Jan 222023
 
 January 22, 2023  Posted by at 10:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  58 Responses »


Joseph Mallord William Turner The Fifth Plague of Egypt 1800

 

Six More Classified Documents Discovered At Biden House (ZH)
DOJ Seizes More Classified Docs From Biden’s Wilmington Home (Fox)
Joe Biden Took Classified Documents Home When He Was a Senator (CTH)
World Moving Closer To ‘Irreversible’ Disaster – Chomsky (RT)
Ukraine – Russian Army Activates Southern Front (MoA)
Fighting Russia ‘Very, Very Difficult’ For Ukraine – Gen. Milley (RT)
Russian Casualties In Ukraine Have Hit 188,000 – US Intel (Az.)
US Attempts To Seek Latin America’s Russian Arms Supplies To Kiev (TASS)
Duma Speaker Warns Of Powerful Retaliation For Weapons Supplies To Kiev (TASS)
Russians’ Level Of Trust In Putin Exceeds 78% (TASS)
Twitter Lost 80% Of Its Workforce Under Elon Musk (Az.)
Twitter Files Prove America Headed for ‘Totalitarian State Territory’ (ET)
EU Car Sales Collapse – Industry Body (RT)
GMC Blinks First: Regulator Declines to Investigate Dr Aseem Malhotra (DS)
Japan Declares It Will Handle COVID-19 Like a Seasonal Flu (GP)

 

 

 

 

The Year of the Tiger has given way to the Year of the Rabbit.

 

 

German MP

 

 

Dowd

 

 

 

 

Scott Adams
https://twitter.com/i/status/1616949618725781506

 

 

 

 

Well, more docs. And more obfuscation. Whereas Trump’s home was raided, Biden is said to have ”offered access to his home” (after more than 2 months. Lots of write-ups, here are two. I went to the CNN homepage, crickets.

BTW, it’s not “Six More Classified Documents”, but “six items consisting of documents with classification markings and surrounding materials”. Yes, that could mean 1000 documents.

Six More Classified Documents Discovered At Biden House (ZH)

The Department of Justice found “six items consisting of documents with classification markings” during a Friday search of President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, according to a Saturday statement by the president’s personal lawyers. Also found were notes from Biden’s time as a Senator, as well as his tenure as Vice President, according to a statement from Biden attorney Bob Bauer, which strategically leads with ‘we’ve fully cooperated!’ The search lasted from 9:45 a.m. until 10:30 p.m. Friday, during which members of Biden’s personal legal tam were present along with members from the Office of the White House counsel, according to the statement. The DOJ also took materials “for further review.” The new documents mark the latest development in the scandal involving classified documents found at non-authorized locations used by Biden. The first batch of papers was discovered in early November, the day before midterm elections, at the Penn Biden Center. More documents marked classified were found at his Wilmington, Delaware home in December – and then earlier this month, an additional batch of papers was found at the home. “

The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Department officials earlier considered having FBI agents monitor a search by Mr. Biden’s lawyers for classified documents at his homes but decided against it, both to avoid complicating later stages of the investigation and because Mr. Biden’s attorneys had quickly turned over a first batch and were cooperating, the Journal reported this week. Some law enforcement officials had discussed the possibility of asking Mr. Biden’s team for consent to have the FBI search the property themselves. Officials didn’t immediately take that step in part to preserve their freedom to take a tougher line later, including by executing a search warrant, the Journal reported. Instead, the two sides agreed that Mr. Biden’s personal attorneys would inspect the homes, notify the Justice Department as soon as they identified any other potentially classified records, and arrange for law-enforcement authorities to take them. -Wall Street Journal”

So, Biden’s personal attorneys searched the house themselves, said they turned everything over to the DOJ, and yet more were found? When Trump’s lawyers did that he was raided by the FBI.

Read more …

13 hour search covered “all working, living and storage spaces in the home.” What are the odds more will be “discovered” next week?

DOJ Seizes More Classified Docs From Biden’s Wilmington Home (Fox)

The Justice Department seized additional classified records from President Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware home after an FBI search on Friday, Fox News has learned. “On Jan. 20, 2023, the FBI executed a planned, consensual search of the President’s residence in Wilmington, Delaware,” Joseph D. Fitzpatrick, an assistant U.S. attorney to U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch, told Fox News Saturday. Lausch was the DOJ official running the investigation into Biden’s improper retention of classified records ahead of the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Hur. Fox News has learned Lausch is still playing an integral role in the probe as Hur gets up to speed. The FBI search began Friday morning at 9:45 a.m. and concluded Friday night around 10:30 p.m.


Biden’s personal attorney Bob Bauer said Saturday evening the search covered “all working, living and storage spaces in the home.” “At the outset of this matter, the President directed his personal attorneys to fully cooperate with the Department of Justice,” Bauer said. “Accordingly, having previously identified and reported to DOJ a small number of documents with classification markings at the President’s Wilmington home, and in the interest of moving the process forward as expeditiously as possible, we offered to provide prompt access to his home to allow DOJ to conduct a search of the entire premises for potential vice-presidential records and potential classified material.” Bauer said that by agreement with the Justice Department, representatives of both Biden’s personal legal team and the White House Counsel’s Office were present for the search. Neither the president nor the first lady were present during the search.

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Don’t be fooled by comparisons between Trump and Biden classified docs. Trump was president when he took them home, and the criminal probe will address the legality of that. Biden took them as Senator and VP. 100% illegal.

Ted Cruz: on Twitter “This says some of the docs are from his Senate service. Serious Q: how on earth did he do that? I’ve served in the Senate for 10 years. EVERY single classified doc I’ve read—100%—have been in a secure SCIF in the basement of the Capitol. What the hell??”

Note: chief of staff Ron Klain is leaving, and more Obama insiders are lined up for the job.

Joe Biden Took Classified Documents Home When He Was a Senator (CTH)

According to multiple media report [See Here and See Here] Joe Biden’s attorneys coordinated a friendly FBI search their client’s Delaware residence. Lawyers for Biden were present and overseeing the FBI review of the home, when additional classified documents were discovered. Interestingly, the Biden lawyers seemingly admit their client had been taking classified documents home for quite some time. According to their statement: “DOJ took possession of materials it deemed within the scope of its inquiry, including six items consisting of documents with classification markings and surrounding materials, some of which were from the President’s service in the Senate and some of which were from his tenure as Vice President. DOJ also took for further review personally handwritten notes from the vice-presidential years.”

That statement was written by Joe Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer. That’s interesting on many levels, including the fact that Bob Bauer is married to Anita Dunn. Mrs. Anita Dunn is one of the original people who helped put Barack Obama in the White House; and Dunn worked with President Obama throughout his terms. Additionally, Anita Dunn is on the short list to replace Biden’s outgoing Chief of Staff, Ron Klain. Many people have wondered if Joe Biden was being set up for failure over this classified document scandal. In my opinion, the entire operation is being managed – but not to remove Biden, simply to control him and ensure he doesn’t run again.

When it comes to the insurance of their ideological long-term goals, democrats play cutthroat politics much better than most imagine. Ask Bernie Sanders what it’s like to be viewed as an impediment to the ideological quest, and what lengths his party will take to cut you down. Now overlay Joe Biden’s personal lawyer, Bob Bauer. Think about who exactly it was discovering these documents and why. If Obama is the silent partner in the background of the Biden administration, then Dunn is the operational manager. If Dunn is the operational manager, then her husband is very useful as the principle’s attorney. From the big picture, it sure looks like Bauer is playing the role of Brutus.

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“the deterioration of an arena of rational serious debate and deliberation”

World Moving Closer To ‘Irreversible’ Disaster – Chomsky (RT)

The world is teetering on the brink of the abyss due to an increased risk of nuclear war, failure to address environmental challenges, and diminished ability to tackle problems rationally, world-renowned philosopher and linguist Noam Chomsky told RT on Saturday. During the interview, Chomsky, who is Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona, was asked to expand on his remark that humanity could be pathologically dedicated to self-destruction. The philosopher recalled that in recent years the Doomsday Clock, which reflects how close humanity is to Armageddon, has moved closer to midnight, which symbolizes the extinction of humanity. He suggested that in several days it could be set even closer to this mark.

According to the philosopher, humanity’s main concerns are “an increasing threat of nuclear war” and “a very severe and growing threat of destruction of climate.” The latter problem persists because “states are not doing what they know they must do to solve this crisis,” he said. The third issue, Chomsky continued, is “the deterioration of an arena of rational serious debate and deliberation” combined with “the collapse of democratic forces” around the world. The professor admitted that while it might seem that this point has nothing to do with the threat of nuclear war and climate change, rational debate is “the only hope for dealing with the first two.”

“All three have gotten considerably worse during the past year, and unless there’s a sharp reversal, we’ll simply be heading for a precipice, falling over, irreversible, and not in the long distant future,” he warned. His comments come after earlier this week, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said that those who want to see Moscow defeated in Ukraine, ignore the fact that “a loss by a nuclear power in a conventional war may trigger the start of a nuclear war.” Moscow believes the Ukraine conflict to be a proxy war waged against it by the US and its allies. However, Russia has repeatedly said that a nuclear war should never be fought, with its military doctrine allowing the use of atomic weapons only if the very existence of the state is threatened.

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“Russia’s Wagner forces have surrounded Bakhmut, lynchpin of ‘Zelensky Line’ [Ukr deployments in Donbass.] US media has begun backtracking on Bakhmut’s importance, anticipating its imminent fall into Russian hands & preparing opinion. A crushing defeat for US-UK axis in Ukraine.”

“The forces which are currently getting mauled in the Bakhmut area constitute 50% of Ukraine’s battle ready forces..”

Ukraine – Russian Army Activates Southern Front (MoA)

The long expected Russian offensive in Ukraine has begun. The Ukrainian army, egged on by its U.S. controllers, had put most of its resource into the static defense of the Bakhmut (Artyomovsk) – Soledar sector of the eastern front. An insane number of Ukrainian brigades, though many partially depleted, were concentrated on that 50 kilometer long front. This left other sectors nearly empty of Ukrainian troops. I count the equivalent of some 27 brigade size formations in that area. The usual size of a brigade is some 3,000 to 4,000 men with hundreds of all kinds of vehicles. If all brigades had their full strength that force would count as 97,500 men. In a recent interview the Ukrainian military commander Zaluzhny said that his army has 200,000 men trained to fight with 500,000 more having other functions or currently being trained.

The forces which are currently getting mauled in the Bakhmut area constitute 50% of Ukraine’s battle ready forces. On the southern and northern sectors of the battle-line the Ukrainian forces have been thinned out and are only able to defend against minor forces. The Ukrainian forces in the north and south are in the same position Russian troops had been in when the Ukrainian army last year launched a blitz attack in the Kharkiv region. The Russian screening force of some 2,000 boarder guards and federal police retreated and used its artillery to destroy the oncoming Ukrainian forces. The attack ran out of power and came to a halt after progressing some 70 kilometers on a rather large front. But Ukraine no longer has, unlike the Russians at that time, the artillery that is need to stop a larger thrust.


The big Ukrainian concentration in Bakhmut is now in an operational encirclement. The Russian forces have progressed north and south of the city and their artillery can easily control the western exit roads of Bakhmut. This a Verdun like situation. Russian artillery is by far numerical superior and can slaughter the Ukrainian troops at will. Even the U.S. military is now suggesting that Ukraine should give up on that city. Should the government in Kiev agree to that it will be a retreat under fire with likely high casualties. Not retreating though will make things even worse.

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A good cop, bad cop routine.

“Asked in November whether Ukraine stood a chance of retaking its pre-February territory, he said that the probability of this outcome “is not high, militarily.”

Fighting Russia ‘Very, Very Difficult’ For Ukraine – Gen. Milley (RT)

Ukraine will struggle to make good on its promise to drive Russian forces out of its former territory, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley stated on Friday. While civilian officials in Washington insist that Kiev must keep fighting, Milley has repeatedly questioned the chances of success. “President Biden, President Zelensky, and most of the leaders of Europe have said this war is likely to end in a negotiation,” Milley said during a meeting of the US-led Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Friday. “From a military standpoint, this is a very, very difficult fight,” he added. The US alone has allocated more than $110 billion in military and economic aid to Kiev since last February – supplying Ukraine with progressively heavier armaments, including infantry fighting vehicles, anti-air systems, and more than a million artillery shells.

Although Ukraine’s NATO-trained troops appear on the cusp of receiving Western-designed main battle tanks, Russian forces have inflicted a series of crushing defeats on Kiev’s military in recent weeks. The strategically important Donbass settlements of Soledar and Klescheevka have both fallen to Moscow’s troops, and the key city of Artyomovsk is now facing Russian encirclement. “I still maintain that for this year, it would be very, very difficult to militarily eject the Russian forces from every inch of Russian-occupied Ukraine,” Milley said on Friday, referring to the four former regions of Ukraine that voted to join Russia in September, and Crimea, an historic Russian territory that voted to rejoin the Russian Federation in 2014.

“That doesn’t mean it can’t happen, doesn’t mean it won’t happen. But it’d be very, very difficult.” Retaking all of this land – including Crimea – is a stated objective of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. To that end, Zelensky has the support of the US, with President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin vowing to bankroll his military for “as long as it takes,” and Secretary of State Antony Blinken declaring in December that “fundamentally, Ukrainians are making the decisions” about whether they want to attempt to capture Crimea or not. However, Milley’s public statements have been more tempered than those of Biden and his cabinet. Asked in November whether Ukraine stood a chance of retaking its pre-February territory, he said that the probability of this outcome “is not high, militarily.”

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These are obviously nonsense numbers.

Gonzalo Lira: “Actual Russian casualties? No one knows for sure. But credible estimates put them at no more than 20,000 KIA, 60,000 WIA.”

Macgregor in the video: 157,000 Ukraine deaths. And we know there are 5-10 times more Ukraine victims than Russian.

Russian Casualties In Ukraine Have Hit 188,000 – US Intel (Az.)

Russian casualties in Ukraine have hit an eye-watering 188,000 according to United States intelligence, Report informs via The Sun. Report informs via The Sun that the massive new figure of those killed or injured in battle was shared with allies at yesterday’s Western summit to drum up support for Ukraine held at Ramstein Air Base in Southern Germany. It is a significant increase on the publicly estimated 100,000 Russian soldiers killed, wounded, or deserted since last February’s invasion that the UK’s Defence Secretary Ben Wallace outlined at the end of last year. Top US General Mark Milley said Russia has suffered a “tremendous amount of casualties” – but stopped short of revealing the exact figure publicly. He said: “They have really suffered a lot.. I would say significantly well over 100,000.” Yesterday ministers and military chiefs from around 50 nations took part in the talks convened by US defence secretary Lloyd Austin at Ramstein – the main US airbase in Europe.

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Old, rusty, in need of repair, but at least Ukrainians know how to use them.

US Attempts To Seek Latin America’s Russian Arms Supplies To Kiev (TASS)

Russia will keep a close eye on the US attempts to urge Latin American countries to hand over weapons to Ukraine, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. The Russian presidential spokesman thus commented on a statement by a Pentagon representative that Washington was working with nine Latin American countries to urge them to hand over available Russian weapons to Ukraine in exchange for the delivery of US equipment. Responding to a question about whether this news came as a surprise for Moscow, the Kremlin spokesman said: “In general, it is hard today to imagine anything that can be a surprise.”


“Here it is very important [to bear in mind] the legal restrictions of any deliveries to third countries. This is because any deliveries are, of course, conditioned by certain commitments of those countries that receive military equipment,” Peskov pointed out. “Of course, we will keep a close eye on this situation,” the Kremlin press secretary said. Commander of the US Southern Command General Laura Richardson announced on Thursday that Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and six other Latin American countries had Russian military equipment and Washington was working “to replace that with US equipment if those countries want to donate it to Ukraine.”

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“Given the technological superiority of Russian weapons, Western politicians who have been making such decisions should realize that this may lead to a global disaster that would wipe out their countries..”

Duma Speaker Warns Of Powerful Retaliation For Weapons Supplies To Kiev (TASS)

Weapons supplies to Ukraine by the United States and NATO for attacks on Russia would lead to retaliatory use of more powerful armaments, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin warned on Sunday. “Supplies of offensive weapons to the Kiev regime would lead to a global disaster. If Washington and NATO countries send arms that will be used for attacks on peaceful cities or attempts at occupying our lands, a threat they have been making, this would provoke retaliatory measures with the use of more powerful weapons,” Volodin wrote on his Telegram channel. The senior Russian lawmaker slammed as untenable other countries’ arguments that “nuclear powers never used weapons of mass destruction in local conflicts.” “Those powers never faced a situation where the security of their citizens or their territorial integrity was at stake,” he argued.


The State Duma speaker called on members of the US Congress, Germany’s Bundestag, France’s National Assembly and other European parliamentarians to realize their responsibility for humankind. “By their decisions, Washington and Brussels are pushing the world to a disastrous war – to military operations that will be quite different from what they have seen so far, when only military and critical infrastructure being used by the Kiev regime has been attacked. Given the technological superiority of Russian weapons, Western politicians who have been making such decisions should realize that this may lead to a global disaster that would wipe out their countries,” Volodin concluded.

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Try that with your leaders wherever you live.

Russians’ Level Of Trust In Putin Exceeds 78% (TASS)

The Russian public’s level of confidence in President Vladimir Putin fell by 0.3 percentage points to 78.1% on January 9-15, according to a poll released by the All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center on Friday. “When asked if they trusted Putin, 78.1% of the poll’s participants said ‘yes’ (a 0.3 percentage point drop from a rating referring to December 26-30, 2022). The share of people who approve of the way the president is handling his job rose by 0.3 percentage points to 75.2%,” the pollster said. A total of 50.5% of those polled said they approved of the Russian government’s work (a 0.6 percentage point increase) and 53.2% approved of Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin’s work (a 0.4 percentage point rise). As many as 62.6% of respondents said they trusted Mishustin (a 0.8 percentage point increase).


As for the leaders of the parliamentary parties, 32.5% of those surveyed trust leader of the Russian Communist Party Gennady Zyuganov (a 0.9 percentage point rise), 28.9% trust leader of the A Just Russia – For Truth party Sergey Mironov (a 3.5 percentage point drop), 8.2% said they trusted Chairman of the New People party Alexey Nechayev (1.7 percentage point fall) and 17.2% of the poll’s participants trust leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) Leonid Slutsky (a 2.4 percentage point rise). The level of popular support for the United Russia party stood at 38.8% (a 0.4 percentage point rise). The level increased by 0.2 percentage points to 10.6% for the Russian Communist Party and fell by 0.2 percentage points to 3.9% for the New People party.

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“..the trust and safety team includes fewer than 20 full-time employees..”

Twitter Lost 80% Of Its Workforce Under Elon Musk (Az.)

The number of employees at Twitter has decreased by about 80% since US entrepreneur Elon Musk’s multibillion-dollar acquisition. Report informs via foreign media that before Musk finalized the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in late October, 2022, the San Francisco-based company had about 7,500 employees, but that number has gone down to approximately 1,300 active employees, CNBC said on Friday. Twitter now has fewer than 550 full-time engineers and the trust and safety team includes fewer than 20 full-time employees.

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Yep.

Twitter Files Prove America Headed for ‘Totalitarian State Territory’ (ET)

Thanks to the revelations in the Twitter Files, there’s evidence that the FBI and other agencies worked to suppress “lawful speech,” and if this type of action is allowed to continue, the United States is headed for “totalitarian state territory,” Matthew Peterson, the cofounder of New Founding, said in an interview with Epoch Times–NTD collaborative program “Newsmakers.” New Founding helps people and organizations position themselves to avoid threats from Big Tech and “woke capital,” and Peterson has two decades of experience in digital media and political consulting. When asked what will happen if the country’s current trajectory continues for three to five years, Peterson said, “We’ll be in totalitarian state territory, there’s no question about it.”


“I mean, remember, this went so far as the government saying, ‘You need to find evidence that there are Russians influencing the election on Twitter.’ And Twitter saying, ‘No, that’s not happening.’ “And then [Twitter had] to be quiet about it and not even defend themselves when they knew that there wasn’t Russian interference that they could find,” he added. Peterson further explained that the U.S. government drove a narrative that it knew wasn’t true and was the “antithesis” of America’s founding principles. “[The government’s actions are] the antithesis of America. The American founding is basically contradicted by what’s happening here, over and over again. And if we don’t do something about that, we will not have free speech in this country,” Peterson warned.

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Mostly EU cars.

EU Car Sales Collapse – Industry Body (RT)

The European Union passenger car market contracted by 4.6% last year to just 9.3 million units, which is the region’s lowest level since 1993, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) reported this week. According to the report, the slump was mainly due to the impact of component shortages in the first half of the year. The market, however, improved from August to December, with new car registrations expanding by 12.8% in the last month of the year. Overall, in 2022 only Germany managed to post growth (+1.1%) among the EU’s four largest markets. It was helped by the strong result in December, the ACEA said. The other three markets all performed worse than in 2021, with Italy posting the steepest decline (-9.7%), followed by France (-7.8%) and Spain (-5.4%).


Data showed that the number of vehicles registered in EU countries (excluding Malta, for which statistics are not available) rose to more than 896,000 units last month from over 795,000 a year earlier. Car sales by the Volkswagen Group (including Skoda, Audi, Seat, Porsche, and others) in the European Union decreased by 5.2% last year, the ACEA said. Automaker Stellantis saw its sales nosedive by 14.1%, while Renault Group sales fell by 4.3%, and BMW sales by 5.1%. Mercedes-Benz sales stood practically at the same level as in 2021, at 549,023 units. Meanwhile, South Korean Hyundai (including Kia) increased its vehicle sales in the EU by 2.6%, Japanese Toyota and Honda sales grew by 7.7% and 4.4%, respectively. Sales by American carmaker Ford decreased by 2.3%.


Most popular cars Europe vs US

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More than blinking.

GMC Blinks First: Regulator Declines to Investigate Dr Aseem Malhotra (DS)

To paraphrase the Sound of Music song, “How do we solve a problem like Malhotra?” After receiving several complaints, the General Medical Council has decided not to investigate cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra, who has become a thorn in the side of the medical profession. Professional regulators have been at the forefront of pandemic discipline, contributing to a culture of fear among practitioners. Severe action has been taken against registrants who criticise or do not comply with the official narrative. I know this from my experience as an officer of the Workers of England Union, representing members brought before the Nursing and Midwifery Council on charges of bringing the profession into disrepute. Apparently the public must be protected against nurses who don’t believe that masks stop airborne respiratory viruses, or who believe in informed consent for novel mRNA vaccines.

A significant strike against this censorial tyranny was by general practitioner Sam White last year. Dr. White was ordered, as a condition of maintaining his clinical licence, to delete his social media posts about COVID-19 and to refrain from making similar comments. Dr. White took the GMC to the High Court and won. The condition was overturned as a breach of his rights to freedom of expression under the Human Rights Act 1998. Whereas White was an early critic of COVID-19 policy, Malhotra is a relatively recent convert. Initially he promoted the vaccine, but when his fit and healthy father died shortly after receiving the injections, Malhotra changed his mind and began speaking out against the mass vaccination programme.

His personal loss came alongside his observation in clinical practice of a marked increase in myocarditis cases (as well as blood clots and other cardiac complications). Malhotra had a review paper published on this phenomenon, and his findings of iatrogenic harm are corroborated by other medical scientists. sMalhotra has repeatedly urged suspension of the vaccination programme until the risks are better understood. He became a darling of vaccine sceptics, with his charismatic and compassionate voice doing the rounds of alt media channels and independent-minded broadcasters working for more mainstream channels (such as Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News, and Neil Oliver on GB News). However, he was ignored by the legacy media, and it was not until two weeks ago, when he took the opportunity of a BBC interview on statins, that his call was more widely heard.

Malhotra

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Lots of doctors speaking out in Japan.

Japan Declares It Will Handle COVID-19 Like a Seasonal Flu (GP)

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan announced on Friday that he had instructed his cabinet to reclassify COVID-19, placing it in the same category as seasonal flu, rubella, and chickenpox in spring. “Today, we held a press conference on the discussion on revising the new coronavirus infectious disease into category 5,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Friday. “In order to further advance the efforts of ‘living with Corona’ and restore Japan to a state of normalcy, we will transition the various policies and measures to date in phases,” Kishida said. In Japan, Covid-19 is currently listed as “Category 2: Very Dangerous” together with tuberculosis, avian flu, and diphtheria.


“COVID-19 is currently classified as “equivalent to category 2,” requiring that hospitals and clinics report the names of infected patients and the details of their diagnosis before making recommendations regarding hospitalization. The soaring numbers of people infected in Japan’s seventh coronavirus wave have increased the administrative burden on the medical front line, leading to regional medical associations and the National Governors’ Association to repeatedly call for a review of the system,” Nippon.com reported. The outlet added that experts have proposed that COVID-19 be reclassified as a “Category 5: Diseases for which outbreaks and spread should be prevented,” similar to seasonal flu, which would restrict reporting to only those at high risk of developing severe symptoms or restrict data collection to only patients diagnosed at designated medical facilities.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Martha Stewart
https://twitter.com/i/status/1616606806574235650

 

 

Kory treatment
https://twitter.com/i/status/1616978685969547266

 

 

 

 

WTF

 

 

Great hornbill
https://twitter.com/i/status/1616774751128625153

 

 

Flycatcher

 

 

 

 

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Dec 182022
 
 December 18, 2022  Posted by at 9:51 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  55 Responses »


Paul Gauguin Brooding woman 1891

 

Has American Democracy Been a Hallucination for Nearly 60 Years? (Simon)
Xi of Arabia and the Petroyuan Drive (Escobar)
German IC Doctor: Never Seen So Many People Sick (Telegraaf)
US: Ukraine Can Retake Crimea, But May Provoke Nuclear Escalation (Antiwar)
Data Confirm US, Poland’s Involvement In Terror Attacks In Russia (TASS)
Twitter Suppressed Early COVID-19 Treatment Information, Vaccine Concerns (ET)
Musk Makes Decision On Banned Journalists After Poll (RT)
Coordination Between DOJ and FBI Is Not Limited to Twitter: Devin Nunes (ET)
Boston University School of Public Health Stops Using Twitter (Prasad)
EU Threatens Musk With Sanctions Over Suspending Media (Turley)
Musk Wars Part X: Doxxing (Denninger)
EU Branded ‘Fundamentally Corrupt’ (Exp.)
FIFA Rejects Zelensky Request To Address World Cup Final (ZH)

 

 

 

 

Be kind
https://twitter.com/i/status/1604034405764308994

 

 

7,300 over 80

 

 

 

 

Pfizer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1604007901647065088

 

 

Tulsi Trudy

 

 

 

 

“Oliver Stone’s “JFK”

Has American Democracy Been a Hallucination for Nearly 60 Years? (Simon)

Call it a democracy, call it a democratic republic, call it a constitutional republic, call it anything you want—it doesn’t really matter what America is if there is truth to what Tucker Carlson was reporting the other night via a source who had “direct knowledge” of still-hidden documents concerning the Kennedy assassination, implicating the CIA. If indeed the CIA was in any way involved in the assassination of JFK on Nov. 22, 1963, then anything that has happened in the public sphere in our country since that day has basically been a hallucination created by an intelligence agency far deeper than most of us—certainly me, since I was never much given to conspiracy theories—ever imagined.

The affairs of the day—RNC chief Ronna McDaniel revealed to be a profligate spender on her own luxury travel, not on Republican candidates; Donald Trump releasing self-aggrandizing NFT pseudo-art as a fundraiser (rest in peace, Johannes Vermeer); even Elon Musk’s exposure of the multiple mendacious censoring creeps behind Twitter, although that has an eerie similarity—pale by comparison to CIA involvement and, therefore, massive coverup for decades in the JFK assassination. That former CIA director Mike Pompeo declined to appear on Carlson’s show to discuss this is not insignificant. We all know about 51 intelligence officials—John Brennan and others who fallaciously claimed two years ago the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. They have to have known otherwise. Now this?

Why are 3 percent of the Warren Commission documents on the assassination still being hidden after those nearly 60 years with all the major players dead, if not to hide something of serious importance from the American public? It’s time to reconsider Oliver Stone’s “JFK” that, though I admired Oliver’s filmmaking, I originally thought to be a crackpot.

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“Xi of Arabia’s announcement was a prodigy of finesse: it was packaged as the internationalization of the yuan.”

Xi of Arabia and the Petroyuan Drive (Escobar)

It would be so tempting to qualify Chinese President Xi Jinping landing in Riyadh a week ago, welcomed with royal pomp and circumstance, as Xi of Arabia proclaiming the dawn of the petroyuan era. But it’s more complicated than that. As much as the seismic shift implied by the petroyuan move applies, Chinese diplomacy is way too sophisticated to engage in direct confrontation, especially with a wounded, ferocious Empire. So there’s way more going here than meets the (Eurasian) eye. Xi of Arabia’s announcement was a prodigy of finesse: it was packaged as the internationalization of the yuan. From now on, Xi said, China will use the yuan for oil trade, through the Shanghai Petroleum and National Gas Exchange, and invited the Persian Gulf monarchies to get on board.

Nearly 80 percent of trade in the global oil market continues to be priced in US dollars. Ostensibly, Xi of Arabia, and his large Chinese delegation of officials and business leaders, met with the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to promote increased trade. Beijing promised to “import crude oil in a consistent manner and in large quantities from the GCC.” And the same goes for natural gas. China has been the largest importer of crude on the planet for five years now – half of it from the Arabian peninsula, and more than a quarter from Saudi Arabia. So it’s no wonder that the prelude for Xi of Arabia’s lavish welcome in Riyadh was a special op-ed expanding the trading scope, and praising increased strategic/commercial partnerships across the GCC, complete with “5G communications, new energy, space and digital economy.”

Foreign Minister Wang Yi doubled down on the “strategic choice” of China and wider Arabia. Over $30 billion in trade deals were duly signed – quite a few significantly connected to China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects. And that brings us to the two key connections established by Xi of Arabia: the BRI and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

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Google translation. Something’s up with immune systems.

German IC Doctor: Never Seen So Many People Sick (Telegraaf)

The number of people in Germany currently suffering from an infection or illness is at a historic high, chairman Christian Karagiannidis of the German Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine told the Rheinische Post. “The disease rate among the population is extremely high at the moment, I have never experienced anything like it.” According to Karagiannidis, almost all IC beds are occupied in many regions. He emphasizes that coronavirus infections are no longer the main problem. “Currently, we are fighting a very wide range of illnesses: flu, RS virus, coronavirus and other respiratory illnesses, plus the usual emergencies.” The IC doctor hopes that the Christmas holidays will provide relief, because the number of admissions often drops then.


