Oct 022022
 


Marc Chagall The Feast of the Tabernacles 1916

 

Russia Makes It ‘Impossible For War To End’ – Borrell (RT)
The End of Western Hegemony is INEVITABLE – Putin (Konstantin Kisin)
Nord Stream Explosions Are A ‘Tremendous Opportunity’ – US (RT)
Europe ‘Indefinitely Deprived’ Of Key Gas Supply Route – Gazprom (RT)
Who Profits From Pipeline Terror? (Escobar)
Russian Gas Exports To EU Via TurkStream Plunge (RT)
Russia Halts Gas Delivery To Italy (RT)
Azerbaijan To Increase Gas Deliveries To Bulgaria, Via Greece (AP)
Greek Gas Utility Clinches Winter LNG Deal (R.)
The Euro Without Germany (Michael Hudson)
Thousands Of German Stores On Brink Of Closure – Spiegel (RT)
Zelensky’s Lies Can’t Hide Ukraine’s Bloody Role In The Holocaust (Dershowitz)
FBI Agents Improperly Saw Privileged Trump Communications: Lawyers (ET)
A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing (Steve Keen)
FDA Withholds Autopsy Results on People Who Died After COVID-19 Vaccines (ET)
Next On Europe’s Doomsday List: Collapse Of Cell Phone Networks (ZH)
China Tells State Banks To Sell Dollars, Buy Yuan (R.)

 

 

 

 

“Good people do things for other people. That’s it. The end”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Said it before: Borrell is EU’s No.1 warmonger, he needs to go.

Try this one: Putin has created the opportunity for peace. By making it much harder for Ukraine to shell its -formerly- own Russian speaking population.

Russia Makes It ‘Impossible For War To End’ – Borrell (RT)

The accession of four former Ukrainian regions into Russia makes the conflict in Ukraine impossible to end, top EU diplomat Josep Borrell said on Saturday. Speaking to the Spanish RTVE channel, the bloc’s high representative for foreign affairs described the impending inclusion of the two Donbass Republics, and Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions, into the Russian Federation as an “annexation” and an act of “completely unjustified aggression.” “Putin makes it more difficult, even impossible, for the war to end,” Borrell said. The EU is committed to continuing its military support for Ukraine, the diplomat stressed. The bloc also intends to go ahead with another package of sanctions against Moscow “so that Russia would be isolated internationally,” he added.

Russia has consistently warned the West against “pumping up” Ukraine with weapons, saying that it would only prolong the conflict. Borrell’s claim that Russia’s “annexation” of new territories will further jeopardize a peaceful solution to the Ukraine crisis echoed earlier remarks by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Speaking on the eve of the accession ceremony for the former Ukrainian regions, Guterres condemned in very strong terms both their inclusion into Russia and the preceding referendums, and called on Russia “to step back from the brink.” In response, Moscow accused the secretary general of abusing his authority.

Putin, meanwhile, warned the Ukrainian authorities and their Western “handlers” that people living in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as in the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye, have become Russian citizens “forever” because they made a choice “to be with their Motherland.” In his speech at the signing ceremony for the accession treaties, the president also accused the West of dreaming “to weaken and break up Russia,” of being “ready to cross every line to preserve the neo-colonial system,” and of overthrowing traditional values, which, in Putin’s opinion, amounts to “pure Satanism.” The Russian president did call on Kiev to “return to the negotiating table.” His Ukrainian counterpart, Vladimir Zelensky, however, said that his country was ready for dialogue with Russia, but “with another president.”

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“.. In the 80s they had another crisis they solved by “plundering our country”. Now they want to solve their problems by “breaking Russia”..

The End of Western Hegemony is INEVITABLE – Putin (Konstantin Kisin)

This is a reproduction of my live Twitter summary/translation of Vladimir Putin’s speech: I wish every single person in the West would listen to Putin’s speech. Obviously, that won’t happen so let me summarise as a professional translator for 10+ years. He states, as he has done from the outset, what his intentions and complaints are in the plainest terms possible. Setting aside his brief comments on the recent “referendums”, he spends most of his speech discussing the West. His primary complaint isn’t NATO expansion, which gets only a cursory mention. The West is greedy and seeks to enslave and colonise other nations, like Russia. The West uses the power of finance and technology to enforce its will on other nations. To collect what he calls the “hegemon’s tax”.

To this end the West destabilises countries, creates terrorist enclaves and most of all seeks to deprive other countries of sovereignty. It is this “avarice” and desire to preserve its power that is the reason for the “hybrid war” the collective West is “waging on Russia”. They want us to be a “colony”. They do not want us to be free, they want Russians to be a mob of soulless slaves – direct quote. The rules-based order the West goes on about is “nonsense”. Who made these rules? Who agreed to them? Russia is an ancient country and civilization and we will not play by these “rigged” rules. The West has no moral authority to challenge the referendums because it has violated the borders of other countries. Western elites are “totalitarian, despotic and apartheidistic” – direct quote.

They are racist against Russia and other countries and nations. “Russophobia is racism”. They discriminate by calling themselves the “civilised world”. They colonised, started the global slave trade, genocided native Americans, pillaged India and Africa, forced China to buy opium through war. We, on the other hand, are proud that we “led” the anti-colonial movement that helped countries develop to reduce poverty and inequality. They are Russophobic (they hate us) because we didn’t allow our country to be pillaged by creating a strong CENTRALISED (emphasis his) state based on Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism. They have been trying to destabilise our country since the 17th century in the Times of Trouble. Eventually, they managed to “get their hands on our riches” at the end of the 20th century.

They called us friends and partners while pumping out trillions of dollars (his irony game is strong today). We remember this. We didn’t forget. The West claims to bring freedom and democracy to other countries but it’s the exact opposite of the truth. The unipolar world is anti-democratic by its very nature. It is a lie. They used nuclear weapons, creating a precedent. They flattened German cities without “any military need to do so”. There was no need for this except to scare us and the rest of the world. Korea, Vietnam. To this day they “occupy” Japan, South Korea and Germany and other countries while cynically calling them “allies”. The West has surveillance over the leaders of these nations who “swallow these insults like the slaves they are”. He then talks about bioweapon research (haven’t heard about them for a while) and human experiments “including in Ukraine”.

The US rules the world by the power of the fist. Any country which seeks to challenge Western hegemony becomes an enemy. Their neocolonialism is cloaked in lies like “containment” of Russia, China and Iran. The concept of truth has been destroyed with fakes and extreme propaganda (irony game still strong). You cannot feed your people with printed dollars and social media. You need food and energy. But Western elites have no desire to find a solution to the food and energy crises *they* (emphasis his) created. They solved the problems at the start of 20c with WW1 and the US established dominance of the world via the dollar as a result of WW2. In the 80s they had another crisis they solved by “plundering our country”. Now they want to solve their problems by “breaking Russia”.

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“It’s obvious to everyone who benefits from it,” Putin explained. “Those who benefit are the ones who have done it.”

Nord Stream Explosions Are A ‘Tremendous Opportunity’ – US (RT)

The US views the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines as a “tremendous opportunity” to wean the continent off of Russian energy, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on Friday. With winter approaching, Blinken said that the US wants Europe to decrease its fuel use. Speaking to reporters in Washington, Blinken boasted that the US is now “the leading supplier of [liquefied natural gas] to Europe.” In addition to shipping its own fuel to Europe, Blinken said that the US is working with European leaders to find ways to “decrease demand” and “speed up the transition to renewables.” “It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from [Russian President] Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs,”Blinken declared.

The US likely stands to gain the most from the destruction of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, which were damaged by a series of explosions off the Danish island of Bornholm earlier this week. Washington has for years been trying to convince European leaders to swap Russian gas for its LNG, and the severity of the damage to the undersea conduits now means that Europe is “indefinitely deprived” of Russian gas via this route, Russian energy operator Gazprom stated on Friday. In a speech on Friday, President Vladimir Putin blamed the explosions on“the Anglo-Saxons,” a Russian colloquialism for the US-UK transatlantic alliance. “It’s obvious to everyone who benefits from it,” Putin explained. “Those who benefit are the ones who have done it.”

While the way is now open for the US to sell its more expensive LNG to Europe, the shortfall cannot be covered overnight. US exporters warned throughout the summer that they will not be able to ship enough gas to meet demand on the continent, and many of Europe’s import terminals are still under construction or in planning. Meanwhile, energy bills are skyrocketing across Europe. In Germany, which faces the prospect of rapid “deindustrialization,” protesters took to the streets to demand the re-opening of Nord Stream 2, just days before the explosions. Food shortages have been predicted in Germany and firewood is in hot demand across the continent as citizens struggle to heat their homes. “There’s a lot of hard work to do to make sure that countries and partners get through the winter,” Blinken said, suggesting, as EU leaders have also done, that Europe work to “reduce demand” for gas.

Blinken

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“..von der Leyen: [..] any “deliberate disruption of the European energy infrastructure is unacceptable and will lead to the strongest retaliation.”

Watch out US! Poland! Denmark! Sweden!

Europe ‘Indefinitely Deprived’ Of Key Gas Supply Route – Gazprom (RT)

The damage to Russia’s Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines means Europe is indefinitely deprived of one of its key gas supply routes, Gazprom spokesman Sergey Kupriyanov said on Friday. “Essentially, Europe is indefinitely deprived of one of the key routes for obtaining a crucial energy resource. Russia and Gazprom spent a huge amount of energy and money to build and launch these pipelines because this is the shortest and safest, as we thought, way for Russian gas to reach European consumers. Now the pipelines are standing with puncture holes,” Kupriyanov said at a UN Security Council meeting. Technical data “allows [Gazprom] to say with certainty” that the sharp pressure drops were caused by physical damage, the spokesman stressed.

According to him, at the time of the incident, the pipelines were not transporting gas, but both were filled with the fuel and ready for service. There were about 800 million cubic meters of gas in the strings, which is equivalent to Denmark’s gas consumption for three months. “Gazprom has begun searching for possible solutions to get the Nord Stream system back up and running, but the timeline cannot yet be estimated… This is a very difficult technical task,” Kupriyanov said, noting that in order to assess the situation, Gazprom will have to start with a physical inspection of the damaged areas. The Danish authorities reported leaks on the pipelines on Monday after a local pipeline operator noted a loss of pressure on both the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines earlier that day.

Danish and Swedish seismologists later spoke of a series of undersea explosions in the area. The Russian, American, and Swedish authorities said the leaks might have been the result of a deliberate attack. European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen said the incidents were the result of sabotage, warning that any “deliberate disruption of the European energy infrastructure is unacceptable and will lead to the strongest retaliation.” Russia called the incident a “terrorist attack” and summoned a UN Security Council meeting over it.

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“The US State Department declared that the idea the US was involved is “preposterous.”

Who Profits From Pipeline Terror? (Escobar)

The notion that Russian intel would destroy Gazprom pipelines is beyond ludicrous. All they had to do was to turn off the valves. NS2 was not even operational, based on a political decision from Berlin. The gas flow in NS was hampered by western sanctions. Moreover, such an act would imply Moscow losing key strategic leverage over the EU. Diplomatic sources confirm that Berlin and Moscow were involved in a secret negotiation to solve both the NS and NS2 issues. So they had to be stopped – no holds barred. Geopolitically, the entity that had the motive to halt a deal holds anathema a possible alliance in the horizon between Germany, Russia, and China.

