René Magritte The conquerer 1926
Tucker Macgregor
Putin subservient
https://twitter.com/i/status/1517675055613767683
US food supply
Vince Coglianese about grim outlook for the future of the food supply in the U.S. pic.twitter.com/ICKIpO0sia
— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2022) April 23, 2022
The MSM spouts only Ukraine propaganda. They have very few people on the ground, so they just parrot whatever -extravagant- claims Zelensky et al make. Lazy? You bet. Journalism? Hell, no.
• Top US Officials To Meet Zelensky On First Wartime Visit To Kyiv (F24)
The United States’ top diplomat and defence chief were Sunday set to make their first wartime visits to Kyiv since Russia invaded Ukraine two months ago, with fierce battles raging in the east of the country. The trip by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin comes as the war enters its third month with thousands dead and millions displaced. A series of European leaders have already travelled to Kyiv to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky and underscore their support, but the United States – a leading donor of finance and weaponry – has yet to send any top officials. In his daily video address Saturday night, Zelensky said he was preparing for “tomorrow’s important talks with American partners”.
The State Department declined to comment on the highly sensitive trip by two of President Joe Biden’s top cabinet members. Their visit comes as Russian forces show no sign of easing their attacks and after a missile strike on the southern city of Odessa that Ukraine said killed eight people, including an infant. “Among those killed was a three-month-old baby girl. How did she threaten Russia? It seems that killing children is just a new national idea of the Russian Federation,” Zelensky said. He also accused Russia of being a terrorist state and of acting like Nazis in the shattered port city of Mariupol, which has been devastated by weeks of intense bombardment.
“New facts about the crimes of the occupiers against our Mariupol residents are being revealed. New graves of people killed by the occupiers are being found. We are talking about tens of thousands of dead Mariupol residents,” he said. The latest of many attempts to evacuate civilians from Mariupol failed Saturday, and an embattled unit of Ukrainian fighters holed up in tunnels under a sprawling steel mill there appeared in increasingly desperate straits. Zelensky also issued a new call Saturday for a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin “to end the war.”
“I think that whoever started this war will be able to end it,” Zelensky said, adding he was “not afraid” to meet the Russian leader, who attended an Orthodox Easter service in Moscow. But he again stressed that Kyiv would abandon talks with Moscow if its troops in Mariupol were killed. Zelensky also criticised a decision by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to visit Moscow on Tuesday, before heading to Kyiv. “There is no justice and no logic in this order,” he said. “The war is in Ukraine, there are no bodies in the streets of Moscow. It would be logical to go first to Ukraine, to see the people there, the consequences of the occupation,” he said.
Ukraine ‘absolutely sure’ it will win war against Russia
Ukraine 'absolutely sure' it will win war against Russia, its PM says on visit to Washington pic.twitter.com/FLHuGTZFRW
— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2022) April 23, 2022
The US and NATO are not the ‘global stage’.
• A West-mandated Russian “Default”: Who Wins And Who Loses? (Vilches)
Russia is currently “defaulting” or — in the best of cases — on a very direct and firm path to an inevitable “default”. Or at least this seems to be what the Western press and international rating agencies are pushing and rooting for, same as specialized academia, think-tanks, the political-financial-military establishment… and pretty much the whole Western Hemisphere including the US and Europe + South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. And it can reasonably be assumed that the above is most probably due to the fact that Western governments have officially and unequivocally dictated that it is not only “fair” but also wise to
(1) freeze and/or eventually “arrest” Russia´s reserve currency stockpiles held in international banking accounts (2) force Russia to pay its international financial obligations from abundantly solvent banks within Russia (3) declare that Russian payments in rubles instead of US dollars or euros or yens or GBP are not valid (4) declare Russia to be “defaulting” on its obligations by not following the above mandates (5) in case of doubt, Western governments remind us that Russia’s mandated “default” will necessarily be contested in UK Courts… which of course will always decide fully against Russia… undoubtedly and conveniently leaving aside whatever could be left of the once-traditional British “fair play” of yore.
