teri
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@ Dr D:
Thanks for repeating the link for me. Wow, that was painful to watch. You were right – that’s racism right there.
Maybe Kamala is paid by the word. Or by the word is she paid. And by the word, which is the word, which means the word exists as a word in its own wordiness, one finds meaning in the word. For which she is paid.
Word.
John Fetterman (Lt Gov of Pa, running for US Senate), 52, and Chris Van Hollen (senator from Md), 63, both had strokes over the weekend.
“Bans Off Our Bodies”???? That’s the sign the protesters are carrying? What the actual hell does that even mean? Except the acronym is BOOBS – and I’m sure whoever came up with it thinks they are being all feminist and woke and shit. No wonder the assholes in charge don’t take us seriously. It’s a repeat of the very stupid “pussy hats”, which, by the way, (speaking as one who happens to sport a specimen of the particular piece of anatomy in question) didn’t look like any part of the female body I’m so familiar with.
And may I add that it appears to me that everyone has simply given up. All this talk about living off the land, stock-piling firewood, making bread from acorns (ugh), learning how to trap squirrels, etc. is all very Mother Earth News and shit, but I gotta tell you, it doesn’t work if one is handicapped, or alone, or unable for other reasons to make such drastic changes to their lives. For some of us, this is just early death. And why should we be settling for this anyway? They want us to eat bread made from moldy acorns scavenged from the woods and we’re all like, “Yeah, okay. I guess that’s just what I’m going to have to do. Who’s got a good recipe?” (Heavy sigh.)
God forbid we demand that we get to keep something that we freaking earned after working for over 50 years. God forbid we quit calling each other names and degrading each other for our political leanings the way Biden and Trump egg us on relentlessly to do, and actually team up with each other to get these freaks and grifters off our necks. God forbid we stop shooting each other and actually threaten our “leaders” – make them straighten up or face the pitchforks.
Richest country on earth, yeah, with the wealth all going to a handful of people who think it’s amusing that most of us don’t know who the enemies really are. They got us blaming “socialist blue states” and those “commie socialist Democrats” (which is about the funniest fucking thing I’ve ever heard – clearly, few US’ians can actually define socialism). They got libertarians who think nobody should be able to tell anyone else what to do, except of course, in the case of abortion, where that clump of cells just has to be carried to term no matter what, and then the mother and father and the already-born kids can try to survive as best they can in a mean world with yet another mouth to feed. You won’t help them out then, because Ayn Rand, one of the ugliest-spirited humans to walk to and fro on this earth, said that’s not how real men, the Übermensch, build a wealthy society.
They got white people hating on black people, they got democrats hating republicans and vice versa, they got us shooting each other. They got us writing ‘please, please let us have some rights’ in chalk on the sidewalks in front of their houses and picketing with signs that say ‘BOOBS’, although it’s not clear if that refers to us or to them. Yeah. Got freaking AOC sending out fundraising letters two days after she voted to send $40 billion to those Nazis in Ukraine. That’s some woke shit right there, boy. Can’t even get rid of those Trump tax cuts for the wealthy or those 19th century tariffs he puked up one day, but we got boodles of lucre for the ass-clown running one of the most corrupt countries on the planet. Got Biden with his black eyes – seriously, are my brother and I the only ones creeped out by the way his eyes appear to have no whites in them? – stumbling around like a golem and clearly suffering from the beginnings of aphasia if not something worse, who seems intent on killing off not only his own fellow countrymen, but a whole lot of other people as well.
They are going to pick us clean. They are picking us clean. Vultures gobbling chunks of our flesh off while we’re still twitching beside the road. But we’ll have our bellies full of dandelion salad (with a light glyphosate dressing) and our hatred for our neighbors who voted the ‘wrong way’ and our signs that spell BOOBS. We’ll feel all righteous and shit in our death throes. Yeah.
I can’t tell if the Ukraine thing is just a particularly bad jest or if they are really trying to get us all nuked. But this one points to the idea that this is a scripted joke being played on the entire world, while the real shit (looting of the commons across the globe) is being hidden behind the tom-foolery and jive. So I guess both real and inane at the same time. Like sending the First Lady into a fucking war zone while active shooting is taking place. What country on earth would do such a thing? (Assuming Jill Biden was actually in Ukraine….)
In any case, I have never seen such silly shit during a time of war in my life as the below:
*****************Zelensky’s iconic fleece sold for over $100,000 at Ukraine fundraiser
(CNN)A fleece jacket worn and signed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sold for £90,000, or around $111,000, at a fundraiser for Ukraine in London on Thursday.
“Today, the whole word looks up to a man wearing a simple fleece jacket,” the Ukrainian Embassy to the United Kingdom said in a video posted on Twitter that included footage of Zelensky wearing the jacket. “And now the iconic item, personally signed by President Zelensky, is here.”
The goal of the event was to “tell the stories of (Ukrainian) bravery which became iconic during the war, as well as to raise funds to support this bravery,” according to a tweet from the embassy. […]
The “Brave Ukraine” fundraiser, which included toys donated by Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska and photographs by late photographer Max Levine as well as Zelensky’s jacket, was hosted by the Ukrainian Embassy in London at the Tate Modern art gallery. The event raised over $1 million for “With Ukraine,” the embassy’s official fundraising effort. Most of the funds will go toward the reequipment of the Western Ukrainian Specialized Children’s Medical Center, said the embassy.
In a speech at the fundraiser, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson commended Zelensky’s leadership after the Ukrainian president addressed attendees via video call.
“What an honor to speak after my friend Volodymyr Zelenskyy, truly one of the most incredible leaders of modern times,” he said, according to a transcript from the British government. […]
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/08/world/zelensky-fleece-auction-fundraiser-trnd/index.html
*****************“As an added bonus: the children who utilize a wet nurse get antibodies along with their sustenance, something formula cannot provide.”
Well, yes, that is true, although now they might also be getting the spike proteins from the vaccines the wet nurse took….
52 years ago today. That was back when we used to think they couldn’t kill us all, nor would they even try. How little we knew.
“Ohio”, CSNY
The original Constitution allowed for slavery. Women were not allowed to vote. Should we return to that? Yet we can’t get rid of assault rifles because, you know, 2nd amendment and all. The USA can bomb the fuck out of any country and kill millions of innocent people without a declaration of war. There is no political interest in helping a woman forced to have a baby she doesn’t want and can’t support raise that child for the next 21 years. We don’t care about poor children or homeless people or education or the costs of healthcare in this country. So don’t be shining me on with how we must respect the “sanctity of life”.
The 1973 Roe decision was decided 7-2 and was written by a Nixon appointee. The 1987 Casey decision (upholding Roe) was written by a Reagan appointee on a Court w/ 8 justices appointed by GOP presidents. Just so you know.
