M. C. Escher Order and chaos 1950
The protected
https://twitter.com/i/status/1445681587547299851
Yellow badges
GERMANY – yellow badges to identify the vaccinated.
“I have been vaccinated.” In the center: the image of a syringe in signal red.
Yes they really have done this. #Covid_19 #NoVaccinePassportsAnywhere pic.twitter.com/4yNimBlnYN
— Bernie's Tweets (@BernieSpofforth) October 6, 2021
“If hundreds of thousands of patients die unnecessarily, their doctors will not be held responsible. “I was just following the guidelines” has replaced “I was just following orders.”
• Covid-19 Response and the Tyranny of Evidence-Based Medicine (Amerling)
When the first wave of what was then known as the Wuhan virus hit in March-April 2020, medical attention was almost completely focused on management of the acutely ill patient. This was notable for its very high failure rate, particularly post-intubation. A handful of intrepid doctors, including Zev Zelenko in upstate NY and Didier Raoult in Marseille, France, addressed early outpatient treatment using repurposed existing drugs such as hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). These physicians achieved remarkable clinical results, but instead of being embraced and emulated, they were censored and harassed. As should now be obvious to even the most naïve, Pharma and other stakeholders had to suppress successful, cheap remedies to pave the way for the rollout of the “vaccines” that were already developed.
How was this accomplished? By using the tyranny of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM). “These treatments are not evidence-based!” they screamed. “Where are the randomized controlled trials (RCTs)?” they demanded. Kind of hard to have RCT data on a brand new disease, but so what. The authorities had spoken. In their excellent book, Tarnished Gold: The Sickness of Evidence-Based Medicine, Steve Hickey and Hillary Roberts write: “EBM encourages totalitarian medicine. It is displacing the doctor-patient unit as the ultimate decision-making authority. Peer review is used as censorship. EBM is a self-referential closed system, where critical appraisal means checking whether a study conforms to its rules. So-called evidence-based medicine wrongly claims the authority of medical and scientific gold-standards. EBM repackages and uses concepts from legal proof, in an attempt to impose a medical dictatorship.”
EBM is a movement that began in the early 1990s with the noble intention of incorporating high quality research into clinical practice. Over the last 20 years, EBM has steadily replaced traditional medicine, which depended on understanding pathophysiology and pathology (i.e. basic science), along with careful patient management including following response to treatments. EBM was quickly hijacked by industry to promote the use of their products through clinical practice guidelines, which are based on little more than a consensus of “experts,” the majority of whom receive financial support from industry. Ironically, many guideline recommendations are based on low quality, or no evidence.
EBM arrogantly claims for itself the mantle of “science,” but is actually pseudoscientific. It relies heavily on studies of large populations and therefore statistics, which are inherently unreliable and easy to manipulate. The conceit of EBM is that the results of large population studies can and should be used to dictate treatment of individual patients. It exalts metanalyses, statistical compilations of many studies, that can be created to support almost any pre-conceived idea. The vast majority of physicians are unable to understand, let alone deconstruct, the statistics used in most studies. “Evidence” is not science. Evidence can always be found to support any hypothesis, no matter how absurd. Remember that according to the “evidence,” Paul McCartney has been dead since 1966!
Whoever controls the “evidence” controls “the science” and through the bogus and corrupt guideline process, controls clinical practice. EBM creates an arbitrary hierarchy of evidence, with RCTs and metanalyses at the top and clinical experience, insultingly called ‘anecdotes,’ at the bottom. This is absurd on its face. The logical conclusion is that clinical experience is not needed to practice medicine! Just buy a guideline cookbook and go out there and heal! Perhaps that’s where things are headed. Or perhaps we are already there. If hundreds of thousands of patients die unnecessarily, their doctors will not be held responsible. “I was just following the guidelines” has replaced “I was just following orders.”
Yes, scary. Very.