And the West does not beat around the bush regarding this official policy with US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell walking out of the recent G-20 meeting as soon as the mike was switched over to the Russian representative. The staged move was also well coordinated with multiple “unfriendly” finance ministers and central bank governors while others present virtually shut off their cameras immediately after the Russian official uttered his first word. And leaving no room for any doubt, White House Press Secretary Jen Saki tweeted in no uncertain terms that “We support her (Janet Yellen´s) steps, and it’s an indication of the fact that President Putin and Russia have become pariahs on the global stage”. By the way, with some notable exceptions, for the same “Ukranian reasons” many of the above have openly proposed to kick Russia out of the G-20 group ASAP.
So, to make a long story short, for all practical purposes Russia will necessarily “default” soon enough per the Western strategy of “we won’t let you pay but you must pay”… or thereabouts.
“The biological weapons programs in the USSR were completely phased out in 1972.”
“..the Russian Federation completely destroyed its chemical arsenal on September 27, 2017, which is confirmed by an OPCW certificate..”
• Urgent Briefing from the Russian MOD re new provocations (Saker)
The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation held an urgent briefing, detailing a provocation against the Russian Federation prepared by the USA and NATO with the accusation of using nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation possesses the information related to the preparation of provocations by the United States of America in order to accuse the Russian Armed Forces of using chemical, biological or tactical nuclear weapons.
There are three scenarios to be applied in order to accuse the Russian Federation.
The first one is a ‘staged incident under a false flag’ that is the most probable.
The second one refers to a ‘Maximally covert use of weapons of mass destruction in small volumes’ for neutralising the will power and the capacity to resist within the fulfilment of a particular operational task.
The third and the least probable one is the ‘overt use of weapons of mass destruction at a combat area’.
[..] We would like to recall that the Russian Federation completely destroyed its chemical arsenal on September 27, 2017, which is confirmed by an OPCW certificate. In turn, the United States, with its strong financial, economic and technical potential, is the only country party to the Chemical Weapons Convention that still possesses an impressive arsenal of chemical warfare agents (672.5 tons). CIA Director Burns’ statement about Russia’s possible use of tactical nuclear weapons is absurd. With the current level of technical equipment of the international nuclear test monitoring system, it is impossible to conceal the use of such weapons. If the CIA director does not understand this, then he is either unprofessional, or he is being misled. The biological weapons programs in the USSR were completely phased out in 1972. At the same time, the number of U.S. biological laboratories is incomparable to other countries. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Washington controls 336 laboratories in 30 countries, which is of great concern.
“Ukraine had an off ramp from civil war early on in the form of the Minsk and then the Minsk II agreements in 2014 and 2015..”
• Minsk II: Two Words You’ll Never Hear on Mainstream News (Antiwar)
Minsk II was the 2015 agreement hammered out by Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany to end the civil war in Ukraine between the pro west, ultra nationalist government and the pro Russian Ukrainians in the eastern Donbas provinces of Lugansk and Donetsk. Why a civil war in Ukraine? Historically, Ukraine was cobbled together first by the Russian Empire, then the Soviet Union over 4 centuries, containing disparate peoples. The main ones were the Western leaning, Ukrainian speaking people in the north and west, and the Russian speaking in the east and south. Their relationship was always toxic, but under Soviet rule relative peace prevailed. Once freed from Soviet rule in 1999, the tension between the two disparate groups resurfaced.
Fifteen years on the U.S. essentially blew up whatever chance for peaceful resolution by aiding a coup which violently removed Russian leaning President Yanukovych, replacing him with an ultra nationalist government under Petro Poroshenko. Thus began the civil war in the Donbas that has killed over 14,000 Ukrainians in Kiev’s effort to subjugate and marginalize the hated Russian leaning Ukrainians. And leading the carnage for the past 3 years is current president Volodymyr Zelensky. Calling him the new Churchill doesn’t quite fit. But Ukraine had an off ramp from civil war early on in the form of the Minsk and then the Minsk II agreements in 2014 and 2015. The latter called for autonomy for the breakaway provinces Donetsk and Lugansk, amnesty to the combatants and representation in the Ukraine government.