If you feel that you have the right to make a “my body, my choice” decision about taking an experimental vaccine, you should allow women the right to make a choice about their bodies as well.
And I know this to be true: if men could get pregnant, you’d be able to get an abortion at every damn Jiffy Lube in the country.
Turns out that Zelensky is named in the Pandora Papers. You have to be REALLY rich to have been listed in the Pandora Papers. (Pandora Papers: “The Pandora papers are the largest trove of leaked data exposing tax haven secrecy in history. They provide a rare window into the hidden world of offshore finance, casting light on the financial secrets of some of the world’s richest people. The files were leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which shared access with the Guardian, BBC and other media outlets around the world. In total, the trove consists of 11.9m files leaked from a total of 14 offshore service providers, totalling 2.94 terabytes of information. That makes it larger in volume than both the Panama papers (2016) and Paradise papers (2017), two previous offshore leaks.”)
Zelensky ran his election bid on getting rid of the oligarchic system, casting the cheating oligarchs out of Ukraine, and instituting a fair system. Behind the scenes, right before the election was held in Ukraine, he shifted most of his money and holdings into his wife’s name and the names of his show-business partners, who continue to hold his wealth for him.
Then he won the election. Now he is telling the US and Europe how his country badly needs money. Not so badly that he will personally chip in, mind you, and like I said the other day, money going into Ukraine does not go to the people but directly into the pockets of the oligarchs. It’s, like, you know, a time-honored tradition.
Well, oligarchs are the same the world over. At least in Ukraine, they call them by the proper noun – oligarchs. Here in the US, we just call them “politicians” or “CEOs” or the “wealthiest Americans” so as to obfuscate their actual role in running the country that is supposedly run “of the people, by the people, for the people”.
See this article from last year, before Zelensky became so popular with the foreign (to Ukraine) media and politicians – back when the newspapers were more honest about his scumminess. And do note his business ties to Russia:
People seem to have forgotten why the 2 eastern provinces in Ukraine wanted to rejoin Russia in the first place. After the US managed to dick around with their election in 2014 and install its puppet president there, the first thing he announced was that the eastern areas would be opened to fracking and to Monsanto-owned farming. As the eastern sections were rightfully proud of their land management practices (there is a reason this is known as the ‘bread basket’ of that part of the world), they immediately objected to both these ideas and broke away from the government in Kiev.
Ukraine should be a fairly wealthy country, all things considered; however, they have been run by oligarchs who stole the common weal for so many generations that they are always in bad shape financially. Zelensky himself is a kind of minor oligarch, so to speak, who has found himself in a position he is entirely unqualified to inhabit. Now, having done nothing for his people, and spent all the country’s money on the stupid and unnecessary war effort – that he drove them straight into because he is just not a very smart guy – he is begging other countries to bail Ukraine out. (Actually, he is asking on behalf of the oligarchy, who will make off with the cash post-haste, but one is invited to politely avert one’s eyes from this little matter.)
But that’s not the end of it. To feather the cap of Ukraine’s future, should it survive as a nation after this fiasco, he is in talks with the IMF to bail out the country. The fucking IMF, for god’s sake! The capo di tutti capi (boss of all bosses) of lenders, whose restructuring demands (the vig, one might call it) imposed on the beggaring country are so onerous that it never gets out from under the ‘loan’.
Opening paragraphs from article below:
***********
Zelensky, IMF chief discuss post-war plans to rebuild UkraineUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke with International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Kristalina Georgieva on Sunday to discuss post-war plans to rebuild Ukraine and maintain financial stability.
The meeting comes as Ukraine says it is running a multi-billion monthly deficit, with the World Bank predicting its economy will shrink by almost half amid Russia’s ongoing invasion.
“Discussed with IMF Managing Director @KGeorgieva the issue of ensuring Ukraine’s financial stability & preparations for post-war reconstruction,” Zelensky wrote in a tweet on Sunday.
“We have clear plans for now, as well as a vision of prospects. I’m sure cooperation between the IMF & (Ukraine) will continue to be fruitful.”
In a response, Georgieva thanked Zelensky for the call, noting that “continued economic support” from Ukraine’s allies will be key to reconstruction efforts.
“Thank you @ZelenskyyUA for the very good call today. Continued economic support by Ukraine’s partners is essential to lay the foundations for rebuilding a modern competitive #Ukraine,” Georgieva said in a tweet.
The World Bank released a report last week that Ukraine’s gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to drop by 45.1 percent this year due to the war, which has now been raging for more than 50 days. […]
Zelensky, IMF chief discuss post-war plans to rebuild Ukraine
****************
@ John Day,
“Just for funsies: (Is ‘LePen’ French for ‘Trump’?)”
Kinda. Le Pen is gaining in popularity for the same reason Trump did here: the major political parties have not done anything for the people in a very long time. Le Pen, the leader of the Front National (National Front in English) Party, is a fascist. The FN party had its start in ’72 and was openly sympathetic to Naziism at that time. They have become much more savvy at hiding their support for such things over the years and have had an increase in support from voters who cannot find a home in either the left or the right any longer. National Front changed its name to the National Rally party recently; I guess they thought it sounded more benign.
Le Pen is most heavily supported by members of the police forces (“les flic”), the military, and those who tend to the far right.
She’s no joke (she’s way smarter than Trump, for instance) and it’s alarming to see one country after another voting in these neo-nazi authoritarian assholes instead of doing the work of building new parties to counter the neolibs and the neocons who currently run these governments.
@ VP:
I don’t think Putin blinked.
Good article explaining the latest comments from Putin at naked capitalism (opening paragraphs from article below):
************
Perhaps an allergy to finance, particularly among political leaders and media employees explains the widespread lack of comprehension of what the Russian “unfriendlies pay for gas in roubles” would amount to. Recall that in his original statement, Putin set forth boundary conditions, most importantly that existing pricing mechanisms would stay in place.
I have to keep recycling this clip because the Russian leader made clear from the get-go that the contract terms and economics would stay in place. What was being added was the requirement that the payment be tendered in roubles: [video]Folks, this is not hard unless you want to make it hard. It’s a mystery why the press went into MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over) mode. If your going to leave the contract otherwise in place, all that Putin was appending was a requirement to exchange the euro/dollar/sterling amount due into roubles at the time of payment. Theoretically, Putin could have insisted on an above-market exchange rate, but that would conflict with his stipulation that price terms remain unchanged, since that would de facto change euro/dollar/sterling pricing for a new higher price stated in roubles.
We listed a whole set of advantages in our post yesterday that Russia would nevertheless get from a minor-seeming, technical change. The main one was to require gas buyers to tender payments to Russian banks, since only Russian banks could get their hands on enough roubles to execute the foreign exchange transaction (more on an important fine point soon). There aren’t a lot of roubles trading outside Russia. That would prevent the West from sanctioning more Russian banks, something they seemed intent on doing at last week’s series of European summits. It would also mean the foreign currency payments would be in the hands of Russian institutions, and hence not vulnerable to being “frozen,” aka expropriated.
