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Debt Rattle June 16 2022

Jun 162022
 
 June 16, 2022  Posted by at 8:15 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  50 Responses »


Caravaggio The calling of St. Matthew 1599-1600

 

• Severe COVID-19 ‘Rare’ In Unvaccinated People (MD)
• FDA Advisors Unanimously Endorse COVID Shots for Infants and Young Kids (CHD)
• The World Is Looking At You (Batiushka)
• First American Mercenary Contractors Captured in Ukraine (CTH)
• The ‘New G8’ Meets China’s ‘Three Rings’ (Escobar)
• Schiff: Evidence That Trump “Engaged in Likely Multiple Criminal Acts (Turley)
• ECB Holds Emergency Meeting To Discuss Market Turmoil (ZH)
• PPI: Smoking -AGAIN- (Denninger)
• Today’s The Day…. (Denninger)
• “Red Flag” Laws Put a Target on the Back of Every American (Whitehead)
• Erdogan Issues Fresh Threats Against Greece (K.)
• A Whistleblower’s Agony (Kiriakou)
• Patel Responsible For Assange’s ‘Slow-Motion Execution’ If Extradited (DIss.)

 

 

 

 

Consumer feelings

 

 

 

 

Blink

 

 

 

 

DeSantis Musk

 

 

 

 

We’ve known for a while that the vaccines don’t protect against infection or transmission. The last thing they had left was protection against severe disease. That is now gone too. It’s over.

• Severe COVID-19 ‘Rare’ In Unvaccinated People (MD)

A survey has found that people who did not get the vaccine had a lower rate of suffering severe COVID-19 amid the pandemic. The survey uploaded to the preprint server ResearchGate presented data from more than 18,500 respondents from the “Control Group” project with more than 300,000 overall participants. An analysis revealed that compared to those who got jabbed, unvaccinated people reported fewer hospitalizations. The international survey also found that the unvaccinated people from more than 175 countries were more likely to self-care to prevent and manage COVID-19 infection. They used natural products like vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc, quercetin, and drugs, such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.

Many participants experienced discrimination for refusing the administration of “genetic vaccines” and struggled with mental health burdens due to the stigma in the mostly “vaccinated” society. Since the participants were self-selected and self-reported, the survey findings had to be interpreted with care compared to statistics or studies based on randomly selected populations, according to the Alliance for Natural Health International. The participants admitted to avoiding vaccines due to their preference for natural medicine interventions and skepticism of pharmaceutical interventions. They also voiced distrust of government information and fear of the possible adverse effects of the vaccines in the long run.

The survey was conducted from September 2021 through February 2022. During the period, participants experienced mild to moderate COVID-19 infection and were infrequently hospitalized. A number of female participants suffered menstrual and bleeding abnormalities, prompting the researchers who analyzed the data to surmise that the issues might have been caused by spike protein exposure and shedding, as per The Epoch Times.


Well, no

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Read the article above and then explain this.

• FDA Advisors Unanimously Endorse COVID Shots for Infants and Young Kids (CHD)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) vaccine advisory panel today unanimously voted 21-0 to recommend Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines for infants and young children, stating the totality of the evidence available shows the benefits of the vaccines outweigh the risks of use. Pfizer’s three-dose vaccine would cover children 6 months to 5 years old, while Moderna’s two-dose vaccine covers children 6 months to 6 years old. States have already ordered millions of doses made available prior to FDA authorization by the Biden administration. Depending on whether the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) accept the recommendations of their advisory panels, White House officials have said the administration of vaccines for these age groups could start as early as June 21.


The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) ignored pleas from experts, the vaccine injured and a congressman representing 17 other lawmakers to halt authorization until questions about the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines for the nation’s youngest children could be properly addressed. Many of the committee members, including pediatrician Dr. Ofer Levy, said the decision to authorize the shots was about providing a choice to parents who wanted access to COVID-19 vaccines, despite concerns by public commenters the panel was not adhering to the requirements for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) and that authorization would eventually lead to mandates — as it did with adult vaccines.

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“..the eyes of the freedom-loving world are turned to the Russian Federation..”

• The World Is Looking At You (Batiushka)

As a result of this first War atheist Bolsheviks seized power in the former Russian Empire. Although well over 600,000 Russian troops had died in the two and half years up until February 1917, as they, unlike the Allies on the Western Front, had faced the vast majority of the forces of Germany, Austro-Hungary and Turkey, far worse was to come. Foreign-sponsored foreigners, like the brain-fevered Blank-Lenin and the evil genius Bronstein-Trotsky, killed millions in a civil war, including the Imperial Family, and through deliberate starvation. Many more would later die in concentration camps. And unlike in the First War when the enemy never even entered Russia, in the Second War the enemy reached the very gates of Moscow, Leningrad and the banks of the Volga, slaughtering 27 million, mainly civilians.

But then there was the American flu (called for propaganda reasons ‘Spanish flu’). Beginning in Kansas, it was brought to Europe in 1917 by American troops, who had entered the First War, as arranged, as soon as the treacherous ‘Allies’ (not Germany) had succeeded in overthrowing Imperial Russia. The Americans had come to conquer Europe. After the Great European Suicide of the First War, this flu may have killed another 50 million, though some say far more. But above all, exactly as the French Marshal Foch foretold at Versailles, the ‘Peace’ of 1919 led directly to the Second Great War that broke out twenty years later. And that murdered tens of millions and in 1945 made Western Europe into a conquered and occupied province of the USA, which then set about creating a USE (United States of Europe) in its own image.

And so came the Cold War, with its MAD (mutually assured destruction) phobia, bunker-building, wasteful spending on arms, and the new generation’s social revolution of the 1960s. In turn came the next generation of 1989, 75 years after 1914 and 50 years after 1939, and the occupation of Eastern Europe by the same US colonists, sending out their proconsul-ambassadors to the client states of the ‘New Europe’. In 1991, 50 years after Operation Barbarossa of Nazi Imperialism ravaged the USSR but was defeated, the latter fell to Nato Imperialism. And in turn, 100 years after the Great European Suicide began, the Evil Empire began its occupation of the Ukraine in 2014, turning it into a dependent vassal. The whole pattern of the hundred years, 1914-2014, had the same source.

Until 2022 there had never been any hope of justice and restitution for any of this. Then on 24 February began the Special Operation to liberate the Ukraine and denazify the world. This is the last throw of the dice and the eyes of the freedom-loving world are turned to the Russian Federation. Even with all its troubles, imperfections and treacheries, we have no other hope. The world is looking at you.

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“The traditional end result for captured mercenaries is execution; however, Russian President Vladimir Putin may not want to hang these two State Dept. conscripts.”

• First American Mercenary Contractors Captured in Ukraine (CTH)

A contracted mercenary has no legal recognition or protection as a prisoner of war. Two American mercenary soldiers have been captured by Russian forces and now present a rather unique issue for the Biden administration. The traditional end result for captured mercenaries is execution; however, Russian President Vladimir Putin may not want to hang these two State Dept. conscripts. (Via Telegraph) – “Two former US servicemen have been captured during fighting with Russian forces in Ukraine, The Telegraph has been told. The pair were taken prisoner during a fierce battle outside the north-east city of Kharkiv last week, according to comrades who were fighting alongside them.


Alexander Drueke, 39, and Andy Huynh, 27, had been serving as volunteers with a regular Ukrainian army unit. They are believed to be the first US servicemen to end up as Russian prisoners of war. They join a growing number of Western military volunteers captured by Russian forces, including at least two Britons. Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner have already been told they face the death penalty as “mercenaries”. The capture of the two Americans will be diplomatically sensitive as the Kremlin may seek to use it as proof that America is becoming directly involved in the war. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, is likely to demand significant concessions to release them.”

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“The new G8, instead, “does not impose anything on anyone, but tries to find common solutions.”

• The ‘New G8’ Meets China’s ‘Three Rings’ (Escobar)

The speaker of the Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, may have created the defining acronym for the emerging multipolar world: “the new G8”. As Volodin noted, “the United States has created conditions with its own hands so that countries wishing to build an equal dialogue and mutually beneficial relations will actually form a ‘new G8’ together with Russia.” This non Russia-sanctioning G8, he added, is 24.4% ahead of the old one, which is in fact the G7, in terms of GDP in purchasing power parity (PPP), as G7 economies are on the verge of collapsing and the U.S. registers record inflation.

The power of the acronym was confirmed by one of the researchers on Europe at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Sergei Fedorov: three BRICS members (Brazil, China and India) alongside Russia, plus Indonesia, Iran, Turkey and Mexico, all non adherents to the all-out Western economic war against Russia, will soon dominate global markets. Fedorov stressed the power of the new G8 in population as well as economically: “If the West, which restricted all international organizations, follows its own policies, and pressures everyone, then why are these organizations necessary? Russia does not follow these rules.” The new G8, instead, “does not impose anything on anyone, but tries to find common solutions.”

The coming of the new G8 points to the inevitable advent of BRICS +, one of the key themes to be discussed in the upcoming BRICS summit in China. Argentina is very much interested in becoming part of the extended BRICS and those (informal) members of the new G8 – Indonesia, Iran, Turkey, Mexico – are all likely candidates. The intersection of the new G8 and BRICS + will lead Beijing to turbo-charge what has already been conceptualized as the Three Rings strategy by Cheng Yawen, from the Institute of International Relations and Public Affairs at the Shanghai International Studies University.

Cheng argues that since the beginning of the 2018 U.S.-China trade war the Empire of Lies and its vassals have aimed to “decouple”; thus the Middle Kingdom should strategically downgrade its relations with the West and promote a new international system based on South-South cooperation. Looks like if it walks and talks like the new G8, that’s because it’s the real deal.

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Schiff himself “Engaged in Likely Multiple Criminal Acts”.

• Schiff: Evidence That Trump “Engaged in Likely Multiple Criminal Acts (Turley)

Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) went on CNN’s “Don Lemon Tonight” to tout the work of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6th riot. In that interview, Schiff declared that the Committee has enough evidence showing former President Donald Trump “engaged in likely multiple criminal acts.” While vague on the specific crimes, Schiff emphasized that the Justice Department did not have to wait any further to launch a criminal investigation based on what has already been disclosed. While the Committee has disclosed new evidence in the form of videotapes and testimony, it has not presented new material evidence of criminal acts in my view. That could still come but the first two hearings largely focused on a “conspiracy” to challenge the election certification and allegations that Trump knew the there was no compelling evidence of widespread election fraud.

If there is evidence of criminal conduct by former president Trump or others, most of us would support the calls for prosecution. It is also possible that the Justice Department is investigating such crimes or has undisclosed evidence. The hearings, however, have not established such a foundation. That can still come but these crimes have elements that have not been addressed in hearings that have lacked any opposing views or adversarial elements. The decision of Speaker Nancy Pelosi to abandon the long tradition of bipartisan members on such selection committee has robbed the investigation of credibility and legitimacy for many Americans.

Indeed, Schiff’s reference to evidence held by the Committee is likely to bring up memories of his highly controversial public statements that the House Intelligence Committee, which he chairs, had direct evidence of Russian collusion despite the countervailing findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. He never produced the evidence and later it was revealed that Justice officials and FBI agents had told his Committee that they did not find such evidence. Now, Schiff is maintaining that:

“I certainly believe there’s enough evidence for them to open an investigation of several people, and so did Judge David Carter of California believes the former president and others were engaged in likely multiple criminal acts. So if the Justice Department concurs with Judge Carter, let alone my own view or others, they should be pursuing that. So, yes, I think there is sufficient evidence to open an investigation. It would be of you up to the Justice Department ultimately to decide does that evidence rise to proof beyond a reasonable doubt such that they’re comfortable indicting someone. But there’s certainly, in my view, enough evidence to open up investigations.”

The reference to the Carter opinion has become a mainstay on cable news. I was critical of Judge Carter’s opinion when it was released. Much of the Jan. 6th hearings seem to be structured along the same lines as the Carter decision which was, in my view, strikingly conclusory and unsupported in critical parts of the analysis. Judge Carter simply declares that Trump knew that the election was not stolen and thus “the illegality of the plan was obvious.” Putting aside the court’s assumption of what Trump secretly concluded on the election, a sizable number of Americans still do not view Biden as legitimately elected. The court is not simply saying that they are wrong in that view but, because they are wrong, legislative challenges amounted to criminal obstruction of Congress.

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First Japan, then Europe, then the US. Russia and China will remain standing.

• ECB Holds Emergency Meeting To Discuss Market Turmoil (ZH)

Last week, shortly after the ECB’s latest meeting disappointed markets and concluded without a discussion of Europe’s growing bond market fragmentation which has since sent Italian bond yields soaring above 4%, we joked that “at this rate the ECB would make an emergency rate cut” just hours after announcing an end to QT and guiding to a July rate hike. Once again, our jokes was not too far from the truth because on Wednesday morning, just hours before the Fed’s first 75bps rate hike sine 1994, and with Italian bonds in freefall, European Central Bank unexpectedly announced it would hold an emergency , ad hoc meeting of its rate-setters starting 11am CET in which it would “discuss current market conditions.”

The meeting, which comes less than a week after the rate-setting governing council’s last vote, raised investor expectations that the central bank is preparing to announce a policy instrument to stave-off another debt crisis in the region, which can only come in the form of more QE… which is ironic at a time when the ECB just announced it was phasing out all QE! Italian government bonds rallied in price following news of the planned meeting, reversing some of the recent sell-off that analysts said brought the country’s borrowing costs towards the “danger zone”. Gilles Moec, chief economist at Axa, an insurer, said the “stakes are high” for the ECB “now that everyone is dusting off their debt sustainability spreadsheets for Italy, they probably need to go up an extra notch”.

[..] ECB executive board member Isabel Schnabel indicated in a speech on Tuesday evening that the central bank was getting closer to the point where it would intervene in bond markets, saying “some borrowers have seen significantly larger changes in financing conditions than others since the start of the year”. She added: “Such changes in financing conditions may constitute an impairment in the transmission of monetary policy that requires close monitoring.” Schnabel, the ECB executive who oversees its market operations and one of the most influential voices on its board, said the central bank’s commitment to the euro had no limits. “And our track record of stepping in when needed backs up this commitment,” she added. But wait, this means… more QE at a time when the ECB just vowed… less QE!!??

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”Choose one and only one: Feel good or be able to afford food and basically everything else.”

• PPI: Smoking -AGAIN- (Denninger)

Oh my look what we have here! “The Producer Price Index for final demand increased 0.8 percent in May, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This rise followed advances of 0.4 percent in April and 1.6 percent in March. (See table A.) On an unadjusted basis, final demand prices moved up 10.8 percent for the 12 months ended in May.” So…. two points, more or less, higher than CPI. PPI leads, I remind you, so the consumer inflation level has not peaked. Let’s look inside. “Final demand goods: The index for final demand goods moved up 1.4 percent in May, the fifth consecutive rise. Over 70 percent of the increase in May can be traced to a 5.0-percent advance in prices for final demand energy. The index for final demand goods less foods and energy moved up 0.7 percent, while prices for final demand foods were unchanged.”

Oh really? Only 5% eh? Well, don’t look at June, because gasoline, for example, has risen by more than 10% in the last two weeks which is all in June. Oops. “Product detail: Nearly 30 percent of the May increase in the index for final demand services can be attributed to prices for truck transportation of freight, which rose 2.9 percent.” No kidding? You mean $6+ diesel fuel turns directly into higher shipping prices? I just got back from a cross-country trip and saw lots of dead dinosaurs coming out of the stack of 18 wheelers and every one of them had better keep moving or you’re not eating, never mind being able to buy and consume anything else. The current Administration’s war on fossil fuels might make you feel good but it is also directly responsible for this insanity. Choose one and only one: Feel good or be able to afford food and basically everything else.

The really nasty is that the 12 month trend is unbroken and, as I noted, it all started right after Biden was inaugurated. He said he was going to do this during the campaign and he has. It takes time for the PPI to reflect down into the final shelf price and it has. But the 12 month final demand number, less food, energy and trade from 12 months prior stands at 6% which it has run at or above since August of last year. Shut it off now and it will be next summer before that has all worked its way through and there’s nothing you can do about the time requirement.

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“At the core what The Fed does is not the question. It’s what Congress does.”

• Today’s The Day…. (Denninger)

….. we “celebrate” The Fed decision on rates. Well, yeah, ok. The 13 week bill says the FFR should be 1.5% now. As has almost-always been the case historically (go look at FRED if you don’t believe me) the market leads and The Fed is not actually in charge of rates. Of course this runs counter to the “all-powerful Fed” which suits everyone on all sides. The politicians and conspiracy nuts get to blame someone else for an agency that follows what the market demands because if it doesn’t it is proved impotent and takes a huge loss on top of it. Unfortunately 50 bips will do nothing to cool inflation; to do that short-term rates must be higher than the inflation rate so that the real cost of borrowing is positive. That would mean putting about 700bips on the FFR right here and now – which we know won’t happen.

Then again this has been the problem for the last 30ish years. The slope of the interest rate curve has gone from the upper left to the lower right and thus serial refinancing at the corporate and government level, say much less at the personal level, has looked “free.” That’s the sneaky part of inflation which I explained back when I wrote Leverage with a nice graph. When you run a deliberate inflationary policy over decades the first years look like a free lunch because the apparent “wealth” initially goes up faster than the debt service (which is on a smaller base) and thus produces a “belly” (an area of expansion of the space between the two lines of available spending power and debt service.) This is a chimera and to intentionally run such a policy as a business or government is fraud because all exponential expansions eventually go vertical, and the debt service will eventually cross available funds at which point you’re screwed since you cannot spend 110% of what you have — ever — no matter what you do.

It’s happening now. At the core what The Fed does is not the question. It’s what Congress does. The Fed is constrained to use only Federal Government backed securities for its monetary operations and policy. Yes, it has shaved that repeatedly, most-egregiously with Fannie and Freddie paper during the housing crash which at the time was wildly illegal yet not one person in Congress called them on it nor did anyone from the Executive (e.g. DOJ) stop it despite its blatant illegality. Then Congress went even further and, for all intents and purposes, explicitly backstopped said paper on a retroactive basis which is also illegal, but heh, nobody cared because it was “too big to fail.”

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Total control is the goal.

• “Red Flag” Laws Put a Target on the Back of Every American (Whitehead)

What we do not need is yet another pretext by which government officials can violate the Fourth Amendment at will under the guise of public health and safety. Indeed, at a time when red flag gun laws (which authorize government officials to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others) are gaining traction as a legislative means by which to allow police to remove guns from people suspected of being threats, it wouldn’t take much for police to be given the green light to enter a home without a warrant in order to seize lawfully-possessed firearms based on concerns that the guns might pose a danger. Frankly, a person wouldn’t even need to own a gun to be subjected to such a home invasion.

SWAT teams have crashed through doors on lesser pretexts based on false information, mistaken identities and wrong addresses. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have adopted laws allowing the police to remove guns from people suspected of being threats. If Congress succeeds in passing the Federal Extreme Risk Protection Order, which would nationalize red flag laws, that number will grow. As The Washington Post reports, these red flag gun laws…”allow a family member, roommate, beau, law enforcement officer or any type of medical professional to file a petition [with a court] asking that a person’s home be temporarily cleared of firearms. It doesn’t require a mental-health diagnosis or an arrest.”

In the wake of yet another round of mass shootings, these gun confiscation laws—extreme risk protection order (ERPO) laws—may appease the fears of those who believe that fewer guns in the hands of the general populace will make our society safer. Of course, it doesn’t always work that way. Anything—knives, vehicles, planes, pressure cookers—can become a weapon when wielded with deadly intentions. With these red flag gun laws, the stated intention is to disarm individuals who are potential threats… to “stop dangerous people before they act.”

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I think he has elections coming up.

• Erdogan Issues Fresh Threats Against Greece (K.)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has issued fresh threats against Greece, this time accusing the country of supporting an international campaign directed against his country. “We have sent a clear message to everyone concerned about developments in the Aegean,” Erdogan told MPs of his AK Party in the wake of the EFES-2022 military exercise near the Aegean port city of Izmir. “We have seen through the game being played at the expense of our country. They are allowing Greece to behave like a spoiled child as they have done in the past,” he said. “The problem is that Greece is not aware of this game, or it has voluntarily adopted a supporting role,” he said, adding that the country would pay a hefty price for “making the same mistake.”

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Joshua Schulte. Treated like an animal.

• A Whistleblower’s Agony (Kiriakou)

A C.I.A. whistleblower languishes awaiting trial in a federal prison under inhumane conditions and almost nobody is paying attention. Joshua Schulte is a former C.I.A. hacker, one of those computer geniuses whose job it is to work his way into the computer systems of our country’s enemies in support of some of the most highly-classified operations the C.I.A. carries out. The government believes that Schulte was a malcontent who released to WikiLeaks in 2017 the equivalent of 2 billion pages of top secret C.I.A. data with code names like Brutal Kangaroo, AngerQuake and McNugget. These programs, collectively known as Vault 7, were custom-made techniques used to compromise Wifi networks, hack into Skype, defeat anti-virus software and even hack into smart TVs and the guidance systems in cars.

They were the C.I.A.’s modern-day crown jewels. One senior C.I.A. officer likened the revelations to “a modern-day Pearl Harbor.” The C.I.A. accused Schulte of stealing the data in 2016 and of sending it to WikiLeaks in 2017. He was eventually charged with 13 felonies, mostly related to the Espionage Act. He was later charged with a number of additional felonies related to child pornography, accusations that he has adamantly denied. Schulte went to trial in New York in early 2020 with the Justice Department accusing him of “the single biggest leak of classified national defense information in the history of the C.I.A.”

After four weeks of testimony and six days of jury deliberation, he was found guilty of contempt of court and making a false statement, both minor charges for which federal sentencing guidelines call for imprisonment of zero-to-six months. The jury deadlocked on all other counts, and the judge declared a mistrial. Schulte remains in prison awaiting retrial. He has been incarcerated since October 2018.

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“This dramatic deterioration of Mr Assange’s health has not yet been considered in his extradition proceedings.”

• Patel Responsible For Assange’s ‘Slow-Motion Execution’ If Extradited (DIss.)

A coalition of over 300 doctors warned UK Home Secretary Priti Patel that she may be responsible for the “slow-motion execution” of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange if her office approves the United States government’s extradition request. Patel has until June 19, which is ten years after Assange entered Ecuador’s embassy in London and sought political asylum, to decide whether to approve the extradition. Assange faces 18 charges brought against him by the US Justice Department, 17 of which are under the Espionage Act. All the charges relate to documents WikiLeaks released in 2010 and 2011, which were provided by US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning.