But goaded by the US and the ultra nationalists with the real power, both post coup presidents Poroshenko and Zelensky opted to continue the civil war to both retake the breakaway provinces and recapture the Crimea, seized by Russia after the 2014 coup threatened their naval base at Sebastopol in the Crimea. In the months leading up to Russia’s criminal war, Ukraine, with the help of weaponry and training by Uncle Sam, dramatically increased its criminal shelling of the Donbas, even massing a hundred thousand troops for a possible invasion predicted for March. Did that, and the threat of NATO’s encroachment in Ukraine up to Russia’s borders make Russia’s invasion legal or necessary for Russia’s national defense? Of course not. But expecting Russia would sit back and do nothing made their invasion virtually inevitable.
“It’s interesting that “operation thermostat” should be announced on April 22nd – Earth Day – despite having zero to do with climate change.”
• Energy Rationing & The Pivot From Ukraine To Climate (OffG)
Italy is officially becoming the first country to start rationing energy after cutting their supply of Russian gas and oil. From next month, until at least March 2023, public buildings across the nation will be banned from running air conditioning at lower than 25 degrees, or heating higher than 19 degrees. The plan, termed “Operation Thermostat” in the press, is being sold as a way for ordinary people to show “solidarity” with the people of Ukraine, with Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi saying: “Do we want to have peace or do we want to have the air conditioning on?” I’m not exactly sure how adjusting your thermostat is going to achieve ‘peace’, but hey we’re living in the age of sentimental manipulation over reason, so – just believe.
For example, the Guardian is illustrating the story with pro-peace artwork allegedly done by Italian schoolchildren (in English, for some reason). There’s no talk yet of this kind of energy-rationing rule extending to private businesses or homes, but a marker has been set down. Expect other nations to follow suit. After that of course will come the opinion pieces asking questions like “we rationed gas to fight Putin, why not climate change?”, and headlines saying that “Europe-wide gas rationing was good for the planet” or something similar. …Oh wait, it’s already happening. Honestly, when I originally wrote the above paragraph I had no idea the New Yorker had published this opinion piece for Earth Day, headlined: “This Earth Day, We Could Be Helping the Environment—and Ukraine”
It argues that rationing energy to fight Putin is just like digging for victory to fight Hitler, and – just as I predicted – would also be good for the planet: “During the Second World War, victory demanded more oil […] In the wars dominating the globe today — Putin’s land grab in Ukraine, and the global land grab caused by rising sea levels and spreading deserts — victory demands getting off fossil fuels as fast as we possibly can.” It even hints at a quasi-lockdown – this time for the sake of beating Putin and combating climate change: “Everyone who can work from home could continue to do so, at least on, say, Mondays, knocking a day off the national commute. Carpools could be organized, taking special advantage of the fact that there are now two million electric cars on the road. More bike paths could be made available, and, when air-conditioning season begins, Americans could turn their thermostats up a degree.”
Remember lockdowns were marketed as planet-saving almost from the moment they were put in place, despite it making almost zero sense. The agenda was pretty obvious right from the start. It’s interesting that “operation thermostat” should be announced on April 22nd – Earth Day – despite having zero to do with climate change. It’s also noteworthy that climate protests groups have piggy-backed on the idea to call for an EU-wide boycott of Russia’s fossil fuels.
Left field?!