The fact that the West seems willing to go along, and is now incorrectly depicting the Russian detailed explanation as a climbdown, makes it awfully hard for them to object when Russia, as it floated on Wednesday, extends this procedure to other commodities, like oil, lumber, wheat, metals, and fertilizer. That means in having payments from “unfriendly countries” on contracts denominated in their currencies be made to an account at an unsanctioned Russian bank with the customer also effectively ordering the currency exchange to roubles. […]
*******************@ Dr. John Day (as the most likely to know):
All these boosters still get recommended in various countries and a lot of them are the mRNA vaccines. These supposedly have to be transported and stored at sub-zero temperatures and have a short shelf life. At the beginning of the pandemic, the required freezers were a huge issue; not only with providing the freezers (there was a severe shortage of the sort of freezers needed), but with maintaining the temperatures consistently throughout the shelf life of the vaccines as they were shipped, stored and then maybe shipped out again elsewhere.
Now we are told that the shelf-life is longer than what they originally said (a sort of random crystal blue persuasion expiration dating method), and absolutely nobody talks about the temperature requirements any more.
So the question is – what has changed? Was all that bullshit, or have the vaccines been altered along the way so as to make them less temperature sensitive?
They are out of their minds. This, on top of everything else that is causing inflation (including Trump’s tariffs on China, which Biden has continued) will cause extreme economic hardship across the US, Canada and the EU. This is economic war against the citizens in all these countries. The leaders of these countries must really hate their own people and intend to bleed us to death. All for the sake of some oligarchs and nazis in Ukraine, for God’s sake – although I really suspect if they hadn’t had Ukraine they would have used something else to hammer us with.
G-7 countries are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union.
The headline is mild and reads as some minor, boring issue. Perhaps they hope people won’t read past that. Stripping Russia of most-favored nation status allows the G-7 countries to put tariffs on Russian products. Tariffs are a stupid 19th century solution to a modern problem, and the people who pay for the tariffs are the consumers in the importing countries.
Article highlights below:
————–U.S., G7 allies to move to strip Russia of ‘most favored nation’ status
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States, together with the Group of Seven nations and the European Union, will move on Friday to revoke Russia’s “most favored nation” status over its invasion of Ukraine, multiple people familiar with the situation told Reuters.
President Joe Biden will announce the plans at the White House at 10:15 a.m. EST (1515 GMT), said one of the sources, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The White House said Biden would announce “actions to continue to hold Russia accountable for its unprovoked and unjustified war on Ukraine”, but gave no details.[…] Stripping Russia of its favored nation status paves the way for the United States and its allies to impose tariffs on a wide range of Russian goods, which would further ratchet up pressure on an economy that is already heading into a “deep recession.”
[…] Each country must implement the change in Russia’s trading status based on its own national processes, two of the people said.
In the United States, removing Russia’s “Permanent Normal Trade Relations” (PNTR) status will require an act of Congress, but lawmakers in both houses – and on both sides of the political aisle – have already signalled their support, two officials said.
“President Biden and the administration appreciate the bipartisan leadership of Congress and its calls for the revocation of PNTR,” one of the officials said, adding that the White House would work with lawmakers on legislation to revoke Russia’s status.
[…] In 2019, Russia was the 26th largest goods trading partner of the United States, with some $28 billion exchanged between the two countries, according to the U.S. Trade Representative’s office.
Top imports from Russia included mineral fuels, precious metal and stone, iron and steel, fertilizers and inorganic chemicals, all goods that could face higher tariffs once Congress acts to revoke Russia’s favored nation trade status.
Biden on Tuesday had imposed an immediate ban on Russian oil and energy imports. […]
Why am I looking at giant (HUGE on my screen, because this website is now formatted in a very strange way on my Mac mini) pictures of muppets, potato chip bags, cartoon characters and Oprah Freaking Winfrey?
I feel stupider than I did an hour ago.
Biden just announced the US is banning imports of Russian oil and gas products. We are told that we must all suffer for the sake of the Nazis in Ukraine. Remember when Bush told us to go shopping after 9/11? Fun times. Now Biden is telling us to eat dirt and die.
Reg gas just hit 3.99 to 4.08/gal here in town (Hagerstown Md).
Diesel is 4.79 in town (4.84 at the truck stop nearest the trucker’s convoy). Considering it’s two hours – on a no-traffic day – to DC, another two hours to circle the Beltway, and then two hours back up here, I don’t see how these guys can afford to do this too much longer.
From article by G. Doctorow:
[…] In particular, one vitally important 3.30 minute video of Russian military spokesman Igor Konoshenkov yesterday and this morning remains accessible on youtube. I will detail below what he was saying, because the messenger and the message concern whether you and I will live to see another day.
Konoshenkov’s points in this video were the following:
1) Russia has now destroyed the entire Ukrainian air force that remained within the confines of Ukraine
2) There are also Ukrainian fighter jets that left the country and are now parked in Romania and other neighboring countries. If these planes are allowed by local authorities to take off from Romania, etc. and enter Ukrainian air space, Russia will consider the country from which they took off as a co-belligerent and will take appropriate action against them. The subtext is that Russia is ready to make missile strikes against NATO airfields that transgress the rules of war.
3) Russia is now about to destroy all military industrial complex factories in Ukraine and has formally warned all employees of these factories to leave the premises and stay away
4) Russia has received documentation from Ukrainian health authorities on the production of biological weapons (anthrax, Siberian plague and much more) by Ukrainian labs in Kharkiv and elsewhere in cooperation with the United States. Stocks of such weapons were being stored in direct violation of international conventions. On 24 February, in advance of the start of Russia’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, the Ukrainian health authorities destroyed these illicit biological weapons. However, Russia has obtained the official documentation certifying this destruction of what should never have been there. Moscow is now studying this documentation, which indicates United States participation in the development of the biological weapons and will publish the incriminating documents, starting from yesterday.
5) Russia has also obtained documentation proving that Ukraine, in cooperation with the United States, was since the presidency of Petro Petrushenko, actively developing nuclear weapons, including “dirty” nuclear devices using readily available fuel from its reactors. Such activity was going on in the Zaporozhye nuclear plants, and it is very likely that the fire reported at a ‘training unit’ adjacent to an active reactor two days ago related to destruction of incriminating papers, if it was not otherwise a ‘false flag’ operation to allege a Russian attack on the power station, in violation of international law.
From this list, the most threatening to European peace in the immediate days ahead is point 2, regarding Ukrainian aircraft based outside of Ukraine and being assigned missions to fly back into Ukrainian air space to thwart Russia’s ongoing military offensive. This bears directly on the patently insane plans of Secretary of State Blinken to allow the Poles to transfer to Kiev, its stock of Soviet era MIGs for missions into Ukraine.
