May 192022
 


Jack Delano Diner along U.S. Highway No. 1 near Berwyn, Maryland 1940

 

The American Cause in Ukraine: Freedom or Empire? (Drake)
Western Leaders Tied To Ukraine Bioweapons Labs (Woltz)
Major NATO War Games Set to Begin Miles From Russian Base (LI)
Third of Global Population Killed in Next War Cycle – Charles Nenner (USAW)
Biden’s ‘Disinformation’ Clown Show ‘Paused,’ Scary Poppins Resigns (Celente)
Mortality Among White-Collar Workers Jumped 24% Between 2020 and 2021 (ET)
Gates, Fauci Funded Experiments on Bird Flu (Mercola)
Why Were So Many Adverse Events Reported as ‘Unrelated’ to Vaccine? (CHD)
Sussmann Is Receiving Every Consideration Denied To Flynn (Turley)
Juror Donations, Judge’s Family Ties At Sussmann Trial (JTN)
Clinton Campaign Lawyer Elias Testifies In 3rd Day Of Sussmann Trial (JTN)
Clintonworld Steps Away From Black Lives Matter (WE)
Elon Musk Announces He Will Vote Republican (JTN)
Twitter Wants to Close Deal ‘Promptly’ and on ‘Agreed Price’ (ET)
Half of President Biden’s Twitter Followers Are Fake (JTN)
Hunter Biden’s Hollywood Lawyer Teases Counter-offensive vs Trump Allies (CBS)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Important

 

 

More on abortion

 

 

“The Russian GDP declined by two-thirds from 1989 to 2000.”

The American Cause in Ukraine: Freedom or Empire? (Drake)

On the principle that historical analysis requires an attempt to understand the motives of all sides in a war, the Russian argument deserves a fair hearing. Roy Medvedev, one of Russia’s most distinguished historians and long a supporter of Vladimir Putin, gave an interview on March 2, 2022, to the Corriere della Sera. The ninety-six-year-old Medvedev succinctly expressed the Kremlin view of the Ukraine crisis as a clash involving far more than Putin’s concern about NATO expansion to his country’s borders. The metastasizing of NATO illustrated but did not define for Russia the fundamental issue, which had to do with the failure of America to understand that the unipolar moment of its rules-based order had ended. The time had come for a paradigm shift in international relations.

As an example of the American hegemony’s failures, Medvedev commented on the effects of Washington’s supervisory role in Russia’s transition to capitalism. He was referring to the misery befalling Russia at Cold War’s end and astringently described by the Nobel Prize-winning Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz in Globalization and Its Discontents (2002). In general, Stiglitz could find nothing moral or competent in the way globalization had been imposed upon the world by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the U.S. Treasury Department. Globalization had turned into an enrichment scheme for international elites implementing and benefitting from the neoliberal Washington Consensus.

When Stiglitz came to discuss the Russian economy’s American-led post-Cold War reconfiguration, which evolved along lines pleasing to the Chicago School of true-believing free-market capitalists, he showed in copious detail what Medvedev was alluding to in his interview with Italy’s leading newspaper. This crash course in free market economics had produced a harrowing increase in the nation’s poverty. The Russian GDP declined by two-thirds from 1989 to 2000.The standard of living and life expectancy fell while the number of people in poverty rose. Levels of inequality grew as oligarchs took advantage of insider information to strip the country of its assets, which they invested not in Russia, but in the U.S. Stock Market. Billions of dollars poured out of the country along with a swelling emigration of talented and educated young people who could see no future for themselves there.

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“Why are these top Western military leaders running dangerous (and illegal) bioweapons operation in Ukraine?”

Western Leaders Tied To Ukraine Bioweapons Labs (Woltz)

A military officer’s oath is for life, so one could rightly suspect that the crapstorm Trudeau’s Trevor Cadieu, The Biden Crime family’s, Admiral Eric Thor Olson, and BoJo’s LTC John Bailey just stirred up, was with their consent. Numerous headlines read, “U.S. Admiral Surrenders to Russia in Mariupol, Ukraine.” What they missed is that U.S. Lt. Gen. Roger Cloutier was also captured at Azovstal and is now headed for Moscow to be put on trial as an international terrorist as well. “Reports have been circulating much of today (Sunday, May 15, 2022) claiming that a U.S. Military Commander surrendered to Russian forces from the Azovstal Steel Mill in Mariupol, Ukraine.”

Not to be outdone in international Bioweapons Crimes against humanity, Boris Johnson’s lad, British Lieutenant Colonel, John Bailey—and four NATO military instructors—also surrendered to the Russian troops Sunday past from the depths of the Neo-Nazi tunnels beneath Azov Steel (Azovstal). There is also news of other officers still hiding in the tunnels under Azovstal—along with an estimated 600 Ukraine Neo-Nazis who can expect less cordial treatment by the Russian courts than the western brass. Russian tribunals will hold them responsible for the 14,000 dead Russian-speaking souls in Eastern Ukraine murdered by these men since 2014. Why are these top Western military leaders running dangerous (and illegal) bioweapons operation in Ukraine? I think the question answers itself.

The World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ glommed onto by the Bidens, the Trudeaus, the Johnsons, the Morrisons Down Under, Ardern in Kiwiland—as well as the Brussels crew in Europe—are losing. Their pandemic was not only ineffective in killing most of ‘us’ (so far) but their dirty bomb plot/bioweapons release from Ukraine planned for March 8th of this year was also a dud.

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“A flurry of additional war games are planned for Germany, Finland, Poland and elsewhere in the coming months.”

Major NATO War Games Set to Begin Miles From Russian Base (LI)

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization will soon conduct large-scale exercises in the Baltics, with thousands of troops from more than a dozen nations set to take part in war games just 40 miles from the nearest Russian military base. Dubbed “Hedgehog,” the drills will kick off later this week in Estonia and run until June 3, meant to simulate a Russian invasion. They will involve 15,000 troops from 14 countries – including the United States, Britain, Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Norway, as well as non-NATO members Ukraine, Georgia, Sweden and Finland.

According to Major General Veiko-Vello Palm, deputy commander of the Estonian Defence Forces, the exercise will take place just 40 miles from a Russian military base, a facility hosting Moscow’s 76th Guards Air Assault Division in the border city of Pskov. The size of the war games – among the largest in the Baltics since the fall of the USSR – their proximity to the Russian border, and the inclusion of non-NATO states are likely to escalate tensions with Moscow. Though the exercises were planned before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, they will no doubt serve as an additional show of force as NATO members flood the Ukrainian battlefield with billions of dollars in weapons and gear.

The drills come as US lawmakers move ahead on a massive $40 billion aid package for Kiev, around half of which will be devoted to arms shipments. That bill follows more than $14 billion in aid already delivered or authorized by the US government. The Hedgehog exercise will also overlap with two major NATO and allied military drills currently being held in the region, “Defender Europe” and “Swift Response,” which together involve around 18,000 soldiers from 20 countries. A flurry of additional war games are planned for Germany, Finland, Poland and elsewhere in the coming months.

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“There was a Jewish prophet that once said, ‘The last war is going to take 8 minutes.’

Third of Global Population Killed in Next War Cycle – Charles Nenner (USAW)

Renowned geopolitical and financial cycle expert Charles Nenner says his analysis shows the world will start a huge war cycle by 2023. This type of war is similar to WWII but much bigger. Nenner explains, “The cycle work I do on wars starts at the Mandarin Empire 3,000 years before Jesus came into this world. The long cycle only picks up the big wars. Wars in Korea and Iraq do not show up. So, I say the big War Cycle is up, and this is going to be a big war because the small ones don’t even show up. So, I am very worried. . . . There was a Jewish prophet that once said, ‘The last war is going to take 8 minutes.’ Nobody took this serious because how can a war last 8 minutes? Now we have an idea why a war can only take 8 minutes.

Things could calm down in the short term this summer. Then, next year, it can start full force again, and the whole thing is very dangerous.” How many casualties will there be in the next world war? Nenner estimates, “It’s very interesting how you calculate something like that. It’s the same way you calculate a cycle in IBM. When you see IBM going down, you can get an upside price target, which we have. You can do the same thing on the war cycle. About one third of the population is not going to survive in this world.” So, more than 2.5 billion people are going to die in the next world war that is just around the corner? Nenner says, “Yes, the numbers say if you have a world war, it’s going to take out 1/3 of the population.”

On the financial front, Nenner says, “There is a catastrophe going on in bonds. They lost their capital and are not going to get it back. It’s the same thing that is happening in stocks.” Nenner advised to get out of both the bond and stock markets at the beginning of the year, and he was on target. Nenner predicts it’s going to get worse for stocks and bonds. Nenner says the next downside target is “15,000 on the DOW,” and it will eventually hit around “5,000 on the DOW.”

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A clown show indeed. Straight from Zelensky’s PR team.

Biden’s ‘Disinformation’ Clown Show ‘Paused,’ Scary Poppins Resigns (Celente)

Nina Jankowicz, the so-called disinformation ‘expert’ that was to lead President Joe Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board said in a statement that she was resigning from her post and that the entire project was “paused.” “With the board’s work paused and its future uncertain, and I have decided to leave DHS (the Department of Homeland Security) to return to my work in the public sphere,” she said in a statement obtained by a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. “It is deeply disappointing that mischaracterizations of the board became a distraction from the department’s vital work, and indeed, along with recent events globally and nationally, embodies why it is necessary.”

The Trends Journal was an outspoken critic of the board and Jankowicz’s position due to her her history of extreme views. Her past roles included stints at the Wilson Center and advising the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry (as part of the Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship), according to Zerohedge.com. She also directed Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute. Jankowicz did her best to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop as “Russian Disinformation” in the days and weeks before the 2020 Presidential election, according to Fox News. At one point she called it a “fairy-tale” of disinformation. She also called it a “Trump Campaign Product.” It has since been proved as authentic. If the media had reported on the laptop honestly, it likely would have severely damaged Joe Biden.

In 2020, she pushed for Twitter to go further in banning political criticism of Biden’s campaign; she said at the time that she “shudders to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities.” DHS told The Trends Journal that the board’s work protects free speech, civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy. “It was intended to ensure coordination across the Department’s component agencies as they protect Americans from disinformation that threatens the homeland – including malicious efforts spread by foreign adversaries, human traffickers, and transnational criminal organizations,” a spokesperson said. “The Board has been grossly and intentionally mischaracterized: it was never about censorship or policing speech in any manner. It was designed to ensure we fulfill our mission to protect the homeland, while protecting core Constitutional rights.”

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And the life insurance people are the only ones worried enough to investigate?!

Mortality Among White-Collar Workers Jumped 24% Between 2020 and 2021 (ET)

The increase in deaths not attributed to COVID-19 in the working-age population during the summer and into the fall of last year affected white-collar workers more than blue- and grey-collar employees, according to life insurance data. In the white-collar sector, mortality jumped 24 percent in the period covered by the data (April 2020–September 2021); less than 64 percent of those were attributed to COVID-19. Among blue-collar workers, mortality rose 19 percent, of which over 80 percent was attributed to COVID-19. As The Epoch Times previously reported, prime-age mortality was particularly elevated in the 12 months ending in October 2021, where there was an excess death spike of more than 40 percent in ages 18–49, compared with the same period in 2018–2019, based on death certificate data from the CDC.

The majority of the excess deaths weren’t attributed to COVID-19. A recent study by the Society of Actuaries, an international professional organization, corroborates the CDC data. It relies on a survey of group term life insurance providers that yielded data on claims made from 2017 to 2021 and reported to insurers by Sept. 30, 2021. The life insurance data show an increase in excess mortality since the second quarter of 2020, along with the COVID-19 pandemic, including a particularly sharp increase in the third quarter of 2021—39 percent above what would have been expected based on 2017–2019 data. That quarter was exceptionally devastating for age groups 25–34, 35–44, 45–54, and 55–64, in which mortality soared 81 percent, 117 percent, 108 percent, and 70 percent, respectively, above the baseline.

Deaths attributed to COVID-19 accounted for about three-quarters of the excess mortality during the 18 months reviewed in the study. But among those under the age of 45, COVID-19 accounted for less than 38 percent of the excess deaths, the study says. Among industries with the largest number of COVID-19 deaths, the worst hit was public administration with nearly 13,000 life insurance claims related to the disease. Yet those only accounted for less than 52 percent of the sector’s excess mortality.

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Get rid of them before they can do more damage.

Gates, Fauci Funded Experiments on Bird Flu (Mercola)

As news of the COVID pandemic winds down around the world, we’re suddenly seeing warnings of another pandemic brewing — bird flu, aka avian influenza (H5N1). In a March 30 CenterPoint interview, former Director for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert Redfield, stated: “I believe the great pandemic still in the future, and that’s going to be a bird flu pandemic for man. It’s going to have significant mortality in the 10 to 50% range. It’s going to be trouble.” Anyone who knows a little about bird flu is likely to wonder where Redfield and other “experts” are getting their predictions from, as natural bird flu is notoriously harmless to humans. In early April, news of a highly pathogenic bird flu ripping through chicken and turkey flocks in the U.S., triggering the slaughter of millions of these animals, was reported.

Historically, however, the bird flu has never posed a threat to mankind — that is until scientists started tinkering with it, creating a hybrid with human pandemic potential. As reported by Alexis Baden-Mayer, political director for the Organic Consumers Association: “H5N1 kills more than half of the people who get it, but H5N1 has circled the globe for decades and there have only ever been 860 human infections worldwide. … “H5N1 isn’t transmitted person-to-person … There are no food safety risks associated with H5N1. If farm workers and meat packers don’t get bird flu in filthy factory farms or slaughterhouses, it’s no surprise the rest of us don’t get bird flu from eating raw eggs or handling raw chicken.” Despite that, the U.S. and other countries have already started stockpiling H5N1 vaccine, and the H5N1 vaccine Audenz is being marketed “for 2022.”

The approval for this vaccine was granted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in January 2020, followed by supplemental approval in 2021. As if on cue, the first-ever H5N1-positive case was identified in the U.S. at the end of April. By the looks of it, the only way human bird flu would appear would be if it was created, and wouldn’t you know it, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has funded gain of function research with the intention to make H5N1 transmissible to humans, as has global vaccine profiteer Bill Gates, Baden-Mayer notes. Some of that research has been undertaken in Pentagon-funded biolabs in Ukraine. For more details on this, be sure to read Baden-Mayer’s extensive article.

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Is that a question?

Why Were So Many Adverse Events Reported as ‘Unrelated’ to Vaccine? (CHD)

The latest release of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine documents raises questions about how frequently adverse events experienced by clinical trial participants were reported as “unrelated” to the vaccine. The 80,000-page document cache released May 2 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) includes an extensive set of Case Report Forms (CRFs) from Pfizer trials conducted at various locations in the U.S. The documents also include the “third interim report” from BioNTech’s trials conducted in Germany (accompanied by a synopsis of this report and a database of adverse events from this particular set of trials).

The FDA released the documents, which pertain to the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the vaccine, as part of a court-ordered disclosure schedule stemming from an expedited Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed in August 2021. Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, a group of doctors and public health professionals, submitted the FOIA request. Pfizer conducted a series of vaccine trials at various locations in the U.S., including the New York University Langone Health Center, Rochester Clinical Research and Rochester General Hospital (Rochester, New York) and the J. Lewis Research, Inc. Foothill Family Clinic (Salt Lake City, Utah).

The Pfizer documents released this month by the FDA included a series of CRFs for patients who suffered some type of adverse event during their participation in the COVID-19 vaccine trials. As the documents reveal, despite the occurrence of a wide range of symptoms, including serious cardiovascular events, almost none were identified as being “related” to the vaccine. [..] The extant body of evidence indicates Pfizer “is hiding critical information from regulators,” Setty said: “The clincher is in the memorandum to the VRBPAC [Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee] (Table 2, efficacy populations), where they show us that five times more people in the vaccine group were pulled out of the trial than the placebo within seven days of their second shot for ‘important protocol deviations.’

“In a trial that big the chances that could have happened coincidentally is infinitesimally small (less than 1 in 100,000). “Moreover, months later, the same thing happened in the pediatric trial (Table 12). This time, six times more children were pulled from the trial after their second dose. “There are, of course, procedural differences when administering a placebo versus the mRNA vaccine, but why didn’t it happen after the first dose as well? “Mathematically, that is about as close as you can get to eliminating any ‘shadow of doubt.’ With a formal allegation by a trial coordinator that states the same thing [referring to whistleblower Brook Jackson], we can be assured Pfizer is hiding critical information from regulators.”

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The US cannot afford two separate justice systems.

Sussmann Is Receiving Every Consideration Denied To Flynn (Turley)

Sussman’s trial for allegedly lying to the FBI is being heard in the same District of Columbia federal courthouse where former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and others faced the very same charge brought by another special counsel. The cases, however, could not be more different. Whereas Flynn’s prosecution was a no-holds-barred affair, Sussmann’s prosecution has been undermined by a series of unfavorable rulings by the court. Special prosecutor John Durham still may be able to eke out a conviction, but the difference in the treatment of Trump and Clinton associates is striking.

Sussmann is charged under 18 U.S.C. 1001 with lying to the FBI during a meeting with then-FBI general counsel James Baker when he came forward with what he claimed was evidence of possible covert communications between the Trump organization and Alfa, a Russian bank. Sussmann allegedly concealed that he was representing the Clinton campaign, which he billed for his efforts. Shaw told the jury that the FBI “should not be used as a political tool for anyone – not Republicans. Not Democrats. Not anyone.” She then added that the jurors themselves should not use this trial for their own political judgments. Looking at the jury box, one can understand Shaw’s unease. During jury selection, one juror admitted he was a Clinton donor and could only promise to “strive for impartiality as best I can.”

Prosecutors objected to his being seated, but Judge Christopher Cooper overruled them. In another exchange, a former bartender and donor to far-left Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was told by a Sussmann defense lawyer that neither Clinton nor Trump were on trial and then asked if she could be impartial. She responded, “Yes, knowing that” — which might suggest she would not be impartial if the campaigns were part of the trial. Other jurors include a woman who said she thought she was a Clinton donor but could not remember; a juror whose husband worked for the Clinton 2008 campaign; and a juror who believes the legal system is racist and police departments should be defunded.

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You can’t have a fair trial in DC.

Juror Donations, Judge’s Family Ties At Sussmann Trial (JTN)

The trial for 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann this week in Washington, D.C., highlights the left-leaning of the nation’s capital — with as many as three jurors reportedly having donated to the Clinton campaign. A fourth juror on the 12-member panel supported New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, according to the New York Post. In addition, presiding federal judge Christopher Cooper says he and Sussmann were “professional acquaintances” while at the Justice Department in the 1990s. And the judge’s wife represents former FBI lawyer Lisa Page. Page exchanged text messages critical of then-GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign with then-FBI agent Peter Strzok, with whom she was having an extra-marital affair.


The District of Columbia votes overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates, with Democrats outnumbering Republican voters 76.5% to 5.4%, according to the most recent figures from the city’s Board of Elections. In 2016, D.C. voters favored Clinton over Trump, 90.9% to 4.1%. Special Counsel John Durham’s team objected to putting one Clinton donor on the jury after the man said he would “strive for impartiality as best I can,” the Post also reported. However, the prosecutors were overruled by Cooper, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who said the Clinton supporter “expressed a high degree of confidence” that he wouldn’t be biased.

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Elias is the leader. No. 1 lawyer for both Hillary AND BLM.

Clinton Campaign Lawyer Elias Testifies In 3rd Day Of Sussmann Trial (JTN)

Marc Elias, a top 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign attorney, began his testimony late Wednesday morning in the federal case against fellow and former campaign attorney and law firm partner Michael Sussmann – as the prosecution laid its groundwork for further questions about the firm’s relationship with opposition research firm Fusion GPS. Special counsel John Durham has charged Sussmann with lying to the FBI, alleging that in 2016, weeks before the presidential election, he pitched the FBI the Trump-Russia collusion plot without disclosing he was working for stakeholder clients, suggesting instead he was there as a good citizen. Sussmann provided evidence at the meeting that purported to prove communications between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Afla Bank, a back channel to the Kremlin.

Elias at the time was general counsel for the Clinton campaign and a partner with Sussmann at the Perkins Coie law firm. Before the court recess Wednesday, the prosecution established through Elias’ testimony that he had hired Fusion GPS for the Clinton campaign in spring 2016, when it looked like then-presidential candidate Donald Trump would become the GOP nominee. Elias said that he had weekly in-person meetings with the firm and daily check-ins over the phone regarding its efforts and progress. Most of what Fusion GPS focused on for the Clinton campaign was Trump-related litigation. The prosecution asked Elias who knew of the relationship between Fusion GPS and the Clinton campaign.

Elias explained that it was largely on a need-to-know basis so as to prevent people in the campaign from reaching out to Fusion GPS without having attorney-client privilege and to prevent leaks on the law firm side from getting out to the public that would hurt the client. Prosecutor Andrew DeFilippis also asked Elias about how Perkins Coie’s clients were billed, setting up a framework for later questioning regarding Sussmann’s purported billing of the Clinton campaign for his meeting with the FBI. The prosecution on Tuesday night had a listed at least five witnesses it intends to bring to the stand Wednesday – including Elias, fellow Clinton campaign lawyer Debbie Fine and Fusion GPS computer researcher Laura Seago.

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Whaddaya know? There’s Elias again. The rats and the sinking ship.

BLM raised $90 million, and spent $60 million?!

Clintonworld Steps Away From Black Lives Matter (WE)

Marc Elias and Minyon Moore, two longtime allies of Bill and Hillary Clinton who recently took up key roles with the national Black Lives Matter group, relinquished top spots with the embattled organization, according to new records filed just days before the group reveals what it did with the $90 million it raised in 2020. The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation revealed in February that the Elias Law Group, Elias’s namesake law firm, had taken control of its books and finances. But Elias Law Group is nowhere to be found in BLM’s latest registration filings submitted to Florida and Oklahoma on April 28, according to records obtained by the Washington Examiner.

While the new records show the Elias Law Group is no longer in control of BLM’s books, whatever continued involvement Elias’s firm may have with the embattled charity remains a mystery. The Elias Law Group declined to provide an on-the-record comment to the Washington Examiner. The Elias Law Group’s absence from BLM’s Florida and Oklahoma registrations submitted on the eve of the charity’s financial disclosure is telling, said Tom Anderson, the director of the Government Integrity Project at the National Legal and Policy Center watchdog group. “It is important to note the Elias Law Group is a firm with a laser focus on electing Democrats and pushing the progressive agenda,” Anderson told the Washington Examiner.

“This makes their disappearance from the latest BLM Global Network Foundation filings a pivotal moment, probably foreshadowing the total collapse of what is left of the organization.” BLM had disclosed in February that Elias’s law firm had taken control of its books and Moore had joined its board of directors. The filings were made public about two weeks after the BLM shut off its online fundraising streams amid legal threats from California and Washington over the charity’s lack of financial transparency. [..] Elias is best known for his funding of British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited anti-Trump dossier while he served as Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign general counsel, and he is expected to be called by special counsel John Durham to testify at the false statements trial of his former Perkins Coie law firm colleague, Michael Sussmann, which begins [this] week.

Zuby
https://twitter.com/i/status/1526982406586224642

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“The dirty tricks attacks will be next-level.”

Elon Musk Announces He Will Vote Republican (JTN)

The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, on Wednesday announced he will vote Republican due to the “hate” in the Democratic Party. “In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party,” Musk tweeted. “But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican,” he wrote. “Now, watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold …” Several hours before making the announcement, Musk posted, “Political attacks on me will escalate dramatically in coming months.” He followed up, “The dirty tricks attacks will be next-level.”

Musk secured a deal to purchase Twitter last month, in a move he says is intended to defend freedom of speech. The Tesla CEO has since said the deal is on hold pending the release of details about fake accounts on the platform. Some Twitter employees are upset with Musk’s possible acquisition of the platform. A video surfaced Tuesday from Project Veritas showing a Twitter executive mocking Musk’s Aspergers and support for free speech.

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No chance anymore.

Twitter Wants to Close Deal ‘Promptly’ and on ‘Agreed Price’ (ET)

Twitter announced Tuesday that it was filing a preliminary proxy statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in order to complete the Elon Musk buyout “on the agreed price,” and as “promptly as practicable.” Twitter wants the $54.20 per share in cash deal with Musk to go through, while the billionaire is hesitant following allegations that the social media platform is rife with spam or bot accounts. “The preliminary proxy statement contains important information including the background of, and reasons for, Twitter’s transaction with Mr. Musk,” the company said in a statement, adding that it expects the deal to close in 2022. Moreover, Twitter encouraged shareholders to vote in favor of the deal in the preliminary proxy statement.


The board of directors unanimously “determined that the merger agreement is advisable,” and that it is “in the best interests of Twitter and its stockholders.” Meanwhile, Musk has called on the SEC to investigate the actual number of users on the network. “Hello @SECGov, anyone home?” Musk wrote in a Twitter post on May 17 as a response to a suggestion for the regulatory authority to look into Twitter’s claims regarding the number of users. As the uncertainties continue, the stock price has fallen from $46.09 last Wednesday to close at $38.32 Tuesday, a decrease of over 16.8 percent.

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Q: Could or should Musk have known this when he made his offer? But also: did Twitter know?

Half of President Biden’s Twitter Followers Are Fake (JTN)

Nearly half of President Biden’s 22.2 million Twitter followers are fake accounts, according to an audit tool by software company SparkToro. Newsweek reports that the tool found that 49.3% of accounts following the U.S. president are fake followers based on a number of factors, including how recently the accounts were established, location issues and lack of profile images. The tool defines fake accounts as “accounts that are unreachable and will not see the account’s tweets (either because they’re spam, bots, propaganda, etc. or because they’re no longer active on Twitter).” Elon Musk, who is in the middle of attempting to purchase Twitter, says the deal cannot move forward until there is a better understanding of the number of fake accounts on the site.


If a crackdown on fake and bot accounts is ultimately implemented, the official @POTUS account could lose an enormous numbers of followers. On Tuesday, Musk said that the number of fake accounts on Twitter was close to 20%, four times what Twitter claims,” he wrote, and “could be *much* higher.” “My offer was based on Twitter’s [Security and Exchange Commission] filings being accurate. Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does,” he wrote. The Tesla CEO and current Twitter CEO, Parag Agrawal, traded some tweets Monday about the issue.

“We suspend over half a million spam accounts every day, usually before any of you even see them on Twitter,” Agrawal posted. “We also lock millions of accounts each week that we suspect may be spam, if they can’t pass human verification challenges (captchas, phone verification, etc).” The Twitter CEO said that the company estimates each quarter that less than 5% of monetizable daily active users are spam accounts. Musk first responded to Agrawal’s lengthy thread with an excrement emoji, and then wrote, “So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter.”