Doctors for Assange” is an international coalition of medical doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists who have spoken up for Assange because of the toll the US government’s prosecution has taken on his health. Many of the doctors are from the UK and Australia, which is Assange’s home country. The doctors sent a letter to Patel on June 10, 2022, ahead of the Home Office’s extradition decision. “Should [Assange] come to harm in the US,” the group contends Patel “will be left holding the responsibility for that negligent outcome.” They add, “The extradition of a person with such compromised health, moreover, is medically and ethically unacceptable.” As the doctors recall, Assange’s health has deteriorated in UK custody at Belmarsh prison, where he’s been detained since April 11, 2019.

“In October 2021, Mr. Assange suffered a ‘mini-stroke.’” “This dangerous deterioration of Mr Assange’s health underscores the medical concern that the chronic stress caused by his harsh prison conditions, as well as his justified fear of the conditions that he would face in the case of extradition, leaves Mr. Assange vulnerable to cardiovascular events,” the doctors add. “This dramatic deterioration of Mr Assange’s health has not yet been considered in his extradition proceedings.” The doctors argue the basis for accepting US “assurances” was based upon “outdated medical information,” which should render the assurances “obsolete.” “Under conditions in which the UK legal system has failed to take Mr Assange’s current health status into account, no valid decision to approve his extradition may be made, by you, or anyone else.”

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Tucker Dore

 

 

 

 

Rooster

 

 

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Debt Rattle May 11 2022

May 112022
 
 May 11, 2022  Posted by at 8:20 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  45 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Agostina Segatori Sitting in the Café du Tambourin 1887

 

• Biden Wanted $33B More For Ukraine. Congress Raised it to $40B (Greenwald)
• Lithuania Lawmakers: Russian Actions in Ukraine ‘Genocide’, ‘Terrorism’ (R.)
• Ukraine Halts Some Russian Gas Flows, Claims Battlefield Gains (R.)
• Are We Pfinding Pfizer Pfraud? -Part 1 (Gato Malo)
• The Covid Vaccine Boomerang (Maajid Nawaz)
• Covid Vaccines Safe For Pregnant Women, Cut Stillbirth Risk – Review (G.)
• FDA: Youngest Kids Vaccine Won’t Need To Hit 50% Efficacy Mark (EP)
• $350 Million in Secret Payments to Fauci, Collins, Others at NIH Uncovered (ET)
• WHO Pandemic Treaty: What It Is, Why It Matters and How to Stop It (Mercola)
• The Chinese Slowdown: Much More Than Covid (Lacalle)
• BBC Climate Editor Made False Claims On Global Warming (DM)
• Priti Patel, Julian Assange Must Not Be Handed Over To The US (G.)

 

 

 

 

WEF implants

 

 

Kolakusic
https://twitter.com/i/status/1524012213517885440

 

 

Depopulation

 

 

 

 

“..the ultimate amounts will be significantly higher still.”

• Biden Wanted $33B More For Ukraine. Congress Raised it to $40B (Greenwald)

From the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the Biden White House has repeatedly announced large and seemingly random amounts of money that it intends to send to fuel the war in Ukraine. The latest such dispatch of large amounts of U.S. funds, pursuant to an initial $3.5 billion fund authorized by Congress early on, was announced on Friday; “Biden says U.S. will send $1.3 billion in additional military and economic support to Ukraine,” read the CNBC headline. This was preceded by a series of new lavish spending packages for the war, unveiled every two to three weeks, starting on the third day of the war:

Feb. 26: “Biden approves $350 million in military aid for Ukraine”: Reuters; Mar. 16: “Biden announces $800 million in military aid for Ukraine”: The New York Times; Mar. 30: “Ukraine to receive additional $500 million in aid from U.S., Biden announces”: NBC News; Apr. 12: “U.S. to announce $750 million more in weapons for Ukraine, officials say”: Reuters; May 6: “Biden announces new $150 million weapons package for Ukraine”: Reuters. Those amounts by themselves are in excess of $3 billion; by the end of April, the total U.S. expenditure on the war in Ukraine was close to $14 billion, drawn from the additional $13.5 billion Congress authorized in mid-March. While some of that is earmarked for economic and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine, most of it will go into the coffers of the weapons industry — including Raytheon, on whose Board of Directors the current Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, sat immediately before being chosen by Biden to run the Pentagon.

As CNN put it: “about $6.5 billion, roughly half of the aid package, will go to the US Department of Defense so it can deploy troops to the region and send defense equipment to Ukraine.” As enormous as those sums already are, they were dwarfed by the Biden administration’s announcement on April 28 that it “is asking Congress for $33 billion in funding to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, more than double the $14 billion in support authorized so far.” The White House itself acknowledges that the vast majority of that new spending package will go to the purchase of weaponry and other military assets: “$20.4 billion in additional security and military assistance for Ukraine and for U.S. efforts to strengthen European security in cooperation with our NATO allies and other partners in the region.”

It is difficult to put into context how enormous these expenditures are — particularly since the war is only ten weeks old, and U.S. officials predict/hope that this war will last not months but years. That ensures that the ultimate amounts will be significantly higher still.

“The ‘Boys from Davos’ plot out the future of the world.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1523927620999475200

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These people have no dictionaries.

• Lithuania Lawmakers: Russian Actions in Ukraine ‘Genocide’, ‘Terrorism’ (R.)

Lithuania’s parliament voted unanimously on Tuesday to describe Russia’s actions in Ukraine as “genocide” and “terrorism” and to call for a international tribunal, modelled on the Nuremberg Trials after World War Two, to prosecute suspected war crimes. The motion, co-sponsored by Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte, said Russian forces’ war crimes in Ukraine included the deliberate killing of civilians, mass rape, forcible relocation of Ukrainian citizens to Russia and the destruction of economic infrastructure and cultural sites. Moscow denies targeting civilians and calls its invasion, launched on Feb. 24, a “special military operation” to disarm Ukraine and rid it of what it calls anti-Russian nationalists. Ukraine and the West say this is a false pretext for waging an unprovoked war of aggression.


“The Russian Federation, whose military forces deliberately and systematically select civilian targets for bombing, is a state that supports and perpetrates terrorism,” the Lithuanian parliamentary motion said. Lithuania’s move follows a similar unanimous vote by Canadian lawmakers on April 27 to call Russia’s attacks in Ukraine a “genocide”. Leonid Slutsky, head of the International Affairs Committee of Russia’s lower house of parliament, said the resolution was not legally binding and that it merely repeated what he called the United States’ Russophobic views. He said the resolution was part of an “anti-Russia project” and biased actions against Russia that “have nothing to do with reality,” the TASS news agency cited him as saying.

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1/3 of Russian gas flows.

• Ukraine Halts Some Russian Gas Flows, Claims Battlefield Gains (R.)

Flows of Russian gas to Europe through a key transit point in Ukraine dried up on Wednesday, while Kyiv claimed battlefield gains over invading Russian forces, including the recapture of four villages around the second city of Kharkiv. Ukraine has remained a major route for Russian gas to Europe even after President Vladimir Putin ordered what he called a “special military operation” on Feb. 24. Mounting Western sanctions are seeking to ban or phase out the use of Russian energy, a major source of funds for Putin’s war effort and a vulnerability for Europe, especially Germany. Blaming the interference of Russian occupying forces for the suspension, Ukraine’s gas operator said on Tuesday it would redirect gas from the Sokhranivka transit point, which is in an area occupied by Russian forces, to another in a Ukraine-controlled area.

Early Wednesday data from the network operator showed zero nominations for Russian gas through the transit point. Since Russia was forced to abandon an assault on the capital Kyiv at the end of March, its main force has been trying to encircle Ukrainian troops in the eastern Donbas region, using the city of Izyum near Kharkiv, in the northeast, as a base. Ukrainian troops have mostly held out against assaults from three directions, and top U.S. intelligence officials say the war is now at a stalemate. Putin appeared to be preparing for a long conflict, and a Russian victory in the Donbas region might not end the war, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said in Washington on Tuesday. But the counterattack near Kharkiv could signal a new phase, with Ukraine going on the offensive and supply lines into Russia now potentially vulnerable.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian successes were gradually pushing Russian forces out of Kharkiv, which has been under bombardment since the war began. “But I also want to urge all our people … not to spread excessive emotions. We should not create an atmosphere of excessive moral pressure, where victories are expected weekly and even daily,” Zelenskiy said in a video address.

8 years

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pfrightening

• Are We Pfinding Pfizer Pfraud? -Part 1 (Gato Malo)

The pfizer data dumps are massive and disordered. They drop 50k pages without regard to completeness or order. Here, have a huge box of who knows what! This is a longstanding legal trick. And it works well. It’s the time honored fashion in which big companies bury small legal teams and create a $3 million bill just to sort and read the stuff. But here’s a fun little wrinkle: this time is not going to be like that. Battalions of interested parties are all over it. The documents are posted and reading and sorting them is crowdsourced. And many hands make for light work. And a lot of very skilled sleuths are at work here. No law firm in history has ever had an expert team like this. Never. The FDA and pfizer fought tooth and claw NOT to release this. I have ZERO doubt that they are dumping all the least awful and incriminating things first.


Keep in mind these folks wanted to take 75 years to disclose this. Only a court order pried it loose. But even with this first set of boxes, it’s starting to become apparent why they did not want anyone poking around. They knew all sorts of things they failed to disclose and many are doing good work on this. But what if the trial itself was pfraud? Because that would be seismic. It would not only severely implicate the FDA and pfizer alike, it would likely invalidate the liability protection granted under EUA and suddenly bourla and his merry band of vaxx aficionados might find themselves accountable. Bigly. And wouldn’t that be interesting? So if this looks like a plausible possibility, we really ought to dig in like busy little mice and see what all we can winkle out. Fortunately, some busy little mice have already been doing so. and what they found is, well, pfrightening.

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“..1223 people died within 90 days of taking the Pfizer jab..”

Say Pfizer’s own docs. But no lack of reports saying they do not.

• The Covid Vaccine Boomerang (Maajid Nawaz)

Initially, the FDA took a strange step on behalf of Pfizer by demanding a full 75 years before releasing any of their vaccine trial data. Euronews reports: “The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says it now needs 75 years to fully release Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine data to the public – twenty years more than it originally agreed on November 15.” So strange was this attempt, that a judge then had to order the FDA to release the Pfizer data: Reuters reports: “Jan 7 – Score one for transparency. A federal judge in Texas on Thursday ordered the Food and Drug Administration to make public the data it relied on to license Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, imposing a dramatically accelerated schedule that should result in the release of all information within about eight months.”


So why did Pfizer and the FDA want to hide their data for 75 years? This week, the first batch of that judge-ordered data was released. Despite predictable media spin disguised as “fact-checking”, the basic and rather shocking revelation that 1233 people died within 90 days of taking the Pfizer jab is true. This is contained within Pfizer’s own adverse events report:

The public and smaller media outlets are finally beginning to wake up to the extent of the problem caused by the experimental mRNA jab in particular. Unherd cites: “On the other hand, Stabell-Benn and her colleagues found no statistically meaningful evidence in the trial data that the mRNA vaccines reduced all-cause mortality. The numbers of deaths from other causes including cardiovascular deaths appear to be increased in this group, compensating for the beneficial effect of the vaccines on Covid” No wonder Pfizer would rather pull out of countries entirely than to allow independent testing of their mRNA jab, locally. Reuters reports: “NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Pfizer Inc said on Friday it had withdrawn an application for emergency-use authorisation of its COVID-19 vaccine in India, after failing to meet the drug regulator’s demand for a local safety and immunogenicity study.”

Immunologist, virologist and the inventor of mRNA technology, Dr Robert Malone summarises the latest developments with Pfizer’s data here: “In my opinion withholding scientific data constitutes fraud, this is scientific fraud in my opinion. If I was to publish a study, in which I had a large body of epidemiological data, and I decided to only publish part of it, because I wanted to advance some agenda, I would be guilty of scientific fraud, the paper would be withdrawn, I would be kicked out of my academic institution. I would be guilty of scientific fraud. That’s what this is. And the CDC..I’ve watched it over the years become more and more and more a political arm, and not serving its function…They no longer release that detailed information.. they have become purely a political organisation, an arm of the Executive Branch and what they have done is in my opinion obscene.

And it is part of what’s under lied the attacks that Peter and I have sustained from the press.. if you think about it, the underlying thesis is: ‘well the CDC didn’t say that, so you’re spreading medical misinformation,’ but now we learn who’s really been spreading medical misinformation is the CDC. I think we’re all owed an apology… I think that this data that they have been withholding …it is a ton of information, they’ve been intentionally withholding it, that’s why we’ve been attacked, it is unjust… it turns out we have been completely vindicated. We have been speaking truth, and it’s a truth that has been hidden from the American public, and more importantly it’s been hidden from other physicians, and it’s been hidden from public health authorities..” Dr Robert Malone.

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We know from Pfizer docs that their “vaccine” was never tested on pregnant women, only on 44 rats. So all reports this below is based on is about guinea pigs, tests taking place after it was said to be safe and effective, though nobody could have known that.

• Covid Vaccines Safe For Pregnant Women, Cut Stillbirth Risk – Review (G.)

Doctors have stressed the importance of Covid vaccinations for pregnant women after a major review found the shots were not only safe, but reduced the risk of stillbirth by 15%. Researchers at St George’s, University of London, and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists analysed 23 published studies and trials that enrolled 117,552 pregnant women vaccinated against Covid, to assess the safety of the shots. The vast majority of the women received the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, which provided 89.5% protection against Covid infection seven days after the second dose. There was no evidence of greater risk from miscarriage, preterm birth or other pregnancy complications.

“We wanted to see if vaccination was safe or not for pregnant women,” said Asma Khalil, professor of obstetrics and maternal fetal medicine at St George’s hospital in London. “It is safe, but what’s surprising, and it’s a positive finding, is that there was a reduction in stillbirths.” “So far, most of the data on vaccines in pregnancy have been about protecting the pregnant woman herself from Covid. Now we have evidence that the vaccines protect the baby too,” she added. The results are published in Nature Communications.

Almost all pregnant women admitted to UK hospitals for Covid treatment are unvaccinated. And while vaccine uptake among pregnant women rose from 23% in August to 54% at the end of last year, doctors believe thousands are still unvaccinated. In December, the UK government’s vaccine watchdog, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, made pregnant women a priority group for jabs after studies found women were more likely to become seriously ill if they caught Covid while pregnant.

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All logic is gone now.

• FDA: Youngest Kids Vaccine Won’t Need To Hit 50% Efficacy Mark (EP)

The FDA’s top vaccine leader told a congressional committee on Friday afternoon that although the adult vaccines had to meet a 50% threshold for efficacy against Covid-19 infections, that same standard will not need to be met for the vaccines for the youngest group of children, for which a vaccine is not yet available. The agency is currently reviewing data from Moderna’s two-shot vaccine for this youngest group as it awaits further data from Pfizer on its potential three-dose shot. The agency previously scheduled and then canceled an adcomm to review data on two doses of Pfizer’s vaccine for children under the age of 5.

According to a readout of the meeting from the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis, Marks explained that the FDA would not withhold authorization — despite previous guidance — for a pediatric vaccine solely because it did not reach a 50% efficacy threshold at blocking symptomatic infections. All of the other adult and children’s vaccines currently authorized in the US have lost significant amounts of efficacy due to the Omicron variant, but they still remain effective at reducing the risk of severe disease, hospitalization and death. “If these vaccines seem to be mirroring efficacy in adults and just seem to be less effective against Omicron like they are for adults, we will probably still authorize,” Marks said.

Meanwhile, Marks directly addressed concerns that the agency might slow-play the Moderna application and wait to review both applications together, saying that the VRBPAC meetings set for next month will be moved up if necessary. “Obviously if we get through reviews faster, then we will send them to committees sooner,” Marks said, according to Rep. Jim Clyburn’s account of the meeting. Marks also told Clyburn and his staff that VRBPAC members have reserved earlier dates, enabling FDA to potentially “move dates up even by a week for any of these reviews.” But he also explained that reviewing these vaccines for the youngest children involves more “complexity” than the review of adult vaccines, and the agency’s review process may require more time.

He also said that the emergence of new variants made the process of reviewing vaccines more complex, explaining it “was a little simpler for the original submissions in late 2020 when we didn’t have the variants and tons of immunogenicity data to go through.

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What a surprise.

• $350 Million in Secret Payments to Fauci, Collins, Others at NIH Uncovered (ET)

An estimated $350 million in undisclosed royalties were paid to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and hundreds of its scientists, including the agency’s recently departed director, Dr. Francis Collins, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, according to a nonprofit government watchdog. “We estimate that up to $350 million in royalties from third parties were paid to NIH scientists during the fiscal years between 2010 and 2020,” Open the Books CEO Adam Andrzejewski told reporters in a telephone news conference on May 9. “We draw that conclusion because, in the first five years, there has been $134 million that we have been able to quantify of top-line numbers that flowed from third-party payers, meaning pharmaceutical companies or other payers, to NIH scientists.”

The first five years, from 2010 to 2014, constitute 40 percent of the total, he said. “We now know that there are 1,675 scientists that received payments during that period, at least one payment. In fiscal year 2014, for instance, $36 million was paid out and that is on average $21,100 per scientist,” Andrzejewski said. “We also find that during this period, leadership at NIH was involved in receiving third-party payments. For instance, Francis Collins, the immediate past director of NIH, received 14 payments. Dr. Anthony Fauci received 23 payments and his deputy, Clifford Lane, received eight payments.” Collins resigned as NIH director in December 2021 after 12 years of leading the world’s largest public health agency.

Fauci is the longtime head of NIH’s National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), as well as chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden. Lane is the deputy director of NIAID, under Fauci. The top five NIH employees measured in terms of the number of royalty payments that they received while on the government payroll, according to a fact sheet published by Open the Books, include Robert Gallo, National Cancer Institute, 271 payments; Ira Pastan, National Cancer Institute, 250 payments; Mikulas Popovic, National Cancer Institute, 191 payments; Flossie Wong-Staal, National Cancer Institute, 190 payments; and Mangalasseril Sarngadharan, National Cancer Institute, 188 payments. Only Pastan continues to be employed by NIH, according to Open the Books.

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“If the WHO says every person on the planet needs to have a vaccine passport and digital identity to ensure vaccination compliance, then that’s what every country will be forced to implement, even if the people have rejected such plans using local democratic processes.”

• WHO Pandemic Treaty: What It Is, Why It Matters and How to Stop It (Mercola)

As noted by anti-extremism activist Maajid Nawaz in an April 28 Twitter post, the “WHO pandemic treaty serves as a backdoor to global empire.” COVID-19, while potentially deadly to certain vulnerable groups, simply isn’t a valid justification for handing over more power to the WHO, especially in light of its many inexplicable “mistakes” in this and previous pandemics. As just one example, the WHO didn’t publicly admit SARS-CoV-2 was airborne until the end of December 2021, yet scientists knew the virus was airborne within weeks of the pandemic being declared. The WHO also ignored early advice about airborne transmission. So, it seems clear that the effort to now hand over more power to the WHO is about something other than them being the most qualified to make health decisions that benefit and protect everyone.

It seems far more likely that the WHO is being installed as a de facto governing body for the global Deep State. Through the WHO, under the guise of biosecurity, the globalist cabal who seek to own everything and control everyone will then be able to implement their wishes across the whole world in one fell swoop. With this treaty in place, all member nations will be subject to the WHO’s dictates. If the WHO says every person on the planet needs to have a vaccine passport and digital identity to ensure vaccination compliance, then that’s what every country will be forced to implement, even if the people have rejected such plans using local democratic processes.

[..] Under the guise of a global pandemic, the WHO, the World Economic Forum and all its installed leaders in government and private business were able to roll out a plan that had already been decades in the making. The pandemic was a perfect cover. In the name of keeping everyone “safe” from infection, the globalists justified unprecedented attacks on democracy, civil liberties and personal freedoms, including the right to choose your own medical treatment. Now, the WHO is gearing up to make its pandemic leadership permanent, extend it into the healthcare systems of every nation and eventually implement a universal or “socialist-like” healthcare system as part of The Great Reset.

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Empty apartments.

• The Chinese Slowdown: Much More Than Covid (Lacalle)

The most recent macroeconomic figures show that the Chinese slowdown is much more severe than expected and not only attributable to the covid-19 lockdowns. The lockdowns have an enormous impact. Twenty-six of 31 China mainland provinces have rising covid cases and the fear of a Shanghai-style lockdown is enormous. The information coming from Shanghai proves that these drastic lockdowns create an enormous damage to the population. Millions of citizens without food or medicine and rising suicides have shown that the infamous “zero covid” policy often disguises mass population control and repression. It is easy to use the covid-19 lockdowns as the reason for the weakening of the Chinese economy but that would be a gross simplification. The problem is deeper.

China is going through a severe slowdown caused by the burst of the enormous real estate bubble and the crackdown on the private sector, which has led to a cut in investment growth. According to Nomura Research, China faces the worst slowdown since the covid outbreak in 2020 and the world should be worried about a further slide, as the challenges persist. Official gross domestic product (GDP) figures may be massaged to deliver the government’s target, but all other macro figures point to a much weaker growth. We must remember that there are two ways in which the Chinese government “boosts” real GDP: By publishing a low inflation and GDP deflator figure and by massively increasing credit and infrastructure spending. However, those two cannot disguise the importance of the weakening of the Chinese economy, because it is now structural.

The collapse of the real estate bubble is the biggest problem. A research paper by Kenneth Rogoff and Yuanchen Yang estimated that the real estate sector accounts for around 29 percent of China’s GDP. It is impossible for the Chinese government to offset the impact of such a massive part of the economy with other high-growth sectors. Furthermore, real estate’s impact on the job market is hard to substitute. Economist George Magnus warned that the impact of the real estate collapse would last for years.

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“..while the number of weather-related disasters [..] has risen in the past 50 years, the number of deaths caused by them has fallen..”

• BBC Climate Editor Made False Claims On Global Warming (DM)

A BBC Panorama documentary about global warming made a number of false claims, an internal investigation by the broadcaster has found. The programme Wild Weather, presented by climate editor Justin Rowlatt, said deaths worldwide were rising due to extreme weather caused by climate change – whereas the opposite is true. It also claimed Madagascar was on the verge of the first famine caused by climate change – despite other factors being involved. The programme, broadcast last November to coincide with the COP26 climate conference, sparked two complaints investigated by the BBC’s Editorial Complaints Unit (ECU). Last year Rowlatt’s sister Cordelia was among a number of Insulate Britain activists arrested for staging a protest at junction 3 of the M25.