The Poles, moreover, are terrified that with Russia’s partial mobilization, and the new phase of the Special Military Operation (SMO) – soon to be transformed into a Counter-Terrorism Operation (CTO) – the Ukrainian battlefield will move westward. Ukrainian electric light and heating will most certainly be smashed. Millions of new refugees in western Ukraine will attempt to cross to Poland. At the same time there’s a sense of “victory” represented by the partial opening of the Baltic Pipe in northwest Poland – almost simultaneously with the sabotage. Talk about timing. Baltic Pipe will carry gas from Norway to Poland via Denmark. The maximum capacity is only 10 billion cubic meters, which happens to be ten times less than the volume supplied by NS and NS2. So Baltic Pipe may be enough for Poland, but carries no value for other EU customers.

Meanwhile, the fog of war gets thicker by the minute. It has already been documented that US helicopters were overflying the sabotage nodes only a few days ago; that a UK “research” vessel was loitering in Danish waters since mid-September; that NATO tweeted about the testing of “new unmanned systems at sea” on the same day of the sabotage. Not to mention that Der Spiegel published a startling report headlined “CIA warned German government against attacks on Baltic Sea pipelines,” possibly a clever play for plausible deniability. The Russian Foreign Ministry was sharp as a razor: “The incident took place in an area controlled by American intelligence.” The White House was forced to “clarify” that President Joe Biden – in a February video that has gone viral – did not promise to destroy NS2; he promised to “not allow” it to work. The US State Department declared that the idea the US was involved is “preposterous.”

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Netherlands banned “export and provision of pipes for Russia’s use”. And this is not deliberate?!

Russian Gas Exports To EU Via TurkStream Plunge (RT)

Russian gas flows to the EU via the TurkStream pipeline dropped by a quarter at the end of September compared to the end of August, the Russian newspaper Vedomosti reported on Saturday.According to the report, which cited data from the association of Europe’s transmission system operators, on September 29 about 32 million cubic meters of gas were supplied to the EU through the Strandzha 2-Malkoclar entry point on the Turkish-Bulgarian border. This is about 25% less than at the end of August, when the pipeline supplied about 43 million cubic meters of gas per day. On Thursday, the Russian-owned operator of the TurkStream pipeline,

South Stream Transport, said that the Netherlands had withdrawn its gas export license due to the latest EU sanctions package against Russia, which implies a ban on the export and provision of pipes for Russia’s use. Announcing their decision to revoke the license ahead of schedule, the Dutch authorities also referred to the ban on the supply of goods and provision of services, including technical assistance and maintenance of the pipeline in Russia’s exclusive economic zone and on its continental shelf. European gas futures spiked on the news of the license withdrawal, jumping 10% on Friday to $2,087 per thousand cubic meters, or €205.995 per megawatt hour.However, South Stream Transport later noted that the sanctions do not expressly impose restrictions on the transportation of gas via the pipeline. The company has already applied for a renewal of its export license.

Representatives of the operator said that the gas delivered to Europe via Turkish Stream supports the region’s energy security and that the pipeline is likely to be exempted from sanctions for this reason. TurkStream is a two-string pipeline with capacity of 31.5 billion cubic meters of gas per year. It carries Russian gas across the Black Sea to Türkiye and from there to countries of southern and southeastern Europe. With Nord Stream 1 currently out of operation due to this week’s leakage, TurkStream is the only remaining gas transmission system that bring gas to Europe besides the transit line running through Ukraine. Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that the TurkStream license withdrawal would not affect its operation and that gas supplies continue.

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“..the temperature when heating buildings will be reduced by one degree Celsius..”

Russia Halts Gas Delivery To Italy (RT)

Russia’s Gazprom has informed Italian energy company Eni that it will not be able to supply gas to the country on Saturday, due to the “impossibility of transporting it” through Austria, the Italian company said in a statement. “Gazprom informed that it is not able to confirm the gas volumes requested for today, stating that it’s not possible to supply gas through Austria. Therefore, today’s Russian gas supplies to Eni through the Tarvisio entry point will be at zero,” the statement from Eni said, as cited by news agency RIA Novosti. Eni has said it will provide further information “in case supplies will be restored.” Gazprom has not yet specified the reason for its inability to supply gas through Austria. Grid operator Gas Connect Austria has not made any statements regarding the situation so far.


Italy receives Russian gas via the one remaining transit line through Ukraine. The gas flows to Italy after passing through Austria. Other European countries that receive Russian gas through Ukraine include Slovakia, Moldova, Romania, and the Czech Republic. Earlier, the website of the Ukrainian gas transit operator reported that the flow through Ukraine is expected to amount to around 41.6 million cubic meters on October 1. Since February, the share of Russian gas in Italian imports has fallen from 40% to roughly 18%, with the authorities saying they can cope with the shortfall expected in the winter by using alternative fuel sources. The country has adopted an energy-saving plan to reduce gas consumption. As part of this plan, the heating season will be cut by 15 days and the temperature when heating buildings will be reduced by one degree Celsius.

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AP doesn’t specify how much goes to Greece, but I would guess at least 1 billion cubic meters.

Azerbaijan To Increase Gas Deliveries To Bulgaria, Via Greece (AP)

Azerbaijan’s president said Friday that his country is a reliable partner and will stick to an agreement to double gas exports to the European Union by 2027. Speaking to reporters in Bulgaria’s capital, President Ilhan Aliyev called a new gas interconnector with Greece “a historic achievement and an opportunity for Azeri gas to reach Europe in larger quantities.” Aliyev was in Sofia for the official launch Saturday of a new pipeline that will supply natural gas from Azerbaijan to Bulgaria, whose vital supply of Russian gas was cut off in April amid the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At the event on Saturday, he will join heads of state and governments from the region, as well as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The 182-kilometer pipeline is designed to run from the northeastern Greek city of Komotini to Stara Zagora in central Bulgaria. It is expected to start with an initial capacity of 3 billion cubic meters of gas a year, with the prospect of future expansion to 5 billion cubic meters. Bulgarian President Rumen Radev stressed the importance of the new gas link not only for Bulgaria, but for the continent. “It decisively changes the energy map of Europe,” he said. The desire for other sources of gas increased significantly after Moscow decided to turn its natural gas deliveries into a political weapon. In late April, Russia cut off gas supplies to Bulgaria after it refused Moscow’s demand to pay for the deliveries in rubles, Russia’s currency. Relations between the two former Soviet bloc allies have tanked in recent months, and last month Bulgaria ordered the expulsion of 70 Russian diplomats, triggering an angry response from Moscow.

Bulgaria, which has a contract for 1 billion cubic meters of Azeri gas, or one-third of the country’s annual needs, wants to increase the volume by between a half-billion to 1 billion cubic meters more per year following the suspension of Russian gas flows were suspended. Radev said he received a letter Thursday from gas system operators in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia that offered to transport gas from Azerbaijan using the integrated networks of their countries. He said Bulgaria could host a summit of the four countries to discuss possibilities for such gas transfers. The topic has become important after Russia said it would suspend some maintenance and repair work of a gas pipeline that supplies Turkey and countries like Serbia and Hungary.

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“TotalEnergies operates in over 130 countries spanning five continents..” US LNG? Qatar?

Greek Gas Utility Clinches Winter LNG Deal (R.)

Greece’s biggest gas utility, DEPA Commercial, has clinched a deal with TotalEnergies for the supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG) over the winter months if needed, the Greek energy ministry said on Thursday. The deal stipulates that TotalEnergies will supply Greece with two LNG cargoes a month for five months until March 2023, the ministry said in a statement The total LNG that would be delivered for the five months would be 10 terrawatt hours (TWh), though Greece reserves the right not to purchase the gas but pay a cancellation fee. A deal price was not disclosed, but the ministry said Greece would buy the gas at a benchmark price rather than the highly TTF price.


“It’s a deal of key importance for the country’s energy supplies in the event gas flows from Russia are curbed or halted,” the statement said. Greece has been receiving Russian gas via the TurkStream pipeline, which also delivers to Hungary via Serbia. Athens has been working to reduce its reliance on Russian gas, ramping up LNG supplies and reopening some coal-fired power plants while also preparing to switch some gas-fired stations to diesel.

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“The problem is that its plans for how the Ukraine war and anti-Russian sanctions have worked out so far have been just the reverse of what was announced.”

The Euro Without Germany (Michael Hudson)

On Tuesday, September 27 when news of the Nord Stream gas attacks became known, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken shed crocodile tears and said that attacking Russian pipelines was “in no one’s interest.” But if that really were the case, no one would have attacked the gas lines. I have no doubt that U.S. strategists have a game plan for how to proceed from here, and to do so that indeed is in what the neocons claim to be in the U.S. interest – that of maintaining a unipolar neoliberalized and financialized global economy for as long as they can. They have long had a plan for countries that are unable to [service] their foreign debts. The IMF will lend them the money, conditional upon the debtor country raising the foreign exchange to repay the (increasingly expensive) dollar loans by privatizing what remains of their public domain, natural-resource patrimony and other assets, mainly to U.S. financial investors and their allies.

Will it work? Or will debtor countries band together and work out ways to restore the seemingly lost world of affordable oil and gas prices, fertilizer prices, grain and other food prices, and metals or raw materials supplied by Russia, China and their allied Eurasian neighbors? That is the next great worry for U.S. global strategists. It seems less easy to solve than was done by the sabotage of Nord Stream 1 and 2. But the solution seems to be the usual U.S. approach: something military in nature, new color revolutions. The aim is to gain the same power over Global South and Eurasian countries that American diplomacy wielded over Germany and other European countries via NATO.

Unless an institutional alternative is created to the IMF, World Bank, International Court, World Trade Organization and the numerous UN agencies now biased by U.S. diplomats and their proxies, the coming decades will see the U.S. economic strategy of financial and military dominance unfold as Washington has planned. The problem is that its plans for how the Ukraine war and anti-Russian sanctions have worked out so far have been just the reverse of what was announced. That may give some hope for the world’s future. The opposition and even contempt by U.S. diplomats to other countries acting in their own economic interest and social values is so strong that they are unwilling to think through just how these countries might develop their own alternative to the U.S. world plan. The question is thus how successfully these other countries may develop their alternative new economic order, and how they can protect themselves from the fate that Europe has just imposed upon itself for the next decade.

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“16,000 businesses may go bankrupt this year..” Imagine next year.

Thousands Of German Stores On Brink Of Closure – Spiegel (RT)

Over 15,000 German stores are facing bankruptcy due to soaring energy costs, Der Spiegel reported on Friday, citing the German Retail Association (HDE). According to the report, the HDE wrote a letter to Vice-Chancellor and Economy Minister Robert Habeck in which it warned that the “exploding energy costs” are making it impossible for increasing numbers of retailers to make ends meet. The group called the situation “existentially threatening” and said that around 16,000 businesses may go bankrupt this year, while the “negative trend” is likely to continue through 2023. The group said the rise in energy costs, which have spiked by 147% on average since the beginning of the year, is preventing retailers from making a profit. The share of electricity costs in sales volumes for retailers has already reached almost 3% on average and many in the industry expect this figure to rise to as high as 5% in 2023.


According to HDE President Josef Sanktjohanser and Managing Director Stefan Genth, the returns generated in many retail sectors are already extremely low today. In the case of clothing, the operating profit as a percentage of sales is 2.1%, while in the case of shoes it is currently negative at -1.2%. Even in the food segment, it is only 2-4%. Such a state of affairs may put many companies “at a disadvantage,” the group warned. Given the sharp decline in the purchasing power of private households and record-high inflation, it will likely not be possible to shift the rising energy costs to consumers, the HDE states. Therefore, the group urged Berlin to intervene by temporarily limiting tariffs and cutting electricity taxes to a minimum.