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Q: How does Hunter pay “a team of more than 30 lawyers and investigators..?” That sounds costly.

Hunter Biden’s Hollywood Lawyer Teases Counter-offensive vs Trump Allies (CBS)

The Hollywood lawyer working with Hunter Biden has recruited a team of more than 30 lawyers and investigators to probe the backstory of how a laptop containing years of personal and intimate emails and business records found its way to news reporters and authorities. The effort led by Kevin Morris, a maverick entertainment lawyer best known for crafting a 9-figure deal for the creators of the animated series “South Park,” appears to be part of an attempt to blunt the impact of an ongoing federal investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax records and business dealings. Morris and his team have been circulating provocative slides that tease a coming counter-narrative to political attacks against the president’s son.

An ongoing Republican-led investigation into Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings is widely expected to escalate if the party takes control of the House or Senate and gains subpoena power. Republicans say the investigation aims to determine if Hunter Biden’s work created any conflicts for his father as a U.S. senator, vice president or presidential candidate. Both Hunter Biden and his father have maintained that they never communicated about the younger Biden’s business dealings, which included service on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm and dealmaking in China — work that has drawn scrutiny for the past several years.

Morris’s team includes investigators on the ground in Delaware, attorneys in multiple states, and forensic analysts who are attempting to determine if malicious content was added to Hunter Biden’s laptop — which has become the source of investigative reports and political attacks targeting the president’s son. But at least initially, the effort appears less focused on the content of the laptop than on how it surfaced in the first place. Based on Morris’ slides, several of which were viewed by CBS News, the attorney’s team of investigators is attempting to re-trace the path of Biden’s laptop and determine how it passed through the hands of the Bidens’ political opponents. Much remains unknown about how the younger Biden’s personal computer and its contents became public.

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Apr 222022
 


Hayami Gyoshu Tea bowl and fruits 1921

 

Biden Brags About Sending Weapons at ‘Record Speed’ to Ukraine (Celente)
The Collective West Is Stumbling Towards Nuclear Armageddon (Doctorow)
New World Disorder (Charai)
Why So Many Middle-Aged Deaths in 2021? (Briand)
Poking Holes In The Brain-blood Barrier. Is That Such A Good Idea? (Girardot)
A Moratorium on mRNA ‘Vaccines’ is Needed (Byram Bridle)
Fauci Complains About ‘Dangerous Precedent’ of Mask Mandate Ruling (TH)
Tulsi Gabbard Releases Cease And Desist Letter To Mitt Romney (JTN)
Destroying Democracy To Save It? (Turley)
Barack Obama Outlines Perils Of Unregulated Big Tech (G.)
Big Tech’s ‘Cancel Culture’ Love Affair (Pepe Escobar)
Feds Subpoenaed Hunter Biden Paternity Documents, Including Tax Returns (CBS)
Black Lives Don’t Matter To BLM (Blaze)
Elon Musk To Collect $23bn Bonus As Tesla Beats Targets (G.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

George Webb

 

 

 

 

Medvedev

 

 

Am I the only one who thinks they’re too eager to get all these people into the US?

President Biden: “I’m announcing a program, Unite for Ukraine, a new program to enable Ukrainians seeking refuge to come directly from Europe to the United States.”

 

 

And not a word about peace.

Biden Brags About Sending Weapons at ‘Record Speed’ to Ukraine (Celente)

President Joe Biden on Thursday took to Twitter to inform Americans that his administration will send another $800 million in military aid to Ukraine to “further augment” Kyiv’s ability to counter the Russian offensive in the eastern region of the country. No mention of peace. Just more war. Biden, who called Putin a killer and war criminal, bragged that the new package will include heavy artillery weapons, dozens of howitzers, 144,000 rounds of ammunition, and tactical drones. “In the past two months, we have moved weapons and equipment to Ukraine at record speed. The United States alone has provided 10 anti-armor systems for every one Russian tank that is in Ukraine,” he posted.

Biden has sent $3.4 billion in less than two months to Ukraine. He also announced that he will send a supplemental budget request to Congress to get the funding for the weapons. He also plans to send $500 million more in direct economic aid to Ukraine and accept more refugees. Biden said the war is at a critical point and about to enter its “next phase” (which only means more weapons). The weapons will go “directly to the front lines of defending freedom,” he said. [..] John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said the new weapons batch will include 72 tactical vehicles to tow the howitzers, 121 Phoenix Ghost tactical drones—a new weapon rapidly developed by the Air Force for the Ukrainians, according to Defense One. Biden also announced that $500 million more is being provided to Ukraine.

Biden, who earlier held a meeting with Ukrainian Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal, said Americans should take pride in providing the weapons and intelligence that “beat back Putin’s savagery.” “Putin has failed to achieve his grand ambitions on the battlefield. After weeks of shelling Kyiv. Kyiv still stands,” he said.

Scott Ritter

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“..overcome with pure hatred for the West brought on by the sanctions, by the rampant Russophobia that is now public policy in Europe and the USA..”

The Collective West Is Stumbling Towards Nuclear Armageddon (Doctorow)

[Mosfilm general director Karen] Shakhnazarov expressed amazement and deep worry that Western leaders have literally ‘lost their minds’ by pursuing measures to destabilize Russia in the hope of precipitating the overthrow of Vladimir Putin and maybe even the disintegration of Russia in a way similar to the dissolution of the USSR in late 1991. Shakhnazarov remarked that total absence of common or any other sense in Joe Biden is to be expected because of his health (read: senility). But his jaw dropped when he heard that the Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, declared a couple of days ago that “Russia must not be allowed to win this war!” Where are his brains? Shakhnazarov asked rhetorically.

The point of Shakhnazarov’s reasoning is as follows: Russia is the world’s leading power in terms of nuclear arms. An overthrow of Putin would lead to chaos, and very likely to genuine radicals assuming power. Their aggressive inclinations for policy to the West would be underpinned by the vast majority of the Russian population, which, in Shakhnazarov’s view, is now overcome with pure hatred for the West brought on by the sanctions, by the rampant Russophobia that is now public policy in Europe and the USA. If the conflict should escalate to use of tactical nuclear missiles and beyond, then Russia would no longer limit its strikes to military installations but will happily target all capitals and population centers in Europe and, we may assume, in North America. In a word, Shakhnazarov equates destabilization of Russia with nuclear Armageddon.

I repeat, these are the fears of a highly responsible and publicly visible Russian general manager in the arts. Is anybody in the West with comparable standing even beginning to imagine the coming catastrophe let alone speak out about it? Before closing, I redirect attention to a major newsworthy development in Russia yesterday afternoon which even our Western media have reported on this morning: the test launch of Russia’s new Sarmat ICBM, which sets new records for speed, distance, destructive force of its MIRV warheads and, surely most important, imperviousness to all known and projected anti-missile systems in the West. Part of the invulnerability of the Sarmat is a function of its range, which extends to every point on planet Earth. Sarmat’s trajectory can be set as best suits its undetectability.

For example, it can hit the USA by approach via the South Pole, thereby evading American tracking systems, which look to attack from the Northwest. The Sarmat’s 7 or 15 nuclear warheads can each also evade ABM systems and head for target at hypersonic speeds. Starting in September, the Sarmat will be installed in silos till now housing the world’s most powerful ICBM, the Voevoda, which will be gradually retired and redeployed as launchers for commercial satellites.

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“The view from the rubble of Kyiv’s suburbs isn’t hopeful.”

New World Disorder (Charai)

The latest battle zone in the Russia-Ukraine war was in the quiet, mostly mannerly halls of the United Nations. There, in the UN’s iconic New York headquarters, the world voted on Russia’s largest invasion since World War II — revealing fractures and fissures in global support for democracy. Suspending Russia from the UN Human Rights Council was technically the issue put before the delegates. But every diplomat knew it was really a vote on Russia’s assault on Ukraine. The consensus for democracy and self-determination was fragile: only 93 states (out of 193) voted for removing Russia from the UNHRC, and therefore condemning its actions against its smaller, weaker neighbor. Another 24 nations (including China) voted with Russia.

Most worrisome, 58 countries abstained, refusing to take sides in what many see as a duel between the great powers. Others feared that energy, food, and fertilizer prices might continue to climb if the conflict escalates. (Both Russia and Ukraine are major producers of oil, gas, wheat, and fertilizing petrochemicals — all of which are a matter of life and death for developing nations.) Fear and food are more important to many developing nations than democratic ideals. American and European policy makers will have to face a hard truth: while Russia is diplomatically isolated, it is not entirely alone, and many countries do not side with Ukraine and its democratic hopes. The view from the rubble of Kyiv’s suburbs isn’t hopeful.

Ukraine’s democratically elected leaders know that they could be captured, wounded, or killed. And they also know that the history of sanctions, the weapon of choice of the Western coalition, shows that they almost always fail to tame invaders. All of these facts were known to the UN delegates. Indeed, they would have heard them directly from Ukrainian diplomats. But high ideals and real desperation didn’t move them.

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“..a 45-54 years old death peak in September is unheard of.”

Why So Many Middle-Aged Deaths in 2021? (Briand)

Martin Kulldorff recently wrote: “For the mRNA vaccines, the big question that needs an urgent answer is whether they cause an increased risk of heart attack and/or other serious heart problems. There are many anecdotal reports, especially among young male athletes, and many VAERS reports. [..] Public health officials face a temptation to summarily dismiss anecdotal vaccine injury stories and people concerned about the publicly available VAERS reports, but in public health, we cannot do that. We must take people’s concerns seriously. What’s an economist’s reaction to anecdotal evidence? A friend recently asked me about the statistical relevance of anecdotal evidence. My answer to him was the following. The sum of life experiences by the many leads to a picture of the whole, while a picture of the whole hides unique and varied life experiences.

No “anecdotal evidence” should be dismissed a priori, just because it has been observed over a small and/or unique sample. The questions are the same, whether about “anecdotal evidence” or “evidence over a larger sample or population”: Have we really observed a change in the pattern in our data? What kind of inferences, if any, can we make from our observations? I have never paid much attention to athletes (no offense to the athletes), but I have recently paid attention to U.S. deaths. Using publicly available CDC data, I simply plotted monthly U.S. deaths, from 1999 to 2021. To my surprise, deaths due to suicides do not show an increase in 2020-21. But we thought they did, didn’t we? Does this mean we were not paying attention to suicides before, but recent events made us more attune to the suffering of others?

Or does it mean deaths of despair are found in other cause of death categories? Deaths due to accidental poisoning and exposure to noxious substances (which include accidental drug and alcohol overdose) have increased. Deaths due to homicide, and deaths due to liver diseases, have too. Some thought April 2020 deaths were too high and justified putting our lives on hold, but January 2021 numbers were worse—the percentage death rate in 2021 is the same as it was in 2020. Why the increase in January 2021 deaths? Continued upward trend in deaths due to the increase and aging of the US population? Deaths of despair? Increased deaths due to untreated conditions in 2020? Deaths due to COVID or one of its variants? Vaccine deaths?

In 2021, death numbers have peaked at unprecedented levels, in September, for the 45-54, 35-44 and 25-34 years old. September 2021 deaths for the 65-74 and 55-64 years old were also higher than their April 2020 numbers. Ok, so why is that significant? Let’s take the 45-54 years old group for example. Seasonal variations in deaths for this group has always been less pronounced than for the 85 years and older group, but whatever peaks they had, they still occurred mostly in January for both groups—so a 45-54 years old death peak in September is unheard of.

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“As long as the brain-blood barrier is leak-proof, very limited quantities of lipid nanoparticles – or pseudo-virus vectors – will penetrate the brain.”

Poking Holes In The Brain-blood Barrier. Is That Such A Good Idea? (Girardot)

Utilising 20% of the body’s energy, the humain brain contains ~650 kilometers of blood vessels, roughly 6 times the lungs’ own vascular system. As such it would be natural that the brain would face the most endothelial risk in the human body. When the data about the LNP distribution came out last year, most of us naturally focused on the organs where most of the nanoparticles seemed to be principally localised: liver, spleen, ovaries, heart, lungs … Strangely, the brain seemed relatively untouched with a peak estimate at 2 million nanoparticles in the brain, whereas the lungs seem to retain 6 times more vaccine particles… an inverted proportion.


Chart 1 – Lipid Nanoparticle Estimate for Pfizer Vaccine based on Mouse Model

There’s an acute difference between the brain and other organs: As a vascular system, the brain-blood-barrier (BBB) is a much tighter assembly of specialised endothelial cells than the rest of the circulatory system. The BBB controls what penetrates the brain much more tightly and rigourously. In other words, vaccine particles can come in and out freely in most organs, not in the brain. As long as the brain-blood barrier is leak-proof, very limited quantities of lipid nanoparticles – or pseudo-virus vectors – will penetrate the brain.

As we have witnessed with the escape from the injection point, it doesn’t mean necessarily that tissues are favourable to transfection…so a significant proportion of cytotoxic LNPs accounted for in Chart 1 aren’t necessarily synonymous with severity. Indeed, they might leak back into the lymphatic system and the blood stream later on. What I am trying to say is that it might seem from Chart 1 that the brain is not so much at risk, but effectively it probably is. Simply the brain isn’t storing LNPs in the tissue the way muscles or the heart might…and therefore the 2 million LNPs accounted for in the brain are likely transfected BBB endothelial cells !

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Too late already?

A Moratorium on mRNA ‘Vaccines’ is Needed (Byram Bridle)

Do you remember when public health and government officials assured everyone that the mRNA ‘vaccines’ function like traditional vaccine technologies? …meaning that they largely remain in the shoulder muscle where they are injected, with some portion going to the draining lymph nodes where an immune response is initiated. Well, back in May 2021, I, along with some international colleagues, looked at a document that Pfizer had submitted to the Japanese health regulatory agency. It was a pre-clinical biodistribution study. This means it was an experiment done with an animal model to predict where the vaccine formulation might go when injected into people. What I saw was startling. Most of Pfizer’s vaccine spread throughout the body instead of staying at the injection site.

This also meant there was the potential for toxicities that would never occur with traditional vaccines that largely remain at or close to the injection site. To ensure people could make a fully informed decision about whether to take the jab I went public with this information in a radio interview. I wasn’t surprised by the systemic distribution of the vaccine per se. Being a vaccinologist, I knew that lipid nanoparticle delivery systems were originally designed to spread far and wide throughout the body with the hopes they could be a vehicle for gene therapy and/or drug delivery. Instead, my surprise came from the fact that the data confirmed my historical understanding and contradicted public health messaging that the mRNA jabs behaved like traditional vaccines.

Public statements by health officials made me assume the lipid nanoparticles had somehow been modified to stay at the injection site, which was news to me. This highlights one of the first rules of thumb when practicing science. Transparently presented raw and/or peer-reviewed data are the cornerstones of objective science; not personal proclamations or data disseminated via media releases. In May 2021 I realized two things: 1. There was a lack of transparency about data supporting COVID-19 inoculations. 2. Incorrect messaging was being relayed to the public. As an academic public servant with relevant expertise, I spoke up when enquiries came from the public. I spoke the truth then and continue to do so.

Ryan Cole Cancer and T cells

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Fauci declares himself above the law. And the courts should stay out of it.

Fauci Complains About ‘Dangerous Precedent’ of Mask Mandate Ruling (TH)

After Fauci himself acknowledged that the rise in cases of this new variant may not lead to increased hospitalizations, he claimed that “it was perfectly logical for the CDC to say ‘wait a minute, we were planning on ending this mandate on a certain date, let’s wait a period of time until May 3” and also tried to convince that that “was a very sound public health decision.” He continued to complain about Judge Mizelle’s ruling, saying that “for a court to come in, and interfere in that, is really unfortunate. It’s unfortunate because it’s against public health principles, number one, and number two is because that’s no place for the courts to do that, this is a CDC decision, and that’s very bad precedent when you have courts making a decision and looking at what the basis of the decision, it was not sound.”

What? Is the CDC accountable to no one? Also, when it comes to waiting until “a certain date,” plenty of us remember the powers that be at the time telling us, over two years ago now, that we just needed two weeks to stop the spread. Such exchanges certainly highlight an entitlement that Dr. Fauci, the CDC, and the Biden administration all have when it comes to their authority in handling the Wuhan coronavirus. It’s all on these members of the mainstream media for throwing Biden such softball questions. These remarks came after Dr. Fauci just recently, during an appearance on ABC News’ “This Week” acknowledged that “this is not going to be eradicated … Each individual is going to have to make their [risk] calculation.”


Fauci has hardly been the only one to denigrate Judge Mizelle though, with other liberals going after her, including to do with her age and her qualifications, as Spencer and our friends at Twitchy highlighted. When it comes to Fauci’s sense of entitlement, he may need to be reminded that the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have found that the CDC overstepped its authority before when it comes to the pandemic. Last August, in a 6-3 decision, the Court ruled against the CDC’s eviction moratorium, which even President Joe Biden had acknowledged was likely unconstitutional, though he issued it regardless.

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And Keith Olberman. But nobody takes him serious anymore.

Tulsi Gabbard Releases Cease And Desist Letter To Mitt Romney (JTN)

Former Democrat Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has sent Sen. Mitt Romney a cease-and-desist letter over the Utah Republican’s recent accusation that she has told “treasonous lies.” The letter, which Gabbard posted to her social media, accuses Romney of making “false and defamatory statements” and encourages him to enter into a settlement with her before the process reaches the litigation stages. “Tulsi Gabbard is parroting false Russian propaganda,” Romney tweeted March 13 about the ex-Hawaii congresswoman, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was roughly two weeks old. “Her treasonous lies may well cost lives.” The senator and former Massachusetts governor and 2016 GOP presidential nominee did not offer specifics.

But he purportedly was referring to comments Gabbard – a major in the Army National Guard who served two tours of duty in the Middle East – made about biolabs in Ukraine. Last month, Gabbard, also a 2020 presidential candidate, told Fox News show host Tucker Carlson that she was “deeply concerned” about the biolab issue and posted a video to her social media accounts in which she said that there are more than 25 “U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine, which if breached would release and spread deadly pathogens.” “While your tweet lacked any context, we surmise that your tweet was made in reference to a video Representative Gabbard published on Twitter that same day,” Gabbard’s attorney said about the Romney tweet.

“In her video, Representative Gabbard called for a ceasefire in the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine so that any biological laboratories in Ukraine could be secured,” states the cease-and-desist document, which also argues everything Gabbard said in her video was “factually accurate.” Treason can be punishable by death, according to U.S. House code. Gabbard’s lawyer also writes: “Representative Gabbard’s loyalty to the United States is beyond reproach. You knew your claims of treason were false, or, at a minimum, you made your claims of treason with reckless disregard for the truth.” Biolabs in Ukraine are the focus of a conspiracy theory that alleges the Biden administration was funding biological weapon labs in the country now under attack from Russia.

Tucker Tulsi

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“Whether Jan. 6 was a riot or an actual insurrection remains a matter of deep and largely partisan disagreement — but the disqualification clause was written in reference to a real Civil War in which more than 750,000 people died in combat.”

Destroying Democracy To Save It? (Turley)

As the country braces for the midterm elections, the left seems to be rallying behind three D’s: Democracy, Disinformation and Disqualification. The latter effort just received a huge boost from a judge in Georgia who has allowed a challenge to knock Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) off the ballot as an insurrectionist. Nothing says “democracy” like preventing others from voting. Many of us have criticized Greene for her inflammatory rhetoric and her extreme views. No less dangerous, though, is the means being used by some of Greene’s critics to get rid of her. It is all part of a new movement to defend democracy by denying it. To paraphrase the Vietnam strategy, democracy can only be saved by destroying it through the denial of speech or the right to vote.

[..] Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was written after the 39th Congress convened in December 1865, following the end of the Civil War. At the time, many members were not pleased to see former Confederates like Alexander Stephens (D-Ga.), the Confederacy’s vice president, appear in Congress to retake the very oath they previously violated by waging war against the country. Whether Jan. 6 was a riot or an actual insurrection remains a matter of deep and largely partisan disagreement — but the disqualification clause was written in reference to a real Civil War in which more than 750,000 people died in combat. The Confederacy was a separate government with its own army, currency and foreign policy.

There is another problem: To the extent that a person can be disqualified under the 14th Amendment, it requires action from Congress, not a local board of election. Despite an otherwise long, careful opinion, Totenberg blithely set aside such details, including an 1869 decision by then-Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase. The case in question challenged the right of Hugh W. Sheffey to hold a Virginia state court office, given his support for the Confederacy. Chase ruled that Section 3 did not disqualify Sheffey because “legislation by Congress is necessary to give effect to” Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, and disqualification from office “can only be provided for by Congress.” Congress later passed the Amnesty Act of 1872, which overrode the Disqualification Clause except for “Senators and Representatives of the thirty-sixth and thirty-seventh Congresses.”

The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that states cannot impose their own qualifications for Congress because it would “erode the structure envisioned by the Framers.” Under such an approach, partisan state election boards could simply conclude that a member is an insurrectionist and prevent voters from being able to make such choices for themselves.

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Cancel Culture. As per the Guardian.

Barack Obama Outlines Perils Of Unregulated Big Tech (G.)

Technology companies must be reined in to address the “weakening of democratic institutions around the world”, Barack Obama said Thursday, in a sweeping keynote speech on the perils of disinformation. Speaking at Stanford University in Silicon Valley, the former president made his most extensive remarks yet about the technology landscape, which he said is “turbo-charging some of humanity’s worst impulses”. “One of the biggest reasons for the weakening of democracy is the profound change that’s taken place in how we communicate and consume information,” he said. The address came as Obama has increasingly focused his post-presidential messaging on misinformation and what should be done about the largely unchecked power wielded by big tech. On Thursday, he solidified those calls, endorsing specific legislation.

“Do we allow our democracy to wither, or do we make it better?” Obama asked. “That is the choice.” Obama’s speech called attention to the grave impacts of disinformation and misinformation – including manipulation of the 2016 and 2020 elections and the rise of anti-vaccination sentiments. He was candid about regrets he had surrounding Donald Trump’s election, saying his administration had long known that Russia had incentive to manipulate US democracy but he underestimated the effectiveness of the efforts. “What still nags at me is my failure to appreciate at the time just how susceptible we had become to lies and conspiracy theories,” Obama said.

A Senate panel report in 2020 found conclusively that Russia had interfered in the 2016 elections to sway votes in favor of Trump, echoing findings from a prior report published by the Department of Justice. In addition to impacting the results of those elections, disinformation and misinformation has also caused many Americans to reject the results of democratically sound elections, Obama said – noting that the majority of Republicans doubt the legitimacy of Biden’s 2020 win. Much of these issues can be attributed to a decline in media literacy, the erosion of local news sources, and an “information overload” as we come into contact with limitless content each day. “The sheer proliferation of conflict and the splintering of information and audiences has made democracy more complicated,” Obama said.

Obama

“Despite the fact that we have now essentially clinically tested the vaccine on billions of people worldwide. Around 1 in 5 Americans is still going to put themselves at risk… rather than get vaccinated.”

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And this is where Obama’s views lead:

Big Tech’s ‘Cancel Culture’ Love Affair (Pepe Escobar)

This month, several of us – Scott Ritter, myself, ASB Military News, among others – were canceled from Twitter. The – unstated – reason: we were debunking the officially approved narrative of the Russia/NATO/Ukraine war. As with all things Big Tech, that was predictable. I lasted only seven months on Twitter. And that was long enough. Contacts in California had told me I was on their radar because the account grew too fast, and had enormous reach, especially after the start of Operation Z. I celebrated the cancelation by experiencing an aesthetic illumination in front of the Aegean Sea, at the home of Herodotus, the Father of History. Additionally, it was heart-warming to be recognized by the great George Galloway in his moving tribute to targets of the new McCarthyism.

In parallel, comic relief of the “Mars Attacks” variety was provided by expectations of free speech on Twitter being saved by the benign intervention of Elon Musk. Techno-feudalism is one of the overarching themes of my latest book, Raging Twenties – published in early 2021 and reviewed here in a very thoughtful and meticulous manner. Cancel culture is inbuilt in the techno-feudalist project: conform to the hegemonic narrative, or else. In my own case regarding Twitter and Facebook – two of the guardians of the internet, alongside Google — I knew a day of reckoning was inevitable, because like other countless users I had previously been dispatched to those notorious “jails”.

On one Facebook occasion, I sent a sharp message highlighting that I was a columnist/analyst for an established Hong Kong-based media company. Some human, not an algorithm, must have read it, because the account was restored in less than 24 hours. But then the account was simply disabled – with no warning. I requested the proverbial “review”. The response was a demand for proof of ID. Less than 24 hours later, came the verdict: “Your account has been disabled” because it had not followed those notoriously hazy “community standards.” The decision was “reviewed” and “it can’t be reversed”. [..] My hit-by-a-Hellfire missile Facebook page clearly identified for the general public who I was, at the time: “Geopolitical analyst at Asia Times”.

The fact of the matter is Facebook algorithms canceled a top columnist from Asia Times – with a proven record and a global profile. The algos would never have had the – digital – guts to do the same with a top columnist from The New York Times or the Financial Times. Asia Times lawyers in Hong Kong sent a letter to Facebook management. Predictably, there was no response. Of course becoming a target of cancel culture – twice – does not even remotely compare to the fate of Julian Assange, imprisoned for over three years in Belmarsh under the most appalling circumstances, and about to be dispatched for “judgment” in the American gulag for the crime of committing journalism. Yet the same “logic” applies: journalism that does not conform to the hegemonic narrative must be taken down.

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They’re coming for him from all sides. By definition, that means they’re coming for his dad, too, even if they don’t recognize it.

Feds Subpoenaed Hunter Biden Paternity Documents, Including Tax Returns (CBS)

Prosecutors investigating Hunter Biden subpoenaed documents from a paternity lawsuit that included tax records for the president’s son, according to documents and an attorney involved in the matter. “They wanted every record relating to Hunter Biden we had,” Clint Lancaster told CBS News. Lancaster represented Lunden Roberts, a woman who filed suit against Hunter Biden in 2019 alleging he was the father of her child. A December 2020 subpoena from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Delaware, obtained by CBS News, requested all documents “regarding [Hunter] Biden’s income, assets, debts, obligations, and financial transactions… and all personal and business expenditures.” The request specified January 2017 to the present. The subpoena also requested a wide range of tax documents pertaining to Hunter Biden.

“All federal, state, local and foreign tax documentation related to Biden,” the subpoena reads, “including but not limited to, IRS Forms 1099, income and payroll tax returns, state tax returns, and amended tax returns.” Hunter Biden’s personal and business conduct have been the subject of scrutiny — and the target of Republican political attacks — since the earliest days of the 2020 presidential campaign. The move by federal authorities to obtain these records offers a new, if narrow, glimpse into the long-running investigation into the president’s son — a probe that began as a tax inquiry several years ago. Lancaster told CBS News that in the fall of 2021, the Assistant U.S. Attorney in Delaware, Lesley Wolf, traveled to his Arkansas law office, joined by at least two federal agents, one from the FBI and the other an IRS enforcement agent.