Miss Rowlatt, who once appeared on TV advising her brother on how to be more environmentally friendly, pleaded guilty by post at Crawley Magistrates’ Court. She was fined £300 with £85 court costs and a £34 surcharge for committing a public nuisance on a highway. The introduction of Wild Weather said ‘the death toll is rising around the world and the forecast is that worse is to come’. The ECU said this risked giving the impression the rate of deaths from extreme weather-related events was increasing. In fact, as noted by a recent report from the World Meteorological Organisation, while the number of weather-related disasters – such as floods, storms and drought – has risen in the past 50 years, the number of deaths caused by them has fallen because of improved early warnings and disaster management.

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The Guardian is a two-faced monster.

• Priti Patel, Julian Assange Must Not Be Handed Over To The US (G.)

Priti Patel now has to make one of the most important decisions of her career: will she bow to heavy pressure from the United States and send a vulnerable man who has been convicted of no crime to face an indeterminate number of years in an American jail where he may experience intimidation and isolation? Her decision is imminent and all other legal avenues have been explored. This was the scenario 10 years ago in the case of Gary McKinnon, the computer hacker who, working out of his north London bedroom, trawled through the computer systems of Nasa and the US defence department in search of information about UFOs and left behind some mildly rude messages about the systems’ sloppy security. The home secretary was Theresa May, who halted extradition proceedings at the last minute.

Now Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder and also a vulnerable man – who has been in Belmarsh high-security prison for three years without being convicted of any crime – is facing extradition, with the issue due to be decided this month. Once again, the home secretary has an opportunity to demonstrate, as May did, that respect for justice and humanity are much finer and more enduring qualities than appeasement. It is worth recalling the words of party leaders in support of McKinnon after Labour home secretaries – to their great shame – declined to intervene in the years after his initial arrest in 2002. Nick Clegg, then leading the Liberal Democrats in opposition, said that McKinnon “has been hung out to dry by a British government desperate to appease its American counterparts”.

David Cameron, before he became prime minister, had said: “McKinnon is a vulnerable young man and I see no compassion in sending him thousands of miles away from his home and loved ones to face trial.” The current case is different in that, while McKinnon remained at liberty, Assange has been held in custody alongside murderers and terrorists after the seven years he spent in the Ecuadorian embassy, seeking political asylum. He should have been given bail long ago to be with his wife, Stella Moris, whom he married in prison in March, and their two young children; he could simply be electronically tagged and monitored. It is also different in that he faces charges under the Espionage Act which carries a potential sentence of 175 years. And yes, the US criminal justice system does actually impose such medieval sentences.

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Truth Social

 

 

Expodentially

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle May 9 2022

May 092022
 
 May 9, 2022  Posted by at 8:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  38 Responses »


Henri Gervex Rolla 1878

 

• It’s Not Over. It’s Just Begun (Naomi Wolf)
• FDA: Americans Should Treat COVID-19 Like the Flu (ET)
• White House Warns Of Covid Surges In The Winter (Pol.)
• US Senator Says Biden Admin Disinformation Board Likely Illegal (JTN)
• Ukraine Will Prevail As Europe Did In 1945 – Scholz (G.)
• Bono Showed up in Kyiv, Ukraine Along with Justin From Canada (CTH)
• Europe’s Mad Ban on Russian Oil (Vilches)
• Biden To Deliver Remarks On Inflation Tuesday (CNN)
• Michigan Police Seize Voting Machine (JTN)
• Courts Find No Government Coercion Of Big Tech On Covid ‘Misinformation’ (JTN)
• Anatomy of the American Baby Formula Shortage (JTN)

 

 

“On Victory Day, let’s remember the heroic peoples of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and elsewhere that fought together, making unbelievable sacrifices to liberate Europe from the horrors of fascism. Nothing – including today’s NATO-Nazi marriage of convenience – can erase that history.”

 

 

 

 

Biden prostitute
https://twitter.com/i/status/1523317412179111937

 

 

MEP Christine Anderson
https://twitter.com/i/status/1523255207312130048

 

 

 

 

 

 

Renz Harari

 

 

Naomi Wolf works on the Pfizer docs with a whole team of people.

• It’s Not Over. It’s Just Begun (Naomi Wolf)

On MSNBC that morning, Dr Anthony Fauci, that entangled mass of compromised spiritual matter, who had presided over the intentional wastelands of the pandemic; who had for two years delivered in his nasal Brooklyn cadences its lie-based soundbites with their dearth of scientific studies, that wrecked livelihoods, destroyed kids’ educations, and that drove whole communities into destitution — had declared, as if he were God Himself, that the pandemic was over. Well — okay then! I realized as we drove that my grief was not actually grief. As any pop psychologist will tell you, just beneath depression is rage. I realized — I was furious.


Brian and I had been fighting, side by side, relentlessly, for over two years, in a bitter, exhausting war to return America to — simply to normal; to its historic status as a great, free society, in which people could enjoy their Constitutional liberties. We were part of a loose community —a movement, say — of people braver and more dedicated than we; we were part of what you might call a liberty movement. But these heroes and heroines alongside whom we fought, were all pitiably few in number. There were maybe hundreds; maybe a few thousand. Many more perhaps were in sympathy with us, but our energies were still spread very thin. As I have written before, these heroes and heroines risked medical licenses, risked livelihoods. They were smeared and mocked by their peers. They were stripped of credentials. They staked their savings and lost them as they had their incomes taken away.

But they burned, as the rebels in 1775 had burned, to defend our way of life and our institutions. They would not let the dream of America die. They were the miserably few real doctors and real reporters, real activists and real lawyers. They were the truck drivers; they were teachers and cops and firefighters. They were patriots. They did not have easy lives. You know who had easier lives over the past two years? The damn quislings. The people who stayed at the cocktail parties and who mocked the unvaccinated. The doctors who were silent about vaccine harms when teens presented with heart damage, because they might lose their licenses if they breathed a word of what they knew.


The ex-Brooklynites who were supposed to be journalists but who smeared and attacked the medical freedom movement instead of reporting on Pfizer’s internal documents showing massive undisclosed medical catastrophes, in what is turning out to be one of the great corporate coverups of our generation. I realized the source of my rage: the labor and nightmares and isolation and persecution and money worries and — well — awful battles waged by us few hundreds, few thousands, had helped these quislings and collaborators have back what — what we had wanted them to have back; indeed, what we had wanted us all to have back; our America.

Naomi Wolf Pfizer

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FDA and CDC need to be disbanded.

• FDA: Americans Should Treat COVID-19 Like the Flu (ET)

Several top Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials, including Commissioner Robert Califf, admitted that Americans will now have to accept COVID-19 as another respiratory virus, comparing it to influenza. Califf, Principal Deputy Commissioner Janet Woodcock, and top vaccine official Dr. Peter Marks wrote for the Journal of the American Medical Association that COVID-19 will be around for the foreseeable future while suggesting that it will require yearly vaccines targeting the most threatening variations of the virus. “Widespread vaccine- and infection-induced immunity, combined with the availability of effective therapeutics, could blunt the effects of future outbreaks,” the officials said, referring to another name for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

“Nonetheless, it is time to accept that the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is the new normal.” The virus “will likely circulate globally for the foreseeable future, taking its place alongside other common respiratory viruses such as influenza. And it likely will require similar annual consideration for vaccine composition updates in consultation with the [FDA],” they continued. It’s a departure from the rhetoric that was expressed by public health officials in 2020 and 2021. In late October 2020, for example, current White House COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci said that President Donald Trump’s comparisons to the flu were false, telling NBC at the time “it is not correct to say it’s the same as flu.”

About a year later, Fauci told CBS News that Americans will “likely” have to deal with COVID-19 in a similar manner as influenza. “That’s entirely conceivable and likely, as a matter of fact, we are not going to be in a situation of this degree of intensity indefinitely,” he said when asked about the Omicron variant. Data published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that while cases have trended slightly upward in the United States, the numbers are a fraction of the cases that were reported in mid-January when the seven-day average stood at around 800,000 per day. As of May 6, the seven-day average was about 68,000 per day.

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Ha ha ha. The White House knows better than the FDA.

• White House Warns Of Covid Surges In The Winter (Pol.)

Covid cases surged during the last two winters and are likely to again this year — unless the country can prepare and act, White House Covid-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha said Sunday morning. “If we don’t get ahead of this thing, we’ll have a lot of waning immunity, this virus continues to evolve and we may see a pretty sizable wave of infections, hospitalizations and deaths this fall and winter,” Jha said on ABC’s “This Week.” Congress needs to provide resources, Jha said, specifically $22.5 billion, a number that will help with a vaccine supply that’s dwindling. In March, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said: “If the science shows that fourth doses are needed for the general population later this year, we will not have the supply necessary to ensure shots are available.”


The money, once allocated, would go toward Covid vaccine supply and coronavirus testing. “If Congress doesn’t step up and fund these, I think, urgent and emergent priorities … they can’t wait until the fall, it will be too late,” Jha said. And the proof is in the jab. With cases increasing in the Northeast, deaths remain low because of high vaccination rates. “That’s not true for the whole country,” Jha said. With enough resources to get more people vaccinated and more therapeutics in place, he said, “I do think we can get through this winter without a lot of suffering and death.”

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“Federal funding available for the board and for Jankowicz’s salary “is ‘none,’” he said, because “Congress explicitly defunded it, just weeks ago.”

• US Senator Says Biden Admin Disinformation Board Likely Illegal (JTN)

Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., says the creation of a board within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) tasked with combating “disinformation” is likely illegal. Creating the board and hiring its new director without Congressional authorization violates several federal laws, Hagerty, R-Tenn., said. Knowingly and willfully violating one of them carries a $5,000 fine and up to two years in prison, he adds. Hagerty sent a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas saying his “actions merit review by Congress, both as a general matter, as well as under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) and because the actions may be in violation of provisions of the Antideficiency Act.”

He told Mayorkas that “you will comply with the requirements” of the CRA when it comes to the creation of DHS’ disinformation board because the law requires “any agency action that falls within the definition of a ‘rule’ must be submitted to Congress for review before it can take effect.” Creating the board and hiring its new director, Nina Jankowicz, “may also be a direct violation of provisions of the Antideficiency Act,” Hagerty wrote. The law prohibits “making or authorizing an expenditure from, or creating or authorizing an obligation under, any appropriation or fund in excess of the amount available in the appropriation or fund unless authorized by law.” Federal funding available for the board and for Jankowicz’s salary “is ‘none,’” he said, because “Congress explicitly defunded it, just weeks ago.”

Citing a section of the fiscal 2022 Omnibus Appropriations Act, Hagerty said the law “specifically prohibits the Secretary of Homeland Security from using any funds provided by Congress to carry out Section 872 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which means it defunded any action to ‘allocate or reallocate functions among the officers of the Department of Homeland Security or to establish, consolidate, or alter organizational units within the Department of Homeland Security.’” Hagerty also put Mayorkas on notice, writing: “As you know, an officer or employee, including you, who violates the Antideficiency Act ‘shall be subject to appropriate administrative discipline,’ and, for willful violations, faces a criminal fine, imprisonment, or both.”

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The man whose country was defeated, for which 25-40 million Russians gave their life. Maybe that man should shut his face on Victory Day.

• Ukraine Will Prevail As Europe Did In 1945 – Scholz (G.)

Ukraine will prevail over Russia as freedom prevailed over the Nazi dictatorship in 1945, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, will say in a TV address to mark the 77th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, in which he will accuse Vladimir Putin of falsifying history. In the speech, which will be aired on German TV at 8.20pm CET (7.20pm BST) on Sunday, Scholz says the “legacy of 8 May” for his country must be to help to ensure that there will never again be genocide or tyranny in Europe. “I am deeply convinced. Putin will not win the war,” the centre-left politician says. “Ukraine will prevail. Freedom and safety will win, just like freedom and safety triumphed over servitude, violence and dictatorship 77 years ago.”

Scholz says it is “falsifying history and disgraceful” of Russia’s president to equate his own “barbaric war of aggression” with the fight against National Socialism. “It is our duty to state this clearly,” his speech says. In keeping with previous postwar German leaders’ messages on 8 May, Scholz thanks the Allied forces for their defeat of Nazi Germany, and says his country owes a debt to both Russia and Ukraine, which suffered millions of casualties in the second world war. Scholz has repeatedly declared Germany’s support for Ukraine’s defensive effort but diplomatic relations between Berlin and Kyiv have been frosty. Ukrainian diplomats have accused his left-liberal coalition government of stalling over embargoes on Russian energy and deliveries of military hardware.

The chancellor, meanwhile, appeared personally piqued after Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, previously a Social Democratic party (SPD) ally, was told last month he was not welcome to visit Kyiv along with eastern European leaders. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said last week he had made up with Steinmeier and invited Scholz to pay a symbolic visit to Ukraine’s capital on 9 May. The German leader did not give any indication on Sunday of whether he was likely to accept or not.

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“Bono’s appearance in any State Dept/CIA construct usually precedes the bombing of the proverbial milk factories and subsequent “babies are casualties of war” narrative.”

• Bono Showed up in Kyiv, Ukraine Along with Justin From Canada (CTH)

It’s the new cool thing. It’s the latest rage on Insta. All the most virtuous people are doing it. Don’t miss out on your opportunity to support the movement. Travel to Kyiv, Ukraine, snap a few selfies… Social media archives will record history. According to pop culture, the Facebook, Insta, Twitter and YouTube social media campaign to save Kyiv, is bigger than the Berlin wall falling. The CIA, DoS, DHS and Nina Jankowicz have declared it true. When the conflict in Ukraine first began, the White House announced the victor would be the one who could “tell a better story.” The war in Ukraine would be determined by who was more likeable on social media. From that moment forth, winning the PR battle has been the focus.


Within days of the White House declaring the strategy, Google, DuckDuckGo, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter all announced they would filter and block content that did not support World War Reddit. Anyone who was not supporting Ukraine and “churchill in a T-Shirt” ran the risk of being deplatformed; and so, the strategy has continued through today. After writing pro-Ukraine poems for Nancy Pelosi to read to congress, now Bono travels to Ukraine. I said on March 1st when Bono shows up, that’s the moment when you know western propaganda over Ukraine will soon apex. Bono’s appearance in any State Dept/CIA construct usually precedes the bombing of the proverbial milk factories and subsequent “babies are casualties of war” narrative.

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May I call you Ursula ?

• Europe’s Mad Ban on Russian Oil (Vilches)

May I call you Ursula ? Thank you. “We will make sure that we phase out Russian oil in an orderly fashion [… a phenomenal bad joke of sorts… ] in a way that allows us and our partners to secure alternative supply routes and minimises the impact on global markets” you said. Question: will the Russians just idly watch you trying to execute such enormity at the EU´s preferred speed and political and geopolitical sequencing? And the Russians would never dare to strike back with natural gas or other restrictions no? For starters, what about nickel, uranium, and lithium? Not having them would be like trying to prepare tasty food without salt, pepper or mustard. Without uranium no nuclear power is possible, did you know? [ more on that later ]. Ursula, your pink unicorn wishful thinking is unfathomable gal.

This mad-ban requires EU approval with conditional support from Hungary, Greece, and others. So some special EU members will be exempted while regular EU ´kelpers´ will not. Now could that lead to serious friction ? How many years will it take all of Europe to reconvert its industry and supply chains? “This is why we will phase out Russian supply of crude oil within 6 months and refined products by the end of the year.” Okay, so Aunty Ursie you believe the Russians are dumb enough to let you phase this idea out nice and easy at your own pace and whenever you decide to act per your own special EU schedule. No market dynamics involved as Europe plays everybody else´s pieces too as grandpas would do with 3-year-old grandkids.

No way Ursula, the Russians play world-class professional chess while you play elementary school checkers, not even being good at that either. The instant Russia perceives the initial execution of your game plan regarding banning of Russian oil, they´ll make their moves, not yours. And those Russian moves will not be nice and pretty. For one, Europe will not have anywhere nearly ready its own diesel refining capacity by the end of 2022 while the middle distillate market is ever much tighter everywhere as demand recovers from the Covid pandemic. So the EU “plan” is to frantically search for hard-to-find or simply non-existent substitutes while investing tons of time, money, effort and risk. Well, the Russians know that already even before you start. Diesel is already in critically short supply in the EU. Furthermore, Europe will continue buying Russian oil and distillates via third countries once it introduces any embargo only that at much higher prices than today. Such old, quick and dirty business is known as “triangulation” Ursula.

The existential threat imposed on Russia by the EU with its macabre “Ukraine Plan” and sanctions has not left Russia any way out other than playing hardball for keeps. Furthermore, the Russian non-military retaliation domain is actually unlimited due to the full-scale and open-ended addiction that Europe has developed for Russian imports of different sorts including commodities of any and every imaginable type. Without such, Europe will cease to exist as we know it in a matter of a very few months, if not weeks. As Francis Fukuyama should posit, Europe´s dependency on Russian commodities is the end of its own history.

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They think they found a way to blame the GOP – and Putin, of course.

• Biden To Deliver Remarks On Inflation Tuesday (CNN)

President Joe Biden will deliver remarks on inflation Tuesday, a White House official said, as his administration looks to further address one of the key economic concerns for voters heading into November’s midterm elections. “He’ll detail his plan to fight inflation and lower costs for working families, and contrast his approach with Congressional Republicans’ ultra-MAGA plan to raise taxes on 75 million American families and threaten to sunset programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,” the official said in an email. A CNN poll released last week found 8 in 10 US adults said the federal government wasn’t doing enough to curb inflation, and a majority said the President’s policies have hurt the economy.


Even within the Democratic Party, just 7 in 10 approve of Biden on the economy (71%) and helping the middle class (71%), considerably lower than the 86% of Democrats who approve of his performance overall. Inflation rates have been increasing sharply since August 2021 and have been out of the normal 2%-to-4% range for a full year. The Consumer Price Index rose 8.5% for the year ending in March, a rate that hadn’t been seen since December of 1981. “It’s our job to make sure that inflation of that unpleasant high nature doesn’t get entrenched in the economy,” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said last week, just after he announced a half-point interest rate hike to combat inflation.

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2000 mules coming right at you.

• Michigan Police Seize Voting Machine (JTN)

Michigan State Police seized a voting machine as part of an investigation into possible unauthorized access to election equipment. Law enforcement and officials at Democratic Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office had a warrant and took a voting machine from Irving Township into custody, officials told CNN and The Epoch Times. “The Township intends to fully cooperate with law enforcement, and the Township attorneys have been in contact with the Michigan State Police regarding this matter. The Township has no further comment at this time,” Irving Township supervisor Jamie Knight told The Epoch Times. County clerk Pamela Palmer told CNN that she did not know about any machine issue until police notified her of the equipment’s seizure. The 2020 election investigation has expanded in Michigan. “As we found out more information we’ve expanded our area to see if any other places were compromised,” Michigan State Police Lieutenant Derrick Carroll said. “We have gone to other regions.”

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Not every court will be this blind.

• Courts Find No Government Coercion Of Big Tech On Covid ‘Misinformation’ (JTN)

Social media users alleged that federal authorities used an old gangster tactic to compel Twitter and Facebook to censor purported COVID-19 misinformation: “Nice place you’ve got here, be a shame if something happened to it.” Federal judges in Ohio and California didn’t buy those arguments, dismissing both First Amendment cases Thursday for lack of legal standing. Both claimed Facebook and Twitter might have punished the plaintiffs anyway under their own terms of service. “The 1st amendment is a dead letter,” Stanford University medical professor Jay Bhattacharya, also a target of censorship for his anti-lockdown Great Barrington Declaration, tweeted in response to the rulings.

“The judges are looking at this very technically,” faulting the absence of direct orders to censor, New Civil Liberties Alliance lawyer Jenin Younes, counsel in the Ohio case, told Just the News. She believes her three clients have better chances in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, pointing to its 2019 ruling against the University of Michigan, which both the court and feds ignored. The 6th Circuit let a First Amendment group represent students challenging the university’s “bias response team,” agreeing it imposed an “objective chill” on their speech regardless of whether it had “actual power to punish” them. The student-run Harvard Law Review blasted the ruling at the time for a “lax view of standing” that “seemingly dispensed with the requirement that a plaintiff show actual injury.

The setbacks may take a backseat to a broader lawsuit filed Thursday. The attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana accused the Biden administration of “colluding” with Big Tech to censor information about the Hunter Biden laptop story, origins of COVID and security of voting via mail during the pandemic. Justin Hart, identified by MIT researchers as an “anchor” for data-driven mask skepticism on Twitter, sued Facebook, Twitter, President Biden, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and federal offices last summer in California, alleging “state action” against his posts. Murthy and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki publicly disclosed “within days” of Hart’s suspensions from Facebook and Twitter that the feds were pressuring social media to remove “misinformation super-spreaders” and that White House “senior staff” were directly contacting the companies.

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An unexpected emergency?! “..the Biden Food and Drug Administration was alerted by a whistleblower last fall..”

• Anatomy of the American Baby Formula Shortage (JTN)

At the outset of his presidency, Joe Biden promised competence by a bigger, better government. A few days ago, one of his loyal allies exposed a gross incompetence by federal officials on Biden’s watch that defied that promise and inflamed a baby formula shortage now panicking parents nationwide. Rep. Rose DeLauro, D-Conn., a reliable liberal ally, unveiled documents showing the Biden Food and Drug Administration was alerted by a whistleblower last fall about potential contamination issues at the Abbott Nutrition baby formula factory in Michigan and failed for months to act aggressively. “The FDA reacted far too slowly to this report,” DeLauro said in releasing a letter to the Health and Human Services inspector general demanding an immediate investigation to an incident that has led to babies being sickened and dying and a belated recall that has emptied shelves of formula nationwide.

The congresswoman, the chairwoman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, laid out a four-month-long trail of federal bumbles and stumbles: the report came in Oct. 20, the whistleblower didn’t even get interviewed for two months, the plant didn’t get inspected until Jan. 31 and the recall didn’t get issued until Feb. 17. “Why did the FDA not spring into action?” she implored during a congressional hearing. “Why did it take four months to pull this formula off store shelves? How many infants were fed contaminated formula during this time, by parents who trusted that the formula they were buying was safe? How many additional illnesses and deaths were there due to FDA’s slow response?”

Now the bureaucratic stumbling has escalated into a national crisis, as video of bare shelves and panicked parents harken in America some of the same fears and images as the bread lines and rationing that befell the Soviet Union in the early 1990s just before its collapse. The problems began even before the recall as inflation, labor shortages and supply chain slowdowns began putting pressure on the baby food staple last fall. In November, baby formula was already substantially more expensive and supply shortages had already risen to 11%. By the first week of April, the shortages had soared to 31%, and last week the number stood at a stunning 40%, according to statistics kept by Datasembly.