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“Ukraine’s parliament formally abandoned neutrality later in 2014.”

The Great Game In Ukraine Is Spinning Out Of Control (Jeffrey Sachs)

Under Clinton’s watch, NATO expanded to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in 1999. Five years later, under President George W. Bush, Jr. NATO expanded to seven more countries: the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), the Black Sea (Bulgaria and Romania), the Balkans (Slovenia), and Slovakia. Under President Barack Obama, NATO expanded to Albania and Croatia in 2009, and under President Donald Trump, to Montenegro in 2019. Russia’s opposition to NATO enlargement intensified sharply in 1999 when NATO countries disregarded the UN and attacked Russia’s ally Serbia, and stiffened further in the 2000’s with the US wars of choice in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. At the Munich Security conference in 2007, President Putin declared that NATO enlargement represents a “serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust.”

Putin continued: “And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances [of no NATO enlargement] our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: ‘the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.’ Where are these guarantees?” Also in 2007, with the NATO admission of two Black Sea countries, Bulgaria and Romania, the US established the Black Sea Area Task Group (originally the Task Force East).

Then in 2008, the US raised the US-Russia tensions still further by declaring that NATO would expand to the very heart of the Black Sea, by incorporating Ukraine and Georgia, threatening Russia’s naval access to the Black Sea, Mediterranean, and Middle East. With Ukraine’s and Georgia’s entry, Russia would be surrounded by five NATO countries in the Black Sea: Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Turkey, and Ukraine. Russia was initially protected from NATO enlargement to Ukraine by Ukraine’s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, who led the Ukrainian parliament to declare Ukraine’s neutrality in 2010. Yet in 2014, the US helped to overthrow Yanukovych and bring to power a staunchly anti-Russian government. The Ukraine War broke out at that point, with Russia quickly reclaiming Crimea and supporting pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas, the region of Eastern Ukraine with a relatively high proportion of Russian population. Ukraine’s parliament formally abandoned neutrality later in 2014.

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Churchill, Nobel Peace Prize, but embedded in the Bandera legacy. Yeah, makes a lot of sense…

Zelensky’s Lies Can’t Hide Ukraine’s Bloody Role In The Holocaust (Dershowitz)

Volodymyr Zelensky has performed a truly great service on behalf of the Ukrainian people. Because of his Churchill-like determination to resist Russian aggression, I have proposed him for the Nobel Peace prize. But he has in the recent past mendaciously denied the role of Ukrainian people in the Holocaust. He has used that argument to forcefully claim that Israel owes Ukraine offensive weapons. Several days ago, he escalated his criticism, saying he shocked that Israel hasn’t capitulated to his demands. He has never apologized for the following statement he made this past March: “The Ukrainians made a choice 80 years ago, we saved Jews…” He is right the Ukrainian people made a choice 80 years ago, but it wasn’t to save Jews.

Almost without exception, Ukrainians either participated in the mass murder of Jews or said nothing as their Jewish neighbors were rounded up and slaughtered in places like Babi Yar. Many of those who pulled the trigger were themselves Ukrainian, recruited into the mobile killing squads by the Nazis. Vanishingly few saved Jews. The complicity of Ukrainians in these mass murders was greater than in most other countries. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Jews were murdered. Nor was this the first time that the Ukrainian people made a similar choice. In 1648, Bogdan Chmielnicki led a pogrom that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews, including babies, children, and mothers. That was a long time ago, but the statue of this genocidal murderer still stands in the center of Kyiv, and his picture still adorns the Ukrainian five-dollar bill. That is now! Ukraine has made a choice: to honor the memory of a mass murderer of Jews.

Between the Chmielnicki murders and the Holocaust, the Ukrainian people made many other choices: they conducted pogrom after pogrom against Jewish families. Antisemitism was rampant throughout the Ukraine. That is why so many Ukrainian Jews immigrated to the United States and elsewhere. In recent years, the situation in Ukraine has improved measurably. Though there are still a large number of antisemites in Ukraine—including in certain units of the armed forces—the remembrance of the Holocaust has caused many Ukrainians to abandon the traditional antisemitism that plagued the country. They even voted for Zelensky, who is a man of Jewish heritage.

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“..Plaintiff is asking the Special Master to order disclosure of the names of each attorney and Special Agent who was exposed to materials eventually provided to the Privilege Review Team.”

FBI Agents Improperly Saw Privileged Trump Communications: Lawyers (ET)

The FBI team that seized documents from former President Donald Trump’s Florida resort improperly viewed communications between Trump and an attorney, violating attorney-client privilege for a third time, lawyers for Trump said in a new filing. The filter process set up by the government to try to prevent FBI agents from viewing privileged materials has already failed twice, the government has acknowledged. On Sept. 26, government officials informed Trump lawyers of a third failure, the lawyers said in a new filing lodged in a federal court in southern Florida. FBI agents viewed an email that they sent to the Privilege Review Team, a team that was supposed to filter out all potentially privileged materials before agents were able to view any.

The review team has characterized the email as non-privileged, but Trump disagrees. “Plaintiff believes the email falls squarely into the category of attorney-client privileged,” Trump lawyers told U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie, a Reagan appointee who is serving as a special master in the case. Benjamin Hawk, the Department of Justice (DOJ) official in charge of the filter team, claimed during a recent hearing that the first two failures to separate potentially privileged materials were examples of the filter process working, but U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee who inserted Dearie into the case, expressed doubt. The instances “indicate that, on more than one occasion, the Privilege Review Team’s initial screening failed to identify potentially privileged material,” she said.

FBI agents who viewed the potentially privileged materials may still be working on the case, according to a sealed filing described by Cannon. In the new filing, Trump’s lawyers said they want the names of all government officials who were exposed to the potentially privileged materials. “The unilaterally imposed filter team, which made no effort to contact Plaintiff’s counsel throughout its review process, has admitted to three breaches so far,” the lawyers said. “All this before review by the Special Master and the Plaintiff. By way of this filing, Plaintiff is asking the Special Master to order disclosure of the names of each attorney and Special Agent who was exposed to materials eventually provided to the Privilege Review Team.”

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Double-entry bookkeeping tells Steve that money is indeed destroyed. Just as Hyman Minsky and Augusto Graziani said.

A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing (Steve Keen)

I owe enormous intellectual debts to Hyman Minsky and Augusto Graziani. But at one point, my “little knowledge” led me to believe, falsely, that they had both made a huge mistake in claiming that repaying debt destroyed money: Graziani: As soon as firms repay their debt to the banks, the money initially created is destroyed. (Graziani 1989) Money is created as banks lend—mainly to business—and money is destroyed as borrowers fulfill their payment commitments to banks. (Minsky 1982) This couldn’t be right, I thought: surely once banks had created money, they wouldn’t let it be destroyed? I considered cash loans in particular—surely the cash wasn’t destroyed on receipt, but put back into the vault for relending?

This is why the model of money in my Debunking Economics (Keen 2011) is of a cash-lending bank, and not a modern electronic banking system, where loans are simultaneously matched by direct payments into deposit accounts. Then I developed Minsky, the monetary modelling software that I named in honour of Hyman Minsky. I came to really understand double-entry bookkeeping, and realised that Minsky and Graziani were correct, and I was wrong. These days, money is primarily the sum of private bank deposit accounts. When you show modern bank lending and bank debt repayment in a double-entry table, it’s obvious that the former creates money, and the latter destroys it.

This points to a general rule about money creation and destruction: leaving aside cash loans, and direct government payments of cash to the non-bank public, to create money, an operation must increase both the Assets and Liabilities (or short-term Equity) sides of the banking system’s ledger. Conversely, this means that operations that occur exclusively on either the Assets side or Liabilities & Equity side neither create nor destroy money. Having made this mistake myself, I came to realise that understanding double-entry bookkeeping is the “Holy Grail” to understanding money, and therefore that if someone makes claims about money that contradict double-entry bookkeeping (DEB for short), then they should be ignored, because they don’t know what they are talking about.

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“If someone submits their experience to VAERS they want and expect to have it investigated by the FDA. This includes autopsy reports..”

FDA Withholds Autopsy Results on People Who Died After COVID-19 Vaccines (ET)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is refusing to release the results of autopsies conducted on people who died after getting COVID-19 vaccines. The FDA says it is barred from releasing medical files, but a drug safety advocate says that it could release the autopsies with personal information redacted. The refusal was issued to The Epoch Times, which submitted a Freedom of Information Act for all autopsy reports obtained by the FDA concerning any deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System following COVID-19 vaccination. Reports are lodged with the system when a person experiences an adverse event, or a health issue, after receiving a vaccine. The FDA and other agencies are tasked with investigating the reports. Authorities request and review medical records to vet the reports, including autopsies.

The FDA declined to release any reports, even redacted copies. The FDA cited federal law, which enables agencies to withhold information if the agency “reasonably foresees that disclosure would harm an interest protected by an exemption,” with the exemption being “personnel and medical files and similar files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” Federal regulations also bar the release of “personnel, medical and similar files the disclosure of which constitutes a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” The Epoch Times has appealed the denial, in addition to the recent denial of results of data analysis of VAERS reports.

Kim Witczak, a drug safety advocate who advises the FDA as part of the Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee, said that the reports could be released with personal information blacked out. “The personal information could easily be redacted without losing the potential learnings from [the] autopsy,” Witczak told The Epoch Times via email. People make the choice to submit autopsy results to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, Witczak noted. “If someone submits their experience to VAERS they want and expect to have it investigated by the FDA. This includes autopsy reports,” she said.

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“..most of them have battery backups that last around 30 minutes to run the mobile antennas. After that they go dark.”

Next On Europe’s Doomsday List: Collapse Of Cell Phone Networks (ZH)

It’s not just heating that could be missing across Europe this winter: cell phones may be the next to go. That’s because if power cuts or energy rationing knocks out parts of the mobile networks across the region, mobile phones could go dark around Europe this winter according to the latest doomsday reporting from Reuters. While everyone knows by now that Europe’s chances of rationing and power shortages have exploded ever since Moscow suspended gas supplies, in France, the situation is even worse as several nuclear power plants are shutting down for maintenance. And the cherry on top: telecom industry officials told Reuters they fear a severe winter will put Europe’s telecoms infrastructure to the test, forcing companies and governments to try to mitigate the impact (i.e., more bailout demands).

The problem, as four telecoms executives put it, is that currently there are not enough back-up systems in many European countries to handle widespread power cuts, raising the prospect of mobile phone outages. Realizing that in just weeks Europe could be cell phone free, countries including France, Sweden and Germany, are scarmbling to ensure communications can continue even if power cuts end up exhausting back-up batteries installed on the thousands of cellular antennas spread across their territory. Alas, like with everything else in Europe, it’s too little, too late and Europe is facing a truly historic cell phone black out because while Europe has nearly half a million telecom towers, most of them have battery backups that last around 30 minutes to run the mobile antennas. After that they go dark.

One of the alternatives being discussed is pushing Europe back to communist era blackout regimes: In France, a plan put forward by electricity distributor Enedis, includes potential power cuts of up to two hours in a worst case scenario, two sources familiar with the matter said. The general black-outs would affect only parts of the country on a rotating basis. Essential services such as hospitals, police and government will not be impacted, the sources said. And now, it appears that cell phones are considered essential too: the French Federation of Telecoms (FFT), a lobby group representing Orange, Bouygues Telecomand Altice’s SFR, put the spotlight on Enedis for being unable to exempt antennas from the power cuts.