Lancaster said he and his client spent about half a day answering questions about Hunter Biden and his business practices. Lancaster said that in the meeting, investigators asked for information about several companies affiliated with Hunter Biden, including Rosemont Seneca Partners, a firm where he worked for several years. The line of questioning tracks with a separate 2019 federal subpoena from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Delaware. The subpoena, obtained by CBS News, sought “all records, documents and accounts pertaining to all financial/banking transactions” between 15 business entities and Hunter Biden, the president’s brother James, as well as two business partners dating back to 2014, when Joe Biden was vice president.

Lancaster said that during the paternity suit Hunter Biden had supplied an “affidavit of financial means,” which detailed his finances through income statements and a breakdown of monthly expenses. Lancaster said the tax records he and his client supplied overlapped with the time period of Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings. Roberts testified before a Delaware grand jury in February of this year, according to her lawyer. An Arkansas court filing from November 2019 states, “DNA testing has established with scientific certainty” that Hunter Biden is the father of Roberts’ child. The child is believed to be around 3 years old today. The paternity case was settled in 2020. Some of the records in the case are under seal.

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Defund.

Black Lives Don’t Matter To BLM (Blaze)

It had even more corporate and cultural support than the vaccines and Ukraine. It was the greatest juggernaut in politics that even ensnared many Republican politicians. Yet never have we seen a movement that accomplished the opposite of what it was purported to do in such a short time frame. It turns out that as a result of the BLM-induced crime wave, reversing a generation-long trend of reduced crime, there were thousands of excess black homicide victims, a body count that is still climbing. Hannah Meyers, director of the policing and public safety initiative at the Manhattan Institute, told Fox News’ Emma Colton that there were nearly 2,500 excess black murders in 2020 over the previous year and the 10-year average. Here is a breakdown of the data from Fox:

In 2019, at least 7,484 Black Americans were murdered. That number shot up to at least 9,941 murders in 2020, meaning there was an increase of 2,457 Black Americans murdered over the previous year. The number of Black murders was also far higher than White murders in 2020. The FBI data shows there 7,043 White people murdered that year, meaning 2,898 more Black people were killed compared to Whites. Between 2010 and 2019, there was an average of 5,954 White murders, which is roughly 16% lower than the 10-year average of Black murders. During that same time period, an average of 6,927 Black Americans were murdered each year, meaning Black murders shot up by 43% in 2020 compared to the previous 10-year average.

What is evident from this analysis is that there were two periods of abnormal increases in black homicides: one in 2015 after Ferguson and Freddie Gray and then a much sharper increase in 2019 with George Floyd. In other words, every time they promote the anti-police and anti-incarceration message, it backfires, and black people are harmed the most. Preliminary numbers from 2021 show an even greater increase in homicides. And given that major cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia set new records, it’s very likely that black victims accounted for an even greater share of the excess.

Republicans stupidly squandered the Trump years trying to outflank the Democrats on de-incarceration in an effort to pander to the black vote. They wrongly focused on the fact that blacks are disproportionately incarcerated, even though that is an unfortunate reflection of the crime rate. What they should have focused on is that black victims of crime are disproportionately affected by jailbreak policies. Despite composing just 13% of the population, they account for the majority of the homicide victims. Releasing career criminals ensures that the body count goes up.

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“Tesla today has a market value of $1.1tn, following a 1,300% rise in its share price since the target was set in January 2018..”

Elon Musk To Collect $23bn Bonus As Tesla Beats Targets (G.)

Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla and the world’s richest person, is set to collect a $23bn bonus after the Californian electric car company’s first-quarter results exceeded performance targets. Musk, who is already sitting on an estimated $249bn fortune, is in line for the bonus share payout after Tesla hit share price and financial growth milestones in its earnings on Wednesday night. Tesla made an adjusted profit of $5bn on revenue of $18.8bn in the first quarter of the year – an 81% increase on the same period a year earlier. The results, combined with the growth in Tesla’s share price performance, mean Musk has hit targets that should lead to a bonus share payout worth about $23bn.

The company outlined an extraordinary deal for Musk in 2018 that would pay him an unprecedented $55.8bn bonus if he built the business into a $650bn company within a decade. He achieved that milestone early, in January 2020. Tesla today has a market value of $1.1tn, following a 1,300% rise in its share price since the target was set in January 2018. It means Musk, who collects no salary, should now have unlocked the final three parts of the 12-tranche bonus scheme. Each tranche gives Musk the right to buy 8.4m Tesla shares at $70, a huge discount on the current $977 share price. His profit on each tranche could be $7.7bn or a combined value of $23bn. The payments need to be signed off by the board, and he must hold on to the shares for five years before selling.

Musk, who is attempting to buy Twitter for more than $43bn, said he was not in talks with Tesla’s board over a new bonus scheme after completing the 2018 deal early. “There are no discussions underway about incremental compensation for me,” he said on the company’s earning call. “The future is very exciting,” Musk said in the call with investors. “I’ve never been more optimistic or excited about the future of Tesla than I am right now.”

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Clinton campaign ad, October 15, 2016.

 

 

Haney suicide

 

 

Greeks eat lamb for Easter

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

Apr 082022
 
 April 8, 2022  Posted by at 8:55 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  60 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Femme nue couchée (Marie-Thérèse Walter) 1932

 

Ukraine Foreign Minister Demands More “Weapons, Weapons, Weapons” From NATO (ZH)
The True Importance Of The Bucha False Flag (Saker)
Israel, Russia Clash Over Ukraine (Lauria)
Azov Fighter Video Overshadows Zelenskyy’s Address To Greek Lawmakers (R.)
Ukraine War Frenzy Proves: It’s Still John McCain’s GOP (Tracey)
US Air Force Delays Hypersonic Missile Program Over “Flight Test Anomalies” (ZH)
The Dollar Devours the Euro (Michael Hudson)
Despite Sanctions The Ruble Is Stronger Than Before The War (OffG)
Sit Back And Watch Europe Commit Suicide (Escobar)
Two-Star General Warns Hunter Biden Laptop Witness About His Safety (CTH)
BLMs LA Mansion Bought For 3.1M Sold 6 Days Later For 5.8M (DM)
Peter Thiel Blasts Buffett, Dimon, & Fink As “Finance Gerontocracy” (ZH)
The Spike Protein Is The “Amyloid” Being Deposited (Chesnut)
Nearly $300 Million To Wokify The Canadian Military (CS)
Priti Patel Part Of CIA-linked Lobby Group With Husband Of Assange Judge (DUK)

 

 

 

 

Disinformation

 

 

Wow, this sounds stupid

 

 

“The more weapons we get and the sooner they arrive in Ukraine, the more human lives will be saved.”

Uh, no.

Ukraine Foreign Minister Demands More “Weapons, Weapons, Weapons” From NATO (ZH)

“Weapons, weapons, weapons” is what Ukraine’s government is still demanding of NATO countries, even after the Biden-approved $800 million package last month. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba issued the plea after meeting with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels, stating on Twitter that the “three most important things” for Ukrainians are “weapons, weapons, weapons.” “Met with Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at NATO HQ in Brussels. I came here today to discuss three most important things: weapons, weapons, and weapons,” Kuleba wrote. “Ukraine’s urgent needs, the sustainability of supplies, and long-term solutions which will help Ukraine to prevail,” he added.

Already the Pentagon has agreed to send more Javelin anti-armor systems, also as Stinger anti-aircraft missiles are being supplied, which Moscow sees as a huge provocation, with the war entering its sixth week. During a press conference in Brussels, Kuleba said his agenda in meeting with NATO leaders remains “simple”… “We know how to fight. We know how to win. But without sustainable and sufficient supplies requested by Ukraine, these wins will be accompanied by enormous sacrifices,” Kuleba said. “The more weapons we get and the sooner they arrive in Ukraine, the more human lives will be saved.”

Previously, CNN had documented that Kiev is increasingly pushing Washington for more advanced battlefield weapons, especially to take out Russia’s superior tanks and aircraft: The Defense Department plans to accelerate production of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and Javelin anti-tank missiles so it can refill its own depleted stocks as it continues to send the vital systems to Ukrainian forces fighting the Russian invasion, according to defense officials. Ukraine wants 500 Javelin anti-tank missiles and 500 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles delivered from the US daily, according to a recent military assistance wish list. CNN viewed the document that details the items Ukraine believes it needs from the US.

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“Russia needs to flush the EU down her “mental toilet” and only deal with sovereign countries which have retained enough agency to defend their own interests.”

The True Importance Of The Bucha False Flag (Saker)

[..] the leaders of the Empire of Hate and Lies have fully opened the “Hate and Lies” valve and it appears that they are seriously “losing it”. Remember how in the Skripal and MH-17 cases EU countries joined in the sanctions out of “solidarity”? I personally would call that cowardice and submissiveness, but “solidarity” works too. Well, the Eurolemmings have solidarized themselves into their own grave and now there is no undoing what they did to themselves. From the Russian point of view, it is rather straightforward: Russia tried to encourage EU countries to use their own judgment and act in their own interests.

It is now quite clear that as long as they get to brown-nose Uncle Shmuel the Eurolemmings are quite content with their fate. Russia needs to flush the EU down her “mental toilet” and only deal with sovereign countries which have retained enough agency to defend their own interests. In the EU that means Hungary and, to a much lesser degree, Serbia (not the people, of course, but the government which remains subservient to the Eurolemmings). The Bucha massacre itself will go down Zone A’s collective memory hole, that’s where all the previous false flags of the Empire of Hate and Lies have gone. Once a demonization operation has served its use, it can be forgotten.

So what are the purposes of the Bucha false flag: • Change the narrative from the (non-existing) Ukronazi “victories” to “stop the Russian atrocities” • Obfuscate the DELUGE of evidence (witnesses and forensic) showing that it was the Ukronazis who engaged in mass atrocities in Mariupol. Remember – Ukrainian victims are sacred, Russian victims are simply irrelevant. In fact, a Russian CAN NOT be a victim unless he is anti-Putin, then it’s okay. • To condition (I mean that in the psychological sense) the TV watching serfs of the Empire of Lies and Hate to hate anything Russian with a searing, explosive, hated. • Declare that Putin is now the “New Hitler” (though Putin has been Hitler pretty much since 2000, it’s just that now he is even MORE Hitler than before) and Russia some kind of broken, poor, and otherwise horrible Mordor.

• Use this pretext to try to eject Russia and Russians from as many locations and organizations on the planet as possible. That means all of Zone A for sure, but also plenty of locations and organizations in Zone B where the comprador ruling set the tone and don’t give a damn about their own people and country. • Try to scare Putin with the same fate as Gaddafi, Milosevic, and Hussein who were all demonized and later murdered. • If you think about it, I think that it is fair to say that these are all clear signs that the Empire of Hate and Lies has now declared total war on Russia, just short of overtly actually attacking Russian forces or Russia, of course. In fact, Russia and the Empire of Hate and Lies have been at war since at least 2013..

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“Serious politicians, especially at such a high level as Minister Lapid, have no right to talk idly..”

Israel, Russia Clash Over Ukraine (Lauria)

From the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Israel has refused to join the West’s economic war against Moscow, maintaining a neutral stance that as positioned it as a possible broker to end the conflict. But all that appears to have changed with remarks by Israel’s foreign minister in a Twitter post on Sunday, the day the massacre at Bucha was revealed and before any investigation could be conducted. Foreign Minister Yair Lapid wrote: “It is impossible to remain indifferent in the face of the horrific images from the city of Bucha near Kyiv, from after the Russian army left. Intentionally harming a civilian population is a war crime and I strongly condemn it.” Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine also implied that Russia had committed a war crime. “Deeply shocked by the photos from #Bucha. Killing of civilians is a war crime and cannot be justified,” Ambassador Michael Brodsky tweeted on Sunday.

Earlier, on March 13, during a visit to Romania, Lapid had tweeted: “… like Romania, Israel condemns the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It’s without justification, and we call on Russia to stop its firing and attacks, and to resolve this conflict around the negotiating table.” The Israeli foreign ministry tried to distance itself from the ambassador’s remarks. Haaretz reported: “Asked if the Foreign Ministry’s official position was that Russia had committed war crimes in Ukraine, a spokesman replied: ‘No. It’s a tweet by the ambassador regarding the photos. He didn’t blame Russia.’” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who flew to Moscow on March 5 to meet with President Vladimir Putin (and was condemned for it), has made no comment about the Bucha incident.

Israel is trying to maintain a balancing act between Moscow and Washington, which cannot be pleased with Israel not joining the economic war. Russia and Israel have long maintained good relations, with Moscow even allowing Israel to conduct bombing raids on Syria. But years of goodwill have now been put on the line with Foreign Minister Lapid’s remarks. And now Russia has struck back. Sergey Ivanov, head of the department of diplomacy and consular service at the Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy, wrote a scathing critique of Israel on Wednesday, posted on the ministry’s Telegram page. It holds nothing back, openly condemning Israel for a variety of sins, including its treatment of the Palestinians.

Ivanov wrote that many Western journalists and political analysts have opportunistically become overnight “Ukraine experts” just as Western politicians, such as Lapid, are making rash statements to boost their popularity. “Serious politicians, especially at such a high level as Minister Lapid, have no right to talk idly,” Ivanov warned. “They should be aware of the possible consequences of what they say, including with regard to relations with Russia.”

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Bring your nazi to work. Just how stupid are these people?

“Ukraine’s Zelensky faces criticism in Greece after bringing a Neo Nazi member of the Azov battalion alongside him during his address to the Greek Parliament.”

Azov Fighter Video Overshadows Zelenskyy’s Address To Greek Lawmakers (R.)

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy’s address to the Greek parliament on Thursday caused an outrage from opposition parties after a man who identified himself as an ethnic Greek member of Ukraine’s ultranationalist Azov battalion appeared on a video. Zelenskyy spoke about the destruction of the Russian-besieged Ukrainian port of Mariupol – home to thousands of ethnic Greeks – and appealed to Athens for help. During his speech he showed a video with a message by a man who identified himself as a member of the Azov battalion, a far-right militia now part of Ukraine’s National Guard. “I address you, as a Greek by origin. I am Mikhail, my grandfather fought against the Nazis… I participate in the defence of Ukraine through the Azov Battalion,” he said.

Zelenskyy, who was invited to address the Greek parliament by conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, received a standing ovation from lawmakers present in the room. But the video caused a backlash on social media and an angry reaction from leftist parties. Shortly after the speech, the head of the leftist SYRIZA party Alexis Tsipras said the incident was a provocation. “Solidarity with the Ukrainian people is a given. But the Nazis can not have a say in parliament,” he tweeted. A Greek government spokesman responded that the message of a member of the Azov Battalion was “mistaken and inappropriate.”

Western countries say Moscow’s invasion, the biggest assault on a European country since World War Two, was entirely unprovoked. Russia says it is carrying out a “special operation” to disarm and “denazify” its neighbors. Ukraine’s embassy in Athens said the Azov regiment, set up as a far right group in 2014, has been reformed and integrated into the National Guard of Ukraine. “For many years Russia tried to ‘plant’ into Greek minds the myth that “Azov” Regiment is a paramilitary independent unit operating in Mariupol,” it said.

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Given the average age, no wonder that things move very slowly.

Ukraine War Frenzy Proves: It’s Still John McCain’s GOP (Tracey)

“The senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladimir Putin,” fumed John McCain back in March 2017. His target: Rand Paul, who had committed the unforgivable offense of momentarily delaying the latest round of NATO expansion. Montenegro, a tiny country in southeastern Europe that most Americans have never heard of, was about to join the sprawling military alliance — and McCain was determined to see the final ratification ritual proceed with as little debate as possible. So he hurled the time-honored “working for Putin” accusation, and sure enough, Paul quickly withdrew his minor procedural objection. The glorious ascension of Montenegro to NATO membership status was thereby assured.

Since that episode, a lot has transpired regarding the public perception of McCain. He delighted liberals by feuding regularly with Donald Trump — even going so far as to denounce Trump for engaging in “disgraceful” and “pathetic” flattery of Putin. “No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant,” McCain raged. He undermined Congressional Republicans’ legislative agenda during the brief window in Trump’s presidency when the party had unified control of government — famously delivering a dramatic thumbs-down gesture to derail GOP hopes of repealing Obamacare, as a chagrined Mitch McConnell watched powerlessly on.

McCain had returned to his most natural state. After annoying Democrats by running against Barack Obama in the 2008 election, and being surly about his defeat for some time afterwards, he had once again resumed playing the “maverick” role he so relished — reviled by “his own side,” and loved by the “other side.” His death in 2018 brought forth the most effusive display of state-sanctioned grief that any US political figure had received since Ronald Reagan died in 2004, with all the universal media adulation that entails. Trump’s exclusion from the funeral proceedings, at McCain’s posthumous direction, was just the icing on the cake. But nowadays, if you bring up McCain in certain GOP circles, it will often be claimed that his influence has mercifully dissipated. The Republican Party experienced a bonafide ideological upheaval under Trump, they’ll say, and the McCain worldview — defined mainly by his unwavering commitment to a hyper-interventionist US foreign policy — has since fallen starkly out of favor.

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“Western countries have yet to field a hypersonic weapon while the old world order crumbles as a multipolar world emerges..”

US Air Force Delays Hypersonic Missile Program Over “Flight Test Anomalies” (ZH)

While Russia launched hypersonic air-to-ground missiles during the invasion of Ukraine and China flew a hypersonic weapon around the world late last year, the US continues to fall behind the hypersonic curve as a new round of delays were announced by the US Air Force (USAF), according to Bloomberg. The AGM-183 Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) was expected to be declared “early operational capability” by Sept. 30. However, according to a USAF statement, those timelines have been pushed back to the next fiscal year. ARRW, expected to be the Pentagon’s first hypersonic weapon, suffered three consecutive failed tests last year. ARRW’s latest hurdle was two upcoming ground-based booster motor tests by June 30.

But, it appears “due to recent flight test anomalies,” the missile test would be shifted out to as late as December with additional tests planned next fiscal year, according to the USAF statement. “The ARRW production decision remains event-driven and will occur after operational utility is demonstrated through successful system end-to-end flight tests,” the service continued. Lockheed-Martin’s ability to manufacture and deliver the new weapon appears to be a 2023 story. Western countries have yet to field a hypersonic weapon while the old world order crumbles as a multipolar world emerges, pushing Russia and China closer together. Perhaps that’s why President Biden is set to unveil a new trilateral security hypersonic pact with the UK and Australia to advance the development of hypersonic weapons.

On Wednesday, Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama sounded the alarm at the House Armed Services Committee hearing that China has “more troops, ships, and hypersonic missiles than the United States.” Republican Rep. Michael Turner of Ohio said the US needs to increase its hypersonic development.

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“..why not simply throw in the financial towel and adopt the U.S. dollar, like Ecuador, Somalia and the Turks and Caicos Islands?”

The Dollar Devours the Euro (Michael Hudson)

European trade and investment prior to the War to Impose Sanctions had promised a rising mutual prosperity between Germany, France and other NATO countries vis-à-vis Russia and China. Russia was providing abundant energy at a competitive price, and this energy was to make a quantum leap with Nord Stream 2. Europe was to earn the foreign exchange to pay for this rising import trade by a combination of exporting more industrial manufactures to Russia and capital investment in developing the Russian economy, e.g. by German auto companies and financial investment. This bilateral trade and investment is now stopped – and will remain stopped for many, many years, given NATO’s confiscation of Russia’s foreign reserves kept in euros and British sterling, and the European Russophobia being fanned by U.S. propaganda media.

In its place, NATO countries will purchase U.S. LNG – but they will need to spend billions of dollars building sufficient port capacity, which may take until perhaps 2024. (Good luck until then.) The energy shortage will sharply raise the world price of gas and oil. NATO countries also will step up their purchases of arms from the U.S. military-industrial complex. The near-panic buying will also raise the price for arms. And food prices also will rise as a result of the desperate grain shortfalls resulting from a cessation of imports from Russia and Ukraine on the one hand, and the shortage of ammonia fertilizer made from gas. All three of these trade dynamics will strengthen the dollar vis-à-vis the euro. The question is, how will Europe balance its international payments with the United States?

What does it have to export that the U.S. economy will accept as its own protectionist interests gain influence, now that global free trade is dying quickly? The answer is, not much. So what will Europe do? I could make a modest proposal. Now that Europe has pretty much ceased to be a politically independent state, it is beginning to look more like Panama and Liberia – “flag of convenience” offshore banking centers that are not real “states” because they don’t issue their own currency, but use the U.S. dollar. Since the eurozone has been created with monetary handcuffs limiting its ability to create money to spend into the economy beyond the limit of 3 percent of GDP, why not simply throw in the financial towel and adopt the U.S. dollar, like Ecuador, Somalia and the Turks and Caicos Islands? That would give foreign investors security against currency depreciation in their rising trade with Europe and its export financing.

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“The price of oil is going up and the ruble is worth just as much as it was before the war.”

Despite Sanctions The Ruble Is Stronger Than Before The War (OffG)

It’s official, as of right now the Russian ruble is worth more US dollars than before the invasion of Ukraine. On the 22nd of February this year, one US dollar would exchange for just over 79 rubles. As of the time of writing, it is now 78. The same is true of the British pound (around 108 rubles before, 102 now), and the Euro (88 rubles before, 84 now). Across the board, the ruble is stronger than before the war. So, how has this happened? Aren’t NATO, the EU and the rest of the “international community” meant to be crippling the Russian economy with biting sanctions? The media are claiming that the strength of the ruble “may be illusory” or that Russia has exploited a “loophole” in the sanctions and used “financial alchemy” to “rescue the ruble”.

Reminder: In 2014, when the west sanctioned Russia over the Crimean referendum, the ruble lost almost half its value. It recovered slightly in 2016, and has since stabilized, but has never come close to its pre-Crimean worth. So, presumably the earlier sanctions didn’t have a “loophole” in them, and/or the Russians either weren’t aware of this “financial alchemy” back then, or simply decided not to use it. Of course there is one key difference between 2014 and 2022 – the oil market. As we have written before, in 2014/15 the US and Saudi Arabia flooded the market with cheap oil and crashed the price. Russia (and Iran, and Venezuela) all suffered huge economic damage from this move.

But far from repeating this tactic, Saudi Arabia has increased their prices. The Western press claims that the US asked Saudi Arabia to increase oil production and they refused. They claim Saudi Arabia “sided with Russia”, and that they should be “punished”. Meanwhile, Turkey has just suspended the trial of the Saudi citizens alleged to have murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a move that should please the Saudi government no end. The West seems as bad at “punishing” their misbehaved allies as they are at tanking the value of the Russia’s currency. To sum up – The price of oil is going up and the ruble is worth just as much as it was before the war.

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“..next winter energy bills packing a mean punch; products disappearing from supermarkets; holiday bookings almost frozen; Le Petit Roi Macron in France – maybe up to a nasty electoral surprise – announcing “food stamps like in WWII are possible”.

Sit Back And Watch Europe Commit Suicide (Escobar)

The stunning spectacle of the EU committing slow motion hara-kiri is something for the ages. Like a cheap Kurosawa remake the movie is actually about the Empire of Lies-detonated demolition of the EU, complete with subsequent rerouting of some key Russian commodities exports to the US at the expense of the Europeans. It helps to have a 5th columnist actress strategically placed, in this case astonishingly incompetent European Commission head Ursula von der Lugen, with a brand new vociferous announcement of an extra sanctions package: Russian ships banned from EU ports; road transportation companies from Russia and Belarus prohibited from entering the EU; no more coal imports (over 4.4 billion euros a year).

That translates in practice into the Empire of Lies shaking down its wealthiest – Western – clients/puppets. Russia of course is too powerful militarily. The Empire badly needs some of its key exports – especially minerals. Mission Accomplished in this case amounts to nudging the EU into imposing more and more sanctions and willfully collapsing their national economies, allowing the US to scoop everything up. Cue to the coming catastrophic economic consequences felt by Europeans in their daily life (but not by the wealthiest 5%): inflation devouring salaries and savings; next winter energy bills packing a mean punch; products disappearing from supermarkets; holiday bookings almost frozen; Le Petit Roi Macron in France – maybe up to a nasty electoral surprise – announcing “food stamps like in WWII are possible”.

We have Germany facing the returning ghost of Weimar hyperinflation; BlackRock President Rob Kapito saying, in Texas, “for the first time, this generation is going to go into a store and not be able to get what they want”; farmers in Africa not able to afford fertilizer at all this year, reducing agricultural production by an amount capable of feeding 100 million people. Zoltan Poszar, former NY Fed and US Treasury guru, current Credit Suisse grand vizir, has been on a streak, stressing how commodity reserves – and here Russia is unrivaled – will be an essential feature of what he calls Bretton Woods III (yet, in fact, what’s being designed by Russia, China, Iran and the Eurasia Economic Union is a post-Bretton Woods). Poszar remarks that wars, historically, are won by those who have more food and energy supplies, in the past to power horses and soldiers, today to feed soldiers and fuel tanks and fighter jets. China, incidentally, has amassed large stocks of virtually everything.

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“..so that people can see the scale of depravity and Biden family corruption within the evidence..”

Two-Star General Warns Hunter Biden Laptop Witness About His Safety (CTH)

Emerald Robinson has a great interview with Jack Maxey from Switzerland. Maxey was the first person to receive a full hard drive copy of the Hunter Biden laptop from Rudy Guliani. After media, Senate and U.S. government officials refused to take action, Maxey went to Switzerland in order to complete a full forensic audit of the laptop content in a neutral jurisdiction. Previously, Maxey outlined his intent to share the full contents of the original files, and all of the retrieved deleted files, with the public so that people can see the scale of depravity and Biden family corruption within the evidence. In this interview with Emerald Robinson, Maxey states the full and searchable email archive will likely be completed early next week.


Additionally, in this interview Maxey goes into greater detail about the larger issues surrounding impediments to the release of information, including how the laptop contained access certificates to enter the Defense Department database. Maxey tried to get the DoD to address the issue without success, until he found a direct conduit to a two-star general who took the certificate codes, deactivated the access and thanked him for his diligence. Unfortunately, that same general then told Maxey he needed to focus on securing the safety of himself and his family, as the full weight of the U.S. interests, including the intelligence apparatus and defense apparatus, will likely target him. In my opinion, it is Maxey’s forensic review of the data and statements about making it all public, that triggered/pressured the collective western media to begin admitting the laptop issues were real and start covering the details.