As regards American involvement in the illicit production of biological weapons and of dirty or other types of nuclear arms, we may expect very heated discussions in the United Nations and other forums in coming days.
In the context of the Russian recovery of incriminating documentation that exposes foreign aiders and abetters of Ukraine’s hoped for but not yet achieved production of weapons of mass destruction, it is entirely possible that this explains the sudden and unanticipated flight to Moscow of Israel’s President Bennett two days ago for urgent consultations with President Putin. So far accusations of foreign participation are directed solely against the United States. […]Dick Durbin interviewed on NPR yesterday:
************
…MCCAMMON: Senator, the wire services are reporting that Putin is putting Russian forces that include nuclear-armed units on high alert because of aggressive statements by NATO leaders, as well as the economic sanctions we’ve been reporting on this morning. What is your reaction to that?[Dick] DURBIN [Dem Illinois]: I’m very worried about that, of course. Russia is a superpower when it comes to nuclear weapons. We just hope beyond hope that we never see anyone use a nuclear weapon in a conflict. I wouldn’t put it past him. This man is a war criminal. Donald Trump may think he is a savvy genius. I think he is a savage war criminal. And whether he would use nuclear weapons, I pray he’ll never even consider that….
“We just hope beyond hope that we never see anyone use a nuclear weapon in a conflict. I wouldn’t put it past him.”
Wow. I just can’t even begin to de-code all the re-writing of history and the use of propaganda Durbin has included in this short sentence.
I’ll leave it at this: Nuclear weapons have ALREADY been used in a conflict. And the ONLY country to ever use nuclear weapons in a conflict was the United States, which bombed both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, using nuclear weapons in August of 1945.
The interviewer let his comment go without any remark on it or correction to it, in case you are wondering.
Just saw this:
Trudeau discontinues Emergencies Act
Canadian Prime Minister has revoked the controversial order that had given the government sweeping powers to crack down on mandate protesters
[…]https://www.rt.com/news/550397-emergencies-act-end-protests/
“[…] Critics have noted that the prime minister voiced support for farmers in India who blocked major highways to New Delhi for a year in 2021, saying at the time: ‘Canada will always be there to defend the right of peaceful protest.'[…]”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60383385
Just sayin’.
For the usual reasons, the US wants a new war (to distract the public, because it’s a money-maker, to fuck with other countries, to support the arms manufacturers, killing others is simply fun for neocons and neoliberal, etc). Russia doesn’t seem to be too interested overall.
Reminds me of a bumper sticker that was popular back in the Vietnam War era: “What if they gave a war and nobody came?”
The ‘hero patient’ who received a pig’s heart when he needed a heart transplant turns out to have served some years in jail for nearly killing a man back in 1988. He had stabbed the fellow 7 times, leaving the victim paralyzed for the next 19 years until he died in 2007. So the would-be killer does his time, gets released and goes on with his life. Now he needs a heart transplant and agreed to be the test subject for the experimental pig-to-human transplant. Two things interested me about this story; one is that the place-names are all familiar to me and I had not realized until I read the story that it turns out to be a “local story” for me, and the second interesting thing is that the doctors all insist that ethically they cannot take his moral failings or criminal history into account. As I read the article, I couldn’t help but remember the story from just a couple of weeks ago wherein a patient in need of a kidney transplant was denied because he (she?) did not have the Covid vaccine. There are doctors all over the place adamantly and angrily saying that if you don’t get a vaccine, you should be refused medical treatment. I wonder if this inconsistency in attitude causes them any inner twinges. Nah, I don’t really wonder at all. I know it doesn’t.
Here are some excerpts from the heart transplant story:
**********He once stabbed a man seven times. Now he’s a pig heart transplant pioneer.
[…] Her daughter had sent a link to a news article about a 57-year-old man with terminal heart disease. Three days earlier at the University of Maryland Medical Center, he’d received a genetically-modified pig heart. The first-of-its-kind transplant was historic, saving the man’s life and offering the possibility of saving others.
[…] The man being heralded as a medical pioneer, David Bennett Sr., was the same man who’d been convicted in 1988 of stabbing her younger brother seven times, leaving him paralyzed. Edward Shumaker had spent the next 19 years in a wheelchair, before he had a stroke in 2005 and died two years later – one week before his 41st birthday.
“Ed suffered,” said Downey, who lives in Frederick, Md. “The devastation and the trauma, for years and years, that my family had to deal with.” After Bennett got out of prison, she said, he “went on and lived a good life. Now he gets a second chance with a new heart – but I wish, in my opinion, it had gone to a deserving recipient.”
More than 106,000 Americans are on the national waiting list for an organ transplant, and 17 people die each day never receiving the organ they need. In the face of such a shortage, it can seem unconscionable to some families that those convicted of violent crimes would be given a life-saving procedure so many desperately need.
But most doctors don’t share that view. There are no laws or regulations prohibiting someone with a criminal history from receiving a transplant or an experimental procedure like the one Bennett had.
“The key principle in medicine is to treat anyone who is sick, regardless of who they are,” said Arthur Caplan, a bioethics professor at New York University. “We are not in the business of sorting sinners from saints. Crime is a legal matter.”
While that is the official stance of federal officials and ethics committees in charge of transplant regulations, wide discretion is given at the local level to hospitals, who decide which individuals qualify to be added to the national waiting list.
At that level, other considerations are often taken into account, including a person’s history of substance abuse or a prisoner’s risk of developing an infection while in incarceration, along with access to follow-up care.
Medical ethicists argue that the criminal justice system already imposes jail time, financial restitution or other punishments on those convicted of violent offenses. Withholding medical services is not a part of that punishment.
That division between the legal and medical systems exists for good reason, said Scott Halpern, a medical ethics professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
“We have a legal system designed to determine just redress for crimes,” he said. “And we have a health care system that aims to provide care without regard to people’s personal character or history.”University of Maryland Medical Center officials declined to say whether they knew about Bennett’s criminal past.
In a written statement, officials said the Baltimore hospital provides “lifesaving care to every patient who comes through their doors based on their medical needs, not their background or life circumstances.” […]https://www.yahoo.com/news/once-stabbed-man-seven-times-155320516.html
*****************@Veracious Poet:
You gave a link for this quote from Joe Biden – ” […] ‘I’m not an economist, but I’ve been doing this a long time. But here’s the way to look at it. If car prices are too high right now, there are two solutions: You increase the supply of cars by making more of them, or you reduce demand for cars by making Americans poorer. That’s the choice.’ ” This quote comes from an article that has chosen to truncate the full quote. Unfortunately, this is common practice, but is an unfair and unethical way to quote someone.