Enedis said it was able to isolate sections of the network to supply priority customers, such as hospitals, key industrial installations and the military and that it was up to local authorities to add telecoms operators infrastructure to the list of priority customers. “Maybe we’ll improve our knowledge on the matter by this winter, but it’s not easy to isolate a mobile antenna (from the rest of the network),” said a French finance ministry official with knowledge of the talks.

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What Reuters claims here is that the banks are today pushed to not sell, but buy dollars -with yuan-, only to sell them tomorrow, to support the yuan?!

At the same time, China wants the yuan to play a big part in the new currency basket they want to replace the USD as reserve currency. Problem is, it’s too weak right now.

China Tells State Banks To Sell Dollars, Buy Yuan (R.)

China’s central bank has asked major state-owned banks to be prepared to sell dollars for the local unit in offshore markets as it steps up efforts to stem the yuan’s descent, four sources with knowledge of the matter said. State banks were told to ask their offshore branches, including those based in Hong Kong, New York and London, to review their holdings of the offshore yuan and ensure U.S. dollar reserves are ready to be deployed, three of the sources, who declined to be identified, told Reuters. The simultaneous selling of dollars and buying of yuan could put a floor under the Chinese currency, which has lost more than 11% to the dollar so far this year and looks set for its biggest annual loss since 1994, when China unified its official and market rates.

The scale of this round of dollar selling to defend the weakening yuan will be rather big, one of the sources said. [..] While the yuan’s depreciation has been gradual and in line with the decline in major currencies against a dollar buoyed by aggressive Federal Reserve monetary tightening, its decline to the weaker side of 7-per-dollar has raised concerns about domestic sentiment and potential capital outflows. The offshore yuan moves in lock-step with the onshore unit, but its trading volumes account for about 70% of all yuan FX trades globally, dwarfing the volumes traded on the mainland. Chinese authorities have intervened in the past in the offshore yuan market to steer the yuan.

Sources said the intervention plan involved using state lenders’ dollar reserves primarily. But the total amount of dollar selling is yet to be determined as the yuan’s movements are largely dependent on dollar moves and the Fed’s tightening trajectory, the source said. China burnt through $1 trillion of its official FX reserves to prop up the currency after a one-off 2% devaluation in 2015 that roiled global financial markets. State banks, which usually act as the PBOC’s agents in offshore markets, are scrambling to procure more dollars in offshore markets, one of the sources said. The People’s Bank of China did not respond immediately when asked by Reuters about state banks stocking up on dollars.

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Aug 142021
 


Pablo Picasso The old guitarist 1903-4

 

Biden Admin Warns Of Threat From Anti-Lockdown ‘Extremists’ and More (RT)
Ex-Pfizer VP Urges Pregnant, Childbearing Age Women Not To Get Vaccine (CP)
Dr. Peter McCullough – Ends The Pandemic With 5 COVID Facts (LS)
Pfizer CEO to Public: Just Trust Us on the Covid Booster (KHN)
Renowned German Pathologist Urges More Autopsies of Vaccinated People (NA)
Israel Predicts Thousands Of Seriously Ill Covid Patients Within Month (ToI)
Japanese Doctors Recommend Ivermectin to Cure Corona (Tribun)
Why Won’t Our Government Even Inform People About Vitamin D? (Horowitz)
Head Of WHO Covid Origin Team Admits China Ordered Them What To Write (SN)
Drug Firms Poised To Make Billions Of Dollars From Covid Booster Jabs (G.)
Low-Cost Test Could Detect Delta Variant In Saliva (MNT)
Brace for Impact (Kunstler)
The Vanishing Legacy of Barack Obama (Taibbi)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The right thing
https://twitter.com/i/status/1422286221015982082

 

 

 

 

The storyline is being written right before your eyes:

Unvaccinated = Anti-Lockdown Extremist = Conspiracy Theorist = Domestic Terrorist = Jihadist = Al-Qaeda.

“..though there are currently no credible or imminent threats identified.”

Biden Admin Warns Of Threat From Anti-Lockdown ‘Extremists’ and More (RT)

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a terror warning that appears to put Americans pushing back against Covid-19 restrictions on par with jihadists who might strike on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. A DHS bulletin published Friday said that “anti-government, anti-authority violent extremists” may try to “exploit the emergence of Covid-19 variants by viewing the potential re-establishment of public health restrictions across the US as a rationale to conduct attacks.” The Covid-19 pandemic has stoked “societal strains and tensions,” the DHS said, “driving several plots by domestic violent extremists, and they may contribute to more violence this year.”

The terrorism warning, which runs through November 11, cited a host of other potential threats, including violent bigots who may perpetrate mass-casualty attacks, “though there are currently no credible or imminent threats identified.” Other potential attackers include “domestic violent extremists” and other “ideologically-motivated” individuals who may be triggered by “conspiracy theories” on such issues as “perceived election fraud,” DHS said. “Law enforcement have expressed concerns that the broader sharing of false narratives and conspiracy theories will gain traction in mainstream environments, resulting in individuals or small groups embracing violent attacks to achieve their desired objectives,” the bulletin claimed.

President Joe Biden’s administration has elevated domestic “extremism” as a top security threat in the wake of the January 6 riot at the US Capitol. Democrat politicians have hyped the riot as a racially motivated “insurrection,” and Biden in April called it “the worst attack on our Democracy since the Civil War.” Critics pushed back against the claim, noting such previous tragedies as the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, four presidential assassinations and – more recently – race riots that torched cities and left dozens of people dead last summer.

On Friday, however, the DHS again raised the specter of January 6. DHS intelligence chief John Cohen told CNN that online rhetoric is similar to the chatter seen before the Capitol riot. He cited such “extremist” comments as “the system is broken,” “take action into their own hands,” and “bring out the gallows.” DHS also noted that, with the 20-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks approaching, Al-Qaeda recently published the first issue of its English-language magazine in more than four years. That move “demonstrates that foreign terrorist organizations continue efforts to inspire US-based individuals susceptible to violent extremist influences,” the agency said.

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It really has never been tested. Some things are still hard to believe.

“Our government is urging pregnant women, and women of childbearing age, to get vaccinated. And they’re telling them they’re safe. And that’s a lie because those studies have simply not been done.“

Ex-Pfizer VP Urges Pregnant, Childbearing Age Women Not To Get Vaccine (CP)

A former Pfizer executive recently advised that women of childbearing age and those who are already pregnant should consider opting out of taking the COVID-19 vaccine. “We never, ever give experimental medicines to pregnant women,” said Michael Yeadon, Ph.D., in a presentation for Life Site News’ “Stop the Shot” conference held on Aug. 4 that featured physicians, scientists, attorneys and religious leaders. Yeadon, who holds degrees in biochemistry and toxicology, and a Ph.D. in respiratory pharmacology, served as vice president and chief scientist for allergy and respiratory at Pfizer until 2011, when he retired to launch his own biotech company after working in the pharmaceutical industry for 32 years.

The British pharmacologist, who has attracted media attention for questioning the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, criticized those in power for not providing the public with adequate information about vaccine risks. “You’re being lied to,” he said to pregnant women who’ve been told that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe for them and their preborn babies. “That’s bad enough because what that tells me is that there’s recklessness. No one cares. The authorities do not care what happens,” Yeadon asserted. “You never ever give inadequately tested medicines, medicinal products, to a pregnant woman,” he continued. “And that is exactly what is happening. Our government is urging pregnant women, and women of childbearing age, to get vaccinated. And they’re telling them they’re safe. And that’s a lie because those studies have simply not been done.”

Guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, however, advise that pregnant women can get the COVID-19 vaccine. Similarly, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine have urged pregnant women to get vaccinated. The CDC states that pregnant women are at increased risk for severe illness with COVID-19 compared to non-pregnant women, adding that they’re also at increased risk for adverse pregnancy outcomes. CDC adds that experts believe the vaccines are “unlikely to pose a risk for people who are pregnant,” but “there are currently limited data on the safety of COVID-19 vaccines in pregnant people.”

During his presentation, Yeadon listed three concerns he has with COVID-19 vaccines that he said haven’t undergone adequate toxicology testing to assess their effects on the reproductive system. Thousands of birth malformations resulted from pregnant women taking thalidomide to treat morning sickness 60 years ago, he said, because studies at the time did not assess that thalidomide was toxic for babies in the womb. “So here we are. There’s been potentially hundreds of millions of women of child-bearing potential [injected] with products which are untested in terms of impacts on fertilization and development of the baby,” he continued. Yeadon added that a study out of Japan found high concentrations of the spike protein in the ovaries, organs and tissue when tested on rats.

“What we find is the vaccine [in rats] doesn’t just distribute around the body and then wash out again, which is what you’d hope,” he said. “It concentrates in ovaries of rats, and it concentrates at least 20-fold over the concentration in other background tissues like muscles.” “You don’t want this product in your ovaries. It’s simply not necessary to induce immunity to have a vaccine in your ovaries. And, as it’s concentrating in the ovaries, getting higher concentrations over time, they have not even defined what the maximum levels are or when that occurs,” he added.

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And this man is being sued for $1 million.

Dr. Peter McCullough – Ends The Pandemic With 5 COVID Facts (LS)

Dr. Peter McCullough – Ends The Pandemic With 5 COVID Facts

1. The virus does not spread asymptomatically.

2. We should never test asymptomatic people.

3. Natural immunity is robust, complete, and durable.

4. COVID-19 is easily treatable at home.

5. The current vaccines are obsolete, unsafe, and unfit for human use.

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“Pfizer announced its global phase 3 trial on a third dose in mid-July. That trial’s completion date is in 2022.”

But they will give it to you in September. Already have in Israel. Trials are for pussies.

Pfizer CEO to Public: Just Trust Us on the Covid Booster (KHN)

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was confident in June about the ability of his company’s vaccine to protect against the highly contagious delta variant, as it marched across the globe and filled U.S. hospitals with patients. “I feel quite comfortable that we cover it,” Bourla said. Just weeks later, Pfizer said it would seek authorization for a booster shot, after early trial results showed a third dose potentially increased protection. At the end of July, Pfizer and BioNTech announced findings that four to six months after a second dose, their vaccine’s efficacy dropped to about 84%. Bourla was quick to promote a third dose after the discouraging news, saying he was “very, very confident” that a booster would increase immunity levels in the vaccinated. There’s one hitch: Pfizer has not yet delivered conclusive proof to back up that confidence.

The company lacks late-stage clinical trial results to confirm a booster will work against covid variants including delta, which now accounts for 93% of new infections across the U.S. Pfizer announced its global phase 3 trial on a third dose in mid-July. That trial’s completion date is in 2022. Phase 3 results generally are required before regulatory approval. “We are confident in this vaccine and the third dose, but you have to remember the vaccine efficacy study is still going on, so we need all the evidence to back up that,” Jerica Pitts, Pfizer’s director of global media relations, said Monday. The financial stakes are enormous: Pfizer announced in July that it expects $33.5 billion in covid-19 vaccine revenue this year. Meanwhile, Pfizer recently said that if a third dose couldn’t combat the delta or other variants, the drugmaker is poised to come up with a “tailor-made” vaccine within 100 days.

All of this has sown a sense of confusion about what exactly will work, and when. The pharmaceutical industry’s rush to recommend boosters for the public is “a little frustrating,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and an adviser to the National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration. Even if a booster is found to be safe, he said, the U.S. effort should focus on “vaccinating people who are unvaccinated.” In any case, decisions about boosters do not rest with vaccine makers, he said. “Pharmaceutical companies aren’t public health agencies, it’s really not theirs to determine when or whether there should be booster dosing,” Offit said. “That is the purview of the CDC.”