In addition to the extremely high number of patients, German hospitals also suffer from absenteeism among staff, high work pressure, attacks aimed at staff and delivery problems of a number of medicines, including antibiotics and heart medication. Pediatrics is also facing shortages of medicines, which could jeopardize the care of young patients with respiratory infections. Karagiannidis calls on local drug manufacturers to produce and stock certain resources in advance so that they are available in sufficient quantities. “I find it worrying for a country like Germany that we have been dealing with such shortages time and time again for a long time and that this shortage has become even more acute due to the many infections.”

Thought leaders
https://twitter.com/i/status/1604329625189957632

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The nukes are in their imagination.

US: Ukraine Can Retake Crimea, But May Provoke Nuclear Escalation (Antiwar)

The White House believes Ukraine’s military could retake the Crimean Peninsula from Russia. However, officials say the offensive may cross Moscow’s “red lines” and prompt a nuclear strike. The Biden administration has radically changed its view of Kiev’s military since Russia invaded nearly ten months ago. The Ukrainians “continue to shock the world with how well they’re performing on the battlefield,” an unnamed official said. The White House now assesses that the Ukrainian armed forces are capable of retaking Crimea, with NBC News reporting that statements to that effect were made to lawmakers during a Congressional hearing last month.

The administration official was attempting to explain to Congress why Kiev still needs American support. The Crimean Peninsula was a region of Ukraine before it was annexed by Russia in 2014. While a referendum of Crimean citizens backed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision, Kiev and Washington assert the peninsula still belongs to Ukraine. Sources reached by NBC News said the White House believes Putin will respond sharply to a successful Ukrainian offensive in Crimea. “Putin may react more strongly to Crimea,” one official said, while a former administration staffer added “That’s the red line.”

The White House does not believe Ukrainian military operations in Crimea to be imminent. “A lot would have to happen militarily first” before Ukraine could begin a real offensive to retake Crimea, an official stated. However, the Biden administration has been surprised by some of Ukraine’s most advanced military operations. Two US officials and an American defense staffer said the White House was caught off guard and frustrated after Kiev launched a series of three drone attacks strikes deep inside Russian territory.

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“..preparation and implementation of joint terror attacks on the Russian Federation territory.”

Data Confirm US, Poland’s Involvement In Terror Attacks In Russia (TASS)

Data from intercepted drones confirm the involvement of the US and Poland in preparation of terror attacks on the Russian territory, a source in Russian security agencies told TASS Friday. “Relevant agencies of the Russian Federation analyzed electronic components of the intercepted unmanned aerial vehicles, used by Ukraine for attacks on Russian infrastructure objects – in particular, in Sevastopol, in Crimea, in Kursk, Belgorod and Voronezh Regions,” the agency said. According to the specialists’ assessments, a number of facts “confirm the direct involvement of the US and Poland in the massive military-logistical support of the Kiev regime, in preparation and implementation of joint terror attacks on the Russian Federation territory.”


The agency noted that “the avionics and drone control stations were produced by US’ Spektreworks, a company that performed the initial tuning and check of the drones at the Scottsdale airport in Arizona.” In addition, the relevant agencies pointed out that “the final assembly and flight trials of these drones were carried out on the Polish territory, near the Rzeszow airport, used by the US and NATO as the main supply node for Ukrainian armed forces.” “The installation of payload, flight mission and the launch itself were carried out near Odessa and Krivoy Rog,” the statement says.

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“..there needs to be a “complete overhaul” of social media leadership and a “cleansing” of all forms of censorship on social media sites.”

Twitter Suppressed Early COVID-19 Treatment Information, Vaccine Concerns (ET)

Thanks to Elon Musk, the public is now aware that Twitter suppressed early treatment options for COVID-19, and vaccine safety concerns, Dr. Peter McCullough alleged in an interview that aired on Newsmakers by NTD and The Epoch Times on Dec. 14. Further, thanks to the Twitter Files—a collection of internal emails and communications made public by Musk—the cardiologist said there’s proof that government agencies were working against him (McCullough) personally. “I didn’t violate any of Twitter’s rules,” McCullough stated. “And what we’re learning is that secret emails between government agencies and Twitter were working to, in a sense, shadow-ban me, censor me, and inhibit my ability to exercise my rights to free speech and disseminate scientific information.”

McCullough said Musk’s takeover of Twitter is a “welcome change,” especially for healthcare professionals like himself. “Twitter had become an incredibly biased and censored platform, where the public knew they weren’t getting a fair, balanced set of information on a whole variety of developments—including the early treatment of SARS-COV2 infection and a balanced view of safety and efficacy of the vaccines,” McCullough claimed. The cardiologist further claimed that he was censored and finally suspended for sharing scientific “abstracts and manuscripts,” which didn’t fit the accepted political view. Plus, McCullough remarked, he wasn’t the only doctor targeted. Musk lifted the suspensions of McCullough and mRNA vaccine technology contributor Dr. Robert Malone—suspended from Twitter in 2021 after criticizing the effectiveness of the mRNA vaccines—after completing his Twitter purchase.

According to McCullough, when a social media company has a COVID-19 warning or labels a post “misinformation,” that’s a sign of government censorship and control. “Facebook, Instagram, and the other platforms. … Anytime a message is posted, and it says, ‘See the COVID information center,’ or it labels it ‘COVID misinformation,’ that actually indicates that there’s government interference. There’s government censorship going on,” McCullough asserted. He added that when a user witnesses the above, they need to call out that platform. Moreover, McCullough believes there needs to be a “complete overhaul” of social media leadership and a “cleansing” of all forms of censorship on social media sites.

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“If anyone posted real-time locations & addresses of NYT reporters, FBI would be investigating, there’d be hearings on Capitol Hill & Biden would give speeches about end of democracy!”

Musk Makes Decision On Banned Journalists After Poll (RT)

Elon Musk has unblocked the accounts of several journalists who had been suspended from Twitter for allegedly violating the platform’s “doxxing” policies. The social media boss reinstated the accounts, which had been sharing data on the billionaire’s flights, following massive public backlash and an opinion poll he conducted on Twitter. “The people have spoken. Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now,” Musk tweeted on Friday. The Twitter CEO had earlier held a poll asking the platform’s users whether they wanted the journalists’ accounts to be reinstated ‘now’ or ‘in seven days.’ A total of 58.7% opted for the former option, with almost 3.7 million people taking part in the vote.


On Thursday, Twitter banned the accounts of several high-profile journalists, including CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, the New York Times’ Ryan Mac, and the Washington Post’s Drew Harwell. According to Musk, these people reported and shared links to ElonJet, an account that had been tracking the billionaire’s flights in alleged violation of Twitter’s “doxxing” policy. The billionaire also argued that journalists had revealed his “exact real-time” location, which he said amounted to releasing “assassination coordinates.” “If anyone posted real-time locations & addresses of NYT reporters, FBI would be investigating, there’d be hearings on Capitol Hill & Biden would give speeches about end of democracy!” he added.

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“.. they were actively sending information on behalf of the government on who to look into, or who to ban, and that sort of thing.”

Coordination Between DOJ and FBI Is Not Limited to Twitter: Devin Nunes (ET)

The social media coordination between the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI isn’t limited to Twitter, former Congressman and current CEO of President Trump’s Truth Social, Devin Nunes, alleged in an interview that aired on Newsmakers by NTD and The Epoch Times on Dec. 14. The Twitter Files, a collection of internal emails and communications made public by Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, confirmed what many Conservatives have alleged for years. Namely, Twitter was shadow-banning accounts that didn’t fit a specific ideology and suspending accounts that bucked the chosen political narrative, Nunes claimed. But, the most concerning revelation in the Twitter Files, according to Nunes, is that the DOJ and the FBI had informants—whether paid or volunteers—that put forward a specific directive to Twitter, and that is likely happening on other social media platforms.

“The coordination that the Department of Justice and the FBI clearly had with Twitter? I don’t think it stops there,” Nunes stated. “It seems like they were either running informants, or had paid informants, or had volunteers, where they were actively sending information on behalf of the government on who to look into, or who to ban, and that sort of thing. “The bigger issue is, Twitter is one thing, but what about Facebook? What about Instagram?” According to Nunes, Trump developed Truth Social because, before Musk bought Twitter, Trump recognized that there was absolute control over public discourse in the United States. Furthermore, that control led to shadow banning and suspending social media accounts, so those accounts couldn’t criticize the controlling regime in the proverbial public square.

And while Nunes further stated that he’d recently discussed the Twitter File drops with Trump—and in general, Trump is glad Musk purchased Twitter—Trump still believes Musk needs to release all of the Twitter Files to the public and not go through cherry-picked journalists. “What [do] we really need from Elon Musk and Twitter at this point? Just release all the files. Don’t just have selective journalists look at it. Release all the files so everyone can begin to evaluate them. You never know what you’re going to find [with more people looking at the files].” Nunes said he believes that by releasing all the files, even more will be uncovered by citizen journalists and by Congress. He added he’s not alone in the belief that Musk should release all files and noted that Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s former CEO and founder, also called on Musk to release the Twitter Files to the public.

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You will be so missed. Bye.

Boston University School of Public Health Stops Using Twitter (Prasad)

Boston University School of Public Health’s Dean, Sandro Galea, recently announced that BU has reconsidered its engagement on twitter. Going forward, “we will, as a School, be disengaging from our Twitter account @busph. Relatedly, I will also suspend my personal @sandrogalea account.” Is this decision a rational one— proportionate to challenges on the online platform—or is it performative? The dean himself wonders, “I always worry that decisions like this can seem overly performative. I hope that this is indeed right given the current landscape of Twitter.” Most importantly, does it advance public health’s credibility? Does it help the profession in the eyes of the public? In this essay, I consider these questions. In order to analyze BU’s decision we need to consider two things. First, what platforms will BU remain on, and second, what are the stated reasons for leaving?

BU school of public health has singled out twitter as the social media platform to disengage from, but remains on other platforms, including “email newsletter, SPH This Week, Public Health Post, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, press outreach, our website, as well as other emerging channels.” Scrolling through past stories it is clear that press outreach can include small papers, including the Staten Island Live, and other news outlets that frankly I have never heard of. Thus, there must be something uniquely disqualifying about Twitter that does not apply to all these other venues. Let’s consider those reasons. Dean Galea offers “two key” ones. #1 Dean Galea writes, “First, Twitter has moved from being a publicly held company to being a privately held company, and, in particular, a company controlled by one person who has not been hesitant to impose his personal views on the platform.”

In other words: we are quitting Twitter is because one person makes the decisions. This argument is clearly lacking. Facebook is a publicly traded company, but the desires of the founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg have tremendous sway over their decisions. Whether public or private— decisions can always be made by one or two people, without transparency and often in illogical and contradictory fashion. How does Linkedin make decisions? Instagram? Staten Island Live? What about all those news outlets I have never heard of? Who knows! Dean Galea senses the obvious weakness of this argument, and thus offers further clarification, “That may well be acceptable if that person shows themselves to be judicious and thoughtful in both their communication and actions, but that has not been the case with Mr. Musk.”

So it isn’t merely that a single person makes the decisions, but that they are not judicious and thoughtful? Yet, even with this clarification, the argument to quit seems thin. BU School of Public Health remains happy to amplify their content in Staten Island Live. That is owned by a company called Advanced Local Media. Who controls this company? Are they judicious and thoughtful? Does BU have obligation to investigate? Rupert Murdoch owns many US papers including the Wall Street Journal, a place where Dean Galea has authored op-eds. In fact, Galea’s bio lists him as a “regular contributor to media, including” the Wall Street Journal. Is Murdoch judicious and thoughtful? I think many at BU public health would disagree.

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“Doxxing has long been subject to suspension. ”

EU Threatens Musk With Sanctions Over Suspending Media (Turley)

Despite my support for Elon Musk’s continuing efforts to reduce censorship and restore free speech protections on Twitter, I have been critical of some of his moves from his use of polls on restoring certain posters to the suspensions of media figures this week. However, this morning, I was struck by the European Union (EU) rushing into the controversy to threaten, again, sanctions against Musk. The EU is apparently aghast that Twitter could suspend media even temporarily after ignoring the bans on conservative media for years under the old management. I understand Musk’s view of such tracking as a form of doxxing (particularly after a man reportedly used the information to attack the car with one of his children inside). Doxxing has long been subject to suspension.

Indeed, figures connected with mainstream media from CNN to the Washington Post have been previously accused of doxxing. Liberal groups were accused of doxxing conservative justices and others, including dangerously posting information on the children of Justice Amy Coney Barrett. It does not seem to matter when the targets are conservative, Republican, or libertarian. Figures who have long advocated the banning of others with opposing views are some of the loudest objecting in the wake of the doxxing controversy. Washington Post Taylor Lorenz expressed fear that she could be next. It may not be a groundless fear since Lorenz has been previously accused of doxxing others and described the reintroduction of free speech protections for others as the opening of “the gates of hell.”

However, it was the appearance of the EU that was most jarring. We have been discussing efforts by figures like Hillary Clinton to enlist European countries to force Twitter to restore censorship rules. Unable to rely on corporate censorship or convince users to embrace censorship, Clinton and others are resorting to good old-fashioned state censorship, even asking other countries to censor the speech of American citizens. It is an easy case to make given the long criminalization of speech in countries like France, Germany, and England. The EU responded immediately by threatening Musk that restoring free speech could result in immediate sanctions or an entire ban.

Now, EU commissioner Vera Jourova warned that the EU’s Digital Services Act was preparing to act to defend press freedom: “Elon Musk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon.” Jourova’s self-righteous tirade was almost comical given the EU’s long-standing attacks on free speech and silence of prior media suspensions. Jourova insisted “[The] EU’s Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights. This is reinforced under our Media Freedom Act.” Really? Where was Jourova and the EU when Twitter was aggressively suspending media like the New York Post for publishing the true story of Hunter Biden’s laptop? How about the slew of conservative writers and experts barred for questioning official accounts on issues ranging from Covid to climate change?

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“What reasonable and lawful purpose is there in knowing where some particular person is on a mass-distribution basis and by what rubric does that meet the “reasonable public purpose” test?”

Musk Wars Part X: Doxxing (Denninger)

Musk claims to have had an incident in which a vehicle carrying his child was accosted by a stalker. In response to this he put forward a rule on Twitter: Publishing the real-time location of any person is a bannable offense. I can argue both sides of that in terms of reasonableness, particularly when it comes to public records, because the usual exception to them (what in many states is called “publication of private facts”) doesn’t really apply. But the reason I argue its not so clear as it used to be, and there is a clean argument for such a policy and perhaps even a law, is that today it is all too easy to gin up a lynch mob using so-called “social media” and other means of mass distribution. This is a relatively new thing; you could always, for example, post a sign on a telephone pole (or tree, before there were telephone poles) but your reach was at least somewhat limited and local. This is no longer true; now you sit in Washington DC and gin up a lynch mob in California at zero cost and trouble.

This isn’t theoretical; “modern media” has been used for this, almost-exclusively by the left, to do exactly that. A sitting Congressperson who lives on a houseboat was relentlessly targeted to the point they couldn’t go get groceries without being harassed. Their decision to live on a boat where ingress and egress is limited for obvious reasons certainly entered into the problem but there’s nothing wrong with living on a boat — plenty of people do and its a perfectly-legitimate choice. Several justices of the USSC have been similarly targeted at their homes and again, this was ginned up by persons all over the United States using capacity that didn’t used to exist. In the latter case the law was broken, yet the government refused to enforce said law.

It is already illegal, by the way, to communicate threats using interstate means or to travel for such a purpose between states. That’s a violation of federal law as it stands today. States also have “anti-stalker” laws with similar provisions. The exact intersection of all of these laws, basic human decency and the generation of “rage mobs” is a worthy matter for public debate. But what’s not under debate is what happened here. This was a pure bad-faith set of actions taken by a bunch of people. Whether they explicitly coordinated their actions is not known and doesn’t matter; the facts are: Musk announced that any real-time “doxxing” of positions was a banhammer offense. These “journalists” did it anyway, in rapid succession from one another, knowing in advance that it was an offense. Musk banhammered them all immediately and refused to apologize. The left went nuts. Good. Let them go nuts.

Tell me what the lawful and legitimate purpose is for real-time information on someone’s location? Is there a perfectly-legitimate public purpose, for example, in disclosing that “Joe X” travels by private jet on a regular basis while advocating that everyone else should be forced to “de-carbon” (e.g. attending some climate confab)? Absolutely; that has a reasonable and possible purpose of exposing hypocrisy. What reasonable and lawful purpose is there in knowing where some particular person is on a mass-distribution basis and by what rubric does that meet the “reasonable public purpose” test?

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“We are definitely one step further away from the amoral, anti-democratic, ever self-empowering mercantilist EU.”

EU Branded ‘Fundamentally Corrupt’ (Exp.)

The European Union is a “fundamentally corrupt” organisation, and easy prey for people with “deep pockets” looking to exert their influence through the continent, a former MEP has warned. Ben Habib, who was one of 29 Brexit Party candidates elected to the assembly in 2019, was speaking after four people, including former European Parliament vice-president Eva Kaili, were charged after a series of raids by Belgian prosecutors. Authorities have not official identified the country suspected of offering cash or gifts to officials but several members of the assembly and some Belgian media have linked the investigation to World Cup hosts Qatar – although the Gulf state denies the allegations.

The European Union’s parliament yesterday voted to suspend work on all files involving Qatar, and called for security passes for representatives of the Gulf country’s interests to be withdrawn until light can be shed on the scandal rocking the assembly. Mr Habib told Express.co.uk: “This doesn’t surprise me at all. The EP is swarming with lobbyists. “It’s inherent in the structure. The Qatari thing is just the surface of it. “I’m sure the same applies to the Commission. The EU itself is fundamentally corrupt.” As such the bloc was a “natural target” for “anyone with deep pockets wanting a favour”, he stressed. Mr Habib remains deeply concerned about the impact on the integrity of the United Kingdom posed by the Northern Ireland Protocol, the mechanism agreed by the UK and the EU as a way of preventing a post-Brexit hard border on the island of Ireland.

However, in consideration of the ongoing corruption claims, he conceded: “We are definitely one step further away from the amoral, anti-democratic, ever self-empowering mercantilist EU.” Mr Habib’s former party colleague Rupert Lowe, who like him sat alongside leader Nigel Farage in Brussels, made a similar point in a post on Twitter today in which he also took the opportunity to take a swipe at British civil servants. The former Southampton FC chairman said: The European Parliament is oozing corruption, from top to bottom. “Packed full of overpaid and incompetent civil servants. Not that unlike Whitehall!”

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“We have to give them a moment when they can forget about their problems and enjoy football.”

FIFA Rejects Zelensky Request To Address World Cup Final (ZH)

This week Zelensky issued a formal request for FIFA to allow him to share a message of “world peace” just before the kickoff to the World Cup final, scheduled for Sunday, but the world governing soccer body promptly rebuffed the request. The Ukrainian government is angered and disappointed, given Zelensky has frequently been invited to make appeals before major public events, even including at the Grammys and Cannes Film Festival. This is when he’s not already busy addressing the G7 or UN-sponsored events, or European Parliament. It goes without saying that the World Cup final will be the single most televised and watched event across the globe this year. According to CNN, Kiev’s lobbying effort is still underway, but Ukraine officials were “surprised” when FIFA quickly reacted negatively:

“The source said Zelensky’s office is offering to appear in a video link to fans in the stadium in Qatar, ahead of the game and was surprised by the negative response. It’s unclear if Zelensky’s message would be live, or taped. “We thought FIFA wanted to use its platform for the greater good,” the source said. Is the Ukrainian leader’s ‘superstar’ status waning? Likely it has more to do with FIFA walking a tightrope in terms of wanting to avoid political topics and public displays at the Qatar-hosted tournament. So far it’s sought to avoid controversy on everything from the proposed ‘One Love’ armbands that some European teams wanted to wear, to imagery in favor of Iranian anti-government demonstrators.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino in a Friday news conference explained that the organization had put a stop to a number of attempts to make “political statements” in Qatar because it must “take care of everyone.” “We are a global organization and we don’t discriminate against anyone,” Infantino explained. “We are defending values, we are defending human rights and rights of everyone at the World Cup. Those fans and the billions watching on TV, they have their own problems. They just want to watch 90 or 120 minutes without having to think about anything, but just enjoying a little moment of pleasure and joy. We have to give them a moment when they can forget about their problems and enjoy football.” Of course, this very rational, straightforward explanation is unlikely to appease Ukrainian officials… but at least they have the consolation that Zelensky was declared Time’s Person of the Year.

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364 neurons

 

 

Marik

 

 

Reindeer

 

 

Face in the trees

 

 

Shark
https://twitter.com/i/status/1604204786546487296

 

 

Prince Cream

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Sep 132022
 


Kazemir Malevich Floor polishers 1912

 

Covid Vaccine Destroys Natural Immunity – NEJM Study (DS)
94% of Vaxxed Patients With Subsequent Health Issues Have Abnormal Blood (ET)
Russian Energy Revenues Forecast To Soar (RT)
German GDP Forecast To Plunge (RT)
Germany Risks Deindustrialization — The Economist (RT)
The Specter of Germany Is Rising (Diana Johnstone)
Germany Has ‘Crossed Red Line’ – Russia (RT)
Europe Commits Suicide-by-Sanctions (Ron Paul)
Hungarian Official Says EU Is The Losing Side In Ukraine Conflict (RT)
New Gazprom Plant Is Shipping Its First LNG Cargo To Greece (BI)
Spain Doubles Russian Gas Imports (RT)
Ukrainian Mayor Announces Hunt For ‘Collaborators’ (RT)
Special Military Operation, Season 2 (Big Serge)
Armenia Requests Russian Military Assistance In Fight Against Azerbaijan (ZH)
New Orleans Mayor Justifies Luxury Flights Citing Skin Color And Gender (RT)
The Continued DOJ Targeting of Joe Biden Political Opposition (CTH)
UK Police Arrests Anti-Monarchy Protesters (G.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Russia 2023

 

 

 

 

Russian TV

 

 

 

 

Can we now finally put an end to the nonsense? Yeah, I didn’t think so. One of the world’s prime medical journals, the New England Journal of Medicine, says “vaccines” kill your immune system, and numerous countries will still go with mandates. As all of their experts read the New England Journal of Medicine. This is not just a little bit crazy, it’s outright criminal. Stay away from the stuff.

Covid Vaccine Destroys Natural Immunity – NEJM Study (DS)

A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) shows not only that the effectiveness of the Pfizer Covid vaccine becomes negative (meaning the vaccinated are more likely to be infected than the unvaccinated) within five months but that the vaccine destroys any protection a person has from natural immunity. The study is a large observational study that looks at 887,193 children aged 5 to 11 years in North Carolina, of whom 273,157 (30.8%) received at least one dose of Pfizer vaccine between November 1st 2021 and June 3rd 2022. The study includes 193,346 SARS-CoV-2 infections reported between March 11th 2020 and June 3rd 2022. The researchers used a form of statistical modelling with adjustments for confounding factors (such as underlying conditions) to calculate estimates of vaccine effectiveness over time and against the different Covid variants.


The findings are depicted in the charts below. In chart A, notice that the green and blue lines, representing children vaccinated in November and December respectively, go through zero into negative territory at a sharp gradient within five months of the first injection. It’s unclear why the green line is not continued past April, as the researchers presumably had the data, but from what is shown it looks very much like the vaccine effectiveness will continue declining deep into negative territory. In chart B, we see both the red and blue lines – which represent children who are vaccinated and have been previously infected and not previously infected respectively – again going through zero at a steep gradient within five months of vaccination. The fact that the vaccinated who have natural immunity from previous infection also see negative effectiveness is a surprise as one would not expect those with natural immunity to be more susceptible to infection than those without it.

Charts C and D suggest that it is the vaccine that is causing this worrying erasure of natural immunity. Chart D shows the effectiveness of natural immunity from previous infection among the vaccinated. Notice that the blue line, which is protection against the Delta variant among the vaccinated-and-previously-infected, hits zero at a steep gradient within seven months. Now look at the blue line in chart C, which is protection against Delta in the previously infected and unvaccinated. It, too, is waning, but much more slowly, and after eight months it is still very much in positive territory at over 50%. The same can be said for natural immunity against earlier variants (green line), which wanes slowly and remains positive after 16 months. Why is natural immunity remaining protective for the unvaccinated, whereas in the vaccinated their ‘protection’ goes negative even if they have natural immunity?

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Need a blood transfusion? Don’t look at the vaccinated! Donor sperm? You know what to do.

94% of Vaxxed Patients With Subsequent Health Issues Have Abnormal Blood (ET)

Physicians in Italy studied the blood of patients who had been injected with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and found foreign matter long after vaccination, a new study shows.The three doctors, all of whom are surgeons—Franco Giovannini, M.D., Riccardo Benzi Cipelli, M.D., and Giampaolo Pisano, M.D.—examined freshly drawn blood of more than a thousand patients using direct observation under microscopes to see what was happening in the blood. Their results were published in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research in August 2022. For this study, the Italian doctors used optical microscopy, that is, regular light microscopes, to examine the blood. Blood cells are easily visible under a microscope.

Their shape, type, and how and if they are aggregated—clumped together—can help the skilled physician better understand the patient’s health. In their 60-page peer-reviewed study, the Italian researchers reported case studies from their observations. Although they could not explain what they observed, they noted in the study that what they saw was so strange that they felt the need to alert the medical community. [..] Of the 1006 patients, 426 were men and 580 were women. One hundred and forty-one received only one dose of an mRNA vaccine, 453 got two doses, and 412 received three doses in total. The patients ranged in age from 15 to 85. The average age of the patients was 49. All 1,006 patients were seeking healthcare because they were not feeling well: presenting with a wide variety of health issues.

On average, the patients whose blood was examined had been vaccinated about one month prior. Of the 1,006 patients, after vaccination, only about 5 percent—just 58 people—had blood that looked normal. [..] Each of the patients was being reviewed for symptoms, a wide range of which had arisen since their vaccinations. The images are dramatic. Side-by-side pictures of a patient’s blood before and after vaccination show stark differences. Before vaccination, the red blood cells are separate from each other and are round, while the blood drawn after vaccination shows red blood cells that are deformed, and that cluster in coagulation around visible foreign matter that was not present before. This foreign material seemed to collect itself into structures, sometimes forming crystals and other times forming long tubes or fibers.

Reminder

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Half the output, twice the income. Now there’s a business model.

Russian Energy Revenues Forecast To Soar (RT)

Russia expects to receive a boost in revenues from energy exports this month, according to its finance ministry. September is expected to bring an extra $6.67 billion into the state coffers, adding to August’s additional earnings of $1.4 billion. “Thus, the total amount of funds to be received as additional oil and gas revenues will reach $8.07 billion,” the ministry said in a statement released last week. According to the statement, the finance ministry is not planning to purchase foreign currency or gold with the extra funds received through energy sales.


In August, Western analysts predicted that Russia’s energy export revenues would surge by 38% year-on-year, totaling $337.5 billion in 2022. According to their outlook, energy export earnings will ease to $255.8 billion next year, but will still be higher than the 2021 figure of $244.2 billion. Growing demand from some of the world’s major economies, including India and China, boosted Russia’s energy exports to the volumes seen prior to the conflict in Ukraine and subsequent Western sanctions. Moscow was forced to redirect supply to Asia and the Middle East, where countries refused to take sides in the conflict between Russia and the West.

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Half the output, 4x the cost. Not a business model.

German GDP Forecast To Plunge (RT)

The German economy is headed for a sharp decline next year, researchers from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy warned on Thursday. “The German economy is in a downward spiral. The recent price jumps for electricity and gas will reduce the purchasing power of private households and lead to a decline in private consumer spending. In addition, the slowing world economy will dampen not only exports but also investment activity. As a result, the German economy will slide into recession once again, at a time when it was just recovering from the pandemic-related crisis,” a press release stated.


Analysts explained that while in their summer forecast they assumed that “recovery would prevail despite the burdens” and predicted a strong rise in GDP, lingering concerns regarding the energy sphere forced them to lower their expectations significantly. “Now we expect GDP to increase by only 1.4% in the current year. In 2023, it is expected to decline by 0.7%,” they wrote, while previously the institute predicted a 3.3% growth for the country’s economy next year. Researchers also expect inflation to rise to 8% this year and 8.7% in 2023. Germany’s spending on energy imports is expected to rise by €123 billion this year and another €136 billion next year. As a result, the country’s industrial output is likely to drop. Private households’ purchasing power is also forecast to fall by 4.1%, the steepest drop recorded since Germany’s reunification in 1990.

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People cannot imagine the implications. But they will have to soon.

Germany Risks Deindustrialization — The Economist (RT)

The biggest challenge the German industrial sector currently faces is posed by rising energy costs, The Economist reported on Sunday, citing the association of German industry BDI. “The substance of our industry is under threat,”BDI President Siegfried Russwurm said as quoted by the media, adding that the situation was looking “toxic” for many businesses. According to the association, the electricity price for next year has already increased fifteen-fold, and the price of gas ten-fold. In July, the country’s industry, which has been forced to reduce production capacities, reportedly consumed 21% less gas than in the same month in 2021.

Smaller companies are struggling more than bigger ones, according to a study by the consulting company FTI Andersch, as cited by the media. Some 25% of firms with fewer than 1,000 employees were forced to cancel or decline orders, or are planning to do so, compared with 11% of those with over 1,000 employees. Almost 10,000 bread manufacturers are reportedly struggling as never before in post-war Germany, as the cost of the electricity and gas needed to heat ovens and run kneading machines have increased enormously. The BDI survey of 600 medium-sized companies showed that nearly one in ten interrupted or reduced output because of high input costs, while more than nine in ten said that the soaring prices of energy and raw materials is a big or an existential challenge for them.

One in five are reportedly considering relocating part or all of their production to another country. Bigger companies that use energy-intensive production capacities, such as chemicals or steel producers, may also relocate abroad, as they have to compete with rivals in other countries, where the cost of energy is lower. If energy prices remain high for a while, up to 3% of Germany’s energy-intensive businesses will relocate abroad, according to Holger Schmieding, the chief economist of private bank Berenberg.

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In light of the previous articles, this is funny. A bigger, stronger Germany? Better first worry how much longer Scholz is in the saddle.

The Specter of Germany Is Rising (Diana Johnstone)

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is a colorless SPD politician, but his Aug. 29 speech in Prague was inflammatory in its implications. Scholz called for an expanded, militarized European Union under German leadership. He claimed that the Russian operation in Ukraine raised the question of “where the dividing line will be in the future between this free Europe and a neo-imperial autocracy.” We cannot simply watch, he said, “as free countries are wiped off the map and disappear behind walls or iron curtains.” (Note: the conflict in Ukraine is clearly the unfinished business of the collapse of the Soviet Union, aggravated by malicious outside provocation. As in the Cold War, Moscow’s defensive reactions are interpreted as harbingers of Russian invasion of Europe, and thus a pretext for arms buildups.)