• 1788. China to Make Electric Tumbrils (Reed)
The media, a salt mine in which I once labored, are an embarrassment, utterly partisan, ranting and howling about Russia. OK, in war it is usual to cut the public off from information and to keep them stirred up with accounts of rape, human shield, “genocide,” chemical war, massacres, torture, a rule of television being to get a woman to cry and fill the frame. In Vietnam the media ran all over the country and actually reported what was happening, which eventually ended the war. This error is not being repeated. {what bothers me is the apparent lack of curiosity, of doubt of official sources. Contrary to belief in some quarters, reporters are not given orders to adopt a particular point of view, though they know better than to contradict the publication’s line. No scribbler at the Washington Post will discuss racial differences in intelligence. But they are herd animals.}
Violeta, whose cynicism toward government—anybody’s government—would peel paint from a wall, watched a video clip purportedly of a Russian tank crushing a car occupied by Ukrainians. She noticed after research that the Russian tank was black without markings, like Ukrainian tanks, instead of green with markings, like all other Russian tanks. OK, maybe it was an undercover Russian tank. She also noticed in some of the Russian-destruction video, street signs are blurred out. Uh…, why dat? Anyone want to guess? Why do reporters not pay attention? First, again, they are creatures of the pack. They live in the Beltway Terrarium, talk to each other, read each other, and so know they are right. Don’t their colleagues all say so?
Second, they are painfully ignorant of matters military, knowing chiefly the bureaucracies involved in policy, contracting, and so on. This includes those for the WaPo, whom I knew—Gerge Wilson, Molly Moore, etc. [..] Why did Russia attack? Anyone who can read a map can see that since 1991 the US has been trying, with considerable success, to encircle Russia militarily. Russia has said over and over that it was not going to have American missiles on its border in the Ukraine any more than America would allow Chinese missiles in Tijuana. I encountered no one in DC who had even heard of this, though it has been going on for years. This is journalism? Yes.
All things end, except those that don’t. On a cold rainy predawn morning we caught an Uber to Reagan National, returning to a country that has just left the Third World to one energetically returning to it. A stewardess aboard read the boilerplate about have a wonderful flight. She didn’t explain just how that laudable goal might be achieved. Remember, cometh the guillotine. Kachunk. Kachunk. Kachun.
“Africa’s vaccination rate remain the most dismal. Fewer than 17 percent of Africans have received a primary Covid immunization.”
• The Drive to Vaccinate the World Against Covid Is Losing Steam (NYT)
Countries in different parts of the world, including some in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, have seen their vaccination rates stagnate in recent months at a third or less of their populations. But Africa’s vaccination rate remain the most dismal. Fewer than 17 percent of Africans have received a primary Covid immunization. Nearly half of the vaccine doses delivered to the continent thus far have gone unused. Last month, the number of doses injected on the continent fell by 35 percent compared to February. W.H.O. officials attributed the drop to mass vaccination pushes being replaced by smaller-scale campaigns in several countries. Some global health experts say the world missed a prime opportunity last year to provide vaccines to lower-income countries, when the public was more fearful of Covid and motivated to get vaccinated.
“There was a time people were very desperate to get vaccinated, but the vaccines were not there. And then they realized that without the vaccination, they didn’t die,” said Dr. Adewole, who wants to see countries continue to pursue the 70 percent target. What momentum remains in the global vaccination campaign has been hindered by a shortfall in funding for the equipment, transportation and personnel needed to get shots into arms. In the United States, a key funder of the vaccination effort, lawmakers stripped $5 billion meant for global pandemic aid from the coronavirus response package that is expected to come up for a vote in the next few weeks. Biden administration officials have said that without the funds, they will be unable to provide support for vaccine delivery to more than 20 under-vaccinated countries.
Some public health experts point to reasons for optimism that the global vaccination campaign still has steam. Despite the drop off from the February peak, the number of Covid vaccinations being administered each day in Africa is still near a pandemic high. And Gavi earlier this month drew a significant new round of funding pledges, securing $4.8 billion in commitments, although it fell short of its $5.2 billion goal. There is also hope that a global Covid summit the White House plans to co-host next month could be an opportunity to generate momentum and funding. But the drop in public demand has led some health officials and experts to quietly, and in some cases outright, question whether the 70 percent vaccination target is feasible or even sensible.