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Musk SNL
https://twitter.com/i/status/1523366203242262529

Buffett

 

 

 

 

 

Joe Rogan Vikings

 

 

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

 

 

 

Debt Rattle April 28 2022

Apr 282022
 
 April 28, 2022  Posted by at 8:37 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  24 Responses »


Robert Rauschenberg Buffalo II 1964

 

• Russia Stops Gas Supplies to Poland and Bulgaria (CTH)
• Russia Doubles Fossil Fuel Revenues Since Invasion Of Ukraine Began (G.)
• Putin’s Main Assault Is Still To Come (Lieutenant-General Jonathon Riley)
• Biden Admin Creates ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ Under DHS (PM)
• DHS Will Establish Disinformation Board with Obvious Agenda (CTH)
• Online Censorship of Ukraine Dissent Is Becoming the New Norm (MPN)
• Twitter Workers Freaking Out Over Elon Musk In Internal Slack Messages (Ngo)
• Obama Goes Full Orwell In Scary Stanford Speech (WND)
• Republicans Want Answers From Garland On FBI’s Role In Whitmer Charges (Fox)
• Mortgage Volume Gets Crushed by Spiking Interest Rates
• Fauci Walks Back Comment About US No Longer Being In ‘Pandemic Phase’ (NYP)
• CDC and FDA ‘Altered’ Covid Guidance, Findings Under Political Pressure (DM)
• Fiction Disguised as Science to Promote Hatred (Byram Bridle)

 

 

 

 

Euro and yen are getting crushed, ruble is at 52-week high.

@TFMetals: Gold has now been attacked TWICE today in an attempt to manipulate it back under $1880. The first was in London and the second, even higher volume attack came during the first hour of Comex trading.

 

 

 

 

Biden Scott Ritter 2002

 

 

“Those who can make you believe absurdities; can make you commit atrocities” ~ Voltaire

 

 

“due to absence of payments in roubles”

• Russia Stops Gas Supplies to Poland and Bulgaria (CTH)

At the same time as Russia has targeted railway lines as part of the effort to block U.S. arms shipments into Eastern Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has now followed through on the previous warning to stop Russian gas supplies unless payments are made in non-sanctioned Rubles. Poland is obviously the primary target for retaliation here, as the NATO alliance is using Poland as the gateway for arms deliveries into Ukraine. According to multiple reports from the EU Russia has halted gas shipments into Poland and Bulgaria. (Reuters) “Gazprom Russia’s gas export monopoly, suspended gas supplies “due to absence of payments in roubles”, as stipulated in a decree from Russian President Vladimir Putin that aims to soften the impact of sanctions.”


There are conflicting reports as to whether Germany is paying Russia, or whether they are trying to avoid running afoul of the NATO alliance by reducing Russian imports. Ukraine President Zelenskyy is using the opportunity to reinforce his position that all European countries need to stop purchasing energy from Russia, or else they are not supporting Ukraine. However, it’s not as simple as it seems because multiple EU countries are dependent on Russia for energy products and there are no immediate alternatives. Russia is leveraging this dependency in an effort to break the western sanctions.

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“Russia has effectively caught the EU in a trap where further restrictions will raise prices further..”

• Russia Doubles Fossil Fuel Revenues Since Invasion Of Ukraine Began (G.)

Russia has nearly doubled its revenues from selling fossil fuels to the EU during the two months of war in Ukraine, benefiting from soaring prices even as volumes have been reduced. Russia has received about €62bn from exports of oil, gas and coal in the two months since the invasion began, according to an analysis of shipping movements and cargos by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. For the EU, imports were about €44bn for the past two months, compared with about €140bn for the whole of last year, or roughly €12bn a month. The findings demonstrate how Russia has continued to benefit from its stranglehold over Europe’s energy supply, even while governments have frantically sought to prevent Vladimir Putin using oil and gas as an economic weapon.


Even though exports from Russia have been reduced by the war and sanctions, the country’s dominance as a source of gas has meant cutting off supplies has only increased prices, which were already high because of tight supply as global economies recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic. Crude oil shipments from Russia to foreign ports fell by 30% in the first three weeks of April, compared with rates in January and February, before the invasion, according to the CREA data. But the higher prices Russia can now command for its oil and gas mean its revenues, which flow almost directly to the Russian government through state-dominated companies, have risen even while sanctions and export restrictions bite. Russia has effectively caught the EU in a trap where further restrictions will raise prices further, cushioning its revenues despite the best efforts of EU governments.

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Always a bit weird when western military “analyzes” Russia. Invariably they pretend to have a direct line into Putin’s brain.

• Putin’s Main Assault Is Still To Come (Lieutenant-General Jonathon Riley)

IN spite of appearances and the beliefs of many, the main Russian assault in eastern Ukraine has not yet begun. Last Sunday, April 24, was Easter Sunday in the Russian Orthodox calendar; the feast lasts eight days until the commemoration of Our Lord’s second appearance to the Disciples after his resurrection and the confrontation with ‘doubting’ Thomas. Given Vladimir Putin’s well-documented devotion to the Orthodox religion, we might expect the main assault in eastern Ukraine to begin after that date. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s declaration that the offensive had begun was useful to Putin. It has caused both the Ukrainian people and the West to think that Russian forces are now fully committed. They are not. What has begun is the deep attack and the use of deception – two recycled Soviet techniques still in full use.

Deep attacks against infrastructure by air and missile strikes and on key targets, including stockpiles of Nato-supplied equipment, air defence systems, airfields and communications are now in progress. Preliminary artillery fire on close targets in the Donbas region is also certainly ongoing. In terms of deception, the Russians continue to be poised in the Black Sea threatening Odessa, but with probably insufficient forces to do more than this. However, it is clearly fixing Ukrainian attention, as the 5th (Reserve) Tank Brigade with its 90 T-72 main battle tanks has been moved there. For Putin, leaving Odessa as the only operational Ukrainian port will be a valuable bargaining chip once the Donbas operation is complete and he seeks to dictate a settlement. If a settlement is not achieved then this picture changes, more of which shortly.

So what can we expect to see when the main assault unfolds? First, combined arms assaults against Ukrainian regular forces in the Donbas and elsewhere on the eastern frontier to fix them. Zelensky’s statements that Ukrainian reserves are now being committed, including the 3rd (Reserve) Tank Brigade deploying to Izyum, and the 4th and 17th Tank Brigades deployed to Kharkov, may well be a bluff. If it is not, then such moves would be premature and play to the Russian script. That said, an encircling movement from Izyum to the south, on the western border of the Donetsk, would be a very clear indicator of the beginning of full offensive operations.

Operations in and around Mariupol will continue, but only to fix the attention of the West and its media. Mariupol is seen as the key to any corridor to the Crimea – but the route to the Crimea has been fully open since early March with the garrison of Mariupol confined to a small area and helpless to interfere.

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Here’s how nervous Elon Musk is making Washington.

• Biden Admin Creates ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ Under DHS (PM)

The Department of Homeland Security is setting up a new board designed to counter misinformation related to homeland security, with a focus specifically on Russia and irregular migration. The board will be called the “Disinformation Governance Board, and will be headed by executive director Nina Jankowicz. Speaking with the House Appropriations DHS Subcommittee on Wednesday afternoon, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said, “Our Undersecretary for Policy, Rob Silvers is co-chair with our Principal Deputy General Counsel, Jennifer Gaskell, in leading a just recently constituted misinformation disinformation governance board. So we’re bringing — the goal is to bring the resources of the department together to address this threat.”

Jankowicz was previously a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, and had advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry as part of the Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship, according to Politico. Jankowicz also oversaw Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute. She announced the new Board via Twitter on Wednesday. Jankowicz has previously said that she was concerned that Twitter had determined early in 2022 to stop limiting speech from users about the 2020 presidential election, saying that “considering the long-term damage these lies do to our democracy,” she was “dismayed about this decision.”

Her view about elections, whether foreign or domestic, are that they “aren’t an end point,” but are “an inflection point,” and that the policies of social media companies as regards free speech “need to reflect that.” Jankowicz was an advisor to the government of Ukraine. She also stated her opinion that Hunter Biden’s laptop, the contents of which were reported by the New York Post, was Russian disinformation. This was entirely false. Jankowicz will be leading the charge against misinformation, of which she believed the laptop actually was an example. Jankowicz also does not appear to be a fan of free speech, saying that setting up free speech in opposition to censorship is “a false dichotomy.”

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This Nina Jankowicz, who will head the board, is herself a veritable disinformation engine.

• DHS Will Establish Disinformation Board with Obvious Agenda (CTH)

I think we are now seeing the outlines of how the Fourth Branch of Government are planning to keep control over information, specifically public discussion on Big Tech platforms, even as Elon Musk moves to open the valves of information from the social media platform Twitter. Previously the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced a new Dept of Homeland Security priority to combat disinformation {LINK} on technology platforms including social media. Many eyebrows were raised as the announcement appeared to be an open admission that the U.S. government was going to control information by applying labels, that would align with allies in social media, who need a legal justification for censorship and content removal.


NOTE: The Republicans did NOT pay for the Steele dossier.

This CISA announcement was quickly followed by various government officials and agencies saying it was critical to combat Russian disinformation, as the events in Ukraine unfolded. In essence, Ukraine was the justification for search engines like Google, DuckDuckGo, and social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to begin targeting information and content that did not align with the official U.S. government narrative. Previously those same methods were deployed by the U.S. government, specifically the CDC and FDA, toward COVID-19 and the vaccination program. All of this background aligns with the previous visibility of a public-private partnership between the bureaucracy of government, the U.S. intelligence agencies and U.S. social media. That partnership now forms the very cornerstone of the DHS/CISA effort to control what information exists in the public space. It is highly important that people understand what is happening.

[..] For two years the control mechanisms around information have been cemented by govt and Big Tech. Even the deployment of the linguistics around disinformation, misinformation and malinformation is all part of that collective effort. The collaboration between the government and Big Tech is not a matter for debate, it is all easily referenced by their own admissions. The current issue is how they are deploying the information controls. We have COVID-19, the vaccination effort and now Ukraine as examples of the collaboration to control information, to control what people are permitted to question and discuss on the internet. Now things are getting much more detailed, and more alarming.

Shortly after Elon Musk made a bid to purchase a single information platform, Twitter, and then expressed his intent to open the speech valves, former Obama administration intelligence officials wrote a letter warning about efforts to break up the information control by Big Tech and Social Media. That letter was shortly followed by a speech delivered by Obama himself where he specifically demanded that government take a larger role in the control of information, essentially promoting an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth’ to control information in the public sphere.

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See Covid. See Russiagate. Parites like the DNC, the MSM and the Twitter snowflakes have convinced themselves they have a god-given right to censorship.

• Online Censorship of Ukraine Dissent Is Becoming the New Norm (MPN)

Google has sent a warning shot across the world, ominously informing media outlets, bloggers, and content creators that it will no longer tolerate certain opinions when it comes to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Earlier this month, Google AdSense sent a message to a myriad of publishers, including MintPress News, informing us that, “Due to the war in Ukraine, we will pause monetization of content that exploits, dismisses, or condones the war.” This content, it went on to say, “includes, but is not limited to, claims that imply victims are responsible for their own tragedy or similar instances of victim-blaming, such as claims that Ukraine is committing genocide or deliberately attacking its own citizens.”

This builds on a similar message Google’s subsidiary YouTube released last month, stating, “Our Community Guidelines prohibit content denying, minimizing or trivializing well-documented violent events. We are now removing content about Russia’s invasion in Ukraine that violates this policy.” YouTube went on to say that it had already permanently banned more than a thousand channels and 15,000 videos on these grounds. Journalist and filmmaker Abby Martin was deeply troubled by the news. “It is really disturbing that this is the trend that we are on,” she told MintPress, adding: It is a preposterous declaration considering that the victim is whoever we are told by our foreign policy establishment.

It really is outrageous to be told by these tech giants that taking the wrong side of a conflict that is quite complicated will now hurt your views, derank you on social media or limit your ability to fund your work. So you have to toe the line in order to survive as a journalist in alternative media today.” The most prominent victim of the recent banning spate has been Russian state media such as RT America, whose entire catalog has been blocked throughout most of the world. RT America was also blocked from broadcasting across the U.S., leading to the network’s sudden closure.

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“We’re all going through the five stages of grief in cycles and everyone’s nerves are frazzled..”

• Twitter Workers Freaking Out Over Elon Musk In Internal Slack Messages (Ngo)

Leaked internal communications by Twitter employees reveal woke employees are overtaken by despair and anger about Elon Musk’s month-long effort to acquire Twitter. Musk announced he would purchase the company for $44 billion on Monday. The deal concludes a month-long saga that began with Musk first tweeting out polls and his thoughts about the decline of free speech on Twitter. On the business communication platform Slack, some Twitter employees vented against the new owner, leaked messages reveal. “Physically cringy watching Elon talk about free speech,” a site reliability engineer who identifies as a nonbinary transgender and plural person wrote.

“We’re all going through the five stages of grief in cycles and everyone’s nerves are frazzled,” wrote a senior staff software engineer who called Musk an “a**hole,” and tried to console his colleagues. “We’re all spinning our wheels, and coming up with worst case scenarios (Trump returns! No more moderation!). The fact is that [Musk] has not talked about what he’s planning on doing in any detail outside of broad sweeping statements that could be easily seen as hyperbolic showboating.” A senior staff video engineer announced he would be quitting, “Not the place to say it perhaps, but I will not work for this company after the takeover.”

Following the back-and-forth among multiple employees angry about the news, some warned that their communications on Slack could be searched. The employees then moved their conversations onto their personal devices using the encrypted chat application Signal. Twitter’s leadership appeared to predict an internal backlash and possible sabotage when it locked down the ability of its employees to make changes to the platform through Friday. Leading up to Monday’s deal, Twitter employees had already been venting for weeks on Slack about Musk and defending the platform’s moderation enforcement.

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“The way I’m going to evaluate?” Obama failed to explain in what capacity he gets to evaluate anything…”

• Obama Goes Full Orwell In Scary Stanford Speech (WND)

A week ago Barack Obama let loose his inner fascist and gave an hour-long speech at Stanford University that deserved more attention than it got. “I’m pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist,” Obama told his audience and then spent the rest of the hour proving he is anything but. In fact, the Obama that emerges in this speech is one scary dude. The one sentence that most alarmed me began thusly, “The way I’m going to evaluate any proposal touching on social media and the internet is whether it strengthens or weakens the prospects for a healthy, inclusive democracy.” “The way I’m going to evaluate?” Obama failed to explain in what capacity he gets to evaluate anything. Does he expect to head the FCC or get appointed to the Supreme Court? Does he plan to engineer a Michelle Obama presidential bid? If any of these happens, God help us all.

The thrust of his speech was that “regulation has to be part of the answer” in combating online “disinformation.” As Obama made much too clear he and his pals get to determine what is and is not disinformation. The former president makes almost no attempt to hide his biases. A sentence that reads, “People like Putin and Steve Bannon, for that matter, understand it’s not necessary for people to believe this information in order to weaken democratic institutions” does not inspire a whole lot of confidence in the deplorable half of America. Nor does a sentence that reads, “There are still brand name newspapers and magazines, not to mention network news broadcasts, NPR [and] other outlets that have adapted to the new digital environment while maintaining the highest standards of journalistic integrity.”

Those “highest standards” included sustaining for three years the fiction that Donald Trump conspired with the Russians to steal the 2016 election and salvaging Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, such as it was, by suppressing all news of Hunter Biden’s laptop under the pretext it was Russian disinformation. On the question of COVID, Obama insists, “People are dying because of misinformation.” He cites the refusal of 1 in 5 Americans to avoid “safe, effective vaccines” as proof of the same. Obama neglected to mention that more than a year into the COVID mania Gallup asked 35,000 Americans, “What are the chances someone with COVID must be hospitalized?” 41% of Democrats said more than 50%; another 28% of Democrats said 20 to 50%. The correct answer was 1-5%.

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“..that whole conspiracy that looks to be completely possibly led by the FBI, which is terrifying, and the comparison of what happened on January 6..”

• Republicans Want Answers From Garland On FBI’s Role In Whitmer Charges (Fox)

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., is seeking answers from the Justice Department (DOJ) on whether the FBI “entrapped” defendants in the Gov. Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot and whether the high-profile charges in Michigan were politically motivated to hurt former President Trump before the 2020 presidential election. Greene on Wednesday sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray that backs defense lawyer claims that four defendants charged with conspiring to kidnap Whitmer were steered by undercover FBI agents and informants. “The American people deserve a transparent justice system and law enforcement that keeps them safe, not entraps them in serious criminal activity in order to sway the outcome of a democratic election,” Greene and 11 other GOP lawmakers wrote in a letter obtained by Fox News Digital.

After a 20-day trial, two of the four men were acquitted on April 8 of a conspiracy to kidnap Whitmer. Jurors couldn’t reach a verdict on charges against two other defendants, resulting in a mistrial. Their lawyers alleged entrapment, and the federal judge in the case allowed jurors to consider whether the FBI engaged in the prohibited practice of cajoling or tricking individuals into committing crimes. Prosecutors sought to show that the defendants were talking about the kidnapping plot before the FBI sting with one defendant posting a video saying, “We need to use brutal force against the government” in 2019, months before he met any agents or informants. In May 2020, another defendant was talking about “hanging” the governor.

[..] In an interview with Fox News Digital, Greene sought to make a link between FBI “entrapping” the Whitmer defendants and the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. She questioned whether the FBI had any involvement or knowledge of those who broke into the Capitol and disrupted the House and Senate proceedings to certify President Biden’s Electoral College win. “The comparison of the two incidents, that’s what most people are just really concerned about – between Governor Whitmer and that whole conspiracy that looks to be completely possibly led by the FBI, which is terrifying, and the comparison of what happened on January 6,” Greene said.

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When is it time to bail out banks?

• Mortgage Volume Gets Crushed by Spiking Interest Rates

Spiking mortgage rates multiply the effects of exploding home prices on mortgage payments, and it has taken layer after layer of homebuyers out of the market for the past four months. And we can see that. Mortgage applications to purchase a home fell further this week and were down 17% from a year ago, hitting the lowest level since May 2020, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s weekly Purchase Index today. The index is down over 30% from peak-demand in late 2020 and early 2021, which was then followed by the historic price spikes last year.

“The drop in purchase applications was evident across all loan types,” the MBA’s report said. “Prospective homebuyers have pulled back this spring, as they continue to face limited options of homes for sale along with higher costs from increasing mortgage rates and prices. The recent decrease in purchase applications is an indication of potential weakness in home sales in the coming months.” The culprit of the plunge in volume: The toxic mix of exploding home prices and spiking mortgage rates. The average interest rate for 30-year fixed rate mortgages with 20% down and conforming to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac limits, jumped to 5.37%, the highest since August 2009, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s weekly measure today.

The mortgage on a home purchased a year ago at the median price (per National Association of Realtors) of $326,300, and financed with 20% down over 30 years, at the average rate at the time of 3.17%, came with a payment of 1,320 per month. The mortgage on a home purchased today at the median price of $375,300, and financed with 20% down, at 5.37% comes with a payment of $1,990. So today’s buyer, already strung out by rampant inflation in everything else, would have to come up with an extra $670 a month – that represents a 50% jump in mortgage payments – to buy the same house. Now figure this with homes in the more expensive areas of the country where the median price, after the ridiculous spikes of the past two years, runs $500,000 or $1 million or more. Homebuyers are facing massively higher mortgage payments in those markets.

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“A day later, after his comments made headlines worldwide, Fauci was singing a different tune.”

• Fauci Walks Back Comment About US No Longer Being In ‘Pandemic Phase’ (NYP)

Dr. Anthony Fauci walked back his comment that the US was no longer in the “pandemic phase” of COVID-19 — the latest jumbled messaging from President Biden’s chief medical adviser on the coronavirus. Biden administration officials and Fauci were scrambling Wednesday to emphasize that the country is still in the midst of a pandemic and that emergency measures are still needed after Fauci told PBS the precise opposite. “Here we are. It’s the end of April. It’s the spring of 2022. How close are we to the end of the pandemic?” Judy Woodruff of “PBS NewsHour” asked Fauci Tuesday. “We are certainly, right now, in this country out of the pandemic phase,” Fauci replied.

“Namely, we don’t have 900,000 new infections a day and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now. “So, if you’re saying, are we out of the pandemic phase in this country, we are,” he added. A day later, after his comments made headlines worldwide, Fauci was singing a different tune. “We are in a different moment of the pandemic,” Fauci told the Associated Press Wednesday. The US has “decelerated and transitioned into more of a controlled phase” after a winter surge, he added. “By no means does that mean the pandemic is over,” Fauci said in his 180-degree turnabout.

He told the Washington Post Wednesday: “The world is still in a pandemic. There’s no doubt about that. Don’t anybody get any misinterpretation of that.” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki fielded a question during her daily press briefing over why emergency measures are still needed if the “pandemic phase” is over. “Well, what Dr. Fauci was saying is that we are in a different phase of this pandemic, and that’s absolutely true,” Psaki said, adding that the level of hospitalizations and deaths has come down.

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What a surprise!

• CDC and FDA ‘Altered’ Covid Guidance, Findings Under Political Pressure (DM)

CDC and FDA officials ‘altered’ Covid guidance and even ‘suppressed’ findings related to the virus due to political pressure, a bombshell report suggests. Investigators from the watchdog Government Accountability Office (GAO) spoke to more than a dozen directors and managers who worked at the agencies behind the country’s pandemic guidance. They unearthed allegations of ‘political interference’ in scientific reports, raising fears that research was tampered with. In its 37-page report, the GAO warned that neither agency had a system in place for reporting allegations of political interference. It also said they had failed to train staff how to spot and report this. Whistleblowers said they did not speak up at the time for fear of retaliation, because they were unsure how to report the issues or believed leaders were already aware.

This is just the latest in a growing patchwork of reports suggesting politicians influenced ‘scientific’ papers during the pandemic for their own ends. On Tuesday, the Biden administration’s top medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci declared the U.S. is now ‘out of the pandemic phase’ of Covid, citing low cases and hospitalizations. But health experts were quick to question the claim — buried at the end of an interview with PBS’ NewsHour — suggesting he may have bungled his words and should only have said the nation was in a phase of ‘low hospitalizations’. ‘A few respondents from CDC and [Food and Drug Administration] FDA stated they felt that the potential political interference they observed resulted in the alteration or suppression of scientific findings,’ GAO investigators wrote in the report.

‘Some of these respondents believed that this potential political interference may have resulted in the politically motivated alteration of public health guidance or delayed publication of Covid-related scientific findings.’ The GAO report published last week looked into the two agencies, alongside the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — America’s top research institution— and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) — in charge of natural disaster response. All are part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which in February was branded as at ‘high risk’ for fraud, mismanagement and abuse by the GAO in a separate report.

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“We thought what was missing from that conversation was, what are the rights of vaccinated people to be protected from unvaccinated people?”

