Jul 062021
 
 July 6, 2021  Posted by at 8:53 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  85 Responses »


Edourd Manet A Bar at the Folies-Bergère 1882

 

Israel Sees Plunge In Pfizer Vaccine Efficacy Rate Due To Delta Variant (BBG)
Lambda Covid-19 Variant From Peru May Be Resistant To Vaccines (NYP)
9 Reasons Not to Support, Mandate Investigational COVID19 Vaccines (McCullough)
The Chicken-and-Egg Problem (Which Came First?) (VanDen Bossche)
How the Moderna Covid-19 mRNA Vaccine Was Made So Quickly (CNBC)
Can Immune Responses Alone Reveal Which Covid-19 Vaccines Work Best? (Smag)
T Cells: Why Immunity Is About More Than Antibodies (CEBM)
Refusing To Be Vaccinated Against Covid A ’Sin’ – Russian Orthodox Church (RT)
Relaxing Of Covid Restrictions In England Sparks Social Media Meltdown (Clark)
HIV Vaccine Trial Launched At Oxford In Bid To End ‘40-Year Wait’ (RT)
The Dollar’s Declining Status as Dominant “Global Reserve Currency” (WS)
The Ice-Cream Flavor Next Time (Kunstler)

 

 

 

 

Suramin

 

 

VanDen Bossche?

Israel Sees Plunge In Pfizer Vaccine Efficacy Rate Due To Delta Variant (BBG)

Israel has recorded a steep drop in the efficacy rate of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in preventing coronavirus infections, due to the spread of the Delta variant and the easing of government restrictions, Ynet news website reported, citing Health Ministry data. At the same time, the decline in protection against serious cases and hospitalisation is considerably milder, the website said. The figures show that between May 2 and June 5, the vaccine had a 94.3 per cent efficacy rate. From June 6, five days after the government cancelled coronavirus restrictions, until early July, the rate plunged to 64 per cent. A similar decline was recorded in protection against coronavirus symptoms, the report said. At the same time, protection against hospitalisation and serious illness remained strong.


From May 2 to June 5, the efficacy rate in preventing hospitalisation was 98.2 per cent, compared with 93 per cent from June 6 to July 3. A similar decline in the rate was recorded for the vaccine’s efficiency in preventing serious illness among people who had been inoculated. These figures are in line with ministry data that show many of the new cases are among people who have been vaccinated, while the number of serious cases is rising much more slowly, Ynet said. Last Friday, 55 per cent of the newly infected had been vaccinated, the website said. As at July 4, there were 35 serious cases of coronavirus in Israel, compared with 21 on June 19. [..] Israel had one of the world’s most effective coronavirus inoculation drives. Some 57 per cent of the general population is fully vaccinated, including 88 per cent of the population above the age of 50 – the group considered most at risk for serious cases.

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The more vaccinations, the higher the chance for more variants. The official narrative has this completely upside down, but it will take a lot for them to declare defeat. Booster shots sounds a lot better to them.

Lambda Covid-19 Variant From Peru May Be Resistant To Vaccines (NYP)

Scientists fear that a highly contagious new COVID-19 variant that is ravaging Peru may be resistant to vaccines. The Lambda mutation, or C.37, appears to have emerged in Peru last August — and is now being blamed for the country having the highest pandemic death rate in the world. The concerning strain has since spread to around 30 countries, mostly in Latin America — but also as far as the UK, which has recorded at least eight cases, according to government figures. There are no known cases of the Lambda strain in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Peru, Lambda has accounted for 81 percent of new infections tested for variants since April, according to the World Health Organization.

The South American nation currently has by far the highest mortality rate in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University data. There, nearly 10 percent of those recorded as being infected end up dying — with the death rate of nearly 600 for every 100,000 citizens almost double that of the next nation, Hungary, the data shows. The US is 21st with just under 185 deaths per 100,000. Lambda was last month declared a Variant of Interest by the World Health Organization (WHO), which noted that it was “associated with substantive rates of community transmission in multiple countries.” “Lambda carries a number of mutations” that may have led to “potential increased transmissibility or possible increased resistance to neutralizing antibodies,” the WHO said.

Scientists in Chile — where Lambda is blamed for more than a third of the country’s infections — also warned in a recent study, published in a preprint last week, that it appears to evade vaccines better than other strains. “Our data show for the first time that mutations present in the spike protein of the Lambda variant confer escape to neutralizing antibodies and increased infectivity,” wrote the researchers from the University of Chile in Santiago. That could explain why it has been able to take hold despite Chile “undergoing a massive vaccination program,” the study warned.

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McCullough is clear and concise. Wonder how long LinkedIn will keep this up.

9 Reasons Not to Support, Mandate Investigational COVID19 Vaccines (McCullough)

1. COVID-19 vaccination is voluntary research. The COVID-19 public vaccination program operated by the CDC and the FDA is a clinical investigation and under no circumstance can any person receive pressure, coercion, or threat of reprisal on their free choice of participation. Violation of this principle of autonomy by any entity constitutes reckless endangerment with a reasonable expectation of causing personal injury resulting in damages.


2. COVID-19 vaccines do not work well enough. The current COVID-19 vaccines are not sufficiently protective against contracting COVID-19 to support its use beyond the current voluntary participation in the CDC sponsored program. A total of 10,262 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine breakthrough infections had been reported from 46 U.S. states and territories as of April 30, 2021. Among these cases, 6,446 (63%) occurred in females, and the median patient age was 58 years (interquartile range = 40–74 years). [..]

3. COVID-19 vaccines have a dangerous mechanism of action. The Pfizer, Moderna, and JNJ vaccines are considered “genetic vaccines” or vaccines produced from gene therapy molecular platforms.[i] [ii] They have a injurious mechanism of action in that they all cause the body to make an uncontrolled quantity of the pathogenic spike protein from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This is unlike all other vaccines where there is a set amount of antigen or live-attenuated virus. This means for the Pfizer, Moderna, and JNJ vaccines it is not predictable among patients who will produce more or less of the spike protein. The spike protein itself has been demonstrated to injure vital organs such as the brain, heart, lungs, as well as damage blood vessels and directly cause blood clots. Additionally, because these vaccines infect cells within these organs, the generation of spike protein within heart and brain cells in particular, causes the body’s own immune system to attack these organs. [..]


7. People are dying and being hospitalized in record numbers in the days after COVID-19 vaccination. Based on VAERS as of June 25, 2021, there were 6,985 COVID-19 vaccine deaths reported and over 23,257 hospitalizations reported for the COVID-19 vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna, JNJ). By comparison, from 1999, until December 31, 2019, VAERS received 3167 death reports (158 per year) adult death reports for all vaccines combined. Thus, the COVID-19 mass vaccination is associated with at least 39-fold increase annualized vaccine deaths reported to VAERS. COVID-19 vaccine adverse events account for 98% of all vaccine-related AEs from Dec 2020 through present in VAERS.

Bell’s palsy

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VanDen Bossche reacts to the CNN article I cited on July 4, Unvaccinated People Are “Variant Factories” – Infectious Diseases Expert.

“..not the non-vaccinated individuals but the vaccinees are now responsible for driving Sars-CoV-2 evolutionary dynamics..”

The Chicken-and-Egg Problem (Which Came First?) (VanDen Bossche)

As already mentioned on multiple occasions, molecular epidemiologists have shown that population-level S protein-directed immune pressure is now driving the propagation of variants that are increasingly evolving mutations enabling resistance to S-specific antibodies (as now massively induced by the ongoing vaccination campaigns). As more infectious variants bind to the cellular Ace-2 receptor with enhanced binding strength, the Ace-2 receptor more readily outcompetes S-specific antibodies for binding to these variants. Consequently, these variants gain a competitive advantage when replicating in individuals who exert strong S-directed immune pressure on the virus (i.e., in vaccinees!), especially upon incorporating additional mutations (within the RBD) that prevent direct binding of S-specific vaccinal antibodies.

Variants that are increasingly resistant to S-specific antibodies (e.g., delta and delta plus variant) can only adapt to the population provided the S-directed immune pressure is widespread in the population. This is, of course, the case if larger parts of the population get vaccinated and when vaccinees can easily transmit the variant due to relaxation of infection prevention measures. In principle, non-vaccinated individuals who are in good physical and mental health can deal with all variants, provided the infectious viral pressure does not exceed a certain threshold. This is because their innate antibodies have relatively lower affinity for the virus.

However, breeding of more infectious and more anti-S antibody-resistant variants in vaccinees will inevitably enhance viral replication and transmissibility in vaccinees, thereby raising the infectious pressure and increasing the likelihood for non-vaccinated subjects to become re-infected while their natural/ innate antibodies (Abs) are being suppressed by short-lived S-specific Abs (elicited as a result from previous asymptomatic infection). So, ‘yes’, some non-vaccinated people will become susceptible to the disease and then contribute to further propagation of these variants. It’s important to note, however, that this is a result and not the source of the enhanced evolution of the virus.

So, not the non-vaccinated individuals but the vaccinees are now responsible for driving Sars-CoV-2 evolutionary dynamics. It’s also important to note that non-vaccinated people will not contribute to natural selection as they will either eliminate the virus (thanks to their innate antibodies in synergy with natural killer cells) or become susceptible to Covid-19 disease due to suppression of their innate immune defense. Short-term shedding of low concentrations of viral variants by asymptomatically infected, non-vaccinated people is a direct consequence of shifting natural immune selection forces that are increasingly coming into play as a result of mass vaccination. This will ultimately put the vaccinees in much worse shape than the non-vaccinated as the latter will still be able to rely on their innate Abs.

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For 10 years, Moderna could get no approval for anything. Then it got one in weeks. Pfizer may have played a key role in that.

How the Moderna Covid-19 mRNA Vaccine Was Made So Quickly (CNBC)

Almost all people hospitalized for Covid-19 are not vaccinated — 99.9% as of May to be exact, according to a recent Associated Press report. Yet 13% of U.S. adults said they will “definitely not” get a COVID-19 vaccine as recently as late May, according to Kaiser Family Foundation COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor. Another 12% wanted to “wait until it has been available for a while to see how it is working for other people.” Vaccinating the majority of the population is the best way to help avoid further surges from constantly evolving variants, like the current delta variant, which is quickly spreading in the U.S. and other countries. Still, Moderna co-founder Noubar Afeyan understands the hesitation to get a new vaccine.

“The vaccines came out in such a [short] timeframe that people assumed automatically, it can’t possibly be safe,” Afeyan said during a talk at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in May. “In fact, many, many people were on television espousing the view that — experts for that matter — that if it’s done in less than five years, it’s got to be unsafe, all of which is untrue. “Nevertheless, people get confused.” What people might not understand is that extensive research was being done on mRNA technology and other mRNA vaccines for years. That decade plus of experience and the innovation of mRNA technology itself is what allowed Moderna to produce its Covid mRNA vaccine so quickly as the pandemic struck. And it could also change the future of medicine.

Here’s what you need to know about how the Moderna Covid-19 mRNA vaccine was developed. It is true that Moderna’s mRNA vaccine was ready remarkably fast, as was Pfizer’s. Chinese scientists put the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus online on Jan. 11. Over the next two days, the NIH and Moderna used it to plot out a vaccine. Afeyan remembers getting a key call about the development of the Covid-19 vaccine. “January 21st, my daughter’s birthday…. I got a call from Davos [during The World Economic Forum] from the CEO of Moderna,” he says. Bancel had been approached by a number of public health groups at the conference “urging” him to work on a vaccine. “We literally Decided overnight…to try and do this,” Afeyan said at MIT.

Moderna delivered the first doses of its Covid-19 vaccine to the NIH for testing on Feb. 24, 2020, and “the first Moderna shot went into a volunteer’s arm in Seattle on March 16, 2020,” according to Afeyan. After testing the Moderna vaccine on 30,000 volunteers, on Dec. 18, 2020, the FDA authorized it for emergency public use, and three days after that, the first Moderna vaccines were administered to front-line health workers, according to Afeyan. One of the reasons Moderna’s mRNA Covid vaccine development moved so quickly is because scientists had been working with mRNA for years. [..] And Moderna has been working with mRNA technology “since its inception in 2010 for myriad therapeutic areas,” including cancer therapies, Afeyan tells CNBC Make It (by way of a publicist), and with clinical development of mRNA-based antiviral vaccines since 2015.

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Science Mag sees testing protocols primarily as a nuisance because proven vaccines are now available. Proven before they were tested, that is. With a vague bit about T cells thrown in.

Can Immune Responses Alone Reveal Which Covid-19 Vaccines Work Best? (Smag)

Other than running a placebo-controlled, clinical trial lasting many months and involving tens of thousands of people, is there any way to be sure a COVID-19 vaccine will work? Many researchers contend that the success of several vaccines now widely in use offers a shortcut: Simply gauge a vaccine’s ability to elicit so-called neutralizing antibodies, which bind to the virus and prevent it from entering cells. But several recent studies, the latest published as a preprint on 24 June, point to other “correlates of protection”: “binding” antibodies—which latch on to the virus but don’t block entry—and another set of immune warriors called T cells.