To meet this imaginary threat, Germany will lead an expanded, militarized EU. First, Scholz told his European audience in the Czech capital, “I am committed to the enlargement of the European Union to include the states of the Western Balkans, Ukraine, Moldova and, in the long term, Georgia”. Worrying about Russia moving the dividing line West is a bit odd while planning to incorporate three former Soviet States, one of which (Georgia) is geographically and culturally very remote from Europe but on Russia’s doorstep. In the “Western Balkans”, Albania and four extremely weak statelets left from former Yugoslavia (North Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina and widely unrecognized Kosovo) mainly produce emigrants and are far from EU economic and social standards.

Kosovo and Bosnia are militarily occupied de facto NATO protectorates. Serbia, more solid than the others, shows no signs of renouncing its beneficial relations with Russia and China, and popular enthusiasm for “Europe” among Serbs has faded. Adding these member states will achieve “a stronger, more sovereign, geopolitical European Union,” said Scholz. A “more geopolitical Germany” is more like it. As the EU grows eastward, Germany is “in the center” and will do everything to bring them all together. So, in addition to enlargement, Scholz calls for “a gradual shift to majority decisions in common foreign policy” to replace the unanimity required today.

What this means should be obvious to the French. Historically, the French have defended the consensus rule so as not to be dragged into a foreign policy they don’t want. French leaders have exalted the mythical “Franco-German couple” as guarantor of European harmony, mainly to keep German ambitions under control. But Scholz says he doesn’t want “an EU of exclusive states or directorates,” which implies the final divorce of that “couple.” With an EU of 30 or 36 states, he notes, “fast and pragmatic action is needed.” And he can be sure that German influence on most of these poor, indebted and often corrupt new Member States will produce the needed majority.

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For Russia, this is about WWII. And about letting Germany unify.

“The German government “has unilaterally acted to destroy bilateral relations [with Russia] that were unique in scale and depth and had been built over decades..”

Germany Has ‘Crossed Red Line’ – Russia (RT)

Germany has crossed a red line with Russia by sending arms to Ukraine, Moscow’s ambassador in Berlin said on Monday. The decision undermined decades of reconciliation since the end of World War II and the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, the diplomat added. “The very fact that the Ukrainian regime is being supplied with German-made lethal weapons, which are used not only against Russian military service members, but also the civilian population of Donbass, crosses the red line,”Ambassador Sergey Nechaev said in an interview with Izvestia newspaper. He added that Berlin should have known better, “considering the moral and historic responsibility that Germany has before our people for the Nazi crimes.” “They have crossed the Rubicon,” Nechaev stated, using an idiom for passing the point of no return.

Berlin discarded its longstanding policy of not sending weapons into zones of armed conflict to join the US and other NATO allies in providing weapons to Ukraine. The German government says it has a moral responsibility to back Kiev so it can defend itself against Russia. Germany also joined an effort by the EU to decouple the economies of member states from Russia’s. German businesses have been relying on cheap Russian natural gas for five decades, since before the Soviet Union collapsed. The German government “has unilaterally acted to destroy bilateral relations [with Russia] that were unique in scale and depth and had been built over decades,” the Russian ambassador noted. “In essence, the post-war reconciliation of our nations and peoples is being eroded,”Nechaev said.

According to the diplomat, economic restrictions imposed on Russia over the Ukraine conflict have resulted in a sharp increase in utility bills, a surge in consumer prices, and a decrease in real incomes in Germany. Nechaev said the “sanctions war” against Moscow is being increasingly seen as “shooting yourself in the foot” in Germany, which has already faced protests over the cost-of-living crisis. The ambassador noted that Russia took no pleasure in seeing the damage, even if Berlin has itself to blame for it. “We believe the ongoing processes to be Germany’s domestic issue, in which we do not get involved,” he said. “And we certainly are not in the habit of delivering pompous lectures, the likes of which the West constantly makes about Russians.”

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“The solution, as always, is non-intervention. No sanctions, no “color revolutions,” no meddling. It’s really that simple.”

Europe Commits Suicide-by-Sanctions (Ron Paul)

European sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine earlier this year will likely go down in history as a prime example of how sanctions can result in unintended consequences. While seeking to punish Russia by cutting off gas and oil imports, European Union politicians forgot that Europe is completely dependent on Russian energy supplies and that the only people to suffer if those imports are shut down are the Europeans themselves. The Russians simply pivoted to the south and east and found plenty of new buyers in China, India, and elsewhere. In fact, Russia’s state-run Gazprom energy company has reported that its profits have increased by 100 percent in the first half of this year.

Russia is getting rich while Europeans are facing a freezing winter and economic collapse. All because of the false belief that sanctions are a cost-free way to force other countries to do what you want them to do. What happens when the people see dumb government policies making energy bills skyrocket as the economy grounds to a halt? They become desperate and take to the streets in protest. This weekend thousands of Austrians took to the streets in a “Freedom Rally” to demand an end to sanctions and the opening of Nord Stream II, the gas pipeline on the verge of opening earlier this year. Last week an estimated 100,000 Czechs took to the streets of Prague to protest NATO and EU policy. In France, the “Yellow Vests” are back in the streets protesting the destruction of their economy in the name of “defeating” Russia in Ukraine. In Germany, Serbia, and elsewhere, protests are gearing up.

Even the Washington Post was forced to admit that sanctions on Russia are not having the intended effect. In an article yesterday, the paper worries that sanctions are inflicting “collateral damage in Russia and beyond, potentially even hurting the very countries that impose them. Some even worried that the sanctions intended to deter and weaken Putin could end up emboldening and strengthening him.” This is all predictable. Sanctions kill. Sometimes they kill innocents in the country targeted for destruction and sometimes they kill innocents in the country imposing them. The solution, as always, is non-intervention. No sanctions, no “color revolutions,” no meddling. It’s really that simple.

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“Powers outside Europe are trying to condemn the bloc’s members to “military vulnerability, political subjugation, economic and energy incapacity, financial indebtedness and social disintegration..”

Hungarian Official Says EU Is The Losing Side In Ukraine Conflict (RT)

The EU has suffered severe political and economic damage from its handling of the situation in Ukraine, and can already be declared the loser in the conflict, the speaker of Hungary’s National Assembly claimed on Sunday.Laszlo Kover, who is a member of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party, accused Brussels of failing to prevent the conflict through political means, with the result that it’s “unable to restore peace diplomatically.” “Under external pressure, the EU is acting against its most basic economic interests and should already be considered a loser, regardless of which of the parties directly involved in fighting will declare itself the winner,” he said.

Powers outside Europe are trying to condemn the bloc’s members to “military vulnerability, political subjugation, economic and energy incapacity, financial indebtedness and social disintegration,” with Brussels helping them to achieve this goal, the parliament speaker claimed. The EU is grappling with soaring natural gas prices, the prospect of energy shortages in winter and spiking inflation in the wake of sanctions it imposed on Russia over its military operation in Ukraine. Brussels has largely followed the US stance of seeking to weaken Russia through sanctions, while supplying Kiev with weapons and financial aid.

Hungary has remained relatively neutral since the outbreak of fighting in late February. It has refused to send arms to Ukraine and remained critical of the EU sanctions against Moscow, calling them ill-conceived and self-defeating. Budapest, which is heavily dependent on Russian energy, was also able to negotiate an exemption for itself from the bloc-wide ban on Russian oil. Last week, Mikulas Bek the European affairs minister of the Czech Republic, which now presides over the EU Council, has warned that Hungary’s stance on Russia could theoretically end up with it exiting the bloc. The country “has come a long way, reaching the edge of an abyss, and now it has to decide whether to go back from that edge or risk a jump,” Bek said.

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A new kind of self-flaggelation: we’ll buy your gas, but only if you make it twice as expensive.

New Gazprom Plant Is Shipping Its First LNG Cargo To Greece (BI)

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the European Union pledged to reduce the bloc’s reliance on natural gas from Russia. But it appears new deals are still pushing through. The first cargo from Russia’s Portovaya liquefied natural gas, or LNG, plant, which is near the shut Nord Stream 1 pipeline, will be going to EU nation Greece, Bloomberg reported on Saturday, citing a person with direct knowledge of the situation. The identity of the buyer and size of the cargo was not reported, but Greece has only one LNG facility that supplies the domestic market, as well as Bulgaria — also an EU country — and North Macedonia.

This is at odds with EU plans, rolled out in March, that aim to cut the bloc’s dependency on Russian gas by two-thirds by the end of 2022 and end its reliance on Russian supplies of the fuel “well before 2030.” Europe depends on Russia for 40% of its natural-gas needs, such as cooking in homes and firing up power stations. It’s fretting over a winter energy crisis, as Russia has reduced natural-gas flows to the continent, citing sanctions-related challenges. Challenges abound, particularly in the short-term after Russia halted natural-gas supply via the key Nord Stream 1 pipeline. Europe is busy setting up LNG terminals to counter the energy crisis, as these facilities will turn the super-cooled fuel to gas.

Sweden, another EU nation, is also still importing Russian LNG. Last week, activists from Greenpeace Nordic protested Russian imports by blocking an LNG tanker from unloading Russian fuel in Sweden. s”The fact that Russian fossil gas is still allowed to flow into Sweden, more than six months after Putin began his invasion of Ukraine, is unacceptable,” Karolina Carlsson, a campaign leader at Greenpeace Nordic, said in a statement on September 8.

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Sanctions at work.

Spain Doubles Russian Gas Imports (RT)

The volume of Russian gas bought by Spain in August soared by 102.2% compared to the same period last year, according to data published on Monday by the Spanish energy company Enagas. The report highlighted that Madrid purchased 4,505 gigawatt hours (GWh) of gas from Moscow compared to 2,228 GWh in August 2021. Meanwhile, imports from Algeria, traditionally a major gas supplier to the country, dropped by 34.8%. Data also showed that imports from the United States accounted for 26.5% of supplies. Russia ranked fifth among the country’s main providers (11.8%), after the US, Algeria, Nigeria and France.


In total, in the first eight months of 2022, Spain purchased 32,770 GWh of gas from Russia, which is 22.88% more than in the same period of the previous year. The EU countries have been boosting gas purchases lately to stockpile for the winter season. On Friday, member states failed to reach a consensus on setting a price cap on Russian gas which was aimed at calming skyrocketing energy prices across the region.

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Support the neo-nazis.

Ukrainian Mayor Announces Hunt For ‘Collaborators’ (RT)

The city of Izyum, which fell under the control of Ukrainian forces last week, is about to see “cleanup” operations by the Ukrainian military, its mayor, Valery Marchenko, told the BBC on Monday. During these efforts, Ukrainian soldiers will search for Russian soldiers who could have potentially remained in the city, as well as those they call “collaborators,” Marchenko added. “The military are doing the cleanup [by] going around the city and looking for enemy soldiers that [could have been] hiding in private houses,”the mayor said, adding that the Ukrainian soldiers then forcefully drove them out. After they finish with the “cleanup,” the mayor added, the Kiev forces will “look for collaborators.”


According to him, these efforts might take up to ten days. After that, the civilians who fled the city would be allowed to return, according to Marchenko. Last week, Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigations said it would conduct similar operations in Balakleya, another town in Kharkov Region that has recently been retaken by Kiev’s forces. According to Marchenko, at least 1,000 Izyum residents died “as a result of military action” in the city and “even more” perished due to the lack of medical assistance. He did not blame any specific deaths on any side of the conflict but slammed Russia for “bombing” and “destroying” the city.

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“Plausible deniability works both ways; because NATO is not officially in Ukraine – only “volunteers” – targeting their personnel is not an overtly aggressive act.”

Special Military Operation, Season 2 (Big Serge)

First, I would like to comment on why I am against mobilization. One of the most important dimensions of this war is the economic front. Europe is being driven to the brink by the energy crisis. The Wall Street Journal keyed in on what I believe to be the most apt descriptor of the crisis, warning of a “new era of deindustrialization in Europe.” A full mobilization would be very costly for Russia’s economy, risking the edge that it currently holds in the economic confrontation with Europe. This, I believe, is the main reason that the Russian government was quick to quash rumors of mobilization today. There are other steps on the escalation ladder before going to total war footing.

There are already rumors that Russia is planning to change the formal designation of the war, from “Special Military Operation”. While that could mean a formal declaration of war, I think that is unlikely. Rather, Russia will likely give the Ukraine operation the same designation as its operations in Syria, loosening the rules of engagement and beginning to target Ukrainian assets in earnest. We saw a foretaste of this last night, when Russia wiped out over half of Ukraine’s power generation with a few missiles. There are many more targets that they can go after – more nodes in the electrical grid, water pumping and filtration facilities, and higher level command posts. There is at least some probability that Russia begins targeting the command facilities with NATO personnel in them.

Plausible deniability works both ways; because NATO is not officially in Ukraine – only “volunteers” – targeting their personnel is not an overtly aggressive act. Russia also has many ways to boost its force deployment in Ukraine that fall short of full mobilization. They have a pool of demobilized contract soldiers that they can call up, as well as a pool of reservists that they can raise with a partial mobilization. The Russian line is hardening. Just in the past 24 hours, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there were “no prospect for negotiations” with Ukraine, and Putin said “Unfriendly forces are targeting us, and we must take initiative in order to succeed in confronting them.”

Medvedev went even further just now: “”A certain Zelenskyy said that he will not hold a dialogue with those who issue ultimatums. The current ‘ultimatums’ are a warm-up for kids, a preview of demands to be made in the future. He knows them: the total surrender of the Kiev regime on Russia’s terms” If you believe the Russian government is utterly incompetent and duplicitous, feel free to view statements like this as bluster. But given the warning shot at Ukrainian power generation yesterday, my sense is that Russia is preparing to escalate to a higher level of intensity, which Ukraine cannot match with its indigenous resources. The only other player on the escalation ladder is the United States. Dark times are ahead for Ukraine – and perhaps for Americans on the other front of this war.

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Trying to open a second theater? Russia knows this territory like the back of its hand. NATO does not, but thinks it does.

Armenia Requests Russian Military Assistance In Fight Against Azerbaijan (ZH)

The overnight outbreak of fighting in multiple spots along the Armenian-Azerbaijan border is serious enough for Yerevan to have asked for its powerful ally Russia’s help. This has been revealed hours after Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan held a late night telephone conversation with President Vladimir Putin. The Armenian government has since confirmed it has requested Russian military assistance to repel Azerbaijan aggression and shelling, according to a statement (machine translation): “During the meeting, further steps were discussed to counter the aggressive actions of Azerbaijan against the sovereign territory of Armenia that began at midnight. In connection with the aggression against the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia, it was decided to officially appeal to the Russian Federation in order to implement the provisions of the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, as well as to the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the UN Security Council.

Armenia is basing the request on the Collective Security Treaty Organization pact it has with Russia, and under which Russia previously sent peacekeeping forces to Nagorno-Karabakh after the Fall 2020 conflict. Independent geopolitical analyst and Russia watcher Clint Ehrlich concludes of the hugely significant request at a time the Ukraine war is raging: “If Russia accepts, we could see a second NATO-Russia proxy war explode.” Of the earlier in the night Putin phone call, the Kremlin said via TASS: “The Prime Minister gave details about the provocative, aggressive actions of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces in the direction of the sovereign territory of Armenia, which began at midnight and were accompanied by shelling from artillery and large-caliber firearms. The Prime Minister considered the actions of the Azerbaijani side unacceptable and stressed the importance of an adequate response from the international community.”

However, it should be noted that during the last major flare-up in fighting between the two longtime rival nations which share a restive border, Moscow was careful to not get too deeply drawn in – only agreeing to help broker a ceasefire and send several hundred Russian peacekeeping forces to oversee the terms of the agreement. If Moscow does get pulled in, it might be seen in the West as an opportunity to “weaken” Russian forces on a separate front.

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The mayor feels threatened in economy, but her staff is not?! Bet you there are black women in that staff. Moreover, letting your security detail travel apart from you is hardly the safest option.

New Orleans Mayor Justifies Luxury Flights Citing Skin Color And Gender (RT)

The Democratic Mayor of New Orleans, LaToya Cantrell, has insisted that spending tens of thousands of dollars on first-class plane seats was necessary, suggesting that flying economy would be unsafe for a black woman. Cantrell is refusing to refund the $30,000 of taxpayers’ money she spent on the luxury seats to France and Switzerland. Speaking at a press conference last week, Cantrell insisted that her “travel accommodations are a matter of safety, not luxury.” That’s despite her entourage and security staff reportedly traveling coach during the trips.

“As the mother of a young child whom I live for, I am going to protect myself by any reasonable means in order to ensure I am there to see her grow into the strong woman I am raising her to be,” Cantrell explained, adding that “anyone who wants to question how I protect myself just doesn’t understand the world black women walk in.” The mayor took a luxury American Airlines flight to Switzerland back in July and a first-class trip to France earlier this year, insisting that she was “doing business on behalf of the city.” “All expenses incurred doing business on behalf of the city of New Orleans will not be reimbursed to the city of New Orleans,” LaToya Cantrell said, speaking outside the Nix Library on Thursday. However, New Orleans’ travel policy for city officials makes it clear that all employees “are required to purchase the lowest airfare available” and that those who choose to upgrade their seats are responsible for the difference in cost.

Furthermore, if the city ends up overpaying for any travel expenses, the employees are required to reimburse the city within 20 business days. Speaking to Fox 8, the mayor’s staff said they are checking to see if the city policy applies to Cantrell, as she is an elected official and not specifically hired by the city itself. As reported by 4WWL, Cantrell also spent over $2,800 dollars back in March on a first-class trip to Miami for a US Conference of Mayors, while her entourage spent between $300 and $677. In January she also reportedly spent $2,300 on a luxury flight to a Conference of Mayors meeting in Washington while her staff paid just $250.

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It’s getting out of hand.

The Continued DOJ Targeting of Joe Biden Political Opposition (CTH)

During his opening monologue today, Fox News host Tucker Carlson outlined the history of the Biden administration targeting the democrat political opposition by using the Dept of Justice and FBI. During one part of the lengthy segment, Carlson outlined the recent subpoenas to people within the MAGA movement.

The technique most often deployed, is for the DOJ/FBI to claim an anonymous source has provided information against the subpoena target, and therefore the target must prove their innocence against the “sources” claims. Having received one of these DC subpoenas directly, my experience with the construct leads me to believe the DOJ is just making up the “anonymous sources.” However, if you refuse to participate in the bizarre demand to prove your innocence, the lack of cooperation becomes the Lawfare angle used to entrap the target. The process is something like this: It is unlawful to rob banks. We were told you rob banks. Prove you do not rob banks or be subject to arrest for being unresponsive.


It is not quite impossible to construct an accusatory claim that is grounded in abject absurdity, but it is highly unlikely these absurd claims -factual lies without any basis whatsoever- would organically lead to the origin of DOJ investigations. Yet, this is what Merrick Garland’s DOJ would have us believe. Either the DOJ is making this stuff up, or affiliates in ideological alignment are making stuff up in order to feed the DOJ. Regardless, the political weaponization of the DOJ and FBI as described by Mr. Carlson is absolutely accurate.

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How to end a monarchy.

UK Police Arrests Anti-Monarchy Protesters (G.)

Civil liberties campaigners and others have expressed alarm about the response of police to anti-monarchy protesters after a number of incidents, the latest of which included the arrest of a man in Edinburgh for apparently heckling Prince Andrew. The advocacy group Liberty said that new powers recently given to the police to curtail protest, and how they were being enforced by officers, were a cause for deep concern. The Labour MP Zarah Sultana said in response to incidents in Edinburgh, London and Oxford: “No one should be arrested for just expressing republican views. Extraordinary – and shocking – that this needs saying.”

Police Scotland said a 22-year-old man and a 52-year-old man had been arrested in connection with a breach of the peace on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh shortly before 3pm on Monday. It came after police were seen pulling a man out of a crowd of people, some of whom appeared to push him, after he was seen shouting at the procession accompanying the Queen’s coffin as King Charles, the Princess Royal, the Duke of York and the Earl of Wessex marched behind the hearse. Earlier, a woman was charged after being arrested by police in Edinburgh on Sunday as she staged a protest during the accession proclamation for the King. Police said the woman, 22, had been arrested on Sunday outside St Giles’ Cathedral in connection with a breach of the peace and would appear at Edinburgh sheriff court at a later date.

The woman, called Mariángela and who had been seen holding a sign that said “Fuck imperialism, abolish monarchy”, was arrested moments before the reading of the proclamation. The incident took place outside the cathedral, where the Queen’s coffin lay on Monday. On Monday night Global Majority Vs Campaign, the group Mariángela represents, released a statement following the arrest, saying it “condemned the centuries of colonial injustice, genocide, and unlawful extraction that have been – and continue to be – carried out in the name of the British Crown”. It added: “Calling for the abolition of the monarchy is as old as the monarchy itself and is a cornerstone of freedom of speech in the UK.”

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Sagan

 

 

 

 

Brian Catt

 

 

 

 

Trees Height

 

 

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

 

 

 

Sep 012022
 
 September 1, 2022  Posted by at 7:51 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  100 Responses »


Frank Walton Crows on a beach 1884

 

Era of Fake Money is Gone – Egon von Greyerz (USAW)
Europeans Face Mass Poverty – Expert (RT)
European Gas Prices Surge As Russia Reduces Supplies (RT)
Russia Has Enough Gas For At Least 100 Years – Gazprom (RT)
Hungary Signs Deal With Gazprom For Extra 5.8bn Cubic Metres Natural Gas (EN)
German Companies Shutting Down In Response To Record Energy Prices (ZH)
Most Germans Want Talks With Russia – Poll (RT)
Northern EU Sees The Light (K.)
Ukraine: Somewhere between Afghanization and Syrianization (Escobar)
Western Propaganda and its Aftermath (AT)
Ukrainian Officials Accused Of Stealing Trainloads Of Aid (RT)
Russian Foreign Ministry Explains Who Is Dividing The West (RT)
US Life Expectancy Plummeting (RT)
Western Allies Sabotaged Tentative Ukraine-Russia Peace Deal… In April (ZH)
DOJ Alleges That “Obstructive Conduct Occurred” at Mar-a-Lago (Turley)

 

 

The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again. And we will never be tormented by the boredom of eternity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Half the country.
Karine Jean-Pierre says that people who voted for Donald Trump are “a threat to our democracy, to our freedom, to our rights.”

 

 

 

 

Ashley

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You have to remember when the debt collapses, all the assets that were supported by this debt will collapse. You will have an implosion of values, I expect 90% plus.”

Era of Fake Money is Gone – Egon von Greyerz (USAW)

“I did forecast that . . . the stock market is going to fall at this particular point. The 1,000-point drop on the DOW last Friday came right on cue. Fundamentally, the markets should have crashed a long time ago. . . . It appears clear to me we are going to see a 30% or so fall in the markets in the next one to two months. That’s the first fall, but that’s just the beginning. . . . Markets will fall, in real terms, by 90% to 95% in the coming years. That’s not going to happen overnight, but if it does happen overnight, then all bets are off and there will be a total disaster. The world is going to shut down. . . . Then there will be some extra money printing and people will be optimistic for a while. There is no money anymore because the money that is printed will make zero difference.

There will be nothing that will drive the world forward. All the decisions on top of the with energy, climate change, sanctions, etcetera, will mean it all will crash a lot faster. . . . The world is going to see a collapse that it has never seen before in history, and there is absolutely no remedy for that. They are not going to be able to do anything. Everybody who is not in power is going to promise something that they can’t deliver. When they get into power, they will be thrown out because they couldn’t deliver. So, the era of Shangri-la and money printing and saving the world by fake money—that era is totally gone.”

EvG goes on to say, “I am not a prophet of doom and gloom, but it may sound like it. I am just someone who just looks at risk. This is why I got into gold 20 years ago. Gold was the best solution to a risk situation in the financial world. . . . We almost had a collapse in 2008, and it was patched up temporarily. This time they won’t succeed . . . . We have a situation nobody can solve. . . . Initially, there will be money printing, but adding new debt to pay old debt is not a great solution to the problem. I don’t think there will be any orderly reset at all . . . . At some point, there will be an implosion of the system. There has to be. . . . You have to remember when the debt collapses, all the assets that were supported by this debt will collapse. You will have an implosion of values, I expect 90% plus. Stocks crashed in 1929 to 1932 by 90%. The risk back then and the magnitude of the problems then were nothing compared to what we have today. Remember, today it’s global, and it’s every single country in the world. . . . It’s everywhere, and no one can escape what’s coming.”

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“..in Belgium, households on average will be paying $10,000 a year for power and heating.”

Europeans Face Mass Poverty – Expert (RT)

Rising energy prices could lead to mass impoverishment in the EU, Professor at the University of Liege in Belgium Damien Ernst told French news site Atlantico on Monday. He warned there is no indication that the situation will improve after this winter. According to him, “the perfect storm” that has formed in energy markets is expected to have a major economic impact on households and businesses. Ernst suggested that in Belgium, households on average will be paying €10,000 ($10,000) a year for power and heating. The energy crisis will be far worse than the 2008 financial crisis and the oil shocks of the 1970s, he said, adding: “This will have economic consequences, especially for purchasing power, and lead to financial constraints.” With such a jump in energy prices, “it will be impossible to control inflation,” Ernst warned. Power prices in Europe have continued to reach record highs, intensifying the region’s energy crisis and stoking fears about access to electricity and heating as the weather begins to cool.

Kyle Bass
https://twitter.com/i/status/1564962742259400705

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I think prices have come down a bit. Not that it matters much anymore.

European Gas Prices Surge As Russia Reduces Supplies (RT)

European spot prices for natural gas rose in early trading on Wednesday after Russian energy major Gazprom shut down supplies via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. According to the Intercontinental Exchange data, the price of October gas futures on the TTF hub in the Netherlands rose 5.5% to €280 ($280) per megawatt-hour, or $2,906 per thousand cubic meters, at around 07:00 GMT, after falling below $2,600 the day before.= Earlier on Wednesday, Gazprom confirmed the temporary halt of natural gas deliveries to Europe via Nord Stream 1 due to scheduled maintenance.


Unless there are technical setbacks, the gas flow will be resumed on September 3, with supply volumes restored to 33 million cubic meters per day, or roughly 20% of the pipeline’s full capacity. Following Gazprom’s announcement on August 19 regarding the temporary suspension, gas prices reacted sharply. Last week, the price of September futures exceeded $3,500 per thousand cubic meters. However, after German Economy Minister Robert Habeck announced that the country’s underground gas storages were 85% filled ahead of schedule, the gas price rally somewhat subsided.

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And the west wants it.

Russia Has Enough Gas For At Least 100 Years – Gazprom (RT)

Russia has huge natural gas reserves that could last for more than a century, the head of state-owned Gazprom, Alexey Miller, said on Wednesday at the International Business Congress. “Our consumers, Russian citizens, will have access to [this] cheap, reliable energy resource. It is especially important to note that they could be optimistic about the country’s gas future. Why? Because we are provided with reserves for 100 years ahead,” Miller said, noting that some of Gazprom’s fields will still be providing gas even in 2120. The energy giant’s chief executive attributed such an optimistic forecast to the development of the vast resources in Russia’s northern Yamal Peninsula, adding that Gazprom is currently preparing to launch the Kharasavey gas field and has also started developing the deep deposits of the Bovanenkovo field. Russia holds the world’s largest natural gas reserves, estimated at 48 trillion cubic meters, or roughly a quarter of the global total.

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Move to Budapest while you can. It’s a pretty city.

Hungary Signs Deal With Gazprom For Extra 5.8bn Cubic Metres Natural Gas (EN)

Hungary says it has signed a deal with Russian energy giant Gazprom for 5.8 billion cubic metres of extra natural gas. Zoltan Kovacs, international spokesman for Hungary’s government, said it would be on top of the country’s current supplies. “Hungary’s energy supply is safe,” he added. Hungary’s foreign affairs minister also announced the deal with Gazprom on Facebook during a break from his meeting with other EU ministers. Péter Szijjártó specified that in September and October, Gazprom will deliver a maximum of 5.8 million cubic meters more natural gas per day to Hungary via Serbia than what was specified in its long-term contract. EU foreign affairs ministers were meeting to debate a possible visa ban on Russian tourists in response to the war in Ukraine.


Szijjártó added that during the foreign affairs meeting, he spoke out against a possible visa ban on Russians. The announcement comes as Europe scrambles to cut energy consumption and cope with a reduction in supply of Russian gas. The Russian state-owned energy company had increased supplies to Hungary earlier this month even as it stopped flows to other European countries. Gazprom stopped gas supplies to Europe’s Nord Stream 1 pipeline earlier on Wednesday for maintenance. The company also said it had suspended gas flows to French gas company Engie “due to failure to pay for July supplies in full.”

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“..the entire German economy is about to get its plug pulled..”

German Companies Shutting Down In Response To Record Energy Prices (ZH)

It’s not just European smelters shutting down due to soaring energy prices: the entire German economy is about to get its plug pulled. While a handful of macro tourists rejoice that record European year-ahead electricity prices plunged by 50% to levels not seen since… last week… Europe is facing economic devastation and depression at a scale that will make 2008 seems like a walk in the park. As the FT reports, German manufacturers are halting production in response to the surge in energy prices, a trend the government has described as “alarming”. German economy minister Robert Habeck said industry had worked hard to reduce its gas consumption in recent months, partly by switching to alternative fuels like oil, making its processes more efficient and reducing output.

But he amusingly clarified, some companies had also “stopped production altogether” — a development he said was “alarming”. “It’s not good news,” he said, “because it can mean that the industries in question aren’t just being restructured but are experiencing a rupture — a structural rupture, one that is happening under enormous pressure.” Habeck said rising gas prices were affecting everyone from big industrial companies to small trading firms and the medium-sized enterprises that make up the “Mittelstand”. “Wherever energy is an important part of the business model, companies are experiencing sheer angst,” he said. And since energy is a crucial part of every business model, one can only imagine the chaos, fear and loathing hammering the largest European economy right now.

Confirming that Trump was right all along, the German minister said the business model of large parts of German manufacturing was based on the abundance of gas from Russia that was cheaper than gas from other regions. That competitive advantage “won’t come back any time soon, if it ever comes back at all”, Habeck said. Whether he was aware of it or not, Habeck effectively echoed what Zoltan Pozsar said over the weekend, that Europe is facing a Minsky moment triggered by excessive financial leverage “and in the context of supply chains, leverage means excessive operating leverage: in Germany, $2 trillion of value added depends on $20 billion of gas from Russia… …that’s 100-times leverage – much more than Lehman’s.”

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Their gov’t has explicitly said they don’t care what the voters want.

Most Germans Want Talks With Russia – Poll (RT)

The majority of Germans want the West to take concrete steps to initiate talks with Russia to end the Ukraine conflict, a recent survey has indicated. Published on Wednesday, the poll commissioned by Germany’s RTL/ntv-Trendbarometer was conducted from August 26 through August 29, with 1,011 people taking part. According to the survey, some 77% of Germans believe that the West should make concrete efforts to try to launch negotiations with Russia, which could help bring an end to the conflict in Ukraine. Only 17% would oppose such talks. When asked whether it is the right thing for Western leaders to keep phoning Russian President Vladimir Putin, 87% of the respondents replied in the affirmative, with 11% against.