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What an insane story.

BLMs LA Mansion Bought For 3.1M Sold 6 Days Later For 5.8M (DM)

A Los Angeles mansion frequented by Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart was bought by a real estate developer working for BLM founder Patrisse Cullors and her partner for $3.1 million, and then purchased by BLM’s foundation just six days later for $5.8 million in cash, it has emerged. The rapid price inflation ‘raises serious questions,’ ethics experts said. The purchase of the 6,500 square-foot, six-bedroom property in Studio City was first revealed on Monday by New York Magazine, amid growing questions about BLM’s finances. The organization in February 2021 said it had taken in more than $90 million in 2020 and still had $60 million on hand, but it remains unclear how that money is being managed or even where it is.

Cullors, the co-founder of the organization, resigned in May 2021 as director of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF), amid scrutiny of her property empire. She has written best-selling books, and has a contract with Warner Brothers to produce content. On Wednesday, Cullors, 38, angrily hit back at the questions over cash purchase of the Studio City mansion, describing the criticism as ‘racist and sexist’. She insisted that the expansive property was bought as a ‘safe space’ for black creatives, activists and thought leaders, and its purchase was never disclosed because it needed renovating. Cullors called the New York Magazine investigation ‘a despicable abuse of a platform that’s intended to provide truthful information to the public’, and said that the author had ‘a proven and very public bias against me and other Black leaders’. She did not address the discrepancy in the home’s cost.

The property was purchased on October 21, 2020 by Dyane Pascall, a real estate developer who worked for the firm run by Cullors and her partner, Janaya and Patrisse Consulting. Pascall is president of Conscious Capital Investment Enterprises, according to LinkedIn, which describes it as ‘Real Estate Investment company in South LA that provides affordable housing in low income communities in the face of rapid gentrification.’

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“today all the gold in the world is worth $12 trillion, while global equities are worth $115 trillion. In 1980, the ratio was one-to-one..”

Peter Thiel Blasts Buffett, Dimon, & Fink As “Finance Gerontocracy” (ZH)

At Bitcoin 2022, Thiel started his speech with a video from him in the past, talking about the future of digital infrastructure. His predictions regarding cell phone usage, which may have sounded odd at the time, were quite accurate. He also mentioned the dollar hegemony and even the potential for digitalization of the dollar, all of which we are seeing today. The speech that followed was, in the words of Bitcoin Mag, “quite incredible” – he started by pulling out a wad of $100 bills, and presenting them to the crowd. He said, “It’s a mysterious thing, what is money?” He followed by offering the money to a random person in the crowd, a gesture to which many people responded. “It’s kind of crazy that this still works,” Thiel said. While he is a billionaire, he had a point.

He went on about how PayPal began, bitcoin’s placement in terms of velocity and more — and then he began talking about enemies of Bitcoin. “If bitcoin is going to replace gold, the question is, why is it so undervalued?” he said. “Bitcoin is always the most honest market in the world, the most efficient market and it was the canary in the coal mine.” Thiel went on to point out that “today all the gold in the world is worth $12 trillion, while global equities are worth $115 trillion. In 1980, the ratio was one-to-one, with all the gold in the world and global equities having the same value of $2.5 trillion.” And so, while in the 1970s, equities were a bad investment, the great moderation that started in 1980 after Volcker killed galloping inflation, made equities the best investment of the past 40 years.

However, now that inflation is as high as it was in the late 1970s, equities are the enemy and bitcoin is the right investment, according to Thiel. Concluding his musing on valuation, Thiel says that the competitor for bitcoin is not ethereum which is a payment system, nor gold, but equities and asks why shouldn’t there be parity between the $115 trillion value of global equities and the ~$830BN value of bitcoin. “I am still hopeful that bitcoin goes up by a factor of 100x” he said. The Paypal founder then also makes a mockery of all those who say that bitcoin is not an inflation hedge with just one chart – the chart showing how anyone who had a sense of the inflationary tsunami that is coming, made a killing in early 2020 when the could have bought bitcoin at a far lower price.

Saying that it’s hard to know where Bitcoin goes from here, the billionaire said that Bitcoin is the most honest and most efficient market: “Bitcoin is the canary in the coalmine, it was telling us that inflation is coming; it is telling us that central banks are bankrupt; it is telling us that we are at the end of the fiat money regime.” [..] His conclusion: the Financial Gerontocracy has declared war on Bitcoin as a revolutionary youth movement for good reason. It is this time the revolutionary youth should understand their enemies and return fire.

Thiel

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It’s everywhere.

The Spike Protein Is The “Amyloid” Being Deposited (Chesnut)

The spike protein is the “amyloid” being deposited and inducing amyloidoses: a major finding missed severe covid may be due to the added deposition of complement with the spike. The paper “The histologic and molecular correlates of COVID-19 vaccine-induced changes in the skin” made a case for the immune response to the Spike Protein causing self-limited hypersensitivity reactions to the vaccine. However, if you study the paper carefully, you notice that the authors have missed a far more important finding.

The biopsy specimens of normal skin post vaccine and of skin affected by the post-vaccine eruption showed rare deep microvessels positive for spike glycoprotein with no complement deposition contrasting with greater vascular deposition of spike protein and complement in skin biopsies from patients experiencing severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The histology exactly recapitulated perniosis including COVID-19–associated perniosis, which provides evidence that the Spike Protein alone induces COVID-19 pathology. More importantly, the fact that IN NORMAL SKIN, the Spike Protein was found to be deposited in DEEP VESSELS, MICROVESSELS, BLOOD VESSELS AND DEEP ENDOTHELIAL CELLS. Why would one assume that this deposition is only occurring in NORMAL SKIN TISSUE? I believe it is most certainly occurring in NORMAL TISSUE. PERIOD.

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Think they’ll give their lives for him?

Nearly $300 Million To Wokify The Canadian Military (CS)

Nestled deep within the Liberal government’s new 2022 budget is a whopping $100.5 million in taxpayer funding for “gender identity” culture change and training in the Canadian Armed Forces. The sum is part of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s new $58 billion spending bonanza and nested in their $8 billion defence spending boost over the next five years. “Budget 2022 proposes to provide $100.5 million over six years, starting in 2021-22, with $1.7 million in remaining amortization, and $16.8 million ongoing,” the budget report reads. These funds will be put towards “undertaking engagement and consultations on culture change” as it relates to gender identity or sexual orientation discrimination. The Liberal budget also mentions “coaching services.”


Under Trudeau’s watch, Canada’s military has been hit with sex scandals and harassment controversies. Instead of addressing the root causes of the problem and removing bad apples, the Liberals have used the issue as an opportunity to make the military more woke. Another gender-related spending in the defence budget included $144.3 million over five years and an additional $31.6 million ongoing to expand health services and physical fitness programs to “be more responsive to women and gender-diverse military personnel.” “This builds on funding from Budget 2021 of $236.2 million over five years, starting in 2021-22, and $33.5 million ongoing for the Department of National Defence and Veterans Affairs Canada to support efforts to eliminate sexual misconduct and gender-based violence in the military and support survivors,” the budget claims.

Read more …

One big vicious circle.

Priti Patel Part Of CIA-linked Lobby Group With Husband Of Assange Judge (DUK)

Priti Patel sat on the Henry Jackson Society’s (HJS) advisory council from around 2013-16, although the exact dates are unclear as neither the HJS nor Patel responded to Declassified’s requests for clarification. She has also received funds from the HJS, and was paid £2,500 by the group to visit Washington in March 2013 to attend a “security” programme in the US Congress. Patel, who became an MP in 2010 and was appointed Home Secretary in 2019, also hosted an HJS event in parliament soon after she returned from Washington. After the UK Supreme Court said this month it was refusing to hear Assange’s appeal of a High Court decision against him, the WikiLeaks founder’s fate now lies in Patel’s hands. He faces life in prison in the US.

The HJS, which was founded in 2005 and does not disclose its funders, has links to the CIA, the intelligence agency behind the prosecution of Assange and which reportedly developed plans to assassinate him. One of the HJS’s international patrons is James Woolsey, CIA director from 1993-95, who was in this role throughout the period Patel was advising the group. Woolsey’s affiliation to the HJS goes back to at least 2006, soon after it was founded. In 2014, the group hosted General David Petraeus, CIA director from 2011-12, at a UK parliament meeting from which all media were barred. Three years later, in 2017, the HJS organised another event at parliament with General Michael Hayden, CIA director from 2006-9, to “discuss the current state of the American Intelligence Community and its relationships with foreign partners.”

Hayden described “the relationship within the Five Eyes community as strong as ever, despite potential concerns over recent intelligence leaks between members.” Five Eyes is an intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the US. During a visit to the UK in July 2020, then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke at a roundtable hosted by the HJS with what the Washington Post referred to as a group of “hawkish” members of the Conservative Party. As director of the CIA in 2017, Pompeo had launched a blistering attack on WikiLeaks calling the media organisation a “hostile intelligence service” that makes “common cause with dictators”. Pompeo did not provide evidence but added a threat: “To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Biden family

 

 

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Mar 052021
 
 March 5, 2021  Posted by at 10:29 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  41 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Landscape with House and Ploughman 1889

 

Covid Vaccine Ads Aim To Influence Without Alienating People (G.)
Does Social Solidarity Only Count When It Gets Us Back To The Pub? (Cook)
eBay Bans Sale Of Some Dr. Seuss Books (DW)
WHO Inspectors ‘To Scrap Interim Report’ On Probe Of COVID Origin (AlJ)
Majority of Brits Say They Will “Miss” Some or Many Aspects of Lockdown (SN)
Capitol Police Requests National Guard Past March 12 (F.)
White House Weighs Minimum Wage Negotiations With Republicans (Pol.)
How To Stop The Manchin Presidency And Raise The Minimum Wage (DP)
Brexit: EU To Launch Legal Proceedings Against UK ‘Very Soon’ (G.)
Michael Brown’s Father, Ferguson Activists Demand $20M From BLM (NYP)
Almost A Full Year of Tomorrows (Snider)
The Appalling Death Of An Extremely Strange Genius (Taibbi)
71kg of Waste Found In Stray Indian Cow’s Stomach (Y!)
Estimated 9 Billion Already Dead From Texas Mask Mandate Reversal (BBee)

 

 

Bit of a strange news day, it seems incoherent, maybe that’s just me. What I do notice is the increasing pressure to promote vaccines, as in this:

Washington Post: The anti-vaccine movement is comparable to domestic terrorism, and must be treated that way

Pfizer not only gets governments to first fund research, then purchase billions of doses, it now also gets them to pay for their advertizing.

They’ll shame and threaten you for asking questions about untested substances, and call you anti-vaxxers.

 

 

 

 

“In a way, governments have to work on a parallel vaccine rollout – immunising the public against science denial.”

Who’s doing the denying here?

Covid Vaccine Ads Aim To Influence Without Alienating People (G.)

In England, the NHS signed up Elton John and Michael Caine for a lighthearted social media campaign aiming to convince the public that Covid vaccines are safe and effective. In Germany, a more sober public information campaign has been led by a virologist and health workers. And in France and elsewhere there have been no mass campaigns aimed at driving up vaccine acceptance. Government attempts to drive up vaccine acceptance will come under increasing scrutiny in the coming months as more jabs are made available. Public health experts say they have to walk a fine line between boosting trust and not being seen to force the jab on the public.

Germany’s campaign, called Germany Pulls Up Its Sleeves, has run across radio, regional newspapers and billboard posters. At a time when the public is being urged to stay at home and avoid commuting, the health ministry chose to spend more than half of its €25m campaign budget on outdoor advertising. A new campaign aimed at spreading confidence among younger people is due to launch when the vaccine becomes more widely available. In France there has been no major mass information campaign. Instead, the prime minister, Jean Castex, the health minister, Olivier Véran, and the country’s “Monsieur Vaccin”, Prof Alain Fischer, who is overseeing the programme, give weekly televised press conferences to update on progress and announce when different groups will be eligible for a shot.

In the US, the federal government is holding off on a nationwide push to raise awareness until vaccine supply increases, and is instead focusing its efforts on vaccine-hesitant minority communities. “When it comes to shifting attitudes to vaccines, it is crucial to distinguish between public information campaigns that seek to educate the public and those that seek to persuade them,” said Philipp Schmid, a behavioural scientist researching vaccine scepticism at the University of Erfurt. “In Germany at least, the latter would risk a backlash. But if you don’t proactively tackle the problem at all, you end up playing catch-up with the anti-vaxxers. In a way, governments have to work on a parallel vaccine rollout – immunising the public against science denial.”

Read more …

Jonathan Cook gets a bit lost in this very long piece. But he means well. And the Dr. Seuss is a great find.

Does Social Solidarity Only Count When It Gets Us Back To The Pub? (Cook)

For decades our societies have worshipped a single value with two faces: money and power. But we are suddenly being told by the very people who atomised our communities, who created an economic system of dog eat dog, who wrecked the planet with their greed – the people who made a religion of neoliberal orthodoxy – that we must trust that they have our best interests at heart during the pandemic. They cared not one whit for the common good until now. But suddenly, after many months of economic contraction, when corporations finally have a chance to make a quick buck again – either by producing and selling vaccines to desperate governments and their populations or by demanding a hurried return to business as usual through enforced vaccination programmes – the corporations and their dutiful servants in the media and political class are shocked that some of the public, those most betrayed, are indicating a lack of “trust”.

Nick Cohen offers an interesting survey result: “In Birmingham – the only city to have produced detailed statistics – just 60% of people over 80 accepted the jab in Alum Rock, a deprived and racially mixed part of the inner city, while 95% accepted it in Sutton Four Oaks, an overwhelmingly white commuter suburb.” Why would that be? Why would affluent white people whom the system has always favoured be quicker to trust a system that cared for them than the poor and ethnic minorities who have always been treated with contempt by that system? To ask the question is to answer it. Affluent liberals like Cohen understand that too. Which is why they hope to revive social controls that tightly police or censor information not to their liking, leaving them once again with exclusive rights to tell the poor and marginalised what constitutes the truth, to define for them what is in their interests.

An alien studying western societies from the heavens for the past half-century could better explain the problem than Cohen. People are being asked to trust the corporate medicine industry, the corporate media and the politicians dependent on the good will of profit-obsessed corporations to decide what is best for us, to believe that this time the corporate elite won’t take short cuts, that they won’t conceal information, that they won’t cause harm, that they won’t externalise the costs on to us, the public. That this time it will be different.

These are exactly the same corporations and their functionaries who in the past destroyed manufacturing industries that were the lifeblood of now-decimated communities; that approved the intensified militarisation of institutionally racist and corrupt police forces, turning them into domestic armies; and that are engaged in ransacking and destroying the planet on which we all depend.

Read more …

We do not ban nor burn books.

eBay still sells Mein Kampf.

eBay Bans Sale Of Some Dr. Seuss Books (DW)

On Thursday, reports surfaced that eBay, the online auction and shopping website, had blocked the sale of certain Dr. Seuss books. One eBay lister received the following response: “We had to remove your listing because it didn’t follow our Offensive material policy. Listings that promote or glorify hatred, violence, or discrimination aren’t allowed. What activity didn’t follow the policy[:] Dr. Seuss Enterprises has stopped the publication of this book due to its negative portrayal of some ethnicities. As a courtesy, we have ended your item and refunded your selling fees, and as long as you do not relist the item, there will be no negative impact to your account. Please review our Offensive Materials Policy prohibits this item for more information. What you need to do next. You can’t relist items we’ve ended. Please ensure your current and future listings follow this policy.

[..] In light of the fact that books such as “Mein Kampf” can be offered on eBay while some Dr. Seuss books are banned, it is important to examine what the company’s Offensive materials policy states: Listings that promote, perpetuate or glorify hatred, violence, or discrimination, including on the grounds of race, ethnicity, color, religion, gender or sexual orientation, aren’t allowed. This includes but is not limited to the following: • Slurs or epithets of any kind • Slavery items, including reproductions, such as tags, shackles, documents, bills of sale, etc. • Items with racist, anti-Semitic, or otherwise demeaning portrayals, for example through caricatures or other exaggerated features, including figurines, cartoons, housewares, historical advertisements, and golliwogs • Black Americana items that are discriminatory •Confederate battle flag and related items with its image • Historical Holocaust-related and Nazi-related items, including reproductions • Any item that is anti-Semitic or any item from after 1933 that bears a swastika • Media identified as Nazi propaganda • Listings that imply or promote support of, membership in, or funding of a terrorist organization

This week, Dr. Seuss Enterprises told The Associated Press that the books “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” “If I Ran the Zoo,” “McElligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra!,” “Scrambled Eggs Super!,” and “The Cat’s Quizzer” portrayed “people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” adding, “Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ catalog represents and supports all communities and families.” “Dr. Seuss Enterprises listened and took feedback from our audiences including teachers, academics and specialists in the field as part of our review process,” the company continued. “We then worked with a panel of experts, including educators, to review our catalog of titles.”

Read more …

Running down the clock.

WHO Inspectors ‘To Scrap Interim Report’ On Probe Of COVID Origin (AlJ)

A World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of COVID-19 is planning to scrap an interim report on its recent mission to China amid mounting tensions between Beijing and Washington over the investigation and an appeal from one international group of scientists for a new inquiry, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. “The full report is expected in coming weeks,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told Reuters news agency. No further information was immediately available about the reasons for the delay in publishing the findings of the WHO-led mission to the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the first human cases of COVID-19 were detected in late 2019.

In an open letter (PDF), a group of 26 scientists called on Thursday for a new international inquiry. They claim that “structural limitations” made it “all but impossible” for the WHO mission to adequately pursue its investigation. Among other issues, the scientists questioned the scientific independence of the “Chinese citizens” composing half of the team. “We have therefore reached the conclusion that the joint team did not have the mandate, the independence, or the necessary accesses to carry out a full and unrestricted investigation into all the relevant SARS-CoV-2 origin hypotheses – whether natural spillover or laboratory/research related incident,” read the letter.

China refused to give raw data on early COVID-19 cases to a WHO-led team investigating the origins of the pandemic, Dominic Dwyer, one of the team’s investigators, said last month, potentially complicating efforts to understand how the outbreak began. The investigation had been plagued by delays, concern over access and bickering between Beijing and Washington, which accused China of hiding the extent of the initial outbreak and criticised the terms of the visit, under which Chinese experts conducted the first phase of research. The team, which arrived in China in January and spent four weeks looking into the origins of the outbreak, was limited to visits organised by their Chinese hosts and prevented from contact with community members, due to health restrictions. The first two weeks were spent in hotel quarantine.

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Doesn’t say which aspects.

Majority of Brits Say They Will “Miss” Some or Many Aspects of Lockdown (SN)

A new opinion poll in the UK finds that over half of Brits say they will miss either “some” or “many” aspects of lockdown despite the country now having been under some form of restrictions for nearly a year. Yes, really. The YouGov survey asked participants, “Do you think you will or will not miss any aspects of lockdown when it is over?” 9 per cent of respondents said they would miss “many” aspects of lockdown while 46 per cent said they would miss “some” aspects of lockdown – a combined total of 55 per cent. Just 39 per cent of respondents said they won’t miss any aspects of lockdown.


Previous polls have routinely showed majority or plurality support for lockdown, with little concern for what innumerable observers have called the biggest imposition on civil liberties in British history. One aspect that many will “miss” about lockdown is undoubtedly getting paid for doing nothing. Under the government’s furlough scheme, those who can’t work from home have had 80 per cent of their wages covered by the state for almost a year, with that program to be extended until September despite the government saying all restrictions will be lifted by the end of June. The prospect of having to work for their money will become a reality for some once again soon, although not for all given that the UK’s economy contracted the most in 300 years as a result of the lockdown, leading to 726,000 job losses.

Read more …

Biden’s entire presidency under siege.

Capitol Police Requests National Guard Past March 12 (F.)

The U.S. Capitol Police on Thursday asked the Pentagon to keep National Guard troops stationed at the Capitol past March 12 – the date at which they are scheduled to depart, citing a 93% increase in threats to lawmakers this year. In a statement, the Capitol Police announced that acting Cchief Yogananda Pittman “formally asked the Department of Defense to extend the support provided by the National Guard.” The statement didn’t specify the length of time for which the Guard troops have been requested, though multiple outlets reported Pittman wants them for an additional 60 days. The statement noted Pittman’s testimony in a House appropriations subcommittee hearing that “threats to members are up 93% during the first two months of this year” compared to 2020.

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), the chair of that committee, credited the National Guard presence in part for his belief that a Jan. 6-style attack on the Capitol could now be effectively dealt with. The statement noted the Pentagon “takes its mission seriously and will do whatever is necessary to achieve that mission,” adding that the Capitol Police is “extremely grateful” for their support. Thousands of National Guard troops have been stationed in and around the Capitol since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, in which Trump supporters stormed Capitol Police and attempted to stop lawmakers from certifying President Joe Biden’s election victory. “We understand the Guard has a tremendous service need back home responding to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the statement concluded.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), the ranking members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the request for an extension is “an outrage,” according to pool reports. “That’s not their function, that’s not their mission. They cannot do it,” he said, claiming it’s “destroying careers of people.”

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He promised.

White House Weighs Minimum Wage Negotiations With Republicans (Pol.)

The White House is weighing whether to engage in talks with Republicans on a minimum wage hike once Congress passes its Covid relief bill, two sources with knowledge of their strategic thinking say. White House aides said they believe there’s room to bring Republicans into the fold because raising the minimum wage is popular across ideological grounds. They pointed to the recent $15-an-hour wage increase passed in Florida, a state that voted for Donald Trump, as evidence that the issue has widespread support. In a sign that the White House is looking to broaden the coalition behind a wage hike, administration officials reached out to trade groups last week to gauge their willingness to support legislation, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Negotiations with Republicans would be another step entirely. And it would likely frustrate progressives and raise alarms among labor and advocacy groups who are looking to Biden to make good on his promise to deliver a $15-an-hour minimum wage. Progressives argue that a phased-in $15 floor over five years is already a compromise and would likely oppose any deal that would go significantly lower. “They don’t want to blow up the world politically and pay a huge political cost, but if the politics aligned for a smaller increase, Joe Biden generally wants to get deals done,” said a source with knowledge of the administration’s thinking. The White House is “not doctrinaire on policy grounds about what it is they sign” the source added.

Cedric Richmond, a White House senior adviser, would only say that the administration is “exploring all options,” and that internal deliberations were still in the preliminary stages. “It’s still early in the game,” Richmond said. “This is not the point where you lay your whole strategy out for the world to see.”

Read more …

Oh sure, let’s pretend that Manchin keeps Biden from keeping his promises.

How To Stop The Manchin Presidency And Raise The Minimum Wage (DP)

For the last week, Americans paying attention to politics have learned an important truth: Joe Biden may live in the White House, but conservative Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is effectively president. This depressing reality can certainly be fixed, but only if progressive Democrats in Congress are willing to actually change the dynamic — and they have a rare opportunity to do that right now by using their power to raise the minimum wage. But so far, they aren’t choosing to use their power — which is a huge structural problem not just now, but also for the foreseeable future. Some have argued that the way to fix this situation is by ending the filibuster, but that’s a catch-22: It is absolutely a necessary reform, but President Manchin is pledging to veto it.

Even if Democrats were to eliminate the filibuster, they would still need Manchin’s stamp of approval for virtually all legislation, given the Senate’s current 50-50 split. The way to fix this dynamic is for a decisive number of House Democrats or Democratic senators to make clear, line-in-the-sand demands, and demonstrate they will vote down Democratic legislation that does not honor those demands. And they must do this specifically on must-pass legislation for which Biden can find zero GOP votes. That is the way to force Biden to stop pretending he has no agency and instead motivate him to use the overwhelming power of the executive branch to press the conservative wing of the party to back down. It is also the way to get Manchin himself to negotiate — right now, he gets to operate with impunity because there is no counterforce.

The COVID relief bill provides progressives this game-changing opportunity, and in the process they can heroically deliver not on some unimportant issue or tangential agenda item — but instead on the crucial cause of delivering a desperately needed higher minimum wage to millions of Americans. The debate over the legislation also gives the public a way to see whether self-identified progressive heroes are as serious about actually using power as President Manchin is. We can see this opportunity in the current wrangling over a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package, where Manchin has successfully pressured the executive branch to support further limiting eligibility for survival checks, devising a phase-out policy so absurdly punitive that even reliably partisan Democratic pundits and centrist think tank wonks can’t support it. The payments — which are $1,400 instead of the $2,000 people were promised — will likely now go to 17 million fewer people than the last round of checks under Donald Trump, as a result of Manchin’s handiwork.

Read more …

Boris: “I’m sure with a bit of goodwill and common sense all these technical problems are eminently solvable..”

Brexit: EU To Launch Legal Proceedings Against UK ‘Very Soon’ (G.)

Brussels has warned it will launch legal action “very soon” following a move by the UK to unilaterally delay implementation of part of the Brexit deal relating to Northern Ireland. The European commission vice-president, Maros Sefcovic, said the announcement by the government on Wednesday had come as a “very negative surprise”. David Frost, the Cabinet Office minister, said the UK was extending a series of “grace periods” designed to ease trade between Northern Ireland – which remains in the EU single market for goods – and Great Britain while permanent arrangements are worked out. It provoked a furious response in Brussels, with the EU accusing Britain of going back on its treaty obligations in the Brexit withdrawal agreement intended to ensure there is no return of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.


In an interview with the Financial Times, Sefcovic – who is responsible for overseeing the implementation of the agreement – said the European commission was now working on “infringement proceedings” against the UK. “We are currently preparing it and it would be really something coming to our table very soon. The most precise term I can give you is really very soon,” he said. His warning came after Boris Johnson had sought to play down the dispute, saying the government was simply taking some “temporary and technical measures” to ensure that trade kept flowing. “I’m sure with a bit of goodwill and common sense all these technical problems are eminently solvable,” he said on Thursday.

Read more …

Where is that money?

Michael Brown’s Father, Ferguson Activists Demand $20M From BLM (NYP)

The father of Michael Brown and other activists from Ferguson, Missouri, are demanding financial support from Black Lives Matter after the organization revealed it raised over $90 million last year. Michael Brown Sr., whose son was fatally shot by a white police officer in August 2014, along with the other activists who helped propel the movement, want $20 million from the group to help their community. “Where is all that money going?” Brown Sr. asked in a Tuesday press release from the International Black Freedom Alliance. “How could you leave the families who are helping the community without any funding?”


The police shooting of Michael Brown sparked months of unrest in Ferguson and helped solidify the national Black Lives Matter movement. “We’re not asking for a handout, but for the funding to keep the movement strong where it began,” said Tory Russell, a Ferguson activist and co-founder of the International Black Freedom Alliance. The funds in Ferguson would be used in part to build a community center in honor of Michael Brown, the press release said. Last month the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation shared its funding numbers in an impact report first provided to the Associated Press.