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“..if we had had a data and safety monitoring board, they would have shut down the vaccine in February of 2021..”

Renowned German Pathologist Urges More Autopsies of Vaccinated People (NA)

A renowned German pathologist has sounded the alarm on the number of fatal consequences of COVID-19 vaccinations being drastically underestimated, according to his findings. Peter Schirmacher, the director of the Pathological Institute of the University of Heidelberg, who was admired by The Pathologist magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential professionals in the field, stated that 30 to 40 percent of people who died within two weeks after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine and whom he performed an autopsy on died from the vaccination, according to the local outlet Augsburger Allgemeine.

The pathologist argues that just like cadavers of people who died from COVID-19, corpses of people who die within the short period of time after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine should be examined more frequently and meticulously. He added that currently, pathologists do not study possible connections between inoculation and a development of deadly health implications such as cerebral vein thrombosis or autoimmune diseases. Since vaccinated people usually do not die under clinical observation, Schirmacher explains, “The doctor examining the corpse does not establish a context with the vaccination and certifies a natural death and the patient is buried. Or he certifies an unclear type of death, and the public prosecutor sees no third-party fault and releases the corpse for burial.”

Schirmacher said that in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, his autopsy group worked closely with public prosecutors, the police, and resident doctors to study the phenomenon, and that the vaccine-related morbidity rate that they established is a “politically explosive statement in times when the vaccination campaign is losing momentum, the delta variant is spreading rapidly and restrictions on non-vaccinated people are being discussed.” [..]The administration of German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected Schirmacher’s conclusions and seemingly declined his calls, stating that vaccines are safe. The Paul Ehrlich Institute, a German federal agency, medical regulatory body, and research institution for vaccines and biomedicines, announced that Schirmacher’s statements were “incomprehensible.”

Thomas Mertens, chairman of the Standing Committee on Vaccination (Stiko), dismissed the findings: “I don’t know of any data that would allow a justifiable statement to be made here and I am not assuming an unreported number.” Schirmacher defends his opinion and calls for further study into the issue. “My colleagues are definitely wrong because they cannot assess this specific question competently,” he responded. Schirmacher added that while he has no intention to spread panic or discourage vaccination, he believes that “individual protection consideration” had been overlooked in the attempt to mass-vaccinate the general public.

[..] The underreporting of vaccine-related deaths and adverse effects is becoming an issue in the United States as well. As reported by the New American, a lawsuit filed in federal court in Alabama is alleging that the federal government is hiding, as of the beginning of July, “at least 45,000” deaths related to COVID-19 vaccines. According to the testimony from whistleblower working at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and who has access to government servers including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service, there is evidence that the Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System (VAERS), which collects data on vaccine-related deaths, is under-reporting such deaths “by a conservative factor of at least five.” According to Dr. Peter McCullough, since typically only 10 percent of vaccine-injury cases make it to VAERS, the death toll from the vaccines may actually be 10-fold higher than the official number. Still, he said, a vaccine that leads to 150 deaths is usually withdrawn from use. “I think if we had had a data and safety monitoring board, they would have shut down the vaccine in February of 2021,” McCullough said.

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Berenson: “Israel, with a nearly entirely vaccinated adult population, now expects this coronavirus wave to be the worst yet – up to 2,500 serious cases compared to 1,200 in January.


Note: the article doesn’t mention vaccines once. It’s like they never even happened.”

Israel Predicts Thousands Of Seriously Ill Covid Patients Within Month (ToI)

Israeli hospitals have to prepare for an influx of nearly 5,000 coronavirus patients within weeks, half of whom will need acute care to deal with severe bouts of COVID-19, health officials have warned Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, according to reports Wednesday. The dire predictions came during a Tuesday meeting between Bennett and senior health experts amid a major influx of new cases, prompting the premier to back a plan to expand hospital capacity, a signal that the government will look to absorb the crush of severe cases head-on rather than attempt to swerve out of its way. Senior Health Ministry officials and other experts presented Bennett with data forecasting some 4,800 coronavirus patients requiring hospitalization by September 10.


The experts expect half of the patients to be seriously ill, putting a major strain on Israel’s health system, according to Hebrew-language media reports on the closed-door meeting. Israel has seen new case numbers skyrocket in recent weeks from a few dozen a day to over 6,000 on Monday. Another 5,755 were diagnosed on Tuesday, the Health Ministry said Wednesday morning, bringing the number of active cases to 38,942. Ministry numbers showed 694 patients hospitalized as of Wednesday morning, 400 of whom were listed in serious condition. Sixty-two people were being treated on ventilators. Bennett and Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz agreed to pump money into the health system to bring in 100 more doctors, 500 nurses and 200 paramedical and support staff every 10 days to keep up with growing demand, according to a summary of the meeting drafted by the Prime Minister’s Office and published by the Ynet news site.

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More Israel. This one is a bit strange, a Google doc as a pic in Hebrew, no access. But the details, via Ran Israeli, are interesting:

New Concerning Results, Israel 2021 (Prof. Retsef Levi)

MDA Emergency calls:

25% increase in Cardiac arrests & Heart attacks (16-29).

83.6% increase in Heart attacks (Women 20-29).

According to the study, this increase was correlated with Mass vaccination.

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Google translate from Indonesia.

Japanese Doctors Recommend Ivermectin to Cure Corona (Tribun)

Dr. Kazuhiro Nagao (63) Chairman of medical company Yuwakai, director (Head) of Nagao Amagasaki Clinic, Hyogo prefecture, and visiting professor at Kansai University of International Studies highly recommend Ivermectin as a drug that can cure early patients infected with the corona virus. “Medical situation we are currently in a state of almost critical and many patients can not be accommodated in the hospital. For patients who are exposed to the corona early is highly recommended to drink the drug Ivermectin . I’ve tried a lot to me and heal patients,” said Dr. Nagao this afternoon (12/8/2021) on NTV. Professor Nagao also sees this (the drug Ivermectin ) as one of the solutions among many efforts to suppress the increasing number of people infected with the corona and at risk of becoming severe.

“In the early stages it’s good to take the drug . I always give my patients the drug , of course it’s made in Japan and the next day it gets better. I ask them to report to me every day the effects of the drug and it turns out to be good, they get well immediately,” he continued again. . In addition, Dr. Nagao also appealed to the Minister of Health and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to immediately promote the drug Ivermectin to the public so that it would be widely used among those infected with the early corona virus. “So far, all of my patients are good, recovering without any problems with the drug . In addition, the drug is also guaranteed and included in insurance coverage in Japan . So I think it’s not a problem and light, not too burdensome for the Japanese people ,” he added.

Until now, the Japanese government, especially the ministry of health, is still monitoring the use of the drug Ivermectin in Japan , and there has been no decision to promote the drug in the midst of the current pandemic. Tokyo itself this Thursday (12/8/2021) drastically increased the number of infected nearly 5000 people per day. Last week a doctor predicted that around August 18 the number of patients infected with the corona virus in Tokyo could reach 10,000 people per day. Professor Yoshihito Niki, Deputy Director of the Respiratory Center, Kurashiki Daiichi Hospital, Professor of Clinical Infectious Diseases, Japan’s Showa University School of Medicine estimates the number of infections could reach 10,000 people in Tokyo around August 18, he explained last August 6.

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Basics.

Why Won’t Our Government Even Inform People About Vitamin D? (Horowitz)

Imagine if rather than running out to buy worthless Chinese face diapers or toilet paper last March, there had been a mad rush to stock up on vitamin D. What would our hospitalization rate have been after the initial wave, and after the early science was clear about the efficacy of vitamin D, had government mailed out free vitamin D to every American (especially in nursing homes)? For a fraction of the cost of a shutdown, waning vaccines, remdesivir, and endless welfare, government could have offered free blood tests of everyone’s vitamin D, C, and zinc levels and advised a plan to bulk up those levels?

Well, we have a new study that demonstrates a good number of hospitalizations could have been avoided. Government agencies that are censoring information on vitamin D can no longer say the same thing about the vaccines, given how Israel is now showing that the vaccine wears off and the country is preparing for the worst run on hospitals ever, despite nearly every adult having been vaccinated. And unlike the vaccines and everything else our government promoted and mandated, vitamin D comes with no risk, numerous other vital benefits, and empowers rather than controls people. There is a misnomer that those promoting vitamin D for COVID somehow believe that all people have to do after getting the virus is to take vitamin D and they will suddenly get better (although there is evidence it works in the active form).

That is obviously an easy straw man for those who oppose preventives and early treatment to knock down. In reality, while vitamin D is definitely important post-infection, it takes several months to bulk up one’s level if it is deficient. A new study recently published in the International Journal of Clinical Practice demonstrates that had Fauci and Co. simply told Americans, especially the vulnerable, to take high doses of Vitamin D (like he does), most of the hospitalizations could have been avoided. The meta-analysis of 23 published studies containing 11,901 participants found the following: One who is vitamin D deficient was 3.3 times more likely to get infected with SARS-CoV-2 than one who is not deficient.

The serum vitamin D concentration, on average, was 20.3 ng/mL among all COVID19 patients but was 16.0 ng/mL among those with severe cases. It’s recommended that one’s levels be at least over 40. “The chance of developing severe COVID-19 is about five times higher in patients with vitamin D deficiency.” A total of 84% of COVID patients in the study were either deficient or insufficient in vitamin D. In other words, whether your vitamin D level is 15, 30, or 50 will make all the difference in terms of getting a mild, moderate, or severe case of the virus, or perhaps getting it at all. How is it that, to this very day, there is no effort to inform people about such a painless, cheap, and effective fix?

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Horse, door, barn.

Head Of WHO Covid Origin Team Admits China Ordered Them What To Write (SN)

The head of the World Health Organization’s origin investigation into COVID-19 has admitted that China basically ordered his team on what to write in their report and allowed them to mention the lab leak theory, but only on the condition that they didn’t recommend following it up. Revealing what is clear evidence of a cover up, the Washington Post reports that Danish WHO chief Ben Embarek made the admission after also commenting that he believes patient zero was a worker at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where experiments on coronaviruses were being carried out. Embarek noted that “human error” could have ultimately led to the virus jumping to humans, but that “the Chinese political system does not allow authorities to acknowledge that.”

Embarek commented that “Somebody could also wish to hide something.” As we have previously noted, the Communist Chinese government, along with Dr. Peter Daszak, President of the EcoHealth Alliance, steered the course of the pathetic WHO “investigation”, which had already dismissed the lab leak notion after only a three hour visit to the facility in February. In addition, China has refused to cooperate with the renewed WHO probe, declaring that any attempt to look into the lab leak theory goes “against science” and claiming, contrary to U.S. intelligence and the WHO’s own conclusions, that workers in the lab were hospitalised with COVID in the autumn of 2020.

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The Guardian has two different articles on this. Must be important.

Drug Firms Poised To Make Billions Of Dollars From Covid Booster Jabs (G.)

The drug companies Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna are poised to make billions of dollars from Covid-19 booster jabs this autumn, with analysts estimating that sales could rival the $6bn-a-year market for seasonal flu vaccines. The UK government is expected to announce details of its booster programme in the coming days, based on formal advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, but the health secretary, Sajid Javid, has suggested the over-50s could be offered a dose along with their winter flu jabs. The UK is expected to join France and Germany in offering follow-up doses from September. The US authorities on Friday approved a third dose for those with compromised immune systems, and Israel and Chile have begun administering boosters to their elderly citizens.