WHO
One World Government… countries that don’t impose vaccine passports, quarantine camps, forced vaccination and lockdowns will face sanctions… only 2/3s of members must agree for this to pass pic.twitter.com/jQt1qsQ2De
— Pelham (@Resist_05) April 23, 2022
Should anyone at all have been given any hardly tested substances at all?
• Have People Been Given the Wrong Vaccine? (Kulldorff)
Randomized controlled trials show all-cause mortality reduction from the Covid adenovirus-vector vaccines (RR=0.37, 95 percentCI: 0.19-0.70) but not from the mRNA vaccines (RR=1.03, 95 percentCI 0.63-1.71). That is the verdict from a new Danish study by Dr. Christine Benn and colleagues. Have people been given vaccines that don’t work (Pfizer/Moderna) instead of vaccines that do work (AstraZeneca/Johnson & Johnson)? Let’s put this study into context and then delve into the numbers. In medicine, the gold standard for evidence is randomized controlled trials (RCT), as they avoid study bias for or against the vaccine. Moreover, the key outcome is death. Do these vaccines save lives? Hence, the Danish study answers the right question with the right data. It is the first study to do so.
When the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), that decision was based on RCTs. The RCTs submitted to the FDA showed that the vaccines reduce symptomatic Covid infections. By recruiting mostly younger and middle-aged adults, who are unlikely to die from Covid no matter what, the studies were not designed to determine whether the vaccines also reduce mortality. That was assumed as a corollary, although it may or may not be true. Neither were the RCTs designed to determine whether the vaccines reduce transmission, but that is a different story for another time. The vaccines were developed for Covid, but to properly evaluate a vaccine, we must look at non-Covid deaths as well.
Are there unintended adverse reactions leading to death? We do not want a vaccine that saves the lives of some people but kills an equal number of other people. There may also be unintended benefits, such as incidental protection against other infections. For a fair comparison, that should also be part of the equation. While each individual RCT was unable to determine whether the Covid vaccine reduced mortality, the RCTs recorded all deaths, and to increase sample size, the Danish study pooled multiple RCTs. There are two different types of Covid vaccines, adenovirus-vector vaccines (AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Sputnik) and mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna), and they did one pooled analysis for each type. Here are the results:
There is clear evidence that the adenovirus-vector vaccines reduced mortality. For every 100 deaths in the unvaccinated, there are only 37 deaths among the vaccinated, with a 95 percent confidence interval of 19 to 70 deaths. This result comes from five different RCTs for three different vaccines, but it is primarily driven by the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. For the mRNA vaccines, on the other hand, there was no evidence of a mortality reduction. For every 100 deaths among the unvaccinated, there are 103 deaths among the vaccinated, with a 95 percent confidence interval of 63 to 171 deaths. That is, the mRNA vaccines may reduce mortality a little bit, or they may increase it; we do not know. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines contributed equally to this result, so there is no evidence that one is better or worse than the other.
1 in 27 dies.
“..with 100M people vaccinated in the United States, there have been almost four million deaths and millions beset with life-altering injuries.”
• Pfizer Docs: 3.7% Death Rate From Vaccine, Many More Serious Injuries (EV)
According to documents released through court order, 3.7% of the cases Pfizer looked at for ‘adverse events’ died, and Pfizer prevented all the data being released – so at this time it is impossible to tell the exact death rate – the bottom line is this is a mass murder event. Dr. Naomi Wolf has been going through the tens of thousands of pages of documents a Federal court forced Pfizer to release from its FDA submission for Covid-19 mRNA vaccine approval. She released the data on War Room Pandemic this morning.
Shockingly, the initial data showed a death rate of 3.7% with a much higher rate of serious injury. In other words, with 100M people vaccinated in the United States, there have been almost four million deaths and millions beset with life-altering injuries. The amount of vaccines shipped by Pfizer was redacted in the documents. This is the government, Pfizer, and the CCP working to commit mass murder against the America people. There is no denying this now.