Read more …

Alhambra’s Jeffrey Snider says deflation.

Almost A Full Year of Tomorrows (Snider)

The ISM reported its manufacturing index at highs on Monday, then today releases its non-manufacturing headline falling sharply. The result is an odd appendage to post-2008 history where these sentiment indicators are concerned; they are upside down to the usual configuration when it’s been more likely manufacturing suffers while services are to a greater extent immune to each successive suppressing downturn influence. The most notable aspect of the non-manufacturing index has to be the specific segments most responsible for the sharp decline. The overall number had been relatively flat/sideways stuck around 57 or 58 going back to last June; and had bumped up slightly to 58.7 for January 2021 as government money hit the stores. The February reading instead comes back to 55.3, the lowest since the earliest days of reopening.

Not only that, around 55 places the number into the same context as mid-2019 (or early 2016) when the US economy, like the rest of the world, was facing increasingly serious downturn pressures. Its employment subcomponent had indicated a contrary bump up in hiring of late (when compared to the more austere rebound in payroll estimates for these same few months) that likewise fell back in February. The subindex had reached 55.2 in January, the highest since late 2019 (so, not that impressive) only to decline to 52.7 last month.

New Orders, these apparently plummeted for reasons that aren’t well explained at the moment. Not only have COVID restrictions increasingly been removed, vaccines plus two full months of that $600 helicopter drop should’ve (if you believe in these things) produced more than a single January effect (as in retail sales). As for the ISM, forward-indicated orders in the service sector crashed by very nearly an even ten points (-9.9). As of this February figure, the New Orders index stands at just 51.9, which, outside of last April and May, isn’t close to anything since 2016’s Euro$ #3 bottoming out.

This is made all the more unsettling given the similar direction and intensity in Chinese sentiment of late. As if determined to further corroborate this interpretation, private payroll processing firm ADP reports also today another serious shortfall in the employment rebound. First, the series had undergone benchmark revisions which stripped a few hundred thousand jobs from the series (meaning they probably never happened) and then reported that for the month of February private payrolls gained just 117,000 last month (compared to revised +195,000 in January and Economist expectations for about the same). Around one hundred thousand would have been considered an alarmingly weak month before 2020; in this situation with the labor market struggling to gain any momentum, it’s yet another contrary signal (deflation, rather than the other one).

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“..grasping the awful truth: we all, eventually, run out of patches…”

The Appalling Death Of An Extremely Strange Genius (Taibbi)

I turned fifty-one this week. Terror of age is becoming a key comic subtext of my life. The first line of a novel I tried to write recently read, He looked in the mirror and shrieked. There’s a scene in Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat where the hero, a dim and nervous clerk named Akaky Akakievich, goes to the tailor to try to patch up his ancient greatcoat. It’s coming apart at the seams, the victim of St. Petersburg’s relentless winters and too many years of service. Akaky asks for one last repair job, but the merciless tailor Petrovich, having laid the coat out on a table, quickly pronounces the patient dead. “No, it can’t be repaired, the wretched garment,” he snaps. Akaky, in denial, tries to protest: it’s just a bit worn on the shoulders! Petrovich cuts him off. “The stuff is rotten, if you put a needle in it, it would give way.” “Let it give way, but you must patch it,” counters Akaky. “There is nothing to put a patch on,” Petrovich says, and Akaky recoils in horror, grasping the awful truth: we all, eventually, run out of patches.


Gogol, my childhood hero, died 169 years ago today, on March 4, 1852. Fitting for him, it might have been the most preposterously horrific act of self-destruction in literary history.Gogol was a genius, but a peculiar and probably very unpleasant kind. If Mozart came out of the womb hearing symphonies, the baby born in Sorochintsy, Ukraine in 1809 had a different fate. It was as if God whacked him with a shovel, locking his brain in the moment of hearing the funniest joke ever told. That may sound wonderful, but there’s a reason we eventually have to stop laughing — it hurts. The line between hilarity and terror is a thin one, as people who drop acid find out all the time. Gogol was a depressive who cheered himself up by imagining the funniest situations possible, but his gift in that area was so prodigious that he ultimately scared himself to death.

Read more …

“The cow is very sacred for us, but no-one cares for their life.”

71kg of Waste Found In Stray Indian Cow’s Stomach (Y!)

Indian vets have extracted 71 kilograms (156.5 pounds) of plastic, nails and other garbage from a pregnant cow, but both the animal and her baby died. The case has highlighted the country’s twin problems of pollution and stray cattle. An estimated five million cows roam India’s cities, with many gorging on the vast amounts of plastic litter on the streets. This cow was rescued after a road accident in late February by the People For Animals Trust Faridabad. A vet soon noticed the pregnant bovine was struggling. In a four-hour operation on February 21, vets found nails, plastic, marbles and other garbage in its stomach, said trust president Ravi Dubay.


They also attempted a premature delivery. “The baby did not have enough space to grow in her mother’s belly so she died,” Dubay told AFP. Three days later, the cow also died. “In my 13 years of experience, this is the most garbage we have taken from a cow… we had to use muscle power to get it all out,” Dubay said. Previous surgeries done by the organisation based in the northern Indian state of Haryana have found up to 50 kilograms of waste in cows’ stomachs. “The cow is very sacred for us, but no-one cares for their life. In every corner in every city they eat the waste,” Dubay added.

Read more …

The horror!

Estimated 9 Billion Already Dead From Texas Mask Mandate Reversal (BBee)

We were warned. Only one day after Texas succumbed to neanderthal thinking and reversed the mask mandate, experts reported an estimated 9 billion people around the world have already died as a direct result of this foolish action. “We estimate there are now negative 1.3 billion people alive,” said one expert solemnly. “We’ve never had a negative number like that before. Shucks– I’m not even alive anymore, come to think of it. Sad.” Scientists have followed the science very scientifically to determine this catastrophic end to all human life on Earth immediately began after Governor Greg Abbott called his press conference, announcing his plan to literally murder everyone by not making them wear t-shirt fabric on their faces.


“Too bad, humanity had a good run,” said another expert, who is also dead now. “That’s what we get for electing Republicans. Hopefully, humanity learned its lesson.” The expert, who was literally dead from the Texas mask mandate reversal, then joined his friends at the local bar for some beers.

Read more …

 

 

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Feb 042021
 
 February 4, 2021  Posted by at 10:25 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  20 Responses »


MC Escher Balcony 1945

 

‘Deadly Carrot’-Derived Antiviral Could Be Magic Bullet (RT)
5.8 Million Fewer Babies: America’s Lost Decade in Fertility (IFS)
Dallas Fed’s Kaplan: Reddit-Fueled Trading Frenzy Driven Partly By Fed (R.)
Beware Of Social Media-Fuelled Bubbles In Market – French Regulator (R.)
The Stock Market Is Broken, Now for All to See (WS)
The Insiders’ Game (Sacks)
SWIFT Sets Up Digital Currency Joint Venture With China’s Central Bank (R.)
“It Can’t Happen Here” (Rickards)
Andrew Cuomo Was a Villain All Along (NR)
Media Runs Defense as Amazon Caught Stealing Millions From Workers (MPN)
Defense Sec. Orders 60-Day Stand-down To Confront Extremism In Military (MT)
US Admiral Warns Nuclear War With Russia, China a ‘Real Possibility’ (Antiwar)
Xi, Putin Make The Case For Win-Win, Not Zero-Sum (Escobar)
If BlacK Lives Matter Wins Nobel, Rename It ‘Mostly Peaceful’ Prize (RT)

 

 

The Working Class pay taxes.
The Middle Class pay accountants.
The Upper Class pay politicians.

 

 

There’s a new meme in town: #AlexandriaOcasioSmollett. No comment.

 

 

Psaki calls out RT and Sputnik in front of the MSM. It’s too much.

 

 

“..several hundred times more effective than the current arsenal of antiviral treatments and is also effective against combined infections.”

‘Deadly Carrot’-Derived Antiviral Could Be Magic Bullet (RT)

Scientists are extolling the efficacy of a wonder drug in combating not only Covid-19 but influenza and other respiratory illnesses, in what may pave the way for a new generation of medicines to prevent future pandemics. Researchers led by a team at the University of Nottingham discovered that the broad spectrum antiviral thapsigargin has shown to be effective against SARS-CoV-2 (which causes Covid-19), a common cold coronavirus, the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) as well as influenza A virus. Acute respiratory infections can be somewhat indistinguishable from one another on initial presentation to a doctor, which may result in lost time in terms of deploying the correct treatment. However, with an effective, broad-spectrum antiviral that can handle many of the main, more serious culprits with ease, it could yield far more positive outcomes for patients and medical practitioners.

Furthermore, it could also turn the tide against spontaneous community outbreaks of certain infections, including the dreaded clusters of Covid-19 which humanity can expect even after widespread vaccine rollout. The researchers, led by Professor Kin-Chow Chang, closely examined the plant-derived antiviral and put it through its paces against a number of pathogens. They found that it triggers a highly effective antiviral immune response against three major types of human respiratory viruses, and works before or during active infection, while preventing a virus from self-replicating for at least 48-hours, a critical component in stamping out community infections.

The drug remains stable in hostile, acidic environments, such as the human stomach, meaning it can be administered orally, without the need for injection or hospital admission, saving precious resources in the process. The researchers also claim the drug, derived from the ‘deadly carrot’ thapsia plant, is several hundred times more effective than the current arsenal of antiviral treatments and is also effective against combined infections. A derivative of the drug has been used in prostate cancer treatment, so concerns about safety in humans have already been allayed.


“The current pandemic highlights the need for effective antivirals to treat active infections, as well as vaccines, to prevent the infection,” Chang said, adding that future pandemics are likely to be zoonotic in nature, either animal-to-human or vice versa, so treating viral infections in humans and animals is crucial to prevent future catastrophe. The drug may mark the beginning of a new generation of powerful, host-centred antivirals, resulting in a holistic “One Health” approach to control both human and animal viruses and, hopefully at least, prevent further pandemics from inflicting such damage on the human race.

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And that’s before suspected COVID influence on -male- fertility.

5.8 Million Fewer Babies: America’s Lost Decade in Fertility (IFS)

Fertility rates have fallen around the world over the last decade—even in countries with generous social welfare states, which experts had long expected to be holdouts in the face of fertility declines. But while demographers often talk about this change in terms of “fertility rates” or “births per woman,” another way to tally the total is in terms of missing births. That is, if the population of women who might have kids changed the way it did over the last decade, and if fertility rates had remained at their 2008 levels (the last time we had replacement-rate fertility in America), how many more babies would have been born?


The answer is 5.8 million babies. Since births in the U.S. actually tend to run around 4 million per year, that’s almost like saying nobody had a baby for a year and a half. Figure 1 below shows the difference between the number of babies actually born to moms of each major racial or ethnic group tracked by the CDC from 2009-2019, and the number that would have been born, had 2008 fertility rates remained stable but underlying population totals changed in the same way.

The lion’s share of “missing babies” would have been born to Hispanic moms. That’s because in 2008, Hispanic moms could expect to have about 2.8 kids on average; now, they can expect to have about 2. Fertility rates declining by almost a third is a huge change, resulting in a loss of 2.7 million Hispanic babies that would otherwise have been born. Non-Hispanic whites make up the second biggest category of missing babies, with almost 2 million missing births. But that’s a bit of an illusion: in fact, non-Hispanic white fertility rates experienced the least amount of decline of any group (from 1.9 children per woman to 1.6; Asian-Americans have always been lower, falling from 1.8 to 1.5). But the number of potential non-Hispanic white moms is very large. Figure 2 below shows the percentage difference between actual births each year, and the expected number of births for that group and year.

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“Some of the current situation you are seeing – one of the factors – is there is a lot of liquidity, and some of that relates to Fed purchases..”

Dallas Fed’s Kaplan: Reddit-Fueled Trading Frenzy Driven Partly By Fed (R.)

Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Robert Kaplan said Tuesday that while the Fed’s massive bond-buying program is creating plenty of liquidity in financial markets, there are no signs of broad market instability at present. “I don’t see anything right now systemic,” Kaplan said in a CNBC interview, responding to a question about a possible link between the Reddit-fueled frenzy in GameStop Corp shares and monetary policy. Kaplan did not comment on GameStop directly, and instead addressed the broader question of how Fed policy affects financial markets.


“Some of the current situation you are seeing – one of the factors – is there is a lot of liquidity, and some of that relates to Fed purchases of $80 billion of Treasuries and $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities every month: I think it’s wise for us to acknowledge that.” The Fed has kept interest rates near zero since last March and has pledged to keep them there until the economy has returned to full employment and inflation has reached, and is on track to overshoot, the Fed’s 2% goal. It has also said it will keep buying at least $120 billion of bonds each month until there is “substantial further progress” toward the Fed’s full employment and 2% inflation goals, a benchmark that Fed Vice Chair Richard Clarida has said may not be reached until next year.

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“Customers with direct market access are welcome, but raises questions about… new ways to manipulate markets..”

Let’s stick with the old ways.

Beware Of Social Media-Fuelled Bubbles In Market – French Regulator (R.)

An increase in retail investors flocking to online brokers during the coronavirus pandemic risks creating “bubbles” engineered by social media, France’s top markets regulator said on Wednesday. Robert Ophele, chair of France’s AMF markets watchdog, said the trading frenzy fuelled by posts on the Reddit forum and surge in bitcoin prices have shown how technology and social media can bring “irrationality” to financial markets. “Customers with direct market access are welcome, but raises questions about… new ways to manipulate markets with a social media dimension,” Ophele told an Afore Consulting webinar.

Read more …

Step 1: stop calling it a market.

The Stock Market Is Broken, Now for All to See (WS)

It has finally blown into the open for all to see. The stock market has been broken for a while, for a long time, actually. The idea that the stock market is where price discovery takes place on a rational transparent basis, with ups and downs, and some amount of chaos, but free of rampant manipulations – that idea has now totally imploded. What has been visible for a long time but now blew into the open is just how manipulated the market is, by all sides, how overleveraged the big players are because the Fed encouraged them to, and how enormous the risks are, and how crazy the trading strategies are. And the stock market soared to record out-of-whack valuations, in a terrible economy where at least 10 million people have lost their jobs and are still out of work, and where entire industries have gotten crushed.


The whole thing is propped up by stimulus and bailout payments to consumers and companies alike. And then came a new force – or rather the force wasn’t new, but the magnitude was: regular folks ganging together in the social media, particularly on Reddit’s WallStreetBets, and they were deeply cynical about the fake markets and they saw an opportunity, and they conspired to make a ton of money and push some hedge funds over the cliff, by buying long the most shorted stocks, in other words, they conspired to engineer a historic short-squeeze. This coordinated buying by the crowd on WallStreetBets, of a handful of small most-shorted stocks, drove up their prices sometimes by 100% or more in a day, which pushed the hedge funds that were short these stocks to the brink. And it pushed online broker Robinhood to the brink. And it revealed for all to see just how broken the stock market has been.

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“With the Town Square now digitized, centralized, and privatized in the hands of a cartel of Big Tech companies, the protections of the First Amendment no longer apply.”

The Insiders’ Game (Sacks)

Some of us warned of a slippery slope when Parler was taken down and a sitting president was systematically ghosted from every online speech platform. But we could not have foreseen how slippery the slope would be, or how fast we would slide down it. We were told that the curbs on speech of President Trump and his supporters were necessary to prevent further “insurrection” and protect the peaceful transition of power. However, much like the troops and barricades that still ring the Capitol, these speech restrictions remain in place well after the transition of power has occurred. The censorship power is always justified in response to a genuine outrage or crisis, but it is rarely relinquished once the threat passes. Rather it gets weaponized to protect powerful, connected insiders, as the GameStop fiasco illustrates.

How do we suppose Discord chose that moment to enforce its “Community Guidelines” against WallStreetBets? Almost certainly, one of the hedge funds whose ox was being gored combed through their message boards looking for anything that might violate the terms of service. And surely they found it, as these boards contain the same raunchy language you would hear if you visited any trading floor or boiler room on Wall Street. They presumably reported the content to Discord, which took the group down. Did Discord warn WallStreetBets of content violations before last Wednesday? I’m sure they did. Amazon sent such a warning letter to Parler as well. Frankly, such a letter could be, and likely is, sent to every large message board on the web.

The founder of a user-generated content site described it to me as “the One Percent Problem.” Every user-generated content site will have a small percentage of offensive material that gets through, no matter how many content moderators are hired. For example, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube allowed far more content advocating for and planning the Capitol riot than Parler. But instead of acknowledging this, they were eager to blame the upstart, which had recently taken over the top spot in the social networking category in the app store. Scapegoating Parler served the dual purpose of deflecting blame and squashing a competitor. Critics of social networks insist that these sites simply need to double down on censorship in order to finally rid us of problematic speech. But that ignores how social media moderation actually works.


Algorithms set to recognize keywords capture only a small fraction of problematic posts, leaving millions of posts for humans to review. The work is so voluminous that it’s outsourced to far-flung locales where English may not even be the first language. Low-level employees must decipher complicated guidelines while navigating our increasingly Byzantine world of political and cultural hot-buttons. Mistakes are inevitable, and the harder a company tightens the standards to get the One Percent Problem down to 0.1 or 0.01 percent, the more undeserving accounts—from Ron Paul to the Socialist Equality Party—will be swept up in the dragnet. With the Town Square now digitized, centralized, and privatized in the hands of a cartel of Big Tech companies, the protections of the First Amendment no longer apply.

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The battle against Bitcoin will be fierce.

SWIFT Sets Up Digital Currency Joint Venture With China’s Central Bank (R.)

SWIFT, the global system for financial messaging and cross-border payments, has set up a joint venture with the Chinese central bank’s digital currency research institute and clearing centre, in a sign that China is exploring global use of its planned digital yuan. Other shareholders of the Beijing-based venture include China’s Cross-border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) and the Payment & Clearing Association of China, both supervised by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), according to public information.


The new entity, called Finance Gateway Information Services Co, was established in Beijing on Jan. 16, and its business scope includes information system integration, data processing and technological consultancy, according to the website of the National Enterprise Credit Information Public System. China is a front-runner in the global race to launch central bank digital currencies, having launched domestic trials in several major cities including Shenzhen, Chengdu and Hangzhou. Its digital currency will help increase oversight of money flows, while also raising the efficiency of cross-border payments and facilitate yuan internationalization, HSBC said in a recent report. China’s cross-border payment system CIPS both partners and competes with SWIFT amid growing Sino-U.S. tensions.

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Rickards recognizes the role of money velocity in inflation, but doesn’t explain why he sees it change.

“It Can’t Happen Here” (Rickards)

The Federal Reserve printed $4 trillion in the years following the 2008 crash, expanding its pre-crisis balance sheet of about $900 billion to roughly $4.5 trillion. Many people thought, if hyperinflation were ever going to happen in the U.S., it would have already. Well, it never happened. Today, in response to the pandemic and the economic lockdowns that followed, the Fed has cranked up the printing press to even higher levels. It’s printed almost as much money in one year as it printed in the several years after the financial crisis. On February 26, 2020, the balance sheet was $4.16 trillion. Less than one year later, it’s roughly $7.3 trillion. Meanwhile, America’s M1 money supply spiked 70% last year.

But this blizzard of money-printing has not caused the level of alarm that the post-financial crisis money creation caused. If we didn’t get the hyperinflation then, they say, why should we get it now? Most people are complacent. They have a point. We still have no hyperinflation or even moderate inflation (except maybe in asset prices). But I’ve even argued that we won’t see inflation right away. Inflation is not only a product of money creation but also of money velocity. You can print as much money as you want, but if it’s not exchanging hands and there isn’t much turnover, it won’t lead to inflation. Inflation is at least as much a psychological phenomenon as a monetary phenomenon. And expectations right now are for disinflation.


Because of the lockdowns and their economic fallout, we will likely suffer a recession in the first quarter of 2021. Money velocity is low, so disinflation is the problem in the short term. But that doesn’t mean inflation isn’t coming back or even that hyperinflation isn’t possible once it does. Inflation will return, and when it does, it could be massive and potentially lead to hyperinflation. All this can happen faster than most people think.

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A useful scapegoat is past his best before date.

Andrew Cuomo Was a Villain All Along (NR)

For much of the past year, the mainstream media and Democrats have largely blamed former president Donald Trump and his administration for most of America’s COVID-19 deaths. Trump did indeed fail in certain aspects of coordination, messaging, and inserting politics into the parts of the process where it didn’t belong. He deserves credit, however, for Operation Warp Speed, the initiative that (ultimately successfully) fostered the development of coronavirus vaccines, one of the most successful public-private ventures in modern history. But Trump’s overbearing personality tended to absorb all the attention, leaving little room for real debate on the successes and failures of other politicians, except when the media found time to criticize Republican governors. But serious criticism of Democrats in this period was rare. Until now.

Last week, New York attorney general Letitia James, a Democrat, released a long-awaited report on the state of New York’s response to the coronavirus outbreak as led by Governor Andrew Cuomo. Her findings were stunning in their demonstration of both gross incompetence and outright malfeasance, and were recently reinforced by a New York Times report this week on Cuomo’s leadership failures and staffing troubles during the coronavirus period. The Times now reports that nine leading health-care experts for the state of New York resigned during the last summer and through the fall, all of whom complained that Cuomo had politicized health-care decisions and was ignoring the experts on long-standing plans for the pandemic, including regarding vaccinations.

Why the discrepancy? First, the state refused to count those patients who were transferred to, and later died at, hospitals. Why this loophole? Nobody has ever provided a good answer. Every other state in the country counts these deaths in the nursing-home numbers, because that is the practical and commonsense way to count it. New York specifically chose to be an outlier. The real failure, however, was New York’s unwillingness to be transparent with the data after the fact. For many who analyzed the data in April and May, it quickly became apparent that the state was not being fully transparent on nursing-home deaths. Many individuals were reporting that their family members died at the hospital, but only after getting severely ill at their extended-care facilities first. But somehow the numbers did not appear to bear that out.


An objective observer might be willing to give anyone in charge during such horrific events the benefit of the doubt. New York was at the time the worldwide center of COVID deaths, and it continued in this manner all through the spring. The vast majority of the more than 40,000 deaths in the state occurred during a horrific twelve-week period, when hospitals and health professionals faced war-like situations as patients died left and right.

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Please don’t send anyone to jail!

Media Runs Defense as Amazon Caught Stealing Millions From Workers (MPN)

It has been a turbulent 24 hours for retail giant Amazon. First, the company’s founder (and world’s richest individual) Jeff Bezos announced that he would step down as CEO. Then, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ruled that the company had illegally stolen more than $61 million worth of customer tips meant for its delivery drivers. Under their contracts, Amazon drivers were supposed to make between $18 and $25 per hour and keep all their tips. However, since at least 2016, the company had been secretly confiscating tips customers sent through an app, using their contributions to reduce their own wage payouts, meaning they were swindling both customers and employees. “In total, Amazon stole nearly one-third of drivers’ tips to pad its own bottom line,” said FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra.

Unlike corporate crime cases in other nations, Amazon will merely be required to pay back the money it took from employees. Thus, it will face no negative consequences, except a possible public relations backlash due to bad press. Yet, instead of grilling Amazon, the media appear to be working hard to run defense for it, downplaying the nature of the crime in their headlines. The word “steal” was noticeably absent from much of the reporting, despite the fact that the original Reuters report used the word in its title — a direct reflection of the FTC’s ruling. Many newspapers instead decided to go with “withhold” instead. Even worse, many more framed the news as a mere allegation, despite the fact that the FTC had made a formal ruling.

Forbes, for instance, led with the headline “Amazon Will Pay $61.7 Million Settlement After Allegedly Withholding Tips From Delivery Drivers.” Others (Daily Caller, Daily Mail) did the same. Meanwhile, in a tweet on the news, Vox claimed that (emphasis added) “Amazon will pay $61.7 million in a settlement over allegations that the company used customer tips to subsidize the hourly wages of some delivery drivers.” Thus, the fact that Amazon had been caught stealing was watered down into a claim that it was merely “subsidizing” “some” of its employees’ wages.


Perhaps the worst offender was business and tech news site ZDNet, whose headline was “Amazon will pay $61.7 million to settle Flex driver tip dispute with FTC,” which obscured the matter into a foggy and very technical sounding financial dispute. Only a very small number of outlets, including Slate and The Huffington Post, echoed the FTC’s decision by using the word “stole” in their headlines.

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The most extreme things in the US military take place in far-away lands.

Defense Sec. Orders 60-Day Stand-down To Confront Extremism In Military (MT)

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has called on the services to conduct a 60-day stand-down on the issue of extremism in the military, prompted by the Jan. 6 attack on the the Capitol and subsequent reports of both active-duty and former service members attending a rally calling to overturn the 2020 election and the riot that ensued. Austin held a meeting Wednesday of the service secretaries and Joint Chiefs, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters, to ask them about their concerns and ideas for improving the situation. “Even though the numbers might be small, they may not be as small as we would like them to be, or we believe them to be,“ Kirby said of the prevalence of troops with extremists views, ties or activities. “And that no matter what it is, it is not an insignificant problem.”


Guidance is forthcoming on what Austin expects to see after the 60 days. “It wasn’t a blithe, ‘Hey, just go talk to your people,’” Kirby said of Austin’s direction to the service secretaries and Joint Chiefs. “He was very clear that he wants commands to take the necessary time. And I didn’t hear him be overly proscriptive about that … to speak with troops about the scope of this problem, and certainly to get a sense from them about what they’re seeing at their level.” The Defense Department does not centrally track troops who have been investigated for domestic terrorism or extremist sentiment, and neither do the services, making it difficult to get a read on how prevalent the problem is. Kirby told reporters on Jan. 28 that the FBI opened 143 investigations into troops and veterans in 2020, 68 of those for domestic extremism.

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The MIC needs orders.

US Admiral Warns Nuclear War With Russia, China a ‘Real Possibility’ (Antiwar)

The head of US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) warned that a nuclear war with Russia or China is a “real possibility” and is calling for a change in US policy that reflects this threat. “There is a real possibility that a regional crisis with Russia or China could escalate quickly to a conflict involving nuclear weapons, if they perceived a conventional loss would threaten the regime or state,” Vice Adm. Charles Richard wrote in the February edition of the US Naval Institute’s monthly magazine. Richard said the US military must “shift its principal assumption from ‘nuclear employment is not possible’ to ‘nuclear employment is a very real possibility,’ and act to meet and deter that reality.”