Regarding the extent of German aid to Ukraine, 43% said they are content with the current state of assistance, while 26% want Berlin to do more and a quarter believe the country is already doing too much in this respect. The latter sentiment is particularly prevalent in eastern Germany and among supporters of the Alternative for Germany party, the researchers noted. Although some politicians from the ruling ‘traffic-light’ coalition are calling for continued deliveries of heavy weaponry to Ukraine, even at the expense of Germany’s own military, 62% of the respondents expressed skepticism about whether this would be a prudent move, while only 32% would welcome such deliveries.

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The way the EU’s been going, they can only make it worse.

Northern EU Sees The Light (K.)

The EU is rushing to intervene in the electricity and energy markets to prevent a further price escalation, now that the crisis is threatening to destabilize the biggest European economies, especially the highly dependent on Russian gas Germany. Those who loudly and with more than a hint of contempt pushed back on proposals by Greece and other southern European countries for a price ceiling on natural gas and the decoupling of gas prices from electricity rates, are now at the forefront of efforts for immediate intervention on exactly these issues, seven months late. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made public Monday the EU’s intent for an “emergency intervention and a restructuring of the electricity market” and, on Tuesday, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner sent a message to his EU colleagues that Berlin was open to considering a price ceiling on natural gas in the emergency meeting of EU Energy Ministers on September 9.


Across Europe and at EU headquarters, in Brussels, officials are weighing the pros and cons of the price ceiling and the decoupling, proposals that Greece had first made, through Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, in October 2021. The task is to find the most effective mix of policies that will restore a certain equilibrium in the natural gas market and will lead to a price de-escalation. Moreover, these measures must be agreed upon by all 27 EU members. In this complicated effort, Europe is certain that, whatever decision it takes, it will lead to a Russian reaction. Also, and independently of what it decides about natural gas, Russia will keep reducing flow, under a variety of pretexts, continuing a policy that begun with demands that it be paid in rubles and whose latest manifestation was Tuesday’s reducing of supply to France’s Engie.

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“..Monsanto, Cargill and Dupont have already bagged 17 million hectares of prime, fertile arable land – over half of what Ukraine still possesses..”

Ukraine: Somewhere between Afghanization and Syrianization (Escobar)

The Russian military never made a conscious decision to interrupt the multi-channel flow of western weapons to Kiev. Methodically destroying those weapons once they’re in Ukrainian territory – with plenty of success – is another matter. The same applies to smashing mercenary networks. Moscow is well aware that any negotiation with those pulling the strings in Washington – and dictating all terms to puppets in Brussels and Kiev – is futile. The fight in Donbass and beyond is a do or die affair. So the battle will go on, destroying what’s left of Ukraine, just as it destroyed much of Syria. The difference is that economically, much more than in Syria, what’s left of Ukraine will plunge into a black void. Only territory under Russian control will be rebuilt, and that includes, significantly, the bulk of Ukraine’s industrial infrastructure.


What’s left – rump Ukraine – has already been plundered anyway, as Monsanto, Cargill and Dupont have already bagged 17 million hectares of prime, fertile arable land – over half of what Ukraine still possesses. That translates de facto as BlackRock, Blackstone and Vanguard, top agro-business shareholders, owning whatever lands that really matter in non-sovereign Ukraine. Going forward, by next year the Russians will be applying themselves to cutting off Kiev from NATO weapons supplies. As that unfolds, the Anglo-Americans will eventually move whatever puppet regime remains to Lviv. And Kiev terrorism – conducted by Bandera worshippers – will continue to be the new normal in the capital.

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“Russians Targeting Kids’ Beds, Rooms With Explosives: Ukrainian Bomb Team”

Western Propaganda and its Aftermath (AT)

The western propaganda we’re currently experiencing is nothing new. Today’s President Putin joins yesterday’s Middle East “monsters” as current Ukrainian Nazi militias become “freedom fighters” and the Russians become “Nazis.” Likewise, the previous Middle Eastern terrorist groups became “moderate Islamist’s” but only if they were fighting for a US led NATO in Iraq and Syria. Yet such is the power of belief on an already stupefied majority western population that it’s become factual. In our upside down world, reality has long vanished to 15% of our western leaders who regard themselves as the “international community.” On August 24th, only 54 countries out of 193 supported a UN resolution which condemned Russia for not stopping its intervention in the Ukraine, which begs the question of why, if the majority population loathe today’s western politicians, do they passionately and often even fanatically believe their every word?

Supplying weapons and financial aid to the Ukraine which enables Russia to get bogged down in an endless war with mounting casualties, coupled with sanctions to bring down Russian middle-class living standards is just another attempt at regime change. Moreover, having failed to control the Middle East oil producers, it has not gone unnoticed that Russia is itself a major gas and oil producer. Bathsheba Crocker, US Ambassador to the UN warned in the New York Times on February 21st before the incursion occurred that Russia had a ‘hit list’ of people destined for arrest, detention and torture including “vulnerable populations such as religious and ethnic minorities and LGBTQI+ persons.” How she knew that is not explained, but the inclusion of homosexuals as a vulnerable group now appears mandatory in any media story.

From allegations presented as facts by Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner Lyudmyla Denisova and picked up by The British Daily Mail and the US New York Times in May, of multiple repeated child rapes and murders near Kiev. Meanwhile, Newsweek also in May ran the headline “Russians Targeting Kids’ Beds, Rooms With Explosives: Ukrainian Bomb Team”; what kind of sick minds dream this up?! Although written in a news format, both headlines carried disclaimers that the content remained unverified. In which case, why report it as news? One assumes that in time these stories will join Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction and the Ghost of Kyiv hoaxes.

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Fraud. The only infrastructure still in place in Ukraine.

Ukrainian Officials Accused Of Stealing Trainloads Of Aid (RT)

Ukrainian officials in the eastern Zaporozhye Region are being investigated for allegedly stealing massive amounts of humanitarian aid sent to them. They are accused of looting hundreds of freight cars’ worth of goods. Raids at offices and addresses associated with the suspected embezzlers were reported on Tuesday. Agents of the SBU, Ukraine’s successor to the KGB, and the anti-corruption agency NABU conducted the operations, according to a statement by the agencies. The region is mostly controlled by Russian forces, but its capital Zaporozhye and some of the surrounding areas are under Kiev’s control. The raids targeted the Kiev-appointed administration and members of the city council, according to the SBU and NABU. The agencies also reported confiscating what they believe to be narcotics and illegal firearms while searching the premises.

While the official statement offered few details, a more comprehensive account of the ongoing probe came from Ukrainian public figure Evgeny Shevchenko, who is widely described by the local media as an unpaid agent for the NABU. The agency had previously confirmed working with him. According to his post on Facebook, the suspected grifters made off with “almost all humanitarian aid” sent to the region, selling the goods through local retail chains. The total volume of what was stolen amounts to 22 sea transport containers, 389 freight train cars and 220 trucks, Shevchenko claimed. The activist named several senior officials in Zaporozhye Region as suspects and shamed them for posing as Ukrainian patriots while profiting at the expense of the country.

Shevchenko is a controversial figure in Ukraine. He emerged from the radical wing of the so-called Maidan protests of 2013-2014 and made a name for himself as an associate of militia commander and former MP Konstantin Grishin, who prefers to be called by his nom de guerre Semyon Semenchenko. Last year, Shevchenko and Semenchenko were arrested on allegations of involvement with an illegal militia. The arrests came after Shevchenko had accused the office of President Vladimir Zelensky of derailing an intelligence operation aimed at luring a group of Russian security contractors to Ukraine and detaining them. Shevchenko believes that his arrest and that of Semenchenko were an act of revenge by Zelensky’s chief-of-staff, Andrey Ermak. In his post about the raids in Zaporozhye Region, he linked the suspects with the president and the head of his office, pointing out that the officials targeted had been appointed by Kiev.

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“Zakharova compared the EU to the group of blind men in the painting ‘The Blind Leading the Blind’ by Dutch Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder.”

“..“strange suicidal initiatives that are attributed to the EU, but are actually imposed or planted” by an outside force..”

Russian Foreign Ministry Explains Who Is Dividing The West (RT)

Russia does not pursue a foreign policy aimed at dividing the West, or the EU in particular, despite claims to the contrary, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has said. However, the bloc could benefit from being more tolerant of dissenting voices, considering how much it has hurt itself with its ‘united’ approach to Russia, she said in a radio interview on Wednesday. Zakharova compared the EU to the group of blind men in the painting ‘The Blind Leading the Blind’ by Dutch Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder. “They are united. No one in this group, who are being led towards a ditch, voices any doubt, objects, asks questions or protests,” she said.

Brussels’ approach towards Russia is similar, the spokeswoman suggested, noting the “strange suicidal initiatives that are attributed to the EU, but are actually imposed or planted” by an outside force. She added that when it comes to Russia, the bloc does not tolerate dissenting voices – which is surprising, given that the EU claims to cherish democracy, a system in which opinions that differ from the dominant line of thinking are supposed to be appreciated. While many Western politicians claim that Russia wants to divide the bloc with its policies, this is not the case, Zakharova said. “If anything, our goal is to return common sense into international relations.”

Her remarks came during a discussion in the radio interview on the EU’s proposed ban on visas for Russians. The plan is promoted by Ukraine and some Eastern European member states, but Western European nations such as Germany and France believe less radical restrictions should be adopted. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki suggested this week that an implosion within the EU could occur unless all member states follow the hardline Russia policy that Warsaw has adopted.

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Yeah, yeah, Covid…

US Life Expectancy Plummeting (RT)

The average American’s life expectancy notably dropped between 2019 and 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed in a report published on Wednesday. It is the first two-year drop recorded since 1961-1963. Over the last two years, the US life expectancy decreased by 2.7 years, leaving the average lifespan at 76.1 years – the same as it was in 1996. According to the CDC, the primary factor in driving down life expectancy was the Covid-19 pandemic, which has contributed to the deaths of over one million Americans. “Unintentional injuries” – a category that includes overdoses and other drug-related misadventures – as well as heart disease were also major factors contributing to the decline.

Before the pandemic, heart disease had long been the top-recorded cause of death in the US, while the opioid epidemic has led to record numbers of overdoses for several years running. Breaking the CDC’s numbers down by race yields even more alarming trends. Native Americans suffered a 6.6 year drop in life expectancy between 2019 and 2021, compared to about four years for black and Hispanic people and 2.4 years for white people. The statistical burden disproportionately fell on males, whose life expectancy has declined to just 73.2 years, while females can still expect to live a comparatively long 79.1 years.

The report found most of the decline in life expectancy took place during the first year of the pandemic for nonwhite populations, while white Americans suffered the worst losses during the second year. Similar studies have found that Covid-19 worsened an already-yawning gap between the US, which has the most expensive healthcare in the world, and other developed nations in terms of life expectancy. Americans can now expect to live five fewer years than their European counterparts. Researchers studying the decline in life expectancy have blamed high rates of preexisting conditions like obesity and heart disease for the US’ outsized losses during the pandemic compared to 19 of its economic peers.

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“..the collective West, which back in February had suggested Zelenskyy should surrender and flee..”

Western Allies Sabotaged Tentative Ukraine-Russia Peace Deal… In April (ZH)

There’s mounting evidence that the war in Ukraine could have been over by this point, but key Western backers of Kiev sought to sabotage the potential for peaceful settlement through negotiations. That’s precisely what regional Ukrainian media reports concluded as early as May, soon after the UK’s Boris Johnson showed up in the capital on a “surprise” visit to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky for the first time the month prior This is what a bombshell story in Ukrainska Pravda said at the time, but which was almost completely ignored in Western mainstream media: According Ukrainska Pravda sources close to Zelenskyy, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson, who appeared in the capital almost without warning, brought two simple messages. The first is that Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with.

And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they [the UK and US] are not. Johnson’s position was that the collective West, which back in February had suggested Zelenskyy should surrender and flee, now felt that Putin was not really as powerful as they had previously imagined, and that here was a chance to “press him.” The Ukrainian media English-language report went on to emphasize that Three days after Johnson left for Britain, Putin went public and said talks with Ukraine “had turned into a dead end”. At the time the Istanbul peace talks, which saw top officials from each warring side gather in the Turkish capital, was hailed in some corners as “the quickest way to end the war in Ukraine” – according to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s words, who was seeking to mediate between Moscow and Kiev.

But as the invasion ordered by Putin pressed on, Britain especially was the earliest out front in making large weapons and munitions deliveries to Ukraine via military transport planes a high priority. UK press reports also took note of the ‘convenient’ timing of London going all-in hawkish on Ukraine given Prime Minister Johnson’s enduring ‘Partygate Scandal’ at home. Again, recall the tone of Ukrainian media following the arrival of the British prime minister in Kiev (and it should be noted Johnson was the first leader of a G7 country to visit, coming two weeks after Russian forces withdrew from suburbs around Kiev) on April 9: “Following the arrival of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in Kyiv, a possible meeting between Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin has become less likely.”s

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A President’s impunity is almost limitless.

DOJ Alleges That “Obstructive Conduct Occurred” at Mar-a-Lago (Turley)

Last night, Department of Justice Tuesday filed in opposition to the appointment of a Special Master in Florida. It used the filing to add new facts and allegations to the public record, including the statement that “obstructive conduct occurred” at Mar-a-Lago by concealing or moving documents. The Department makes many of the same claims that it used to opposed the release of a redacted affidavit, claims shown to have been misleading and exaggerated after the magistrate ordered the release. Notably, this filing contained details that were likely redacted in the affidavit but just released on the public record. In the most direct challenge to the former President’s public claims, the Justice Department claimed that he and his staff had failed to turn over classified material and that the Department had no choice but to search areas outside of the storage room. Indeed, it says that it found three classified documents in Trump’s desk without indicating the level of classification or subject matter.

It also said that the Trump staff barred the FBI from looking at documents in the storage room after turning over classified information to them. “As the former President’s filing indicates, the FBI agents and DOJ attorney were permitted to visit the storage room. See D.E. 1 at 5-6. Critically, however, the former President’s counsel explicitly prohibited government personnel from opening or looking inside any of the boxes that remained in the storage room, giving no opportunity for the government to confirm that no documents with classification markings remained.” The filing also adds new disclosures on past claims of declassification by Trump. It states that “[w]hen producing the Fifteen Boxes, the former President never asserted executive privilege over any of the documents nor claimed that any of the documents in the boxes containing classification markings had been declassified.”


That was in January 2022. It then alleges that, in the June 3, 2022 meeting, “neither counsel nor the custodian asserted that the former President had declassified the documents or asserted any claim of executive privilege.” It is not clear if or when the Trump team made the declassification claim. The filing also includes this notable allegation: “The government also developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.” The Justice Department told the court that it was vindicated in its suspicions and that “the FBI, in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many documents with classification markings as the ‘diligent search’ that the former President’s counsel and other representatives had weeks to perform calls into serious question the representations made in the June 3 certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter.”

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Not a fan of the man, but he’s right here.

David Icke

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Undefeated
https://twitter.com/i/status/1565077573863985159

 

 


The long-tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus) is found throughout Europe and the Palearctic. Photo Hajime Nakatsuka

 

 

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

 

 

 

Jul 012022
 
 July 1, 2022  Posted by at 9:08 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  50 Responses »


Pablo Picasso The artist and his model 1933

 

The G-7 Squawks But They’ve Already Lost The War Against Russia (Luongo)
You’re Either With Us Or You’re A “Systemic Challenge” (Escobar)
Beijing Slams NATO For ‘Maliciously Smearing’ China As A Security Threat (CD)
Biden: High Gas Prices ‘As Long As it Takes’ to Defeat Putin (Celente)
Supreme Court Rules For States Against EPA, Biden Climate Change Agenda (WT)
Key Witnesses Challenge Bombshell J6 Committee Key Witness Allegations (Turley)
Donald Trump Questions Why Jan. 6 Witness Hutchinson Isn’t Prosecuted (JTN)
Biden Has Weaponized The FBI And DOJ Against His Political Opponents (HE)
The Great Reset: Ending Freedom of the Press, Speech, and Expression (Filip)
Putin: Western Leaders Would Look ‘Disgusting’ Topless (AP)
Three Physicians Are Suing Twitter (CHD)
DR. VLADIMIR ZELENKO (1973-2022), REST IN PEACE (HE)

 

 


We regret to inform you that Elmo has passed away suddenly and unexpectedly.

 

 

 

 

“Europe suffers from anti Russian sanctions more than the United States, perhaps Washington wants to weaken the EU.” – Lavrov.

The G-7 Squawks But They’ve Already Lost The War Against Russia (Luongo)

So, the G-7 leaders are in agreement, more war with Russia. Without actually saying exactly that, that was the main takeaway from he meeting of the most feckless leaders in the world. They also pledged $600 billion they don’t have to fund global infrastructure projects to ‘combat China’s Belt and Road Initiative.’ One wonders where all this money and, in the case of Europe, energy is going to come from to fund all of this. But the question I’ve had from the beginning of this obvious war of attrition the West wants to impose on Russia is the following: Do we have the stamina, in terms of real production capacity, to cash these checks our leaders are writing?


A major report from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), one of the oldest military think tanks in the UK emphatically said not in anyone’s wildest dreams. I told you at the outset of this war that Russia was absolutely engaged in a war of attrition against the West, hoping NATO would take the bait of a ground war in Ukraine. I didn’t have numbers to back this up, only the inference because of what I understood about Putin and his previous maneuvers against the West. What’s obvious to me is the neocons and neoliberals controlling the West think they can turn Ukraine into a quagmire for Putin, but what if Putin thinks he can turn Ukraine into a quagmire for them? Russia is not capable of conquering Europe. But he doesn’t need to to defeat them. He just needs to create a version of this map:

I knew that Putin wouldn’t commit Russia to this conflict if it couldn’t sustain fighting it. I also knew that the West would LIE OUTRAGEOUSLY about the level of corruption within the Russian society to play on the biases of marginally-informed American armchair generals. Is the Russian system perfect? No. Is there corruption? Yes. But it’s complete nonsense to think it wouldn’t be uncovered and stripped out of all branches of the Russian military/industrial complex during the initial military gambit. The shifts made by Russia strategically and in terms of personnel have set it up for the long haul, fighting a type of war they are very good at and which the US and NATO left the UAF mostly defenseless against.


Now, with sanctions further hollowing out the US’s and Europe’s economies and the “leadership” of the buffoons that just met in Germany, Russia is in the driver’s seat to grind out a victory in Ukraine and leave the West depleted of weapons if the current situation goes on without a course correction. The point made by RUSI is that it may not be possible to course correct in time (or ever) in the time frame needed to affect the outcome in Ukraine, absent an unthinkable escalation. The exhaustion we thought we would put to Russia, is the ultimate form of ‘sanctions boomerang’ on the West. To listen to RUSI tell the tale, we’re the ones without the capacity to fight if the conflict widens. And yet, to listen to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken or National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, you would think Russia is still on the verge of collapse.

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“Turkiye under the Sultan of Swing – Global South in spirit, tightrope walker in practice..”

You’re Either With Us Or You’re A “Systemic Challenge” (Escobar)

Fast but not furious, the Global South is revving up. The key takeaway of the BRICS+ summit in Beijing, held in sharp contrast with the G7 in the Bavarian Alps, is that both West Asia’s Iran and South America’s Argentina officially applied for BRICS membership. The Iranian Foreign Ministry has highlighted how BRICS has “a very creative mechanism with broad aspects”. Tehran – a close partner of both Beijing and Moscow – already had “a series of consultations” about the application: the Iranians are sure that will “add value” to the expanded BRICS. Talk about China, Russia and Iran being sooooo isolated. Well, after all we’re deep into the metaverse spectrum, where things are the opposite of what they seem.

Moscow’s obstinacy in not following Washington’s Plan A to start a pan-European war is rattling Atlanticist nerves to the core. So right after the G7 summit significantly held at a former Nazi sanatorium, enter NATO’s, in full warmongering regalia. So welcome to an atrocity exhibition featuring total demonization of Russia, defined as the ultimate “direct threat”; the upgrading of Eastern Europe into “a fort”; a torrent of tears shed about the Russia-China strategic partnership; and as an extra bonus, the branding of China as a “systemic challenge”. There you go: for the NATO/G7 combo, the leaders of the emerging multipolar world as well as the vast swathes of the Global South that want to join in, are a “systemic challenge”.

Turkiye under the Sultan of Swing – Global South in spirit, tightrope walker in practice – got literally everything it wanted to magnanimously allow Sweden and Finland to clear their paths on the way of being absorbed by NATO. Bets can be made on what kind of shenanigans NATO navies will come up with in the Baltics against the Russian Baltic Fleet, to be followed by assorted business cards distributed by Mr. Khinzal, Mr. Zircon, Mr. Onyx and Mr. Kalibr, capable of course of annihilating any NATO permutation, including “decision centers”.

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“..it is NATO that is a “systemic challenge to world peace and stability” and its “hands are stained with the blood of the world’s people.”

Beijing Slams NATO For ‘Maliciously Smearing’ China As A Security Threat (CD)

Beijing criticized the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Thursday after the U.S.-led military alliance asserted that China poses “serious challenges” to global stability. NATO listed China as one of its priorities in the so-called 2022 Strategic Concept that leaders approved Wednesday at a summit in Madrid. This marked a first, as the alliance’s previous blueprint, published in 2010, made no mention of the East Asian country. According to NATO, Beijing’s “coercive policies” threaten the Western bloc’s “interests, security, and values.” Addressing the “systemic challenges posed by the People’s Republic of China to Euro-Atlantic security” and the “deepening strategic partnership” between China and Russia is now a NATO priority, the bloc declared.

Beijing responded with indignation. “Who’s challenging global security and undermining world peace?” China’s mission to the European Union asked Thursday in a statement. “Are there any wars or conflicts over the years where NATO is not involved? “NATO’s so-called Strategic Concept, filled with Cold War thinking and ideological bias, is maliciously attacking and smearing China. We firmly oppose it,” the statement said. “When it comes to acts that undermine China’s interests, we will make firm and strong responses.” As The Guardian reported: “Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China has been pointing its finger at the U.S. and NATO on multiple occasions.

But NATO’s attention to the China-Russia partnership began even before Moscow’s military operations in its neighbor. It has also been openly talking about China for some time. “In its annual summit in Brussels last June, the traditionally Russia-focused military alliance asserted, for the first time, that it needed to respond to Beijing’s growing power. The language the bloc used at the time also echoed the E.U.’s phrase of “systemic rival,” and the U.K.’s “systemic competitor” when describing China.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters Wednesday that “China is substantially building up its military forces, including nuclear weapons, bullying its neighbors, threatening Taiwan… monitoring and controlling its own citizens through advanced technology, and spreading Russian lies and disinformation.” “China is not our adversary,” said Stoltenberg, “but we must be clear-eyed about the serious challenges it represents.” In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Thursday that NATO’s latest policy document “disregards facts, confuses black and white… [and] smears China’s foreign policy.” China, Zhao added, does not pose “the systemic challenge imagined.” Instead, he argued, it is NATO that is a “systemic challenge to world peace and stability” and its “hands are stained with the blood of the world’s people.”

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You want to go into the midterms with gas at $5?

Biden: High Gas Prices ‘As Long As it Takes’ to Defeat Putin (Celente)

President Joe Biden said Americans better get ready to take it up the ass at the gas pump for “as long as it takes” to defeat the Russians in Ukraine. A reporter from The New York Times asked the president in Spain about the pain at the pump in the U.S. He asked, “How long is it fair to expect American drivers and drivers around the world to pay that premium for this war?” “As long as it takes,” Biden responded. “Russia cannot, in fact, defeat Ukraine and move beyond Ukraine. This is a critical, critical position for the world.” Biden has made it clear that Americans should know that the economic hardships that they face can be blamed on Russian President Vladimir Putin and not the useless COVID-19 lockdowns, trillions in stimulus funding, and massive sanctions leveled against Moscow… all which have spiked inflation and driven down the economy.


Biden said last week that Americans have been willing to sacrifice after the Russian invasion and “chose to stand with the people of Ukraine.” “So for all those Republicans in Congress criticizing me today for high gas prices in America, are you now saying we were wrong to support Ukraine? Are you saying we were wrong to stand up to Putin? Are you saying that we would rather have lower gas prices in America and Putin’s iron fist in Europe? I don’t believe that,” he said. Biden has long blamed the Russian president for causing the economic hardships in the country and said “Putin’s price hike” is taking its toll on Americans. Biden used a recent speech in Los Angeles to call energy price increases “Putin’s tax.”

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Again, what I see is SCOTUS questioning the decision making process, not the decisisons themselves.

Supreme Court Rules For States Against EPA, Biden Climate Change Agenda (WT)

The Environmental Protection Agency lacks the power under current laws to impose stark greenhouse gas emissions caps on the nation’s electricity supply, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday, erecting a major roadblock in President Biden’s path to impose climate change policies. The case before the justices dated to 2015, when President Obama, frustrated by his inability to win climate change legislation from Congress, had the EPA step in with newly discovered authority to force states to cut emissions from power plants. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing the majority opinion in the 6-3 decision, said Congress tasked the EPA with forcing plants to operate more cleanly but never envisioned the kind of cap-and-trade system the Obama team imposed to pressure emissions-heavy coal plants to close.

“A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in a ruling joined by the court’s other Republican-appointed members. The decision doesn’t mean Congress can’t grant that power, but only that it has not done so. Mr. Biden called the ruling “devastating” but vowed to find ways to move forward with his climate plans. “The science confirms what we all see with our own eyes — the wildfires, droughts, extreme heat, and intense storms are endangering our lives and livelihoods,” he said in a statement. “I will take action.” The ruling marks a significant limit to executive powers a decade after presidents started to test those boundaries.

Mr. Obama, frustrated with Congress, famously vowed to use his pen and phone to work around Congress. President Trump and now Mr. Biden have flexed executive authority to try to accomplish goals that were stymied by lack of legislation. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, writing a concurring opinion, shot down that approach. “When Congress seems slow to solve problems, it may be only natural that those in the executive branch might seek to take matters into their own hands. But the Constitution does not authorize agencies to use pen-and-phone regulations as substitutes for laws passed by the people’s representatives,” he said. Chief Justice Roberts said that when agencies confront “major questions,” courts should take extra care to ensure the administration stays within its legal lanes.

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“This is the peril of an investigation that occurs in an echo chamber. Such “gotcha” moments are powerful in the moment but can also be equally damaging if later challenged…”

Key Witnesses Challenge Bombshell J6 Committee Key Witness Allegations (Turley)

There is an old expression in the media that some facts are just too good to check. It is a recognition that journalists can sometimes be reluctant to endanger a good story by confirming an essential fact. The Select Committee on the Jan. 6th riot is facing a similar accusation this week after critical witnesses not contradicted some of the most explosive assertions of last week’s witness, Cassidy Hutchinson. Specifically, critical witnesses said that no one on the Committee reached out to confirm her account of former President Donald Trump lunging for the wheel in “the Beast” in a physical altercation with his security team on that day. The controversy highlights the failure of the Committee to offer a balanced investigation.

Many of us support the effort to bring greater transparency to what occurred on Jan. 6th and these hearings have offered a great deal of important new information. Indeed, it has proven gut-wrenching in the accounts of lawyers and staff trying to combat baseless theories and to protect the constitutional process. Yet, the heavy-handed approach to framing the evidence has been both unnecessary and at times counterproductive. The strength of some of this evidence would not have been diminished by a more balanced committee or investigation. We have been discussing the highly scripted and entirely one-sided presentation of evidence in the Committee.

Indeed, witnesses are primarily used to present what Speaker Nancy Pelosi referred to as “the narrative” where their prior videotaped testimony is shown and they are given narrow follow up questions. They at times seem more like props than witnesses — called effectively to recite prior statements between well-crafted, impactful video clips. It has the feel of a news package, which may be the result of the decision to bring in a former ABC executive to produce the hearings. That framing has led to glaring omissions. The Committee has routinely edited videotapes and crafted presentations to eliminate alternative explanations or opposing viewpoints like repeatedly editing out Trump telling his supporters to go to the Capitol peacefully.

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Lying under oath.

Donald Trump Questions Why Jan. 6 Witness Hutchinson Isn’t Prosecuted (JTN)

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday questioned why Jan. 6 committee witness Cassidy Hutchinson is not being prosecuted for lying under oath about her experiences in the White House while serving as an aide to then-chief of staff Mark Meadows. The former president and his White House officials have disputed much of Hutchinson’s testimony to the House Jan. 6 Capitol riot committee. Trump continued defending himself on Thursday through posts on his platform, Truth Social. “Social Climber Hutchinson lied about my attack on our great Secret Service, lied about her writing the White House note, lied about my throwing food at a wall in the Oval Office, & lied about my wanting to be surrounded by ‘people with guns’ during my “Go Peacefully and Patriotically” speech (how crazy is that?), yet no guns were found in the Capitol. These lies, among others, were made UNDER OATH. What is the Justice Department going to do about this? Do we have a two tiered system of Justice?” Trump wrote.

Other sources have substantiated Trump’s accusations about Hutchinson’s testimony. For example, a spokesperson for former White House attorney Eric Herschmann told ABC News that his client wrote the note that Hutchinson claimed she authored on Jan. 6. In another case, Hutchinson said Trump lunged at the steering wheel of his presidential vehicle to turn back to the Capitol on Jan. 6, but admitted she was not in the vehicle at the time of the incident. The Secret Service said the Democrat-led House committee did not contact the agency before Hutchinson testified about the alleged incident. A Secret Service agent and the vehicle’s driver are reportedly ready to testify under oath that Trump did not try to steer the vehicle, nor did he touch the men, sources told CBS News.

“Cassidy Hutchinson also forgot to tell the Unselects that she was desperate to go to Florida with certain others of the Trump staff, long after January 6th had come and gone,” the former president continued his defense. “If I was so evil, why did she fight so hard to stay a part of the MAGA TEAM? This is all documented in writing! Why did it take her so long to tell (make up!) these ridiculous and obviously Fake Stories, even after previously sitting for four long depositions? Was it, just maybe, her brand new lawyer? Lying under oath???” he asked. Former Trump White House ethics lawyer Stefan Passantino served as Hutchinson’s attorney until earlier this month, when she replaced him with Jody Hunt, a close ally of Jeff Sessions, Politico reported.

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I think Obama started that.