Vaccine decisions may soon depend on a better understanding of these supporting actors. Several companies are developing updates of their COVID-19 vaccines tailored to protect against new viral variants, and they hope regulatory agencies won’t require that they show efficacy in big clinical trials, which are not only time-consuming and expensive, but also increasingly ethically fraught because some of the participants receive a placebo even though proven vaccines are now available. With an established correlate of protection, trials can give an updated vaccine to a much smaller group of participants and then check whether they produce the telltale immune responses. (That’s how the annual updates of flu vaccines are approved.) Health officials may also turn to correlates when they consider prioritizing existing COVID-19 vaccines, authorizing new “mix and match” combinations, or even when making decisions about entirely new vaccines.

But finding robust correlates has been challenging. During the megatrials that led to the authorization of COVID-19 vaccines, investigators monitored antibody responses and tried to correlate them with their odds of participants getting sick. Different trials, however, used different antibody assays and different definitions of mild COVID-19, the main endpoint in the trials. “It’s anarchy because it’s always been anarchy,” says John Moore, an immunologist at Weill Cornell Medicine. “You’re dealing with different academic labs and different companies, and companies tend not to talk to each other.” Many trials also lacked the statistical power to measure protection from hospitalization and death, arguably a COVID-19 vaccine’s most important task. And few trials even looked carefully at T cells, which are far more cumbersome to measure.

[..] Penny Moore and colleagues also found support for a role for T cells. In an 11 June preprint, they reported that 96% of participants in an efficacy trial of the COVID-19 vaccine produced by Johnson & Johnson (J&J) made antibodies that neutralized a viral strain from early in the pandemic but only 19% had antibodies that neutralized the Beta variant, which is widespread in South Africa and infamous for dodging neuts. Yet despite the variant, the vaccine remained protective against moderate and severe COVID-19. “I think it’s entirely plausible … that T cells are doing something really useful here,” Penny Moore says.

And you thought spike proteins were bad…
https://twitter.com/i/status/1412287378568384515

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I was reading this yesterday (twice), how the immune system fights off Covid.

T Cells: Why Immunity Is About More Than Antibodies (CEBM)

The CD4+ T cell response in COVID-19 Some studies have shown that in patients with severe COVID-19 there is evidence of impaired function of CD4+ T cells, including reduced IFN ɣ production [16], while others seem to suggest over-activation of these T cells [17]. Overall, the CD4+ T cell response in acute SARS-CoV-2 infection, whether impaired, over-activated, or inappropriate, and how this relates to disease outcomes, remains to be elucidated and is an important question. A particularly high frequency of CD4+ T cell responses specific to virus spike protein has been observed in patients who have recovered from COVID-19, which is similar to what has been reported for influenza virus infections [11]. In one small study of 14 patients, circulating virus-specific CD4+ T cells were identified in all of those who recovered from SARS- CoV-2, which also suggests the potential for developing T cell memory [18] and perhaps longer-term immunity.

The CD8+ T cell response in COVID-19 There appears to be heterogeneity in the immune response between patients. Some studies have reported that CD8+ T cells from patients with severe COVID-19 had reduced cytokine production following in vitro stimulation, and some have shown evidence of possibly exhausted T cells; in contrast, other studies have reported an overaggressive CD8+ T cell response or highly activated CD8+ T cells with increased cytotoxic response in patients with COVID-19 [14]. It is still unclear how the heterogeneity of the CD8+ T cell response relates to disease features, which could be driven by, for example, patient immunotypes [17,19] or the nature of the interaction between respiratory epithelial cells and cytotoxic T cells and the level of response.

Several chemokine receptor genes (including CCR9, CXCR6, and XCR1) and the locus controlling the ABO blood type have been identified as being associated with severe disease; however, whether these genes are directly or indirectly related to T cell responses in COVID-19 remains unknown [14]. A higher proportion of CD8+ T cell responses was observed in patients who only developed mild disease, suggesting a potential protective role of CD8+ T cell responses [11]. Most of the CD8+ T cell responses were specific to viral internal proteins, rather than spike proteins, which should be considered in vaccine development [4]. SARS-CoV-2-specific CD8+ T cells are present in about 70% of patients who have recovered [18], which is evidence of a virus-specific CD8+ T cell response and the presence of CD8+ T cell memory. However, the ability of these cells to protect from future infection remains to be determined.


Role of T cells in response to COVID-19 infection: adapted from The trinity of COVID-19: immunity, inflammation and intervention. Nat Rev Immunol. 2020 Jun;20(6):363-374. doi: 10.1038/s41577-020-0311-8.

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How clear is the bible on this?

Refusing To Be Vaccinated Against Covid A ’Sin’ – Russian Orthodox Church (RT)

Those who refuse to be vaccinated against Covid-19 are committing a sin they will have to repent for the rest of their lives. That’s according to the Russian Orthodox Church, whose spokesman said rejecting a jab is selfish. Speaking to TV channel Russia 24, the head of the Russia Orthodox Church’s Department for External Church Relations, Metropolitan Hilarion, explained that his parishioners regularly repent to him for not being vaccinated. They feel guilty because they passed the virus on to someone else who eventually died, he claimed. “They come and say, ‘How am I supposed to live with this now?’ And it’s hard for even me to say how to live with it,” he explained. “All your life, you have to make up for the sin you committed.”


The sin is thinking about yourself instead of thinking about other people,” the metropolitan said. “We are responsible – each of us – not only for ourselves and not only for our loved ones, but also for all those who come into contact with us.” In recent months, the Church has been more vocal about its support for the government’s vaccination program. Metropolitan Hilarion has regularly spoken on TV about the need to follow the rules and take precautions to avoid infection. In June, the cleric revealed his “positive attitude” towards the government initiative to impose compulsory vaccination on those working in the service sector. “Of course, it is desirable to observe the principle of voluntariness in relation to vaccinations – the principle that was stated from the very beginning,” he explained. “But there is also the principle of people’s responsibility for the lives of other people.”

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Seen this a lot in the UK: people who say it’s criminal to expose kids to Covid, and therefore they should be injected. How do you get the world so wrong side up?

Relaxing Of Covid Restrictions In England Sparks Social Media Meltdown (Clark)

Boris Johnson has announced that masks and social distancing are likely to end on July 19, which has, predictably, been met with a hysterical, irrational response by those who don’t seem to want life ever to return to normal. Talk about being triggered. Boris Johnson’s press conference on Monday sent #wearamask Twitter into a hyperbolic meltdown of epic proportions. The PM announced that the public would have independence from burdensome domestic Covid restrictions- which were supposed to have lasted for only three weeks but instead have lasted for sixteen months- on 19 July 19, with confirmation of this coming on July 12. The relaxing of restrictions had been foreshadowed in an article in the Mail on Sunday by the new UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid, in which he said Britain would need to learn to live with Covid.

While we should all remain cynical about what the government may have planned for the autumn, Javid declared –rightly, in my view– that opening the country up would actually make us healthier, physically and mentally. Cue the most incredible Twitter meltdown ever seen. What the government was proposing was ‘genocide.’ “Why are the British people accepting this? We need to close borders, effective test and trace, social distancing (through bi-weekly remote and in person education) in schools, masks indoors, work from home and vacs until infections are really low. Then re-cover (sic), slowly” opined one Tweeter ironically with the moniker ‘Freedom.’ Citing Orwell (again, who said satire was dead?), the Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr tweeted “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Health is the deliberate mass infection of an entire nation’s children with a novel & mutating virus with unknown long-term consequences.”

The hashtag #WearAMask was trending with a whole succession of self-righteous virtue signallers telling the world that they would continue to mask up after July 19, whatever the government announced. Repeat after Me: People who wear masks are Good People, People who don’t are Bad People (and probably supporters of Brexit and Donald Trump). “The thing about mask wearing is it protects others more than you” declared Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran, who piously informed us she’d continue to wear a mask indoors after July 19. As if we had to know. The Liberal Democrat-supporting author Emma Kennedy tweeted: “In a nutshell, post July 29 there will be people prepared to wear masks because they care about other people. And those who don’t. And that’s it, isn’t it.”

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If it doesn’t have any mRNA, we’re not interested.

HIV Vaccine Trial Launched At Oxford In Bid To End ‘40-Year Wait’ (RT)

Researchers at the UK’s University of Oxford have administered the first doses of a potential HIV vaccine to participants, as part of a Phase-One clinical trial launched on Monday. The trial, called HIV-CORE 0052, aims to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity of the HIVconsvX vaccine, the University said. The project is part of the European Aids Vaccine Initiative, funded by the European Commission. The jab is known as a “mosaic,” meaning it can target a broad range of HIV-1 variants and potentially become a suitable vaccine for use around the world. Scientists will give two doses of the vaccine four weeks apart to 13 healthy, HIV-negative adults, aged between 18 and 65, who are not considered at risk of infection. “An effective HIV vaccine has been elusive for 40 years,” Tomas Hanke, the trial’s lead researcher and Professor of Vaccine Immunology at the University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute, said in a statement.


“This trial is the first in a series of evaluations of this novel vaccine strategy in both HIV-negative individuals for prevention and in people living with HIV for cure.” The Oxford solution works by stimulating the body’s immune response via T cells which kill specific pathogens, unlike most other HIV vaccine candidates, which induce antibodies created by B-cells to fight the virus. HIV attacks the body’s immune system and can develop into life-threatening AIDS if left untreated. In 2014 the UN announced a ‘fast-track’ target of decreasing the number of people newly-infected with the virus to 500,000 by 2020. However, last year there were approximately 1.5 million new cases. The Oxford team expects to report its results by April next year. There are also plans to start similar trials in Europe, Africa and the US.

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Always amusing. But mostly led by what people wish for, not what is reality.

The Dollar’s Declining Status as Dominant “Global Reserve Currency” (WS)

Yes, the Fed is a drunken reckless money-printer, and the US government has been high for years on deficit spending, but other major central banks and governments do the same or worse. The long-term trends are clear, however. The global share of US-dollar-denominated exchange reserves ticked up to 59.5% in the first quarter of 2021, after having dropped to a 25-year low in Q4 2020, according to the IMF’s Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER) data released at the end of June. Dollar-denominated foreign exchange reserves are Treasury securities, US corporate bonds, US mortgage-backed securities, US Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities, and other dollar-denominated financial assets held by foreign central banks. Q1 was a ripple in the long-term trajectory.

Since 2014, the dollar’s share has dropped 6.5 percentage points, from 66% to 59.5%, on average 1 percentage point per year. At this rate, the dollar’s share would fall below 50% over the next decade. Since 1999, when the euro arrived, the dollar’s share of foreign exchange reserves has dropped 11.5 percentage points, from 71% to 59.5% (year-end shares, except Q1 2021):

Exchange rates between the dollar and other currencies change the valuations expressed in dollars of non-dollar reserves, such as German government bonds. Yes, but… The Dollar Index (DXY) moved substantially since 1999, up and down, but it is now roughly back where it was in 1999. This means that nearly all of the decline in the share of the dollar as foreign exchange reserves since 1999 was due to central banks unloading dollar-denominated assets, and not due to exchange rates.

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“..decoding the foreign policy moves signified in “Joe Biden’s” ice-cream flavor choices. (Rocky Road means: Oh, let China have that….)”

The Ice-Cream Flavor Next Time (Kunstler)

A nation mesmerized by its own weakness wanly celebrated the long-ago and faraway memory of standing up for itself, while it passively endures the current orgy of tyrannical cancellation and suppression of anyone talking back to the present folks-in-charge. Over just a few years, this tyranny has grown like a toxic slime mold from such an unlikely place, the Internet social app ecology of Facebook, Twitter, and Google, as they took over the public arena — where the battle of ideas is supposed to live — and did the government’s dirty work, complete with adorable emojis. You’re fired! Who will stand up to Zuck, Jack, and Sundar Pichai? Who elected these megalomaniacs boss of the USA? What will it take to end their reign of terror? Some sort of… revolution? (Shhhh! That must be a dirty word, even considering we just celebrated the high point of the American Revolution: The Declaration of Independence, signed July 4, 1776.)

Don’t look to “Joe Biden,” the nation’s putatively elected leader — about whose election back in November, 2020, you are liable to hear more about as the summer stickily unspools. Zuck, Jack, and Sundar managed to protect “Joe Biden” from the stupendous depredations of his offspring, Hunter Biden, recorded in explosive detail on a laptop the public was not allowed to hear about. Don’t look to the Department of Justice, supposedly “investigating” that horde of memos and emails detailing the Bidens ’influence-peddling to the CCP and others — they’re busy surveilling “white supremacists” on the apps run by Zuck, Jack, and Sundar. And for sure don’t look to the news media, that coalition of sell-outs and quislings, busy decoding the foreign policy moves signified in “Joe Biden’s” ice-cream flavor choices. (Rocky Road means: Oh, let China have that….)