However, health experts are warning that many more people around the world will die of Covid if western countries prioritise boosters for their own populations instead of sharing them with the rest of the world. Moderna, Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, have already inked over $60bn in sales for this year and next, in deals for supplying follow up shots and also the initial two doses for those being inoculated for the first time in less wealthy countries. Analysts polled by data group Refinitiv have forecast revenue of more than $6.6bn for the Pfizer/BioNTech shot and $7.6bn for Moderna in 2023, mostly from booster sales. They expect the annual market to settle at about $5bn or higher eventually, with additional drugmakers competing for those sales.

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CAN you test for Delta? Yes, but only through genome sequencing, and that doesn’t happen all the time. Instead, as an MD explains: “The CDC does intermittent sequencing of the virus to determine what strain/variant is predominant in a particular region at any given time. The PCR tests do not differentiate.”

In other words: “There is not a specific test for the delta variant. However, since the vast majority of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. are the delta variant, it’s likely a positive test result indicates you could be infected with the delta variant, according to Human and Health Services of Texas.”

Low-Cost Test Could Detect Delta Variant In Saliva (MNT)

Scientists from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), both in Cambridge, MA, and several Boston-area hospitals, recently created miSHERLOCK. miSHERLOCK is an inexpensive, CRISPR-based diagnostic test that allows users to self-test for variants of SARS-CoV-2 at home, using their saliva. “Simple things that used to be ubiquitous in the hospital, like nasopharyngeal swabs, were suddenly hard to get, so routine sample processing procedures were disrupted, which is a big problem in a pandemic setting,” said co-first author of the study, Dr. Rose Lee, who is a visiting fellow at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at MIT. “Our team’s motivation for this project was to eliminate these bottlenecks and provide accurate diagnostics for COVID-19 with less reliance on global supply chains, and could also accurately detect the variants that were starting to emerge,” she notes.


“miSHERLOCK is a low-cost point-of-care [COVID-19] test that is capable of detecting and differentiating specific SARS-CoV-2 variants, which could be used to guide patient care as well as for infection control or epidemiological purposes,” lead author Helena de Puig Guixe, a postdoctoral researcher at the Collins lab at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, told Medical News Today. “Our device is low-cost, provides a simple visual answer in 1 hour, and only requires saliva from a patient with no additional equipment separate from the device itself (including its standard battery). […] Our full device, including all testing components, costs $15, down to $6 with reuse of the housing and electronics, but could be as low as $2–3 per test if produced at scale,” she added.

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“General David Berger, Commandant of the US Marine Corps, briskly told the SecDef, in effect, to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut. What do you make of that?”

Brace for Impact (Kunstler)

My Pillow man Mike Lindell’s three-day Cyber Symposium demonstrated a couple of things about the current depraved state of our nation: You could prove pretty conclusively that the national election of 2020 was saturated with fraud; and that no one in the news business would either care or dare to report it. Otherwise, it’s a little early to tell whether the exercise will have any effect on the country’s mood, though it is apparently a fact that millions tuned into the event on the few Internet sites that evaded the efforts to hack it out of existence.

The presentations by physicist Douglas Frank, law professor (New Mexico State U) David Clements, and retired army intelligence analyst Seth Keshel made a multi-dimensional case that the Dominion vote tallying machines were both pre-programmed with insidious algorithms and were also run remotely by Internet connection through servers in Senegal tied to China the night of Nov. 3, 2020. Even so, the vote in favor of Donald Trump so overwhelmed the programming that oafish mopping-up operations with bogus write-in paper ballots had to be conducted on-the-fly to make sure the election came out in “Joe Biden’s” favor.

It was interesting to be reminded that four key states — Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — all claimed to have stopped counting votes around 10:30 eastern time, and nobody reporting the tally on TV (a national ritual going back seventy years) seemed to consider anything irregular about it. But since when in US elections do officials not work through the whole of election night to reach a result? The answer, of course, is never before. It is, as they say, not a thing. Shouldn’t that have been a national WTF moment?

And so began the secret after-hours hijinks, such as in the Fulton County, GA, arena, where poll watchers were shooed out of the joint and then ballot-counters supplied by a Stacey Abrams-owned temp worker company got foolishly caught on a security camera running reams of paper ballots multiple times through their machines… and the arrival in Philadelphia of a truck from Long Island delivering tens of thousands of fresh paper ballots… and so on through the long night of supposedly no vote counting.

[..] The regime is trying to soften up the public for mandatory vaxes now, using its propaganda arms to turn up the volume on pandemic fear and new variants, using phony statistics and threats to turn the unvaxed into social pariahs, including schoolchildren. The regime is playing with nitroglycerine there. How desperate and crazy are they, really? Is something wicked coming their way? I think so, and I think they know it’s so, and I think they have just about run out of tricks for avoiding it. A crack in the edifice of tyrannical coercion materialized a few days ago when SecDef Lloyd Austin declared his intention to vax-up the whole military. General David Berger, Commandant of the US Marine Corps, briskly told the SecDef, in effect, to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut. What do you make of that?

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Barack and Hunter, the new elites.

The Vanishing Legacy of Barack Obama (Taibbi)

“Even Scaled Back,” wrote Vanity Fair, “Barack Obama’s Birthday Bash Is the Event of the Season.” Not even the famed glossy Bible of the unapologetic rich seemed sure of whether to write Obama’s Birthday bash straight or as an Onion headline: what did the “Event of the Season” mean during a pandemic? A former president flying half the world’s celebrities to spend three days in a maskless ring-kissing romp at a $12 million Martha’s Vineyard mansion, at a moment when only a federal eviction ban prevented the outbreak of a national homelessness crisis, was already an all-time “Fuck the Optics” news event, and that was before the curveball.

Because of what even the New York Times called “growing concerns” over how gross the mega-party looked, not least for the Joe Biden administration burdened with asking the nation for sober sacrifice while his ex-boss raised the roof with movie stars in tropical shirts, advisers prevailed upon the 44th president to reconsider the bacchanal. But characteristically, hilariously, Obama didn’t cancel his party, he merely uninvited those he considered less important, who happened to be almost entirely his most trusted former aides.

Cast out, the Times said, were “the majority of former Obama administration officials… who generally credit themselves with helping create the Obama legacy,” including former top aide David Axelrod, who’d just called Obama an “apostle of hope” in the Washington Post and sat for a three-hour HBO documentary deep-throat of his ex-boss. Remaining on the list were celeb couples Chrissy Teigen and John Legend, as well as Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union, along with Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Bruce Springsteen, Questlove, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Don Cheadle, and other Fabulous People, who drank “top shelf liquor,” puffed stogies, and hit the links at the Vineyard Golf Club (membership fee: $350,000). An early report that Pearl Jam had been hired to perform was later refuted. Eddie Vedder would just be there, but not to play.

Read more …

 

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If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read “Vietnam.”
– Martin Luther King, April 4, 1967

 

 

 

 

Oz

 

 

@LilithAssyria
My Russian friends told me – it was a very strict compliance about vax passports in Moscow.

Nobody would be allowed to come into the restaurant without a vax.

That lasted about 3 weeks. Why? Because nobody went to the restaurants anymore.

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime. Click at the top of the sidebars to donate with Paypal and Patreon.

 

Jul 092021
 


Alessandro Allori Self portrait c1555

 

Those Dying Post-Vaccine: Where Are The Autopsies? (WND)
‘Absolutely Government’s Business’ To Know Who in US Hasn’t Been Jabbed (Fox)
Pfizer To Seek Authorization For “Booster” Dose To Protect Against Delta Variant (ZH)
Feds Dispute Pfizer On Need For A Covid Booster Shot (JTN)
Fauci Defends Vaccines But Antibodies Don’t Protect Against Delta (ZH)
Fauci Tells People Hesitant About The Vaccine To ‘Just Get Over It’ (DC)
Sturgeon Warns Against Treating Young People Like Covid ‘Guinea Pigs’ (G.)
Risking England’s Health: Not Everyone Can Choose To Stay Safe (G.)
Canada Cracks Down On Doctors Who Warn Of Covid-19 Vaccines Risks (JTN)
How Some Teens are Faking Positive Covid-19 Tests (GR)
Wells Fargo Shuts Down All Personal Lines Of Credit (CNBC)
Trump Announces Class Action Lawsuit Against Twitter, Facebook & Google (HE)
Trump Says Hunter Biden Is Worse Than Al Capone (DM)
Hunter Biden Art Show Sparks Ethics Concerns (NYP)
UK High Court Grants US Permission for Appeal in Assange Extradition Case (CD)

 

 

 

 

Should I take the vaccine?

 

 

 

 

I don’t especially like to agree with Laura Ingraham, but in this case I do.

Ingraham

 

 

Jane M. Orient, M.D. is executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, AAPS.

Those Dying Post-Vaccine: Where Are The Autopsies? (WND)

My internal medicine training was in the dark ages before CT and MRI, but we were still supposed to make an accurate diagnosis. A patient who died without a medical history was an “ME case.” We had to call the medical examiner, who would decide whether an autopsy was indicated. Anything potentially related to the death, such as pill bottles, was evidence. If an injection had been given, the vial would be recovered if possible. With vaccines, one is supposed to record the lot number, so it would be possible to check a sample for contaminants. If the patient died in hospital, the medical resident was required to request permission for an autopsy. Survivors might be persuaded to OK one by the possibility that their loved one may have had a hereditary condition or an infection that might affect others.

In any event, we assured them that their loved one would be treated with respect and that funeral arrangements would not be affected. A chaplain would volunteer to attend. The most important reason was that the “altar of truth” was the ultimate “quality assurance” mechanism. Hospitals were required to perform autopsies on a certain proportion of decedents in order to maintain their accreditation. A classic study of 100 randomly selected autopsies from each of three years (1960, 1970 and 1980) revealed that major diagnoses had been missed in about 22% of cases in all three eras, despite the introduction of modern imaging methods. Unfortunately, autopsy rates have fallen from 25% to less than 5% over the past four decades. It never was a revenue producer for anyone except malpractice attorneys.

I always attended the autopsy if I could. One of my most important teachers was a patient in whom we had missed a condition that was glaringly obvious when the skull was opened. We might not have been able to save him, but since we hadn’t even thought of the diagnosis, he didn’t have a chance. Tens of thousands of patients died of COVID before a series of 12 autopsies done in Germany showed that most had blood clots and could not have been saved by forcing air into their lungs with a ventilator. If a person dies after a COVID jab, I would like to know whether there are spike proteins in the tissues and blood vessels, and whether there was an immunological reaction that was damaging those tissues. If a mother loses a baby, I would like to see a thorough examination of the placenta. Was the baby’s oxygen and nutrition cut off because of damaged blood vessels?

I find it shocking that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Joint Commission that accredits hospitals are not demanding autopsies or testing of vaccine samples. It is not possible to declare a product safe and effective without obtaining direct evidence from potential victims. The manufacturers are protected against product liability, thanks to Congress. But where is the accountability of the government agencies charged with protecting us, or of the private entities coercing employees or students to take an experimental, potentially dangerous, or even lethal product? If someone you love dies unexpectedly, call the medical examiner, and demand a forensic autopsy.

Read more …

Medical information is private.

‘Absolutely Government’s Business’ To Know Who in US Hasn’t Been Jabbed (Fox)

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said Thursday it was “absolutely the government’s business” to know which Americans haven’t been vaccinated yet against the coronavirus. Responding to GOP criticisms of the Biden administration’s planned “door-to-door” campaign to encourage unvaccinated Americans to inoculate themselves, Becerra told CNN the government has had to “spend trillions of dollars to try to keep Americans alive during this pandemic.” “So it is absolutely the government’s business, it is taxpayers’ business, if we have to continue to spend money to try to keep people from contracting COVID and helping reopen the economy,” he said.