Biden Has Weaponized The FBI And DOJ Against His Political Opponents (HE)

On June 23, federal agents stormed the Virginia home of former Department of Justice official and legal scholar Jeffrey Clark in the early morning hours, searching his house and seizing multiple electronic devices in the process. And on June 27, news broke of the FBI executing a search warrant on June 22 against legal scholar and professor John Eastman for his role in advising the Trump administration on legally contesting the 2020 presidential elections. (Eastman has filed a motion for return of property, claiming that the federal agent refused to show him their search warrant before seizing his cell phone, as required by the law.) Clark and Eastman, like tens of millions of other Americans, wanted to determine if voter irregularities may have played a role in the 2020 presidential election.

Clark, as a member of the Justice Department, and Eastman as a Trump advisor, explored legal remedies that involved fielding alternate electors in states with contested elections. That they should or should not have done this is open to opinion, but it was not at all illegal. The harassment of Clark and Eastman is part of a much wider DOJ investigation into what the media has now dubbed a “fake electors scandal.” But these were not “fake electors” at all, these were alternate electors that would be ready in the event that legal challenges in certain states opened up the possibility of a GOP win. Nevertheless, the Justice Department has been serving subpoenas and search warrants to Republican Party officials all across the country in a wild witch hunt designed to intimidate local leaders and criminalize legal maneuvering.

None of this is illegal, and it is not without precedent. In fact, the procedure Mr. Clark and Mr. Eastman were pursuing has precedent going back to 1960 and the presidential contest between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. An initial vote tally indicated that Richard Nixon won the three electoral votes from the state of Hawaii. While a recount was ordered, the official Republican electors and a competing Democrat slate of electors were sent to the Administrator of General Services. The recount, which ultimately showed Kennedy narrowly winning the state, did not finish until 10 days after the procedural deadline. Nevertheless, the unofficial Democrat electors were appointed for Hawaii and a new certification process was rushed through to be included in the final tally.

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“The holiest of men, it appears, cannot be admitted to posthumous honors, until all that the devil could say against him is known and weighed.”

The Great Reset: Ending Freedom of the Press, Speech, and Expression (Filip)

Governments, corporations, and elites have always been fearful of the power of a free press, because it is capable of exposing their lies, destroying their carefully crafted images, and undermining their authority. In recent years, alternative journalism has been growing and more people are relying on social media platforms as sources of news and information. In response, the corporate state, digital conglomerates, and the mainstream media have been increasingly supportive of the silencing and censoring of alternative media outlets and voices that challenge the official narrative on most issues.

At the recent World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, “Australian eSafety commissioner” Julie Inman Grant stated that “freedom of speech is not the same thing as a free for all,” and that “we are going to need a recalibration of a whole range of human rights that are playing out online—from freedom of speech … to be free from online violence.” Meanwhile, the Canadian government is seeking to restrict independent media and the freedom of expression via the implementation of Bill C-11, which would allow it to regulate all online audiovisual platforms on the internet, including content on Spotify, Tik Tok, YouTube, and podcast clients. Similarly, the UK is seeking to introduce an Online Safety Bill, the US “paused” the establishment of a Disinformation Governance Board following backlash, and the European Union approved its own Digital Services Act, all of which aim to limit the freedom of speech.

Attempts by elites and politicians to silence dissenters and critical thinkers is not something new. In fact, history is full of examples of “the persecution of men of science, the burning of scientific books, and the systematic eradication of the intelligentsia of the subjected people.” However, these current efforts to curtail freedom of speech and press by supposedly liberal governments are still somewhat ironic, given that even “the most intolerant of churches, the Roman Catholic Church, even at the canonization of a saint, admits, and listens patiently to, a ‘devil’s advocate.’ The holiest of men, it appears, cannot be admitted to posthumous honors, until all that the devil could say against him is known and weighed.”

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Most of them, yes.

Putin: Western Leaders Would Look ‘Disgusting’ Topless (AP)

Russian President Vladimir Putin shot back at Western leaders who mocked his athletic exploits, saying they would look “disgusting” if they tried to emulate his bare-torso appearances. Putin made the comment during a visit to Turkmenistan early Thursday when asked about Western leaders joking about him at the G7 summit. As they sat down for talks, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson jested that G7 leaders could take their clothes off to “show that we’re tougher than Putin” amid Russia-West tensions over Moscow’s military action in Ukraine.


Canadian premier Justin Trudeau joked that Western leaders could try to match Putin’s naked torso pictures with a “bare-chested horseback riding display,” one of his widely publicized athletic adventures. Speaking to reporters, Putin retorted that, unlike him, Western leaders abuse alcohol and don’t do sports. “I don’t know how they wanted to get undressed, above or below the waist,” he said. ”“But I think it would be a disgusting sight in any case.” He noted that to look good “it’s necessary to stop abusing alcohol and other bad habits, do physical exercise and take part in sports.”

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“However, Twitter also implemented specific community standards to limit COVID-19 misinformation on the platform, and Twitter was bound to follow those terms..”

Three Physicians Are Suing Twitter (CHD)

Three physicians are suing Twitter, alleging the company violated its own terms of service and community standards when it suspended their accounts for posting “truthful statements regarding COVID-19 policy, diagnosis and/or treatment.” Drs. Robert Malone, Peter McCullough and Bryan Tyson on Monday filed the lawsuit in Superior Court in California, San Francisco County. The complaint alleges Twitter breached the terms of its contract when it permanently suspended the plaintiffs’ accounts, silenced their voices and failed to provide them with “verified” badges. Plaintiffs allege Twitter’s actions were a substantial factor in causing them harm, and are asking the judge to order Twitter to reactivate their accounts.

All three doctors are represented by attorneys Bryan M. Garrie and Matthew P. Tyson (no relation to the plaintiff, Bryan Tyson). Matthew Tyson on May 12, sent a letter to the directors and managing agents of Twitter requesting the company reinstate the accounts of five physicians, including the plaintiffs, and provide them with “verified” badges. Twitter failed to respond. In the letter, Matthew Tyson acknowledged Twitter is a “private company” and its terms state it can “suspend user accounts for any or no reason.” “However, Twitter also implemented specific community standards to limit COVID-19 misinformation on the platform, and Twitter was bound to follow those terms,” he added. According to the complaint, Twitter’s content-moderation terms included removal procedures for ineffective treatments and false diagnostic criteria, and measures for “labeling” information as “misleading.”

Twitter has a “five-strike policy” as part of its COVID-19 misinformation guidelines and community standards. Twitter’s website states: “The consequences for violating our COVID-19 misleading information policy depend on the severity and type of the violation and the account’s history of previous violations. In instances where accounts repeatedly violate this policy, we will use a strike system to determine if further enforcement actions should be applied.” Strike 1 is “no account-level action.” Strike 2 results in a 12-hour account lock. Strike 3 results in another 12-hour account lock. Strike 4 results in a seven-day account lock and five or more strikes lead to permanent suspension.

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“..without it [cancer] I could not have held to the persecution and ridicule I received for daring to treat patients. I have looked death in the eye and I have been made ready to meet God. I fear nothing on this earth.”

DR. VLADIMIR ZELENKO (1973-2022), REST IN PEACE (HE)

Zev had a family medical practice in Monroe, New York in 2020 during the onset of what would become the Covid-19 pandemic. As a physician who masterfully combined the skills of both critical thinking and the scientific method, and who shaped their application out of his love for both God and patients, Zev was not content to sit back and wait for politicians or public health officials to settle upon a prescribed treatment path. People were dying. He began searching almost immediately for a method of treatment. Aided by initiative, good fortune, and from his account divine intervention, he discovered a treatment in combining Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), zinc, azithromycin, and other various drugs, especially steroids, and creating what has come to be known as the “Zelenko protocol,” based on the concept of very early intervention to treat the virus inside the cellular level before it could break loose and develop into a full-blown respiratory disease.

Up to the time of his death, Zev had overseen the treatment of approximately 7,500 patients using his protocol and experienced only three patient deaths. The use of the Zelenko protocol has spread worldwide. While he was nominated along with other courageous doctors for a Nobel Prize in recognition of his groundbreaking treatment and outspoken advocacy on behalf of patients, for the most part Zev faced censorship and condemnation for his taking a bold stand against prevailing orthodoxy. For whatever their motives, politicians and health officials worldwide attempted to either downplay or outright deny the efficacy of the Zelenko protocol and its simple, low-cost treatment path. Numerous studies were launched to dispute the efficacy of using HCQ (later ivermectin) in conjunction with other drugs.

There were even steps taken by politicians like then New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to forbid the use of HCQ in treating patients. Social media platforms joined in the effort to silence Zev, with Twitter having famously banned him from the platform in late 2020. As Voltaire said, “It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.”

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New Canada Day fines

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Jun 042022
 


Andy Warhol Queen Elizabeth, Reigning Queens Series 1985

 

Putin Says US Decision To Print Money Is Behind Soaring Food Prices (ZH)
Biden: Ukraine Might Have To Give Russia Land In ‘Negotiated Settlement’ (NYP)
The Inexorable Path To War (ITT)
Truth Is on Our Side – About the Timing of the Special Operation (Patrushev)
The Ukraine War: a Colloquy (CP)
$9.8 Million Given Last Year by Fauci Agency to Test Monkeypox Treatment (CHD)
US COVID-19 Vaccination for Children Under 5 May Start by June 21 (ET)
Campaign Launched To Stop Musk Buying Twitter (AFP)
Elon Musk To Slash Tesla Jobs, Has “Super Bad Feeling” About Economy (ZH)
DOJ Declines To Prosecute Former Trump Chief Of Staff And Deputy (NBC)
The FBI Tried To Ambush My Source. Now I’m Telling The Whole Story (Risen)
The Complexity Trap (CoS)

 

 

 

 

Schizer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1479069654450593793

 

 

 

 

Not just the US.

Putin Says US Decision To Print Money Is Behind Soaring Food Prices (ZH)

Earlier, we reported on the deranged, confused, false ramblings of a senile old man who is so out of his depth in running the world’s biggest economy, the catastrophic results will soon be obvious to even his most die-hard fans. Now, it’s time for his nemesis on the world scene, Russia’s Vladimir Putin to respond. Speaking in a TV interview on Friday evening, following a meeting with African leaders in Sochi, Putin accused Western leaders of trying “to shift the responsibility for what is happening in the world food market” and said that “restrictions imposed by the US and its allies against Russia and Belarus will only exacerbate the looming global food crisis by affecting fertilizer trade and sending the food prices further up.”

Instead of looking toward Russian, Putin said that the root causes of the crisis lie with the US decision to print record amounts of money which led to an increase in global food prices, as well as Europe’s over-reliance on renewables and short-term gas contracts, which have led to price hikes and rising inflation. High gas prices, the direct result of Europe’s catastrophic green/ESG policies which as we warned one year ago would spawn energy hyperinflation, resulting in under-investment in the traditional energy sector, have forced many fertilizer producers to shut down their businesses because of unprofitability; such developments have shrunk the fertilizer supply, which, in turn, has sent the food prices up, he added. This is another topic we have discussed extensively in the past (see our Oct 2021 article “Fertilizer Prices Hit Record Highs, May Pressure Food Inflation Even Higher”), and yes, Putin is correct again.

Yet, instead of making some real steps to remedy the situation, the western nations just pin the blame on Moscow, the Russian president remarked. The Russian president has dismissed all claims that Moscow is preventing the Ukrainian grain from being exported to other nations as a “bluff.” He has also said that Russia is ready to increase its own grain export up to 50 million tons. Putin has pointed to the fact that there are several ways to safely transport the grain from the Ukrainian territory, including through Poland and Hungary. He has also said that the Russian forces are about to finish demining the areas of the Black Sea it controls to facilitate safe transfer of goods through the Azov and Black Seas.

The Russian leader has also called the Belarus transport route “the cheapest way” of making the Ukrainian grain reach the customers around the world. Yet, using it would require western nations to lift sanctions they imposed against Minsk, he has added.


ECB Balance Sheet

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Zelensky’s best friend.

Biden: Ukraine Might Have To Give Russia Land In ‘Negotiated Settlement’ (NYP)

President Biden on Friday declined to rule out Ukraine having to cede part of its territory to Russia in order to end Moscow’s more than three-month-old invasion. “Does Ukraine have to cede territory to achieve peace?” a reporter asked Biden after his remarks on the May jobs report. “From the beginning, I’ve said and I’ve been — not everyone’s agreed with me — nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine,” Biden began his answer. “It’s their territory. I’m not going to tell them what they should and shouldn’t do. “But it appears to me that at some point along the line, there’s going to have to be a negotiated settlement here,” the president added. “And what that entails, I don’t know. I don’t think anybody knows at the time. But in the meantime, we’re gonna continue to put the Ukrainians in a position where they can defend themselves.”


Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday that Russian forces currently occupy roughly one-fifth of his country. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war objectives remain murky, but Biden claimed in February that Putin was attempting “re-establish the former Soviet Union” by seizing territory that Moscow once ruled. Biden’s subordinates previously expressed an openness to Ukraine giving up land to placate Putin. For example, White House communications director Kate Bedingfield said in March that she would not “pre-judge” the matter. But it’s unclear if Ukraine would actually agree to be carved up.

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Part 6 of a series.

The Inexorable Path To War (ITT)

Russia can cite military considerations in the face of a national security crisis as justification for its actions. However, it seems that Russia’s military operation in Ukraine may have been motivated by more than just a response to a national security threat. In March 2021, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine approved Defense Council Decree no. 117/2021, which declared the Ukrainian government’s “Strategy for De-occupation and Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol.” The Ukrainian state information news agency—Ukrinform—stated that the strategy focused upon: “[D]iplomatic, military, economic, informational, humanitarian and other measures aimed at restoring the territorial integrity, state sovereignty of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders through the de-occupation and reintegration of Crimea.”

In the months that followed, Ukrainian forces steadily increased their presence in the Donbas and Southern oblasts. The Ukrainian Defence minister insisted that this reinforcement was purely defensive. Ukraine’s stated intention to use all possible means to regain Crimea and to defeat the DPR & LPR, combined with its build-up of forces, created a reasonable cause for concern on the part of the Russian government. For example, Russia’s access to the vital strategic port of Sevastopol appeared to be under imminent threat. Ukraine’s efforts to regain its claimed territory were financed by the IMF, World Bank, EU member states, the UK and the US. IMF loans of $700 million were part of a $5 billion total package. Money and Ukraine’s resultant national debt appeared to be no object to this funding cartel.

NATO simultaneously undertook a series of provocative exercises. DEFENDER-Europe 21, Locked Shields 21 (cyber), CAPABLE DEPLOYER 2021, Ramstein Ambition 21 (electronic warfare), Spring Storm, Breeze 21, Iron Wolf II 21 and Atlantic Resolve 21 all took place in the spring and summer of 2021. Every one of these exercises focused on defending Eastern Europe as NATO markedly increased its surveillance over Ukraine and the Black Sea. Among the most provocative, from a Russian perspective, was Exercise Cossack Mace which ran throughout May and June 2021. NATO and Ukrainian forces war-gamed an attack from a “fictitious” Eastern adversary. Another one, Exercise Sea Breeze, saw the US and Ukrainian navies cooperate.

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Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Nikolai Patrushev.

Truth Is on Our Side – About the Timing of the Special Operation (Patrushev)

The style of the Anglo-Saxons has not changed for centuries. And so today they continue to dictate their terms to the world, boorishly trampling on the sovereign rights of states. Covering their actions with words about the struggle for human rights, freedom and democracy, they are actually implementing the doctrine of the “golden billion”, which suggests that a limited number of people can flourish in this world. The destiny of the rest, as they believe, is to bend their backs in the name of their goal.

In order to increase the welfare of a handful of magnates in the City of London and Wall Street, the governments of the United States and United Kingdom, controlled by big capital, are creating an economic crisis in the world, dooming millions of people in Africa, Asia and Latin America to starvation, limiting their access to grain, fertilizers and energy resources. By their actions they are provoking unemployment and a migration catastrophe in Europe. Uninterested in the prosperity of European states, they are doing everything to make them disappear from the pedestal of economically developed countries. And for unconditional control over this region, the Europeans were put on a chair with two legs called NATO and the EU, disdainfully watching how they balance.

[..] Some experts express an opinion about the man-made coronavirus infection, believing that it could have been created in the Pentagon laboratories with the assistance of a number of major multinational pharmaceutical companies. Clinton, Rockefeller, Soros and Biden funds were involved in this work under state guarantees. Instead of caring for the health of mankind, Washington spends billions on the study of new pathogens. In addition, Western medicine is increasingly practicing genetic engineering, synthetic biology methods, thereby blurring the line between artificial and natural.

[..] As they say, a thief’s hat is on fire. Today it is easier to say which of the largest international terrorist organizations did not arise with American assistance. The United States widely uses them as an instrument of geopolitical confrontation, including with our country. Back in the mid-1980s, under the control of American intelligence services, Al-Qaeda was created on Afghan soil to counter the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, the United States created the Taliban movement to influence Afghanistan and Central Asia. Guided by their supposedly “national interests”, the United States overthrew objectionable regimes in Libya, Iraq by force of arms, and tried to do it in Syria. And the main striking force in all cases is radical groups, the further unification of which led to the creation of a terrorist monster called the Islamic State, following Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, which got out of control of the Americans.

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“..oldest living person active in anti-war struggles who is on record in print (school newspaper) at the time in opposing the 1938 Munich Agreement..”

The Ukraine War: a Colloquy (CP)

Russia’s invasion (illegal) of Ukraine has generated debate regarding how to end the war. It comes as no surprise that arguably the United States’ leading ant-war activist, Professor Noam Chomsky, has given extensive comment on this conflict. Committed already as a boy to opposing state aggression, now at age 93, Noam Chomsky likely is the world’s oldest living person active in anti-war struggles who is on record in print (school newspaper) at the time in opposing the 1938 Munich Agreement, which has become synonymous with appeasement of states engaging in military adventures.

In May of this year, four economists from Ukraine (Bohdan Kukharskyy, Anastassia Fedyk, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, and Ilona Sologoub) working in the United States took umbrage with Chomsky’s comments on the war, or at least what they assumed were the ideas (and “patterns”) he expressed. They held some of his statements to be either inaccurate, or even when true, irrelevant to the conflict and/or giving succor to Russia’s war effort. The Ukrainian economists invited Dr. Chomsky to respond. What follows at bottom are Noam’s responses to their assertions, their rejoinders to his answers, and his following comments.

In the ensuing exchange Professor Chomsky demonstrates several of the positions he was purported to hold by the economists, simply were never articulated by him. Provided with two chances to substantiate remarks attributed to Chomsky, the four economists often could not. Moreover, some points which the four economists asserted were either false or contested, Dr. Chomsky demonstrated were true, with any “contestation” of them chiefly evasions of inconvenient facts. Parts of their debate comes down to points of language and meaning, which the four economists at one point concede that Dr. Chomsky is more precise in his use of.

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To test it you must first have monkeypox?!

$9.8 Million Given Last Year by Fauci Agency to Test Monkeypox Treatment (CHD)

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), directed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, last year paid $9.8 million to government researchers to test a monkeypox treatment, the National Pulse reported. According to the National Institutes for Health (NIH), which oversees the NIAID, the research began Sept. 28, 2020 and will conclude Sept. 27, 2025. Its goal is to carry out a “randomized, placebo-controlled trial of the safety and efficacy of tecovirimat for the treatment of patients with monkeypox virus disease.” It is unclear if the grant provided for any payments in 2020. The NIAID awarded the grant to the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, a federally funded research and development center in Frederick, Maryland, supported by the National Cancer Institute.

According to the grant abstract: “The similarity between monkeypox and the variola [smallpox] virus, coupled with concerns about the potential of the variola virus as a potential bioterrorism agent, have placed monkeypox treatments at the forefront of public health and scientific research agendas in many countries.” On May 25, SIGA Technologies Inc. announced that it received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for an intravenous formulation of the antiviral tecovirimat (called TPOXX) for the treatment of smallpox. Although smallpox was eradicated in 1980, the treatment was developed in the event smallpox were to be used as a bioweapon.

The U.S., Canada and Europe have approved an oral formulation of TPOXX for treating smallpox, and Europe also approved it for treating monkeypox and cowpox. As of May 30, the NIH project had not generated any publicly available studies, papers or patents, according to The National Pulse. The National Pulse called the timing of the grant “curious,” as it comes while pharmaceutical giants including Pfizer and Johson & Johnson are making record-level profits due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Lori Dodd, a mathematical statistician in the biostatistics research branch of NIAID, is the project’s principal investigator. On a recent segment of The Hill’s “Rising,” co-hosts Briahna Joy Gray and Kim Iversen reminded viewers that Dodd was “exposed for her involvement in the agency’s reported data altering of remdesivir trials to make [remdesivir] seem more effective against COVID.”

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More madness.

US COVID-19 Vaccination for Children Under 5 May Start by June 21 (ET)

The White House said it expects its COVID-19 vaccination rollout for children under 5 years of age to start on June 21, in the event of a swift approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Ashish Jha, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator, on Thursday walked reporters through a hypothetical timeline of how things may play out within the next month regarding the vaccines for the young cohort, but pointed out he is not there to “pre-judge” the outcome of the vaccine vetting process. “I’m not here to pre-judge the outcome of the process, but the administration is hard at work planning all sorts of scenarios based on whatever the outcome is from the process that’s playing out,” Jha said.

“We’ve been working very closely with states, local health departments, pediatricians, family physicians, other health care providers, and pharmacies to get ready.” He said that “if and when” the FDA authorizes the vaccine, the administration will “move from planning to execution.” “FDA authorization will allow us to start shipping doses. These doses are specifically formulated for these young kids. These doses will be shipped to thousands of sites across the country,” he said. He said that the FDA’s independent advisory panel, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC), is set to meet June 14–15 to discuss requests for emergency use authorizations from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna for their COVID-19 vaccines for children.

“We expect FDA to make its decision soon thereafter. Once FDA authorized—if they have authorized vaccines, we can begin shipping,” Jha continued. “We expect some of the shipments to start arriving to in their destinations over that long weekend. Remember Monday is an important federal holiday and many doctors’ offices may be closed. And we can’t ship vaccines until FDA has authorized these vaccines. And vaccination can’t start until CDC has issued its recommendations. “So we expect that vaccination will begin in earnest as early as Tuesday, June 21, and really roll on throughout that week. It will take some time to ramp up the program and for vaccines to be more widely available.”

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Free speech is a threat.

Campaign Launched To Stop Musk Buying Twitter (AFP)

Advocacy groups on Friday launched a campaign to stop Elon Musk from buying Twitter as the proposed purchase cleared review by US antitrust authorities. Twitter said that the deal for Musk to acquire the company was a step closer to being sealed with the passing of a deadline for it to be challenged under a US antitrust law. The Tesla chief’s $44 billion deal to take the one-to-many messaging platform private still faces review by other regulators and must be approved by shareholders. A “Stop The Deal” campaign launched by a coalition of nonprofit groups aims to stop the takeover. “Elon Musk is a wolf in expensive sheep’s clothing whose Twitter takeover is motivated by ego and grievance,” Accountable Tech executive director Nicole Gill said in a release.


“If we don’t stop this deal, he’ll hand a megaphone to demagogues and extremists, who will cheer him as they incite more hate, harm, and harassment.” The campaign will involve pressing the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other agencies to closely scrutinize everything about the takeover deal. The coalition will also work to convince Twitter shareholders and advertisers to oppose Musk buying the San Francisco-based tech firm. The list of more than a dozen organizations involved in the campaign includes MoveOn, SumOfUs, Media Matters for America, and the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

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“pause all hiring worldwide..”,

Elon Musk To Slash Tesla Jobs, Has “Super Bad Feeling” About Economy (ZH)

Since mid-May, real-time indicators warned the labor market had hit a brick wall. Piper Sandler predicted last week that up to a million layoffs or more were ahead as the US economy is on the verge of recession. The latest sign of an impending job market shock is an email seen by Reuters from the world’s richest man, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who told executives the electric carmaker needs to cut staff by 10% because he has a “super bad feeling” about where the economy was headed. The email, titled “pause all hiring worldwide,” was sent to executives on Thursday and is the latest sign of mounting macroeconomic headwinds as lower-than-expected US new car sales in May could be a harbinger of a recession.


In an another email Tuesday, Musk told employees: “Everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week … If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned.” On Wednesday, Musk tweeted: “Recessions serve a vital economic cleansing function.” Tesla, which has EV factories worldwide, including ones in the US, Berlin, and China, employs about 100k staff, so reducing 10% of jobs could equate to 10k people. Musk’s stark warning of impending economic doom and the need for job cuts sent Tesla shares down nearly 4% in premarket, dragging down Nasdaq 100 futures about half a percentage point and other electric carmakers.

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But Peter Navarro, same situation?!, was dragged off a plane, and put in handcuffs and leg irons.

DOJ Declines To Prosecute Former Trump Chief Of Staff And Deputy (NBC)

Justice Department officials said Friday that prosecutors would not file criminal contempt of Congress charges against Mark Meadows, who served as White House chief of staff during former President Donald Trump’s last 10 months in office. The department also declined to prosecute Dan Scavino, who was deputy chief of staff, the DOJ officials said. The decisions were a defeat for the House committee investigating the Capitol riot. After both Trump officials refused to honor the panel’s subpoenas, the committee found them in contempt of Congress and referred the cases to the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., for prosecution. But even if prosecutors had charged them and obtained convictions, it would not have required them to cooperate with the committee.

It would simply have punished them for their refusal. A senior Justice Department official said the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Matthew Graves, notified the committee of its conclusions. The decisions were based “on the individual facts and circumstances of their alleged contempt,” according to the official. Meadows was “uniquely situated to provide critical information about the events of January 6,” the committee said in seeking his cooperation, as well as efforts taken by public officials and private individuals to spread the false message of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election. He was “with or in the vicinity of” Trump when word of the riot at the Capitol reached the White House, it said.

[..] Earlier Friday, former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro was arrested at an airport on contempt of Congress charges — allegations he vowed to fight. Navarro, 72, was indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday after snubbing a subpoena from the House committee investigating Jan. 6 seeking testimony and documents.

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James Risen.

The FBI Tried To Ambush My Source. Now I’m Telling The Whole Story (Risen)

FBI agent Grayden Ridd had a confidential message for his informant. An FBI team had been given the green light by the Justice Department to ambush and derail a planned meeting between a reporter and a source, and the informant’s job was to let the FBI know when and where the meeting would take place. The reporter whose meeting they planned to target was me. It was January 2014, and I was an investigative reporter in the Washington bureau of the New York Times focusing on national security. The FBI wanted to stop me from obtaining documents that I’d been told would reveal the details of massive spying operations by the National Security Agency. The FBI was convinced that I was in contact with someone they had secretly nicknamed the “second Snowden,” who was about to give me an archive that they feared could go far beyond what former NSA contractor Edward Snowden had leaked about the agency’s spying operations the year before.

The FBI’s plan to grab my source at our scheduled meeting was approved by top officials at the FBI and the Justice Department during the Obama administration, according to audio recordings I obtained of several phone conversations between Ridd and his informant. At the time, Eric Holder was U.S. attorney general and James Comey was FBI director. “Right now, they are on board,” Ridd said in one phone conversation to plan the ambush operation, referring to top Justice Department and FBI officials. “I have to periodically go up to the throne room and recommit them. … We actually have a lot of buy-in and a lot of support, but I do need to feed the beast.” The FBI’s attempt to identify and catch my source came as the Justice Department was waging a seven-year legal campaign against me in connection with a separate leak investigation.

The Obama Justice Department had subpoenaed me and was demanding that I testify in court and reveal the confidential sources I had relied on for a chapter about a botched CIA operation in my 2006 book, “State of War.” I included the story in my book after the Times killed an article on the same topic under pressure from the White House and the CIA. The attempt to derail my reporting on the purported NSA leaks came during a critical period in my legal battle with the Justice Department. In January 2014 — just as the FBI was planning its ambush operation — the U.S. Supreme Court was asked to hear arguments over my subpoena in the leak case involving the mismanaged CIA program. At the time, I was facing the possibility of going to prison for refusing to reveal my sources if the Supreme Court did not rule in my favor. But the Justice Department did not disclose to the Supreme Court that the FBI was simultaneously targeting my reporting on a completely separate story.

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“..the smart thing to do today would be to simplify our way of life..”

The Complexity Trap (CoS)

Although we like to pretend that the technology which surrounds us is novel and world-changing, as physicist Tom Murphy has shown, much of it would be recognisable to someone in the USA of the 1950s: “Look around your environment and imagine your life as seen through the eyes of a mid-century dweller. What’s new? Most things our eyes land on will be pretty well understood. The big differences are cell phones (which they will understand to be a sort of telephone, albeit with no cord and capable of sending telegram-like communications, but still figuring that it works via radio waves rather than magic), computers (which they will see as interactive televisions), and GPS navigation (okay: that one’s thought to be magic even by today’s folk). They will no doubt be impressed with miniaturization as an evolutionary spectacle, but will tend to have a context for the functional capabilities of our gizmos.

“Telling ourselves that the pace of technological transformation is ever-increasing is just a fun story we like to believe is true. For many of us, I suspect, our whole world order is built on this premise.” The point is that most of these technologies have already reaped the cheap and easy, and, indeed, almost all of the hard and expensive improvements that are ever going to be made. In this respect, we are entering a period similar to the early twentieth century when we hit the limits to coal-powered technologies. The big difference today being that there is no even more energy-dense and easily available new energy source available to us to usher in a new suite of technologies in the way that oil-based technologies rapidly replaced coal in the years after World War Two.

From this viewpoint, the smart thing to do today would be to simplify our way of life – and write-off a large part of the monetary claims on future exergy growth which will not be arriving – in order to bring our economies into line with the declining surplus energy available to us. The paradox though, is that – even at today’s higher prices – energy does not appear to be the biggest problem before us. For all of the complaints about the rapid and steep rise in fuel and electricity prices, they remain low in comparison to the benefits that we derive from them.

[..] Several decades ago, sociologist Joseph Tainter observed that collapsing civilisations have a habit of unconsciously entering into complexity traps, adding energy-intensive complexity in a desperate attempt to sustain themselves. Our turn to energy-intensive automation in an attempt to overcome our growing woes and to maintain economic growth is likely repeating the same folly. The difference – at least for those who see the economy as primarily an energy rather than a monetary system – is that we have the necessary knowledge to avoid our complexity trap if only we are prepared to actively simplify away from an economy based on mass consumption in favour of one based around material simplicity… I’m not holding my breath though.