• Fiction Disguised as Science to Promote Hatred (Byram Bridle)

The legacy media has been like pigs at a trough today and yesterday with the publication of an atrocious ‘peer-reviewed’ ‘scientific’ article by Dr. David Fisman, Dr. Ashleigh Tuite, and a graduate student. After all, with raw public health data unable to support the only COVID-19 narrative that has been deemed acceptable, fresh fuel was apparently needed. Lots of media outlets have been reporting on this study; one of them being CTV News. Here is the headline for their article: “Being with unvaccinated people increases COVID-19 risk for those who are vaccinated: modelling study” This kind of messaging will only fuel hatred and segregation and the potential development of harmful policies. And it is all in the name of bad science.

As a researcher who has published and reviewed many scientific papers, I can tell you that the article by Fisman, et al. is the worst one that I have ever seen. The ‘peer reviewers’ of this article should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this to be published, and the editor even more so. If the Canadian Medical Association Journal does not promptly retract this article, they will have made themselves an embarrassment among scientific publishers. This paper by Fisman, et al. is only thinly veiled hate speech under the guise of science. Before I walk you through the numerous massive errors in this paper, let me first show you one example of the messaging regarding the impact and relevance of the paper.

Fisman was quoted by CTV News as saying “We thought what was missing from that conversation was, what are the rights of vaccinated people to be protected from unvaccinated people?”. The only reason why Fisman is trying to turn people against other people is due to the abject failure of the COVID-19 ‘vaccines’ to function like vaccines. That is to say that the purpose of a vaccine is to protect people from a pathogen; to prevent both the disease and transmission of the causative agent. Such a medical product does not require one to pit people against people. Fisman has inappropriately labelled critically thinking people as an enemy when the actual culprits are SARS-CoV-2 and overly rushed jabs of exceptionally poor quality and highly questionable safety that have been pushed as the sole solution at the expense of all others.

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@TexasLindsay has a whole series of these “animations”, for many countries. This is Greece.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1519028584345710594

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle April 14 2022

Apr 142022
 
 April 14, 2022  Posted by at 7:41 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  31 Responses »


Andy Warhol Shot Sage Blue Marilyn 1964 (click pic for great article!)

 

• Putin Vows ‘Consequences’ For Those Who Interfere In Ukraine (DM)
• The Fog of War and the Global Paradigm Shift (Vianna)
• How To Wrest War Reparations From Russia: Ukraine, West Count The Ways (JTN)
• Zelenskyy’s Steinmeier Snub Triggers Backlash In Germany (Pol.eu)
• Bretton Woods III: “Suicidal Europe Saved By Gold?“ (Vilches)
• My Video Call With The WHO This Morning (Tess Lawrie)
• The Anatomy of Big Pharma’s Political Reach (CHD)
• C19 “Vaccine” – The Cause Of Causes (CdC)
• GOP Lawmakers Demand FDA Publish Covid Vaccine Safety And Efficacy Data (JTN)
• The Horrible, Terrible, Bad, Bad Results of CNBC’s Biden Performance Poll (CTH)
• Annual Wholesale Inflation Rises 11.2%, Mirroring Record CPI Numbers (JTN)
• Hunter Biden Mixing Business Affairs With Hunger Charity (JTN)
• My Personal Experience in Twitter’s Assault on Free Speech (Scott Ritter)

 

 

 

 

“This Is the Largest Experiment on Human Beings Ever Performed in the History of the World”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1514014220345561093

 

 

 

 

The Daily Mail says faltering invasion twice in two sentences. They must be afraid once is not enough.

I saw a headline yesterday about Russia threatening arms shipments into Ukraine, but can’t find it back right now.

• Putin Vows ‘Consequences’ For Those Who Interfere In Ukraine (DM)

Vladimir Putin today warned his enemies in the West they will face ‘consequences’ if they ‘worsen the situation’ in Ukraine, as the Russian strongman threatened to create ‘waves of migrants’ in Europe. Putin, speaking in front of dozens of rockets at the Vostochny space launch facility in Russia’s Far East, insisted that his faltering invasion of Ukraine would prevail as he warned of world starvation as a result of Western sanctions against Moscow. The Russian President claimed Russia’s economy and financial system withstood the blow from what he called the Western sanctions ‘blitz’ and insisted the move would backfire by driving up prices for essentials such as fertiliser, leading to food shortages and increased migration to the West.

Despite Putin’s faltering invasion, which saw Russian troops retreat from Ukrainian cities and instead focus on the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, the leader said his war effort is going to plan as he vowed Russia would triumph in all of its ‘noble’ war aims. Putin said that ‘common sense should prevail’ and added that the West should ‘come back to reason and make well-balanced decisions without losing its face.’ He argued that new Western restrictions on high-tech exports will encourage Russia to move faster to develop new technologies, opening a ‘new window of opportunities.’ Putin also claimed on Tuesday that the images and footage of dead bodies strewn across the Ukrainian town of Bucha were fake, parroting the same lines his spokesman gave earlier this week. He compared the accusations to those concerning the use of chemical weapons by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. ‘It’s the same kind of fake in Bucha,’ Putin said.

[..] An unconfirmed video uploaded last night appears to show two Russian coastal defence missile systems moving along a road on the Russian side of the border that leads to Helsinki. The missile systems, which were seen driving past a sign to the Finnish capital, are thought to be the K-300P Bastion-P mobile coastal defence system, designed to take out surface ships up to and including aircraft carrier battle groups. The Russian deployment comes as Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said she expects her government ‘will end the discussion before midsummer’ on whether to apply for NATO membership.

Recent opinions polls by a Finnish market research company put 84% of Finns as viewing Russia as a ‘significant military threat’, up by 25% on last year. In response, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov euphemistically warned the move would ‘not improve’ the security situation in Europe, and Moscow lawmaker Vladimir Dzhabarov added more bluntly it would mean ‘the destruction of the country’. ‘We have repeatedly said that the alliance remains a tool geared towards confrontation and its further expansion will not bring stability to the European continent,’ Peskov said.

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“..the deepening of the continuous and unlimited reproduction and expansion of the american military empire is a reality that became even clearer after the first russian tank entered ukrainian territory..”

• The Fog of War and the Global Paradigm Shift (Vianna)

With ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky being a kind of spokesman of a script written in Washington – or, who knows, Hollywood – the repeated attacks on european leaders who have worked so hard for the normalization of Russian-European Union relations, as is the case of the recent attack on former chancellor Angela Merkel, indicate that the instruments of fourth generation war, already used by the United States in other regions of the planet, are intensifying in the heart of the western alliance. Not only the maintenance, but the deepening of the continuous and unlimited reproduction and expansion of the american military empire is a reality that became even clearer after the first russian tank entered ukrainian territory, even if this meant destabilizing, or even destroying, old and loyal allies.

In this sense, the old premise carried by many scholars of the “realist” school of International Relations, as well as by great thinkers of the World System, that the concentration of global power in a single state would be an essential condition for lasting world peace, falls to the ground. The “Hyperpower Paradox” is confirmed as a slap in the face of the enormous theoretical consensus developed since the mid-1970s of the last century. In other words, since the first minute of the US bombing of Iraq in 1991, which followed the 48 military interventions of the 1990s, and the 24 interventions in the first two decades of the 21st century – which in turn culminated in 100,000 bombings around the globe – the International System is immersed in a somber process of permanent, or infinite, war, which contradicts the kantian utopia of perpetual peace reflected in the idea of hegemonic stability.

Thus, it was a mistake to consider that the unipolar global power that emerged with the victory in the cold war could exercise its hegemony in the name of peace and global stability, assuming, therefore, a responsible leadership and in the name of a great global governance. On the contrary, what we have witnessed over the last 30 years is the escalation of interstate competition, with the reaction of other states to the insane and inconsequential process of power expansion carried out by the American military empire.

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The same way Yemen, Libya, Syria etc etc will wrest war reparations from the US, one would presume.

• How To Wrest War Reparations From Russia: Ukraine, West Count The Ways (JTN)

Seven weeks into a war that seems poised to escalate before it ends, Kyiv and Western leaders are calculating ways to exact reparations from an aggressive Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 24 launched an attack into Ukraine, pummeling cities and wreaking havoc on lives and infrastructure. Aside from the intangible damages to society, experts have estimated that the damages range from $700 billion to a projected $1.5 trillion. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Moscow last month that he expected that country to pay for the damages. “We will restore every house, every street, every city,” Zelensky said in a video address. “You will reimburse us for everything you did against our state, against every Ukrainian, in full.”

Although Putin most likely would dismiss such claims, the West may already have the means to earmark reparations on Ukraine’s behalf, one analyst said. “In the past, reparations have been paid after hostilities ended by the aggressor country — that was Germany in the first two world wars,” according to the Brookings Institution’s Robert Litan. “Now, the fact that many countries already have control over Russia’s holdings of foreign currency means that, in effect, reparations for the Ukrainian invasion have been pre-funded by Russia itself,” Litan wrote in a March essay. Significant sums of Russian money have been frozen by governments around the world. But funneling it toward reparations may present a number of hurdles, others say.

European officials reportedly are considering whether the seized property of Russian oligarchs can be applied toward rebuilding Ukraine. A more lucrative move would be to confiscate Russia’s central bank reserves that are held in foreign banks. But such a move would be complex in light of legal constraints, one analyst said. “There is international law that puts property of foreign states under special protection,” according to Stephan Schill, a professor at the Amsterdam Center for International Law.

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This is the US speaking. Pick on someone who has visibility but no power.

• Zelenskyy’s Steinmeier Snub Triggers Backlash In Germany (Pol.eu)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s decision to declare his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier unwelcome in Kyiv has triggered dismay among German politicians and warnings that the move may backfire. Steinmeier, seen as a symbol of Germany’s soft line on Moscow before the invasion of Ukraine, had planned to visit Kyiv on Wednesday along with the presidents of Poland and the three Baltic states, but the German president had to cancel his trip — which had not been made public in advance for security reasons — after Kyiv indicated that he was not welcome. The move was a humiliation for Steinmeier — a former foreign minister closely associated with Berlin’s previous policy of pursuing close economic and diplomatic ties with Russia — but also for Germany as a whole.

As federal president, Steinmeier is the highest-ranking representative of the German state. The fact that Zelenskyy communicated his decision just hours before Steinmeier’s planned secret trip, after days of preparation between Berlin and Kyiv, and that Ukrainian officials leaked the snub to German tabloid Bild, deepened the diplomatic insult for Germany. Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he found Zelenskyy‘s decision not to welcome Steinmeier “irritating.” Reacting to a Ukrainian invitation for him to visit Ukraine himself, Scholz told RBB24 radio he was not planning any such trip in the near future. The chancellor argued that he had been to Kyiv just about a week before the outbreak of the war and that he was speaking regularly to Zelenskyy on the phone, most recently on Sunday.

In an official statement, a government spokesperson voiced a sober reaction to the Ukrainian move, saying that Steinmeier “has taken and is taking a very clear and unambiguous position on the side of Ukraine,” and stressed that he had also directly appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty. Others were more critical. “While understanding the existential threat to Ukraine posed by the Russian invasion, I expect Ukrainian representatives to adhere to a minimum level of diplomatic manners and not unduly interfere in our country’s domestic politics,” said Rolf Mützenich, the parliamentary group leader of the center-left Social Democrats, the party of both Steinmeier and Scholz.

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“Goal (A) is having all countries being able to gradually repatriate their gold bullion now theoretically in custody at the Bank of England..”

Good luck with that. Theoretically.

• Bretton Woods III: “Suicidal Europe Saved By Gold?“ (Vilches)

In a nutshell, right now our Western Graeco-Roman Judeo-Christian millenary culture needs to rise to the occasion. Dear “Europa”, as the cradle of Western civilization that you are supposed to be, please be advised that this is it. Otherwise, not just our culture but also our species could soon become functionally disabled. Or, in financial terms which technocrats enjoy so much, we can soon become a forever ´non-performing asset´ a.k.a. wasted garbage. Accordingly, this draft Plan attempts to AVOID the UK-EU Armageddon that “NATO´s internal gold war” would necessarily bring about. And also please be advised that our success would be the only way at hand to prove the Davos agenda wrong which actually was what brought us to the situation we are now facing in the first place.

The basic philosophy behind this über urgent project is probably best represented by a photograph taken at Verdun in 1984 wherein French President Francois Mitterand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl are firmly holding each other´s hand like two school children both looking straight at the camera for the whole world to see. These two most serious, intelligent and very powerfull elderly statesmen were silently screaming something instantly understood by everyone after French and Germans had killed, maimed and hatefully destroyed each other for decades. Say no more.

Lacking public domain data, let´s accept a spitball yet trustworthy “back-of-the-envelope” guesstimate of 5000 tons of gold deposited by EU members for custody at the Bank of England. So, if such tonnage were now physically available at today´s ultra low central-bank-manipulated prices it would pay for all of Europe´s oil & gas imports for one full year …while if gold were priced at USD $ 5000 per ounce Troy it would pay for 2,5 years of Europe´s oil & gas needs… And if gold were priced at USD $ 50,000 per ounce (something quite possible if genuine price-discovery mechanisms were set free without central bank manipulation…) those 5000 metric tons of gold at current oil & gas prices (which could be lower due to deflationary pressures) would pay for 25 years of EU´s fuel needs, or more.

2022 goals of The Plan, Goal (A) is having all countries being able to gradually repatriate their gold bullion now theoretically in custody at the Bank of England if they so desire with a serious and foreseeable schedule in place to be unequivocally complied with. Goal (B) being able to sell such gold bullion even with buyers taking physical delivery but always at a genuine market price most probably very much higher than today´s fully manipulated quotes thru central bank daily interventions. s

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“No one in their right mind would want the WHO in charge of a global pandemic.”

“On Sunday, it launched a so-called ‘public participation process’ and invited video and written submissions. They gave two days to make video submissions, and written submissions must be received by 5pm CEST today. That’s five days for the world’s citizens to have their voices heard. Five days – and no public announcement.”

• My Video Call With The WHO This Morning (Tess Lawrie)

As you may know, the WHO is proposing a global pandemic agreement that would give it undemocratic rights over every participating nation and its citizens. Put simply, in the event of a ‘pandemic’, the WHO’s constitution would replace every country’s constitution. Whether your country’s elected government would agree or not, the WHO could impose lockdowns, testing regimes, enforce medical interventions, dictate all public health practice, and much more. Throughout this pandemic, the WHO has demonstrated its incompetence, dishonesty and corruption. It has withheld safe and established older medicines, ignored the experiences of frontline doctors, disregarded evidence from low, middle and high-income countries, and taken no heed of the values and preferences of people affected by their recommendations.


It has ignored the huge numbers of adverse reactions on its own database and has failed to issue warnings about the gene-based vaccines. It has also advertised that the mRNA vaccines are as safe as normal vaccines – and this is simply not the case. No one in their right mind would want the WHO in charge of a global pandemic. And yet, that’s precisely what it is proposing with its global pandemic treaty. The World Council for Health wrote a response to this a while back and has been watching developments closely. Well, this week the WHO pulled a fast one on the world. On Sunday, it launched a so-called ‘public participation process’ and invited video and written submissions. They gave two days to make video submissions, and written submissions must be received by 5pm CEST today. That’s five days for the world’s citizens to have their voices heard. Five days – and no public announcement. If you’re angry, you have every right to be.

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Full portrait of the world’s biggest lobbying enterprise.

• The Anatomy of Big Pharma’s Political Reach (CHD)

Pfizer has outspent its peers in six of the last eight election cycles, coughing up almost $9.7 million. During the 2016 election, pharmaceutical companies gave more than $7 million to 97 senators at an average of $75,000 per member. They also contributed $6.3 million to president Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. The question is: what did big pharma get in return? To truly grasp big pharma’s power, you need to understand how The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) works. ALEC, which was founded in 1973 by conservative activists working on Ronald Reagan’s campaign, is a super secretive pay-to-play operation where corporate lobbyists – including in the pharma sector – hold confidential meetings about “model” bills. A large portion of these bills is eventually approved and become law.

A rundown of ALEC’s greatest hits will tell you everything you need to know about the council’s motives and priorities. In 1995, ALEC promoted a bill that restricts consumers’ rights to sue for damages resulting from taking a particular medication. They also endorsed the Statute of Limitation Reduction Act, which put a time limit on when someone could sue after a medication-induced injury or death. Over the years, ALEC has promoted many other pharma-friendly bills that would: weaken the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversight of new drugs and therapies, limit FDA authority over drug advertising, and oppose regulations on financial incentives for doctors to prescribe specific drugs. But what makes these ALEC collaborations feel particularly problematic is that there’s little transparency — all of this happens behind closed doors.

Congressional leaders and other committee members involved in ALEC aren’t required to publish any records of their meetings and other communications with pharma lobbyists, and the roster of ALEC members is completely confidential. All we know is that in 2020, more than two-thirds of Congress — 72 senators and 302 House of Representatives members — cashed a campaign check from a pharma company. The public typically relies on an endorsement from government agencies to help them decide whether or not a new drug, vaccine or medical device is safe and effective. And those agencies, like the FDA, count on clinical research. As already established, big pharma is notorious for getting its hooks into influential government officials.

Here’s another sobering truth: The majority of scientific research is paid for by the pharmaceutical companies. When the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published 73 studies of new drugs over the course of a single year, they found that a staggering 82% of them had been funded by the pharmaceutical company selling the product, 68% had authors who were employees of that company and 50% had lead researchers who accepted money from a drug company. According to 2013 research conducted at the University of Arizona College of Law, even when pharma companies aren’t directly funding the research, company stockholders, consultants, directors and officers are almost always involved in conducting them.

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“Though myocarditis gets the most notoriety, the entire circulatory system is under attack..”

• C19 “Vaccine” – The Cause Of Causes (CdC)

The official Massachusetts database of death certificates contains proof that C19 “vaccines” killed thousands of people in Massachusetts in 2021. This article details a forensic journey in a one-of-a-kind, brute-force, pedestrian, forensic analysis of the official Massachusetts government data to discover what happened and is happening in a population of ~ 6.9 million people at the fore of C19 “science.” Massachusetts is a leading medical and pharmaceutical technology exporter to the world. Some leaders say it is a model for C19 response planning. The truth is that Massachusetts is a model for fraud on the people.

As demonstrated in particularity below, there was a short pandemic of respiratory deaths in 2020. Then, in the year of injections en masse, deaths switched to mainly circulatory system deaths. Something is attacking the circulatory systems of citizens of Massachusetts. Three main events are initially depicted: a pandemic, an extremely attenuated second wave of disease no longer a pandemic, and a nearly steady-state excess death anomaly in the second half of 2021 (likely began around February 2021, but was obscured by lower than normal deaths of 85+yo’s due to culling from C19 in spring 2020).

Investigation of the anomaly indicates that excess deaths are circulatory system involved, also known and documented in the C19 vaccine trial data. Though myocarditis gets the most notoriety, the entire circulatory system is under attack. Hereinafter, the C19 “vaccine” will be called “gene modification” because it is a more accurate descriptor of the biological injectable product. Industry and government chose “vaccine” because it is more psychologically acceptable to consumers. “Vaccine” has product-class recognition and reputation. Ergo, the definition of “vaccine” was changed in 2020 to accommodate the inclusion of C19 gene modification into this product-class. Lawsuits based on this issue of “definition” are pending.

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“Time is of the essence, as the FDA is expected to authorize vaccines for children as young as six months old..”

• GOP Lawmakers Demand FDA Publish Covid Vaccine Safety And Efficacy Data (JTN)

Two months after the CDC acknowledged hiding the vast majority of its COVID-19 data, partly to protect the reputation of vaccines, the FDA is under pressure to release its current and future safety and efficacy data on COVID vaccines and therapeutics. “The fact that the data in the FDA’s possession has remained behind an FDA firewall for more than 18 months is appalling,” Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) wrote to Commissioner Robert Califf, noting the agency unsuccessfully asked a court to dribble out Pfizer vaccine data over 55-75 years. Nine House GOP colleagues joined Posey’s April 11 letter, including Kentucky’s Thomas Massie, the leading libertarian in the caucus, and Alabama’s Mo Brooks, who sponsored a bill to defund vaccine mandates.

In light of mandates and liability shields for manufacturers, “[n]othing is more important to physicians, parents, patients, public health officials and elected officials than having access to as much information as possible when evaluating immediate and long-term responses to the pandemic,” the letter says. The House Republicans want the agency to “immediately” release safety and efficacy data for COVID products granted emergency use authorization (EUA) and full approval, and ongoing publication of data within 14 days of receipt by the FDA. It’s already requiring manufacturers to submit most of this information “in redacted and releasable form” and “should have been preparing to immediately release data once licensure was granted” to enable “rigorous independent review,” they said.

[..] The responses of public health agencies to Posey’s previous letters on COVID products and authorization, going back to fall 2020, were “not serious,” Posey spokesperson George Cecala told Just the News. He shared Posey letters calling attention to a British Medical Journal investigation of a Pfizer contractor’s trial practices and a 2021 British study reporting rare polyethylene glycol-induced anaphylaxis from the coating around the vaccine. The Science Committee member also sponsored a bill to establish a COVID commission. Time is of the essence, as the FDA is expected to authorize vaccines for children as young as six months old, Cecala said. Pfizer data showed 2-4 year-olds received no benefit from two doses, but the FDA asked for an EUA application while it tests a third dose.

When the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program was created in the 1980s, “it was regularly understood that it would be a small percentage of people” who suffered, Cecala said. Nobody thought it was a “conspiracy theory,” which is how COVID vaccine injury is portrayed. The feds haven’t used vaccine safety systems “optimally” since the pandemic’s onset, said epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff, who was removed from the CDC’s COVID Vaccine Safety Technical Work Group for criticizing its “pause” in Johnson & Johnson vaccine distribution. The well-known Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System lacks basic health information that can determine “whether the [COVID] vaccine was responsible” for reported side effects, the former Harvard Medical School professor wrote in a Brownstone Institute essay Monday.

Read more …

81 million votes.

• The Horrible, Terrible, Bad, Bad Results of CNBC’s Biden Performance Poll (CTH)

CNBC commissioned a poll by Hart research and associates, a friendly outfit for the left. Unfortunately, that means CNBC then needed to tell everyone what the results were. That task fell to CNBC’s Steve Liesman; an appropriate name given the task at hand. The irony doubles when you remember this was the same CNBC pundit who refused to accept the horrible economic data that began surfacing last fall. There was even a public broadcast where Liesman said the BLS statistics had to be wrong, because the results were so horrible. A few months later, and here he is explaining how the country now feels about Joe Biden.