Here’s what Biden said, and note the sentences immediately after the part of the quote you gave:
——-
“I’m not an economist, but I’ve been doing this a long time. But here’s the way to look at it. If car prices are too high right now, there are two solutions: You increase the supply of cars by making more of them, or you reduce demand for cars by making Americans poorer. That’s the choice.
Believe it or not, there’s a lot of people in the second camp. You’ll hear them complain that wages are rising too fast among the very middle-class and working-class people who have endured decades of stalled incomes.
Their view of the economy says the only solution to our current and future challenges is to make the working families that are the backbone in our country poorer or keep them in the state they’re in.
It’s a pessimistic vision, and I reject it. I reject the idea that we should somehow punish people because they finally have a little more breathing room.
America doesn’t need to settle for less. We need an economy that has the capacity to generate more growth, more jobs, and more opportunity for all Americans.”transcript from: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/01/07/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-december-2021-jobs-report/
———-Now, I don’t think Biden is up to the job. I also think he lies like a rug on the floor. I also think he has no clue what to do about rising costs, the shitty jobs available in the US, creating better jobs, or any of it. He’s not capable of the job of being president, mentally or ethically.
But let’s not join in the game of misquoting someone to make it sound like they said something they didn’t. And I will add that I don’t think YOU deliberately misquoted Biden – you just didn’t click on the link in the article you were reading (the one you quoted from) to see what Biden actually said. The article’s embedded link takes you to the WH transcript itself, and makes it obvious that the writer of the article left off a few key sentences. I’m sure he assumed no-one would bother to click on the link; most people don’t.
From the article about Greek Deputy Health Minister Mina Gaga: ” […] Meanwhile, in Cyprus a new variant has been identified, the Deltacron, a mutation with both the strains of Delta and Omicron. According to professor Leontios Kostrikis at the Biological Science Department of the University of Cyprus, the Deltacron mutation has been identified in 25 cases and it seems that the strains have a genetic background of the Delta mutation. The new mutation was detected in 11 hospitalized patients and in 14 people of the general population and its frequency was higher among Covid-patients in hospitalization.’
Yeah, well, some other experts say this is just contamination of the tests:
“A hybrid of the Delta and Omicron Covid-19 variants has reportedly been discovered in Cyprus, and 25 cases of the virus have already been recorded. Critics of the discovery, however, allege it to be a mere case of contamination.
[…] ‘The Cypriot ‘Deltacron’ sequences reported by several large media outlets look to be quite clearly contamination,’ virologist Tom Peacock said on Saturday, explaining that ‘they do not cluster on a phylogenetic tree and have a whole Artic primer sequencing amplicon of Omicron in an otherwise Delta backbone.’ ”https://www.rt.com/news/545480-alleged-omicron-delta-hybrid/
——-Hey, the teacher who put her son in the truck of the car to save herself from being exposed to covid on the way to the testing center – just where the hell does she keep him when they are at home? Does she make him eat in the bathroom? Sleep in the front closet? Maybe she ties him up in the back yard and tosses his food into a bowl on the ground once a day? I mean, they live in the same house, FFS.
My computer is showing very weirdly messed-up formatting at TAE today. I think it is the age of my computer and not TAE’s website itself. In any case, I am making an attempt to post a comment, although I am not sure it will go through properly.
Below are some quotes from the amicus brief filed by America’s Frontline Doctors to the Supreme Court in the case against the OSHA mandates. The brief is not long (as these things go), but is very sharp and focused, with footnotes backing up each point. One should take the time to read this in its entirety. One thing I just discovered from reading it is that the vaccines are not only non-sterilizing and not technically vaccines, they are not even actually classified as vaccines by the FDA; they are classed as “therapeutics”, which simply means they are a medical treatment. In the EU, these mRNA shots are classed as “gene therapy medicinal products”.
Here are some quotes I picked out, with a link to the brief itself at the end.
****************
amicus brief by America’s Frontline Doctors:MOTION FOR LEAVE TO FILE AMICUS CURIAE BRIEF AND BRIEF OF AMERICA’S FRONTLINE DOCTORS AS AMICUS CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF APPLICANTS
[…] ARGUMENT
A. Covid-19 injections do not create immunity. They are treatments, not vaccines.The uncontroverted medical consensus is that existing Covid-19 injections do not prevent infection or transmission of the coronavirus; i.e., they do not create immunity in the recipients. This is admitted openly today, including by U.S. Health Agencies, which is why the CDC Director stated on CNN, “What the vaccines can’t do anymore is prevent transmission.”3
Examples abound [they give quotes from Fauci, several doctors, etc]:[…] Since they do not create immunity, but are claimed to merely reduce the symptoms of the disease, the so called Covid-19 vaccines are treatments, not vaccines.20 Even the FDA has classified them as “CBER-Regulated Biologics” otherwise known as “therapeutics” which fall under the “Coronavirus Treatment Acceleration Program.”21
The FDA’s “therapeutics” classification of the injections is consistent with representations made by Pfizer partner BioNTech to the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) in its 2020 Annual Report, where it stated with regard to the mRNA technology forming the basis of its Covid-19 injection:
Although we expect to submit BLAs [biologics license applications] for our mRNA-based product candidates in the United States, and in the European Union, mRNA therapies have been classified as gene therapy medicinal products, and other jurisdictions may consider our mRNA-based product candidates to be new drugs, not biologics or gene therapy medicinal products, and require different marketing applications.22
Similarly, in its June 30, 2020 Quarterly Report to the SEC, Moderna stated with regard to the mRNA technology underpinning its injection: “Currently, mRNA is considered a gene therapy product by the FDA.”23
Thus, the medical community, the relevant agencies, and both Pfizer and Moderna — the manufacturers of the dominant injections — recognize that the so- called vaccines are therapeutics, or medical treatments. Since they do not achieve immunization, this conclusion is also consistent with Congress’ definition of vaccines in establishing the National Vaccine Program in 1986: the “prevention of human infectious diseases through immunization.”24 Accordingly, we herein refer to the Covid-19 “vaccines” as Covid-19 injections.
[…] The OSHA ETS fails to take any of these differences into account, and simply applies uniformly to everyone working for a company employing 100 people or more. It is indeed a sledgehammer approach.
b. The ETS fails to consider natural immunity.