Wondering who is actually running the “Joe Biden” government? Some of us out here are. (Do you think we’re allowed to say that?) For instance, have you tried googling the name Susan Rice lately? Remember her? Maybe not. “Joe Biden” appointed her Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. From the looks of things across the country, you’d think her plate would be heaped mighty high, what with “insurrection” and other white mischief threatening to take down the republic. Anyway, I googled “news” for her. Hardly a goshdarn thing came up that wasn’t from months ago, and most of that was sheer puffery about how accomplished she is, and what a fabulous person. Don’t you wonder what her phone log looks like? All those calls to the Obama residence, day after day, hour after hour?

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Jul 042021
 


Edward John Poynter Erato, Muse of Poetry 1870

 

 

 

Why the Delta scare? As a virus mutates, it becomes more contagious and less lethal. And then eventually it mostly disappears. Many voices claim that Delta will be with us for a very long time, but we should be so lucky. It’s way more likely that it will soon be followed by a next variant that will in turn become dominant. And more contagious and less lethal.

And no, that’s not because of unvaccinated people, or at least there’s no logic in that. If most people are not vaccinated, the virus has no reason to mutate. If many people are, it does. So this CNN piece is suspect. Vaccinated people are potential variant factories, just as much, if and when the vaccines used don’t stop them from being infectious, as the present vaccines don’t, far as we know.

Unvaccinated People Are “Variant Factories,” Infectious Diseases Expert

Unvaccinated people do more than merely risk their own health. They’re also a risk to everyone if they become infected with coronavirus, infectious disease specialists say. That’s because the only source of new coronavirus variants is the body of an infected person. “Unvaccinated people are potential variant factories,” Dr. William Schaffner, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told CNN Friday. “The more unvaccinated people there are, the more opportunities for the virus to multiply,” Schaffner, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said. “When it does, it mutates, and it could throw off a variant mutation that is even more serious down the road.”

“Even more serious”? Well, yes, it can become more contagious, but then it loses lethality. Maybe that’s what we want. Maybe we want a virus that everyone can be infected by, and build resistance to, without serious consequences. Maybe that’s even what we should aim for. And also, maybe that’s what we already have, with survival rates of 99.99% among most people.

And maybe, just maybe, a one-dimensional “solution” in the shape of an experimental vaccine is the worst response of all. Because it doesn’t protect from anything other than more severe disease, while unleashing potential adverse effects for decades to come in the inoculated. Maybe one dimension simply doesn’t cut it. Maybe we should not refuse to prevent people from becoming infected, or to treat them in the early stages of the disease.

Maybe the traumatic effects of lockdowns and facemasks should be part of “benefits and risks” models. And maybe we should start trying vitamin D, ivermectin and HCQ on a very large scale. No research, you say? There’s more research for those approaches than for the vaccines. But it’s largely been halted in the west to maintain the viability of the one-dimension “solution”; the medical Siamese twin of the Trusted News Initiative, one might say. Of which The Atlantic is also a valued member, look at this gem:

 

The 3 Simple Rules That Underscore the Danger of Delta

2. The variants are pummeling unvaccinated people.

Vaccinated people are safer than ever despite the variants. But unvaccinated people are in more danger than ever because of the variants. Even though they’ll gain some protection from the immunity of others, they also tend to cluster socially and geographically, seeding outbreaks even within highly vaccinated communities.

The U.K., where half the population is fully vaccinated, “can be a cautionary tale,” Hanage told me. Since Delta’s ascendancy, the country’s cases have increased sixfold. Long-COVID cases will likely follow. Hospitalizations have almost doubled. That’s not a sign that the vaccines are failing. It is a sign that even highly vaccinated countries host plenty of vulnerable people.

[..] And new variants are still emerging. Lambda, the latest to be recognized by the WHO, is dominant in Peru and spreading rapidly in South America. Many nations that excelled at protecting their citizens are now facing a triple threat: They controlled COVID-19 so well that they have little natural immunity; they don’t have access to vaccines; and they’re besieged by Delta.

First, the vaccines don’t confer immunity on the jabbed, there is no evidence of that. Second, a large majority of healthy people have an immune system strong enough to fight off the infection, even without ever being infected. So to suggest that unvaccinated people might “gain some protection from the immunity of” the vaccinated is simply nonsense.

As for “Delta’s ascendancy”, yes, cases are rising in the UK and Israel, two highly vaccinated countries. Not that anyone would acknowledge a possible connection there: it’s all despite the vaccines, not because of them. But as the graph below shows, while cases there are up a lot, hospitalization and deaths are not over the past month. They barely register.

On January 20, the UK had 1,823 deaths. Today, they had 15.

 

 

I even enlarged the hospitalizations a bit, or you wouldn’t see anything.

 

“Hospitalizations have almost doubled”, says The Atlantic. Yeah, but they’re still very low, as are deaths. And perhaps that’s not all that surprising, because the Delta variant doesn’t appear to be the big killer that everyone wants to close their borders and restaurants for again. There’s no conclusive evidence, it’s too early, but this is what we know today.

 

Rand Paul Cites 0.08% Delta Variant Death Rate Among Unvaccinated

Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul is telling Twitter followers to not let the ‘fearmongers’ win, amid growing concerns about the newest delta variant of the coronavirus. Paul, who is a doctor with a degree in medicine from Duke University, cited a study of the strain that shows only a 0.08% death rate among unvaccinated people. “Don’t let the fearmongers win. New public England study of delta variant shows 44 deaths out of 53,822 (.08%) in unvaccinated group. Hmmm,” he tweeted Tuesday to his 3.2 million followers. The variant, which has caused virus outbreaks in Australia and other countries, has resulted in officials reimposing recently lifted health-safety orders including mask-wearing.

In another graph, the Delta variant Case Fatality Rate in the UK even appears 8 times higher among the fully vaccinated than the unvaccinated. Maybe the press should pay a little more attention to that, instead of the Great Big Delta Scare. All they do today is sell fear and vaccines, but that will backfire, promise.

 

 

And what goes for the press is also valid for politicians and their “experts”: there will come a day that people realize you could have focused on prophylactics and early treatment, but chose not to. And that this cost a lot of lives and other misery. What are you going to do then? Apologize?

 

 

Let’s not miss this from the past week: strong immune systems kill the virus before antibodies are formed. Which means an antibody test won’t show anything, but a PCR test will come back positive because there are dead virus bits. And everyone will cry: vaccinate! vaccinate!

Maybe it’s finally time for some real science, instead of clickbait and fear and gene therapy.

Pre-existing polymerase-specific T cells expand in abortive seronegative SARS-CoV-2 infection

Individuals with likely exposure to the highly infectious SARS-CoV-2 do not necessarily develop PCR or antibody positivity, suggesting some may clear sub-clinical infection before seroconversion. T cells can contribute to the rapid clearance of SARS-CoV-2 and other coronavirus infections1–5 . We hypothesised that pre-existing memory T cell responses, with cross-protective potential against SARS-CoV-26–12, would expand in vivo to mediate rapid viral control, potentially aborting infection.

We studied T cells against the replication transcription complex (RTC) of SARS-CoV-2 since this is transcribed first in the viral life cycle13–15 and should be highly conserved. We measured SARS-CoV-2-reactive T cells in a cohort of intensively monitored healthcare workers (HCW) who remained repeatedly negative by PCR, antibody binding, and neutralisation for SARS-CoV-2 (exposed seronegative, ES).

16-weeks postrecruitment, ES had memory T cells that were stronger and more multispecific than an unexposed pre-pandemic cohort, and more frequently directed against the RTC than the structural protein-dominated responses seen post-detectable infection (matched concurrent cohort). The postulate that HCW with the strongest RTC-specific T cells had an abortive infection was supported by a low-level increase in IFI27 transcript, a robust early innate signature of SARS-CoV-2 infection16.

We showed that the RNA-polymerase within RTC was the largest region of high sequence conservation across human seasonal coronaviruses (HCoV) and was preferentially targeted by T cells from UK and Singapore pre-pandemic cohorts and from ES. RTC epitope-specific T cells capable of cross-recognising HCoV variants were identified in ES. Longitudinal samples from ES and an additional validation cohort, showed pre-existing RNA-polymerase-specific T cells expanded in vivo following SARS-CoV-2 exposure, becoming enriched in the memory response of those with abortive compared to overt infection. In summary, we provide evidence of abortive seronegative SARS-CoV-2 infection with expansion of cross-reactive RTC-specific T cells, highlighting these highly conserved proteins as targets for future vaccines against endemic and emerging Coronaviridae.

 

 

 

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Jun 222021
 
 June 22, 2021  Posted by at 8:57 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  72 Responses »


Edward Hopper People in the sun 1963

 

More Australians Have Died From AstraZeneca-Related Clots Than Covid (USAT)
Sen. Johnson: Media Suppress Information About Over 5,000 Vaccine Deaths (OAN)
Lab Lies: A Conflict of Interest for Dr. Daszak (HE)
Vaccines Exhibit “Reduced Efficacy” Against “Delta” Variant: WHO Doctor (ZH)
The WHO Is NUTS (Dr. No)
Lockdown Trauma Causing 5-Year-Olds to Suffer Panic Attacks (SN)
WHO To Establish First Vaccine Tech Transfer Hub In South Africa (F24)
UK Crony Capitalism: They Didn’t Want To Reveal These Names
Thinking Out Loud (Kunstler)
Julian Assange’s Continued Imprisonment Is A Test For Bitcoin’s Values (F.)

 

 

Note: the text says 52,000 spontaneous abortions.

 

 

Unsafe

 

 

1 death from COVID, 2 from blood clots. Technically true, but a weird headline for USA Today.

More Australians Have Died From AstraZeneca-Related Clots Than Covid (USAT)

Australia’s top medical officer on Monday urged countrymen who have received an AstraZeneca COVID shot to “not delay” getting the second dose – even though the vaccine has been linked to more deaths than COVID in Australia this year. Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly, after a National Cabinet meeting, reiterated the benefits of vaccination and encouraged Australians to stay vigilant for symptoms of COVID-19. He told Australia’s ABC network that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine in combating COVID-19 “far outweighed” the risks of developing a very rare blood clotting syndrome. Two women in Australia have died from the blood clots. The only COVID fatality this year was an 80-year-old traveler who died in April after being infected overseas and diagnosed in hotel quarantine. Last week authorities recommended that the AstraZeneca vaccine be given only to people 60 or over; people 50-59 were encouraged to get the Pfizer vaccine instead.

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How did he become the sole truth teller?

Sen. Johnson: Media Suppress Information About Over 5,000 Vaccine Deaths (OAN)

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) highlighted reports of a rising number of deaths caused by coronavirus vaccines. He announced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported thousands of deaths from side effects of experimental vaccines. The Republican senator argued Dr. Anthony Fauci and various media outlets have been turning a blind eye to warning signals from the Vaccine Adverse Event Warning System from the CDC, which has reported about 5,000 deaths. Johnson stressed there are safe and effective treatments for COVID-19, such as hydroxychloroquine, and Democrat calls for mass vaccination have been misleading.


“Over 1,700 within days zero, one and two of getting vaccinated. We have thousands of people who have permanent disabilities, 20,000 hospitalizations,” he expressed. “That, quite honestly, compares to less than 200 deaths per year in the entire 30 year history of the VAERS system with other vaccines.” Johnson went on to say Big Tech and mainstream media are still censoring the information about early treatments for COVID-19, which must be investigated. He argued that American people will continue to suffer the consequences of misleading information and the ignorance of leading health experts.

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Daszak was removed from the Covid-19 commission yesterday.

Lab Lies: A Conflict of Interest for Dr. Daszak (HE)

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been much debate about the origins, treatment and rushed vaccines. Many doctors have been interviewed and consulted, with varying opinions about the virus, research, and the best medicines on the market to help those afflicted with the virus. One such doctor is Peter Daszak, a zoologist and president of the Eco-Health Alliance, a group based in New York City. His bio on the site says that his company is a US-based organization that conducts research and outreach programs on global health, conservation and international development. Unfortunately, when he participated in a statement for the medical journal, The Lancet, with other medical professionals, he was not 100% forthcoming. There may have been some factors that swayed his professional opinions on the COVID-19 virus and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Now we know that EcoHealth gave over $600k in taxpayer dollars to The Wuhan Institute of Virology, and even more through grants. The NY Post and Vanity Fair both did reports about these connections, and discovered some troubling connections: The nonprofit, which says it’s “dedicated to protecting wildlife and public health from the emergency of disease,” has received as much as $15 million a year in grant money from various federal agencies, Vanity Fair said. EcoHealth has used those grants to fund controversial “gain-of-function” research — which can increase the infectiousness and virulence of viruses — at facilities that include the Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to Vanity Fair.