• Reverse-transcribed SARS-CoV-2 RNA Can Integrate Into The Genome (Pnas)
Continuous or recurrent positive severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) PCR tests have been reported in samples taken from patients weeks or months after recovery from an initial infection. Although bona fide reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 after recovery has recently been reported, cohort-based studies with subjects held in strict quarantine after they recovered from COVID-19 suggested that at least some “re-positive” cases were not caused by reinfection. Furthermore, no replication-competent virus was isolated or spread from these PCR-positive patients, and the cause for the prolonged and recurrent production of viral RNA remains unknown. SARS-CoV-2 is a positive-stranded RNA virus.
Like other beta-coronaviruses (SARS-CoV-1 and Middle East respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus), SARS-CoV-2 employs an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase to replicate its genomic RNA and transcribe subgenomic RNAs. One possible explanation for the continued detection of SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA in the absence of virus reproduction is that, in some cases, DNA copies of viral subgenomic RNAs may integrate into the DNA of the host cell by a reverse transcription mechanism. Transcription of the integrated DNA copies could be responsible for positive PCR tests long after the initial infection was cleared. Indeed, nonretroviral RNA virus sequences have been detected in the genomes of many vertebrate species with several integrations exhibiting signals consistent with the integration of DNA copies of viral mRNAs into the germline via ancient long interspersed nuclear element (LINE) retrotransposons.
Furthermore, nonretroviral RNA viruses such as vesicular stomatitis virus or lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) can be reverse transcribed into DNA copies by an endogenous reverse transcriptase (RT), and DNA copies of the viral sequences have been shown to integrate into the DNA of host cells.
47% after five months. Better get back in that jab line.
• New Lancet Study Confirms Plummeting Vaccine Effectiveness (DS)
A study appeared in the Lancet this week confirming that vaccine effectiveness against infection is fading fast. The study involved 3,436,957 people over the age of 12 who are members of the healthcare organisation Kaiser Permanente Southern California. It sought to assess the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19-related hospital admissions for up to six months, with a study period covering December 14th 2020 to August 8th 2021. Comparing fully vaccinated to unvaccinated, and controlling for confounders such as prior infection, the researchers found that effectiveness against infection plummeted from 88% (95% confidence interval 86-89%) during the first month after double-vaccination to 47% (43-51%) after five months. The variation by age (depicted above) was largely within the margins of error.
Among sequenced infections, the researchers found vaccine effectiveness against Delta infection was 93% (85-97%) during the first month after double-vaccination but dropped to 53% (39-65%) after four months. Effectiveness against infection from other variants the first month after double-vaccination was 97% (95-99%), but declined to 67% (45-80%) at 4-5 months. Vaccine effectiveness against hospital admissions for Delta infection held up at around 93% (84-96%) for the six months across all ages. However, the researchers note that the latest data from Israel “suggests that some reduction in effectiveness against hospital admissions has been observed among older people (65 years and over) roughly six months after receiving the second dose of [Pfizer]”.
One question that’s arisen recently is to what extent vaccine effectiveness estimates are affected by whether more people who have been previously infected decide not to be vaccinated. According to this study the answer is: not very much at all. Among the unvaccinated, 2.3% had one or more previous positive PCR tests, only slightly more than the 2% of the double-vaccinated who did.
“..NIH’s ongoing compassionless guideline of doing virtually nothing until COVID-19 patients are so sick they require hospitalization..”
• GOP Senators Demand More Early Treatment Options For Covid-19 (JTN)
Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and 21 other Republicans are pressuring the Biden Administration to offer more early treatment options for COVID-19 to the American Public. “Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, public health officials have not only ignored potential early treatments, but at times seem to have participated in an aggressive campaign against the use of specific early treatment options,” the group’s letter to officials stated. The letter was addressed to Xavier Becerra, Secretary of Health and Human Services; Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Dr. Janet Woodcock, Acting Commissioner of Food and Drug Administration.
“Even though a basic tenet of medicine is: early detection allows for early treatment which produces better results; your agencies have overtly discouraged the use of cheap and widely-available early treatments like ivermectin in favor of expensive new drugs like Remdesivir (which costs more than $3,000 per treatment),” the letter said. The group charged that the Administration a “strong bias” against ivermectin and “other potential early treatment drugs.” The letter from the Republican senators comes as the Biden administration started capping how many doses of antibody treatments it would be giving to states.