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Elements

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Apr 202022
 
 April 20, 2022  Posted by at 8:47 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  74 Responses »


Andy Warhol Grace Kelly 1984

 

There Has Been No Talk Of Peace, Only War (Celente)
Putin ‘Will Go Nuclear’ Says CIA Boss in Regime Change Set Up (Ransom)
Yet Another Huge Ukraine Arms Package As Total Military Aid Nears $3BN (ZH)
Watch Out, Vlad! Here Comes the British Invasion (Tracey)
Russia Must Prepare For “Possible Aggressive Action” From NATO – Medvedev (ZH)
Two Cheers for Realism (Lee)
Telling the COVID Good Guys from the Bad Guys (Hope)
Wall Street Now Paying Attention to the ‘Trust the Science’ Fraud – Dowd (Wolf)
New CDC Center to Predict Pandemics, Provide ‘Outbreak Analytics’ (CSN)
DOJ To Appeal Court Decision to Overturn Mask Mandate, if CDC Asks (CTH)
CDC Removes All Countries From COVID-19 ‘Do Not Travel’ List (Reason)
Treasury Bond Massacre, Mortgage Rates Hit 5.35%, and it’s Only April (WS)
Clinton Campaign: Fusion GPS Provided Legal Advice (TechnoFog)
Taylor Lorenz Is Simply Following The New Rules Of Journalism (Miller)

 

 

Number of days Julian Assange has been in Belmarsh prison, never charged with anything.

Today, another decision is due in his extradition case.

 

 

 

 

Zelensky’s statements influenced by what he drinks or smokes – Lavrov

 

 

 

 

Musk

 

 

The only thing you need to know, really.

There Has Been No Talk Of Peace, Only War (Celente)

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday that the Western sanctions that were intended to punish Moscow into submission and end its war with Ukraine have failed and, instead, hurt the very countries who imposed them. Putin used a televised address to tell Russians the sanctions were “expected to quickly upset the financial-economic situation, provoke panic in the markets, the collapse of the banking system and shortages in stores.” But said the West’s “economic blitz” failed and backfired. He said they instead led to a “deterioration of the economy in the West.” Last month, President Joe Biden told reporters that the sanctions imposed on Russia were not intended to prevent the 24 February invasion, but were intended instead to unite Europe and show its resolve.

“That’s the important thing. If you’re Putin and you think that Europe is going to crack in a month or six weeks or two months, [that] they can take anything for another month…We have to stay fully, totally, thoroughly united,” he said. When the White House announced a ban on Russian oil imports, oil prices in the U.S. hit their highest levels since 2008. The Russian central bank on Monday announced that consumer prices were about 16.7 percent higher than the same time period last year. The New York Times, citing international financial organizations, reported that economists believe that the Russian economy will contract up to 15 percent.

Biden, who has called Putin a war criminal, killer, and a brute, has discussed additional sanctions against Russia with European allies on Tuesday, Reuters reported. They also discusses arming Ukrainians with even more weapons. Canada announced Tuesday a new round of sanctions against Russians, including Putin’s two adult daughters, the report said. The repot said: “Among those on the call were Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, as well as the leaders of Poland, Japan and Italy.” There has been no talk of peace, only war.

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The narrative needs a new chapter every day, lest people start questioning yesterday’s tale.

Putin ‘Will Go Nuclear’ Says CIA Boss in Regime Change Set Up (Ransom)

Democrats have invented their own WMD story to support regime change, as the head of the CIA warned about taking Russia’s nuclear capability too “lightly.” Speaking at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, CIA Director William Burns has said that in desperation Russian President Vladimir Putin could use a tactical or low-yield nuclear weapon in Ukraine in order to try to reverse his battlefield mistakes. “Given the potential desperation of President Putin and the Russian leadership, given the setbacks that they’ve faced so far, militarily, none of us can take lightly the threat posed by a potential resort to tactical nuclear weapons or low-yield nuclear weapons,” said Burns, according to Voice of America. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has also warned about potential Putin use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine.


Nina Khrushcheva, the great granddaughter to former Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev, echoed the comments but said it wasn’t a prediction of the use of nukes, but was just noting the potential is there for Putin to use nuclear weapons, said Newsweek. “Since there are questions about how far Russia can go to create victory, and nuclear weapons have been part of the conversation on both sides, Russian and the West, the tactical atomic option is potentially imaginable,” said Khrushcheva, a professor of International Affairs at The New School in New York City, a progressive hotbed.

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Let’s make it an even $30 billion. $3 billion is hardly enough to pay the bonuses at Raytheon this Christmas

Yet Another Huge Ukraine Arms Package As Total Military Aid Nears $3BN (ZH)

Coming off last week’s approved gargantuan $800 million military package for Ukraine, which the broader public and media seemed to not even bat an eye about (but quite the opposite: positively cheering it), what more is there for Biden to do except sign off on another massive weapons package for Kiev… “The Biden administration is preparing to announce another substantial military aid package for Ukraine this week,” NBC News cited five US officials to report Tuesday evening. “Three officials said the package is expected to be similar in size to the $800 million one the administration announced last week.” Biden previewed the new aid package by answering a simple “yes” when asked by a reporter whether Washington will send more artillery to Ukraine.

The new transfers are expected to include “tens of thousands more artillery rounds” – notes Bloomberg, and likely along with more anti-tank missiles, as has been consistently shipped stretching back even before Russia’s late February invasion kicked off. It appears to be the administration’s response to Moscow launching a ‘new phase’ in the war: a major force buildup and push to take the Donbas region from Ukraine, which the Kremlin reportedly wants to see fully accomplished by May 9, Victory Day, which commemorates the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany. Without doubt these continual major weapons packages pledged to Ukraine will only push Russia and NATO into increasingly direct confrontation, given the Kremlin’s standing warning that it will target any inbound Western arms transfers.

Meanwhile, on Monday a senior Pentagon official told Reuters of plans to begin training Ukrainian forces on how to use American-supplied howitzers. It was described, however, that the training would occur outside Ukraine, likely in a neighboring friendly country like Poland. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki confirmed this week that so far the United States has successfully delivered new weapons to the Ukrainians on four flights – this as overall US aid pledged to Ukraine since Feb.24 has totaled about $2.6 billion and counting.

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“..the article was published at 10pm local time on the Friday of Easter weekend..”

Watch Out, Vlad! Here Comes the British Invasion (Tracey)

“You heard it here first”? Within less than 48 hours of publishing my previous article — aptly titled “The UK is Trying to Drag the US into World War III” — the most decisive evidence yet for the thesis conveniently emerged. This was thanks to The Times newspaper, which reported that British “boots on the ground” have been deployed to Ukraine. It’s the first time that the armed forces of any NATO member state were confirmed to be physically present inside Ukraine since the war started on February 24. If the UK Government really does aim to position itself at the “vanguard” of an escalating military intervention, in hopes that it can cajole the US into hotter and hotter warfare — as I reported in the previous article — then this seems like a pretty plausible way of going about it.


Is the US content to just sit around and let itself be one-upped by the British, who have now demonstrated their willingness to boldly send “boots on the ground” in defense of freedom and democracy? While the mighty US dithers impotently on the sidelines? Oddly, the response to the Times revelation has been conspicuously muted. At least from my vantage point here in London. And maybe that’s by design: the article was published at 10pm local time on the Friday of Easter weekend, and as I recently discovered, Easter weekend in England a big four-day Bank Holiday bash. So maybe the article was intentionally “buried” to dampen its effect — or maybe the timing was just an innocent coincidence. Either way, there’s been a curious lack of followup or even significant discussion in the days since the news broke. Maybe some inscrutable code of omertà reigns within the UK press corps? For all the problems with US media, it’s not quite as weirdly incestuous and insular as media in the UK.

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“We are talking primarily about an attempt to expand NATO’s presence near our borders.”

Russia Must Prepare For “Possible Aggressive Action” From NATO – Medvedev (ZH)

Following earlier this month both Finland and Sweden signaling their intent to join NATO, close Putin ally and former president Dmitry Medvedev, who serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, has warned that the Western military alliance is engaged in a military buildup along Russia’s borders. “A senior Russian official said on Tuesday that NATO’s reinforcement of its borders with Russia was no longer a figure of speech and Moscow should be prepared for possible aggressive action, Russia’s TASS news agency reported,” according to Reuters. “NATO’s expansion near Russia’s borders is no longer a figure of speech or a set of threats, we must be prepared for aggressive action,” he said according to a translation. The fresh words follow Medvedev’s prior threats to position nuclear and hypersonic missiles along Russian’s western border in the scenario that Finland and Sweden join NATO.

The prospect of Finland, which is said to be studying the issue, joining the alliance is especially alarming for the Kremlin, given Russian and its Scandinavian neighbor share a 810-mile border. Sweden, though a little less important geographically, has already announced its intent to join the alliance. “There can be no more talk of any nuclear–free status for the Baltic – the balance must be restored,” Medvedev said previously. But now on Tuesday, he’s heightened the rhetoric further by saying, “We are talking primarily about an attempt to expand NATO’s presence near our borders.” Medvedev stated further according to state-run TASS, based on a rush translation: “And this is no longer a figure of speech today, this is not a set of standard threats. We must be prepared for those aggressive actions that may happen.”

The thrust of his words were toward encouraging the rapid technological advance of the country’s defense capabilities amid the new ‘NATO threat’ – given the remarks were delivered before a national conference on science and education. He stressed that “it is important to build up, among other things, a system that allows you to provide the country with the most modern weapons.” “And this requires reliable, high-tech, powerful equipment – both military and dual-use,” the deputy head of the Security Council added, explaining that the situation did “not arise by itself, especially in those conditions when sanctions have been imposed on the country.”

Cement

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Westphalian Treaty, 1648.

“Russia, China have legitimate spheres of influence and this should be respected. This will involve an end to the gross provocations in the South China Sea and in Poland, Romania, and the Baltics, not to mention the ongoing series of colour revolutions.”

Two Cheers for Realism (Lee)

As the US and its vassals therefore prepare for war, its populations must be conditioned to believe and accept such an inevitable outcome. The propaganda machine has been stepped up to unprecedented levels. The message is simple. Our side = good, Their side = bad. Our side does good things, their side does bad things. Thus, the media – now an asset of the deep state – plays an essential role of propagating this political construction among the populations of the Anglo-Zionist heartlands. All of which is very reminiscent of Orwell’s short novel Animal Farm. After the Animal Revolution and the eviction of Jones the Farmer, the sheep were instructed by the ruling group – the pigs – into reciting the goodness of the animals and the badness of humans. The short and endless bleat of the sheep went as follows: ‘’Four legs good, two legs bad,’’ repeated endlessly.

That is about the level of western foreign policy. Good guys, bad guys, white hats, black hats, no compromise, no surrender. Result war. The question we must now ask is has this menacing process gone too far to go into reverse? This of course remains an open question. But the thrust of neo-conservative foreign policy would suggest this war would be a logical outcome. Either that or the whole thing is a bluff. Up to this point the US performance in attacking recalcitrant weak states has not been a roaring success. The same goes for Israel. Bombing countries with no air defence or shooting Palestinian kids with sniper rifles is easy-peasy. Taking on Iran is a different matter entirely. The irresistible force seems to be meeting its immovable object.

From a realist as opposed to a neo-conservative foreign policy the idea of an American world empire is frankly deranged. Pursuit of this pipedream can only result in mutually assured destruction; yes, M.A.D. still applies. The United States and its minions might not like it, but it will have to learn to live with other great powers. Russia, China have legitimate spheres of influence and this should be respected. This will involve an end to the gross provocations in the South China Sea and in Poland, Romania, and the Baltics, not to mention the ongoing series of colour revolutions.

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“These sociopathic characteristics include superficial charm, untruthfulness, absence of neurosis or anxiety, poverty of emotion, and a lack of remorse or shame. ”

Telling the COVID Good Guys from the Bad Guys (Hope)

Most recently, Elon Musk has stepped forward, offering to purchase Twitter and remove the censorship from the platform. This move would turn the tables on the Great Reset and restore the voice of the American public. Some are conflicted and see Musk as a potential bad guy due to his billionaire status and work developing technologies that could be used against the populace. However, upon closer inspection, one notices that Musk has been consistent in his views over the last two years. Musk was among the first to tweet about the potential benefits of using HCQ in early 2020. Musk’s position has not changed, while the opposition lies, waffles, and double talks.

In his first interview with Joe Rogan in May of 2020, Musk questioned the lockdowns’ wisdom and insisted that our freedoms should come first. He noted that our liberty and democracy had come at significant cost, and we should not allow them to be eroded so easily. Looking deeper at Musk, one realizes he is not a sociopath like so many other billionaires. Sixteen factors help identify a sociopath – according to the Cleckley Profile as set forth by Dr. Hervey M. Cleckley, the expert considered to be the Father of Psychopathy. He discussed these in his treatise, The Mask of Sanity. These sociopathic characteristics include superficial charm, untruthfulness, absence of neurosis or anxiety, poverty of emotion, and a lack of remorse or shame.

In short, they have cold, reptilian personalities and no conscience. Sociopaths have no anxiety and can often beat lie detector tests because their heart rates and blood pressure can remain stable under questioning that would phase most of us. While our leading health authorities and top vaccine billionaires easily qualify as sociopaths, Musk’s personality does not fit. He tears up at interviews to the extent the cameraman must stop filming; he exhibits great emotion when speaking about his childhood or challenges with his businesses.

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There goes the CDC.

Wall Street Now Paying Attention to the ‘Trust the Science’ Fraud – Dowd (Wolf)

As Pfizer try to ‘pump their stock’ Hedge Fund guru Dowd, takes us inside what he calls the third great fraud in his lifetime, in this new bombshell interview with Dr Naomi Wolf.

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Except, they’re giving the CDC more powers, no matter how badly it failed.

New CDC Center to Predict Pandemics, Provide ‘Outbreak Analytics’ (CSN)

On Tuesday, the Biden Administration announced the launch of the CDC’s new Center for Forecasting and Analysis (CFA) to predict future pandemics and guide the government’s efforts to address such anticipated infectious disease threats. A center of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CFA will use “infectious disease modeling and analytics and to provide support to leaders at the federal, state, and local levels,” the CDC explains in its announcement. As “the equivalent of the National Weather Service for infectious diseases,” the CFA will “predict trends and guide decision-making,” the CDC says:

“CFA’s work will be focused into three main pillars: to predict, inform, and innovate. CFA has begun to build a world-class outbreak analytics team with experts across several disciplines to develop faster, richer evidence to predict trends and guide decision-making during emergencies.” According to the CFA website, the new center will also predict the future course of ongoing pandemics, in order to help public health officials to take preemptive measures: “The goal of the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics (CFA) is to enable timely, effective decision-making to improve outbreak response using data, modeling, and analytics.

“To do so, CFA will produce models and forecasts to characterize the state of an outbreak and its course, inform public health decision makers on potential consequences of deploying control measures, and support innovation to continuously improve the science of outbreak analytics and modeling.” CFA Science Director Marc Lipsitch, hopes to employ regular population sampling, by means like blood draws and swab tests, in order to collect data, the AP reports: “[T]he United Kingdom uses regular population sampling with swab tests and blood draws to get a clearer picture of who’s been infected, said Marc Lipsitch, the new center’s science director. He said similar sampling should be considered in the U.S.”

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“..a political DOJ has to wait for a political CDC to determine whether they still have any currency of influence..”

DOJ To Appeal Court Decision to Overturn Mask Mandate, if CDC Asks (CTH)

On one hand, Joe Biden needs to appease the base of his Covidians who identify themselves through the prism of COVID. On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of Americans are done with the COVID fear mongering. What to do, what to do? Trying to split the baby, Biden’s DOJ announces it will appeal the federal court ruling that overturned the federal Transporation covid mask mandate, but only if the CDC tells them to. “DOJ PRESS RELEASE – […] “The Department of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) disagree with the district court’s decision and will appeal, subject to CDC’s conclusion that the order remains necessary for public health.” “If CDC concludes that a mandatory order remains necessary for the public’s health after that assessment, the Department of Justice will appeal the district court’s decision.”


Keep in mind, the federal court ruling specifically centered around the arbitrary nature of the original mandate, which exceeded the scope of CDC legal authority, compounded by the CDC breaking its own rules for public feedback in the implementation.The mandate created by Joe Biden did not have legal structure. It was a dictatorial fiat that exceeded the capacity of the executive branch to create. Congress could easily write a law authorizing mechanisms for the CDC and TSA to use in enforcement of a federal Transportation mask mandate; but they won’t – because the public would never support it. So now, a political DOJ has to wait for a political CDC to determine whether they still have any currency of influence amid the politics of COVID.

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Just demolish it.

CDC Removes All Countries From COVID-19 ‘Do Not Travel’ List (Reason)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its international travel recommendations on Monday, relaxing previous COVID-19 risk assessments.Previously, the CDC’s “Level 4” risk designation applied to destinations with “very high” levels of COVID-19 transmission. On Sunday, 89 countries and territories were listed in this category, with the CDC advising, “Avoid travel to these destinations. If you must travel to these destinations, make sure you are fully vaccinated before travel.” The agency has since named its highest risk category “Level 4: Special Circumstances/Do Not Travel” and removed all countries from it. In a statement last week, the CDC indicated it would reserve this designation for “special circumstances, such as rapidly escalating case trajectory or extremely high case counts, emergence of a new variant of concern, or healthcare infrastructure collapse.”

The CDC’s next highest designation, “Level 3: COVID-19 High,” now includes 122 destinations and advises that travelers are up to date with their COVID-19 vaccinations, but does not advise the fully vaccinated to avoid travel wholesale. Given that there are few places in the world where COVID-19 has not spread widely, it is becoming necessary for the individual traveler to determine his own risk tolerance. Safety does not simply depend on picking the country with no active COVID-19 cases, but rather on taking stock of your vaccination status, your preexisting conditions, and the medical infrastructure at your destination.

The CDC’s new advisory structure makes the point that not all areas with high COVID-19 transmission are irreconcilably dangerous to visit. As recently as Sunday, the CDC advised travelers to exercise the same level of COVID-related caution when visiting Norway and the Central African Republic; South Korea and Papua New Guinea; and Australia and Vietnam. It makes little sense to advise the same level of extreme medical caution across each of these nations, considering how vastly each country’s health capacities may differ. Denmark, Switzerland, and Sweden are said to have some of the best health care in the world, but in terms of COVID contagion, the CDC considered them as risky to visit as Somalia, a country with only one surgeon for every 1 million people and a full COVID vaccination rate of just 8.5 percent.

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You will own nothing and you will be happy.

Treasury Bond Massacre, Mortgage Rates Hit 5.35%, and it’s Only April (WS)

The interesting thing is that no one at the Fed is trying to talk down those spikes in Treasury yields and mortgage rates. It shows that those yields are going where the Fed wants them to go, and that the Treasury market is coming around to the Fed’s rate-hike plan, and that those yields have a long ways to go, given that CPI inflation is 8.5%, a gigantic mess that has unfolded over the past 15 months, finally, after 12 years of money-printing. The two-year Treasury yield spiked by 15 basis points today to 2.61%, the highest since January 2019. This has been a huge move in just seven months. When the two-year yield goes over 2.83%, it will be in territory not seen since 2007, as the Treasury market begins to price in the Fed’s coming policy action to crack down on inflation:

Even the biggest doves at the Fed are now fully on board the rate-hike train, and it’s only a question of how fast and how long. Chicago Fed President Charles Evans, one of the biggest doves, is “comfortable” with 25-basis-point hikes at every meeting this year (there are seven more), and even he is “open” to 50-basis-point hikes: “we want to be humble and nimble, and get to neutral before too long – maybe 50 helps, I’m open to that,” he said. The 10-year Treasury yield rose by 8 basis points to 2.93% at the close today, the highest since December 2018. The magic number there is 3.24%, beyond which yields are back in 2011 territory:

When yields rise, it means prices of those bonds fall, and prices fall the hardest of bonds with the longest remaining maturities. And it’s a massacre for people who invested in what they thought was a very conservative and prudent instrument, namely a bond fund tracking long-term Treasury securities, when in fact it turned out to be a highly risky wager on long-term Treasury yields always going lower forevermore. The iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF [TLT], which tracks an index of Treasury securities with at least 20 years of remaining maturities, dropped another 0.75% today, is down 19.5% year-to-date, and has plunged by 30.6% from the peak in August 2020, which was when long-term Treasury yields had hit historic lows, and which was – with hindsight – the moment the greatest bond-market bubble in US history began to implode:

Holy moly Mortgage rates. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate spiked to 5.35% today, the highest since 2009! This daily measure of mortgage rates by Mortgage News Daily had briefly hit 5.05% in November 2018, with inflation at or below the Fed’s target, and with markets tanking left and right, before the Fed made its infamous U-Turn, and mortgage rates dove. Now the Fed is just getting started, with inflation at 8.5%. There is no one that can persuade me that this jump in mortgage rates isn’t going to have a serious impact on the housing market. It’s the Fed’s way of getting the housing bubble under control before it tears up the financial system again:

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They’re getting lost in their own narratives.

Clinton Campaign: Fusion GPS Provided Legal Advice (Techno Fog)

The battle over documents and e-mails in the Michael Sussmann case just got hotter. Back in August 2017, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee, explaining how his firm was retained to gather “lots of facts about Donald Trump.” He admitted that Fusion GPS met with reporters leading up to the 2016 election to spread opposition research against then-candidate Trump. The context of Perkins Coie’s retention of Fusion GPS was further explained in a book co-authored by Simpson and Fusion GPS co-founder Peter Fritsch. They documented an April 20, 2016 meeting with Mark Elias (Perkins Coie partner and counsel for the DNC/Clinton Campaign), where Elias requested their services for opposition research.

Now the stories have changed. Fusion GPS is no longer an opposition research firm, and they weren’t hired to dig-up dirt against Trump. Instead, they would have you believe, after the phony dossier and the Alfa Bank hoax, that Fusion GPS was retained to provide legal advice to the Hillary Clinton Campaign. Remarkable. On April 6, Durham filed [a] motion to compel in the Michael Sussmann case, requesting the court require the production of “emails and attachments between and among” Perkins Coie, Rodney Joffe, and Fusion GPS. These emails and documents, according to Durham, “appear or involve or relate to” Fusion GPS’s provision of research and media services to Hillary for America, the DNC, and Perkins Coie. (Some documents had been produced pursuant to grand jury subpoenas dating back to the 2021.)

Faced with this pressure, today there was a flurry of filings from interested entities in the Sussmann case, seeking to intervene to petition the court to keep these emails and documents secret. The DNC, Rodney Joffe, Perkins Coie, and Hillary for America all filed motions to intervene and memorandums in opposition to Durham’s motion to compel. Notably, we saw arguments to the court that Fusion GPS wasn’t retained for opposition research. Hillary for America, for example, asserted “attorney-client privilege and work product protection over communications and work product of its attorneys (at Perkins Coie) and their consultant (Fusion GPS).” In support of that motion, Hillary for America included declarations from John Podesta, Robby Mook, and their attorney, Marc Elias. Declarations which contradict the public record.

To prove my point, John Podesta declared that to his knowledge, Perkins Coie has “consistently maintained” confidentiality, despite the fact that Perkins Coie (Sussmann in particular) assisted in distributing to the press the materials and allegations prepared by Fusion GPS and other researchers. Not to be outdone, Robby Mook (Hillary’s campaign manager) told the court that he believed that contractors for Perkins Coie – which would include Fusion GPS – were providing “legal services and legal advice” to the Clinton campaign. Unfortunately for Hillary for America, Mook’s belief is insufficient for the purposes of privilege. Clinton lawyer Mark Elias also submitted a declaration, stating the role of Fusion GPS was to “provide consulting services in support of the legal advice” Perkins Coie and Elias were providing their clients. This contradicts the Elias’s own statements cited above.

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“Taylor Lorenz is not the ultimate problem. The problem is news outlets and infotainment companies using their outsize power and vast budgets to harass and doxx private citizens they disagree with. ”

Taylor Lorenz Is Simply Following The New Rules Of Journalism (Miller)

Much has been said about Taylor Lorenz, the 30-something-year-old journalist for the Washington Post and former New York Times Slack channel gossipmonger. Still, her lack of media ethics is now unambiguous. On Tuesday, we learned about Lorenz’s doxxing of those behind a viral social media account she personally dislikes. Lorenz published a story on the popular “LibsofTikTok” Twitter account. This account curates and highlights content from the extreme fringes of the cultural and political Left on TikTok and other platforms. The account isn’t much different from the “Right Wing Watch” account on Twitter, which does mostly the same thing from a politically left perspective. The difference is simply who is protected by most of the media and who isn’t. That’s what much of the discourse around the public revealing of the person behind the LibsofTikTok account is missing.

Taylor Lorenz is what the media are now. In 2017, CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski tracked down an anonymous Reddit user who had created a gif of President Donald Trump clotheslining a wrestler at a WWE event, with the CNN logo replacing the opposing wrestler’s head. CNN found this to be doxx-worthy simply because it was retweeted by Trump. In 2019, when a joke video of a “drunk” Nancy Pelosi (the creator simply reduced the speed of the video) spread around, Kevin Poulsen of the Daily Beast tracked down and doxxed the person who did it, revealing he is an ex-con living in the Bronx who was working as a forklift operator. These details were not newsworthy. The video itself was not newsworthy. But the Daily Beast published his name and employment anyway.

In 2018, HuffPost writer Luke O’Brien doxxed and revealed the identity of a pro-Trump Twitter user, including information regarding a popular Brooklyn deli that her siblings owned and was not related to her social media posts. The deli was soon threatened with boycotts and negative Yelp reviews. These are just three examples of what has become an industry standard. It’s a standard that now has some reporters comparing LibsofTikTok to Harvey Weinstein and the Watergate scandal. However, in singling out Taylor Lorenz, what the political Right doesn’t understand is this is about politics and shutting down opposing speech. That is to say, speech that Lorenz or Kaczynski or the Daily Beast are ideologically opposed to. Of course, this is also about media power.

CNN is a multibillion-dollar media conglomerate that used the full weight of its corporate power to threaten a private individual with a Reddit account. In a newspaper owned by Jeff Bezos, Lorenz publishes a story with an individual’s name, professional license, and address information. It’s a struggle between one of the richest, most powerful men on the Earth and someone behind a Twitter account with less than a million followers (although that follower count is almost certainly about to increase). Taylor Lorenz is not the ultimate problem. The problem is news outlets and infotainment companies using their outsize power and vast budgets to harass and doxx private citizens they disagree with. It’s a new journalistic model for an industry that sees its grip loosening on what news it can control and create (see the media freak-out over Elon Musk buying their favorite toy). Taylor Lorenz, for all her theatrics, is simply leading the charge.

Tucker Libs of TikTok

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Gates Nov 2019
https://twitter.com/CovidMemo/status/1516444224622927882

 

 

 

 

Ships waiting to dock in Shanghai.

 

 

NATO ad

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Oct 182021
 
 October 18, 2021  Posted by at 7:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  55 Responses »


M. C. Escher Meeting (Encounter) 1940

 

Covid Infection In Vaxxed 40-49 Yr Olds Double The Unvaxxed Rate (DS)
Over 90% Of A Hospital’s Admissions Were Vaccinated For Covid-19 (Siri)
What Happens If Israel Fails The Stress Test? (Geert)
White House Tells Governors to Get Ready to Vaccinate Young Kids (CHD)
40% Of California State Workers Are Unvaccinated Despite Newsom’s Order (ZH)
Pentagon Faces Class-Action Lawsuit Over Vaccine Mandates (ET)
Ron Johnson Slams DOJ Probe Of Parents’ School Board Protests (JTN)
Facebook Announces 10,000 EU Jobs To Build ‘Metaverse’ (Y!)
MPs Back Challenge To Boris Johnson On Vaccine Passports (Exp.)
Bare Shelves, No Holidays… At Last, A Biblical Kind Of Christmas (Cumming)
Who Do You Blame When You’ve Killed The Scapegoat? (Fintan O’Toole)

 

 

Ivermectin works in Tokyo..

 

 

And in Indonesia.


Indonesia ramped up ivermectin production and the government assured national distribution and fair prices. IVM is considered by the government a COVID medicine.

 

 

But Singapore has the same pattern as Taiwan: very low infection rates, but then the vaccines came…

 

 

McCullough
https://twitter.com/i/status/1448336581358665733

 

 

Effectiveness Hits Minus-109%

Covid Infection In Vaxxed 40-49 Yr Olds Double The Unvaxxed Rate (DS)

In the latest Vaccine Surveillance report from Public Health England (PHE) the Covid infection rate in double-vaccinated people in their 40s went above 100 per cent higher than in the unvaccinated for the first time, reaching 109 per cent. This translates to an unadjusted vaccine effectiveness of minus 109 per cent.

Vaccine effectiveness continues to drop fast in all over-18s, hitting minus 85 per cent for those in their 50s, minus 88 per cent for those in their 60s and minus 79 per cent for those in their 70s. Vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation and death continues to hold up in all age groups, though with some signs of decline, particularly among older people. There is still nothing from Government sources acknowledging this failure of the vaccines against infection, its implications for policy and analysing what might be behind it.

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We’ve seen Deborah Conrad.

Over 90% Of A Hospital’s Admissions Were Vaccinated For Covid-19 (Siri)

A concerned Physician Assistant, Deborah Conrad, convinced her hospital to carefully track the Covid-19 vaccination status of every patient admitted to her hospital. The result is shocking. As Ms. Conrad has detailed, her hospital serves a community in which less than 50% of the individuals were vaccinated for Covid-19 but yet, during the same time period, approximately 90% of the individuals admitted to her hospital were documented to have received this vaccine. These patients were admitted for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to COVID-19 infections. Even more troubling is that there were many individuals who were young, many who presented with unusual or unexpected health events, and many who were admitted months after vaccination.


One would think that after an association was identified by a healthcare professional, our health authorities would at least review this finding, right? Sadly, when Ms. Conrad reached out to health authorities herself, she was ignored. My firm then sent a letter to the CDC and FDA on July 19, 2021 on Ms. Conrad’s behalf (see letter below), yet neither agency has responded. Even worse, when doctors came to Ms. Conrad for assistance with filing VAERS report for their patients, the hospital prohibited her from filing these reports. That the CDC and FDA failed to respond is arguably not surprising – they have been cheerleading this vaccine for months. Admitting almost any harm now would be akin to asking them to turn a gun on themselves. This again highlights the importance of never permitting government coercion and mandates when it comes to medical procedures.

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“..it is reasonable to expect booster injections to only enable the virus to more rapidly evolve resistance to the vaccines..”

What Happens If Israel Fails The Stress Test? (Geert)

It is well known that, regardless of any induced antigen (Ag)-specific adaptive immune response, all vaccines (including mRNA vaccines) have an adjuvant effect: they stimulate innate immune effectors, some of which have antiviral activity and/or facilitate adaptive immunity (2, 3, 4). Without going into mechanistic detail, there is no doubt that some of these innate, nonAg-specific immune responses have a short-lived antiviral effect. This could already explain why booster doses in the population described above can prevent viral infection while recalling anti-spike Abs. It may also be tempting to assume that these recalled Abs are now responsible for enhanced protection from both infection and disease.