The WIV received about $600,000 from a five-year, $3 million-plus grant that Vanity Fair said EcoHealth got from the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci. Daszak was questioned in London about his visit to the Wuhan Lab in January of this year. Daszak was the only American to visit the lab with the World Health Organization. His statement regarding that trip VIA Vanity Fair: “…Daszak admitted that the group didn’t ask to inspect the WIV’s database of 22,000 virus samples and sequences, a decision he defended by saying that “a lot of this work has been conducted with EcoHealth Alliance,” Vanity Fair said.” Now, the Lancet, which is widely peer-reviewed, is making adjustments to the statement Daszak participated in so as to inform of his bias and influence. From the Lancet :

“In February 2020, 27 public health experts co-authored a Correspondence in The Lancet (“Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19”), supporting health professionals and physicians in China during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this letter, the authors declared no competing interests. Some readers have questioned the validity of this disclosure, particularly as it relates to one of the authors, Peter Daszak.”

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A harmless variant?!

Vaccines Exhibit “Reduced Efficacy” Against “Delta” Variant: WHO Doctor (ZH)

As the mutant COVID-19 strain known as “Delta” picks up steam across Europe and the US, one of the WHO’s leading doctors has just expressed concern about recent research published in the Lancet showing that the first generation of COVID-19 vaccines aren’t as effective at protecting against “Delta”. Answering a question from a reporter during the organization’s regular Monday briefing in Geneva, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove said that there is data “showing a reduction in neutralization” for the Delta variant, but not as much as the “Beta” variant – better known as the mutant strain that was first discovered in South Africa. She continued on, noting that the first generation of vaccines are still highly effective:

“Having said that, these vaccines are still highly effective, they produce enough antibodies to protect against serious disease and death. While we are seeing some reduced efficacy, they are still effective at preventing severe disease and death including against the delta variant.” Ultimately, the WHO needs to vaccinate as many people as quickly as possible – which is the goal of Covax, the WHO’s program to vaccinate the world – to give dangerous variants less opportunity to take root and spread. “The goal of Covax is that we need those who are most at risk to severe disease, and those who are most exposed, to receive those vaccines and to be protected,” Dr. Kerkhove said.

To learn more about vaccine efficacy, the WHO has been “working with a global network…to get these studies under way…and to look at real-world efficacy data as well.” New research is coming in “fast and furious” and WHO is doing everything it can to determine what’s relevant and what’s not. The agency remains vigilant, however, because they fear that over time a growing number of “double” or “triple” mutants could further erode the efficacy of the first generation of vaccines. What’s more, “there may be a time where we have a constellation of mutations that arise in a variant” that will cause vaccines to lose potency entirely.

UK Delta variant

Read more …

Untested.

The WHO Is NUTS (Dr. No)

The normal development process for drugs, including vaccines, includes pharmacokinetic (how a dug moves through the body) studies of biodistribution (where the drug, or vaccine, ends up in the body, and when). In the ordinary course of development, these pre-clinical animal studies are comprehensive and thorough, but in the case of covid vaccine development and approval, regulatory authorities lowered the bar considerably. The MHRA’s Reg 174 Information for Healthcare Professionals on Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, for example, drops the bar through the floor (“5.2 Pharmacokinetic properties Not applicable.”), while in its long and complicated lay summary of the vaccine it says “Pharmacokinetic studies have not been conducted with COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 and are generally not considered necessary to support the development and licensure of vaccine products…”.

The EMA (European Medicines Agency, Europe’s equivalent to our MHRA) is happily singing along on the same hymn sheet: “No traditional pharmacokinetic or biodistribution studies have been performed with the vaccine candidate BNT162b2”. Instead the regulators relied on studies that use surrogates for the vaccine. The results are not easy to find: those for biodistribution are buried deep in a Pfizer report submitted to the Japanese regulators in Japanese which defeats even google translate. [..] The surrogate used in the biodistribution study uses the same LNP (lipid nanoparticle) RNA technology as the Pfizer/Biontech vaccine, and there are no reasons to suppose its biodistribution is significantly different to the vaccine’s distribution, allowing it to pass muster for the vaccine, at least in the regulators’ eyes.

But we should apply a caveat. Animal studies are only an indication of how a drug will behave in humans, because different species handle drugs in different ways. Nonetheless, it is an indication, and furthermore, it is all we have. After giving a large dose (getting on for 500 times the normal vaccine dose per kilogram of body weight used in humans) of a radio-actively labelled version of the surrogate to rats, researchers turned off the lights, and watched, observing when and where the rats started to glow in the dark.

Tucker WHO

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“..an extra 1.5 million children and young people will require mental health support..”

Lockdown Trauma Causing 5-Year-Olds to Suffer Panic Attacks (SN)

Children in the UK as young as five are suffering panic attacks and other psychological trauma as a result of COVID lockdowns, leaving 1.5 million kids in need of mental health treatment, according to a new report. NHS leaders say that the impact of repeated lockdowns has left children fearful of leaving their homes or meeting their friends amid an explosion of “locked-in trauma.” “Forecasts seen by this newspaper state that an extra 1.5 million children and young people will require mental health support “as a direct impact of the pandemic” during the next three to five years,” reports the Telegraph. “The calculations from the Centre for Mental Health, involving NHS economists, suggest demand will be as much as three times greater than the capacity of mental health services.”


One individual said that her daughter had a panic attack over a planned play date, while another parent said his 5-year-old was housebound and unable to go to school due to being traumatized by lockdown propaganda. With the NHS overwhelmed, child psychologist Maryhan Baker says demand for her services has doubled in recent months. “It’s going to get worse before it gets better. There are a lot of children who were maybe just a bit anxious before the pandemic presenting now with compulsions, eating disorders, self-harm and other control behaviours,” she said.

Read more …

Spread the goodies.

WHO To Establish First Vaccine Tech Transfer Hub In South Africa (F24)

South Africa will host the continent’s first Covid-19 vaccine production facility, as President Cyril Ramaphosa said Monday Africa now understood that doses would “never come” from elsewhere in time to save lives. Ramaphosa joined the World Health Organization (WHO) and French President Emmanuel Macron in announcing the new hub for Messenger RNA coronavirus vaccine technology. But as the project will take time to get off the ground, no vaccines are expected from it until next year. At tech transfer hubs, the technology is established at industrial scale, while interested manufacturers can receive training and any necessary licences to the technology.

“The ability to manufacture vaccines, medicines and other health-related commodities will help to put Africa on a path to self-determination,” Ramaphosa told a WHO virtual press conference via video-link. “It’s been shown now that we just cannot continue to rely on vaccines that are made outside of Africa because they never come. They never arrive on time and people continue to die.” The hub is seen by the Geneva-based WHO as a way to combat the vast inequality in access to vaccines between the world’s wealthiest and poorest nations. WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said it could take nine to 12 months before Covid-19 vaccines could be produced in South Africa using tested and approved processes.

Under the tech transfer hub system, the WHO and its partners bring in the production know-how, quality control and necessary licences to enable a rapid roll-out. At the South African hub, the bio-pharmaceutical company Biovac will act as developer; the Afrigen biotechnology firm will be the manufacturer; and a consortium of universities will provide the scientific know-how. Messenger RNA genetic technology — as used in the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus jabs — trains the body to reproduce spike proteins similar to those found on the coronavirus. When exposed to the real virus later, the body recognises the spike proteins and is able to fight them off. The WHO said it would “continue its assessment of potential mRNA technology donors and will launch subsequent calls for other technologies, such as viral vectors and proteins, in coming months”.

Read more …

Stories like these in many countries.

UK Crony Capitalism: They Didn’t Want To Reveal These Names

Good Law Project is now able to reveal the names of six more companies awarded PPE contracts through the controversial ’VIP’ fast-track lane for associates of ministers and advisers. These six firms landed nearly half a billion pounds of public contracts – all without competition – and were uncovered in documents prised from Government in the course of our litigation: Uniserve Limited is a logistics firm controlled by Iain Liddell. Prior to the pandemic the firm had no experience in supplying PPE, yet the firm landed a staggering £300m+ in PPE contracts from the DHSC and an eye watering £572m deal to provide freight services for the supply of PPE. The company shares the same address as Cabinet Minister Julia Lopez MP and is based in her constituency. Here they are together.

Draeger Safety UK Ltd which is a subsidiary of the Germany-based Draeger AG, landed a direct award contract in July 2020 to supply FFP3 masks valued at £87m. Urathon Europe Limited, a Wiltshire based supplier of wheelchair accessories, was handed two contracts worth £74m to supply face masks. Correspondence released during our recent PPE hearing revealed the Urathon contracts were ‘escalated through VIP Channel’. First Aid For Sport Limited, SanaClis, and Global United Trading and Sourcing PTE Ltd were awarded contracts from the DHSC worth a combined total of £28.6m.

The six companies revealed here are in addition to the six other ‘VIPs’ previously revealed by Good Law Project. In April we revealed documents showing P14 Medical, Luxe Lifestyle, and Meller Designs were fast-tracked down the ‘VIP’ route alongside Pestfix and Ayanda. P14 Medical, run by a Tory donor and ex-Tory councillor, was awarded £276m in PPE contracts. Meller Designs, run by another large Tory donor, David Meller, won more than £160m of PPE contracts. Luxe Lifestyle, a tiny recently-formed company with no staffand no experience in buying and selling PPE, was awarded a contract worth £26m after being referred to the VIP lane by an MP. This followed our scoop last December that Government had handed PPE Medpro, a firm linked to an associate of a Conservative peer with mystery investors, £200m of PPE contracts via the ‘high-priority lane.’

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“Xi is following The Art of War to the letter so far.”

Thinking Out Loud (Kunstler)

While all that is cooking on one front burner, we also have the case of the US equity markets burbling away at bubblicious highs on another burner, and therefore primed for a nauseating boil-over. Would a new and lethal government scandal supply the few extra therms for that? And by scandal, I mean something more like a broad loss of legitimacy and paralysis of the “Joe Biden” government. Also, how would a market train-wreck affect the credit markets? The US dollar? Whatever is left of the on-the-ground economy? Let’s just say it sure won’t act as a tonic for any of that; more like a slug of ethylene glycol. So now we’re talking about a simultaneous government crisis and financial crisis.

Now, consider what might happen in the fall if a potent new strain, or “third wave,” of Covid-19 virus wafts across America. We’ve already seen speculation in the medical media that the residual action of mRNA “vaccines,” if exposed to yet another novel coronavirus, might tend to whack-out the immune response of those who got vaxed, killing them, as well as killing a new cohort of victims among the unvaxed, adding up to many millions of dead Americans. How would the country manage any of this along with a twin crisis of economy and government? We couldn’t even manage the pandemic when our institutions were supposedly still functioning. And now, consider what might happen if China decides this is a good time to gain control of Taiwan (and the world’s leading chip manufacturers). A savvy friend of the blog writes:

“They’ll hit Taiwan, Guam, Vietnam, South Korea, Philippines, Australia. Iran would move to secure the overland route from China to Africa. The Israeli/Saudi coalition could stop Iran but only if China didn’t help Iran. (Iran/China are far ahead of us in drone swarm warfare.) China could overrun all of it in a matter of weeks and establish a deep defensive perimeter before we could effectively respond. More importantly they’ll hit our infrastructure so hard we’ll have a hard time hitting back effectively for years. Last year pretty much exposed our weakness; now they’ll move to exploit it. They’ll not wait till 2030, as our fearless leaders are touting, otherwise we might have time to mend our ways. Sun Tzu dictates they act now. My bet is they follow his guidance. It is the one area they are most predictable. Xi is following The Art of War to the letter so far.”

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Is bitcoin truly uncensorable?

Julian Assange’s Continued Imprisonment Is A Test For Bitcoin’s Values (F.)

When Wikileaks first emerged, it represented an affinity with another emerging community: bitcoin. Julian Assange had spoken at length about the Cypherpunks, the early 90s movement that sought to enact change through code and the laws of cryptography. This included experiments with early versions of digital money. So it was a natural fit for Wikileaks to use bitcoin due to its uncensorable nature, with Assange once commenting that “bitcoin is the real Occupy Wall Street”. The threat model for Wikileaks was simple and yet devastatingly powerful: the most powerful state collective in the world was likely to go after them eventually, if not now, then sometime in the future.

This included not only the “rogue’s gallery” Assange described in a 2010 speech to the Oslo Freedom Forum (states such as North Korea, Iran and the People’s Republic of China), but also the states that controlled the financial and trade apparatus that ran the world’s financial system, one where deviation and dissent was routinely punished with sanctions and exclusion. Even as early as 2010, Assange expressed a desire to wrestle with censorship in the West, including in “common law” societies that “prided” themselves on fundamental freedoms and Enlightenment ideals.