“We strongly believe you should explain to the American people why your agencies have failed to sufficiently examine and ensure access to a growing list of drugs being used by doctors who have had the courage to ignore NIH’s ongoing compassionless guideline of doing virtually nothing until COVID-19 patients are so sick they require hospitalization,” the group wrote. Sen. Johnson previously held two hearings on early treatment of COVID-19.
Sweden: people under 30. Denmark: people under 18.
Do they really think no-one will notice?
• Sweden Halts Use Of Moderna’s Covid Vaccine For Younger Adults (RT)
The Swedish Public Health Agency has decided to suspend offering Moderna’s Covid vaccine to anyone born in 1991 and later for precautionary reasons, citing the slightly increased risk of heart inflammation following inoculation. On Wednesday, the agency issued a statement announcing that it will pause dishing out Moderna’s jab, marketed as Spikevax, to people under 30. Instead, the Comirnaty vaccine manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech will be offered to this age group. Announcing the suspension, the agency said data pointed to an “increased incidence” of heart inflammation diseases myocarditis and pericarditis – mainly in younger men and adolescent boys – “in connection with vaccination against Covid-19.”
The notice stated that “new preliminary analysis from Swedish and Nordic data sources indicate that the connection is especially clear when it comes to Moderna’s vaccine Spikevax, especially after the second dose.” Younger Swedes who have already received their first dose of the paused jab, estimated to be around 81,000 people, will now be unable to receive the second shot of that vaccine as per its usual delivery regimen. The health agency said it was looking for the best alternative to offer this group. Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, said that those who have been vaccinated recently, either with their first or second jab, should not worry about the risk, noting that it is very small. He added though that Swedes should be vigilant for symptoms of the two inflammatory conditions. Nordic neighbor Denmark also stopped the use of Spikevax on Wednesday, although only for minors under 18, citing similar concerns of rare side effects such as myocarditis.
So you take that difference between 18 and 30 years above, and then ask: what age are most people in the army?
Ah, the rumor is real. “STOCKHOLM, Oct 6 (Reuters) – Sweden will pause the use of Moderna’s (MRNA.O) COVID-19 vaccine for people born 1991 and later after reports of possible rare side effects, such as myocarditis, the Swedish health agency said on Wednesday. The health agency said data pointed to an increase of myocarditis and pericarditis among youths and young adults that had been vaccinated.” That’s anyone under 30 years old. Ok folks, how many people did we screw here in the US with mandates, with “strong recommendations” and similar?
How many businesses, along with all of their directors and officers need to be completely destroyed as a consequence of mandates? Oh, and what percentage of the MILITARY active duty are under 30? Threatened with a dishonorable discharge for refusal to put your cardiac health at risk of permanent harm eh? Note that Sweden previously approved the Moderna shot for anyone over 12. That turns out to be wrong. They claim the risk of being affected is “very small.” Would you quantify “very small” please? No? Gee, why not? Incidentally on the data that we have available the Pfizer jab, which Sweden is still willing to use in young people, also has the same potential adverse effect.
“[M]erely drawing different conclusions based on consideration of scientific evidence does not render the Vaccine Policy arbitrary and irrational..”
It should make it subject of discussion. And that’s what’s being suppressed.
• Covid Commissars Financially Squeezing, Blackballing Dissenting Doctors (JTN)
Medical professionals are facing threats to their careers and livelihoods for challenging COVID-19 orthodoxy, while an oft-censored Harvard Medical School professor is facing his latest Big Tech kerfuffle. The University of California put psychiatrist and bioethics professor Aaron Kheriaty on “investigatory leave” after he sued the university system for refusing to recognize natural immunity such as his among exemptions to its COVID vaccine mandate. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Kheriaty had previously invoked the post-Nazi Nuremberg code in urging universities to abandon their mandates. In his personal newsletter Wednesday, Kheriaty said he’ll lose half his income while on so-called paid leave, because he’s banned from “seeing my patients, supervising resident clinics, and engaging in weekend and holiday on-call duties.”