Perhaps most concerning is that the ETS completely ignores natural immunity. Universal principles of virology and immunology teach us that immunity from natural infection is the most complete, most robust, and most durable.30 Consistent with this principle, the evidence establishes that natural immunity acquired by those who have been infected with and recovered from Covid-19 (the “Covid-19 Recovered”) acquire complete and lifelong immunity.31 Indeed, The Cleveland Clinic found the following: “Individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination.”32
There is no evidence to support the argument that the Covid-19 Recovered lose their immunity. In fact, there is substantial evidence suggesting it will be lifelong.33,34 Such evidence includes: University of Washington scientists discovered that prior infection35 with the original SARS-CoV-136 (which is approximately 78 percent identical to SARS-Cov-2) conferred natural immunity that is robust against the current SARS-CoV-2 eighteen years later;37 The Lancet reports that “infection does protect against reinfection;”38 SCIENCE reports: “Substantial immune memory is generated after natural infection with COVID-19, involving all four major types of immune memory”;39 and Nature reports: “SARS-CoV-2 infection induces long-lived bone marrow plasma cells in humans.”40
The Covid-19 Recovered are now more than half of the U.S. population. “As of July 1, 2021, about 53.8% of the 330 million people living in the U.S. have been infected with SARS-CoV-2….”41 In December 2021, this number exceeds 200 million people. The OSHA ETS, however, fails to account for the more than 50 percent of the population that is now naturally immune. Far from being narrowly tailored, it is ludicrously overbroad. In addition, OSHA fails to consider the damage done to those naturally immune people forced to take the injections, who are placed at greater risk of harm from the injections in both the short term and the long term.42 […]
@ Doc Robinson,
Thanks for the link to the article re: Walensky. See? I knew I had forgotten something.
And the answer to my question is yes; one person is making decisions that affect the health, life and death of millions of people all on her own. I wonder how many times a day she talks to Fauci.
Just saw this article on the Yahoo news compiler (posted at the top in red as “breaking news”):
************
FDA expands Pfizer boosters for more teens as omicron surges.The U.S. is expanding COVID-19 boosters as it confronts the omicron surge, with the Food and Drug Administration allowing extra Pfizer shots for children as young as 12.
Boosters already are recommended for everyone 16 and older, and federal regulators on Monday decided they’re also warranted for 12- to 15-year-olds once enough time has passed since their last dose.
But the move, coming as classes restart after the holidays, isn’t the final step. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must decide whether to recommend boosters for the younger teens. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, is expected to rule later this week.
The FDA also said everyone 12 and older who’s eligible for a Pfizer booster can get one as early as five months after their last dose rather than six months. […]https://www.yahoo.com/news/fda-expands-pfizer-boosters-more-144201594.html
*************i am very curious about this statement: “Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, is expected to rule later this week.” Does Walensky actually have the right to make this decision on her own? One person at the CDC gets to make some unilateral decision on this sort of thing?
Maybe I missed out on something, but I thought that these people at least pretended to have committees and hearings and presentations of data and such. Seriously, maybe I missed out on some information and Walenski has been allowed to act on her own all along. It just stunned me to read that sentence just now.
And the rest of the article goes on to discuss a third shot recommended for immune-compromised 5- to 11- year olds to be given 28 days after their second shot, and that Pfizer is studying its vaccine for kids under 5.
“President Joe Biden on Monday pledged to support governors struggling with the omicron variant of Covid-19, but acknowledged the states will need to take the lead in controlling the pandemic.
Speaking just before a meeting with some of the nation’s governors, Biden said: “There is no federal solution. This gets solved at a state level.” […]”https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/27/biden-says-covid-surge-needs-to-be-solved-at-state-level-vows-full-federal-support.html
***************So, what about those FEDERAL vaccine mandates you got going there, Nimrod? Can we toss those?
Huh. We have been complaining that these vaccines are non-sterilizing. And now it turns out that the pharma companies made them so they DO sterilize us. That’s what you get for complaining.
(I will see myself out now.)
Off-topic, sorry. This is how dumb they think you are; just send us your personal nude selfies and sex scenes and we PROMISE we will only keep them on file so that if someone (other than you) tries to use them, our computer algorithm will recognize them and prevent them from being uploaded. We also promise we won’t peek at them ourselves and laugh about your fat butt or your strange proclivities.
************
Meta, the new name for Facebook Inc., has co-developed a platform that asks people to submit their intimate photos and videos in order to prevent them from being used as ‘revenge porn’ on Facebook or Instagram.
The tool is for “adults over 18 years old who think an intimate image of them may be shared, or has already been shared, without their consent,” Meta said in a blogpost on Thursday.
The new platform, which Meta developed together with the UK Revenge Porn Helpline and 50 other NGOs, aims to prevent the publication of ‘revenge porn’, rather than just removing the delicate files after they’ve already appeared online.
Concerned users are being asked to submit photos or videos of themselves naked or having sex to a hash-tagging database through the StopNCII.org (Stop Non-Consensual Intimate Images) website.
The special hashtags, or “digital fingerprints,” are then assigned to those materials by the tool, and can be used to instantly detect and curb attempts to upload them online by the perpetrators.
Meta said that the system had been developed “with privacy and security at every step.” Only the hashtags are being shared with StopNCII.org and the tech platforms participating in the project, while the explicit images and clips never leave the user’s device and remain “securely in the possession of the owner,” it assured.
The new tool represents “a sea-change in the way those affected by intimate image abuse can protect themselves,” Revenge Porn Helpline manager Sophie Mortimer insisted.
But the question remains whether people will actually be willing to use it, considering Meta’s bad rap for mishandling user data.
https://www.rt.com/news/542115-meta-facebook-revenge-porn/
*************NY’s new governor, Hochul, has declared a state of emergency for NY hospitals already. No elective surgeries, only emergency needs will be met, until at least Jan 15th. No, they will not bring back the unclean unvaccinated health workers who got fired, even though we know that the vaccines did not prevent Delta from spreading and they sure as hell can’t prevent anything newer than that (according to the vaccine manufacturers themselves). What the hell kind of reasoning is used to come to such a decision?
*******************Parts of the U.S. have begun an all-out assault against the new, highly transmissible Omicron variant of COVID-19 as Dr. Anthony Fauci warned that the variant is likely already circulating in the country.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency Friday, limiting hospital capacity to emergency needs as of Dec. 3 and arranging for the purchase of medical supplies. The emergency state, which temporarily bans elective surgeries, will remain in effect until at least Jan. 15.
“We continue to see warning signs of spikes this upcoming winter, and while the new Omicron variant has yet to be detected in New York State, it’s coming,” Hochul said. […]https://www.yahoo.com/news/fauci-says-omicron-variant-likely-151154911.html
Wallstreetonparade has a couple of articles about Omarova, nominee for heading the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Wall Street on Parade is not politically motivated; they are just anti-corruption and anti-big-wall-street-banks-and-thier-CEO’s-taking-everything. They wrote this about Omarova and the Congressional hearing just a day or so ago:
**************[…] If one were to score yesterday’s confirmation hearing as a baseball game, it was Republicans 15, Democrats 0. The Republican Senators simply read Omarova’s verbatim statements that she made in recent papers or video appearances and the Democrats had no ammunition to counter these damaging words other than to call it all a smear campaign.
Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania and Ranking Member of the Committee, said this as part of his opening remarks:
“Let’s talk about some of Professor Omarova’s radical ideas. For starters, she wants to effectively ‘end banking as we know it.’ What does that mean? Well, she’s told us. In ‘The People’s Ledger,’ a paper she published just last month, she outlined her plan for nationalizing retail banking. Under her plan, ‘central bank accounts fully replace—rather than uneasily co-exist with—private bank deposits.’ In other words, you couldn’t have an account with your local community bank. Your money would be held by the government at the Federal Reserve.
“Countless Americans were outraged over recent Democrat plans for the IRS to get their personal bank account information. Imagine their reaction to having the government actually take over their bank accounts.
“Professor Omarova also has a proposal to control the money supply through these individual FedAccounts, including when necessary ‘implementing a contractionary monetary policy by debiting’ those accounts. For those of us who are not accountants, debiting means subtracting.
“This, she allows, could be ‘perceived as the government taking away people’s money.’ I think I know why—because it is the government taking away people’s money.”
And so it went throughout the hearing. The Democrats were left to huff and puff over the alleged smear campaign while Republicans simply read Omarova’s preposterous writings or video statements back to her. For further background on what Omarova has proposed in articles published in legal journals, read our report: Biden’s Nominee Omarova Has a Published Plan to Move All Bank Deposits to the Fed and Let the New York Fed Short Stocks.
Democrats Go Out on a Limb for Biden Nominee, Omarova: The Limb Snapped Yesterday
Just saw on yahoo news compiler:
OSHA has suspended the implementation and enforcement of the mandate. Full article below:
****************The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has suspended implementation and enforcement of the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for private employers after a federal court blocked the measure.
The OSHA website page dedicated to the COVID Vaccine Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) reads: “While OSHA remains confident in its authority to protect workers in emergencies, OSHA has suspended activities related to the implementation and enforcement of the ETS pending future developments in the litigation.”
Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit fully blocked Biden’s executive order requiring companies with over 100 workers to mandate vaccination for their employees after temporarily staying it on November 12. The court ordered that OSHA “take no steps to implement or enforce” the vaccine mandate “until further court order.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/osha-suspends-enforcement-biden-vaccine-171701465.htmlThose vaccines for children – shit. There are NO studies and the FDA let Pfizer/BioNTech defer any studies until later.
I found this from the FDA to BioTech Manufacturing, dated Aug. 23, 2021, regarding their Biologics License Application (BLA) for the use of the vaccine in children and pregnant women. The application to broaden the use of their vaccine was received by the FDA on May 18, 2021.
The FDA found that they were applying for approval to administer vaccines (the COMIRNATY vaccine) to groups not yet approved for its use: to wit; children under 16 and pregnant women. In order to approve it, the FDA has to have studies that prove it is safe and effective, unless the FDA decides to “defer” the studies until a later date. So that is what they did. Absent any current studies, they outline the deferred dates that BioNTech/Pfizer has to abide by in their studies for pediatric and pregnancy use. In other words, there are no studies that show either safety or efficacy for this vaccine, but the FDA just approved them for kids anyway and told Pfizer to do the studies later. The reasoning for this is circular – we already approved it for those over 16 and you didn’t do studies on anyone under 16, so we’ll approve it now and you do the studies, y’know, when you get around to it.
The study dates are pretty far out on the horizon. I am copying a few of them in between the rows of stars (for some reason, I still don’t have any formatting options here, so I can not indent quotes.)
************
PEDIATRIC REQUIREMENTS
Under the Pediatric Research Equity Act (PREA) (21 U.S.C. 355c), all applications for new active ingredients, new indications, new dosage forms, new dosing regimens, or new routes of administration are required to contain an assessment of the safety and effectiveness of the product for the claimed indication in pediatric patients unless this requirement is waived, deferred, or inapplicable.
We are deferring submission of your pediatric studies for ages younger than 16 years for this application because this product is ready for approval for use in individuals 16 years of age and older, and the pediatric studies for younger ages have not been completed.Deferred pediatric Study C4591001 to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of COMIRNATY in children 12 years through 15 years of age.
Study Completion: May 31, 2023
Final Report Submission: October 31, 2023Deferred pediatric Study C4591007t to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of COMIRNATY in infants and children 6 months to <12 years of age.
Study Completion: November 30, 2023
Final Report Submission: May 31, 2024Deferred pediatric Study C4591023 to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of COMIRNATY in infants <6 months of age.
Study Completion: July 31, 2024
Final Report Submission: October 31, 2024
****************
The FDA goes on to admit that myocarditis and pericarditis are actual risks, so they are requiring BioNTech/Pfizer to do the following studies (note the end dates of the studies):****************
We have determined that an analysis of spontaneous postmarketing adverse events reported under section 505(k)(1) of the FDCA will not be sufficient to assess known serious risks of myocarditis and pericarditis and identify an unexpected serious risk of subclinical myocarditis.Furthermore, the pharmacovigilance system that FDA is required to maintain under section 505(k)(3) of the FDCA is not sufficient to assess these serious risks.
Therefore, based on appropriate scientific data, we have determined that you are required to conduct the following studies:
Study C4591009,entitled “ANon-Interventional Post-Approval Safety Study of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine in the United States,” to evaluate the occurrence of myocarditis and pericarditis following administration of COMIRNATY. We acknowledge the timetable you submitted on August 21, 2021, which states that you will conduct this study according to the following schedule:
Final Protocol Submission: August 31, 2021
Monitoring Report Submission: October 31, 2022
Interim Report Submission: October 31,2023
Study Completion: June 30, 2025
Final Report Submission: October 31, 2025Study C4591036, a prospective cohort study with at least 5 years of
follow-up for potential long-term sequelae of myocarditis after vaccination
(in collaboration with Pediatric Heart Network).
We acknowledge the timetable you submitted on August 21, 2021, which
states that you will conduct this study according to the following schedule:
Final Protocol Submission: November 30, 2021
Study Completion: December 31, 2026
Final Report Submission: May 31, 2027Study C4591007 substudy to prospectively assess the incidence of subclinical myocarditis following administration of the second dose of COMIRNATY in a subset of participants 5 through 15 years of age.
We acknowledge the timetable you submitted on August 21, 2021, which states that you will conduct this assessment according to the following schedule:
Final Protocol Submission: September 30, 2021
Study Completion: November 30, 2023
Final Report Submission: May 31, 2024
********************Regarding the use of their vaccine in pregnant women, the required safety study on vaccine exposure during pregnancy will not be completed until June 30, 2025, with the final report due Dec. 31, 2025.