[..] I sat down and spoke with Gabriel Shipton, Julian Assange’s half-brother, to discuss the case and what is happening with it. He has recently been active in publishing articles describing the effects Assange’s imprisonment can have broadly when it comes to the Internet and press freedoms, and specifically when it comes to bitcoin. One of the first things he commented on was Assange’s continued belief in bitcoin, his love for a tool that made it possible to do his work. The way he thought about cryptography fighting the inevitable centralization of repression made his thought process a natural complement and extension of bitcoin’s fight to remake classical economic and financial systems.

People who support bitcoin should be concerned about Assange’s imprisonment not only because it reflects the betrayal of bitcoin’s ideals in the specific case of Assange — states tying themselves into pretzel knots in order to undermine a non-violent disseminator of information — it also makes vulnerable the principles of true transaction neutrality that underpin bitcoin, creating the most pressing version of the “wrench attack”. If you cannot go after the system, you must go after the person. Dissidents around the world are using bitcoin now: some are using it to avoid censorship in Nigeria by the ruling economic elites against police brutality protests that have involved the murder of civilians by the ruling class. People in Belarus are accepting payment in order to defy the government, which has tried to crush protests with force. Hong Kong Free Press, a bastion of pro-democracy views in a Hong Kong that is seeking to crush journalists through weaponization of the financial system, accepts bitcoin.

The point isn’t trying to determine whether or not any of these individual causes is more worthy or not, or which ones align with our geopolitical views. The point is to acknowledge that all of them are only possible if they are branches stemming from the same uncensorable tree.

Read more …

 

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Jun 112021
 
 June 11, 2021  Posted by at 8:47 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  60 Responses »


Wassily Kandinsky Free Curve to the Point – Accompanying Sound of Geometric Curves 1925

 

Stalin’s Covid Mismanagement Gets International Attention (CM)
100s Suffer Heart Inflammation Following COVID Vaccines (ZH)
Highly Contagious Delta Variant Now Makes Up 91% Of UK’s New Covid Cases (F.)
As Trump Banned China Travel, Fauci Funded Wuhan Lab Studies (NP)
There Are No Solutions -Part Two (Jim Quinn)
Goldman Requires Workers To Report If They Are Vaccinated (ZH)
Celebrity Cruises Has A Workaround For DeSantis’ Vaccine Passport Ban (F.)
The Global Pandemic Requires A Global Vaccination Plan (F.)
China Passes Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law (Y!)
Cash Gone Nuts: Treasury General Account Drops to $674 Billion (WS)
Trump Tells Biden To Give Putin His ‘Warmest Regards’ (F.)
Convert New York’s Entire Grid to Renewables With This One Trick (Vice)

 

 

 

 

Bhakdi: the authorities who Ok’d this; the EU; all the governments who approved these vaccines.. I think they should all be taken to court.”

 

 

Come for the headline, stay for the ivermectin.

Stalin’s Covid Mismanagement Gets International Attention (CM)

In a special live broadcast on June 1 of the DarkHorse podcast, Dr. Bret Weinstein (Ph.D.) and Dr. Pierre Kory (M.D.) discussed the incredible story of the Ivermectin drug in controlling COVID, in which they criticized Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin for his irresponsible behavior during the pandemic. In the recent broadcast, Dr.Pierre Kory praised the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) for including Ivermectin in their treatment guidelines. He added,” Some of the states in India went even further and they went much more aggressive. One of the boldest and uplifting moves was that of the Chief Minister of Goa, who recommended the use of Ivermectin for every adult over the age of 18 who was infected with corona. This is what I would have done if I were the Chief Minister of state.”

He went on to say that states like Goa and Uttar Pradesh took bold steps to help India reduce the number of COVID cases in the country. Later, he slammed Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin for effectively outlawing Ivermectin and going all-in on Remdesivir, which he claims is the cause of the state’s increasing cases. He also took a dig at MK Stalin’s name recalling the Russian Communist dictator Joseph Stalin who killed thousands of people. “I don’t know why but his name is MK Stalin. I just have to mention that. So, Stalin in India outlawed Ivermectin and it is not going well for the citizens”, he said. In another interview with Sky News Australia, Craig Kelly, Independent Federal Member for Hughes, Australia, also criticized MK Stalin for blocking Ivermectin drug in the state, claiming that it resulted in a rise in mortality and infection rates while every other state that used it experienced a decrease in COVID cases.

“There is one exception in India. It is the state of Tamil Nadu down the south where they have elected a new leader who goes by the name Stalin. People actually went to the ballot boxes and voted for a bloke called Stalin. He decided that Ivermectin wasn’t effective and basically blocked from the state. The death rate and infection rate have gone through the roof while every other state that is using it is seeing massive declines.” he said.

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Perfectly safe.

100s Suffer Heart Inflammation Following COVID Vaccines (ZH)

Federal authorities have received over 800 reports of heart inflammation in people who received a COVID-19 vaccine, a health official said Thursday. The reports of myocarditis or pericarditis were submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a passive reporting system run jointly by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration, through May 31. The bulk of the reports described heart inflammation appearing after the second of two doses of either the Pfizer of Moderna vaccines, both of which utilize messenger RNA technology.

Authorities stress that anybody can submit reports through the reporting system but authorities have already verified that 226 of the reports meet the CDC’s working case definition, Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, a deputy director at the agency, said during a presentation of the data. Followup and review are in progress for the rest. Of the 285 case reports for which the disposition was known at the time of the review, 270 patients had been discharged and 15 were still hospitalized, officials said. Myocarditis typically requires hospital care. No deaths were reported.

Update (2000ET): The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday that it will convene an “emergency meeting” of its advisers on June 18th to discuss rare but higher-than-expected reports of heart inflammation following doses of the mRNA-based Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. The new details about myocarditis and pericarditis emerged first in presentations to a panel of independent advisers for the Food and Drug Administration, who are meeting Thursday to discuss how the regulator should approach emergency use authorization for using COVID-19 vaccines in younger children.

As CBS reports, the CDC previously disclosed that reports of heart inflammation were detected mostly in younger men and teenage boys following their second dose, and that there was a “higher number of observed than expected” cases in 16- to 24-year-olds. Last month, the CDC urged providers to “ask about prior COVID-19 vaccination” in patients with symptoms of heart inflammation.

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If they don’t open on June 21, watch the spectacle.

Highly Contagious Delta Variant Now Makes Up 91% Of UK’s New Covid Cases (F.)

The highly contagious “delta” variant of the coronavirus originating from India now makes up nearly all of the U.K.’s new coronavirus cases, Health Minister Matt Hancock revealed Thursday, as the rapid spread of the mutant strain adds a new threat to Europe’s reopening. Hancock told lawmakers while under questioning about the government’s handling of the pandemic that intelligence he saw Wednesday night showed 91% of the U.K.’s new cases are made up by the delta variant. While research is still ongoing about its transmission rate, Hancock told Parliament earlier this week that the British government believes the delta variant is 40% more transmissible than the alpha variant (B.1.1.7) first detected in Britain.

Notably, as of Thursday, just three fully vaccinated people in the U.K. infected with the new variant have been hospitalized, according to data cited by Hancock, who emphasized “the jabs are working.” However, government data shows cases have been sharply rising in the U.K.: more than 41,000 new infections were reported in England in the week through June 9, a two-thirds increase from the previous seven-day period. The revelation about the virus’s prevalence in the U.K. came as the World Health Organization on Thursday morning warned the delta variant is “poised to take hold” across Europe. Hans Kluge, WHO’s regional director for Europe, encouraged countries to “act fast on signals of increasing cases” and urged caution as some move to reopen.

Hancock stressed that vaccines appear to be effective against this version of the virus. So far, the U.K. has partially vaccinated over 60% of its population and fully vaccinated nearly 43%, boasting one of the most successful vaccine rollouts in the world. The broader European Union has moved more slowly, with just 42% partially vaccinated and 22% fully vaccinated against the virus. Nonetheless, the spread of the variant is threatening to prolong lockdowns in the U.K. as the government is currently weighing whether it should delay the lifting of restrictions in England scheduled for June 21.

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Fauci and Daszak above the law.

As Trump Banned China Travel, Fauci Funded Wuhan Lab Studies (NP)

Published on February 3rd 2020, the paper entitled Synergistic China–US Ecological Research is Essential for Global Emerging Infectious Disease Preparedness was authored by researchers from the notorious EcoHealth Alliance and several Chinese Communist Party-run scientific institutions, including the Wuhan lab. EcoHealth Alliance – run by self-declared “killer” virus creator Peter Daszak – and the Wuhan lab have both come under increased scrutiny for their potential role in the creation of COVID-19 as well as the cover-up of its true origins. The 14-page paper was the culmination of two-year collaborative project between Chinese and U.S. researchers involving two workshops on “Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases” in Shenzhen, China and the University of California Berkeley in 2018.

“The workshop has two objectives,” a summary notes before explaining: The first objective is to review recent progress in ecology and infectious disease research and identify key gaps in data, information, and knowledge. The second objective is to identify research priority areas and discuss possible mechanisms for joint, international cooperation on research and education activities in ecology and infectious disease research. The paper – which was published in EcoHealth Alliance’s official journal “EcoHealth” – asserts that collaboration between the U.S. and China is key to stopping future pandemics. “International cooperation, particularly between China and the USA, is essential to fully engage the resources and scientific strengths necessary to add this ecological emphasis to the pandemic preparedness strategy,” it posits.

“The global nature of emerging and re-emerging infectious disease threats indicates the critical role of international cooperation, particularly spearheaded by China and the USA, in emerging infectious disease (EID) preparedness,” the paper adds before calling for the two countries to form a “united front for research”: “The world would be much better equipped for curbing the next pandemic, if China and the USA provided a united front for research and progress toward EID preparedness.”

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“No scientist ever believes that he has the final answer or the ultimate truth on anything.”
– Carroll Quigley

There Are No Solutions -Part Two (Jim Quinn)

The boldness and extremeness of their actions since the Fall of 2019 seem out of character with their usual shrouded machinations behind the scenes, where the public is ignorant of their actions. Something broke within the debt saturated financial system and Powell was ordered to restart QE and start reducing interest rates to fend off disaster. In a fascinating coincidence, Event 201, a pandemic simulation, was conducted on October 18 in New York City, jointly run by The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, World Economic Forum, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The four-year coup attempt by the Deep State against Trump was floundering, with their pathetic last gasp impeachment farce in January 2020.

The weaponization of the Chinese bio-weapon lab virus into a global pandemic narrative accomplished numerous objectives for the Deep State. It provided cover for the Federal Reserve to funnel trillions into the pockets of the criminal Wall Street cabal and their billionaire clientele. It provided the means for Democrat governors and mayors to use it as an excuse to allow mass mail-in voting in order to fraudulently steal the election. Destroying the economy through unnecessary worthless lockdowns and blaming it on Trump gave the Democrats a further impetus to steal the election. Convincing the entire nation masking and lockdowns stopped the spread (they did not) allowed the ruling class to exercise tyrannical authoritarian un-Constitutional mandates with little to no push back from the masses – giving them the confidence to push further.

Cases and deaths were plummeting before vaccines were rolled out in any quantity, but the media mouthpieces and lying politicians will credit the jab for decline. Using propaganda fear, convincing the masses cowering in your basement was brave, using their captured media to lie about “being in this together” as our rulers flaunted their own lockdown dictates, creating social unrest based on the false narrative of systematic racism, forcing people to be scared and suspicious of each other, and pitting families and friends against each other based on falsehoods, has accomplished the mission of tearing the fabric of our society. And now for the coup de grace – forced vaccinations with an experimental untested DNA altering concoction for a virus with a 99.8% survival rate.

The immune systems of all but the sickliest are sufficient to fight off this virus and cheap, effective, and safe treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine have been scientifically proven to successfully defeat this virus. Watching scientists and doctors declare these treatments dangerous and ineffective, with Big Tech censoring anyone dissenting from this narrative, tells you how corrupted the medical and media industries have become. Science is never settled. “No scientist ever believes that he has the final answer or the ultimate truth on anything.” – Carroll Quigley

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“..the bank had sent a memo this week informing employees in the US that they had until noon on Thursday to report their vaccination status.”

Goldman Requires Workers To Report If They Are Vaccinated (ZH)

Goldman Sachs’ bankers dragged themselves back to the office last month, shortly before American workplace safety regulators weighed in on what employers are legally allowed to ask (and not ask) about their vaccination status. As it turns out, vague federal standards will allow Goldman to allow workers to go bare-faced in the office so long as they provided their managers with information confirming they had been vaccinated. Previously, disclosing vaccination status had been “optional” for employees. That has apparently changed, as Andrew Ross Sorkin’s “DealBook” reported Thursday that the bank had sent a memo this week informing employees in the US that they had until noon on Thursday to report their vaccination status.