(CNBC) – […] The pessimism is clearly dragging on Americans’ opinions of President Joe Biden. In fact, nothing looks to be working in the Biden presidency from the public’s viewpoint. The president’s approval rating sank to a new low of just 38%, with 53% disapproving. Biden’s -15% net approval rating is measurably worse than his -9% approval in the CNBC December survey. What’s more, his approval rating on the economy dropped for a fourth straight survey to just 35%, with 60% disapproving, putting the president a deep 25 points underwater.

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“The Treasury sent out checks, transferring the reserves to people’s banks. The Treasury then borrowed another $2 trillion or so, and sent more checks…”

• Annual Wholesale Inflation Rises 11.2%, Mirroring Record CPI Numbers (JTN)

Wholesale prices in March increased by 11.2%, compared to 12 months earlier, the Labor Department said Wednesday. The report also show the prices increased 1.1% from February to March. The newly released numbers follow the agency saying Tuesday the price of consumer goods in March increased by 8.5%, compared to the same time last year, making the Consumer Price Index’s so-called “annualized rate” the highest since December1981. The wholesale numbers, officially the Producer Price Index, measures the price of goods and services that businesses pay one other. The recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia, a global energy provider, has resulted in soaring fuel prices, which were a major fact in the wholesale and consumer inflation.


Another factor continues to be COVID-19-related supply chain problems, with some economists also arguing the federal government’s ongoing fiscal response to the pandemic, particularly the infusion of trillions of dollars into the economy, is another major factor. Hoover Institution economist John H. Cochrane wrote in a beginning-of-year message that reads: “In response to the disruptions of COVID-19, the U.S. government created about $3 trillion of new bank reserves, equivalent to cash, and sent checks to people and businesses. Mechanically, the Treasury issued $3 trillion of new debt, which the Fed quickly bought in return for $3 trillion of new reserves. “The Treasury sent out checks, transferring the reserves to people’s banks. The Treasury then borrowed another $2 trillion or so, and sent more checks. Overall, federal debt rose nearly 30 percent. Is it at all a surprise that a year later inflation breaks out?”

Read more …

“In February 2017, Hunter Biden flew to Miami to meet with CEFC chairman Ye Jianming. There, Ye offered Hunter a three-year deal at $10 million per year for “introductions alone.”

• Hunter Biden Mixing Business Affairs With Hunger Charity (JTN)

With his father’s eight-year tenure as Barack Obama’s vice president waning, Hunter Biden received a remarkable overture in 2015: One of China’s richest businessmen wanted to make a sizable donation to the World Food Program USA (WFP USA), which was led by the VP’s son. WFP USA is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to raising funds and building U.S. support for the World Food Program, the United Nations organization that fights global hunger. But soon, memos gathered by the FBI show, the charitable discussions evolved into an expanding relationship between Hunter Biden and Chinese energy giant CEFC to include business deals that would eventually reap the Biden family millions of dollars.

“CEFC China is very interested in exploring humanitarian initiatives of mutual interest to the World Food Program USA and discussing investment opportunities with Burnham,” an email received and then forwarded by Hunter Biden in October 2015 stated. Burnham was one of the many firms through which Hunter Biden and his partners like Devon Archer scored large investments. The story of CEFC’s dual pitch for charity and business opportunities is documented in emails and memos stored on the notorious laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop. The device was eventually turned over in December 2019 to the FBI, which is leading an investigation into the taxes, finances and foreign business dealings of the president’s son.

The FBI’s former intelligence chief said the Chinese overture to Hunter Biden fits the classic pattern of a foreign influence operation, much like was seen with Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell a few years ago. “First, you have to understand that China does not donate to American led charities because they are altruistic,” explained former FBI Assistant Director for Intelligence Kevin Brock. “And Chinese intelligence operatives like Christine Fang don’t cozy up to Rep. Eric Swalwell because he’s a fun guy to be around. Chinese intelligence does what it does in order to steal information and influence American policy makers.”

[..] In February 2017, Hunter Biden flew to Miami to meet with CEFC chairman Ye Jianming. There, Ye offered Hunter a three-year deal at $10 million per year for “introductions alone.” To close the deal, Ye gave Hunter a three-carat diamond valued at over $80,000, memos show. When asked about this fateful meeting in Miami, Hunter Biden told the New Yorker’s Adam Entous he was there for WFP USA charity work when the meeting unexpectedly “turned to business opportunities.” Hunter Biden, however, went there with two other business partners who had been intimately involved in pitching private business deals to CEFC. Over the next year, the CEFC money began to flow, and Hunter Biden reaped nearly $6 million from the Chinese energy giant.

Read more …

Excellent account.

• My Personal Experience in Twitter’s Assault on Free Speech (Scott Ritter)

By the evening of April 5, I believed I had more than enough information to try and put forth a counter-narrative to the one being pushed by The New York Times and President Biden, namely that Ukraine, not Russia, was responsible for the Bucha killings. “The Ukrainian National Police,” I composed on Twitter, “committed numerous crimes against humanity in Bucha.” Drawing on the precedent of the Nuremburg International Military Tribunal established at the end of the Second World War to prosecute Nazi war criminals, I then went on to state that “Biden, in seeking to shift blame for the Bucha murders onto Russia, is guilty of aiding and abetting these crimes. Congratulations, America…we’ve created yet another Presidential war criminal!” At 9:42 p.m. I hit “send,” and the deed was done.

As far as Twitter metrics go, this tweet didn’t do so badly—5,976 “likes”, 2,815 retweets, and 321 comments, for a total of what Twitter calls 265,098 “impressions.” It also got me suspended from Twitter. The next day, April 6, at 11:57 a.m., I received an email from Twitter Support, notifying me that my account, @RealScottRitter, “had been suspended for violating Twitter Rules,” specifically for violating rules against abuse and harassment. “You may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone or incite other people to do so. This includes wishing or hoping that someone experiences physical harm.” I re-read the tweet in question, wondering how anyone could possibly interpret its contents as violating the rules cited by Twitter Support. Who had I harassed or incited others to harass?

I followed the procedures to appeal the suspension and went on with my daily routine—minus the part where I interact with the people I follow, and those who followed me, on Twitter. My suspension caught the eye of several people who follow my tweeting activity. Several of these people reached out to inquire as to what happened and were as confused as I was over the grounds cited by Twitter for the suspension. The end result of this was a very heart-warming grass-roots protest against the Twitter decision to suspend my account of such intensity, that one had to believe it caught the eye of one of the Twitter bureaucrats tasked with monitoring the temperature in Twitterdom. On April 6, at 11:54 p.m., I received an email from Twitter Support notifying me that “After further review, we have unsuspended your account as it does not appear to be in violation of the Twitter Rules.”

Life, it seemed, could return to normal, with me safely ensconced in my overstuffed arm chair, frantically working the controls to the television remote while monitoring my all-important, and recently restored, Twitter account. Nothing good, however, lasts forever.

Land of the free

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Maher Joe Rogan
https://twitter.com/i/status/1513983596956196873

 

 

You were warned even as a child…

 

 

 

 

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Bankruptcy For Moderna, Definitely Pfizer

Feb 232022
 
 February 23, 2022  Posted by at 12:36 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  57 Responses »


Caravaggio The raising of Lazarus 1609

 

 

Justus R. Hope, MD, at Desert Review has a long article up on the views of former Blackrock exec, hedge funder, investment adviser Edward Dowd, along with a neverending list of podcasts. To which I will add a few at the bottom of this article. We’ve seen a few Dowd videos lately, but nothing like this. He should be on Joe Rogan ASAP.

The entire thing is so complete, devastating, shocking, that I don’t know what else to do than give you some quotes. It very much feels like the end of mRNA, and of the FDA in its present shape, because they -the government itself- are deeply complicit in outright investor fraud. Wall Street (“multiple brokerage houses”) is finding this out, Moderna stock is already down 70%, and that’s just the start.

mRNA vaccines are killing and maiming people: “..no matter the effort, one cannot hide the bodies – and “the bodies are piling up.”

Good luck with your vaxx mandates.

 

 

Pfizer & Moderna Investors Run for the Exits

Wall Street investors are dumping their Moderna and Pfizer stock faster than the world can drop the mandates. Moderna is down 70 percent from its high, while Pfizer is off 19 percent. Former Blackrock Executive and investment adviser Edward Dowd calls for Moderna to go to zero and Pfizer to end under ten dollars per share.

How is this possible given that Pfizer now enjoys record earnings per share and a market capitalization of some $270 billion, making it the 29th largest corporation globally? With nothing but profits in sight for the Pharmaceutical giant, what could be the problem?

[..] For the skeptics, consider that Pfizer stock lost $20 billion in market capitalization on February 8, 2022, when their record earnings fell short of more optimistic expectations. Also consider that Moderna’s stock is down some 70 percent from its high of $484 on August 9, 2021, wiping out almost $ 140 billion in investment. Dowd predicts Moderna will drop to zero with bankruptcy as fraud related to concealing the COVID vaccine dangers surfaces, and he predicts Pfizer will become a sub-ten-dollar stock. Dowd explains that the smart money has already left Moderna and will soon be exiting Pfizer.

Dowd foresees an avalanche of lawsuits coming as the insurance industry continues to uncover the legions of mounting deaths coming from the complications of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. Dowd teamed up with an insurance industry analyst and researched the life insurance claims. They found that since OneAmerica shocked the world by announcing a 40% rise in non-COVID deaths in younger working-class employees, multiple other insurance companies worldwide have seen the same thing – massive rises in non-COVID deaths. And the evidence inescapably points to the vaccines as the cause.

Meanwhile, the funeral company stocks have outperformed the S&P. “Funeral Home companies are growth stocks. They had a great year in 2021 compared to 2020, and they outperformed the S&P 500. The peer group of Funeral Home stocks was up 40 plus percent while the S&P was up 26 percent – and they started accelerating price-wise in 2021 during the roll-out of the vaccines – You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to connect the dots here.”

Other insurance companies have reported the same or worse death numbers as OneAmerica. For example, “Unum Insurance is up 36%, Lincoln National plus 57%, Prudential plus 41%, Reinsurance Group of America plus 21%, Hartford plus 32%, Met Life plus 24%, and Aegon – which is a Dutch insurer – saw in their US arm plus 57% in the 4th quarter – in the 3rd quarter they saw a 258% increase in death claims.”

 

“They raised (mortality) expectations 300,000 for 2022 over 2021 due to COVID plus ‘indirect COVID,’ which I think we know what that’s code for… They (Aegon) did a $1.4 billion reinsurance deal with Wilton Reinsurance…what they were reinsuring were high face amount individual policies from 1 million to 10 million… (So) I think there is an asymmetric information situation going on in the insurance industry where some people have figured out something’s going on. They are off-loading their risk – they are not going to say what it is as they don’t want that information to get out as they unload the risk.”.

“Someone is going to be the bag holder here.” And Dowd is confident it won’t be the insurance industry. A court in France has already held that a life insurance company cannot be held liable for a death because of the mRNA vaccine. But that does not explain how mRNA manufacturers can be held responsible for an emergency product they were told was liability-free. Aren’t the vaccine manufacturers immunized from lawsuits? After all, they were granted EUA, the specialized Emergency Use Authorization, which means they cannot be held legally accountable for deaths or adverse effects stemming from the experimental vaccines.

The idea is that no company – upon government request – should have to pay for unforeseen complications resulting from an emergency product that they released to the world out of their goodness of the hearts, with the best of intentions. Right? Wrong – not when your company accomplishes this through deceit, also known as fraud. Fraud undoes all these protections. If a company or person intentionally deceives another to profit, we have fraud. If Pfizer’s data showed increased all-cause mortality and hid this to motivate people to take the vaccine while claiming it was safe, then fraud exists.

Under common law, the required elements to prove fraud amount to: #1. A materially false statement or purposeful failure to state or release material facts which non-disclosure makes other statements misleading. #2. The false statement is made to induce Plaintiff to act. #3. The Plaintiff relied upon the false statement, and the injury resulted from this reliance. #4. Damages include a punitive award as a punishment that serves as a public example to discourage any future similar fraud. Punitive damages are generally proportional to the Defendant’s assets.

 

Dowd has been researching the COVID-19 vaccines and what he considers obvious evidence of knowing concealment of the actual risks of death – and he points to the Herculean efforts of Pfizer with FDA in withholding their data despite legal challenges to release it. He likens the FDA today to the rating agencies during the Mortgage Crisis. “FDA is the trusted third party, just like the rating agencies were. And a lot of doctors in this country, a lot of local governments are placing their trust in the FDA which gets 50 percent of its budget from large cap pharma. It wasn’t any one person…I think they overlooked things…An all-cause mortality end-point should have stopped this thing in its tracks – and it didn’t.”

There were more deaths in the vaxxed group than in the unvaxxed. Dowd assumes fraud based upon the FDA backing Pfizer in not releasing their data. He believes this is a knowing attempt to conceal the deaths. “When one party enters into a contract…and fraud was occurring when they entered into that contract, and the other party did not know that – the contract is void and null. There’s no indemnity if this can be proven, and I think it will be.” “Pfizer got blanket immunity with EUA. If fraud occurred, to my mind and what I’m seeing from their refusal to release the data – if there is fraud and it comes out – and we need whistleblowers – and it’s looking more apparent that this product is deadly – fraud eviscerates all contracts – that’s case law. So you go down the daisy chain, and that’s liability – that’s bankruptcy for Moderna, definitely Pfizer.”

Dowd remarks that no matter the effort, one cannot hide the bodies – and “the bodies are piling up.” He notes that the deaths skyrocketed after the vaccine rollout when they should have dropped. And the deaths are what distinguished the 2021-2022 vaccine scandal as far worse than what happened with Enron. “People are dying and being maimed. This is a fraud that goes beyond the pale…We have the VAERS data…We have the DoD leak…And now we have the insurance company results and the funeral home results…We don’t need to think too hard about this…Deaths should have gone down after the vaccines rolled out. This is the most egregious fraud in history of the nation – and it’s global…Pfizer’s involved, and they committed fraud,” Dowd explained.

[..] Dowd emphasized that he is not short on Pfizer or Moderna stock. He explained that he does not profit from their share prices dropping. He also points out that his predictions are not the cause of the steep declines as these occurred before he came out with this analysis. “Let me make a point here. The mainstream media may ignore this. Wall Street is not.”

[..] Edward Dowd cautions those who continue to slumber, “If you are long these two stocks, you are long mandates, you are long government control, and you are long the selling of your freedoms.” Let us get everyone on board the freedom train.

 

 

More Dowd.

Multiple Brokerage Houses Now Investigate MRNA Jabs

EXCLUSIVE: Wall Street Taps Pfizer Whistleblower to Help Probe Alarming Details of Fraud During VAX Clinical Trials; Former Blackrock’s Edward Dowd Drops More Bombs as ***MULTIPLE*** Brokerage Houses Now Investigate MRNA Jabs



 

 

 

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Debt Rattle January 27 2022

Jan 272022
 
 January 27, 2022  Posted by at 9:47 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  90 Responses »


Alfred Sisley A Village Street in Winter 1893

 

• Whistleblowers Share DOD Vaccine Data (Horowitz)
• CDC Study Suggests Unboosted Vaccines Become Worse Than Nothing (JTN)
• Fauci Says Children Younger Than 4 Will Get Three Doses Of Covid Vaccines (NYP)
• Quebec Bans Unvaccinated From Buying Groceries At Walmart, Costco (TNC)
• Mayo Clinic Expert Predicts Covid-19 Will Be Around Until Next Century (DM)
• Florida Doctor: Families Sneak Ivermectin to Loved Ones in Hospitals (ET)
• OSHA Withdraws Workplace Vaccine Mandate (CHD)
• FDA Stonewalls On Vaccine Data, Pfizer Has Now Intervened (BN)
• Rand Paul: What To Do When Confronted By ‘Crazy Lunatic’ Mask People (SN)
• Spotify Sides With Joe Rogan, Removes Neil Young’s Music: ‘A Costly Move’ (NYP)
• Is the Fed Delusional or a Big Pack of Liars? (Mish)
• The Ukraine Crisis, Sponsored By US Hegemony And War Profiteers (Maté)

 

 

 

 

 

 

RN NYC
https://twitter.com/i/status/1485736872626339844

 

 

When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.’
-Turkish proverb

 

 

 

 

A VAERS that works…

• Whistleblowers Share DOD Vaccine Data (Horowitz)

On Monday, during Sen. Ron Johnson’s five-hour hearing on a “COVID-19: Second Opinion,” Ohio attorney Thomas Renz, who has been representing clients suing the vaccine mandates, presented DOD medical billing data from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) that paints a shockingly disturbing picture of the health of our service members in 2021. According to the military, DMED is the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Branch’s (AFHSB) “web-based tool to remotely query de-identified active component personnel and medical event data contained within the Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS).” In other words, it contains every ICD medical billing code for any medical diagnosis in the military submitted for medical insurance billing during any given period of time.

Three military doctors have presented queried data to Renz that shows a shocking and sudden spike in nearly every ICD code for common vaccine injuries in 2021. In a declaration under penalty of perjury that Renz plans to use in federal court, Drs. Samuel Sigoloff, Peter Chambers, and Theresa Long — three military doctors — revealed that there has been a 300% increase in DMED codes registered for miscarriages in the military in 2021 over the five-year average. The five-year average was 1,499 codes for miscarriages per year. During the first 10 months of 2021, it was 4,182. As Renz explained to me in an interview with TheBlaze, these doctors queried the numbers for hundreds of codes from 2016 through 2020 to establish a baseline five-year average. These codes were generally for ailments and injuries that medical literature has established as being potential adverse effects of the vaccines.

Renz told me the numbers tended to be remarkably similar in all those preceding years, including in 2020, which was the first year of the pandemic but before the vaccines were distributed. But then in 2021, the numbers skyrocketed, and the 2021 data doesn’t even include the months of November and December. For example, some public health officials speculate that COVID itself places women at higher risk for miscarriages. But the number of miscarriage codes recorded in 2020 was actually slightly below the five-year average (1,477). However, they were not drastically below the average on any one category in a way that one can suggest it reflects lockdown-related decreases in doctor’s visits, which somehow led to an increase in 2021 diagnoses.

[..] Some other numbers he did not mention at the hearing but gave to me in the interview are the following:
• myocardial infarction –269% increase
• Bell’s palsy – 291% increase
• congenital malformations (for children of military personnel) – 156% increase
• female infertility – 471% increase
• pulmonary embolisms – 467% increase
All these numbers are among the ambulatory visits because those are where the vast number of diagnoses in the military occur. However, Renz did say the increases were indicated in the hospitalized patients as well. I have seen one of the sworn declarations from one of the military doctors, and it states as follows, “It is my professional opinion that the major increases incidences of the above discussed instances of miscarriages, cancers, and disease were due to COVID-19 ‘vaccinations.'”

Read more …

Original Antigenic Sin

• CDC Study Suggests Unboosted Vaccines Become Worse Than Nothing (JTN)

Two-dose COVID-19 vaccines may after an initial protective window become less effective against symptomatic infection by the Omicron variant than not getting jabbed at all, according to little-noticed findings in a federal study of how well boosters performed against different variants. The “adjusted odds ratio” crossed 1 for vaccinated versus unvaccinated individuals 7-10 months after vaccination, according to the “original investigation” by Atlanta-based CDC researchers, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association last week. That means the vaccinated were more likely than the unvaccinated to have symptomatic Omicron infections beginning at about the time the former become eligible for boosters. When considering the upper bound of the 95% confidence interval, the disparity emerged two months earlier.

Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine performed worse than Moderna’s, the researchers wrote. “The upper bound of the 95% CI was consistently greater than 1 starting at 3 months after second dose” for the former and six months for the latter. By contrast, the odds ratios for either vaccine never got close to 1 for the Delta variant, even for the upper bound. Even as evidence of the short-lived efficacy of the COVID mRNA vaccines continues to mount, federal regulators stepped in Tuesday to block doctors from using monoclonal antibodies to treat COVID patients. The FDA on Monday revoked authorizations for two such treatments against Omicron infections, including the one used by then-President Trump, finding they were “highly unlikely to be active” against the now-dominant variant.

The little-noticed findings in the JAMA study were highlighted by law professor Todd Zywicki, whose natural immunity lawsuit prompted George Mason University to grant him a medical exemption from its vaccine mandate. “Still more confirmation that Pfizer and Moderna’s CEOs know what they are talking about when they state that 2 doses of vax provides insignificant (at best) protection against Omicron,” Zywicki tweeted Tuesday. [..] The adjusted odds ratio of symptomatic Omicron infection for boosted versus unvaccinated individuals was 0.33, and for boosted versus two-dose recipients, 0.34. That means three doses corresponded with an “estimated effectiveness” of 67% over no doses, and 66% over two doses.

The study confirms that “OVERALL vaccine efficacy is zero,” Zywicki told Just the News: The first few months of protection “rapidly approaches zero” around the six-month mark and then goes negative for a few more months. He said the JAMA study was the fourth to find “basically this same negative [vaccine efficacy] effect” that he documented in an Epoch Times op-ed on “original antigenic sin.” Zywicki highlighted research from Toronto, California and Denmark that found negative VE starting two to six months after vaccination. The California study was “slippery,” he claimed, because “the authors appear to have simply arbitrarily set a floor of zero vaccine efficacy.”

Read more …

“Not my kid!”

• Fauci Says Children Younger Than 4 Will Get Three Doses Of Covid Vaccines (NYP)

The White House said Wednesday that the COVID-19 vaccine regime for kids younger than 4 years old will likely be three doses when it’s approved — and vowed to make millions more hard-to-find Pfizer anti-viral pills available in coming months. Two clinical trials of the Pfizer vaccine on children ages 6 months to 2 years old, and ages 2 to 4 are underway, but the older group hasn’t yet met standards, White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said at a press conference. “Dose and regimen for children 6 months to 24 months worked well, but it turned out the other group from 24 months to 4 years did not yet reach the level of non-inferiority, so the studies are continued,” Fauci said, referencing effectiveness standard comparison to adults.


“It looks like it will be a three-dose regimen. I don’t think we can predict when we will see it [approved],” he said — adding he can’t speak for the Food and Drug Administration. “We need to be patient,” he said. “That’s why the system works. The FDA is very scrupulous in their ability and in their effort to make sure that, before something gets approved for any age, and especially with children … that they will be safe, and that they will be effective.” Meanwhile, White House officials promised to release millions more Pfizer antiviral pills by June, amid reports that the medicine has been difficult to find in recent weeks. “We’ve purchased 20 million treatment courses of the Pfizer pill and we accelerated delivery of the first 10 million from September to the end of June,” said White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients.

Read more …

No freedom left.