Becerra said people didn’t have to answer the door but he hoped they would so officials could dispel rumors about the vaccine, which has proven to be highly effective in driving down cases, hospitalizations and deaths. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 56% of the adult population has been “fully vaccinated” and 67% has gotten at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine. States that tend to vote Republican have reported lower vaccination rates, and polls show Republican voters are far more likely than Democrats to say they will not or likely will not get the vaccine. The issue has become part of a larger debate over public health measures colliding with Americans’ personal freedoms.

Ultimatum

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Every next shot is more dangerous.

Pfizer To Seek Authorization For “Booster” Dose To Protect Against Delta Variant (ZH)

Hours ago, Dr. Anthony Fauci emphatically defended the efficacy of the three American-made vaccines that have received emergency authorization for use by the FDA. His comments weren’t unprompted: reports out of Israel claiming the Pfizer jab is far less effective than advertised have shaken public confidence in the jabs, at a time where President Biden is about to send people knocking on doors to try and encourage more adults (and increasingly, children) to get vaccinated. It’s no secret that a handful of southern and western states are lagging the rest of the country in vaccine rollout. But not long after Dr. Fauci made his comments (which were picked up by all the major newswires) the NYT published a sneak peak at new research showing how the Delta variant bypasses the antibodies created by the vaccines, and prior infection with another strain of the virus.

It’s just the latest example of how the authorities don’t care about the “science” so much as protecting the narrative that helps Big Pharma sell the most vaccines. And while the vast majority of countries are still struggling with vaccination rates below 1% since they simply can’t get the supplies (while unused jabs are piling up across the US) – and Bill Gates doing everything he can to keep it that way – Pfizer and Moderna have apparently spotted an opportunity. Pfizer and its partner BioNTech announced Thursday evening that they will seek authorization from the FDA for a third “booster” dose of their COVID vaccines that will offer increased protection against the Delta variant (despite the fact that both Pfizer and its rival Moderna repeatedly insisted that its vaccines are still effective against all known variants including Delta), the Hill reports.

In a statement, the company referenced the data out of Israel, where government scientists have estimated the real efficacy of the vaccine vs. Delta is somewhere around 64%, while leaving particularly vulnerable patients at risk of severe illness and death. The booster dose would ideally be given within 6 to 12 months post-vaccination. “Based on the totality of the data they have to date, Pfizer and BioNTech believe that a third dose may be beneficial within 6 to 12 months following the second dose to maintain highest levels of protection,” the companies said.

Don’t take the 2nd shot

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Once you’ve had the first one, you’re hooked.

Feds Dispute Pfizer On Need For A Covid Booster Shot (JTN)

Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech said Thursday they are developing a booster shot to combat the highly transmissible delta variant of the COVID-19 virus. As the pharmaceutical companies announced their shot, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that fully vaccinated people do not need those types of booster shots. “People who are fully vaccinated are protected from severe disease and death, including from the variants currently circulating in the country such as Delta,” the FDA and CDC said Thursday, according to Axios. “Americans who have been fully vaccinated do not need a booster shot at this time.”


The companies cited a study by the Israel Ministry of Health released on Monday that showed the “vaccine efficacy has declined six months post-vaccination, at the same time that the Delta variant is becoming the dominate variant in the country.” “These findings are consistent with an ongoing analysis from the companies’ Phase 3 study,” the companies said in a written statement, according to CNBC News. “That is why we have said, and we continue to believe that it is likely, based on the totality of the data we have to date, that a third dose may be needed within 6 to 12 months after full vaccination.”

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“The logic is confusing, but it goes something like this: Delta is scary, so get vaccinated…but vaccines don’t protect against Delta.”

Fauci Defends Vaccines But Antibodies Don’t Protect Against Delta (ZH)

As the world passes 4MM confirmed COVID cases, the NYT has just published new research published in the journal Nature calling into question the efficacy of US-made vaccines in offering protection against the Delta variant. Shortly before the research was released, Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday defended American COVID vaccines, claiming that the jabs developed by Pfizer, Moderna and J&J are all effective against the Delta variant, a mutant strain that has become the obsession of public health officials who claim that it could ignite another wave of the pandemic. But what they don’t tell you is that epidemiologists believe COVID is now endemic in the human population, and that reaching “COVID zero” simply isn’t possible.

At any rate, while the vaccine makers are salivating at the opportunity to produce lucrative booster shots offering protection against various variants, the new research previewed by the NYT and published in the journal Nature found that the Delta strain is able to bypass the antibodies produced by vaccination or prior infection. Delta, which was first identified in India, is believed to be roughly 60% more infectious than the alpha variant – the strain also known as the “Kent Strain”, or B.1.1.7, which was first identified by scientists in England. This week, as the number of new COVID cases climbed by double-digits from the prior week (while hospitalizations and deaths remained stagnant), Delta was declared the dominant variant found in the US. Almost as alarming, the researchers found that while Delta is able to effectively evade the antibody response, the Beta variant, which was first identified in South Africa, can do it even more easily. Here’s more from the NYT report on the research:

“The researchers looked at blood samples from 103 people who had been infected with the coronavirus. Delta was much less sensitive than Alpha to samples from unvaccinated people in this group, the study found. One dose of vaccine significantly boosted the sensitivity, suggesting that people who have recovered from Covid-19 still need to be vaccinated to fend off some variants. The team also analyzed samples from 59 people after they had received the first and second doses of the AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.

Blood samples from just 10 percent of people immunized with one dose of the AstraZeneca or the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines were able to neutralize the Delta and Beta variants in laboratory experiments. But a second dose boosted that number to 95 percent. There was no major difference in the levels of antibodies elicited by the two vaccines. “A single dose of Pfizer or AstraZeneca was either poorly or not at all efficient against Beta and Delta variants,” the researchers concluded. Data from Israel and Britain broadly support this finding, although those studies suggest that one dose of vaccine is still enough to prevent hospitalization or death from the virus.”

What’s more, the delta variant was also found to be resistant to antibody-based treatments, like “bamlanivimab”, the monoclonal antibody cocktail produced by Eli Lilly. Meanwhile, Dr. Fauci tells reporters that nine out of ten Americans who died from the virus were unvaccinated. Despite the growing number of vaccinated patients who are being infected and seriously sickened, insisted that the “science” shows the vaccines are extremely effective at preventing infection. The logic is confusing, but it goes something like this: Delta is scary, so get vaccinated…but vaccines don’t protect against Delta. It’s just the latest reminder that Dr. Fauci & company don’t care about “the science”.

Tucker about vaccine coercion

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Those who still believe him have already gotten jabbed.

Fauci Tells People Hesitant About The Vaccine To ‘Just Get Over It’ (DC)

White House senior medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday that people hesitant about getting vaccinated against COVID-19 should “just get over it.” Fauci appeared on MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes,” where he went on a rant equating people’s hesitancy towards the vaccines’ safety to a “political statement.” “This is not complicated. We’re not asking anybody to make any political statements one way or another,” he said. “So many diseases that I deal with … don’t have solutions. It’s very frustrating — you don’t have a treatment, or you don’t have a vaccine,” Fauci added. “Here, we have a vaccine that’s highly, highly effective.”


“What is the problem? Get over it. Get over this political statement. Just get over it and try and save the lives of yourself and your family.” he concluded. Fauci has previously warned about the possibility of the emergence of “two Americas” as a result of low vaccination rates in some areas of the country. “When you have such a low level of vaccination superimposed upon a variant that has a high degree of efficiency of spread, what you are going to see among under-vaccinated regions … you’re going to see the individual types of blips. It’s almost like it’s going to be two Americas,” Fauci said on June 30.

Fauci GET OVER IT

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Don’t be a guinea pig. Be a guinea pig instead.

Sturgeon Warns Against Treating Young People Like Covid ‘Guinea Pigs’ (G.)

Nicola Sturgeon has warned against treating young people like “guinea pigs” by allowing them to get infected with coronavirus when lifting restrictions, amid fears they remain at risk of significant health impacts such as long Covid. Scotland’s first minister said the desire to live free of lockdown-style restrictions did not mean governments could “throw all caution to the wind”, while suggesting the “domination” of England’s plans to scrap Covid rules risked confusing other UK nations. The steep rise in infections across Scotland caused by theDelta variant may be levelling off, Sturgeon added. The current spike has led to six Scottish health boards being placed among the top 10 worst-hit regions in Europe by the WHO last weekend.


The levelling off gave her “more cause for optimism” that she would be able to confirm the move to level 0 of Scotland’s five-tier system of Covid controls in parliament next Tuesday, she said, before emphasising that the planned easing on 19 July “won’t be an abrupt end to basic protective measures like face covering, physical distancing, rigorous hand hygiene and advising on good ventilation.” However, she pointed out the “significant” impact the virus can have on younger people, even if there is a lower risk of death. She said: “I want to set out simply why we can’t just throw all caution to the wind. Firstly, this virus is still dangerous, as we see every day. It is still taking lives, though mercifully, thanks to the vaccines, it is doing so in far fewer numbers than we saw in earlier stages.”

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“the authors of the Lancet letter are too generous in describing this as “a dangerous and unethical experiment”: that terminology suggests a degree of scientific rigour and concern. Instead, this is a political wager..”

That comment is pro-vaccination. You would’t know without the context.

Risking England’s Health: Not Everyone Can Choose To Stay Safe (G.)

In a letter to the Lancet, over 100 global scientists have warned that rushing ahead with reopening on 19 July – rather than waiting until more people are vaccinated – is dangerous and premature. Those concerns will be compounded by the relaxation of travel restrictions announced on Thursday. Allowing children and double-vaccinated adults to travel to amber list countries without quarantining on return increases the risk of importing new variants which could be more infectious or more resistant to current vaccines, just as opportunities for transmission increase. The health secretary, Sajid Javid, concedes we could soon be looking at 100,000 cases a day, but argues that hospitalisation and death numbers are what matter more than anything.

Unfortunately, he will not say what figures he expects or would tolerate. The link between infection and serious illness or death has been much weakened, but not broken. Vaccination rates vary widely; in some areas, fewer than 30% have received two doses. On Thursday, the UK reported weekly rises of more than 50% in Covid hospital admissions and deaths – both of which lag rises in cases – to 456 and 35 respectively. The government’s chief medical adviser, Prof Chris Whitty, has said that we are likely to see a significant increase in long Covid; experts fear that huge numbers could be affected. Though the government talks of personal responsibility, there can be no responsibility without choice. For too many, danger is being imposed upon them. Vaccines are widely available, and people can still cover their faces.

But masks are better at protecting people from the wearer than protecting the wearer. Young workers on public transport or in shops, not yet able to get a second jab, will be exposed to the virus by customers who choose not to wear masks. They surely need and deserve protection. Children are currently unable to be vaccinated. The immunocompromised are less protected by vaccines and more likely to become seriously ill if they contract Covid. Reportedly, the department of health will be issuing new guidance for the immunosuppressed and clinically very vulnerable. But while support for shielders is needed, confining them to quarters indefinitely is hardly a liberation.

Nor is there much choice for exhausted NHS staff who face a soaring workload again, or for patients whose operations are being cancelled because hospitals are treating growing numbers of Covid patients or staff are having to self-isolate. If anything, the authors of the Lancet letter are too generous in describing this as “a dangerous and unethical experiment”: that terminology suggests a degree of scientific rigour and concern. Instead, this is a political wager, in which large parts of the population are not players but gambling chips.