Bankers can log their vaccination status with the bank’s internal app for employees. Since employers can’t directly ask for this information, the bank will instead ask workers to fill in the date where they received their shots, along with the maker of their vaccine. Goldman has also informed employees through the app that their vaccination status may be shared with managers and used for planning purposes. “Registering your vaccination status allows us to plan for a safer return to the office for all of our people as we continue to abide by local public health measures,” said a section of the memo, which was sent to employees who hadn’t already reported their vaccination status. A copy of the letter was obtained by the NYT.

One of the NYT’s “expert” sources explained that Goldman can share vaccination status “with certain individuals if it’s relevant to the individual’s responsibilities, but they can’t share for no reason,,” according to Jessica Kuester, who specializes in benefits at the law firm Ogletree Deakins. [..] Companies across the US are trying to find out how many workers are vaccinated ahead of full office reopenings. They have conducted surveys and given out cash rewards, mimicking strategies embraced by state governments, as the Biden Administration scrambles to meet its goal of having 70% of American adults at least partially vaccinated by July 4. Though as things stand, it looks like the US is going to miss that target.

No word yet on whether Goldman workers will receive any kind of compensation for getting vaccinated. But seeing as the bank largely skipped bonus compensation offered to junior employees by other banks, we suspect junior bankers who comply will be doing so mostly out of the goodness of their hearts – and their unwillingness to lose their jobs.

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“We’re going to manage that. We’ve got codes, we’ve got, you know, if we have to shut down cabin categories or open cabin categories, we are going to make sure that’s on us, not you.”

Celebrity Cruises Has A Workaround For DeSantis’ Vaccine Passport Ban (F.)

For cruise operators, their mission impossible is to figure out how to follow both the guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) — which recommends that 98% of crew and 95% of passengers on a ship be vaccinated before setting sail — and avoid violating a much-hyped law from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis that prohibits businesses in his state from verifying the vaccination status of individuals. The first ship slated to sail out of Florida in 15 months is Celebrity Edge, which will depart Fort Lauderdale on June 26 on a seven-night cruise to the Western Caribbean. That’s just the beginning. By mid-summer, nine of the cruise line’s 15 ships will be operating out of Florida and other ports.

On a call with travel agents on Tuesday, Dondra Ritzenthaler, senior VP of sales, trade support and service at Celebrity Cruises, outlined how Celebrity plans to thread the needle to stay on the right side of both the CDC guidance and the Florida law, according a scoop in the unofficial Royal Caribbean Blog, which is not affiliated with the cruise line. Forbes has also obtained a recording of the June 8 call. For context, this is the second such call within two weeks where Ritzenthaler has outlined a possible workaround to travel advisors. Forbes previously obtained a recording of a May 27 call where Ritzenthaler told agents that the DeSantis administration and major cruise lines had discussed a possible exemption to the Florida law for cruise lines. A DeSantis spokesperson denied that the governor had ever considered such an exemption and told reporters that Forbes had “misinterpreted” Ritzenthaler’s comments from that call.

Throughout Tuesday’s 46-minute call, Ritzenthaler outlined the CDC guidance and reiterated multiple times that 95% of passengers on all Celebrity ships would be fully vaccinated. “We will require documentation of full vaccination from all guests who are eligible,” she said. “This is for everybody, but Florida is a little bit different, okay?” “Florida — because we honor the government, we honor DeSantis — we will still go out with 100% of our crew and 95% of our guests vaccinated. But in Florida, we will not require you to have to show proof of vaccination, because we are doing this exactly the right way,” said Ritzenthaler.

“Our President and CEO, Lisa Lutoff-Perlo, right before this call, said, ‘Dondra, you reassure every travel adviser on this call that we will sail with 95% of our guests vaccinated,’” said Ritzenthaler, who did not explain in detail how Celebrity would accomplish this feat except to suggest that, instead of verifying passengers’ vaccination records at the port on embarkation day, Celebrity would manage the ratio of vaccinated-to-unvaccinated guests during the booking process. “Guys, the way we’re going to do that is we’re going to manage the sailing, right?” she told the hundreds of agents on the call. “We’re going to make sure that we open some cabin categories. We close some cabin categories. We are going to make sure that 95% of our guests are vaccinated.”

That would mean that only five percent of any ship’s inventory for any sailing would be made available to unvaccinated passengers. At the end of the call, Ritzenthaler fielded a question from a travel advisor asking for additional clarity on how the cruise line would achieve the 95% vaccination threshold. “That’s not anything you have to worry about,” Ritzenthaler reiterated. “We’re going to manage that. We’ve got codes, we’ve got, you know, if we have to shut down cabin categories or open cabin categories, we are going to make sure that’s on us, not you.”

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Don’t laugh, they’re serious.

The Global Pandemic Requires A Global Vaccination Plan (F.)

As world leaders gather for the annual G7 Leadership Summit, they have one job: end the pandemic by delivering a global roadmap to vaccinate the world. This must be a comprehensive, coordinated strategy that accelerates global Covid-19 vaccine access and delivery in order to achieve at least 70% coverage in all countries. Eighteen months into the Covid-19 pandemic, we find ourselves navigating a schism between the haves and the have-nots where those in high-income countries can see a light at the end of the pandemic tunnel while many in poorer countries are experiencing the persistence of this devastating crisis. More than 85% of vaccine doses administered to date have gone to people in high- and upper-middle-income countries. And low-income countries? Just 0.3%.

What was once the bright spot in the pandemic — the rapid development and manufacture of life-saving vaccines — now points to a vast moral failing. There are many reasons that this has happened, but it boils down to a difficult truth: there is still no end-to-end plan to vaccinate the world to at least 70% coverage and provide the support needed for every country to get vaccines delivered and administered safely. The system that allowed just a few countries to buy nearly all the world’s vaccine supply needs root and branch reform. But right now, we must collectively do more. We are calling for an end-to-end plan that addresses urgent gaps in vaccine supply and delivery. After all, vaccines alone don’t save lives — vaccinations do.

Though the commitment of COVAX — the mechanism to accelerate the development and manufacture of Covid-19 vaccines and guarantee fair and equitable vaccine access — is laudable, to date it is not enough. As WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said to the World Health Assembly, while COVAX has delivered 72 million doses to 125 countries, “those doses are sufficient for barely 1 percent of the combined population of those countries.” President Joe Biden’s announcement last week that shipments of surplus doses have begun is also promising, but global leaders must do more. According to the Launch & Scale Speedometer, the G7 countries (including the whole of the EU) have an excess of 3 billion doses, even after vaccinating their entire population. G7 countries have the opportunity to do the right thing. We urge leadership to share one billion doses by the end of August, and another billion by the end of the year to support the global vaccination effort.

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“The law aims to firmly safeguard the sovereign dignity and core interests of the country and oppose Western hegemony and power politics..”

China Passes Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law (Y!)

China on Thursday passed a new law to counter foreign sanctions, as it looks to build its defences against rising US and EU pressure over trade and human rights. Beijing has accused the United States of “suppressing” Chinese firms and issued veiled threats of retaliation after President Joe Biden last week expanded a blacklist of companies in which Americans are not allowed to invest. Countermeasures in the Chinese law include “refusal to issue visas, denial of entry, deportation… and sealing, seizing, and freezing property of individuals or businesses that adhere to foreign sanctions against Chinese businesses or officials,” according to the text published by the standing committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature. The restrictions can apply to family members of individuals who fall foul of Beijing.


The law also allows the country’s courts to punish companies that comply with foreign laws, and says that businesses or people in China do not need to comply with foreign restrictions. “The law aims to firmly safeguard the sovereign dignity and core interests of the country and oppose Western hegemony and power politics,” foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbing told a briefing. China has long complained about US sanctions and trade restrictions affecting Chinese companies, calling it an extraterritorial application of US law. Biden has stepped up US criticism of Beijing in recent months over the theft of intellectual property, and alleged human rights abuses in Hong Kong and the restive Xinjiang region. Last week, the White House expanded the blacklist of companies Americans are barred from investing in due to the firms’ links to Beijing’s military.

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“..in part responsible for the flood of cash that suddenly started to show up in the banking system that was already up to the gills in cash, and poured out from there.”

Cash Gone Nuts: Treasury General Account Drops to $674 Billion (WS)

The excess balances in the federal government’s checking account – the “Treasury General Account” (TGA) at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York – that had ballooned to $1.8 trillion by July 2020 plunged to $674 billion as of Wednesday, according to the Fed’s balance sheet, released today, the lowest since April 2, 2020, having now unwound most of the monetized-but-unspent debt-binge spike from spring last year. The Mnuchin Treasury started reducing the balance in the TGA in baby steps by borrowing less than they were spending. The Yellen Treasury announced in February that it would draw down the account to $500 billion by the end of June. $174 billion more to go:

Last spring, the government sold a gigantic amount of debt, piling an additional $3 trillion on top of its mountain of debt in just a few months. At the same time, the Fed bought $3 trillion in securities as part of its QE and wealth effect program, thereby monetizing nearly all of the $3 trillion in new debt that the government issued during that time. But the government didn’t spend all of the $3 trillion in proceeds from the new debt, and the TGA – a liability on the Fed’s balance sheet – soared from around $400 billion in February 2020 to $1.8 trillion in July. This $1.4 trillion addition that the government had borrowed and that the Fed had then monetized didn’t go into the economy and the markets but sat in the government’s checking account.


But now, during the drawdown of the TGA, that money has been going into the economy and the markets. The drawdown so far is money that the government has spent since February but didn’t have to collect in taxes or borrow from investors since it already borrowed it over a year ago, with the Fed having monetized the new debt. Since February, this money has started circulating in the economy, markets, and banking system, as the government spent it, and is in part responsible for the flood of cash that suddenly started to show up in the banking system that was already up to the gills in cash, and poured out from there.

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“..don’t fall asleep during the meeting.”

Trump Tells Biden To Give Putin His ‘Warmest Regards’ (F.)

Less than a week before President Joe Biden’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva, Switzerland, former President Donald Trump put out a statement insisting his widely criticized 2018 Helsinki summit with Putin went “great” and telling Biden not to “fall asleep” when meeting with the strongman. Trump said in a statement he had a “great and productive” summit with Putin, at which he contradicted U.S. intelligence on alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 election, stating, “Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be.” Trump said the negative image of that meeting is the result of a “belated Fake News portrayal,” claiming he “won much” from it, including the “respect of President Putin and Russia,” though what they actually discussed in their closed-door meeting remains a mystery.


Trump said it was the “obvious” choice for him to believe Russia over former U.S. intelligence officials with whom he has feuded, including former FBI directors James Comey and Andy McCabe. Trump wished Biden “good luck” in “dealing with President Putin,” and, in a continuation of attacks he made on Biden’s physical and mental capacity during the election, added “don’t fall asleep during the meeting.” “Because of the phony Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, made-up and paid for by the Democrats and Crooked Hillary Clinton, the United States was put at a disadvantage—a disadvantage that was nevertheless overcome by me,” Trump said, reflecting how he feels his presidency was kneecapped by the Russia probe.

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The “trick” is more legislation?!

Convert New York’s Entire Grid to Renewables With This One Trick (Vice)

New York lawmakers are considering legislation that would drastically build out the state’s renewable energy offerings, a step toward a future in which some activists believe energy utilities could be fully renewable and municipally owned. The New York Build Public Renewables Act (Assembly Bill A1466A) would enable the New York Power Authority (NYPA)—the largest state public utility in the country—to develop and operate utility-scale renewable energy projects while requiring it to phase out fossil fuel infrastructure by 2025. The bill was introduced in January by State Senator Kevin Parker and Assemblymember Robert Carroll, and is championed by the Public Power NY Coalition—a statewide collective of environmental justice organizations that includes several Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) chapters and the NY Energy Democracy Alliance.

It is less radical than a previously considered piece of legislation that would have transitioned control over utilities to the state while banning for-profit energy service companies like National Grid and Con Edison. Advocates believe the passage of the Build Public Renewables Act would represent a first meaningful step toward climate action more than two years after the passage of New York’s landmark Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA). Passed in 2019, the CLCPA established a set of legally-binding environmental targets requiring 70 percent of New York’s energy to come from renewable sources by 2030 in order to reduce statewide greenhouse gas emissions by 85 percent by 2050.

The CLCPA was once lauded as the the most ambitious piece of state climate legislation in the country, but activists like Charlie Heller, organizer with the Public Power Coalition, say the state hasn’t upheld its promises. (Just five percent of New York’s energy production is currently generated by wind and solar power, for example.) “If you really think it’s a climate emergency, you wouldn’t just sit there and not pass any major climate bills,” Heller said.