The entire letter with its set of protocols and study requirements may be read here:The Guardian has an article up that reads, in its third paragraph, “Over the last month, 4,409 people over 50 were admitted to English hospitals after testing positive for Covid – despite having two doses of a vaccine. And 2,148 men and women in that age group lost their lives.” It goes on to this, “The best way to protect the elderly and vulnerable this winter is, say government scientists, a booster programme. The third vaccine dose will eventually be offered to 30 million people over 50, medical staff, and younger adults with some health conditions.[…]”
Yes, they are saying that about half the people over the age of 50 who were “fully vaccinated”, but who then got sick enough to enter the hospital died anyway. And by the way, if anyone over 50 is now considered “elderly”, I can only assume someone has re-defined the word “elderly” the same way someone re-defined the word “vaccine”.
The Guardian is using this statistic to tell everyone that this is why you ought to get another booster pronto. Looks like most of the commenters are very worried about why they can’t find a closer place to get said booster or why they couldn’t get on the booster list for a quicker appointment. I would have read more of the comments, but my head hurt from banging it on the desk so many times, so I quit reading the comment section after a dozen or so.
Full article here: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59122646
oxymoron and polder dweller;
That Di Nero clip is from the Tony Awards in 2018. It kind of looks to me that the person who tweeted that old clip was attempting to show how silly it is to claim that saying “Let’s Go, Brandon” is so-o-o-o offensive when Di Nero didn’t face too much backlash for saying worse about Trump a few years ago.
The tweet overall is sarcastic. Unfortunately, it looks like a bunch of people replying to it did not get his point.
I was reading the latest post at moonofalabama regarding Biden’s approach to the Iran nuclear agreement. Biden’s idea has morphed from returning to the JCPOA as written into keeping Trump’s added sanctions on Iran and adding more of his own (in my opinion, the JCPOA one of the only good things Obama did, while dumping it was one of the more retarded things Trump did). Biden added some new sanctions a couple of days ago, just as he is supposed to be re-visiting the topic with the EU leaders and beginning a new round of negotiations with Iran. More sanctions on top of not ending the Trump sanctions is not a very useful tactic.
In any case, these new sanctions involve “penalizing the members of the IranianIran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and two affiliated companies for supplying lethal drones and related material to insurgent groups in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen and to Ethiopia, which has been fighting rival Tigray forces for almost a year.” They also “block any assets that those targeted may have in U.S. jurisdictions, bar Americans from transactions with them and, perhaps more importantly, also subject foreign people and firms that do business with them to potential penalties.”
Biden has also kept Trump’s sanctions against Cuba and even tightened them further.
Now, economic sanctions are recognized as a form of asymmetrical warfare and are, technically, considered illegal under international law. The US does this sort of warfare against other countries on a routine basis in an effort to impoverish the country in question, which will theoretically encourage the targeted country’s native population to rise up and overthrow their own government, and bring the “rogue” government more into line with the ideal of US democracy standards. It seldom works, of course, because while the people of the targeted country suffer shortages, poverty, lack of medical care and loss of jobs due to our sanctions, they are not stupid. They generally know who is causing the problems. Furthermore, people tend to become MORE protective of their own country when under such attacks, not less. Imagine for a few minutes how you would react if the Chinese, the Saudi Arabians, or the Germans, say, told the US that they would shut down commerce, banking, and trade with the US until such time as the US got rid of its president and elected a new leader that was more suitable to that foreign government. The foreign government also wants the US to alter some of its laws to more match the laws of the foreigners. For this exercise, you may imagine that either Biden or Trump (or FDR or Bush or Kennedy) is the president. Would you not rally around the flag, so to speak, even if you didn’t particularly like the current president and didn’t vote for him? You wouldn’t want some foreign government dictating our laws, our values, and our choices to us and you wouldn’t accept the idea that some strangers across the globe were going to get away with causing food and medical shortages, ruining your ability to hold a job or feed your family, interrupt your access to banking transactions, and to top it off, penalize other countries or companies that do business with the US so as to add to the pain. Now it’s not just Germany or China that won’t do business with us, it’s all countries. We would be pissed. We would HATE that other country. I suspect that even the North Koreans blame the US for their troubles more than they blame the Kim family because while they (or at least some of them) might realize that Kim Jong Il is a fascist tyrant, they CAN’T GET OUT OF THERE AND THEY CANNOT GET RID OF HIM – and in the meantime, they are starving because of the US sanctions. Kim is not. They are being punished for a leader they didn’t even ask for.
Well, I just went on too long with the intro, for which I apologize. Here is the point: reading about Biden instituting yet another new round of sanctions on Iran made me realize that the US government has just imposed economic sanctions on its own people, as have all the other governments that are imposing vaccine mandates on their respective populations.
You will not be allowed to ply your trade and earn money for you and/or your family. The company you work for will also be sanctioned with financial penalties if they allow you to continue to work. You will not be allowed to apply for unemployment compensation for the loss of your job. You will not be allowed to enter certain places that remain accessible to some other people in your country (stores, schools, hospitals, etc). You will be denied education. You cannot travel. The “mandate countries” are talking about increasing these sanctions to include refusing you access to all medical care, refusing your purchase of medical insurance (assuming you have enough money saved up to pay for it after you lose your job), and forcing you to live only in certain areas; i.e., they will take away your home and your possessions.
These are economic sanctions. These are a form of asymmetrical warfare levied against our own people rather than against some foreign speculated “enemy”. Some people may think all laws are a form of coercion and we should live in anarchy without a government at all. I don’t agree with that. I think we need reasonable laws to preserve peace and maintain a just, functioning society. Murderers, rapists, and child molesters should go to jail. Thieves should be punished for stealing (even if they are the CEO of a major bank). Etc, etc. However, these sanctions over vaccines are not just or reasonable.
We are talking here about vaccines that do not protect anyone from getting the disease. They are experimental, include new technology such as mRNA and nanoparticles that have been proven to be problematic when tried for other vaccines, have not finished the preliminary rounds of testing, have unknown long-term effects and have already proven to have some serious adverse medical effects on thousands of people – up to and including death. The vaccines are programmed to protect against the original “Wuhan” variant and don’t even protect against the current Delta variant, while at the same time they are encouraging the virus to mutate further. At present, it appears people will need constant semiannual boosters of these shots. We do know that such frequent administration of non-sterilizing vaccines will eventually strip the immune system of its innate ability to fend off other infections.
To top it off, the government is refusing to search out prophylactics and treatments that could save the lives of people who are sickened by covid, refusing to do accurate testing, refusing to address long covid issues, and spending zero money to develop an actually useful sterilizing vaccine.
The 10 – 30 percent of Americans who are refusing the vaccines or who refuse to go along with the infinite boosters required by the government are facing the same sort of [illegal] economic sanctions we routinely use on “recalcitrant” non-allied countries. Millions of lives will be ruined over a medical experiment that doesn’t even keep anyone from getting the damn disease. It’s finally come to this.
“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.” – Revelation 6:8.