His contract also bans him from working as a physician outside the UC system to recoup his revenue loss. “The University may be hoping this pressure will lead me to resign ‘voluntarily,’ which would remove grounds for my lawsuit,” Kheriaty wrote. UC’s action came a day after a court refused to issue a preliminary injunction, functionally declaring a draw between each party’s scientific arguments about different forms of immunity and what risk vaccination poses for the recovered. “[M]erely drawing different conclusions based on consideration of scientific evidence does not render the Vaccine Policy arbitrary and irrational,” U.S. District Judge James Selna wrote. Protecting “a campus community of more than half a million students, faculty, and staff from a deadly infectious disease … far outweighs any harm Kheriaty may face” from choosing between vaccination or his job.
The only remaining defendant now is UC President Michael Drake, after Kheriaty agreed to drop the regents this week. The professor disclosed he filed another natural immunity federal lawsuit last week, this time against California’s vaccine mandate for health professionals. Just the News couldn’t find that lawsuit in the docket, and Kheriaty didn’t respond to a request to share it or explain how his investigatory leave may affect his UC lawsuit, such as a new retaliation claim. Canadian physician Charles Hoffe has also lost half his income while under investigation for sharing government data on the COVID recovery rate with patients, who are mostly First Nations members, according to his lawyers at the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF).
British Columbia’s Interior Health Authority had already warned Hoffe to stop promoting “vaccine hesitancy” after it learned he had been telling colleagues about his patients’ adverse reactions to the Moderna vaccine — one death and nine “disabling long-term side-effects.” A dozen European countries had pulled the AstraZeneca vaccine around that time for its association with blood clots, and Hoffe’s own investigation found “strong evidence” his patients had the same problems. A provincial health official referred Hoffe to a vaccine safety specialist who dismissed his concerns as “coincidences,” according to JCCF.
How does this improve health care? 1000s of professionals are being thrown out.
• Ontario Doctor Resigns Over Forced Vaccines And Falsehoods (LSN)
Dr. Rochagné Kilian recently resigned as an emergency room and family practice physician due to her concerns that the Ontario health system and Grey Bruce Health Services (GBHS) crossed ethical lines throughout the pandemic. In a virtual meeting that included GBHS CEO Gary Sims and other staff members, Dr. Kilian asked Sims a series of questions about what she believes is unethical behaviour on behalf of the Ontario health system at all levels. Sims appeared to be unprepared for difficult questions pertaining to the ongoing rollout of vaccination mandates and vaccine segregation restrictions the Ontario heath system is championing. Kilian estimated that 80 percent of the patients she saw in the ER during the past month who had inexplicable symptoms were “double vaxxed.”
Dr. Kilian relocated to Owen Sound – a small city in Grey County, Ontario – from South Africa after previously working in British Columbia. When she resettled in Owen Sound with her family, she expressed to a local paper how happy she was to live there: “Our recruitment to Owen Sound might have been by chance, but our choice to settle here was definitely not. Our four months in Owen Sound have been blessed. A little town with lots of soul, surrounded by beautiful landscapes, filled with welcoming residents and businesses, and exciting festivals, programs and activities. We truly feel fortunate to raise a family here.”
The first issue that Dr. Kilian brought up during the meeting was informed consent regarding the COVID jab and what she considered to be a coercive mentality of pressuring people to accept medications that she pointed out are still in “clinical trials.” An GBHS administrator did not answer her question directly, but instead passed the buck to the provincial government and stated they do not have “oversight or input” regarding consent mechanisms presented to patients. Kilian added that having more input into what patients are consenting to is something that GBHS “should consider,” especially in light of enacting the government-recommended vaccination mandates with their own staff. Referring to informed consent and mandating experimental vaccines that been linked to thousands of deaths and injuries, Sims explained that because of the “pandemic,” certain procedural normalities will not take place.
[..] Dr. Kilian pressed Sims about claims that protocols of informed consent can be skirted due to an emergency, and clarified that the Tri-Council Policy Statement stipulates that an emergency situation does not warrant skirting protocols that protect the population from being put at risk due to medical experimentation. The Tri-Council Policy Statement is a Canadian guideline for the ethical conduct of research involving humans and/or human biological materials. As the vaccinations are still technically under experimental trial, they are being implemented under a research-based framework on the population.