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Jul 162020
 


Irving Underhill Irving Trust Building, Trinity Church, Wall Street, New York 1931

 

‘Over Half’ Of Trial Participants Had Adverse Reactions To Moderna Vaccine (JTN)
Obesity May Stack the Deck for COVID-19 Risk (WebMD)
Victoria Gov’t Refuses To Say How Many Health Workers Have COVID19 (G.)
Italy’s Call For Urgent Help Was Ignored As Virus Swept Through Europe (G.)
Hackers Convinced Twitter Employee to Help Them Hijack Accounts
Twitter Silences Some Top Accounts After Internal Systems Hacked (R.)
Twitter Hack Is A Nightmare Not Just For Twitter (BV)
Delta’s Passenger Revenue -94%. How it Plans to Stay Alive (WS)
Adam Schiff Just Can’t Stop Lying (Roger Stone)
“They Always Do It Within 24 to 48 Hours” – Sidney Powell (GP)
Ghislaine Maxwell Is Married, Refuses To Name Spouse (G.)
Cleaners Remove Banksy Artwork From London Tube Train (BBC)
Indigenous Group Accidentally Blows Up Rio Tinto’s Headquarters (Chaser)

 

 

The most disturbing thing about the Twitter hacks may not even be how easy it is to break into the company and take control over many things, but that, as screenshots show, Twitter very much DOES appear to have the power to shadow ban etc. accounts. And that is not what @jack told Congress.

 

 

Both the US and the world come up just short of new records. But there are rumblings about manipulated and inflated Florida numbers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moderna

 

 

So much for a rapid vaccine: “..they intend to follow participants “for 1 year after the second vaccination..”

‘Over Half’ Of Trial Participants Had Adverse Reactions To Moderna Vaccine (JTN)

A highly anticipated clinical trial for a potential COVID-19 vaccine managed in part by the American drug company Moderna has resulted in some adverse effects in more than half of the trial’s participants, with one test group reporting “severe” symptoms. The trial, which is also being sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, administered the vaccine “as a 0.5-ml injection in the deltoid muscle” in two shots spaced about one month apart. Two separate groups received 25-microgram and 100-microgram doses, respectively. A third group with a 250-microgram dose was subsequently added. The vaccine “induced anti–SARS-CoV-2 immune responses in all participants,” the research team reported Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Researchers said that “no trial-limiting safety concerns were identified.” Yet a majority of participants still reported at least one side effect. “Solicited adverse events that occurred in more than half the participants included fatigue, chills, headache, myalgia, and pain at the injection site,” the report states. Fever, joint pain and nausea were also reported. Side effects grew more common with more (and larger) injections, the scientists write: “Systemic adverse events were more common after the second vaccination, particularly with the highest dose, and three participants (21%) in the 250 microgram dose group reported one or more severe adverse events.”

Notably, every participant in the two larger-dose groups reported adverse reactions after their second injections. One study participant in the smallest-dose group, meanwhile, was removed due to having developed hives after the first round of injections. The scientists said that due to the ongoing status of the project, they are not yet “able to assess the durability of the immune responses” generated by the vaccine, but that they intend to follow participants “for 1 year after the second vaccination” and examine regular blood samples to monitor the vaccine’s effects.

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Overall big risk. As is smoking, which also returns as a major COVID risk.

Obesity May Stack the Deck for COVID-19 Risk (WebMD)

Stephen O’Rahilly recently spent a week in a hospital, sick with COVID-19 and struggling to breathe. “My lungs were quite badly affected,” says O’Rahilly, 62, who spent almost a week getting extra oxygen in what’s known as a high-intensity care unit in the U.K. The experience got him thinking: While about 80% of cases of COVID-19 can be treated at home, why do some people, including him, wind up with more severe infections? Besides his age, O’Rahilly knew he had another strike against him when it comes to COVID-19 infection: his weight. His BMI, or body mass index, is over 30. O’Rahilly, who directs the MRC Metabolic Diseases Unit at Cambridge University, is considered one of the world’s leading obesity researchers.

He was knighted in 2013 by Queen Elizabeth II for his work, which includes the discovery of a genetic condition that robs the body of the hormone leptin, which controls appetite and weight. And so after his brush with the coronavirus, he started digging into exactly what it is about obesity that makes it so risky for a COVID-19 infection. It has become clearer that people who are obese are one of the groups at highest risk from the disease, regardless of their age. The CDC recently refined its risk categories for COVID-19, stating that obesity was as big a risk for COVID as having a suppressed immune system or chronic lung or kidney disease. The agency also lowered the bar for where that risk starts — from a BMI of 40 to a BMI of 30. Roughly 40% of Americans have a BMI over 30.

The CDC’s change in BMI risk comes after a British study of more than 17 million people found that people living with severe obesity were about twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as people who were not obese. That was true even after other things like their age and sex were taken into account. The study also found that risk rises with the degree of obesity. The bigger a person, the higher their risk of a COVID-19 death. [O’Rahilly] he thinks the risk comes from the fact that fat makes and regulates hormones. For example, people who are obese make more of something called “complement” proteins. These proteins can trigger out-of-control blood clotting, which is a problem in patients with severe COVID-19.

People with obesity also have lower blood levels of a hormone called adiponectin. Recent studies in mice show that adiponectin protects the lungs. O’Rahilly thinks that if you have lower levels to begin with, you may be more likely to have lung inflammation during an infection like COVID-19. Adiponectin also helps keep blood vessels clean and open. So if the insides of your blood vessels are sticky, and a virus causes your immune system to go haywire and create more blood clots, that sets the stage for blockages. These blockages can cause heart attacks, strokes, and lung damage — all problems seen in COVID-19 patients. To compound the problem, people with obesity appear to have more ACE2 receptors on their cells than others. ACE2 receptors are the doors the virus uses to infect cells and then make more copies of itself.

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Oh, why not, you’re at the other end of the world anyway.

Victoria Gov’t Refuses To Say How Many Health Workers Have COVID19 (G.)

The Victorian government has refused to answer questions about hospital surge capacity or the number of healthcare workers and medical institutions coping with outbreaks of Covid-19, with hundreds of health staff now in precautionary quarantine due to potential exposure to the virus. An email from the chief executive of Victoria’s largest public health service, Monash Health, said 77 staff across the service were in precautionary quarantine following three potential sources of exposure. Infections have been found in five employees. Monash Health services a quarter of the state. “We must use this opportunity to reinforce processes, to make sure that we all understand them, and are doing what we need to do to stay safe,” the email said, urging staff to use protective gear properly and undertake frequent infection risk assessments.


Meanwhile, 14 staff from St Vincent’s hospital in Melbourne are recovering from the virus, an email sent from the chief executive to staff on Thursday said. The emergency and general medical departments of the hospital are undergoing deep cleaning following “potential exposures,” the email said. All emergency staff have undergone testing. There are 10 inpatients with Covid-19 at the hospital. The email said “a small number of emergency department staff” had contracted the virus, so precautions were being taken. There had also been a potential exposure in the intensive care ward, the email said. Contact tracing is underway and several intensive care and general medical team staff are now in isolation. As of Thursday, 70 staff associated with the Royal Melbourne Hospital were also in precautionary quarantine, with 12 positive staff and 48 inpatients with the virus. The ABC has confirmed Melbourne’s Northern Health has 142 staff in self-isolation.

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EU has zero power, and zero decision-making process.

Italy’s Call For Urgent Help Was Ignored As Virus Swept Through Europe (G.)

It was a moment of chilling clarity. On 26 February, with the numbers of Italians known to be infected by coronavirus tripling every 48 hours, the country’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, appealed to fellow EU member states for help. His hospitals were overwhelmed. Italian doctors and nurses had run out of the masks, gloves and aprons they needed to keep themselves safe, and medics were being forced to play God with the lives of the critically-ill due to an acute lack of ventilators. An urgent message was passed from Rome to the European commission’s Berlaymont headquarters in Brussels. The specifications of Italy’s needs were uploaded into the EU’s Common Emergency Communication and Information System (CECIS). But what happened next came as a shock. The distress call was met with silence.

“No member state responded to Italy’s request and to the commission’s call for help,” said Janez Lenarcic, the European commissioner responsible for crisis management. “Which meant that not only is Italy is not prepared … Nobody is prepared … The lack of response to the Italian request was not so much a lack of solidarity. It was a lack of equipment.” It was as millions of Europeans prepared for their New Year’s Eve celebrations that officials in the Stockholm office of the EU public health agency, the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC), first received notice of a cluster of pneumonia cases in China of unknown origin. Established in 2005 in reaction to the Sars outbreak two years before, the ECDC offers scientific advice. It can do no more.

Responsibility for health remains entirely with the national governments of the EU, and not in the European commission or its agencies. Despite its limitations, the ECDC’s job is to look to the full European horizon, and call the alarm whether capitals listen or not. The agency gave its first threat assessment on 9 January, the body’s director Dr Andrea Ammon recalled. “At that time, the notion [was] most of the cases were linked to this live animal market [in the Chinese city of Wuhan]”, she told the Guardian. “Roughly two weeks later it turned out it is human to human transmission which of course changes what you need to do”. The initial concern was how to keep the disease outside the EU’s borders. On 17 January a first coronavirus conference call was held by another EU body born out of previous health crises – but again lacking the powers retained by the national governments.

[..] The stark reality was that in the months and years before coronavirus arrived in Europe, stocks of personal protective equipment (PPE) had dwindled. Emergency supplies of masks had expired, been destroyed and never replaced. Pandemic preparedness plans were out of date. “Several European countries had a strategic stock of masks that were outdated … Most of them were just destroyed,” said one scientific adviser. France held 1.7bn protective masks in 2011, but now had only 117m. Between January and March this year it incinerated 1.5m. In 2017, Belgium ordered the destruction of 38m masks and they were never replaced. No one, it appeared, had a hold on what was out there. Up until 23 February, flights carrying donations of PPE were leaving Europe for China in the hope of containing the virus there. But the unpalatable truth was that Europe itself was exposed.

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Hmmm…looks like@jack lied to Congress.

“Alleged leaked pictures from the Twitter admin control panel that was compromised showcase the buttons ‘Trends Blacklist’ and ‘Search Blacklist’, indicating Twitter DOES have the ability to shadowban its users.”

What is Congress going to do about that?

Hackers Convinced Twitter Employee to Help Them Hijack Accounts

A Twitter insider was responsible for a wave of high profile account takeovers on Wednesday, according to leaked screenshots obtained by Motherboard and two sources who took over accounts. On Wednesday, a spike of high profile accounts including those of Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Uber, and Apple tweeted cryptocurrency scams in an apparent hack. “We used a rep that literally done all the work for us,” one of the sources told Motherboard. The second source added they paid the Twitter insider. Motherboard granted the sources anonymity to speak candidly about a security incident. A Twitter spokesperson told Motherboard that the company is still investigating whether the employee hijacked the accounts themselves or gave hackers access to the tool.

The accounts were taken over using an internal tool at Twitter, according to the sources, as well as screenshots of the tool obtained by Motherboard. One of the screenshots shows the panel and the account of Binance; Binance is one of the accounts that hackers took over today. According to screenshots seen by Motherboard, at least some of the accounts appear to have been compromised by changing the email address associated with them using the tool. In all, four sources close to or inside the underground hacking community provided Motherboard with screenshots of the user tool. Two sources said the Twitter panel was also used to change ownership of some so-called OG accounts—accounts that have a handle consisting of only one or two characters—as well as facilitating the tweeting of the cryptocurrency scams from the high profile accounts.

Twitter has been deleting some screenshots of the panel and has suspended users who have tweeted them, claiming that the tweets violate its rules. The panel is a stark example of the issue of insider data access at tech companies. Whereas in other cases hackers have bribed workers to leverage tools over individual users, in this case the access has led to takeovers of some of the biggest accounts on the social media platform and tweeted bitcoin related scams in an effort to generate income. The screenshots show details about the target user’s account, such as whether it has been suspended, is permanently suspended, or has protected status. One of the screenshots is a Twitter user posting images of the panel themselves. At the time of writing that account has been suspended.

Data breach monitoring and prevention service Under The Breach obtained a similar screenshot and tweeted it as the worker hijacked several accounts. The person in control of the Under The Breach account told Motherboard Twitter then removed the tweet with the screenshot and suspended them for 12 hours. A message replacing the tweet now says it violated the Twitter rules.

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Most are back up.

Twitter Silences Some Top Accounts After Internal Systems Hacked (R.)

Twitter said hackers accessed its internal systems to hijack some of the platform’s top voices including U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden, reality TV star Kim Kardashian, former U.S. President Barack Obama and billionaire Elon Musk and used them to solicit digital currency. Twitter said employees with access to its internal systems had been successfully targeted by hackers who “used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf.” “We’re looking into what other malicious activity they may have conducted or information they may have accessed and will share more here as we have it,” the company said.