The STRATCOM chief said Russia and China “have begun to aggressively challenge international norms and global peace using instruments of power and threats of force in ways not seen since the height of the Cold War.” Richard hyped up Russia and China’s nuclear modernization, calling for the US to compete with the two nations. When it comes to China’s nuclear weapons, the US and Russia have vastly larger arsenals. Current estimates put Beijing’s nuclear arsenal at about 320 warheads, while Washington and Moscow have about 6,000 warheads each.

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Was it Trump’s policies that made them stronger, or was it the way America handled Trump?

Xi, Putin Make The Case For Win-Win, Not Zero-Sum (Escobar)

The best in-depth analysis of Putin’s extraordinary speech , hands down, was provided by Rostislav Ishchenko, whom I had the pleasure to meet in Moscow in 2018. Ishchenko stresses how, “in terms of scale and impact on historical processes, this is steeper than the Battles of Stalingrad and Kursk combined.” The speech, he adds, was totally unexpected, as much as Putin’s stunning intervention at the Munich Security Conference in 2007, “the crushing defeat” imposed on Georgia in 2008, and the return of Crimea in 2014. Ishchenko also reveals something that will never be acknowledged in the West: “80 people from among the most influential on the planet did not laugh in Putin’s face, as it was in 2007 in Munich, and without noise immediately after his open speech signed up for a closed conference with him.”

Putin’s very important reference to the ominous 1930s – “the inability and unwillingness to find substantive solutions to problems like this in the 20th century led to World War 2 catastrophe” – was juxtaposed with a common sense warning: the necessity of preventing the takeover of global policy by Big Tech , which “are de facto competing with states”. Xi and Putin’s speeches were de facto complementary – emphasizing sustainable, win-win economic development for all actors, especially across the Global South, coupled with the necessity of a new socio-political contract in international relations. This drive should be based on two pillars: sovereignty – that is, the good old Westphalian model (and not Great Reset, hyper-concentrated, one world “governance”) and sustainable development propelled by techno-scientific progress (and not techno-feudalism).


So what Putin-Xi proposed, in fact, was a concerted effort to expand the basic foundations of the Russia-China strategic partnership to the whole Global South: the crucial choice ahead is between win-win and the Exceptionalist zero-sum game.

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Amen.

If BlacK Lives Matter Wins Nobel, Rename It ‘Mostly Peaceful’ Prize (RT)

While 2020 may be remembered as the year Orwell turned over in his grave – and also the year deemed the perfect “match” for Satan – 2021 might well be remembered for the year Alfred Nobel did back flips in his. The Nobel Peace Prize has often generated controversy over many of its dubious nominees and recipients. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger shared the prize with his counterpart, Le Duc Tho, “for jointly having negotiated a cease fire in Vietnam in 1973.” Kissinger won despite his role in the bombings in Cambodia and in the killings in ‘Operation Candor’. President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, inspiring him to bomb seven countries as he managed to out-Bush G.W. Bush. The former Nobel secretary told the AP news agency in 2015 that in awarding the prize to Obama, “the committee didn’t achieve what it had hoped for.” You don’t say?

Yet, one of the biggest jaw-droppers may be a current contender, the corporate-funded Marxist front group, Black Lives Matter. The nomination must make BLM’s sponsors proud. And how much do corporate socialists like Black Lives Matter? As of June 2020, corporate America had pledged BLM over $1.678 billion, led by Bank of America and cheap-labor lover Nike. BLM was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by a Norwegian lawmaker. NBC News reported: “In his nomination letter, Petter Eide, a Socialist Left member of the Storting, Norway’s parliament, wrote that he had nominated Black Lives Matter ‘for their struggle against racism and racially motivated violence.’”

By now, much has been said about BLM’s violent roots. I discovered attempts by BLM (and its enablers) to disguise its history and ideology. But BLM’s scrubbing of its shady past has been to no avail, since its goals and tactics were on full display in the BLM-inspired riots. Protests and riots, including looting and arson, rampaged through the US from May to December 2020. The violence that resulted in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis was the first “multi-state catastrophe event” ever declared for civil disorder by claim-tracking company Property Claim Services, Triple-I has said. BLM demonstrations have included calling for the murder of police officers: “What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now!” On August 29, 2015, during a Black Lives Matter march outside the Minnesota State Fair in St. Paul, a chant rang out: “Pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon.” Inspired by BLM, at least two police officers were murdered, one at point-blank range.


On September 16, 2020, Axios headlined: “$1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history.” But noted in the report was the obligatory leftist cover for those who looted and set many cities ablaze. “The protests that took place in 140 U.S. cities this spring were mostly peaceful, but the arson, vandalism and looting that did occur will result in at least $1 billion to $2 billion of paid insurance claims.”

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Not quite dead yet meme:

 

 

 

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Oct 082020
 


Rene Magritte Memory 1944

 

Pence Responds to Charlottesville Very Fine People Hoax at VP Debate (Pollak)
Trump: All US Troops Should Be Withdrawn From Afghanistan By Christmas (JTN)
Mike Flynn Seeks To Remove Judge Overseeing Case, Alleging Bias (JTN)
“A Means Of Distracting The Public” (Turley)
Despite MSM And Establishment Bias Against Trump, He’ll Still Win (Feierstein)
Trump Orders Russiagate Documents Declassified (Ray McGovern)
Is Warren Buffett the Wallet Behind Black Lives Matter? (Tablet)
The Constitutional Reckoning of State Lockdown Orders (AIER)
Golden Dawn Leader And Ex-MPs Found Guilty In Landmark Trial (G.)
Why Did Golden Dawn’s Neo-Nazi Leaders Get Away With It For So Long? (G.)
Reporters Claim Facebook is Censoring Information on Julian Assange Case (MPN)
Movie-Going Could ‘Become Extinct’ Warns Director (BBC)

 

 

Didn’t see the VP debate, but did see the reactions, tons of them. Pretty sure nobody really listened, and nobody learned a thing. Because those reactions are as split along party lines as the whole country is. Dems think Kamala did great, Reps think Pence demolished her.

All perfectly exemplified by the “very fine people” hoax. Both Biden and Kamala brought it up again. There is no clearer illustration of America’s divide than them being able to use a long deconstructed line again and again. Their supporters simply haven’t seen or read how ludicrous the whole thing is. Because their media won’t tell them. This happens on both sides, obviously.

Another example is the very strange play around fracking, where both Biden and Harris have in the past said they would ban it, and now say they won’t. Apparently this is because of the battle for Pennsylvania. Opportunism.

 

 

Banning fracking

 

 

 

 

“Joe Biden will be a president who brings our country together ..”

There are people who believe that? Wow. Trump brings the people together, in that everyone focuses on him. But Biden?

Pence Responds to Charlottesville Very Fine People Hoax at VP Debate (Pollak)

At long last, the Charlottesville “very fine people” hoax has been deflated on the national stage. At the vice presidential debate at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) attempted to repeat the false claim that President Trump failed to condemn white supremacists on the debate stage, and the false claim that Trump called neo-Nazis in the 2017 Charlottesville riots “very fine people.” Harris said: “Last week, the President of the United States took a debate stage in front of 70 million Americans and refused to condemn white supremacists [sic].” She then proceeded to twist Trump’s words in which told the Proud Boys — whom Joe Biden had brought up — to “stand down and stand by,” using terms similar to those moderator Chris Wallace had used in his question prompt.

Harris then recited the infamous hoax, among other hoaxes: “He called Mexicans “rapists” and “criminals” [sic]. He instituted, as his first act, a “Muslim ban” [sic]. He — on the issue of Charlottesville, where people were peacefully protesting [sic] the need for racial justice, where a young woman* was killed, and on the other side, there were neo-Nazis, carrying tiki torches, shouting racial epithets, antisemitic slurs, and Donald Trump, when asked about it, said: “There were fine people on both sides.” This is who we have as the President of the United States — and America, you deserve better. Joe Biden will be a president who brings our country together and recognizes the beauty in our diversity, and the fact that we have so much more in common than what separates us.”

Wednesday night’s moderator, Susan Page of USA Today, gave Pence a chance to reply. He said: “You know, I think this is one of the things that makes people dislike the media so much in this country, Susan, is that you selectively edit — just like Senator Harris did — the comments that President Trump and I and others on our side of the aisle make. I mean — Senator Harris conveniently omitted, after the president made comments about people on either side of the debate over monuments, he condemned the KKK, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists, and has done so repeatedly. You’re concerned that he “doesn’t condemn neo-Nazis”? President Trump has Jewish grandchildren! His daughter and son-in-law are Jewish. This is a president who respects and cherishes all of the American people.” Pence was correct. Trump said the neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville should be “condemned totally.”

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Let’s go!

Trump: All US Troops Should Be Withdrawn From Afghanistan By Christmas (JTN)

President Trump on Wednesday tweeted that the United States should withdraw all of its troops from Afghanistan by Christmas. “We should have the small remaining number of our BRAVE Men and Women serving in Afghanistan home by Christmas!” the president tweeted. Reuters reported that earlier on Wednesday, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said that the U.S. presently has fewer than 5,000 troops in Afghanistan and will decrease the level to 2,500 by early 2021. Foreign forces are slated to depart from Afghanistan by May of next year in connection with an agreement struck between America and the Taliban, if a ceasefire between the Taliban and the Afghanistan government sticks, Military Times reports.

“war made the state, and the state made war”
– Charles Tilly

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The judge was quoting Rachel Maddow?!

Mike Flynn Seeks To Remove Judge Overseeing Case, Alleging Bias (JTN)

In a dramatic escalation of a long-running feud, lawyers for former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn on Wednesday filed a motion to disqualify U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan from considering the request to dismiss their client’s case, arguing the jurist has demonstrated “contempt and disdain for the defense.” The filing by attorneys Sidney Powell and Jesse Binnall came after the defense and judge clashed several times at a hearing last week. It also follows Flynn, retire Army lieutenant general, having tried to get an appeals court to issue a writ of mandamus forcing Sullivan to immediately dismiss the case. The defense won an initial ruling by a three-judge panel before it was reversed by the full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals after Sullivan appealed.


In the new motion, the defense lawyers argued that Sullivan met the standard for dismissal or recusal because he created the appearance of bias “when he actively litigated against General Flynn” in the appeals court. “He has since far exceeded it – rising to the level of demonstrating actual bias,” the lawyers wrote, citing Sullivan’s comments during last week’s hearing. “The court’s contempt and disdain for the defense was palpable throughout the hearing on September 29, 2020, including when defense counsel made an oral motion for his immediate disqualification, which he refused to allow even to be fully stated for the record.”

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“When asked about this referral involving a candidate for the presidency, then-FBI Director James Comey insisted that it “didn’t ring a bell.”

“A Means Of Distracting The Public” (Turley)

My interest in this story is not simply the serious underlying allegation but the lack of coverage by major networks or media outlets. This was clearly released at this time for political purposes, but that does not make it a non-story. We have often discussed concerns over the active effort by many in the media to downplay stories that would either help President Donald Trump or hurt the Democrats in the upcoming elections. This would seem such a case. Whether this is true or a complete fabrication, it should be major news. In the meantime, the responses from Clinton allies have not addressed the substance of the document before simply dismissed any inquiries. Brennan’s handwritten notes would seem extremely serious on their face. It certainly indicates that Brennan considered the issue sufficiently serious to brief the President of the United States on July 28th.

The notes state “We’re getting additional insight into Russian activities from [REDACTED]. . . CITE [summarizing] alleged approved by Hillary Clinton a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.” There is also a notation reading “Any evidence of collaboration between Trump campaign + Russia” and margin references to “JC,” “Denis,” and “Susan.” If Brennan thought this was serious enough to brief the President, shouldn’t the media consider this sufficiently serious to investigate and report? This release further supports a newly-declassified document with the Senate Judiciary Committee revealing that, in September 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral on Hillary Clinton purportedly approving “a plan concerning U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections” in order to distract the public from her email scandal.

When asked about this referral involving a candidate for the presidency, then-FBI Director James Comey insisted that it “didn’t ring a bell.” Once again, my initial interest is in the utter blackout on the story. This would seem a major story regardless of the ultimate findings. If these notes have been fabricated or misrepresented, it would show a breathtaking effort to lie to the voters before the election. If these notes are genuine, it would indicate that the FBI was aware of an effort by the Democratic presidential candidate to tag Trump with a Russian collusion scandal. We know that Clinton’s campaign funded the Steele dossier and that Steele shopped the dossier with the media to try to generate coverage to influence the election.

Throughout the campaign, and for many weeks after, the Clinton campaign denied any involvement in the creation of the dossier that was later used to secure a secret surveillance warrant against Trump associates during the Obama administration. Journalists later discovered that the Clinton campaign hid the payments to Fusion as a “legal fees” among the $5.6 million paid to the law firm. New York Times reporter Ken Vogel at the time said that Clinton lawyer Marc Elias had “vigorously” denied involvement in the anti-Trump dossier. When Vogel tried to report the story, he said, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’”

Times reporter Maggie Haberman likewise wrote: “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.” Even when Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta was questioned by Congress on the matter, he denied any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Sitting beside him was Elias, who helped devise contract. Later, confronted with the evidence, Clinton and her campaign finally admitted that the dossier was a campaign-funded document that was pushed by Steele and others to the media.

Ron Paul: The Democrats have been caught

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“Biden scoffed and rambled non-sequiturs that had nothing to do with the questions asked, and the impudent ‘debate moderator’ Chris Wallace let Biden slide.”

Despite MSM And Establishment Bias Against Trump, He’ll Still Win (Feierstein)

A dark week has seen the MSM turn a blind eye to Democrat failings and exaggerate the extent and severity of Donald Trump’s illness. But I remain convinced that he will have the last laugh on November 3 when he is re-elected. As the battle for the White House intensifies, major storylines emerged over the last week that should have a major role in deciding the outcome of the election, but simply aren’t being given serious coverage by the MSM. The first came in the form of Joe Biden, a presidential ghost candidate who appeared on a debate stage refusing to answer any substantive policy questions. Instead of calling him out on this, the media ran cover for him by refusing to ask any probative questions.

Secondly, as Biden was proclaiming himself ‘the Democratic Party’, Congress was disclosing that a $3.5-million payment was made from the widow of Moscow’s ex-mayor for the benefit of his son Hunter Biden. More information also came to light regarding Hunter Biden’s employment by Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma. And thirdly, previously unseen documents were declassified that allegedly show Hillary Clinton was behind the Russiagate scandal, and that people in the US cannot trust the FBI. This is all dark, very dark. Not even Hollywood or Fellini could write a script like this. During the most contentious presidential debate in a hundred years, Biden refused to answer whether he or his administration would set objectives to end the US Senate filibuster, stack the Supreme Court, add four senators to the US Senate or end the Electoral College.

He even refused to identify his picks for the Supreme Court of the United States. Biden scoffed and rambled non-sequiturs that had nothing to do with the questions asked, and the impudent ‘debate moderator’ Chris Wallace let Biden slide. The US Senate released documents showing that Hunter Biden received a $3.5-million wire-transfer from Elena Baturina, the widow of Moscow’s ex-mayor Yury Luzhkov, who was fired for corruption. When confronted about this, Biden stumbled, repeating a lie: “That’s a lie…It has been debunked.”

No, Joe, it happened – as did Hunter’s employment by Burisma holdings, one of Ukraine’s most controversial corporations. Hunter, with no experience in the energy sector, was paid nearly one million dollars by Burisma. Why? Was it buying influence from the Obama administration’s vice president who was charged with distributing a billion dollars in aid to Ukraine? A vice president who boasted on national TV about threatening to withhold that billion dollars if the prosecutor investigating Biden’s son and Burisma was not fired. This is real banana republic stuff.

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“54 years after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the CIA and FBI demanded more time to decide what secrets to keep hiding – and a chastened President Trump bowed to their power.”

Trump Orders Russiagate Documents Declassified (Ray McGovern)

Home alone yesterday evening, and apparently emboldened by the steroids he is now taking, President Donald Trump sent out a storm of Tweets that included a unprecedentedly bold challenge to the FBI and CIA to stop their foot dragging and declassify documents related to Russiagate and Hillary Clinton. It was probably his plummeting poll numbers as much as the steroids that accounted for his rhetorical forcefulness, but Trump has now openly thrown down the gauntlet to the National Security State. Yes, he is the president, but he is not likely to prevail. What the president-elect didn’t know on Jan. 3, 2017, when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer publicly warned that the intelligence community “has six ways to Sunday” to thwart a president, he does know now.

Trump understands that taking on the FBI and CIA is inherently risky. His public upbraiding and instructions to them on Twitter should be seen as a sign of desperation. Trump is likely to come across as impulsive and impotent in the weeks remaining before the election because — if past is precedent — the security agencies will probably double-down on slow-walking his declassification demands. The stakes are high for senior officials of the FBI, CIA and Justice Department. Remember: they fully expected Hillary Clinton to win in 2016; they took liberties with the law to make sure she did; and, when she didn’t, they had to hustle to hide their tracks.

[..] On Oct. 21, 2017, Trump tweeted that in accordance with a law passed by Congress, “I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened.” Six days later, came a headline in The Washington Post: “JFK files: The promise of revelations derailed by CIA, FBI.” Trump’s decision to delay release of 30,000 of the potentially most sensitive files for another six months frustrated historians. The issue was supposed to be revisited in 180 days, but nothing further was heard of it. Thus, 54 years after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the CIA and FBI demanded more time to decide what secrets to keep hiding – and a chastened President Trump bowed to their power.

It will take more than a presidential Tweet to get recalcitrant players like FBI Director Christopher Wray and CIA Director Gina Haspel, and the powerful institutions they lead, to comply. Wray has been a major stumbling block and will remain inclined to give priority to protecting his former colleagues. Haspel, who reportedly was directly involved in the off-shore Russiagate operations from her perch as CIA chief of station, London, has her own derriere, as well as those of her fellow workers, to protect. Trump could have already fired both for slow-walking release of evidence. He could also fire them now, of course, but it is doubtful that, even on steroids, he would have the temerity to do so.

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The article says it’s Buffett’s son. Plus a lot of large companies.

Is Warren Buffett the Wallet Behind Black Lives Matter? (Tablet)

In July of 2013, the seeds of the most powerful protest movement of the modern era were planted. In a restless climate of nationwide demonstrations touched off by the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, an activist named Alicia Garza uttered the phrase “Black lives matter.” A few months later, in October 2013, Garza took a job with an organization called the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and the nonprofit immediately saw a dramatic increase in its funding from organizations tied to some of the wealthiest people in the world—people with names like Buffett, Soros, and Rockefeller.

This spring, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, the movement became a global interest: Some 1.1 million individual donations worth an estimated $33 million flowed into its coffers. Large corporations, especially in Silicon Valley and retail, have been quick to follow suit, with brands like Square, Ubisoft, Google, Spanx, Tom’s Shoes, Lululemon, Nike, and Anastasia Beauty all making six- and seven-figure organizational pledges.

The received wisdom, echoing the official mythology around Black Lives Matter Global Network Inc.—co-founded by Garza along with fellow activists Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors—is that BLM is a grassroots movement that rose up organically out of the widespread rage sparked by viral videos of Black American men killed by police officers. According to this account, the political priorities of activists in Brooklyn screaming at cops and calling to defund the police have been fused with those of suburban moms in Peloton T-shirts, hand-painting signs with their kids using the BLM hashtags of large multinational conglomerates—an unusual union of protesters and the corporate boardroom spurred on by nothing more than everyone’s shared outrage over racism.

There is, however, another version of events, in which the heartfelt dedication to racial justice is only the forward-facing side of a more complicated movement. Behind the street level activism and emotional outpouring is a calculated machinery built by establishment money and power that has seized on racial politics, in which some of the biggest capitalists in the world are financially backing a group of self-described “trained Marxists”—a label that Cullors enthusiastically applies to herself and the group’s other co-founders.

These bedfellows, whose stories and fortunes are never publicly presented as related, are in reality intertwined under the umbrella of a fiscal sponsor named the International Development Exchange. A modestly endowed West Coast nonprofit with origins in the Peace Corps—which for decades supported local farmers, shepherds, and agricultural workers across the Global South—IDEX has, in the past six years, been transformed into two distinct new things: the infrastructure back end to the Black Lives Matter organization in the United States and also, at the very same time, an investment fund vehicle driven by recruited MBAs and finance experts seeking to leverage decades of on-the-ground grantee relationships for novel forms of potentially problematic lending instruments . And it did so with help from the family of one of the most famous American billionaires in history—the Oracle of Omaha himself.

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“This unilateral and unauthorized exercise of power without legislative oversight was what the court deemed unconstitutional.”

The Constitutional Reckoning of State Lockdown Orders (AIER)

On October 3rd NPR reported that the Michigan Supreme Court struck down Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s state of emergency and the powers it granted. NPR writes: “In a 4-3 majority opinion, the state’s high court said she did not have that authority. “We conclude that the Governor lacked the authority to declare a ‘state of emergency’ or a ‘state of disaster’ under the EMA after April 30, 2020, on the basis of the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, we conclude that the EPGA is in violation of the Constitution of our state because it purports to delegate to the executive branch the legislative powers of state government– including its plenary police powers– and to allow the exercise of such powers indefinitely,” wrote Justice Stephen J. Markman on behalf of the majority.”

Governor Whitmer has been one of the more heavy-handed executive figures during the pandemic. One of her policies went as far as to ban the selling of gardening supplies in stores that were still permitted to stay open. More importantly, however, this court ruling was not the first of its kind but the third in a series of legal victories against lockdown orders. The first was a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that declared parts of Governor Tony Evers’ stay at home order unconstitutional and the second was by a federal court that struck down Governor Tom Wolf’s policies in Pennsylvania. There is no doubt that the governors across the country have gone off the constitutional deep end in response to Covid-19, exercising powers that are not only unprecedented but unproven.

These cases, notably in Michigan and Wisconsin, all share some important legal themes that may suggest the beginning of a constitutional reckoning for governors across America. Back in March, Governor Whitmer declared a state of emergency in response to the pandemic, much like many others across the country. Unlike many other governors, hers was particularly strict and arbitrary. The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, an organization that represented a number of healthcare firms in a suit against the state write: “One of the affected medical practices, Grand Health Partners, operates in the Grand Rapids area. It performs endoscopies and other elective surgeries, many of which were deemed nonessential by executive order. Due to the shutdown, many of their patients were not able to receive treatment and have suffered because of it.”

This is one of the many unintended consequences that come with policies such as stay at home orders and deeming certain businesses “nonessential.” Interestingly, this had little to do with the Michigan Supreme Court’s ruling. Such claims would be justified under the equal protection clause guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. However, the court decided to take a different route. The court ruled that the governor lacked the very authority to continue her state of emergency. The Michigan legislature authorized the governor to declare a state of emergency in March but only until April 30. Governor Whitmer decided to invoke the Emergency Powers of the Governor Act (EPGA) of 1945 as well as the Emergency Management Act of 1976 to grant herself virtually unlimited power. This unilateral and unauthorized exercise of power without legislative oversight was what the court deemed unconstitutional.

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Good day for Greece. Because it took five years, many had doubted it would happen.

Golden Dawn Leader And Ex-MPs Found Guilty In Landmark Trial (G.)

A Greek court has delivered an overwhelming conviction against Golden Dawn, finding the neo-fascist party guilty of operating a criminal gang that brutally targeted opponents under the guise of being a political group. At the end of a trial launched more than five years ago, the three-member tribunal headed by presiding judge Maria Lepenioti, announced that seven of Golden Dawn’s leaders were culpable of directing the deadly organisation. Others were found guilty of the lesser charge of participating in the criminal gang. The judgement was met with jubilation by thousands who had gathered around the heavily guarded court complex ahead of the verdict chanting “Nazis belong to prison.” Many broke into spontaneous applause as news of the decision reached the street.

“This is a very good day for the anti-fascist movement globally,” said Petros Constantinou, a prominent anti-racist activist. “The decision will send a very important message to the far right in Europe. A conviction today is vital if we are to end the fascist threat. The evidence against them is overwhelming.” The hearing has been the biggest trial of neo-fascists since the prosecution of the Nazis at Nuremberg after the second world war. Two thousand police officers, many brought in as backup from the countryside amid fears of violent clashes between the protestors and far right supporters, surrounded the area as helicopters and drones flew overhead. The leftist former prime minister Alexis Tsipras, who was in the crowd, said after years of sowing hate, poisoning Greek society and orchestrating murderous attacks, Golden Dawn fanatics would finally face justice.

“They are not innocent. We all know that,” he wrote on social media ahead of the three-member tribunal’s decision. “On Wednesday we ought to be there to shout it loud and clear. We owe it to the history of this country, we owe it to democracy, we owe it to our children.” The long-awaited verdict ends one of the longest court hearings in modern times. Golden Dawn’s entire leadership, including former MPs, were among 68 defendants accused of murder, weapons possession and operating a criminal gang while also masquerading as a political group. Those charged with directing the criminal organisation face sentences of up to 15 years in prison. If found guilty of additional crimes, the jail terms handed down by the criminal court are likely to be longer although justice officials said it may take several days of legal proceedings before they are formally announced.

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Countries with far-right regimes in their past always see remnants left over once that regime is toppled.

Why Did Golden Dawn’s Neo-Nazi Leaders Get Away With It For So Long? (G.)

In the end, the leader of a party whose supporters threatened “civil war” and to turn the skins of immigrants into lampshades could not even bring himself to face judgment in person. Nikolaos Michaloliakos, like other senior members of Golden Dawn, was absent from court in Athens yesterday as a judge read out a series of damning verdicts on the neo-Nazi party he leads. Golden Dawn, which shot to prominence amid Europe’s economic crisis a decade ago, and is responsible for a years-long campaign of violence and intimidation against immigrants, LGBTQ communities and political opponents, was found to be a criminal organisation.

Seven of the party’s former MPs, including Michaloliakos, have been found guilty of directing the organisation, while a range of members are guilty of crimes including murder, attempted murder and possession of weapons. Some now face sentences of up to 15 years in prison. It is the culmination of a lengthy court process that some campaigners have called the largest trial of Nazis since Nuremberg, triggered by the murder of Pavlos Fyssas, an anti-fascist Greek rapper, in 2013 – at a time when the party was Greece’s third-largest political force. The trial, which lasted more than five years, has already effectively stopped Golden Dawn from operating. The verdict now offers Greece the chance to close a painful chapter in its recent history.

Born of the fascist milieu surrounding the far-right military dictatorship that ruled Greece between 1967 and 1974, Golden Dawn was given its greatest opportunity by the global financial crash of 2008. As Greece struggled from a profound economic slump, and public anger grew at the remedy insisted on by the European Union – austerity – the party attracted unprecedented support. It chose familiar targets to blame for Greece’s predicament: immigrants and refugees, out-of-touch politicians and a global banking elite. But this far-right rhetoric was backed up by a paramilitary-style organisation that operated in parallel to the political party, and a cult-like devotion to Nazi beliefs. As Golden Dawn grew, assault squads of uniformed members, sometimes armed, sought to take over neighbourhoods in Greek towns and cities by attacking and intimidating parts of the local population. Much of the violence was carried out openly – yet for years it went unpunished.