It was Kilian’s opinion that the ethical framework is being ignored, thus health workers and citizens are being forced to take something against their will that is not proven to be safe or effective in the long term, as a result of vaccination mandates. Sims reacted sharply to Kilian and said, “Nobody is forcing you to do this, you have a right to say no, but the reality is the government has the right to say that you’re not employed.” “When the law looks at it, the law is saying you have the right to do it [enforcing vaccine mandates],” he added.
“Conscription didn’t end because it was a breach of human rights, it ended because the public pressure was just too much.”
• Mandatory Vaccination Is A Human Rights Violation (Spec.au)
Mandating or coercing COVID vaccination is one of the most important civil liberties issues of my lifetime. It’s a fundamental breach of human rights allegedly guaranteed by a number of international conventions and Australian law, as well as our long tradition of liberal democracy. Nowhere is the legal case against put more clearly than in a judgment of the Fair Work Commission published on Monday. It says, in a dissenting judgment, that because the vaccines are part of a clinical trial, coercing someone to take them breaches The Nuremburg Code, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Declaration of Helsinki, and the Siracusa Principles.
The judgement also holds that vaccine mandates also breach Australian law as the Australian Human Right Commission Act 1986 (Cth) gives effect to Australia’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Article 7 which provides “…no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation”. So the issue isn’t whether it is a breach, but how great a breach, and whether that will have any practical consequences. In my view, it is in the top tier of breaches – much worse than infringements on free speech, but not as bad as conscripting someone to war (the most serious breach I have seen). Unlike many abuses of human rights, in this case there are physical risks and benefits to taking the vaccines, some of which are “known unknowns”, or perhaps even “unknown unknowns” to borrow Donald Rumsfeld’s taxonomy of knowledge.
However, on “known knowns”, the US CDC estimates, using the VAERS database that the risk of death is .021 per thousand. That would be 525 deaths from the vaccine if everyone in Australia was vaccinated. And for what? We also know that a percentage of those vaccinated will also die from COVID. Another way of measuring the severity is to ask what individual Australians will put at risk to avoid the vax. The answer to that is that thousands have protested on the streets, risking fines in the thousands, and others are about to protest silently by losing their jobs and livelihoods, a price greater than any of the current fines.
What that adds up to one can only guess, but it will be significant, not only to the individuals but to the country as well as expertise is taken out of the system, perhaps never to return. Of particular concern must be that a significant proportion of these are health professionals. This will increase the stress on our hospitals at the moment when they are likely to be hit by a wave of illness from the Delta wave. In the end, the individual will is more important than the legalities. Conscription didn’t end because it was a breach of human rights, it ended because the public pressure was just too much.
The sheer insanity. Move to a red state?!
• Colorado Hospital Set To Deny Kidney Transplant For Unvaxxed Woman (ZH)
Now that vaccines are widely available and 56% of the US population is vaccinated (significantly missing President Biden’s Jul. 4 target of 70%), a little less than half of the country is unvaxxed and subjected to shocking and dehumanizing discrimination, making life very stressful. Across the country, the hot-button subject entering the fall is COVID vaccination passes for restaurants and football stadiums in certain cities, counties, and or even states. This has made life painful for the unvaxxed (as planned by the administration) who can’t go to their favorite eatery or cheer on their favorite sports team. However, the latest discrimination story of an unvaxxed person is terrifying.
A Colorado woman with stage 5 kidney failure is scrambling to find a new hospital because she and her donor are unvaxxed, and the hospital system has given them 30 days to get vaccinated or be taken off the transplant list. UCHealth, a healthcare system headquartered in Aurora, Colorado, adopted new transplant rules requiring patients to be fully vaccinated. “Here I am, willing to be a direct donor to her. It does not affect any other patient on the transplant list,” Jaimee Fougner, Leilani Lutali’s kidney donor, told Colorado-based news station CBS4. “How can I sit here and allow them to murder my friend when I’ve got a perfect kidney and can save her life?” Fougner said.