However, from an immunological viewpoint, it is difficult to understand how a rapid recall of the very same anti-S Abs in a previously vaccine-primed population would now all of a sudden enable better protection from infection and disease. If innate immunity is indeed the confounder, then the outcome of long-term surveillance studies would look very different. Given the more potent neutralizing Abs booster shots are generating against variants (5), the S(pike)-directed immune pressure in the population will only continue to rise while still failing to curtail the spread of the predominantly circulating highly infectious SARS-CoV-2 variant (e.g., Delta variant). On the contrary, it would be reasonable to assume that upon an additional booster shot the more potent Abs further contribute to selecting S-directed immune escape variants and, therefore, turn the previously primed population in an even more fertile breeding ground for the highly infectious Delta variant.

As vaccine-elicited Ab responses have a much longer duration (and can be memorized) than that induced by short-term innate immune activation, and as vaccinal Abs suppress the functional capacity of pre-existing CoV-reactive innate Abs, short-term vaccine-mediated innate immune protection against viral infection or disease does not automatically imply a positive effect of the vaccine on viral infection or morbidity rates in the longer term. Interpretations from scientists who only conduct short-term surveillance studies in vaccinees, the majority of whom are adults or elderly, lead to erroneous, although peer-reviewed conclusions such as: ‘Although vaccines are less effective against asymptomatic disease (*) or against transmission than against severe disease, even in populations with fairly high vaccination rates the unvaccinated are still the major drivers of transmission and are themselves at the highest risk of serious disease’ (6).

This clearly illustrates their lack of understanding of the contribution of innate immunity in providing short-term protection after vaccination, and in the more durable protection of young and healthy unvaccinated age groups. Based on all of the above, it is reasonable to expect booster injections to only enable the virus to more rapidly evolve resistance to the vaccines. This evolution would be dramatically expedited by vaccinating and boosting more and more younger age groups.

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No FDA approval, but “..the Biden administration has already purchased 65 million doses of pediatric COVID vaccines..”

White House Tells Governors to Get Ready to Vaccinate Young Kids (CHD)

In a private phone call Tuesday with the nation’s governors, the White House told states to prepare to vaccinate children as young as 5 by early November. A White House official said the call was made in anticipation of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine being cleared for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in the coming weeks for children ages 5 to 11. According to NBC News, the Biden administration purchased 65 million pediatric doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine — enough to vaccinate an estimated 28 million children who would be eligible should the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approve Pfizer’s request to vaccinate the younger age group. In anticipation of a green light from the FDA, the administration began planning vaccination efforts with states, pharmacies and medical groups.

The administration told providers in a planning document last week the vaccine for children will be delivered to thousands of sites within one week of FDA authorization. The pediatric Pfizer vaccine will be distributed in 100-dose packs. Each dose is one-third of what is given to adults, and will be free through sites enrolled in a federal program that guarantees the shots are provided at no cost. Some states are planning to provide the vaccine through schools. “We’ve secured plenty of supply, and we’ll be putting in place an allocation, ordering and distribution system similar to what we’ve used for the other vaccines,” said Biden’s White House COVID coordinator, Jeff Zients, on a phone call, obtained by ABC News, with governors.

“It is distressing to hear that the Biden administration has already purchased 65 million doses of pediatric COVID vaccines,” said Dr. Elizabeth Mumper, pediatric physician and CEO of the Rimland Center for Integrative Medicine. “Vaccinating children is not the way out of the pandemic.” In an email to The Defender, Mumper said she hopes the White House will consider the following data:

• 99.998% of patients under the age of 18 survive COVID
• COVID “vaccines” have not undergone adequate long-term safety studies
• According to the latest available data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, as of Oct. 1, there have been a total of 21,298 reports of adverse events, including 1,284 rated as serious and 22 reported deaths (two of the 22 deaths were suicides) in the 12- to 17-year-old age group
• healthy adolescents given COVID “vaccines” have experienced blood clots, myocarditis, abnormal menses, neurologic symptoms and extreme fatigue
• most COVID cases are spread from adults to children — children are not a significant threat to the elderly and vulnerable

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“..a third of all hospitals in the state are experiencing critical staffing shortages because engineers, janitorial staff, respiratory therapists, nurses, midwives, physical therapists, and technicians have either staged strikes or have left the job over the mandate.”

40% Of California State Workers Are Unvaccinated Despite Newsom’s Order (ZH)

This might come as a surprise, but 40% of California state employees are unvaccinated despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s directive to mandate the jab or be subjected to regular testing. Newsom issued this new directive in July following a surge in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. At the time, he said, “We are now dealing with a pandemic of the unvaccinated, and it’s going to take renewed efforts to protect Californians from the dangerous Delta variant.” Still months later, less than two-thirds of state workers, or 62%, were vaccinated, according to The Sacramento Bee. The figure is much lower than the state’s overall rate of 72%. Human Resources Department spokeswoman Camille Travis said her agency has only compiled 89% of state employee vaccination status.

She said the data so far suggests some state employees weren’t compelled to get jabbed after Newsom’s directive. Some of the state’s largest departments shared vaccination rates: 52% of California Highway Patrol employees, 60% of Department of Motor Vehicles employees, and 60% of prison employees have received the shots. California Department of Transportation has the highest with 70%. Newsom’s mandatory jab, or be forced to regular testing for state employees, is less stringent than those of health care workers who have been forced to get the vaccine unless they had a medical exemption or religious claim.

One emerging drawback of mandatory jabs, with no consideration for regular testing nor naturally-acquired immunity, are reports that a third of all hospitals in the state are experiencing critical staffing shortages because engineers, janitorial staff, respiratory therapists, nurses, midwives, physical therapists, and technicians have either staged strikes or have left the job over the mandate. Director of Medical Ethics, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty of the University of California, Irvine, challenged the constitutionality of the hospital’s vaccine mandate regarding individuals who have recovered from COVID and have naturally acquired immunity and was immediately placed on leave. There’s no room to debate science as only the government can decide what’s best for state employees.

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“..Attorneys argued in the suit that no COVID-19 vaccine is available in the United States that has received full licensing and approval..”

Pentagon Faces Class-Action Lawsuit Over Vaccine Mandates (ET)

Service members from all five branches of the U.S. military, federal employees, and federal civilian contractors have joined in a class-action lawsuit against the Department of Defense over its COVID-19 vaccine mandates. The 24 plaintiffs “face a deadline under the Federal COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate to receive a COVID-19 vaccine that violates their sincerely held religious beliefs, and have been refused any religious exemption or accommodation,” according to Liberty Counsel, the Christian legal firm that filed the lawsuit. The lawsuit (pdf), filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, lists President Joe Biden, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as defendants.

The plaintiffs are asking the court to issue a temporary restraining order (pdf) to prevent the COVID-19 vaccine mandates from taking effect, and ultimately issue an injunction to prevent the Pentagon from enforcing the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Biden on Sept. 9 issued an executive order requiring almost all federal employees to get a COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of employment. Regular testing isn’t an option. Civilian federal employees and contractors have until Nov. 22 to be fully vaccinated. Austin issued a memorandum on Aug. 24 saying that all military service members must receive a COVID-19 vaccine, after which all the branches of the military announced various deadlines for its troops to be fully vaccinated, regardless of whether they had previously survived a bout of COVID-19, and threatening suspensions or other disciplinary actions if service members don’t have a pending exemption request or fail to comply.

The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps have set a Nov. 28 deadline for their active-duty service members; reservists have until Dec. 28. For the Army and the Air Force, the deadlines for active-duty service members are Dec. 15 and Nov. 2, respectively, and deadlines for National Guard and Reserve members are June 30, 2022, and Dec. 2, 2021, respectively. U.S. Coast Guard members have until Nov. 22 to be fully vaccinated. [..] Attorneys argued in the suit that no COVID-19 vaccine is available in the United States that has received full licensing and approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and as such, cannot be mandated.

Austin, in his memo on Aug. 24 (pdf), stated that the mandatory vaccinations “will only use COVID-19 vaccines that receive full licensure from the [FDA] in accordance with FDA-approved labeling and guidance,” attorneys noted, arguing that “additional military documents reveal that the Department of Defense is not following its own directive” and is using vaccines under emergency use authorization [EUA] “because there is no FDA approved vaccine available.” Austin’s memo came a day after the FDA issued full approval for future Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines, which will bear the Comirnaty label. The latter vaccine wasn’t available in the United States as of Oct. 12, The Epoch Times reported previously.

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“Show up peacefully. Be respectful. But be insistent. Demand that the school boards follow your wishes. Not the wishes of Joe Biden and his cast of characters.”

Ron Johnson Slams DOJ Probe Of Parents’ School Board Protests (JTN)

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin says Attorney General Merrick Garland‘s order to have the FBI investigate parent protests of school policies is “outrageous” and a “method of intimidation.” “He is saying they are intimidating school board members. No, it is the attorney general of the United States that is intimidating people exercising their rights to free speech and the right to petition their government,” Johnson said in an interview aired Sunday on the Cats Roundtable with John Catsimatidis show on WABC radio in New York. Garland announced recently the FBI would be investigating comments made by parents during contentious school board meetings over curriculum issues such as critical race theory and transgender pronouns.


The Wisconsin Republican, who is up for reelection next year, encouraged parents not to be intimidated and to continue to press for the policies they want for their children. “I tell people in Wisconsin, if you don’t want critical race theory; if you don’t want the 1619 project taught to your children, don’t let it be,” he said. “Show up peacefully. Be respectful. But be insistent. Demand that the school boards follow your wishes. Not the wishes of Joe Biden and his cast of characters.”

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“..meetings in a virtual room where they all appear as cartoonish 3D versions of themselves..”

Facebook Announces 10,000 EU Jobs To Build ‘Metaverse’ (Y!)

Facebook on Monday announced plans to hire 10,000 people in the European Union to build the “metaverse”, a virtual reality version of the internet that the tech giant sees as the future. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been a leading voice in Silicon Valley hype around the idea of the metaverse, which would blur the lines between the physical world and the digital one. The technology might, for example, allow someone to don virtual reality glasses that make it feel as if they’re face-to-face with a friend — when in fact they are thousands of miles apart and connected via the internet. “The metaverse has the potential to help unlock access to new creative, social, and economic opportunities. And Europeans will be shaping it right from the start,” Facebook said in a blog post.


“Today, we are announcing a plan to create 10,000 new high skilled jobs within the EU over the next five years.” The European hires will include “highly specialised engineers”, but the company otherwise gave few details of its plans for the new metaverse team. “The EU has a number of advantages that make it a great place for tech companies to invest — a large consumer market, first class universities and, crucially, top quality talent,” the blog post said. [..] Facebook bought Oculus, a company that makes virtual reality headsets, for $2 billion in 2014 and has since been developing Horizon, a digital world where people can interact using VR technology. In August it unveiled Horizon Workrooms, a feature where co-workers wearing VR headsets can hold meetings in a virtual room where they all appear as cartoonish 3D versions of themselves.

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“If we start down this road the future is dark.”

MPs Back Challenge To Boris Johnson On Vaccine Passports (Exp.)

Campaigners for the Together Declaration petition, already signed by almost 110,000 people including more than 200 church leaders and representatives of businesses and groups, fear that the UK Government will be pushed into agreeing to a so-called plan B to bring in new restrictions over the winter. It follows warnings by chief medical officer Chris Whitty last week that the NHS will “experience an exceptionally difficult winter” this year. Already this has been taken as an indication that pro-lockdown scientists working for the government will push for vaccine passports which have been introduced by Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland and the Labour government in Wales. Already, Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee, which represents backbench Conservative MPs has signed the declaration.

He said: “‘Vaccine passports would set an alarming precedent where our medical records become public and some people are subjected to discrimination as they seek to go about their everyday lives. Surely that isn’t the kind of society that we want to create?” Another senior Tory MP, Sir Desmond Swayne added: “It is contrary to all our values and traditions to have to prove that we have undergone a medical procedure to go about our lawful business. “It is coercive and discriminatory, the abandonment of liberal values; a frightful precedent to set. I am appalled that a Conservative government could contemplate such a measure. If we start down this road the future is dark.” Campaigners will meet former minister Steve Baker, deputy chairman of the powerful Covid Recovery Group (CRG), and other Parliamentarians tomorrow before unfurling a 40m banner in Parliament Square.

[..] Robert Dingwall, former government advisor, and professor of sociology from Nottingham Trent University, who has carried out extensive research on the use of vaccine passports said: “Vaccine passports are a tech industry idea in search of a problem. In terms of public safety, they have little to offer. “Vaccinated people have a high degree of protection from their own vaccination. They also still have a potential to infect other people. By now, anyone who wants to be vaccinated has had an opportunity to do so.

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“There won’t be any turkeys, or at least not dead ones.”

Bare Shelves, No Holidays… At Last, A Biblical Kind Of Christmas (Cumming)

“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” says Jo at the start of Little Women. BoJo is going one better. This Christmas, not only will there be no presents, but there will be no anything. After cancelling Christmas altogether last year, this time around he is creating a kind of half-Christmas, Christmas methadone, to ease us back into the festival. There is nothing the man will not do to get himself compared to Churchill. Thanks to his foresight and the happy accidents of the global economy, we will be able to wallow in our beloved blitz spirit, making do and mending, with a safe low dosage of consumerism to tide us over.

There will be no PlayStation 5 under where the Christmas tree used to be. There will be no jokes in Mrs Brown’s Boys, as usual, but none in the Christmas crackers either. There’s no petrol or HGV drivers, of course, but correspondents also report shortages of tennis balls, merlot, white bread, sardines, M&S chicken kievs, fish sauce, frozen apple strudel, tinned sardines, spring onions, fire alarms, an effective opposition, chocolate Hobnobs, cat vaccines, cat worming pills, bubble bath, Leon fish-finger wraps, marmalade, butter beans, dog-poo bags, goats, crisps, decaf coffee, bulbs (plant), bulbs (light), pigs, blankets, pigs-in-blankets, roofing lead and Harry Potter merchandise, especially wands. The last is hard to take; usually there are more wands than you can shake a stick at.

On the off-chance you manage to get to 25 December with a full tank and are able to dodge Insulate Britain’s armed roadblocks, you’ll arrive at houses that are too expensive to heat. The environmentalists ought to be encouraging the free movement of cars this Christmas; there are few people more persuasive on the subject of double-glazing than a chilly mother-in-law. There won’t be any turkeys, or at least not dead ones. There are plenty waddling around in barns, but there’s nobody to slaughter them. For the handful that do make it to Bernard Matthews’ big barn in the sky, there’s nobody to drive them to the shops. In a delicious irony, there are shortages of everything except shortages. Like it or not, this is what leadership looks like.

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“Frost demanded that the EU agree to rewrite completely the Northern Ireland protocol of the withdrawal treaty that Johnson hailed in October 2019 as a “fantastic deal for all of the UK”.

Who Do You Blame When You’ve Killed The Scapegoat? (Fintan O’Toole)

Last week, Boris Johnson, with his paintbrush and easel at his holiday villa in Marbella, touched up his self-portrait as the reincarnation of Winston Churchill. Meanwhile, another bodysnatcher, Johnson’s Brexit tsar, David Frost, was also in sunny Iberia. In Lisbon on Tuesday evening, he channelled the intellectual father of modern conservatism, the 18th-century Irish writer and politician Edmund Burke. Frost demanded that the EU agree to rewrite completely the Northern Ireland protocol of the withdrawal treaty that Johnson hailed in October 2019 as a “fantastic deal for all of the UK”. His speech was entitled, in imitation of a famous Burke pamphlet, “Observations on the present state of the nation”.

In case his audience somehow failed to make the connection between the former chief executive of the Scotch Whisky Association and one of the greatest political thinkers these islands has produced, Frost reminded them – how could they have forgotten? – that he had previously given a speech entitled “Reflections on the Revolutions in Europe”. Geddit? For those who did indeed get it, the first response was surely to sigh, like the ghost in Shakespeare’s tragedy, “O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there”. The second was the dizzying feeling that the “present state of the nation” is that of a skydiver, free-falling downwards from Burkean conservatism into pure Tory anarchism. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke wrote that “good order is the foundation of all good things”.

Somehow, when his soul was transmigrating to be born again in Brexit Britain, that bit got lost in translation. Disorder is now the royal road to all the good things that will come to those who keep the Brexit faith. Tearing up international treaties is, like the mass culling of pigs and fruit rotting in the fields, merely a manifestation of the creative chaos from which the new universe of “Global Britain” will emerge. It is rather unfortunate that the ground on which this big bang is set to explode, Northern Ireland, is a place that knows all about big bangs and the misery of chaos. And even more so that it is a place held together by one of those documents that Johnson and his government now hold in such contempt: an international treaty, the Belfast agreement of 1998.

Before Frost gave his speech on Tuesday, he knew full well that the EU was about to put forward a generous, sensible and very helpful set of proposals to deal with the difficulties in the practical implementation of the protocol. These proposals, unveiled on Wednesday, give civic and business leaders in Northern Ireland pretty much everything they have asked for to make the new arrangements work smoothly. Anticipating this EU move to calm everything down, however, Frost and Johnson chose to pre-empt the solutions by creating a new problem, one they know to be insoluble. They have hyped up an issue that no one in business or trade in Northern Ireland gives a damn about: the role of the European court of justice (ECJ) in any potential disputes about the interpretation of EU law. Deprived of the movement of sausages as a casus belli, they grasped another dubious foodstuff – the red herring.

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Earplugs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1449965542916374529

 

 

 

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

 

Jan 272021
 


Gustave Courbet Sunset on Lake Geneva 1876

 

Bill Gates Advised Oxford to Ditch Open Source COVID Vaccine (MPN)
FBI Knew DOJ Was Preparing To Fire Comey Long Before Trump Ordered It (JTN)
Washington Will Remain Militarized Until At Least March (Greenwald)
Biden is Already Breaking Promises (Lawrence)
Legal Counteroffensive Against Big Tech Crackdown On Conservative Dissent (JTN)
Meet the Censored: Status Coup (Taibbi)
US Billionaires ‘Have Received $1.1tn Windfall In Covid Pandemic’ (G.)
Ted Cruz Attempts To Impose Term Limits On Members Of Congress (JTN)
Judge Bars President Joe Biden From Enforcing 100-Day Deportation Ban (AP)
Migrants Increasing At “Concerning Rate” On Southern Border – CBP Agent (ZH)
Ghislaine Maxwell Asks To Throw Out Case Over Epstein Plea Deal (G.)
UK Sells Arms To Nearly 80% Of Countries Under Restrictions (G.)
Humans Are Estimated To Eat A Credit Card Worth Of Plastic Every Week (USPIRG)

 

 

 

 

Tulsi Brennan Schiff
https://twitter.com/i/status/1354035548524957697

 

 

“As a result, the planet’s poor will have to wait until at least 2024 to be immunized.”

Bill Gates Advised Oxford to Ditch Open Source COVID Vaccine (MPN)

Europe is reeling from the shock news that biotech giant AstraZeneca will not be delivering anything like the number of vaccines it promised. The company informed European Union officials that they will only be supplying 31 million doses to 27 E.U. countries, rather than the 80 million they had promised would arrive by the end of March. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conti predicted that the news would reap “enormous damage” on the continent that has already sustained over 32 million confirmed cases and 703,000 deaths due to COVID-19. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine had been hailed last year as a miracle in the global fight against the coronavirus primarily because the research team at Oxford University had promised to share the rights to its product with any and all drugmakers, meaning that poorer countries could produce and inoculate their citizens at cost price ($3-$4 per shot — a fraction of the price of those from Pfizer or Moderna).

Last year, economist and drug patent reform advocate Dean Baker told MintPress that, “The Oxford vaccine is even more striking, since the point was to pay researchers, but not to rely on patent monopolies to generate large profits. We ended up with a cheaper, better vaccine…It would be great if we could take away some lessons from the experience of vaccine development in this crisis and get away from the antiquated patent monopoly mechanism for financing research.” However, behind the scenes, the Oxford team reneged on their promise, signing an exclusive deal with pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, who made no commitment to selling the lifesaving vaccine at a low price. Even less well-known is that the decision was taken at the behest of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

“We went to Oxford and said, ‘Hey, you’re doing brilliant work,’” Gates said, “But…you really need to team up.” The 65-year-old tech tycoon is a strong proponent of patents and spends much of his time shaping global health policy. James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International, a nonprofit that works to expand access to medical technology, said that “Gates has staked out this outsized role in the vaccine world…He has an ideological belief that the intellectual property system is a wonderful mechanism that is necessary for innovation and prosperity.” The decision to put profit before people is likely to have a devastating impact on the Global South. Poor countries are not in a position to inoculate their entire populations, especially as the world’s wealthiest nations hoard the large majority of the available vaccines while refusing to support moves by companies in the Global South to produce them for themselves.

As a result, the planet’s poor will have to wait until at least 2024 to be immunized. This latest news is unlikely to do anything but set that clock further back. Unable to secure a profit in immunizing Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans, Western multinationals have turned their back on those regions, prioritizing those who can pay the most. As a result, those in the Global South have turned to Russia and China for help. While Western media have dismissed these efforts as “vaccine diplomacy” and a “charm offensive,” while casting doubt on the Sputnik V vaccine’s efficacy, global opinion studies show the Russian offering is actually the most trusted option.

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Special Counsel.

FBI Knew DOJ Was Preparing To Fire Comey Long Before Trump Ordered It (JTN)

Newly declassified FBI memos provide startling new details that undercut the frenzied 2017 effort to investigate Donald Trump for obstruction, revealing the FBI knew Director James Comey’s firing had been conceived by Justice Department leadership long before the president pulled the trigger during a key moment in the Russia probe. The memos written in May 2017 by Acting Director Andrew McCabe and a lieutenant also provide contemporaneous proof for some of the more jaw-dropping lore of the now-discredited Russia collusion scandal. For instance, the memos directly state that then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein offered to wear a wire to secretly record Trump in the Oval Office and that Rosenstein also wanted to seek Comey’s advice — after his termination — on a possible Russia special counsel. The bureau nixed both ideas, the memos show.

The documents — declassified by Trump during his final 24 hours in office — also provide a tantalizing list of names the Trump administration considered for FBI director, including former Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman, ex-director and eventual Russia Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and retired Gen. John Kelly. Eventually, Trump settled on former prosecutor Chris Wray for the job. But the memos’ most explosive revelations chronicle the decision by McCabe in his early days on the job to open a formal investigation of Trump on the grounds that Comey’s firing may have been an act of obstruction of justice designed to thwart the Russia probe. The notes show McCabe informed Rosenstein during a May 16, 2017 meeting — one of their first after Comey was fired and McCabe became acting director — that he had opened the obstruction probe.

“I explained that the purpose of the investigation was to investigate allegations of possible collusion between the President and the Russian government, possible obstruction of justice related to the firing of FBI Director James Comey and possible conspiracy to obstruct justice,” McCabe wrote in typewritten notes of the meeting. One of McCabe’s lieutenants who also attended the meeting, then-bureau attorney Lisa Page, took her own notes, observing that Rosenstein’s expressed outrage over Comey’s firing seemed odd since Rosenstein had revealed to FBI officials he and then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions had been contemplating it since January 2017. “This was a strange comment,” Page wrote, “because it was my understanding that the DAG had previously indicated that he and AG Sessions had been discussing firing Director Comey since January, but given the nature of the conversation there was no room for follow-up.”

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“The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations.”

Washington Will Remain Militarized Until At Least March (Greenwald)

Washington, DC has been continuously militarized beginning the week leading up to Joe Biden’s inauguration, when 20,000 National Guard troops were deployed onto the streets of the nation’s capital. The original justification was that this show of massive force was necessary to secure the inauguration in light of the January 6 riot at the Capitol. But with the inauguration over and done, those troops remain and are not going anywhere any time soon. Working with federal law enforcement agencies, the National Guard Bureau announced on Monday that between 5,000 and 7,000 troops will remain in Washington until at least mid-March. The rationale for this extraordinary, sustained domestic military presence has shifted several times, typically from anonymous U.S. law enforcement officials.

The original justification — the need to secure the inaugural festivities — is obviously no longer operative. So the new claim became that the impeachment trial of former President Trump that will take place in the Senate in February necessitated military reinforcements. On Sunday, Politico quoted “four people familiar with the matter” to claim that “Trump’s upcoming Senate impeachment trial poses a security concern that federal law enforcement officials told lawmakers last week requires as many as 5,000 National Guard troops to remain in Washington through mid-March.” The next day, AP, citing “a U.S. official,” said the ongoing troop deployment was needed due to “ominous chatter about killing legislators or attacking them outside of the U.S. Capitol.”

But the anonymous official acknowledged that “the threats that law enforcement agents are tracking vary in specificity and credibility.” Even National Guard troops complained that they “have so far been given no official justifications, threat reports or any explanation for the extended mission — nor have they seen any violence thus far.” It is hard to overstate what an extreme state of affairs it is to have a sustained military presence in American streets. Prior deployments have been rare, and usually were approved for a limited period and/or in order to quell a very specific, ongoing uprising — to ensure the peaceful segregation of public schools in the South, to respond to the unrest in Detroit and Chicago in the 1960s, or to quell the 1991 Los Angeles riots that erupted after the Rodney King trial.

Deploying National Guard or military troops for domestic law enforcement purposes is so dangerous that laws in place from the country’s founding strictly limit its use. It is meant only as a last resort, when concrete, specific threats are so overwhelming that they cannot be quelled by regular law enforcement absent military reinforcements. Deploying active military troops is an even graver step than putting National Guard soldiers on the streets, but they both present dangers. As Trump’s Defense Secretary said in response to calls from some over the summer to deploy troops in response to the Black Lives Matter and Antifa protests: “The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations.”

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“We want you to endorse our commitment to aggression, to unlawful interventions, to ‘regime change’ ops, to merciless sanctions, and altogether to the empire. But you must make it look nice. Make it look thoughtful and complicated and considered.”

Biden is Already Breaking Promises (Lawrence)

[..] let’s draw the old lesson. You can have democracy at home or empire abroad, but you can’t have both. We will continue to suffer the latter under Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Those drawn into thinking the Biden regime would conduct America’s affairs abroad decently and humanely and in principled fashion will now discover they have been savagely sucker-punched. Those who understood from the outset that Biden’s people would go nowhere near the essential, determining questions of exceptionalism, universalism, and our consequent dedication to empire will be repelled but not surprised as the policy framework is revealed. In this case, the moment of truth came even before Biden’s inauguration.

His saccharine inauguration speech last Wednesday, with its Hallmark-card calls for unity, was quite secondary to the confirmation hearings the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held the previous day. In a matter of hours, Biden’s key national security people — Antony Blinken as secretary of state, Avril Haines as director of national intelligence, and Lloyd Austin as defense secretary — gave us a remarkably fulsome idea of what we are in for these next four years.Haines and Austin, neither of whose records are to be admired, are at bottom functionaries who were nominated and swiftly confirmed because they do what they are told and do not think too much—always a career-advancer in Washington. It is instead Blinken, who is said to enjoy some kind of “mind-meld” with Biden, that we must consider carefully. (Such a meld must be odd terrain.)

Blinken’s Senate testimony last Tuesday sprawled over four hours. It is best to scrutinize his remarks while seated in a chair with sturdy armrests, ideally to calm one’s nerves with a pot of chamomile tea. Seen or read as a whole, those four hours gave us an extraordinary display of how empire works and how it prolongs itself. One by one, Blinken’s senatorial interlocutors told him in so many words, “Son, this is what you need to say if you want our confirmation. We want you to endorse our commitment to aggression, to unlawful interventions, to ‘regime change’ ops, to merciless sanctions, and altogether to the empire. But you must make it look nice. Make it look thoughtful and complicated and considered.”

[..] Among Blinken’s many rather sad-to-witness “Yes sirs,” two standout: his finely chiseled endorsement of Pompeo’s reckless assassination a year ago of Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s revered military commander (“Taking him out was the right thing to do”), and his approval of the Trump administration’s decision to send lethal arms to the manically corrupt regime in Kiev (“Senator, I support providing that lethal defensive assistance to Ukraine,” when the Obama administration, from which he comes, did not.)

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”.. their job, under state law, is to act as a steward for shareholders. That is their legal obligation. They are not to act as an extra-governmental arm of one party of another.”

Legal Counteroffensive Against Big Tech Crackdown On Conservative Dissent (JTN)

Paxton said the tech firms also open themselves up to challenges under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which offers broad legal immunities for social media networks that claim they are neutral platforms rather than media companies making editorial decisions. “These companies put themselves out as neutral platforms,” Paxton said. “If in reality, they’re not doing that, one, they don’t deserve the protection of federal law, special protection that no other company has. And two, they may need to be looked at under consumer protection laws, because they’re presenting consumers with a choice that says, ‘We are a platform that allows any speech,’ when in reality, they are controlling what speech is being put out there.”

Justin Danhof, general counsel for the National Center for Public Policy Research, faults conservatives themselves for long trying to brush aside the threat of social media viewpoint bias and censorship with hopeful assurances that “the free market will solve this.” “They said, ‘Just create a new platform,'” recalled Danhof. “‘If you don’t like censorship occurring on Facebook and Twitter against conservatives — which has been happening for a decade — create a new platform.’ So Parler did. But then [Big Tech] disappeared Parler.” Facebook and Twitter have both long denied any viewpoint bias against conservatives in their content moderation practices. Danhof compared what tech firms are doing in the United States to how these companies are acting in China.

“Apple — of course — deletes many apps from its app store, largely news apps, at the behest of the Chinese Communist Party,” Danhof said, alluding to deleted apps that pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong were using to communicate and to get news and information. “So clearly, in China, Apple is operating as an extra-governmental arm of the Chinese Communist Party — acting at the behest of the communists to do what they want,” Danhof said. “Well, we have folks like Nancy Pelosi and AOC, Kamala Harris in the United States calling on Twitter and Facebook and others to ban President Trump. And to take down Parler. And what are they doing? They’re honoring those requests.”

Twitter’s permanent ban of President Trump led to a dramatic loss of share value for the company. Danhof argues that the company’s political decision has hurt its investors, thus exposing the company to civil action by shareholders for breach of fiduciary duty. “Lawsuits should abound from shareholders,” Danhof said. “Because boards of directors and management — their job, under state law, is to act as a steward for shareholders. That is their legal obligation. They are not to act as an extra-governmental arm of one party of another.”

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Live streamers.

Meet the Censored: Status Coup (Taibbi)

On January 6th, Jon Farina, photographer and videographer for Jordan Chariton’s Status Coup outlet, captured horrifying images. At the Capitol, a pro-Trump mob tried to burst into the building, and a police officer who attempted to intercede was caught in a door. He cried out in pain, but the crowd was indifferent, chanting, “Heave, ho!” as they tried to break in. Farina, in the middle of the physical mayhem as photojournalists often are, caught the scene up close while 30,000 people watched the live feed. Farina’s footage rocketed around the world, and major press outlets celebrated his work as an example of hard-hitting reporting. CNN did a laudatory story about the freelance photojournalist, with Pamela Brown asking Farina to “bring us inside the mayhem.”