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“I have never seen anything on this scale before. 90% of my traffic has just been cut off by what seems to be a general algorithm command of some kind to downplay Assange..”

Reporters Claim Facebook is Censoring Information on Julian Assange Case (MPN)

Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and longtime confidant of Julian Assange, has been fastidiously reporting on the Australian publisher’s extradition hearing to the United States. Yet few people have been reading it. This, according to Murray, is because of a deliberate decision by online media giants to downplay or suppress discussion of the case. On his blog, Murray wrote that he usually receives around 50 percent of his readers from Twitter and 40 percent from Facebook links, but that has dropped to 3 percent and 9 percent, respectively during the hearing. While the February hearings sent around 200,000 readers to his site daily, now that figure is only 3,000.


To be plain that is very much less than my normal daily traffic from them just in ordinary times. It is the insidious nature of this censorship that is especially sinister – people believe they have successfully shared my articles on Twitter and Facebook, while those corporations hide from them that in fact it went into nobody’s timeline,” he added. Asked about the situation by former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, Murray explained that Anybody who is at all radical or takes any view of anything that is outwith the official establishment view gets used to occasional shadow banning, but I have never seen anything on this scale before.”“90% of my traffic has just been cut off by what seems to be a general algorithm command of some kind to downplay Assange,” he added. “I think it is as simple as that.”

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Theater owners say they can survive IF they are provided new movies to show.

Movie-Going Could ‘Become Extinct’ Warns Director (BBC)

Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins has said that movie-going is facing a real threat of extinction. Her new superhero movie has been delayed three times during the coronavirus pandemic. Jenkins is among dozens of top Hollywood directors appealing to the US government to provide a financial lifeline to cinemas. Her warning comes as cinemas in the UK are also struggling with a recent spate of delayed film releases. “If we shut this down, this will not be a reversible process,” she said in an interview with Reuters news agency. “We could lose movie theatre-going forever.” Cinemas across the world are struggling financially with tough Covid-19 social restrictions limiting customers, along with a lack of blockbuster movies to attract them.


In the US, the National Association of Theatre Owners said 69% of small and mid-sized cinema companies could be forced to file for bankruptcy or shut down permanently. America is the world’s biggest movie market in terms of box office revenues, with China catching up rapidly. Jenkins said widespread closures would lead Hollywood studios to stop investing in films for cinemas, and turn to online streaming instead. “It could be the kind of thing that happened to the music industry,” she added. “Where you could crumble the entire industry by making it something that can’t be profitable.”

Read more …

 

 

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Jun 082020
 


Harris&Ewing Protest: “Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage” 1916

 

New Zealand Has Eradicated Virus (AP)
800-Day Plan: Air New Zealand Warns Of More Job Cuts, Less Flights (R.)
China Stats Accurate, Lockdown Makes Little Difference – Nobel Winner (RT)
Coronavirus in Texas: Cases, Deaths and Tests (TT)
Guatemala President To Work Remotely After 18 Staff Get Coronavirus (R.)
US Bankruptcies Soar 48% In May (ZH)
Major Corporations Scramble To Support Black Lives Matter (JTN)
Minneapolis City Council Votes To Disband Police Force (AP)
Buffalo Police ERT Members Say Resignation Was Not In Solidarity (WKBW)
NYPD, City Hall Deny Police Brass Shake-Up (Pix11)
33 Russia Collusion Probe Witnesses The Senate Could Subpoena (Solomon)
Hillary: How Can Anybody With Beating Heart, Working Mind Support Trump? (Ind.)
Rep. Jordan: Not Surprising McCabe, Rosenstein Disagree
Out With the Old Blood (Mitteldorf)

 

 

Worldometer has global new cases for June 7 (midnight to midnight GMT+0) at + 113,090.

My count from about 6 am EDT to 6 am EDT is about + 108,198 cases. But it was Sunday yesterday, and Brazil ceased providing stats. Let’s see tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

New cases past 24 hours in:

• US + 18,905
• Brazil + 18,375 (first day gov’t stats are unavailable)
• Russia + 8,985
• India + 11,412
• Pakistan + 4,728
• Chile + 6,405

 

 

Cases 7,113,012 (+ 108,198 from yesterday’s 7,004,814)

Deaths 406,549 (+ 3,884 from yesterday’s 402,665)

 

 

 

From Worldometer yesterday evening -before their day’s close-:

 

 

From Worldometer:

 

 

From COVID19Info.live: Note: COVID19Info global cases and deaths are now higher than Worldometer’s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course congrats are in order. But also for New Zealand things are far from solved, it’s an isolated place now.

New Zealand Has Eradicated Virus (AP)

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Monday she was confident New Zealand has halted the spread of the coronavirus after the last known infected person in the country recovered. It has been 17 days since the last new case was reported, while 40,000 have been tested in that time. And Monday also marked the first time since late February that there have been no active cases. Ardern also announced the Cabinet had agreed to another phase of the country’s reopening, to take place at midnight. “We are confident we have eliminated transmission of the virus in New Zealand for now, but elimination is not a point in time, it is a sustained effort,” she said at a news conference.


“We almost certainly will see cases here again, and I do want to say again, we will almost certainly see cases here again, and that is not a sign that we have failed, it is a reality of this virus. But if and when that occurs we have to make sure and we are, that we are prepared.” She said her government’s focus will be on the country’s borders, where isolation and quarantine will continue. Experts say a number of factors have helped the nation of 5 million wipe out the disease. Its isolated location in the South Pacific gave it vital time to see how outbreaks spread in other countries, and Ardern acted decisively by imposing a strict lockdown early in the outbreak. Just over 1,500 people contracted the virus in New Zealand, including 22 who died.

https://twitter.com/farmgeek/status/1269804429693169664

And congrats for Thailand too:

https://twitter.com/RichardBarrow/status/1269853178318577664

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Quite optimistic.

800-Day Plan: Air New Zealand Warns Of More Job Cuts, Less Flights (R.)

Air New Zealand will be nimbler, fly fewer passengers and routes, and may cut more jobs as it targets a return to “healthy profits” by 2022, its chief executive said as he navigates the airline through the coronavirus crisis. Greg Foran laid out an 800-day plan to customers and staff under which the national flag carrier will look at how to further cut labour costs, including leave without pay, reduced hours or possibly laying off more people. “We must first survive, then revive and finally thrive,” Foran said in an email to staff and customers, as he forecast revenue for the next financial year to more than halve from recent levels. Shares of the airline surged 11 per cent to NZ$1.82, its highest in almost three months.


Airlines have slashed thousands of jobs and set aside cash for impairments on aircraft as the coronavirus damaged demand amid global lockdowns. Even as countries re-open, profits may be threatened by people refraining from travel and lower fares due to discounts. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said last week that global airlines cut domestic fares by an average 23 per cent in May, and previously warned traffic would not return to pre-crisis levels until at least 2023. Foran envisions Air New Zealand will be 70 per cent of its pre-COVID-19 size by August 2022 and hinted at further layoffs as the second phase of a cost-cutting plan, to save around $NZ150 million began.

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Well, the richest ones, those that can afford to quarantine dozens of people.

Film-Makers Back To Work In New Zealand After Coronavirus (R.)

New Zealand’s capital has had an extra buzz of excitement over the past week since Hollywood director James Cameron and his crew flew in to film the much-anticipated sequel of the epic science-fiction film “Avatar”.The film is among a handful of productions kicking off in New Zealand as it begins to open up after containing the novel coronavirus, and looks to its film industry to give its battered economy a boost. New Zealand’s borders remain closed to foreigners but the government gave special permission for the 55 crew members working on the “Avatar” sequel to jet in on a chartered plane. “Certainly, the fact that we are able to start earlier than some countries is great, much as it’s distressing to see that the pandemic is still such a challenge around the world,” said Annabelle Sheehan, chief executive of the New Zealand Film Commission.

New Zealand’s mountains, meadows and forests, made famous by “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, have drawn several major film productions over recent years. About 47 productions were underway when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern imposed a tough lockdown on March 26 to stop the spread of the coronavirus. It was a great success and the virus has been almost eliminated in New Zealand, which could be among the first countries in the world to return to normal this week, apart from the closed border. Avatar producer Jon Landau posted a picture of himself and director Cameron after landing last week and said they would self-isolate for 14 days in line with government rules.

“Your country has become a leader in how to deal with something like this, and I think films will want to come,” Landau told Radio New Zealand in an interview, referring to the coronavirus campaign. With people around the world cooped up at home, pressure is on film-makers and other content creators to make new material and get it out. But what’s holding them back is the lack of safe places to work, industry experts say. Now New Zealand is an option. “We’ve had a few international enquiries and that’s on the back of our COVID-free status,” said Gary Watkins, chief executive of Wellington-based Avalon Studios, which was used for the filming of the 2017 Scarlett Johansson starrer “Ghost in the Shell” and will also help with the new “Avatar”.

Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford defended the decision saying the border was only open to a few foreigners who were important for projects with significant economic value. New Zealand’s film industry is worth more than NZ$3 billion a year. A six-month international film can create an estimated 3,000 jobs. “You only need a few international people coming to trigger thousands of jobs,” said Sheehan. And New Zealand needs the jobs. The government expects hundreds of thousands to be lost because of the coronavirus.

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Some people just don’t care about credibility, and neither does the Nobel committee. What utter nonsense.

China Stats Accurate, Lockdown Makes Little Difference – Nobel Winner (RT)

Challenging the widespread belief that the worldwide anti-coronavirus lockdown has helped in slowing down the disease spread, Stanford Professor Michael Levitt said that it’s actually made very little difference. Speaking to RT’s Going Underground, Nobel Prize-winning biophysicist Levitt said that there was no reason to doubt China’s official coronavirus figures, since its statistics are corresponding with the dynamics observed elsewhere. “What happened in China outside of Hubei is exactly the same dynamics of the curve as what happened in New Zealand,” Levitt stated. “If China is forging statistics, they must have a time machine. And if they have the time machine, they would’ve beaten us in any competition anyway.”

The lockdown measures that have been implemented across many countries worldwide were actually not that effective, the scientist believes. The vast majority of the disease transmissions actually occurred before the lockdowns went into force – and in many countries the people were not that eager to abide by the rules, making the restrictions even more useless. Levitt believes that the best strategy for the government would have been focusing on protecting the elderly population and let others move freely.


“This virus really does seem to be limiting. It gets to about 500 to 1,000 fatalities per million people and then it stops. And this we’ve seen at so many places. I don’t think that Northern Italy practiced wonderful social distancing, I don’t think that social distancing was practiced wonderfully in New York City,” he said. What happened is that the virus is most infectious and most dangerous before you actually know it’s there. Sweden, for instance, which has been harshly criticized for its laissez-faire approach to the pandemic, remains within the European averages – and even falls behind the worst-hit nations, such as Belgium and the UK. “Sweden has had a much milder lockdown than anybody. The predicted number for Sweden was around 60,000 [deaths]. Sweden looks like it’s going to stop at 6,000 at the most,” Levitt said.

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This one is for the Automatic Earth’s resident physician Dr. John Day in Texas.

“74,978 Texans tested positive for the coronavirus as of June 7 — 1,425 more than the day before and 10,691 more than a week ago.”

Coronavirus in Texas: Cases, Deaths and Tests (TT)

Gov. Greg Abbott is looking at two specific metrics to justify his decision to restart the Texas economy — the positive test rate and hospitalization levels. Here’s how the numbers changed in the first two weeks of May when Texas began reopening. On March 4, DSHS reported Texas’ first positive case of the coronavirus, in Fort Bend County. The patient had recently traveled abroad. A month later on April 4, there were 6,110 cases in 151 counties. As of June 7, there are 74,978 cases in 235 counties. The Tribune is measuring both the number of cases in each county and the rate of cases per 1,000 residents.

The rate of cases per 1,000 residents is especially high in the panhandle’s Moore County, where infections are tied to a meatpacking plant. The rate of cases is also high in counties with state prisons such as Walker and Jones. In other rural areas where the presence of the virus has yet to be confirmed, testing has been scarce.

On April 6, the state started reporting the number of patients with positive tests who are hospitalized. It was 1,153 that day and 1,878 on June 7. This data does not account for people who are hospitalized but have not gotten a positive test. As of mid-April, concerns that Texas hospitals would be unable to accommodate a surge of COVID-19 patients seem to have been assuaged. As he makes decisions about how quickly to restart the Texas economy, Abbott says he is watching the number of hospitalizations and the hospitalization rate — the proportion of infected Texans who require hospitalization. [..] The first death linked to the coronavirus in Texas occurred March 16 in Matagorda County. As of June 7, 1,830 people who tested positive for the virus have died.

Daily infection rateGov. Greg Abbott said he is watching the state’s infection rate — the percentage of positive cases to tests conducted. The average daily infection rate is calculated by dividing the 7-day average of positive cases by the 7-day average of tests conducted. This shows how the situation has changed over time by de-emphasizing daily swings. Public health experts want the daily infection rate to remain below 6%.

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Makes you wonder how many are on his staff.

Guatemala President To Work Remotely After 18 Staff Get Coronavirus (R.)

Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei said on Sunday that 18 employees at his office and on his security detail have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, so he will work remotely and the presidential offices will be disinfected. “I and the vice president will carry out our activities remotely. We’re healthy. We’ve been tested. We don’t have coronavirus,” Giammattei said in a televised address. The Central American country has registered 7,055 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 252 fatalities from the pandemic.

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“An estimated $7.4 billion in rent for April hasn’t been paid (May numbers have yet to be released), or about 45% of what’s owed..”

US Bankruptcies Soar 48% In May (ZH)

One month ago, when showing the uncanny correlation between defaults and the unemployment rates, we predicted that the number of Chapter 11 filings that is about to flood the US will be nothing short of biblical. All that was missing was a catalyst, one which according to Bloomberg arrived in late May as retail landlords started sending out thousands of default notices to tenants, who in turn experienced a collapse in foot traffic, sales and cash flow due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and were simply unable to pay their debt obligations. According to Bloomberg, restaurants, department stores, apparel merchants and specialty chains have been receiving notices from landlords – some of whom have gone as long as three months without receiving rent.

“The default letters from landlords are flying out the door,” said Andy Graiser, co-president of commercial real estate company, A&G Real Estate Partners. “It’s creating a real fear in the marketplace.” Pressure from default notices and follow-up actions like locking up stores or terminating leases was cited in the bankruptcies of Modell’s Sporting Goods and Stage Stores Inc. Many chains stopped paying rent after the pandemic shuttered most U.S. stores, gambling that they could hold on to some cash before landlords demanded payment. An estimated $7.4 billion in rent for April hasn’t been paid (May numbers have yet to be released), or about 45% of what’s owed, according to a recent analysis by CoStar Group, which also found that just a quarter of expected rent payments have been received by landlords.


“If the landlords don’t put a pause on their actions, you’re going to see more bankruptcies.” Last Thursday, these anecdotal reports were confirmed by the American Bankruptcy Institute which announced that as expected, corporate bankruptcies soared during May, pushing the number of filings to levels recorded in the wake of the 2007-09 recession. According to figures from legal-services firm Epiq Global, US bankruptcy courts recorded 722 businesses nationwide filing for chapter 11 protection last month, a yearly increase of 48% from 487 businesses in May of 2019. The surge was also seen on a month-over-month basis, which jumped by 28% from the 562 Chapter 11 filings in April.

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In the same way that they all paint themselves green.

Major Corporations Scramble To Support Black Lives Matter (JTN)

As protests and demonstrations against racism and police brutality drag on for another week across America, numerous corporations are scrambling to capitalize on the moment by donating to various Black Lives Matter organizations and allied causes, winning praise and sometimes sharp criticism for P.R. efforts that are by turns successfully deft and sometimes unfortunately clumsy. Corporations today appear to be keenly aware of the marketing benefits to striking that balance, which is likely why so many of them are hastily jumping on board with the current Black Lives Matter craze — some with success, others with more difficulty.

Uber Eats, the food delivery app of the rideshare company Uber, announced this week that black-owned businesses would have free delivery privileges on its system. Uber is suspending delivery fees for black-owned restaurants through the end of the year, the company said in a statement, and will also offer discounted rides to those who own and work at black-owned small businesses. Uber’s announcement was perfectly timed for both the political climate and the economic one: Most restaurants have been surviving on takeout alone over the last few months of coronavirus lockdowns, and owners are still depending heavily on takeaway business as reopenings progress slowly across the country.

Other companies have pledged substantial monetary donations for progressive and racially conscious causes. YouTube this week announced a $1 million donation “to address social injustice.” The company was not clear to what causes exactly it would be donating that money, the sum of which accounts for about 0.006% of the company’s yearly revenue of $15 billion. The clothing company Spanx, meanwhile — known for its undergarments that men and women wear to appear thinner — said in an Instagram post this week that it would be donating “$100,000 across national organizations focused on combating racial injustice: Black Lives Matter, NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and The Minnesota Freedom Fund.”

[..] It is not immediately evident what it means exactly to donate to “Black Lives Matter,” a mostly loosely organized movement of disassociated activists and protesters across the country and the world. The campaign’s nominal central authority does accept donations, though it is not evident how those funds are dispensed. The companies Ganni, Anastasia Beverly Hills, Pretty Little Thing and others all pledged to donate to Black Lives Matter, among other causes.

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I sort of see why they would do it, I can even see a few ways that might make it work, but a lot more ways that won’t. And if the council president says: “Our efforts at incremental reform have failed, period.”, shouldn’t the council perhaps disband itself also?

Minneapolis City Council Votes To Disband Police Force (AP)

A majority of the members of the Minneapolis City Council said Sunday they support disbanding the city’s police department, an aggressive stance that comes just as the state has launched a civil rights investigation after George Floyd’s death. Nine of the council’s 12 members appeared with activists at a rally in a city park Sunday afternoon and vowed to end policing as the city currently knows it. Council member Jeremiah Ellison promised that the council would “dismantle” the department. “It is clear that our system of policing is not keeping our communities safe,” Lisa Bender, the council president, said. “Our efforts at incremental reform have failed, period.” Bender went on to say she and the eight other council members that joined the rally are committed to ending the city’s relationship with the police force and “to end policing as we know it and recreate systems that actually keep us safe.”


[..] Community activists have criticized the Minneapolis department for years for what they say is a racist and brutal culture that resists change. The state of Minnesota launched a civil rights investigation of the department last week, and the first concrete changes came Friday in a stipulated agreement in which the city agreed to ban chokeholds and neck restraints. A more complete remaking of the department is likely to unfold in coming months. Disbanding an entire department has happened before. In 2012, with crime rampant in Camden, New Jersey, the city disbanded its police department and replaced it with a new force that covered Camden County.

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“57 officers did *not* resign in solidarity with the officers who pushed over a 75-year-old causing brain injury. This turns out to be a lie from the police union.”

“We quit because our union said [they] aren’t legally backing us anymore. So why would we stand on a line for the City with no legal backing if something [were to] happen?”

Buffalo Police ERT Members Say Resignation Was Not In Solidarity (WKBW)

“It went bad. It went bad.” Two officers of the Buffalo Police Department’s Emergency Response Team spoke with 7 Eyewitness News under the condition their names not be used. The officers are part of the 57-person volunteer assignment team that resigned Friday, following an incident involving two of their members Thursday night in Niagara Square. They did not resign from the police department, only from their roles on the team. The officers we spoke with said the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association’s statement asserting all 57 officers resigned from ERT in a “show of support” with the two officers that were suspended without pay is not true.

“I don’t understand why the union said it’s a thing of solidarity. I think it sends the wrong message that ‘we’re backing our own’ and that’s not the case,” said one officer with whom we spoke. “We quit because our union said [they] aren’t legally backing us anymore. So why would we stand on a line for the City with no legal backing if something [were to] happen? Has nothing to do with us supporting,” said another. A representative from the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association told 7 Eyewitness News Reporter Hannah Buehler the officers resigned in “disgust” with how the two officers were treated. “Some of them probably resigned because they support the officer,” said another officer with whom we spoke. “But, for many of us, that’s not true.”


“The City, DA Flynn, they’re not representing those guys at all. They have to find their own lawyers, they have to come out of pocket.” 7 Eyewitness News was not able to reach PBA president John Evans to confirm this information or get a response to several officers shooting down his assertions, but we did obtain an email sent to PBA members by Evans. It states, in part: “In light of this, in order to maintain the sound financial structure of the PBA it will be my opinion the PBA NOT to pay for any ERT or SWAT members legal defense related to these protests going forward. This Admin in conjunction with DA John Flynn and or JP Kennedy could put a serious dent in the PBA’s funds.”

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Things are going to change one way or another.

NYPD, City Hall Deny Police Brass Shake-Up (Pix11)

Text messages and Facebook posts went into overdrive Sunday in New York’s law enforcement community, with claims top leaders in the NYPD were either resigning or being asked to leave, with replacements ready to step in. “This is not true,” tweeted Freddi Goldstein, press secretary to Mayor Bill de Blasio. NYPD Deputy Commissioner Richard Esposito, over the phone, also said it wasn’t true. But we’re learning there are tensions behind the scenes about the specific fate of two police officers involved in confrontations with protesters in the last twelve days. Both of the cops were suspended without pay on Friday. One of them allegedly knocked down a female protester, Dounya Zayer, outside the Barclays Center in Brooklyn in the early days of the George Floyd protests.

Zayer said she suffered seizures, as a result. Another cop was seen on video pulling down the mask of a male demonstrator and spraying the man’s face with pepper spray. Multiple sources said there’s anger among the rank and file—and among some of the NYPD brass—about the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office considering criminal charges against the two officers. When PIX11 called a spokesman for the Brooklyn DA’s office Sunday evening, we were told, “We’re investigating both of these cases. It’s not true both are going to be arrested imminently. It might happen in the future.” The NYPD has dealt with a lot of turmoil in the last two weeks. “This is all about pandering to anti-cop sentiment,” said a former NYPD Deputy Commissioner.


Multiple police officers have been under siege during the protests, trying to fend off looters, brick and bottle throwers and the burning of NYPD vehicles. Officer Yayon Jean Pierre was stabbed in the neck last week while working an anti-looting post, and two other cops were shot in the hand. Several other officers have been hit by cars, one of them hurt seriously. Sergeant’s Benevolent Association President Ed Mullins, said his phone was exploding with calls about behind-the-scenes clashes between the NYPD and City Hall. “The losers in this are not going to be the cops,” Mullins said. “It’s going to be the public.” Mullins said he didn’t believe the protests were continuing because of the NYPD. “I think it’s about overthrowing the presidency,” he said.

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Again: storm warning. The “left” will try and label it all political. But if that fails, where are they?

33 Russia Collusion Probe Witnesses The Senate Could Subpoena (Solomon)

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Ron Johnson, Wis., now has the authority to subpoena the agencies and individuals he wants to interrogate or to turn over documents. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham hopes to get his subpoena power this week. [..] The scope of the subpoenas suggests a far-reaching inquiry. For instance, the FBI will be asked to surrender “all records related to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. This includes, but is not limited to, all records provided or made available to the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice for its review that resulted in the report ‘Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation’; and all records related to requests to the General Services Administration (GSA) or Office of the Inspector General of GSA for presidential transition records from November 2016 through December 2017.”

The State Department will be asked to produce records of its contacts with Christopher Steele, the former MI6 operative who penned the unverified dossier that was used by the bureau as essential evidence in pursuing the case. And the DNI will be asked for all records related to the Obama administration’s unmasking of Trump campaign and transition figures in intelligence intercepts. The list of individuals that Johnson’s committee is seeking to question or seek documents from includes some familiar figures in the controversy, like fired FBI Director James Comey, ex-FBI Counsel James Baker, fired FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and his paramour, the former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice, whose final email on the day she left office about President Obama’s dealings in the Russia probe has stoked great intrigue.


Senate investigators plan to delve into discrepancies in stories between Comey and Brennan over the intelligence community assessment that Russia tried to help Trump win the 2016 election and Comey and Clapper over who briefed President Obama in early January 2017 about a sensitive intercept of a conversation between incoming Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and the Russian ambassador to Washington. One of the most anticipated witnesses is Bill Priestap, the former FBI assistant director of counterintelligence, who supervised Strzok’s Russia investigation and interacted often with former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe.

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In other words: half the country are deplorables. Same issue, same question she asked in 2016. Never learned a single thing.

Hillary: How Can Anybody With Beating Heart, Working Mind Support Trump? (Ind.)

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke out about her 2016 presidential rival Donald Trump, calling his time in office a “failure” and questioning how anyone could continue to support him. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Ms Clinton lashed out at President Donald Trump, criticising his leadership and characterising him as uncaring and incompetent. “What has been so surprising to me is how he can barely make an effort to rise to the occasion. I truly don’t think he can get out of his own way. Everything always has to be about him,” Ms Clinton said. She said Mr Trump tried to ignore the coronavirus pandemic until he was forced to address it, after which she claims he tried to turn the pandemic response into a “daily rally.”

Regarding the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent protests against police brutality and systemic racism in the US, Ms Clinton suggested she had initially hoped that Mr Trump was going to respond with empathy, but that it quickly became clear that wasn’t going to be the case. “He doesn’t have even the minor amount of empathy to fake it, to look like he is concerned, and he reverts to the belligerence and the threat-making and the photo-opping, all the tried and true tactics that feed his need for control and dominance and attention,” Ms Clinton said. Of Mr Trump’s “photo-opping,” his appearance at St John’s Church near the White House – and the tear gassing of protesters to clear the path for the president – has become one of the many flashpoints in the George Floyd protests.


“It was beyond my comprehension. We have never seen anything like this,” she said. “He is without shame. It is a mystery why anybody with a beating heart and a working mind still supports him.” She said that despite the fact that Mr Trump’s character was apparent during the election, even she wasn’t prepared for the degree to which the president would shuck norms. “So much of what we’re seeing now, sadly, was known about Trump and the kind of people who were loyal to him. But it turned out to be even worse than what I thought it would be,” she said. “Despite having my own front-row seat and being concerned about his character and behaviour, he has gone further and broken more norms and undermined our institutions more deeply than I thought would have been possible in such a short period of time.”

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Jordan hasn’t had the best of times either.

Rep. Jordan: Not Surprising McCabe, Rosenstein Disagree

It’s not surprising that former FBI Director Andrew McCabe and ex-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein disagree about the events surrounding the Russia probe, Rep. Jim Jordan said Thursday. “Somebody is not telling the truth because former FBI counsel Jim Baker told us when we deposed him last Congress, in the Judiciary Committee, that Rod Rosenstein was serious about wearing a wire and using the 25th Amendment to try to remove President [Donald] Trump from office,” the Ohio Republican told Fox News’ “Fox and Friends.” “Somebody is not being square and I guess maybe when you are engaged in this kind of wrongdoing which happened at the upper levels of the FBI, maybe it’s tough to keep your story straight.”