Lutali received a letter from UCHealth last week explaining she and Fougner had until the end of October to begin the vaccine process, or they would be removed from the transplant list. “I said I’ll sign a medical waiver. I have to sign a waiver anyway for the transplant itself, releasing them from anything that could possibly go wrong,” said Lutali. “It’s surgery, it’s invasive. I sign a waiver for my life. I’m not sure why I can’t sign a waiver for the COVID shot.” In August, UCHealth told Lutali that being vaxxed wouldn’t be a requirement for the surgery. “At the end of August, they confirmed that there was no COVID shot needed at that time,” she said. “Fast forward to Sept. 28. That’s when I found out. Jamie learned they have this policy around the COVID shot for both for the donor and the recipient.”
“If you want people to put up patiently with long hours of drudgery at miserably low wages, subject to wretched conditions and humiliating policies, so that their self-proclaimed betters can enjoy lifestyles they will never be able to share, it’s a really bad idea to make them stop work and give them a good long period of solitude..”
• That Untraversed Land (Greer)
I think that in retrospect, the decision to lock down entire societies to stop the coronavirus will end up in the history books as one of the most spectacular blunders ever committed by a ruling class. Partly, of course, the lockdowns didn’t work—look at graphs of case numbers over time from places that locked down vs. places that didn’t, and you’ll find that locking down societies and putting millions of people out of work didn’t do a thing to change the size and duration of the outbreak. Partly, the economic damage inflicted by the lockdowns would have taken years to heal even if the global industrial economy wasn’t already choking on excessive debt and running short of a galaxy of crucial raw materials. But there’s more to it than that.
If you want people to put up patiently with long hours of drudgery at miserably low wages, subject to wretched conditions and humiliating policies, so that their self-proclaimed betters can enjoy lifestyles they will never be able to share, it’s a really bad idea to make them stop work and give them a good long period of solitude, in which they can think about what they want out of life and how little of it they’re getting from the role you want them to play. It’s an especially bad idea to do it so that they have no way of knowing when, or if, they will ever be allowed to return to their former lives, thus forcing them to look for other options in order to stay fed, clothed, housed, and the like. (We can set aside the question of vaccine mandates for now—that’s another kettle of fish—but of course those feed into this same effect.)
So there’s a labor shortage, and it’s concentrated in exactly those jobs that are most essential to keeping the economy running. These are also the jobs most likely to have lousy pay and worse conditions. This isn’t accidental. It unfolds from one of the most pervasive and least discussed features of contemporary economic life: the metastatic growth of intermediation. Let’s unpack that phrase a bit. The simplest of all economic exchanges takes place between two people, each of whom has something the other wants. They make an exchange, and both go off happy. If what one of the people brings to the exchange is labor, and the other person brings something the first person wants or needs in exchange for labor, we call that “employment,” and the first person is an employee and the second an employer, but it’s still a simple exchange.
So long as there’s no overt or covert coercion involved on either side, it’s a fair trade. What happens as a society becomes more complex, however, is that people insert themselves into that transaction and demand a cut. Governments—national, local, and everything in between—tax income, sales, and everything else they can think of. Banks charge interest and fees on every scrap of money that passes through their hands. Real estate owners drive up the cost of land so that they can take an ever larger share of the proceeds in rent and mortgage payments. Then you have a long line of other industries lobbying government for their share of the take.
“He has ordered me to pay millions to Chevron to cover their legal fees in attacking me, and then he let Chevron go into my bank accounts and take all my life’s savings because I did not have the funds to cover these costs. Chevron still has a pending motion to order me to pay them an additional $32 [million] in legal fees..”
• The Anonymous Executioners of the Corporate State (Hedges)
Donziger and his lawyers have two weeks to appeal the judge’s order that Donziger be sent immediately to jail. Preska denied Donziger bail claiming he is a flight risk. If the Federal Court of Appeals turns down Donziger’s appeal he will go to jail for six months. The irony, not lost on Donziger and his lawyers, is that the higher court may overturn Preska’s ruling against him, but by the time that decision is made he will potentially have already spent six months in jail. “What Judge Preska is trying to do is force me to serve the entirety of my sentence before the appellate court can rule,” Donziger told me by phone on Monday. “If the appellate court rules in my favor, I will still have served my sentence, although I am innocent in the eyes of the law.”