• Quebec Bans Unvaccinated From Buying Groceries At Walmart, Costco (TNC)

Unvaccinated Quebecers over 12 years old are now banned from buying groceries at big box stores including Walmart and Costco, while people wishing to access pharmacies inside those outlets will require a store escort. This comes as Quebec’s new vaccine requirement for retail stores over 1500 square meters took effect today. While the new mandate explicitly excluded grocery stores and pharmacies, the Quebec government said they did not consider groceries to be Walmart and Costco’s “principal activity.” The box-store ban comes despite statistics showing that Walmart and Costco are among the top three places where Canadians get their groceries. Quebec’s health minister Christian Dubé is standing by the measure, claiming that the goal is to protect “both the vaccinated and the non-vaccinated.”


An exemption was added for pharmacies located inside big box stores after pharmacy leaders raised concerns in a letter to the government. Unvaccinated people who wish to access those pharmacies must be accompanied by a store employee, who will ensure they make no other purchases. Unvaccinated Quebecers are now subject to the harshest government restrictions in Canada, and some of the strictest in the world. Quebec also requires vaccine passports at government-run liquor and cannabis stores, and a “significant” health tax is on the way. The government also announced that Quebecers would require a third jab for their vaccine passports to remain valid. At one point, the Quebec government even considered banning the unvaccinated from regular grocery stores and pharmacies that offer delivery, but it appears they have abandoned the idea.

Fleury
https://twitter.com/i/status/1486245972858617862

Read more …

Maybe. But why would you need vaccines?

• Mayo Clinic Expert Predicts Covid-19 Will Be Around Until Next Century (DM)

While many Americans are beginning to look towards a life after Covid, and some experts are making optimistic predictions about the future of the pandemic, the entire scientific community is not in agreement. Dr Gregory Poland, epidemiologist for the Mayo Clinic and is editor-in-chief of the scientific journals ‘Vaccine’ and one of the nation’s top experts on vaccination and immunology, said this week that the virus could be affecting humans for the next century. In a conversation with MarketWatch on Tuesday he gave a grave prediction that counters what some worldwide global health experts are saying.

Due to the rapid transmission of the Omicron Covid variant combined with its more mild nature, experts are hopeful that it be the strain that transitions the virus from a pandemic to an endemic, meaning the pattern of the virus is stable and predictable. Poland does not share the same optimistic point of view. ‘We are not yet at any stage where we could predict endemicity. We’re not going to eradicate it,’ Poland said. He noted that the virus has shown the ability to infect animals, meaning it can potentially circulate indefinitely as it transmits across species and continues to mutate. Poland believes the virus will circulate for so long that people will still be receiving Covid shots for generations down the line.

‘So let me make a prediction, which will be hard for any of you to hold me to because we will all be dead by then, but your great-great-great-grandchildren will still be getting immunized against coronavirus,’ ‘How can I even say such a thing? If you got your flu vaccine this fall you were immunized against a strain of influenza that showed up in 1918 and caused a pandemic.’ This is not the first grim prediction Poland has made, and he has been correct before. Last month, he told DailyMail.com that he believed 32,000 people would die from Covid between early December to the end of the year. ‘32,000 Americans who think they’re going to be alive to celebrate Christmas and New Years are, no pun intended, dead wrong,’ he said on December 9. ‘Not one of them believes [they will die].’ During that period, 31,000 U.S. Covid deaths were recorded, nearly a spot on prediction, per Our World in Data.

Read more …

“..those payments are tied to their use of approved treatments only, as outlined in the CARES Act.”

• Florida Doctor: Families Sneak Ivermectin to Loved Ones in Hospitals (ET)

A Florida doctor says families of loved ones hospitalized with COVID-19 are resorting to desperate measures when approved treatments have failed. And when it’s not too late, some have seen tremendous success by sneaking medications prohibited by hospitals to patients, says Eduardo Balbona, an independent internist in Jacksonville. He’s helped dozens of seriously ill patients recover using ivermectin and other drugs and supplements not officially approved in the treatment of COVID-19, he says. Hospitals receive payments from the federal government for treating patients with COVID-19. But those payments are tied to their use of approved treatments only, as outlined in the CARES Act. When there’s nothing left to try under those protocols, families naturally research alternatives, Balbona says, often learning about treatments touted by independent physicians around the country.


Hoping to try anything that might work, families around the country have filed lawsuits asking judges to intervene. In some cases, judges have ordered hospitals to allow the use of other treatments, such as ivermectin. Some of those seriously ill patients have recovered. In other cases, judges have sided with hospitals and declined the families’ requests to try. Meanwhile, independent physicians like Balbona watch helplessly, feeling that when families ask, they should be allowed to try medications they believe can turn critically ill patients around. But independent doctors often have limited hospital privileges and may be banned from seeing their own patients in some hospitals.

Read more …

“Some states have banned vaccine mandates for private employees, while other states, like New York, require them.”

• OSHA Withdraws Workplace Vaccine Mandate (CHD)

The Biden administration is withdrawing its COVID vaccine-or-test mandate for large employers, the U.S. Department of Labor announced today. In pulling the rule, the department said it recognized the Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) could not be revived after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked it earlier this month. Instead, the Biden administration is working to set a permanent standard for the vaccine mandate based on the Supreme Court’s ruling, according to a notice provided to the court by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). OSHA said in a press release:

“Although OSHA is withdrawing the vaccination and testing ETS as an enforceable emergency temporary standard, the agency is not withdrawing the ETS as a proposed rule. The agency is prioritizing its resources to focus on finalizing a permanent COVID-19 Healthcare Standard.” OSHA could move a version of the vaccine-or-test rule through its rule-making process, but would still likely face legal challenges, according to David Michaels, a former OSHA administrator and professor at George Washington University. The Labor Department’s decision to withdraw the rule means pending legal proceedings will be dropped. The case was on its way back to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals to be heard on the merits, although the lower court most likely would have followed the Supreme Court’s lead, The New York Times reported.

Without OSHA’s vaccine mandate in effect, employers must follow state and local laws on COVID workplace safety. Some states have banned vaccine mandates for private employees, while other states, like New York, require them. “OSHA continues to strongly encourage the vaccination of workers against the continuing dangers posed by Covid-19 in the workplace,” the Labor Department wrote in the notice of its withdrawal. The Supreme Court on Jan. 13, rejected the Biden administration’s employer mandate. The court’s conservative majority said the administration overstepped its authority by imposing OSHA’s vaccine-or-test rule.

Read more …

“Pfizer’s legal bill will likely be multiple times what it would cost the FDA to simply hire a private document review company..”

• FDA Stonewalls On Vaccine Data, Pfizer Has Now Intervened (BN)

The Food and Drug Administration thought it was appropriate that it be given 75 years to produce data for vaccines, which have proven to be the basis for the biggest public policy disaster in U.S. history. The judge instead ordered it to fork over the documents at a rate over a hundred times faster what it had requested. “I am pleased to report that a federal judge soundly rejected the FDA’s request and ordered the FDA to produce all the data at a clip of 55,000 pages per month!” Aaron Siri, who is the key litigator in the case, announced earlier on his Substack page. But in an update to the legal battle, Siri now indicates that the FDA is dragging its feet while providing flimsy excuses about why it won’t do what it was ordered.

The FDA “has now asked the Court to make the public wait until May for it to start producing 55,000 pages per month and, even then, claims it may not be able to meet this rate,” Siri writes. “The FDA’s excuse?” he asked rhetorically. “As explained in the brief opposing the FDA’s request, the FDA’s defense effectively amounts to claiming that the 11 document reviewers it has already assigned and the 17 additional reviewers being onboarded are only capable of reading at the speed of preschoolers.” Even more ominously for scientific transparency and the rule of law, Pfizer has even intervened in the case. Siri pointed out that the pharmaceutical company’s reps showed up at the recent court trial.

“As the FDA tries to obtain months of delay, guess who just showed upon in the lawsuit? Yep, Pfizer,” he said. “And it is represented by a global chair and team from a law firm with thousands of lawyers. Pfizer’s legal bill will likely be multiple times what it would cost the FDA to simply hire a private document review company to review, redact, and produce the documents at issue. Within weeks, if not days.” “Pfizer is coming in as a third party,” he added. “But Pfizer assures the Court it is here to help expedite production of the documents. Sure it is! Where was Pfizer before the Court ordered the 55,000 pages per month? Right, doing what it normally does: letting the government work on its behalf – like the way the government mandates, promotes, and defends Pfizer’s product.”

“But the government did not please Pfizer this time and so here it comes, likely looking for a second bite at the apple,” Siri said. “Of course the FDA consented to Pfizer appearing.” The federal judge in the case earlier issued a ruling against the FDA that it had to produce 55,000 pages a month, instead of the originally requested 55 years to release all of them. Aaron Siri weighed in on the importance of the court’s ruling. “No person should ever be coerced to engage in an unwanted medical procedure,” Siri said. ”And while it is bad enough the government violated this basic liberty right by mandating the Covid-19 vaccine, the government also wanted to hide the data by waiting to fully produce what it relied upon to license this product until almost every American alive today is dead. That form of governance is destructive to liberty and antithetical to the openness required in a democratic society.”

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“See, I would say bear spray but I’m afraid that will get me in trouble so I won’t say that..”

• Rand Paul: What To Do When Confronted By ‘Crazy Lunatic’ Mask People (SN)

Appearing on Fox News Tuesday, Senator Rand Paul issued advice on what to do if you find yourself confronted by one of the dwindling numbers of mask wearing “lunatics” who continue to appeal for mass “collectivism”. Host Jesse Watters asked Paul about a recent indecent in which two mask Karens attacked a man for not wearing one, and as he was black, kept yelling ‘Black lives Matter’ at him. “These people clearly aren’t well,” Watters noted, adding “Large swaths of America are in a Covid cult.” The host asked the Senator “As a medical professional, as a genteel Senator and a polite individual, Dr. Rand Paul, what would you recommend Americans do when they are confronted with these mask maniacs, when they are yelled at and screamed at and being recorded on their phone? How should they handle that in a respectful but normal way?”


“See, I would say bear spray but I’m afraid that will get me in trouble so I won’t say that,” Paul jokingly responded. He followed up “I think you should back away and say, ‘Lady, you are crazy, leave me the hell alone,’ but you should not confront her.” Paul continued, “You should not use violence. Back away and just say look, can you not find some other lunatic friends to hang around with?” Paul also noted that “Really this is a difference between individualism and collectivism.” “I have an opinion, but I’m not wanting to enforce it on anybody. I’m not telling you that you can’t wear a mask. I’m just saying don’t make me wear a mask when it doesn’t work,” the Senator urged.

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I’d say Spotify sides with itself. They can’t very well censor people every time someone takes offence with something.

• Spotify Sides With Joe Rogan, Removes Neil Young’s Music: ‘A Costly Move’ (NYP)

Spotify has sided with its podcast superstar over Neil Young. The legendary folk singer gave the streaming behemoth an ultimatum earlier this week, saying he refused to allow his music on the same platform as Joe Rogan. The “Heart of Gold” singer accused Rogan and his podcast of spreading false information about COVID-19 vaccines. Spotify reportedly paid more than $100 million deal to be the exclusive home of Rogan’s show. Young, meanwhile, stands to lose 60% of his streaming income from his defiant stance, he said in a statement on his website. “We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users,” a spokesperson for the company told the Wall Street Journal. “With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators.”

Since the start of the pandemic, the spokesman noted, Spotify has removed more than 20,000 COVID-related podcast episodes. Still, Young’s protests were not sufficient for it to drop its lucrative star talker. “We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon,” the spokesperson added. Rogan’s podcast has attracted an estimated 11 million listeners. Young’s letter — which is now deleted from his website — did not mince words in accusing the streaming giant of giving an undeserved platform to Rogan and his COVID-19 vaccine “misinformation.” “I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,” wrote the 76-year-old rock icon. “I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them.”

[..] Young thanked his publisher Hipgnosis and his label Warner Records/Reprise for supporting his ultimatum. “Losing 60% of worldwide streaming income by leaving SPOTIFY is a very big deal, a costly move, but worth it for our integrity and beliefs. Misinformation about COVID is over the line.” He went on to nudge other artists to take a similar stance. “I sincerely hope that other artists can make a move, but I can’t really expect that to happen,” Young said. “I did this because I had no choice in my heart. It is who I am. I am not censoring anyone. I am speaking my own truth.”Although Young did not specifically note which episodes he took issue with, Rogan did recently host Dr. Robert Malone, the “anti-vaxxer epidemiologist” who was recently booted from Twitter for alleged dissemination of vaccine misinformation…

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I’m trying to get interested.

• Is the Fed Delusional or a Big Pack of Liars? (Mish)

Powell: It will soon be appropriate to raise the Federal Funds target rate. …. Reducing our balance sheet will occur after the process of raising interest rates has begun.

Mish: Inflation suggests it was appropriate a year ago. At the very least, expanding the balance sheet now is ridiculous. Yet the Fed will still expand through March 2022. The Fed made similar statements a year or so ago, and thus committed to let inflation burn higher regardless of what happened in the interim.

Powell: Reductions will occur over time in a predictable manner. primarily through adjustments to reinvestments so that securities will roll off our balance sheet. … The Committee has not made decisions regarding specific timing, pace or other details of shrinking the balance sheet. We will discuss these matters in upcoming meetings and provide additional information at the appropriate time.

Mish: This implies a very slow balance sheet reduction. In practice, it’s highly likely the next recession hits before the Fed gets seriously underway with balance sheet reduction.

Chris Rugaber, Associated Press: Are rate hikes at consecutive meetings on the table? Is every meeting a live meeting? Would the Fed consider frontloading rate hikes?

Powell: It is not possible to predict with much confidence what path our policy will take will prove appropriate. … We will be humble and nimble. … We will be led by the incoming data.

Mish: Just like the Fed was led by the incoming inflation data? Here’s the real deal: The Fed will do what it wants and will bend subsequent wishy-washy statements to justify whatever policy it wants to set.

Nick Timiraos, Wall Street Journal: Apart from moving faster to shrink [balance sheet] holdings are there any other ways you and your colleagues are seriously thinking about recalibrating this process? And finally, how much disagreement is there on how you use tools?

Powell: I am afraid to tell you those are all great questions, but those are questions the committee is just turning to now.

Mish: This implies the Fed has been on autopilot all this time, and amazingly is still there despite huge inflation every step of the way. The Fed announced QE through March of 2022 and despite everything that happened, did not waver from announced policy. Yet, the Fed wants us to believe it will decide policy on the basis of incoming data!

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“to see whether Washington is willing to discuss any sort of commitment that constrains U.S. power.”

• The Ukraine Crisis, Sponsored By US Hegemony And War Profiteers (Maté)

The row over Ukraine is the outgrowth of an aggressive US posture toward Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago, driven by hegemonic policymakers and war profiteers in Washington. Understanding that background is key to resolving the current impasse, if the Biden administration can bring itself to alter a dangerous course. Russia’s central demands – binding guarantees to halt the eastward expansion of NATO, particularly in Ukraine, and to prevent offensive weapons from being stationed near its borders – have been publicly dismissed by the U.S government as non-starters. In rejecting Russian concerns, the Biden administration claims that it is upholding “governing principles of international peace and security.”

These principles, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken says, “reject the right of one country to change the borders of another by force; to dictate to another the policies it pursues or the choices it makes, including with whom to associate; or to exert a sphere of influence that would subjugate sovereign neighbors to its will.” The US government’s real-world commitment to these principles is non-existent. For decades, the US has provided critical diplomatic and military cover for Israel’s de-facto annexations, which have expanded its borders to three different strips of occupied territory (the West Bank, Gaza, and Syria’s Golan Heights). The US is by far the world leader in dictating policies to other countries, be it who their leaders should be; how little to pay minimum-wage workers; or how to share energy supplies.

The Biden administration continues to subjugate sovereign countries to its will, whether it’s “neighbors” like blockade-targeted Cuba; coup-targeted Venezuela; sanctions-targeted Nicaragua; or far-away countries like US military-occupied and sanctions-targeted Syria. Biden just recently embraced the longstanding Monroe Doctrine of a US sphere of influence by declaring Latin America to be the United States’ “front yard.” When not making sanctimonious public pronouncements, US officials are quietly able to acknowledge the real principles that guide their actions. According to the Washington Post, one US official specializing in Russia “believes the Russians are still interested in a real dialogue.” Russia’s real aim, this official says, is “to see whether Washington is willing to discuss any sort of commitment that constrains U.S. power.”

The official added: “The Russians are waiting to see what we’re going to offer, and they’re going to take it back and decide is this serious. Is this something we [the Russians] can sell as a major victory for security, or is it just, from their point of view, another attempt to fob us off and not give us anything?”

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Debt Rattle December 31 2021

Dec 312021
 
 December 31, 2021  Posted by at 9:48 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  42 Responses »


Arnold Böcklin The Isle of the Dead III 1883

 

• South Africa Says Death Toll ‘Extremely Low’ After Omicron Wave (JTN)
• Omicron-Fuelled Fourth Covid Wave Has Passed, Says South Africa (G.)
• Fauci Takes Professional Gaslighting to New Levels (CTH)
• COVID-19 Genetic Vaccine Safety in Children (Malone)
• Officials Ponder What It Means To Be ‘Fully Vaccinated’ (NYT)
• Covid and Corrupt Federal Statistics (Bovard)
• Justin Trudeau Calls Unvaccinated ‘Racist and Misogynistic Extremists’ (RAIR)
• Healthcare Worker Vaccine Mandate Reinstated In Half Of US (JTN)
• FDA: PCR Tests For Covid Are ‘Gold Standard’ (JTN)
• Has The $230 Trillion LIBOR Derivative Time-Bomb Really Been Defused? (ZH)
• NGO Memorial Closed By Russian Court Over ‘Foreign Agent’ Breaches (RT)
• Epstein’s Guards Accused Of Sleeping On Job, Falsifying Records Go Free (JTN)
• Maxwell Conviction Leaves Glaring Questions Over Lack of Prosecutions (Turley)

 

 

 

 

McCullough

 

 

 

 

“Peak in four weeks and precipitous decline in another two. This Omicron wave is over in the city of Tshwane. It was a flash flood more than a wave..”

• South Africa Says Death Toll ‘Extremely Low’ After Omicron Wave (JTN)

South Africa is nearing the end of its fourth COVID-19 wave without seeing as many deaths as previous waves, according to a government statement Wednesday. “Hospitalisations and deaths are lower than the second and third wave,” Premier of Western Cape Alan Winde said. The COVID variant omicron was discovered in South Africa last month, greatly contributing to the fourth wave. While cases are now declining, Winde said, “the gap between cases, admissions and deaths continues to widen during the fourth wave.” Fareed Abdullah of the South African Medical Research Council told The New York Times: “The speed with which the Omicron-driven fourth wave rose, peaked and then declined has been staggering.” “Peak in four weeks and precipitous decline in another two. This Omicron wave is over in the city of Tshwane. It was a flash flood more than a wave,” he said.


The high of South Africa’s most recent wave appears to have occurred the week of Dec. 13. with nearly 163,000 cases, while the wave’s peak death toll seems to have occurred the week of Dec. 20 with 428 deaths, according to World Health Organization data. This sharply contrasts with previous South African waves. For example, during the third wave there, nearly 133,000 people were diagnosed with COVID the week of July 5, and more than 2,800 people died the week of July 19. “While the case numbers and test positivity rate during the fourth wave have exceeded previous waves, admissions are below the peak of both the second and the third wave and deaths remain extremely low, in line with previous interwave periods. There is therefore a widening gap between these metrics, pointing to less severe disease during the fourth wave,” Winde said.

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More much ado.

• Omicron-Fuelled Fourth Covid Wave Has Passed, Says South Africa (G.)

South Africa has lifted a nightime curfew on people’s movement with immediate effect, believing the country has passed the peak of its fourth coronavirus wave driven by the Omicron variant. As the head of the World Health Organization sounded an optimistic note about beating the pandemic in 2022, the government in Pretoria removed the midnight-to-4am curfew based on the trajectory of the pandemic, vaccination levels and available capacity in the health sector, the government said on Thursday. “All indicators suggest the country may have passed the peak of the fourth wave at a national level,” a statement from a special cabinet meeting held earlier on Thursday said. “While the Omicron variant is highly transmissible, there has been lower rates of hospitalisation than in previous waves,” the cabinet statement said.


Data from South Africa’s health department showed a 29.7% weekly decrease in new cases detected in the week ending 25 December, the government said. Hospital admissions have declined in eight of South Africa’s nine provinces. South Africa, with close to 3.5 million infections and 91,000 deaths, has been the worst-hit country in Africa during the pandemic on both counts, and was where the Omicron variant of the coronavirus was first detected last month. The country is at the lowest of its five-stage Covid-19 alert levels. Besides lifting the restrictions on public movement, the government also ruled that alcohol shops with licences to operate beyond 11pm may revert back to full licence conditions, a welcome boon for traders and businesses hard hit by the pandemic and looking to recover during the festive season.

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Why don’t I see anyone saying if this is true for kids, it’s true for all hospitalizations? Because that is the inevitable conclusion.

• Fauci Takes Professional Gaslighting to New Levels (CTH)

This admission is exactly what people have been arguing for two years. This exact point, and the “with COVID -vs- from COVID” argument within the false narrative, is what justified Big Tech to ban COVID critics from their speech platforms. I’m not going to comment further; at a certain point these reversals just get silly. Suddenly, as the magic politics of COVID infection rates turns into a liability, the accuracy of hospitalized COVID tests is something to clarify. These officials are just throwing magic beans into the audience at this point. In the past ten days, the CDC, NIH and FDA have jumped so far over the justification shark, the light from where justification shark jumping starts could not catch them for years.

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More kids, but also:

“..people in the 65+ demographic are five times as likely to die from the inoculation as from COVID-19 under the most favorable assumptions!”

• COVID-19 Genetic Vaccine Safety in Children (Malone)

“Even as experts expressed concern about a marked jump in hospitalizations — an increase more than double that among adults — doctors and researchers said they were not seeing evidence that Omicron was more threatening to children. In fact, preliminary data suggests that compared with the Delta variant, Omicron appears to be causing milder illness in children, similar to early findings for adults.” NY Times, “Omicron Is Not More Severe for Children, Despite Rising Hospitalizations” By Andrew Jacobs Dec. 28, 2021

The risk of death associated with COVID-19 in healthy children is virtually non-existent, as children have significant immunologic advantages relative to the older adult population (> 65 years) which comprises the high risk cohort for COVID-19. The risk of death and disease in children has become even more rare with Omicron. Yet even prior to the advent of Omicron, a peer reviewed study clearly demonstrated (using safety data accumulated during past variant circulation) that the genetic COVID-19 vaccines carry a risk/benefit ratio of five deaths in the older, high risk cohort for every one life saved from COVID-19 (and those data did not account for the reporting bias inherent in US deaths due to COVID consequent to inappropriate use of PCR tests).