McCabe on Wednesday accused Rosenstein of lying about ex-FBI Director James Comey’s memos about his meetings with Trump. Rosenstein testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that McCabe should have told him sooner about the Comey documents, reports Fox News. “Mr. Rosenstein’s claims to have been misled by me, or anyone from the FBI, regarding our concerns about President Trump and the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russia are completely false,” McCabe said in a statement Wednesday. Rosenstein signed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act application to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page, named Bob Mueller as special counsel, and broadened the scope of the Russia investigation, Jordan pointed out.


“The guy who did all of that now says there wasn’t anything there,” said Jordan. “That’s what we have been saying for three years … yet Rosenstein names Bob Mueller as a special counsel and puts our country three years of what we went through. That’s why people are upset about this and that’s why we have got to get to the bottom of it all.”

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Intriguing. Made me think of Einstein love of simplicity.

Diluting the blood of mice with saline/albumin rejuvenates them.


Original paper: Rejuvenation of three germ layers tissues by exchanging old blood plasma with saline-albumin

Out With the Old Blood (Mitteldorf)

There is great promise in 2020 that we might be able to make our bodies young without having to explicitly repair molecular damage, but just by changing the signaling environment. Do we need to add signals that say “young” or remove signals that say “old”? Does infusion of biochemical signals from young blood plasma rejuvenate tissues of an old animal? Or are there dissolved signal proteins in old animals that must be removed? For a decade, Irena and Mike Conboy have been telling us removal of bad actors is more important. But just last month, Harold Katcher reported spectacular success by infusing a plasma fraction while taking away nothing. Then, last week, the Conboys came back with a demonstration of the rejuvenating power of simple dilution.


They simply replaced half of the blood plasma in 2-year-old mice with a saline solution containing 5% albumin. What is albumin? Blood plasma is chock full of dissolved proteins, about 10% by weight. About half of these are termed albumin. Albumin is the generic portion. It doesn’t change through the lifetime. It doesn’t carry information by itself. But albumin transports nutrients and minerals through the body. The Conboys took care to show that albumin has no rejuvenation power on its own, and had nothing to do with their experimental results. Rather, they had to replenish albumin in diluting blood, because the animals would be sickened if half their albumin were removed. Replacing the albumin in a transfusion is akin to replacing the volume of water or maintaining the salinity.

In preparation for this experiment, the Conboys have invested years in miniaturizing the technology for blood transfusions, so that mice can be subjected to the same procedures that are commonplace in human hospitals. The Conboy lab replaced 50% of mouse blood plasma. They got spectacular results with a single treatment, based on a lucky guess. They have not yet experimented with 30% or 70%. They don’t know yet how long the treatment will last and how long it needs to be repeated. As with previous papers from the Conboy lab, the group focused on repair and stem cell activity as evidence of a more youthful state. Three separate tissue samples were taken from liver, muscle, and brain. “Muscle repair was improved, fibrosis was attenuated, and inhibition of myogenic proliferation was switched to enhancement; liver adiposity and fibrosis were reduced; and hippocampal neurogenesis was increased.”

Read more …

 

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on people’s kind donations. Since their revenue has collapsed, ads no longer pay for all you read, and your support is now an integral part of the interaction.

Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elmer Fudd has singlehandedly solved the US gun problem:

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime.

 

Jun 072020
 


Banksy June 2020

 

 

Coronavirus Shows Global Consequences Of China’s Local Censorship (SCMP)
More Than 140 Zuckerberg-Funded Scientists Want Facebook To Censor Trump (G.)
Cuba Sets Example With Successful Program To Contain Coronavirus (G.)
Brazil Govt Yanks Virus Death Toll As Data Befuddles Experts (AP)
China Would Make A Coronavirus Vaccine A ‘Global Public Good’ (R.)
FBI Pledge Allegiance to Black Lives Matter, Antifa (CTH)
Banksy: “It’s Not Their Problem, It’s Mine” (PA)
Walmart CEO Pledges $100 Million To Address Systemic Racism (Hill)
For Millennials And Women, The Jobs Report Was Catastrophic (ZH)
‘Never Say Never’ On ECB Buying Shares: Governing Council Member (R.)
Elmer Fudd Will Not Have A Gun In ‘Looney Tunes’ Reboot (Hill)
Mexico To Sit Out Extension Of OPEC+ Oil Output Cuts (R.)
DOJ, 50 State AGs Inn Push To Breakup Google’s Ad-Tech Dominance (ZH)
Judge In Epstein Grand Jury Case Has Ties To People Involved (Julie K. Brown)

 

 

The entire world increasingly retreats into echo chambers deeply buried in trenches, goaded onwards by mass value signaling and gaslighting. It is scary.

 

 

Total global cases surpassed 7,000,000.


Total global deaths surpassed 400,000.

 

 

Worldometer puts global new cases for June 5 at + 128,039.

My count from about 6 am EDT to 6 am EDT is+ 132,816 cases.

 

 

 

 

New cases past 24 hours in:

• US + 22,836
• Brazil + 30,488
• Russia + 8,984
• India + 10,086
• Pakistan + 4,960
• Chile + 5,246

 

 

Cases 7,004,814 (+ 132,816 from yesterday’s 6,871,728)

Deaths 402,665 (+ 4,002 from yesterday’s 398,663)

 

 

Note: Italy, Spain, France stripped out. They combine for 90,000 deaths.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Worldometer yesterday evening -before their day’s close-:

 

 

From Worldometer:

 

 

From COVID19Info.live:

 

 

 

 

Interesting: other than in purely moral terms, to what degree does censorship hinder the world in finding a response to disasters like pandemics?

Coronavirus Shows Global Consequences Of China’s Local Censorship (SCMP)

China has the world’s highest number of internet users at over 854 million in 2019 according to the country’s Cyberspace Administration. However, its online world is confined within the so-called “Great Firewall”, and everything from criticism of the government to pornography is censored. Technology companies that run China’s social media platforms employ thousands of content moderators as censors and develop algorithms to prevent anything sensitive from being published or to quickly remove it, while foreign websites and social media platforms such Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are blocked.

[..] About 19 posts per 1,000 were removed – almost 700 from 37,226 – when China’s Centres for Disease Control published a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine on January 29 that indicated officials knew of human-to-human transmission of Covid-19 earlier than admitted. The authorities had previously claimed there was no evidence of human-to-human spread of the disease “so that’s why this was the top grievance”, Fu said. “There were a lot of people complaining and reacting to that paper.” News of the coronavirus became public on December 30, 2019, after screenshots from doctors’ chat groups warning about an unknown respiratory illness spread online. But police reprimanded some of the doctors who tried to raise the alarm, including Li Wenliang who later died from the disease, prompting a huge outpouring of public grief and anger.

Li’s death on February 7 prompted another spike in censorship with three posts per 1,000 – 117 out of 40,232 – relating to the topic being censored that day. Again, Fu said, what seemed like a low number was explained by the huge amount of posts and the fact that many would not have been detected by Weiboscope because they did not mention Li’s name to avoid the censors. Independent journalists have also been targeted, and two citizen journalists Chen Qiushi and Fang Bin are still missing after they disappeared in February after reporting from Wuhan, the city at the centre of the initial Covid-19 outbreak in China.

Research published in the journal Nature last month estimated that if strong intervention had been taken against Covid-19 in China a week earlier, cases could have been “dramatically reduced” by 66 per cent. Acting three weeks earlier, at the start of January, would have reduced the number of cases by 95 per cent, according to the paper by scientists from China, the United States and Britain. “Early warnings allow governments to take early action,” Fu said. “We find evidence that social media posts including early warnings to the public were censored especially in the early stage of the pandemic.”

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Would they like their own work censored as well? Or just the people they don’t agree with?

More Than 140 Zuckerberg-Funded Scientists Want Facebook To Censor Trump (G.)

More than 140 scientists funded by Mark Zuckerberg have said Facebook should not be letting Donald Trump use the social media platform to “spread both misinformation and incendiary statements”. The researchers, who include more than 60 professors at leading US research institutions and one Nobel laureate, sent the Facebook CEO a letter on Saturday asking him to “consider stricter policies on misinformation and incendiary language that harms people”, especially during the current turmoil over racial injustice. The letter calls the spread of “deliberate misinformation and divisive language” contrary to the researchers’ goals of using technology to prevent and eradicate disease, improve childhood education and reform the criminal justice system.

Their mission “is antithetical to some of the stances that Facebook has been taking, so we’re encouraging them to be more on the side of truth and on the right side of history, as we’ve said in the letter”, said Debora Marks of Harvard Medical School, one of three professors who organized it. The others are Martin Kampmann of the University of California, San Francisco, and Jason Shepherd of the University of Utah. All have grants from a Chan Zuckerberg Initiative program working to prevent, cure and treat neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. They said the letter had more than 160 signatories. Shepherd said about 10% were employees of foundations run by Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.


The letter objects specifically to Zuckerberg’s decision not to act on a post by Trump that stated “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”. The letter’s authors called the post “a clear statement of inciting violence”.

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“..tens of thousands of family doctors, nurses and medical students to “actively screen” all homes on the island for cases of Covid-19 – every single day.”

Cuba Sets Example With Successful Program To Contain Coronavirus (G.)

The World Health Organization has identified Latin America as the new centre for coronavirus pandemic, but over the last two months, cases in Cuba have fallen. Cubans are now 24 times less likely to catch the virus than Dominicans, 27 times less likely to catch it than Mexicans, and more than 70 times less likely to be infected than Brazilians. Desperate for tourist revenue, Cuba closed its border later than most other countries in the region. But ever since the communist-ruled island shut out the outside world in late March, it has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at the virus. The state has commanded tens of thousands of family doctors, nurses and medical students to “actively screen” all homes on the island for cases of Covid-19 – every single day.


That means that from Monday to Sunday, Dr Caballero and her medical students must walk for miles, monitoring the 328 families on her beat. “There’s no other country in the hemisphere that does anything approaching this,” said William Leogrande, professor of government at American University in Washington DC. “The whole organization of their healthcare system is to be in close touch with the population, identify health problems as they emerge, and deal with them immediately. “We know scientifically that quick identification of cases, contact tracing and quarantine are the only way to contain the virus in the absence of a vaccine – and because it begins with prevention, the Cuban health system is perfectly suited to carry out that containment strategy.”

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Johns Hopkins depended on those numbers. Don’t know about Worldometer.

Brazil Govt Yanks Virus Death Toll As Data Befuddles Experts (AP)

Brazil’s government has stopped publishing a running total of coronavirus deaths and infections in an extraordinary move that critics call an attempt to hide the true toll of the disease in Latin America’s largest nation. The Saturday move came after months of criticism from experts saying Brazil’s statistics are woefully deficient, and in some cases manipulated, so it may never be possible to gain a real understanding of the depth of the pandemic in the country. Brazil’s last official numbers showed it had recorded over 34,000 deaths related to the coronavirus, the third-highest number in the world, just ahead of Italy. It reported nearly 615,000 infections, putting it at the second-highest, behind the United States. Brazil, with about 210 million people, is the globe’s seventh most populous nation.

On Friday, the federal Health Ministry took down a website that had showed daily, weekly and monthly figures on infections and deaths in Brazilian states. On Saturday, the site returned but the total numbers of infections for states and the nation were no longer there. The site now shows only the numbers for the previous 24 hours. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro tweeted Saturday that disease totals are “not representative” of the country’s current situation. A Bolsonaro ally contended to the newspaper O Globo that at least some states providing figures to the Health Ministry had sent falsified data, implying that they were exaggerating the toll. Carlos Wizard, a businessman expected to assume a high-level post in the Health Ministry, said the federal government would be conducting a review intended to determine a “more accurate” toll.


[..] A council of state health secretaries said it would fight the changes by Bolsonaro, who has dismissed the gravity of the coronavirus pandemic and tried to thwart attempts to impose quarantines, curfews and social distancing, arguing those steps are causing more damage to the economy than the pandemic. “The authoritarian, insensitive, inhumane and unethical attempt to make the COVID-19 deaths invisible will not prosper,” the health secretaries council said Saturday.

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US Senator Scott says they’ll do the opposite, even hinder western attempts at a vaccine.

China Would Make A Coronavirus Vaccine A ‘Global Public Good’ (R.)

China will increase international cooperation if it succeeds in developing a novel coronavirus vaccine, the science and technology minister said on Sunday. China would make a vaccine a “global public good” when it is ready, the minister, Wang Zhigang, told a news conference in Beijing.

[..] China is expending great efforts in the global scramble to develop a vaccine for the new coronaries epidemic that began in its central city of Wuhan, with Chinese researchers conducting five separate clinical trials on humans, or half of all such trials globally, according to the data compiled by the World Health Organization. President Xi Jinping vowed last month at the World Heath Assembly, the WHO’s governing body, that vaccines China’s develops will become a “global public good” once they are ready for use, and it will be China’s contribution to ensuring vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries.


Developing “a vaccine is still the fundamental strategy in our effort to overcome the new coronavirus,” Science and Technology Minister Wang Zhigang told a news conference in Beijing. But vaccine development is very difficult and takes time, he said, when asked how China would initially prioritise shots by country when a vaccine is found. “The rigour of vaccine development has been compared by some scientists to a dance involving precise steps and rehearsals,” Wang said.

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How right wing America views the issue. They feel betrayed by the FBI because of Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Lisa Page, Russiagate and the impeachment fiasco.

FBI Pledge Allegiance to Black Lives Matter, Antifa (CTH)

In a display of public unity with ‘The Movement’ writ large, FBI officials took a knee to declare their woke allegiance with the protesting mobs. With that visible display we now have a better understanding of the motives behind a history of FBI failures. Setting aside the optic that some members of the FBI looking more like ‘meal-team-6’, there was always a suspicion the FBI were more concerned about political correctness than actually doing the work of a federal investigative agency. Historically the FBI has failed miserably to stop domestic terror threats; and when the investigative failures are researched there’s usually a prior connection between the attackers and the FBI.

The father of the Orlando Pulse nightclub terrorist, Omar Mateen, was a guy named Seddique Mateen (you might remember seeing him at the Hillary Clinton rally). After Omar killed 49 people it was discovered that Seddique had been an FBI informant for over eleven years (2005 to 2016). Similarly, after the Parkland school shooting, it was discovered the FBI was fully aware of Nikolas Cruz, yet again they had taken no action. The exact same scenario had played out several years earlier when the FBI was warned about the Tsarnaev brothers before the Boston Marathon Bombing 2013 and yet they did nothing to stop it.


The FBI is now a political agency with police powers within the federal government. The activity of Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, James Comey, Andrew McCabe and a host of very familiar names has shown just how important politics is within the institution. Indeed, as we saw in the ridiculous Hillary Clinton investigation, politics was the prism for every decision; and protecting their ideological tribe was the biggest concern within the agency. Understanding the sensitivity behind the FBI to the Muslim community; a sensitivity almost identical to the expressed position of the democrat party apparatus; it should not come as a big surprise to see FBI agents ignoring terror threats and simultaneously taking a knee to show their allegiance with Black Lives Matter.

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The headline the Guardian used for this PA Media piece is “Banksy Supports Black Lives Matter With Latest Artwork”. But he doesn’t, or we don’t know if he does, not from his words. He supports black people, not some movement.

Banksy: “It’s Not Their Problem, It’s Mine” (PA)

Banksy has shown his support for the Black Lives Matter movement, saying “people of colour are being failed by the system”. The graffiti artist wrote in an Instagram post: “At first I thought I should just shut up and listen to black people about this issue. But why would I do that? It’s not their problem, it’s mine. “People of colour are being failed by the system. The white system. Like a broken pipe flooding the apartment of the people living downstairs. The faulty system is making their life a misery, but it’s not their job to fix it. They can’t, no one will let them in the apartment upstairs. “This is a white problem. And if white people don’t fix it, someone will have to come upstairs and kick the door in.”

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Walmart supports black people. What a joke that is.

A single Tweet says it all: “Walmart is the largest private employer of Black people in the US, is viciously anti-union, and pays poverty wages..”

Walmart CEO Pledges $100 Million To Address Systemic Racism (Hill)

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon is pledging to donate $100 million over five years to create a new center on racial equity following the death of George Floyd, a black man who died as a result of an arrest by Minneapolis police. In an email to employees Friday, McMillon condemned racial violence and said the company plans to make changes to fight for greater racial equity inside and outside of Walmart. “The global health crisis has tested all of us in recent months, and the racial violence in the U.S.— in particular, the murder of George Floyd — is tragic, painful and unacceptable,” McMillon wrote in the email. The Walmart CEO laid out several initiatives the company will undertake, including making the recruitment, development and support of African Americans inside the company “even more of a priority.”


The company will also invest in improving fairness, equity and justice in society broadly. “We will find the natural overlaps between Walmart’s core business and society’s larger needs that perpetuate racism and discrimination,” McMillon wrote. “Specifically, we’re going to focus the power of Walmart on our nation’s financial, healthcare, education and criminal justice systems.” McMillon said the center focused on racial equity “will seek to advance economic opportunity and healthier living, including issues surrounding the social determinants of health, strengthening workforce development and related educational systems, and support criminal justice reform with an emphasis on examining barriers to opportunity faced by those exiting the system.”

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Trump is so eager to praise the headline numbers that he forgets they are nonsense, and misses the opportunity to tell people to try harder.

For Millennials And Women, The Jobs Report Was Catastrophic (ZH)

There were clear problems with Friday’s “incredible” – as Trump put it – jobs report. First and foremost the BLS’ own admission there was a “survey error” which may have reduced the real unemployment rate by up to 3% as survey-takers mistakenly counted about 4.9 million temporarily laid-off people as employed, then moving through some very aggressive statistical assumption revisions to boost the “birth/death” model, the curious case of millions of “jobs” resurrected temporarily thanks to the PPP program: as recruitment firm LaSalle Network head Tom Gimbel said, today’s jobs report may offer a “false ray of light” because almost all job gains stemmed from furloughed employees kept on the books due to PPP loans (he said he was seeing real weakness in new hiring).


But even if one accepts the report at its face, if one digs beneath the glossy veneer, the details are anything but “incredible” as described by the president. Start with Trump’s “incredible” V-shaped rebound: after the 2.5mm new jobs added, total US employment is basically where it was at the depth of the financial crisis, while 21 million workers find themselves unemployed – this number was 6 million just two months ago. Putting that number in context, with roughly 133 million employed workers, there are a record 102 million Americans who are not in the labor force, of whom 92.7 million don’t even want a job.

Among those who were lucky enough to remain in the work force, millions were shifted from full to part-time.

[..] And here is the catalyst for the next round of social discontent: women unemployment is now far higher than that of men after being roughly the same before covid: how long before accusation of rampant employer sexism are the next big thing?

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Dangerous because clueless. Trying to revive the past, because that’s what got him his job.

‘Never Say Never’ On ECB Buying Shares: Governing Council Member (R.)

“Never say never” on the European Central Bank one day buying shares rather than government or corporate bonds, but it has not discussed the idea yet, ECB Governing Council member Robert Holzmann said in comments published on Sunday. The ECB on Thursday announced a bigger-than-expected expansion of its stimulus package to prop up an economy plunged by the coronavirus pandemic into its worst recession since World War Two. Holzmann took over as head of the Austrian National Bank just last year but has already been outspoken on various issues, calling for the ECB to lower its often-undershot inflation target and warning against negative rates. He also says he initially suggested that Thursday’s decision be put off.


“Never say never. If the need is there, this discussion will definitely have to take place. But currently that discussion does not exist,” Holzmann told newspaper Die Presse when asked if the ECB could start buying shares. On lowering the inflation target from just under 2%, Holzmann said he could still change his stance in a discussion that the ECB has pushed back because of the pandemic. “If it is difficult to get from 1.5% to 1.9%, then in a time of low inflation expectations one can also set oneself a different target, although I myself have not yet formed a final opinion here,” Holzmann said. “The fundamental discussion on ECB strategy has been postponed because of the crisis and should be taken up again as of the summer,” he added.

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How to make guns magically disappear.

Elmer Fudd Will Not Have A Gun In ‘Looney Tunes’ Reboot (Hill)

In a new series based on the beloved “Looney Tunes” cartoons, the classic character Elmer Fudd will no longer carry a gun. The new series “Looney Tunes Cartoons,” which premiered last week on the streaming service HBO Max, will feature the cartoon’s characteristic violence – using sticks of dynamite, booby traps and the iconic anvils and bank safes dropped onto characters, The New York Times reported last week. However, Peter Browngardt, the series executive producer and showrunner, told the outlet, “We’re not doing guns.” “But we can do cartoony violence — TNT, the Acme stuff. All that was kind of grandfathered in,” Browngardt told the outlet.


Elmer Fudd is regularly foiled trying to hunt Bugs Bunny on the show. In the new series, the character will carry a scythe. However, comics artist Johnny Ryan, who worked on the show, noted to the Times that he believes “We’re going through this wave of anti-bullying, everybody needs to be friends, everybody needs to get along.” “‘Looney Tunes’ is pretty much the antithesis of that,” he said. “It’s two characters in conflict, sometimes getting pretty violent.”

https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1269487929463898112

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OPEC+ meets COVID19. That was nnever going to be smooth.

Mexico To Sit Out Extension Of OPEC+ Oil Output Cuts (R.)

Mexico will not join other top oil producers in extending through July output cuts aimed at propping up the price of crude, Energy Minister Rocio Nahle said on Saturday. Made up of OPEC members and allies led by Russia, the group known as OPEC+ agreed in April to cut oil supply by 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd) in May and June to support prices. Under that deal, Mexico pledged to reduce its crude output by 100,000 bpd in May and June, after resisting pressure from other oil producers to make cuts of 400,000 bpd. The cuts had been due to taper to 7.7 million bpd from July to December, but on Saturday, OPEC+ agreed to extend the production cuts until the end of July.


Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who has vowed to ramp up the country’s crude oil production, said on Friday that Mexico was not in a position to make additional cuts on top of what it had agreed in April. His energy minister Rocio Nahle confirmed Mexico would not participate in the fresh cuts agreed on Saturday. “There are other countries that extended their cuts to July, in this case we said no, we’ll stick to the agreement that we signed in April,” she told reporters in the eastern state of Veracruz. “There’s no problem.”

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They’re going to frustrate the CIA? I’ll believe it when I see it.

DOJ, 50 State AGs Inn Push To Breakup Google’s Ad-Tech Dominance (ZH)

In what would be a monumental move — and we might ad good for independent media breaking the shackles of the mainstream’s ongoing attempts to police content and punish dissent — Google’s total dominance over online advertising could soon come to an end. CNBC revealed Friday that no less than 50 sate attorneys general have been investigating Google’s business practices as part of a months long probe alongside a parallel DOJ effort, and momentum is gaining toward a looming major antitrust lawsuit against the internet giant. Leading the probe among the states is Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who did not comment in Friday’s CNBC report.

Google, however, did respond, with a Google spokesperson rebutting with, “The facts are clear, our digital advertising products compete across a crowded industry with hundreds of rivals and technologies, and have helped lower costs for advertisers and consumers.” President Trump has lately put big tech in the spotlight over allegations of targeted censorship of conservative content, lately signing an executive order which seeks to reduce liability protections of major internet companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google. Independent and alternative voices have also long complained of being demonetized or unfairly targeted for analysis and commentary falling outside of accepted ‘groupthink’.


It remains that the bulk of Google’s some $161 billion in revenue comes via ad sales, with a far smaller amount coming through products the tech giant and its parent company Alphabet Inc. are traditionally known for: software and technology. CNBC summarizes what’s at stake as follows: “Critics have said that Google bundles its ad tools so that rivals can’t afford to match its offerings and that its operation of search results, YouTube, Gmail and other services to hinder ad competition. They also say that Google owns all sides of the “auction exchange” through which ads are sold and bought, giving it an unfair advantage.” But a key legal obstacle the courts would have to consider is the fact that Google’s ad group doesn’t function as a stand alone business, but is made up of Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform, and Google Ad Manager.

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Julie K. Brown at the Miami herald is back. Worse than any fantasy, or book, or movie.

Judge In Epstein Grand Jury Case Has Ties To People Involved (Julie K. Brown)

The Palm Beach judge who has thus far refused to release grand jury records in the Jeffrey Epstein case has both professional and family ties to three of the politicians who have a stake in keeping those records secret, the Miami Herald has learned. Krista Marx, the Palm Beach chief judge who also heads a panel that polices judicial conduct, has potential conflicts of interest involving three prominent players embroiled in the Epstein sex-trafficking saga: State Attorney Dave Aronberg, who has been sued by the Palm Beach Post to release the grand jury records; Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, whose department’s favored treatment of Epstein while he was in the Palm Beach County jail is part of an ongoing state criminal investigation; and ex-State Attorney Barry Krischer, part of the same investigation in connection with his decision not to prosecute Epstein on child-sex charges.

Special prosecutors appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis went to court in January to unseal records of Krischer’s secret 2006 state grand jury presentment in the case. Prosecutors wanted to examine whether Krischer’s office told the panel the full scope of Epstein’s crimes, or whether state prosecutors kept key evidence from the grand jury. The grand jury returned a minor charge of solicitation of prostitution against Epstein, who later managed to negotiate a lenient plea deal, resulting in him serving 13 months in the Palm Beach County Jail, much of at his lavish office in West Palm Beach, thanks to generous work-release provisions.

Last year, following a series of stories in the Miami Herald detailing the machinations behind Epstein’s plea deal, DeSantis ordered a state criminal probe focusing on Krischer’s decision not to prosecute and on Bradshaw’s role in helping Epstein maintain an opulent lifestyle — including having sex with women — while subject to sheriff’s custody on sex charges. But Marx in January rejected the criminal prosecutors’ effort to unseal the grand jury records, calling it a “fishing expedition.’’ Then on Wednesday, she rebuffed a similar request by attorneys representing the Post, who sued Aronberg, and the county clerk, Sharon Bock, for release of the records.

Marx was dismissive of the Post’s lawsuit against Aronberg, who has denied he has custody of the grand jury records; and Bock, who has custody of the records but won’t release them without a court order. Marx, however, did not disclose from the bench that Krischer was her former boss, that her daughter works for Aronberg as an assistant state attorney and that her son works for Bradshaw as a sheriff’s deputy. Marx’s husband, Palm Beach County Judge Joe Marx, has a disclosure on his county web page stating he would recuse himself from any cases that involve his two stepchildren. Krista Marx’s county web page does not have such a disclosure.

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