Other outlets like USA Today quoted his recollections of that day, and the likes of Steven Colbert on CBS, as well as ABC News, NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, the New York Post, the Daily Mail, and others used it as fodder for outraged coverage of the riot: For a week or so, Status Coup was feted for service on the front lines of responsible journalism. Nearly two weeks later, on January 18th, another Farina live stream was shut down by YouTube, thanks to policies that will make it very difficult for non-corporate media going forward to do live reporting. In fact, it’s not a stretch to say that if the incident from the 18th happened earlier, we may never have gotten the Capitol pictures.

On the 18th, Farina was in Richmond, Virginia, where a significant rally of pro-gun protesters was expected. There had been widespread reports warning of unrest. CBS relayed FBI fears of “credible threats of violence,” while the Washington Post said officials were “on edge” ahead of the Martin Luther King Day protest, gearing up for a full-scale assault: Members of the National Guard are on standby. Plywood covers the windows of the State Capitol. Tall metal barricades surround Capitol Square, with police vehicles idling on pathways just inside locked pedestrian gates. Downtown streets will be closed; signs warning against carrying guns have gone up around the city. “The violent, lawless insurrection and assault on democracy and its institutions that unfolded last week in Washington, D.C., will not be tolerated in the city of Richmond,” Mayor Levar Stoney warned on Thursday.

The threats may have been credible, but when Farina began live-streaming to an audience of 6,000, the event turned out to be peaceful and unremarkable, though not without interest from a news perspective. “Frankly, there might have been more press than protesters,” Status Coup’s Chariton said later. “And while it was live, it was pretty informative. Jon talked to 4-5 people, and they pretty much all made it clear that they weren’t Trump supporters, that they didn’t support what happened in the Capitol. They were pretty relaxed compared to the propaganda ahead of time.” Despite the seeming unremarkableness of the event, it shut down abruptly mid-feed. Chariton assumed something happened on Farina’s end. “Then I got an email from YouTube, telling me we’d violated their ‘Firearms Policy.’ I wasn’t aware they had a firearms policy.”

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And that’s just the 660 richest.

US Billionaires ‘Have Received $1.1tn Windfall In Covid Pandemic’ (G.)

The richest 660 people in the US have collected a $1.1tn (£800bn) “windfall of wealth” since the coronavirus pandemic began, according to a report by a US progressive thinktank, the Institute for Policy Studies. The report found that the collective wealth of America’s 660 billionaires has risen by 39% since the World Health Organization declared that Covid-19 was a pandemic virus in March 2020. The billionaires combined wealth has increased from just under $3tn on 18 March 2020 to $4.1tn, according to Forbes magazine data. The report noted that there had also been “46 newly minted billionaires since the beginning of the pandemic”, when there were 614.

Chuck Collins, the director of the Institute for Policy Studies’ Program on Inequality and co-author of the Billionaire Bonanza 2020 report, said: “Billionaires are reaping unseemly windfalls of wealth during the pandemic. They benefit from having their competitors shut down or controlling technologies and services we are all dependent on in this unprecedented time. We should tax these windfall gains to pay for recovery.” Collins said the gains the billions have made since the crisis began could “pay for all the relief for working families contained in the $1.9tn coronavirus relief package proposed by President Biden, while leaving the nation’s richest households no worse off than they were before Covid-19 hit”.

Frank Clemente, the executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, said: “While we can all rejoice that our nation’s response to the terrible pandemic is now in steadier and more caring hands, we can only lament that America’s billionaires are not making a meaningful contribution to that national effort, even as their wealth continues to soar. “The Covid crisis is crushing people of colour and low-income workers while billionaires who are nearly all white have seen fortunes skyrocket. This is why we need the fair-share taxes programme Joe Biden ran on, won on and is now ready to pursue.”

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Fat chance.

Ted Cruz Attempts To Impose Term Limits On Members Of Congress (JTN)

Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz on Tuesday reintroduced an amendment that would put term limits on members of Congress, saying the rise in “political careerism” is not what the country’s founders intended. “Today my colleagues and I reintroduced a constitutional amendment to impose #TermLimits on Members of Congress,” the Texas lawmaker tweeted. “The amendment would limit U.S. senators to two six-year terms and members of the U.S. House of Representatives to three two-year terms.” Cruz gained the support of fellow Republican Sens. Mike Braun and Todd Young of Indiana, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania for the proposed constitutional amendment.


This marks the third time Cruz has introduced legislation to impose term limits on Congress, having also done so in 2017 and 2019. His previous attempts never made it to the Senate floor. “Every year, Congress spends billions of dollars on giveaways for the well-connected: Washington insiders get taxpayer money and members of Congress get re-elected, all while the system fails the American people,” Cruz said in a statement. “The rise of political careerism in today’s Congress is a sharp departure from what the Founders intended for our federal governing bodies. I have long called for this solution for the brokenness of Washington, D.C., and I will continue fighting to hold career politicians accountable.”

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Immigration remains a touchy issue.

Judge Bars President Joe Biden From Enforcing 100-Day Deportation Ban (AP)

A federal judge on Tuesday barred the U.S. government from enforcing a 100-day deportation moratorium that is a key immigration priority of President Joe Biden. U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton issued a temporary restraining order sought by Texas, which sued on Friday against a Department of Homeland Security memo that instructed immigration agencies to pause most deportations. Tipton said the Biden administration had failed “to provide any concrete, reasonable justification for a 100-day pause on deportations.” Tipton’s order is an early blow to the Biden administration, which has proposed far-reaching changes sought by immigration advocates, including a plan to legalize an estimated 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.

Biden promised during his campaign to pause most deportations for 100 days. The order represents a victory for Texas’ Republican leaders, who often sued to stop programs enacted by Biden’s Democratic predecessor, President Barack Obama. It also showed that just as Democratic-led states and immigration groups fought former President Donald Trump over immigration in court, often successfully, so too will Republicans with Biden in office. David Pekoske, the acting Homeland Security secretary, signed a memo on Biden’s first day directing immigration authorities to focus on national security and public safety threats as well as anyone apprehended entering the U.S. illegally after Nov. 1. That was a reversal from Trump administration policy that made anyone in the U.S. illegally a priority for deportation.

The 100-day moratorium went into effect Friday and applied to almost anyone who entered the U.S. without authorization before November. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argued that the moratorium violated federal law as well as an agreement Texas signed with the Department of Homeland Security late in the Trump administration. That agreement required Homeland Security to consult with Texas and other states before taking any action to “reduce, redirect, reprioritize, relax, or in any way modify immigration enforcement.”

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Touchy.

Migrants Increasing At “Concerning Rate” On Southern Border – CBP Agent (ZH)

As caravans build up in Honduras, migrants are increasing at a “concerning rate” at the United States southern border, according to Matthew Hudak, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) chief patrol agent of the Laredo sector in Texas. He warns that immigration is just a piece of the threat coupled with the pandemic health risk and other crimes along the border. “Like everybody, we’re tracking the formation of these caravans in Central America,” said Hudak. The Laredo Sector is one of nine CBP sectors along the southern border. It contains about 135 miles of the international border with Mexico. On Jan. 8, CBP Acting Commissioner Mark A. Morgan issued a statement on potential migrant caravans: “Do not waste your time and money, and do not risk your safety and health.”

According to Hudak, the Laredo Sector hasn’t seen a reduction of migrants in response to the statement. It has made over 30,000 arrests in this fiscal year, a 50 percent increase over the same period last year. Hudak added that similar trends are identified by other sectors on the southern border. The U.S. government fiscal year starts on Oct. 1. Hudak called the 50 percent increase “a pretty concerning rate.” He told The Epoch Times that some portions of the caravan of 9,000 migrants will make their way to the southern border. Part of the group was stopped in Guatemala on Jan. 16. Depending on the pace and the means with which these migrants travel, the arrival time at the U.S.-Mexico border may be between a few days and a few weeks. As of Jan. 21, he hasn’t yet seen a dramatic increase of migrants indicative of caravans arriving at the southern border.

Hudak said that human smuggling is usually achieved with systems shared with drug and firearm smuggling, and the fees migrants are charged feed larger criminal organizations. Therefore, he sees a more significant threat: “We may be talking about one piece of it, which is immigration, but it’s part of a much larger criminal enterprise.”

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And the jury was too white.

Ghislaine Maxwell Asks To Throw Out Case Over Epstein Plea Deal (G.)

Lawyers for Ghislaine Maxwell complained on Monday that the pool of grand jurors who indicted her was not diverse enough, according to new court documents. “The fact that Ms Maxwell herself is neither Black nor Hispanic does not deprive of her of standing to raise this challenge,” the attorneys wrote in court papers, arguing that the US constitution “entitles every defendant to object to a [pool] that is not designed to represent a fair cross section of the community, whether or not the systematically excluded groups are groups to which he himself belongs”. Maxwell’s purported concerns about diversity stem from the geographical circumstances surrounding her indictment.

Maxwell is facing charges in the southern district of New York’s Manhattan division relating to her alleged involvement in her late friend Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of minor girls. However, she was indicted by a grand jury in the SDNY’s White Plains division before her 2 July arrest, as Covid-19 had limited grand jury proceedings in Manhattan. White Plains grand jurors hail from counties outside of New York City. Maxwell’s attorneys said they were therefore “drawn from a community in which Black and Hispanic residents are significantly underrepresented by comparison. “The sixth amendment guarantees a criminal defendant a grand jury selected from a fair cross-section of the community.

“Ms Maxwell’s right under the sixth amendment to a grand jury drawn from a fair cross-section of the community applies to the grand jury that indicted her. “Here, the use of a White Plains jury resulted in the systematic underrepresentation of Black and Hispanic persons from the jury selection process, in violation of Ms Maxwell’s sixth amendment right.” Maxwell’s lawyers also argued that prosecutors could have waited to convene a grand jury in Manhattan, claiming that one such panel met “as early as” 25 June. “There appears to have been no reason, other than a publicity-driven desire to arrest Ms Maxwell on the anniversary of the Epstein indictment, why the government could not have waited until that time,” they said.

Maxwell’s attorneys made the claims as part of their push to dismiss her case. Among 12 arguments attacking the indictment, they said a non-prosecution deal Epstein reached with the federal government in 2008 should shield Maxwell too. The agreement sought to protect Epstein and those around him, but Maxwell was not identified by name in a document signed when Epstein agreed to plead guilty to state charges in Florida that forced him to register as a sex offender. Lawyers for Epstein planned to argue that the deal protected him against sex-trafficking charges in New York City.

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Insane.

UK Sells Arms To Nearly 80% Of Countries Under Restrictions (G.)

British ministers and officials have approved the sale of arms to nearly four-fifths of countries subject to arms embargos, trade sanctions or other restrictions over the past five years, according to analysis. The UK has exported military hardware to 58 countries of the 73 listed as subject to restrictions by the Department for International Trade (DIT), including sniper rifles to Pakistan, assault rifles to Kenya and naval equipment to China. The exports are legal but researchers with the group that compiled the report, Action on Armed Violence, said they represented “a systemic failure to consider the human rights record of states before exporting weapons to them”.

Countries covered by sanctions range from a handful where all arms sales are banned to a larger group covered by transit controls, where a special licence is required, for political, security or human rights reasons. Five countries listed by the trade department as key export markets for British arms makers: Bahrain, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, also feature on the Foreign Office’s latest list of 30 “human rights priority countries”, although not all are subject to sanctions. The report’s author, Murray Jones, of Action on Armed Violence, said his research – which reviewed UK export records between January 2015 and June 2020 – “demonstrates the frailty of the UK’s commitment to human rights abroad”.

Licences have been granted to export aircraft parts, riot shields and hundreds of sniper rifles to Pakistan, including 630 in 2016 and a further 20 in 2019, despite the Foreign Office warning in November of “increased pressure on civic space and freedom of expression” in the country, including threats to minorities. The sale of 3,000 assault rifles to Kenya for £9.45m was authorised in 2017, although security forces in the African country were accused by Amnesty International the year before of carrying out “enforced disappearances, extrajudicial executions and torture with impunity, killing at least 122 people”.

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Even more insane.

Humans Are Estimated To Eat A Credit Card Worth Of Plastic Every Week (USPIRG)

For years, we have known that the harmful effects of plastic are found everywhere in our natural environment. We’ve seen images of birds and sea turtles choking and entangling themselves to death on plastic waste. But beyond its impact on wildlife, microplastics are now concealed in the air we breathe, water we drink, and food we eat; humans are estimated to eat a credit card worth of plastic every week. We also know that plastic isn’t just harmful as physical waste; plastic products often contain harmful chemicals. A recent report compiled a summary of international research on endocrine-disrupting chemicals used to make plastic — including 144 chemicals/chemical groups known to be hazardous to human health — intended to give plastics attributes like antimicrobial properties, colorants, flame retardants, solvents, UV-stabilizers, and plasticizers.

The aforementioned report focuses on a specific kind of health effect seen in plastics and the chemicals they can leach, called endocrine or hormone disruption. Our hormones play crucial roles in many of our bodily systems and are vital to our reproductive development and growth. This means children are especially susceptible to the health risks of harmful chemicals found in plastic. The chemicals found in plastic products can linger in our environment even after the plastic has been cleaned up. A recent study found that when scientists introduced and then removed plastic from an aquatic environment, sea urchins still developed abnormal skeletons and nervous systems because of the chemicals left behind. To make matters worse, plastics have the unique ability to bind together chemicals that are otherwise more diluted in the environment, meaning they become carriers of all sorts of concentrated toxins.

Hazardous chemicals can be found in single-use plastic food wrapping and containers, which have direct contact with the food we eat and may introduce these chemicals into our bodies. One familiar example is BPA, which is well known due to “BPA-free” marketing and the European Union listing BPA as a substance of high concern. Exposure to BPA can affect brain development and behavior. BPA has also been linked to hormone disruption, reproductive problems in men and women and other harmful health impacts. There is a solution. Many of the most common single-use plastics polluting our environment contain toxic chemicals that harm human health. By banning unnecessary single-use materials — like plastic film used in plastic bags and polystyrene used in Styrofoam packaging — we could prevent a lot of these chemicals from seeping into the environment.

To reduce our risk of exposure to these toxic chemicals and maintain a cleaner environment, we must start by calling on our legislators to ban unnecessary single-use plastic and transition to non-toxic, reusable alternatives. Nothing we use for a few minutes should persist in our environments and threaten our health for generations.

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Sep 052020
 
 September 5, 2020  Posted by at 10:04 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  11 Responses »


John Guttman 1st drive-in theater in California, Los Angeles 1935

 

Russia’s COVID19 Vaccine Showed Antibody Response In Initial Trials (R.)
Post-COVID Syndrome Severely Damages Children’s Hearts (MedEx)
Back to School…D’ya Think? (Kunstler)
Joe Biden Goes Full Ron Burgundy (ZH)
Stocks Are Up. Wages Are Down. What Does it Mean? (EFTD)
Fed Chair Powell: Wearing Masks Can Lead To ‘Enormous’ Economic Gains (Y!)
Nearly Two-Thirds Of New York Restaurants Could Close By Year’s End (JTN)
DOJ, Flynn Lawyers Urge Judge To Move ‘With Dispatch’ To Dismiss Charges (JTN)
In Joint Motion With DOJ, Flynn Requests Court Expedite Ruling (SAC)
Why Capitalism Creates Pointless Jobs (David Graeber)

 

 

On the COVID front, the numbers get uglier, but the Russian vaccine works, so how many have we ordered, did you say? Can we get the billions in development funds back from Big Pharma?

On the election front, it’s getting harder to find news, because the polarization is getting so extreme. The Atlantic piece about Trump badmouthing soldiers is on the level of eating babies stories, but people eat it up. What else do they have in store? And why isn’t anyone calling for calm?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ben Hunt

 

 

It seems to work. What are we waiting for?

Russia’s COVID19 Vaccine Showed Antibody Response In Initial Trials (R.)

Russia’s “Sputnik-V” COVID-19 vaccine produced an antibody response in all participants in early-stage trials, according to results published on Friday by The Lancet medical journal that were hailed by Moscow as an answer to its critics. The results of the two trials, conducted in June-July this year and involving 76 participants, showed 100% of participants developing antibodies to the new coronavirus and no serious side effects, The Lancet said. Russia licensed the two-shot jab for domestic use in August, the first country to do so and before any data had been published or a large-scale trial begun.

“The two 42-day trials – including 38 healthy adults each – did not find any serious adverse effects among participants, and confirmed that the vaccine candidates elicit an antibody response,” The Lancet said. “Large, long-term trials including a placebo comparison, and further monitoring are needed to establish the long-term safety and effectiveness of the vaccine for preventing COVID-19 infection,” it said. The vaccine is named Sputnik-V in homage to the world’s first satellite, launched by the Soviet Union. Some Western experts have warned against its use until all internationally approved testing and regulatory steps have been taken.

But with the results now published for the first time in an international peer-reviewed journal, and with a 40,000-strong later-stage trial launched last week, a senior Russian official said Moscow had faced down its critics abroad. “With this (publication) we answer all of the questions of the West that were diligently asked over the past three weeks, frankly with the clear goal of tarnishing the Russian vaccine,” said Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, which has backed the vaccine. “All of the boxes are checked,” he told Reuters. “Now… we will start asking questions of some of the Western vaccines.”

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More freak stuff.

Post-COVID Syndrome Severely Damages Children’s Hearts (MedEx)

Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), believed to be linked to COVID-19, damages the heart to such an extent that some children will need lifelong monitoring and interventions, said the senior author of a medical literature review published Sept. 4 in EClinicalMedicine, a journal of The Lancet. Case studies also show MIS-C can strike seemingly healthy children without warning three or four weeks after asymptomatic infections, said Alvaro Moreira, MD, MSc, of The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. Dr. Moreira, a neonatologist, is an assistant professor of pediatrics in the university’s Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine.


“According to the literature, children did not need to exhibit the classic upper respiratory symptoms of COVID-19 to develop MIS-C, which is frightening,” Dr. Moreira said. “Children might have no symptoms, no one knew they had the disease, and a few weeks later, they may develop this exaggerated inflammation in the body.” The team reviewed 662 MIS-C cases reported worldwide between Jan. 1 and July 25.

Among the findings:
• 71% of the children were admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU).
• 60% presented with shock.
• Average length of stay in the hospital was 7.9 days.
• 100% had fever, 73.7% had abdominal pain or diarrhea, and 68.3% suffered vomiting.
• 90% had an echocardiogram (EKG) test and 54% of the results were abnormal.
• 2.2% of the children required mechanical ventilation.
• 4.4% required extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO).
• 11 children died.


“This is a new childhood disease that is believed to be associated with SARS-CoV-2,” Dr. Moreira said. “It can be lethal because it affects multiple organ systems. Whether it be the heart and the lungs, the gastrointestinal system or the neurologic system, it has so many different faces that initially it was challenging for clinicians to understand.” The amount of inflammation in MIS-C surpasses two similar pediatric conditions, Kawasaki disease and toxic shock syndrome. “The saving grace is that treating these patients with therapies commonly used for Kawasaki—immunoglobulin and glucocorticosteroids—has been effective,” Dr. Moreira said.

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“Covid has initiated the death of public ed in America..”

Back to School…D’ya Think? (Kunstler)

“…Covid has initiated the death of public ed in America…. The state cannot decide whether we should start full remote or whether we should try some weird hybrid schedule. Nobody can make a decision. The union is pissed. They know most of the classrooms are poorly ventilated and too small and they see nothing but a ‘cruise ship’ scenario unfolding. Remote is terrible, but it is better than nothing….” Before we go further, remember the first principle of the long emergency: anything organized at the giant scale is liable to fail. During the post-war growth spurt, we consolidated all the nation’s schools into giant districts serviced by the yellow bus fleets bringing thousands of kids together in buildings designed to look like insecticide factories.

And when that project was complete, what did we get? Two decades of mass shootings in schools. I don’t think we got the correct message from this — which is that this manner of schooling produces so much ennui and anomie that some kids turn homicidal by the time they hit their teens. The fact that this condition remains unrecognized, and certainly absent from public discussion, says a lot about our disastrous collective psychology of previous investment: having set up this miserable system at titanic expense, we can’t even think about changing it. Now, as is usual in human history, the process will happen emergently, on its own, whether we like it or not, because circumstances demand it.

Another matter absent from news media is what happens when falling tax revenues start to bite the giant consolidated school districts. My physics teacher correspondent in New England writes: “School finances are in full reverse mode. Whispered in the hallways before every school committee and in every town council chamber is the awesome reality that sales tax and property tax collections are down 25 – 30 percent. The fear is palpable…. It seems to me that Public Ed as we currently know it will be history in about four years. It is a big edifice. It will take a few years to fully implode, but not a decade. There’s no money left to keep it going as it is.”

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This was just too funny.

Joe Biden Goes Full Ron Burgundy (ZH)

Joe Biden engaged in a giant softball game with the press today – perhaps best described by Newsbusters’ Curtis Houck as not “even putting the ball on the tee. This is hitting the ball over the stands and letting Biden run the bases.” But before we get the choreographed Q&A, you should know that Biden went full Ron Burgundy today – reading “end of quote” off the teleprompter. The Friday flub comes just one day after Biden read ‘topline message’ off another teleprompter. In short, Biden is now having issues with ‘behind the curtain’ media cues.

Hillary
https://twitter.com/i/status/1302033150164586497

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“Since 2017, Bezos’ net worth has grown by about $4 million per hour..”

Stocks Are Up. Wages Are Down. What Does it Mean? (EFTD)


If you listen carefully, you can hear Jeff Bezos getting richer. There’s the sound again. Another billion in Bezos’ coffers. Let’s put some numbers to this sound of money. Since 2017, Bezos’ net worth has grown by about $4 million per hour — roughly 500,000 times the US minimum wage.1 This accumulation of wealth would be absurd during normal times. Today, as many workers lose their jobs to a brutal pandemic, it’s obscene. While Bezos is the pinnacle of capitalist excess, his wealth is part of a larger story. Over the last 40 years, stock prices have surged while wages have stagnated. What does this trend mean? In this post, I take a deep dive into the stock market. I’ll first tell you what the stock market is not. It’s not an indicator of ‘productive capacity’. Nor is it ‘fictitious capital’. So what is it?

The stock market, argue Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler, is how capitalists quantify their power. To understand what Nitzan and Bichler are talking about, we’ll unmask the ritual that defines our social order — the ritual of capitalization. Read on to take the red pill and lift the veil of capitalist ideology. When it comes to the stock market, many people believe they have original insight. Often, however, they’re parroting old ideas. Noting this tendency, economist John Maynard Keynes wrote: “[T]he ideas of economists and political philosophers … are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” (Keynes in The General Theory)

When it comes to interpreting the stock market, there are two big ideas. Both come from ‘defunct economists’. The first big idea is that rising stocks are good for everybody. I’ll call this the ‘good-for-GM’ worldview (for reasons explained below). This big idea owes not to any single economist, but to an entire defunct school: neoclassical economics. The second big idea is that the stock market is disconnected from the rest of the economy. I’ll call this the ‘fictitious-capital’ worldview. It’s an idea that dates back to Karl Marx (who had a defunct view of capital). Let’s unpack these ideas.

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He doubles as a doctor?

Fed Chair Powell: Wearing Masks Can Lead To ‘Enormous’ Economic Gains (Y!)

Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell said Friday that Americans should wear masks and follow social distancing guidelines to ensure an economic recovery. “There’s actually enormous economic gains to be had nationwide from people wearing masks and keeping their distance,” Powell told NPR. Powell added that short of a vaccine, such measures enable people to “go back to work and not get sick.” Powell also spoke about the August jobs report, describing the addition of 1.371 million payrolls in August as “a good one.” The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the new numbers on Friday morning, which also showed the unemployment rate falling to 8.4% — below the street’s expectations.

Powell pointed out that the August gains were not as large as those in May and June. “I guess I would just say, the recovery is continuing,” Powell said Friday in a clip aired on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” “We do think it will get harder from here because of those areas of the economy that are so directly affected by the pandemic still.” Powell’s remarks on Friday mark his third media interview since the COVID-19 crisis began. On March 26, Powell appeared on NBC’s “Today Show” and in mid-May, CBS’s “60 Minutes” interviewed Powell. The Fed Chairman’s remarks to NPR will be the last from Fed officials as policymakers head into a media blackout ahead of the Federal Open Market Committee’s meeting on September 15 and 16.

“We think that the economy’s going to need low interest rates, which support economic activity, for an extended period of time,” he told NPR. “It will be measured in years. The Fed chief also emphasized that more fiscal support is needed from lawmakers at the White House and Capitol Hill, for example on eviction moratoriums. “We shouldn’t let those people lose everything they have and have to move out or be evicted and move in with family. That’s also not going to be good for containing the COVID spread,” he said.

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Eat at home.

Nearly Two-Thirds Of New York Restaurants Could Close By Year’s End (JTN)

New York restaurants are taking the hit from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s extended coronavirus shutdowns, with almost two-thirds of owners saying they could be out of business by year’s end, according to a survey released Thursday. The survey by the New York State Restaurant Association is based on responses from over 1,000 restaurant owners in the state and provides a window into the future of the previously booming industry, as the pandemic nears six months. Roughly 63% of respondents said they could likely close by the end of the year without some form of financial relief and 36% said they expect to still be in business in January. “It is painfully clear that without financial assistance, the restaurant industry in New York State could collapse,” said Melissa Fleischut, the NYSRA’s president and CEO.


“These recent survey results illustrate just how dire the financial situation has become for most restaurants, and it shows how critical it is that elected officials understand the urgency of the situation.” Restaurant owners need financial support but ultimately want increased indoor dining capacity and in NYC the ability to open for indoor dining. New York city officials said earlier this week that roughly 1,300 of the city’s 25,000 restaurants and bars have shut down amid the pandemic. “We are now asking the governor, the state Legislature and those at the federal level to simply help us survive. Without further assistance, the restaurant industry as we know it could be gone in a New York minute,” Fleischut also said.

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Why am I thinking the judge will let it go to the Supreme Court? What does he have to lose?

DOJ, Flynn Lawyers Urge Judge To Move ‘With Dispatch’ To Dismiss Charges (JTN)

The Justice Department and Michael Flynn’s defense team jointly asked a federal judge Friday to move “with dispatch” to complete a ruling on whether to dismiss the former Trump adviser’s guilty plea and related criminal charge from the Russia probe. The two sides, which agree the case should now be dismissed based on exculpatory evidence of innocence made public earlier this year, laid out a schedule in a joint status report to complete briefs, reports and hearings in September. “The United States and General Flynn agree that this Court should resolve the pending motion to dismiss with dispatch,” their report argued. “Any delay would harm both the government, which must expend resources on a case that it has determined should be dismissed, and General Flynn, who faces impairments on his liberty and the cloud of a pending prosecution that the Executive Branch seeks to end.”


The filing came just days after the full DC Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a three-judge panel’s decision and refused to grant a writ of mandamus that would have dismissed the charge against Flynn. The appeals court sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan and asked him to move quickly to resolve the matter. Flynn withdrew his guilty plea nearly a year ago and the Trump DOJ concluded earlier this year that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecution of the former Trump national security adviser for lying to the FBI was unwarranted.

https://twitter.com/SidneyPowell1/status/1301996116494475270

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“..there is no reason for any delay.”

In Joint Motion With DOJ, Flynn Requests Court Expedite Ruling (SAC)

Former National Security Advisor Michael T. Flynn and the Department of Justice filed a motion late Friday to expedite his case after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied his petition for a writ of mandamus against Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is overseeing the case. Flynn’s case has been a roller coaster ride since the former Special Counsel Robert Mueller targeted the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who went on to be a loyal and trusted member of Trump’s team in 2016. Moreover, Flynn has been up against a behemoth of opposition from former Obama officials and Sullivan, who has acted more like a prosecutor than a judge. The circumstances surrounding Flynn’s case have led Trump, along with many others, to call for his exoneration.

Evidence discovered over the past year by the DOJ’s Inspector General, Flynn’s attorney, Sidney Powell, and an appointed counsel put in place by Attorney General William Barr reveal extensive malfeasance in the FBI’s handling of its investigation into the Trump campaign and Flynn. The litany of evidence collected during the investigations led the Justice Department to request a dismissal Flynn’s case. Unfortunately, the request to dismiss the case was politicized by Judge Sullivan, who is overseeing Flynn’s case. He has been fighting the request and accusing Barr of intervening on behalf of Trump. Because of this, Sullivan appointed an amicus curiae, a friend of the court, to argue on his behalf as to why the case should not be dismissed until he reviews it further.

Powell fought back against Sullivan’s unusual actions but could not persuade the appellate court last week to order Sullivan to dismiss the case against Flynn based on the Justice Department’s motion to have his case dismissed. In effect, Flynn and his family have faced an extraordinary ordeal over the past three years that has left the three-star general and war hero depleted of funds and emotionally strained. “We look forward to getting a ruling on the government’s motion to dismiss as soon as possible,” Powell told SaraACarter.com. “Between the issues fully briefed for the Court of Appeals in which Judge Sullivan fully participated as if he were a party and the briefing already filed in his court, there is no reason for any delay.” In the motion Powell and the Justice Department argue that it “is not necessary, however, for this Court to wait until September 21 to proceed with this case. The Court instead may, and should, set a schedule to resolve this case as soon as possible.”

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4 years ago.

Why Capitalism Creates Pointless Jobs (David Graeber)

In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that technology would have advanced sufficiently by century’s end that countries like Great Britain or the United States would achieve a 15-hour work week. There’s every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen. Instead, technology has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it.

Why did Keynes’ promised utopia – still being eagerly awaited in the ‘60s – never materialise? The standard line today is that he didn’t figure in the massive increase in consumerism. Given the choice between less hours and more toys and pleasures, we’ve collectively chosen the latter. This presents a nice morality tale, but even a moment’s reflection shows it can’t really be true. Yes, we have witnessed the creation of an endless variety of new jobs and industries since the ‘20s, but very few have anything to do with the production and distribution of sushi, iPhones, or fancy sneakers.

So what are these new jobs, precisely? A recent report comparing employment in the US between 1910 and 2000 gives us a clear picture (and I note, one pretty much exactly echoed in the UK). Over the course of the last century, the number of workers employed as domestic servants, in industry, and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically. At the same time, “professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers” tripled, growing “from one-quarter to three-quarters of total employment.” In other words, productive jobs have, just as predicted, been largely automated away (even if you count industrial workers globally, including the toiling masses in India and China, such workers are still not nearly so large a percentage of the world population as they used to be).

But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world’s population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas, we have seen the ballooning not even so much of the “service” sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations. And these numbers do not even reflect on all those people whose job is to provide administrative, technical, or security support for these industries, or for that matter the whole host of ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza deliverymen) that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones.

These are what I propose to call “bullshit jobs.”

Read more …

 

 

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