Twitter temporarily took the extraordinary step of preventing for several hours at least some verified accounts from publishing messages altogether. It said it would restore access only when it was certain it could do so securely. Publicly available blockchain records show the apparent scammers received more than $100,000 worth of cryptocurrency. Chief Executive Jack Dorsey earlier said the company was diagnosing the problem and pledged to share “everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened.” “Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened,” he said in a tweet. Shares in the social media company tumbled almost 5% in trading after the market close before paring their losses.

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“Twitter’s average monetizable daily active users hit 166 million in the first quarter, an almost 25% increase.”

Twitter Hack Is A Nightmare Not Just For Twitter (BV)

A hack of prominent Twitter accounts is a nightmare for more than just the social network itself. Fake tweets soliciting digital currency on Wednesday from figures like Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk and U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden mean Twitter’s cybersecurity costs will rise. But if that’s all that happens, founder Jack Dorsey can count himself lucky. Posts on the social network have the potential to move markets, or worse. The intrusion was severe enough that Twitter locked down so-called verified accounts – its label for those owned by high-profile people. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, former President Barack Obama and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos were among those that had appeared to solicit bitcoins from other users – saying that whatever was given would be doubled by them and returned. It sent Twitter’s stock down by almost 4% in after-market trading.

For investors in tech companies, a major hacking incident usually means one thing: higher costs. Twitter’s expenses already rose nearly 20% in the first quarter of the year, resulting in an operating loss of $7 million compared to a profit of $94 million a year earlier. Ideally, that’s offset by a reduced risk of future embarrassing events. The scam, though, could have been worse. Tweets from business leaders can move markets. Then there’s President Donald Trump, who uses the platform to announce new policies – and communicate with, or about, other world leaders. It’s not hard to see how a fake tweet could send markets reeling, or even pose a national security risk.

So what can be done? Users with public profiles could start behaving differently online, even if Trump doesn’t. The company, like other social media networks, benefits from having highly active celebrity users, and Covid-19 has actually proved good for business. Twitter’s average monetizable daily active users hit 166 million in the first quarter, an almost 25% increase. Fewer prominent tweeters could impact that trend, and hurt ad revenue. And if users don’t proceed with caution, regulators could also step in. Expect law enforcement agencies, and Congress, to want to know more about Twitter’s security processes. The social network could even emerge stronger for the scrutiny. The world, as well as the company’s investors, should hope it does.

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There go the jobs.

Delta’s Passenger Revenue -94%. How it Plans to Stay Alive (WS)

Delta Airlines confirmed today why Warren Buffett dumped his huge stake in mid-crash: Airlines are in an existential crisis, and there is no V-shaped recovery, according to Delta’s earnings report for the second quarter this morning, which was beyond dismal. There were the huge losses. In the quarter ended June 30, Delta booked a pretax loss of $7.01 billion and an after-tax net loss of $5.72 billion. That translates into a loss of $9.01 a share. These losses include $2.1 billion in write-downs of its stakes in Latam Airlines and Aeromexico, both of which filed for bankruptcy in the US recently, and in Virgin Atlantic Airways, which may go into “administration” in the UK.

Then there were the revenues, with a breath-taking plunge:
• Passenger revenue – which last year was 90% of total revenues – collapsed by 94% year-over-year to just $678 million.
• Its highly profitable business cabin and other premium sales (usually over 1/3 of total revenues): -95%.
• Revenues, domestic flights -93%; Atlantic -97%; Latin America -98%; Pacific -95%.
• Cargo revenue: -42% to just $108 million.
• “Other revenues” (loyalty programs, its own refinery, etc.): -31% to $682 million.
• Total revenues: -88%, to $1.47 billion, from $12.5 billion a year ago

So Delta is shrinking into “a smaller, more efficient airline,” and is shedding its older less efficient planes this year, including all of its ancient MD-88, MD-90, plus its 777 and 737-700 fleets, and portions of its 767-300ER and A320 fleets. Shedding these planes comes with shedding the people that fly them and take care of them. Today, Delta said it would “proactively manage headcount and rescale operations” via “voluntary separation and early retirement programs.” In late June, Delta said it would send WARN notices to nearly 20% of its pilots, notifying them of potential furloughs. On October 1, the layoff restrictions attached to the bailout funds expire, and then the involuntary layoffs can commence.

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Let Stone talk for a minute. He has as much right as anyone else.

Adam Schiff Just Can’t Stop Lying (Roger Stone)

On Dec. 10, 2017 Schiff once again stated, “We have all of these facts in chronology, you’d have to believe that these were all isolated incidents, not connected to each other — just doesn’t make rational sense … We do know this: the Russians offered help, the campaign accepted help, the Russians gave help and the president made full use of that help. That is pretty damning, whether it is proof beyond a reasonable doubt of conspiracy or not.” Again, the Trump campaign accepted and made use of nothing. But don’t interrupt little Adam Schiff when he’s on a rhetorical roll. Schiff stated on Feb. 7, 2018 that there was “certainly a lot of evidence” of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. He added, “In terms of ethical violations and acting against the interest of the United States, that evidence is already ample and in the public view.”

Again, the congressman from West Hollywood has produced evidence of no such thing. In what appeared to be a direct reversal, Schiff appeared on ABC’s “The View” on March 1, 2018. He refused to cite any specific evidence the panel he co-chaired had found that proved that the Trump campaign “colluded” with the Russian government during the 2016 election. Yet on April 15, appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Schiff made a point to say that it was “simply not true” that there had been no evidence the 2016 presidential campaign for Donald Trump colluded with Russia. Schiff, the ever-hopeful wannabe star, continued making headlines such as this one on April 27, 2018: “ADAM SCHIFF ANNOUNCES DEMOCRATS HAVE EVIDENCE OF TRUMP/RUSSIA COLLUSION.” The story quoted Schiff: “In fact, we found evidence of collusion in the abundant secret meetings and communications between Trump campaign officials and associates.”

None of this of course even touches on his ridiculous antics during the Ukrainian impeachment hoax where Schiff once again got caught lying about contact with the so-called “whistleblower.” Now, incredibly, Schiff is trying to fan the embers of the Russian collusion delusion one more time. One thing is abundantly clear. If Robert Mueller and his minions had any proof whatsoever that I worked with Russian intelligence to steal and disseminate data from the democrats, they most certainly would have charged me with it. If Mueller and his henchmen had any evidence that I had received documents from WikiLeaks and passed them on to the Trump campaign, they would have charged me with that. In fact, if Mueller and his 12 angry Democrats had any proof beyond the plea bargain-induced uncorroborated claims of convicted liars Michael Cohen and Rick Gates that I ever even spoke to Donald Trump about WikiLeaks, they surely would have indicted me on that charge and would have used it to impeach the president.

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It’s not Bill Barr, it’s her.

“They Always Do It Within 24 to 48 Hours” – Sidney Powell (GP)

General Michael Flynn was lied to, set up multiple times before and after the Trump inauguration, excessively and to the point of illegally unmasked, targeted, ambushed in the White House, falsely accused, threatened with his son being indicted, provided corrupt legal counsel (the same firm where corrupt Obama former AG Eric Holder works), harassed for 3 years, belittled, slandered, besmirched by the judge, harassed by the judge, and then the attorneys going after him were the same attorneys who represented the corrupt Sally Yates who lied and told President Trump General Flynn lied.

The government reviewed General Flynn’s case and determined it never should have occurred. When the government and Flynn’s attorneys, including Sidney Powell, went to the court to have the case thrown out, the judge overseeing the case wouldn’t do it. Next the government and Powell went to the DC Circuit court to have the case thrown out and the Circuit Court two weeks ago ordered Judge Sullivan to do so. This interview discusses the entire case from Sidney Powell’s perspective and the current status of this corrupt case not being thrown out by this corrupted judge. At the 1:30 mark in the video the following exchange occurs:

Jan Jekielek: The DC Circuit Court of Appeals has basically said, has ordered Judge Sullivan to close the case and I think he had 24 hours to do so and he didn’t do it, so what’s going on? Where we at here?

Sidney Powell: Well they don’t really put a time limit on the order but I can’t say in my decades of practice, and we’re not going to number those, that I’ve ever seen a judge not do what he was told to do by what’s called a ‘writ of mandamus’ or extraordinary writ order directly from the Circuit Court of Appeals to do something. They always do it within 24 to 48 hours. I just haven’t seen that happen with the possible exception of one case way back when I had to get a writ of mandamus against a Federal District Judge twice in the same case. Now we are certainly hoping that doesn’t have to happen here and that the order will be signed shortly. Because he’s not party to the case. That doesn’t mean the full court can’t review the case on its own but it would be unprecedented to do so in these circumstances.

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Let’s go crazier. Anyway, no bail for her, which would have set up a storm.

Ghislaine Maxwell Is Married, Refuses To Name Spouse (G.)

The British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who faces federal charges in Manhattan for allegedly enabling Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of minor girls, is married, prosecutors said during a court proceeding. Prosecutors made the revelation on Tuesday when arguing that Maxwell should be detained pending trial. Maxwell, who had asked for release on a $5m bond co-signed by six people, was ultimately denied bail. Maxwell pleaded not guilty to the charges. They also said Maxwell had “declined” to identify her spouse to court officials. “In addition to failing to describe in any way the absence of proposed co-signers of a bond, the defendant also makes no mention whatsoever about the financial circumstances or assets of her spouse whose … identity she declined to provide to pretrial services,” assistant US attorney Alison Moe told Judge Alison Nathan.

“There is no information about who will be co-signing this bond or their assets and no details whatsoever.” News of Maxwell’s purported marriage surfaced in earnest on Wednesday morning. Maxwell’s arraignment and bail proceeding was conducted via video, and audio repeatedly cut out for those observing from the courthouse; transcripts that became available late last night filled in some of these gaps. However, many details of Maxwell’s secretive personal life were audible – including information on how she wound up living on the 156-acre Bradford, New Hampshire, estate where she was arrested on 2 July. A real estate agent involved with the property’s sale told an FBI agent that the buyers introduced themselves as “Scott and Janet Marshall, who both have British accents”.

“Scott Marshall told her that the … that he was retired from the British military and he was currently working on writing a book. Janet Marshall described herself as a journalist who wants privacy. They told the agent they wanted to purchase the property quickly through a wire and that they were setting up an LLC,” Moe said, noting that this conversation took place in November 2019. “Following [Maxwell’s] arrest, the real estate agent saw a photograph of [Maxwell] in the media and realized that the person who had introduced herself as Janet Marshall … was the defendant, Ghislaine Maxwell.”

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Love it. This is why he made the video. But it’s still a few million pounds they cleaned off.

Cleaners Remove Banksy Artwork From London Tube Train (BBC)

It was a smudge on a cleaning cloth long before the artist revealed on social media he’d done it. In the current climate, it is perhaps reassuring that the cleaners on the Tube did their job quickly and efficiently and cleaned off the work so quickly. Graffiti is regarded – certainly in the transport world and by many commuters – as something that contributes to a threatening, unwelcoming atmosphere. Of course there will be those who say it should have been kept or protected as art but that is somewhat academic. You get the feeling Banksy, who has previously destroyed his art on purpose, knew exactly what would happen to his work by putting it inside a carriage.


This was perhaps all part of the plan. An official statement said the art was removed “some days ago” in line with the London Underground’s “strict anti-graffiti policy”. All public transport users in London must wear a face covering, and TfL said it appreciated “the sentiment of encouraging people” to do so. “We’d like to offer Banksy the chance to do a new version of his message for our customers in a suitable location,” it added.

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Bit of Australian humor.

Indigenous Group Accidentally Blows Up Rio Tinto’s Headquarters (Chaser)

The Pinikura Aboriginal Corporation have today apologised to the traditional owners of the Rio Tinto headquarters located in urban-Australia after learning that the site held special importance to the group who hold claim over the land. “We apologize to the traditional owners of the site,” explained a representative for the indigenous group, “and we hope that we can work together in the future to ensure that other mining-related artifacts aren’t destroyed without consultation with the corporation’s elders.” However, critics have pointed out that Rio Tinto was simply getting in the way of progress, with the P.A.C. acting well within their rights to explore for minerals underneath the skyscraper.


“We can’t seriously expect to just waste such precious resources because of some group that superstitiously believes that some rocks are valuable and are a source of power,” explained one Aboriginal expert with a degree in White Studies. “The reality is that at the end of the day, if we lost a few accounting books tracing the history of the company, that’s a small price to pay for progress.” Asked what they will be doing to make amends, the Aboriginal group said it all happened in the past, so instead of any meaningful action they will simply put up a plaque explaining why blowing up a building might be considered bad in hindsight, but also pointing out that people three hours ago held different views around these things so we shouldn’t judge them by the standards of the current time.

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