“In certain areas of the country almost twice as many people are dying than what we would expect in those young ages and it’s not COVID.“
• Dissecting Canada’s All-cause Mortality (Rebel)
All-cause mortality data for 2021 is starting to trickle out in Canada and it’s showing some concerning trends. Accidental COVID data analyst and financial investor Kelly Brown has been a leader in analyzing official Government COVID data for the better part of two years. He began sounding the alarm bells on the post-vaccination myocarditis risk in young males and has continued this unpaid work ever since. After discovering loopholes in the government messaging and clear indications of harm using Governments’ own data, Kelly now finds himself doing deep dives into other statistical analyses. Using data published by Canada’s national statistics office, Statistics Canada, Kelly has dissected all-cause mortality and excess mortality. He notes that Alberta (AB) and British Columbia (BC) have the most robust data and it shows that the actual number of excess deaths exceeds the predicable baseline by nearly double!
Referring to this as a “tsunami of death” as deaths in BC and AB exceed expected levels by nearly 70%. Using historical averages, Kelly can only explain approximately 30-50% of these deaths by drug overdose. After a rapid acceleration in July 2021, the 0-44 age group saw a catastrophic 25% weekly excess death rate for approximately three months that “cannot be explained by suicides, overdoses, cancers, etc.” When referring to this chart that overlays daily doses (either 1st or 2nd) with excess mortality, Kelly asserts that it not up to us to investigate this looming safety signal, “there’s something at play here that Public Health needs to investigate. This is a real public health emergency. In certain areas of the country almost twice as many people are dying than what we would expect in those young ages and it’s not COVID.”
These studies come far too late.
• Covid Vaccines Increase Risk of Severe Heart Inflammation Up to 120-Fold (DS)
Covid vaccination increases the risk of severe heart inflammation up to 120-fold, a major study from Scandinavia published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has found. The study looked at over 23 million patient records covering the over-12s populations of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden from the start of the vaccine rollout in December 2020 to October 5th 2021. For young males aged 16-24 years within 28 days of a second dose the study found severe myocarditis (requiring inpatient hospital admission) around five times more common after Pfizer and 14 times more common after Moderna.
This corresponded to six events per 100,000 people after Pfizer and 18 events per 100,000 after Moderna. A second dose of Moderna given after a first dose of Pfizer came with even higher risk: a 36-fold increased risk, corresponding to 27 events per 100,000 people. The Moderna vaccine has three times the dose of mRNA of the Pfizer vaccine, which the authors suggest lies behind the increased risk. One oddity is that the study can’t seem to decide how many severe myocarditis events there actually were in total. In Table 2 below, in the left hand column, it indicates there were 85 + 34 + 53 = 172 events following a second dose.
In the text, however, it says: “During the 28-day risk period, we observed 105 myocarditis cases following administration of the first dose of BNT162b2 [Pfizer] and 115 myocarditis cases following the second dose. We also observed 15 myocarditis cases following administration of the first dose of mRNA-1273 [Moderna] and 60 myocarditis cases following the second dose.” That gives 115 + 60 = 175 events following the second dose. Yet lower down we get a third figure: “Of the 213 myocarditis cases in the 28-day risk window after a second dose of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination, 135 events occurred within the first week.” So how many cases of severe myocarditis were there within 28 days of a second mRNA vaccine dose – 172, 175 or 213?
Using the larger figure, the authors observe that with 135 of 213 occurring within the first week – more than half – the risk in that week is greatly elevated. Among males aged 16 to 24 years, the risk was around 13-fold greater during the week after a second dose of Pfizer and 38-fold greater after a second dose of Moderna. For a second dose of Moderna where the first dose was Pfizer the risk was 120-fold greater.
Ali
Muhammad Ali wrecks a student trying to debate him about the draft pic.twitter.com/lXpSK57bV9
— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) April 23, 2022
Philantrophy
Real philanthropy (Elon Musk) versus fake philanthropy (Bill Gates) pic.twitter.com/rlzFahQWlH
— Nitzao (@Nitzao) April 23, 2022
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