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“I have not met a single vaccinated child or parent who has been adequately informed and who then understand the risks of this vaccine or its benefits.”

Canada Cracks Down On Doctors Who Warn Of Covid-19 Vaccines Risks (JTN)

Canadian doctors are facing professional repercussions for sharing their concerns about COVID-19 vaccines, specifically their emergency use authorization status and safety for children. The University of Saskatchewan removed Francis Christian, a clinical professor of surgery, from his faculty and administrative responsibilities days after he hosted a press conference about “the risks of mRNA vaccines to children” and alternatives to vaccination, including use of the drug ivermectin. The Saskatchewan Health Authority also said it was terminating Christian’s contract Sept. 21, after the required 90-day notice, for his “conspiracy theories” on COVID-19 vaccines. He is not “committed to fact-based, scientifically driven public messaging,” the provincial agency told the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

Christian endangers lives by “potentially discouraging uptake on life-saving vaccines.” Christian opened the June 17 press conference with an explicit disclaimer that he was not representing the university or the provincial agency, and emphasized he was “very pro-vaccine” in general. “The principle of informed consent is being consistently violated in this province for the mRNA vaccine for our kids,” for whom there is no “emergency” justifying experimental COVID-19 vaccines, he said. “I have not met a single vaccinated child or parent who has been adequately informed and who then understand the risks of this vaccine or its benefits.”

Christian said nearly 6,000 deaths have been associated with mRNA vaccines in the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. Echoing arguments by other medical experts, he said such associations “in any other drug or vaccine … would have been sufficient to stop the whole program” to allow for reevaluation. “Tomorrow the CDC is meeting in emergency session to discuss this issue” of heightened risk for myocarditis among young COVID-19 vaccine recipients, he said, and “there is a good likelihood that they too will call for a pause in vaccinating our kids.” The U.S. FDA added heart-inflammation warnings to two vaccines several days later.

Read more …

Can they fake negative tests as well? Asking for a friend.

How Some Teens are Faking Positive Covid-19 Tests (GR)

A new study released on Monday suggests that teenagers are using social media to share information on faking covid-19 tests in order to get a positive result. Since July 1, videos of young people sharing information on how to trick rapid at-home covid tests (lateral flow tests) into producing positive results using soda drinks have gone viral. This has prompted researchers at the University of Liverpool to look into whether there is any validity to the claim that artificial sweeteners used in sodas can change negative coronavirus results into positive ones. The results of their study, which is still awaiting peer review, were submitted to medRxiv on Monday. The videos of children faking positive covid-19 test results have gone particularly viral in the UK, where a single case of coronavirus in a school can often lead to the whole grade of the person diagnosed needing to isolate at home.

In the UK, schools have mandated students test themselves for the coronavirus twice weekly, in a move similar to that enacted by the Greek government. Some teens have decided that sham positive results are a good thing, as it allows them and their friends to skip school for around ten days and hang out instead. However, this can have a devastating effect on learning, as students miss out on school for days because of false information. Videos are continually being uploaded to social media sites with the hashtag “#fakecovidtest,” showing children putting different liquids on rapid antigen tests in an attempt to produce a positive result. The study by University of Liverpool researchers showed that soda drinks could be used to fake rapid covid-19 tests.

The researchers first ruled out the significance of artificial sweetener, as four different kinds of artificial sweetener and spring water produced negative results on the test swabs. However, when the researchers went to test sodas, the results became a bit more concerning. Ten out of fourteen sodas tested were able to produce positive or weakly positive results. However, the researchers have had a hard time identifying what ingredient produces this reaction, as there seems to be no apparent link between the test results and the soft drinks’ ingredients.

Read more …

One shut down after another. Not a good sign at all.

Wells Fargo Shuts Down All Personal Lines Of Credit (CNBC)

Wells Fargo is ending a popular consumer lending product, angering some of its customers, CNBC has learned. The bank is shutting down all existing personal lines of credit in coming weeks and no longer offers the product, according to customer letters reviewed by CNBC. The revolving credit lines, which typically let users borrow $3,000 to $100,000, were pitched as a way to consolidate higher-interest credit card debt, pay for home renovations or avoid overdraft fees on linked checking accounts. “Wells Fargo recently reviewed its product offerings and decided to discontinue offering new Personal and Portfolio line of credit accounts and close all existing accounts,” the bank said in the six-page letter. The move would let the bank focus on credit cards and personal loans, it said.

Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf has been forced to make difficult decisions during the coronavirus pandemic, offloading assets and deposits and stepping back from some products because of limitations imposed by the Federal Reserve. In 2018, the Fed barred Wells Fargo from growing its balance sheet until it fixes compliance shortcomings revealed by the bank’s fake accounts scandal. The asset cap has ultimately cost the bank billions of dollars in lost earnings, based on the balance sheet growth of rivals including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America over the past three years, analysts have said. It has also affected Wells Fargo’s customers: Last year, the lender told staff it was halting all new home equity lines of credit, CNBC reported. Months later, the bank also withdrew from a segment of the auto lending business.

With its latest move, Wells Fargo warned customers that the account closures “may have an impact on your credit score,” according to a frequently asked questions segment of the letter. Another part of the FAQ asserted that the account closures couldn’t be reviewed or reversed: “We apologize for the inconvenience this Line of Credit closure will cause,” the bank said. “The account closure is final.”

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“We are going to hold Big Tech very accountable..”

Trump Announces Class Action Lawsuit Against Twitter, Facebook & Google (HE)

Trump is suing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for violating his First Amendment rights. “Today, in conjunction with the America First Policy Institute, I’m filing as the lead class representative a class action lawsuit against Facebook, Google and Twitter,” Trump said. “Our case will prove this censorship unlawful.” “We’re demanding an end to the shadowbanning, a stop to the silencing, and a stop to the blacklisting, banishing and canceling that you know so well,” he added.


The lawsuits, filed in the Southern District of Florida, also call for the court to strike down Section 230, a decades-old Internet law that protects tech companies from lawsuits over content moderation decisions, per the New York Times. The suits seek unspecified punitive damages. The announcement came during a morning press conference at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, where he was joined by Linda McMahon and Brooke Rollins of the America First Policy Institute, per the Tennessee Star. Trump is bringing the lawsuit on behalf of not only himself, but other Americans whose First Amendment rights were violated by the Big Tech conglomerate. “We are going to hold Big Tech very accountable,” he said.

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He’s seen the laptop’s contents.

Trump Says Hunter Biden Is Worse Than Al Capone (DM)

Former President Donald Trump said Wednesday there was more ‘criminal activity’ on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop than mobster Al Capone ever carried out. Trump commented on what he termed the ‘laptop from hell’ as he announced his lawsuit against Facebook and big tech. He used language that suggested he may have seen the laptop, although he didn’t specify if he was referring to media reports on its contents. ‘The laptop from hell,’ Trump termed it. ‘You look at that thing, there’s more criminal activity on that laptop than Al Capone had if he ever had a laptop,’ the former president said. The tech-averse Trump then riffed: ‘We’d like to give Al Capone one, but he was a baby compared to what I was able to see.’

The laptop purportedly once owned by the president’s son has produced a series of revelations about Hunter Biden’s convoluted family sagas and international business deals. DailyMail.com consulted computer forensics experts who vouched for its authenticity. The New York Post reported on some of its email contents weeks before the election, reporting that it was dropped off at a Delaware repair shop in 2019 and never picked up. Recent stories unearthed from the laptop appear to show Hunter paying his father’s AT&T bill, saying prostitutes should unionize, as well as information on the family’s painful struggles with addiction. Longtime Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, whose apartment was raided by the FBI in April, said agents refused to take hard drives he said were Hunter’s during the search.

[..] Trump brought up the laptop while complaining about probes of him he terms witch hunts. ‘That’s what happened with Russia, that’s what happened with Ukraine,’ he said, before pivoting to Hunter. He invoked Capone, the Chicago mobster famously sentenced to 11 years on tax charges, days after longtime Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg was indicted on tax fraud charges over $1.7 million in perks and benefits prosecutors say he did not disclose.

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The White House ensures secrecy for the buyers? That’s in their job description?

Hunter Biden Art Show Sparks Ethics Concerns (NYP)

Government ethics watchdogs and art critics alike are voicing their concerns as first son Hunter Biden prepares for his first solo art exhibition this fall — where paintings from the former lawyer and lobbyist are expected to fetch between $75,000 and $500,000 and buyers will remain anonymous. “The whole thing is a really bad idea,” Richard Painter, chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, told the Washington Post. “The initial reaction a lot of people are going to have is that he’s capitalizing on being the son of a president and wants people to give him a lot of money. I mean, those are awfully high prices.” Walter Shaub, who led the Office of Government Ethics under President Barack Obama, told the paper that the art buyers having their identities protected created a host of problems.

“Because we don’t know who is paying for this art and we don’t know for sure that [Hunter Biden] knows, we have no way of monitoring whether people are buying access to the White House,” he said. “What these people are paying for is Hunter Biden’s last name.” Painter also referenced the issue of anonymity, noting that foreign governments or lobbyists could buy the art through intermediaries in an effort to curry favor with the Biden White House. President Biden’s 51-year-old son is putting the finishing touches on the 15 paintings that will comprise his first solo exhibition, which is scheduled to open in October at the Georges Berges’ Gallery in Soho, with a private viewing for VIP collectors in Los Angeles in September. Speaking to The Post late last month, Berges, 45, who said he discovered Biden after being introduced by a “serious” Los Angeles-based collector, admitted he was skeptical of the president’s son’s artistic ability.

“A lot of people say they can paint and do sculpture, but what I was concerned about was whether Hunter’s work would be authentic,” the gallery owner said. Berges, who represents a roster of international artists, spent three years helping Biden, who is self-taught, take his abstract expressionist painting from a hobby that occupied “about 20 percent of his time” to a full-time job that saw Biden spend the last two and a half years holed up in his home studio on a hillside in Los Angeles following a “regimented” routine. “What interested me was whether the work was going to be honest — something that was really true to him and his journey,” Berges said. “But as soon as I met him, I had a real connection with him and I felt I could work with him.”

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Julian has nothing to expect from British law.

UK High Court Grants US Permission for Appeal in Assange Extradition Case (CD)

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s legal team said Wednesday that the United Kingdom’s High Court had granted permission to the U.S. government to appeal an earlier decision that blocked Assange’s extradition The court reportedly granted the appeal “on a limited basis” and on “narrow, technical grounds,” and did not set a date for a future court hearing. The ruling led to intensified calls by Assange’s supporters for his release from Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh, where he has been held for more than two years following seven years in isolation at the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he claimed asylum. The High Court’s decision “means he is still at risk of extradition where he faces a 175-year prison sentence and…is certain to lose his life if he is extradited,” said Stella Moris, Assange’s partner.


District Judge Vanessa Baraister ruled at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in January that Assange should not be extradited to the U.S., where the government is pursuing Espionage Act charges against him for his publication of military and diplomatic documents, on the grounds that Assange was at “substantial” risk for committing suicide in the “harsh conditions” of the U.S. prison system. Baraister’s ruling led to calls for the U.S. to end its pursuit of Assange—which has been called a threat to press freedom all over the world by international rights groups including Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, and the Freedom of the Press Foundation—but U.K. authorities continued his detention at Belmarsh pending the Biden administration’s appeal.

Greenwald NSA Assange

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