Donziger, his lawyers have pointed out, is the first person under U.S. law charged with a “B” misdemeanor to be placed on home confinement, prior to trial, with an ankle monitor. He is the first person charged with any misdemeanor to be held under home confinement for over two years. He is the first attorney ever to be charged with criminal contempt over a discovery dispute in a civil case where the attorney went into voluntary contempt to pursue an appeal. He is the first person to be prosecuted under Rule 42 (criminal contempt) by a private prosecutor with financial ties to the entity and industry that was a litigant in the underlying civil dispute that gave rise to the orders. He is the first person tried by a private prosecutor who had ex parte communications with the charging judge while that judge remained (and remains) unrecused on the criminal case.
“No lawyer in New York for my level of offense ever has served more than 90 days and that was in home confinement,” Donziger told the court. “I have now been in home confinement eight times that period of time. I have been disbarred without a hearing where I have been unable to present factual evidence; thus, I am unable to earn an income in my profession. I have no passport. I can’t travel; can’t do human rights work the normal way which I believe I am reasonably good at; can’t see my clients in Ecuador; can’t visit the affected communities to hear the latest news of cancer deaths or struggles to maintain life in face of constant exposure to oil pollution. In addition, and this is little known, Judge [Lewis A.] Kaplan has imposed millions and millions of dollars of fines and courts costs on me. [Kaplan is the judge for Chevron’s lawsuit against Donziger; Preska is his handpicked judge for the contempt charges.]
He has ordered me to pay millions to Chevron to cover their legal fees in attacking me, and then he let Chevron go into my bank accounts and take all my life’s savings because I did not have the funds to cover these costs. Chevron still has a pending motion to order me to pay them an additional $32 [million] in legal fees. That’s where things stand today. I ask you humbly: might that be enough punishment already for a Class B misdemeanor?”
“..a “rarely invoked” law that allows police in Iceland to detain someone considered to be in the middle of crime spree..”
• Key US Witness Against Assange Arrested in Iceland (Lauria)
A key U.S. witness in the conspiracy to commit computer intrusion charge against imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, who earlier this year admitted to fabricating evidence he gave to the FBI, has been arrested in Iceland, according to a report in the Icelandic newsmagazine Stundin. Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson was arrested in Reykjavík on Sept. 24 after returning from Spain under a “rarely invoked” law that allows police in Iceland to detain someone considered to be in the middle of crime spree, Stundin reported. Thordarson “was brought before a judge after police requested indefinite detention intended to halt an ongoing crime spree. The judge apparently agreed that Thordarson’s repeated, blatant and ongoing offences against the law put him at high risk for continued re-offending,” Stundin said.
Thordarson admitted in an interview with Stundin last month that he was engaged in ongoing criminal activity. Thordarson admitted in an earlier interview with Stundin in June that he lied to the FBI about Assange directly ordering hacking operations — a key element of the U.S. computer charge against the WikiLeaks founder. Thordarson was granted immunity by the FBI against prosecution in exchange for becoming an FBI informant in a sting against WikiLeaks in 2010. It is not clear if Thordarson recanting his testimony is related to his recent arrest. In his September interview Thordarson said the FBI promised not to reveal to Icelandic authorities any crimes he committed in Iceland in exchange for his cooperation.
Stundin reported: “It is not clear to what extent the Icelandic authorities were informed about these arrangements, if at all. Indeed Thordarson claims he was assured by the FBI that no information would be shared with the Icelandic police about crimes he committed in Iceland, particularly the hacking attempts against Icelandic institutions. Siggi: ‘My worry was that if I told them who was hacked and how, like Landsvirkjun and the government’s website and all that, I would become a target of Icelandic authorities.’ Reporter: ‘Why?’ Siggi: “Eventually I asked if they [Icelandic authorities] would get access to the data I talked about and they [the FBI] just said no, that would never happen. That was the only discussion I had with the FBI about Icelandic authorities.’” But Thordarson also said if he lied to the FBI the immunity deal would be off.
Celente
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