“Thus, our extremely conservative estimate for risk-benefit ratio is about 5/1. In plain English, people in the 65+ demographic are five times as likely to die from the inoculation as from COVID-19 under the most favorable assumptions! This demographic is the most vulnerable to adverse effects from COVID-19. As the age demographics go below about 35 years old, the chances of death from COVID-19 become very small, and when they go below 18, become negligible.” The new variant of COVID-19, Omicron, has exploded onto the scene. What was already an inverted risk benefit ratio for genetic vaccination in children and adults (greater risk of death from vaccine than from COVID-19) will become even more inverted since the risks of COVID-19 are further reduced with Omicron.

The Omicron variant is different in five essential ways:
• More infectious and will soon be the dominant variant in the USA
• Less pathogenic
• Poorly matched to currently available vaccines
• Natural immunity is providing good protection against Omicron
• Disease symptoms are more similar to the common cold

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Anyone seen those goalposts?

• Officials Ponder What It Means To Be ‘Fully Vaccinated’ (NYT)

Goldman Sachs and Jeffries, the investment banks, are demanding that employees get booster shots. The University of Oregon and other institutions are requiring that students and staff members get boosters. New York state has said it plans to stop considering residents fully vaccinated unless they have gotten the shots. As the highly transmissible Omicron variant spreads from coast to coast, corporations, schools, governments and even sports leagues are reconsidering what it means to be “fully vaccinated.” Now federal health officials, too, have taken on the question. Although top policymakers want to encourage Americans to get three doses, some would like to avoid changing the definition of a phrase that has become pivotal to daily life in much of the country, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Tuesday that she and other health officials were “working through that question” now. “There really isn’t debate here in what people should do,” she added. “CDC is crystal clear on what people should do: If they’re eligible for a boost, they should get boosted.” With Omicron’s sharp rise — more than 488,000 new cases were reported Wednesday alone — some experts think the moment for change has arrived. “I think the time is now,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. From a medical perspective, he said, receiving that additional booster dose “is really what we should be thinking of as fully vaccinated.”

Redefining “fully vaccinated” could lead to enormous logistical challenges, as even supporters of the idea concede, and it is likely to incite political backlash. Tens of millions of Americans who thought of themselves as vaccinated might discover that without boosters, they could lose access to restaurants, offices, concerts, events, gatherings — any place where proof of vaccination is required to enter. Moreover, the change risks undermining trust in public health officials after two years of shifting recommendations, experts said. Some Americans may feel that the goal posts have been moved again, and too suddenly. “While a determination of what constitutes full vaccination may be grounded in science, it does have significant political and economic ripple effects,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president of KFF, a nonprofit organization that focuses on health issues.

The CDC currently defines “fully vaccinated” as those who have received two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna shots, or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson shot. Although experts continue to believe that these regimens protect against hospitalization and death, the vaccines’ effectiveness against infection with the virus wanes over time. What had been considered full vaccination is substantially less effective against infection with Omicron, which is able to partially evade the body’s antibodies.

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“According to the Vermont Department of Health, “Half of the [Covid] deaths in August were breakthrough cases. Almost three-quarters of them in September were..”

• Covid and Corrupt Federal Statistics (Bovard)

During his update on his Winter Covid Campaign on Tuesday, President Biden declared, “Almost everyone who has died from COVID-19 in the past many months has been unvaccinated.” This was true from the start of the pandemic in early 2020, until the vaccines’ efficacy began failing badly in recent months. Oregon officially classifies roughly a quarter of its Covid fatalities since August as “vaccine breakthrough deaths.” In Illinois, roughly 30 percent of Covid fatalities have occurred among fully vaccinated individuals. According to the Vermont Department of Health, “Half of the [Covid] deaths in August were breakthrough cases. Almost three-quarters of them in September were,” as well, according to Burlington, Vermont TV station WCAX.

The Biden administration guaranteed that the vast majority of “breakthrough” infections would not be counted when the Centers for Disease Control in May ceased keeping track of “breakthrough” infections unless they resulted in hospitalization or death. Ignoring that data permitted Biden to go on CNN in July and make the ludicrously false assertion: “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.” But federal data on fully vaxxed Covid fatalities is far flimsier and less reliable than the numbers compiled by some states. Honestly recognizing the limits of vaccines could be fatal to Biden’s push for compulsory vaccinations.

The same policymakers who claim to be guided by data have little or no idea how many Americans have been hit by Covid. According to the CDC, there have been 51,115,304 Covid cases in America. But a different CDC web page estimates that there had been 146.6 million Covid infections in the US as of October 2, 2021. That CDC analysis estimated that only one in four Covid infections have been reported, which would mean that based on the latest official case numbers, more than 200 million Americans have contracted Covid. For Biden and his fellow policymakers, a potential error of 150 million Covid infections is “close enough for government work.” Relying on the lower number is convenient for policymakers who want to continue ignoring the natural immunity acquired by 199 million Americans who survived Covid infections.

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“..psychopathe fasciste..”

• Justin Trudeau Calls Unvaccinated ‘Racist and Misogynistic Extremists’ (RAIR)

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stunned viewers during a television appearance in Quebec when he announced people who do not receive the experimental Covid “vaccine” are “often racist and misogynistic extremists.” The left-wing Canadian leader questioned whether the country needed to “tolerate these people.” He further bashed anyone unvaccinated, smearing them as “science deniers.” Although those refusing to be injected are a “small group of the population,” states Trudeau, they are still “taking up space.” The leader stressed that the only way to end this pandemic is by getting jabbed. “We will emerge from this pandemic through vaccination,” said Trudeau. The radical leaders praised the “80% of Quebecers” who received the injection and “did the right thing.”


Canadians “want to get back to the things we like doing,” stressed Trudeau. “These people who are not [vaccinated] are going to block us now,” warned the leader. In Quebec, 77.6% of residents have received two injections vaccination. A total of 15,245,140 doses have been administered. After his shocking comments, the conservative leader of the People’s Party of Canada, Maxime Bernier, took to Twitter to call Trudeau a “fascist psychopath.”

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Does it get any messier than this?

• Healthcare Worker Vaccine Mandate Reinstated In Half Of US (JTN)

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on Tuesday reversed on a previous decision, and will now mandate health care workers to receive the COVID-19 vaccine within the next month in half of the nation where the mandate has not been put on hold by the court. The new CMS rule reverses a decision made on Nov. 5 that suspended the mandate, making it dependent on the future of two cases, State of Louisiana et al v. Xavier Becerra, Sec. of HHS, et al and Joseph Biden, President of U.S., et al v. Missouri, et al. Half of all U.S. states joined in these lawsuits to stop the federal vaccine requirement for health care employees. The Supreme Court combined the two and will hear arguments next week.


Facilities in states not part of the pending case will be forced to have 100% of staff vaccinated by Jan. 27, 2022. If a health care center has a compliance rate of more than 80% and plans to reach a 100% rate within 60 days, then the facility will not be “subject to additional enforcement action.” Depending on the rate of vaccination, enforcement mechanisms include “plans of correction, civil monetary penalties, denial of payment, termination, etc.” Workers must receive a second dose by Feb. 28, the memo states. All employees must receive the vaccine “regardless” of their job responsibilities or the amount of time they are in contact with patients. Health care employees affected by the new rule are allowed to opt-out of the vaccine mandate, and receive other “accommodations” if they have a “disability or sincerely held religious beliefs, practices, or observations.”

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FDA and CDC play good cop/bad cop.

• FDA: PCR Tests For Covid Are ‘Gold Standard’ (JTN)

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky’s recent admission that common tests for COVID-19 can detect long-gone infections has some calling into question the Food and Drug Administration’s claim that the tests represent the “gold standard” for diagnosing coronavirus. The CDC’s new caution also falls in line with reports going back 16 months about widespread false positives among the so-called PCR tests, particularly when labs run them at high “cycle thresholds,” which pick up viral loads that may be dead or too small to transmit. The CDC’s decision Monday to halve the recommended “isolation” time for asymptomatic COVID-19 infections amid the Omicron wave, regardless of whether individuals test negative, prompted consternation in some medical circles.

The agency justified the new 5-day isolation by claiming “the majority of SARS-CoV-2 transmission occurs early in the course of illness, generally in the 1-2 days prior to onset of symptoms and the 2-3 days after.” But Walensky also emphasized that neither rapid antigen tests, which are currently in short supply, nor PCR tests were appropriate for determining if a person can safely leave isolation. She told CBS Mornings that antigen tests may not be sensitive enough to detect infectiousness, while PCR tests are so sensitive that “it can stay positive for up to 12 weeks, for months and months.” People would have to stay isolated “for a very long time if we were relying on PCRs,” she told Good Morning America. The significance of Walensky’s declaration, which has sweeping implications for COVID policy in the workplace, school and travel settings, went largely unnoticed except among skeptics of COVID policy.

“Think of all the lives ruined, jobs lost, education squandered b/c of false positives,” tweeted Justin Hart, chief data analyst for the COVID contrarian website Rational Ground. “We’ve been saying since summer 2020 that the PCR test can be positive at 5 days or 75 days. And ONLY JUST NOW is it being used to adjust policy,” he said. Hart is suing Facebook, Twitter and the feds for viewpoint discrimination by “conspiring … to censor messages with which [the government] disagrees.” The suit was triggered by Facebook suspending him over a graphic questioning the science behind school mask mandates. The New York Times highlighted the sensitivity problem with PCR tests in August 2020. In a review of testing data with cycle thresholds (CTs) from Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, the newspaper found that “up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus.” The newspaper said most tests in the U.S. were run at 40 CTs and “a few at 37,” but experts it consulted said the threshold should be 30-35, if that high.

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Slow death.

• Has The $230 Trillion LIBOR Derivative Time-Bomb Really Been Defused? (ZH)

Years ago, we predicted that the Fed’s commitment to phase out Libor, the interest rate set by committee (not market forces) that had come to undergird trillions of dollars in loans and securities around the world, would ultimately prove unsuccessful. Now, as the FT points out, it appears we were correct. Libor won’t be phased out completely by the start of next year. While technically speaking no new securities can be bechmarked to Libor, there’s still the matter of the $230 trillion in existing contracts that rely on the benchmark. And the rates that undergird these contracts will continue to be published. Still, plenty of other Libor rates won’t. Only the most popular will survive, according to the FT. So in a way, next month does mark the moment when “four years of arduous preparation to live without it goes into effect.”


“It’s one of the biggest transitions in financial markets in decades,” said Dixit Joshi, group treasurer of Deutsche Bank. “This is a milestone for the regulators since the great financial crisis about lessons learned.” But it’s not a complete break, which is what the world was promised in the wake of the scandals that inspired the decision. Much lower in its story on the impending Libor deadline, the FT concedes that, in order to make the transition “work”, America’s financial regulators had to help build a workaround whereby futures markets based on the US dollar LIbor would need to be allowed to continue on until mid-2023, something we noted a year ago. As a result, the US dollar Libor rates will continue to be published until that point (and potentially beyond mid-2023, once regulators devise some new excuse for keeping it alive for even longer).

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Courtesy of US intel.

• NGO Memorial Closed By Russian Court Over ‘Foreign Agent’ Breaches (RT)

A Moscow court has ruled that a prominent organization campaigning on human rights issues should be dissolved after prosecutors insisted that it was breaching the country’s laws regulating ‘foreign agents.’ In a ruling on Wednesday, the Moscow City Court said that the Memorial Human Rights Center would be dissolved. Handing down the verdict, judge Mikhail Kazakov said that he would “rule in favor of the claims of the prosecutor’s office to liquidate the inter-regional public organization [Memorial] in full.” Officials allege that the civil society association repeatedly broke the terms of its ‘foreign agent’ status, imposed over links to overseas funding.

The day before, Russia’s Supreme Court ordered that the group’s sister organization, which is dedicated to the memory of the victims of Communist-era repressions, be dissolved as well. Authorities filed applications to liquidate the two entities in November. During the hearing on Tuesday, the Prosecutor General’s office argued that Memorial had been created in the late 1980s originally “as an organization to perpetuate historical memory, but now it is almost completely focused on distorting historical memory, primarily about the Great Patriotic War,” as WWII is known in Russia. According to officials, the group “creates a false image of the USSR as a terrorist state” and “attempts to whitewash and rehabilitate Nazi war criminals who have the blood of Soviet citizens on their hands… probably because someone is paying for this.”

Memorial had faced a number of fines after authorities found it failed to prominently display its ‘foreign agents’ status on its materials. Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously said that the rules “exist simply to protect Russia from external meddling in its politics,” and insisted that organizations that adhere to them can keep working. However, the legislation has come under fire from a number of groups which argue the measures are too restrictive. In August, an open letter signed by 10 separate outlets asked the Kremlin to investigate the use of the ‘foreign agent’ legislation as part of “the persecution of independent journalism in the country.”

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Timing is everything.

• Epstein’s Guards Accused Of Sleeping On Job, Falsifying Records Go Free (JTN)

Federal prosecutors moved Thursday to drop criminal charges against two Bureau of Prisons guards who admitted to falsifying records the night convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein died on their watch. Manhattan guards Tova Noel and Michael Thomas avoided prison time in May 2021 through deferred prosecution agreements mandating that they cooperate with a federal investigation on Epstein’s death and perform 100 hours of volunteer work each. Both complied with the agreements, and the prosecutors asked a judge Thursday to dismiss the charges, Reuters reported. Epstein was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. He was found in August 2019 hanging in his Manhattan cell, and the New York City medical examiner officially declared his death a suicide.


Noel and Thomas were accused of falling asleep on the job and surfing online despite having orders to check every half hour on Epstein, who had recently been taken off of suicide watch. Both admitted to “willfully and knowingly” falsifying records of monitoring Epstein that evening. The prosecution’s move comes the day after Epstein’s girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted on five of the six sex trafficking-related charges brought against her. She is expected to appeal. While Noel’s lawyers could not be reached, Thomas’s lawyer “his client was happy with the dismissal and looked forward to putting the matter behind him,” Reuters reported.

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Records were sealed for a reason.

• Maxwell Conviction Leaves Glaring Questions Over Lack of Prosecutions (Turley)

The conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell for five out of six criminal charges was heralded by many as bringing some justice for the girls abused through her actions. Indeed, the Southern District of New York correctly called the underlying conduct as “one of the worst crimes imaginable – facilitating and participating in the sexual abuse of children.” However, that statement only begged the question of why none of the men listed on flights of the “Lolita Express” or on the guest lists of these parties have been prosecuted. That list includes former presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump as well as Prince Andrew and an assortment of billionaires. It is not clear if these men committed criminal acts but it is also not clear that they have been formally questioned by the FBI.

As I discussed last night, this criminal enterprise was allegedly not only to bring girls and women to Epstein but to his powerful friends. Without pursuing those alleged “johns,” the Maxwell prosecution seems like arresting a getaway driver but letting the bank robbers escape. The pictures of men on these trips are now well-known. They do not in themselves establish criminal conduct. For example, the pictures of Clinton getting a message from a 22-year-old woman is not illegal and she later described him as a “perfect gentleman.” However, Clinton has been accused of misleading the public on his number of flights with Epstein. The media has reported at least 26 flights with Epstein. Being a repeated guest with an infamous child molester raises obvious concerns. It is certainly enough to warrant questioning by the FBI.

Then there is Prince Andrew who has been pursued for questioning. Much of the litigation, however, has come from civil litigation. Prince Andrew recently put forward a novel defense in one such case. Yet, there is a concern that the Justice Department has previously worked to scuttle rather than to pursue the underlying wrongdoing, including a disgraceful plea agreement. I was an early and vocal critic of that deal with Epstein. Despite a strong case for prosecution, Epstein’s lawyers were able to secure a ridiculous deal with prosecutors. He was accused of abusing more than forty minor girls (with many between the ages of 13 and 17). Epstein pleaded guilty to a Florida state charge of felony solicitation of underage girls in 2008 and served a 13-month jail sentence. Epstein was facing a 53-page indictment that could have resulted in life in prison. However, he got the 13 month deal. Moreover, to my lasting surprise, former Miami U.S. attorney Alexander Acosta was inexplicably made labor secretary under Trump. He later resigned.

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Dog

 

 

 

 

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

 

Debt Rattle December 28 2021

Dec 282021
 
 December 28, 2021  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  62 Responses »


Diego Velázquez The Spinners 1655-60

 

• Covid Vaccines: Why They Cannot Work, And Their Causative Role In Deaths (D4CE)
• Calls for New Medical Approaches to Mute Autoimmunity Must Be Addressed (PR)
• In Reply To The Facebook Factcheck On My Dana Loesch Interview (Vanden Bossche)
• Israel Sets Precedent With Fourth Booster Shot (RT)
• Pfizer Antiviral Pill Could Be Risky With Other Widely Used Medications (Hill)
• Danish Doctors Decry Merck’s COVID Pills, Refuse to Use Them (Sp.)
• Protective Effect of Melatonin Administration against SARS-CoV-2 (MDPI)
• Study Reveals How Covid Affects The Brain (RT)
• Outpatient Treatments for COVID-19 Reviewed (Mercola)
• Stop and Assess (Kunstler)
• Pfizer Still Distributes Covid Vaccine Version Not Fully Approved By FDA (JTN)
• US officials recommend shorter COVID isolation, quarantine
• NASA Hired 24 Theologians To Study Human Reaction To Aliens (NYP)

 

 

 

 

Underreported
https://twitter.com/i/status/1475450844661399552

 

 

 

 

They lied

 

 

The autoimmunity issue comes to the foreground.

Sucharit Bhakdi, MD and Arne Burkhardt, MD. [..] a written summary of Dr. Bhakdi’s and Dr. Burkhardt’s presentations at the Doctors for COVID Ethics symposium that was live-streamed by UKColumn on December 10th, 2021.

• Covid Vaccines: Why They Cannot Work, And Their Causative Role In Deaths (D4CE)

Why the vaccines cannot protect against infection A fundamental mistake underlying the development of the COVID-19 vaccines was to neglect the functional distinction between the two major categories of antibodies which the body produces in order to protect itself from pathogenic microbes. The first category (secretory IgA) is produced by immune cells (lymphocytes) which are located directly underneath the mucous membranes that line the respiratory and intestinal tract. The antibodies produced by these lymphocytes are secreted through and to the surface of the mucous membranes. These antibodies are thus on site to meet air-borne viruses, and they may be able to prevent viral binding and infection of the cells.


The second category of antibodies (IgG and circulating IgA) occur in the bloodstream. These antibodies protect the internal organs of the body from infectious agents that try to spread via the bloodstream. Vaccines that are injected into the muscle – i.e., the interior of the body – will only induce IgG and circulating IgA, not secretory IgA. Such antibodies cannot and will not effectively protect the mucous membranes from infection by SARS-CoV-2. Thus, the currently observed “breakthrough infections” among vaccinated individuals merely confirm the fundamental design flaws of the vaccines. Measurements of antibodies in the blood can never yield any information on the true status of immunity against infection of the respiratory tract. The inability of vaccine-induced antibodies to prevent coronavirus infections has been reported in recent scientific publications.

The vaccines can trigger self-destruction A natural infection with SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) will in most individuals remain localized to the respiratory tract. In contrast, the vaccines cause cells deep inside our body to express the viral spike protein, which they were never meant to do by nature. Any cell which expresses this foreign antigen will come under attack by the immune system, which will involve both IgG antibodies and cytotoxic T-lymphocytes. This may occur in any organ. We are seeing now that the heart is affected in many young people, leading to myocarditis or even sudden cardiac arrest and death. How and why such tragedies might causally be linked to vaccination has remained a matter of conjecture because scientific evidence has been lacking. This situation has now been rectified.


[..] Conclusion Histopathologic analysis show clear evidence of vaccine-induced autoimmune-like pathology in multiple organs. That myriad adverse events deriving from such auto-attack processes must be expected to very frequently occur in all individuals, particularly following booster injections, is self-evident. Beyond any doubt, injection of gene-based COVID-19 vaccines places lives under threat of illness and death. We note that both mRNA and vector-based vaccines are represented among these cases, as are all four major manufacturers.

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James Lyons-Weiler discusses the same issue.

• Calls for New Medical Approaches to Mute Autoimmunity Must Be Addressed (PR)

Pathogenic priming, as originally described, is the act of exposing people (or animals) to epitopes that match human proteins, leading to the inducement of autoreactogenic antibodies that attack tissues anywhere in the body. I described pathogenic priming in April, 2020 and predicted that tissues across the body could become afflicted due to exposure to COVID-19 proteins. Evidence is mounting that points to pathogenic priming contributing morbidity and mortality among the vaccinated, including • Increased all-cause mortality • Histopathological evidence of autoimmunity across various organs. An important message, with data, came to me today on one of my many email threads. I am sharing this on Popular Rationalism with permission Ronald Kostoff, who fowarded the analysis below.

[..] Commenting on the above, Ronald wrote: “If the autopsy findings are confirmed by other pathologists with additional samples, and if they are combined with the findings of Dr. Hoffe (>60% inoculant recipients have elevated D-dimer tests and evidence of clotting) and Dr. Cole (increase in cancers after inoculation, including twenty-fold increase in uterine cancer), we are seeing a disaster of unimaginable proportions. The conclusion (if supported by further data) is that essentially EVERY inoculant recipient suffers damage, with more damage after each shot. The damage could be cumulative, and the shots may be synergistic. Given the seriousness of the types of damage (autoimmune diseases, cancer, re-emergent dormant infections, clotting/strokes, cardiac damage, etc.), these effects will translate into lifespan reduction, which should be counted as deaths from the inoculations.

So, in the USA, where ~200M people have been fully inoculated, the number of deaths will not be the 10,000 or so reported in VAERS, or 500,000-1,000,000 scaled-up deaths from VAERS, but could be closer to tens of millions (or more) when the inoculation effects play out! What the above three findings (Burkhart, Hoffe, Cole, and I suspect many others who have not yet come forward) show is that the post-inoculation effects are not rare events (as reported by the media-gov’t), but are in actuality frequent events. They may be, in fact, universal, with different degrees of severity and damage for each recipient. The question is whether it is possible to reverse these inoculation-based adverse events.

Can the innate immune system be fully restored? Can the microclotting be reversed? Can the autoimmunity be reversed? There is a wide spectrum of opinions on whether this is possible, none of which is overly convincing. Are we headed for the situation where the ~30% unvaxxed will be devoting their lives to operating whatever is left of the economic infrastructure and serving as caretakers for the vaxxed? The above sounds extreme, and maybe when more data are gathered from myriad credible sources the results and conclusions may change, but right now the above data seem to synchronize with the demonstrated underlying mechanisms of damage. Additionally, we seem to be doubling down on inoculations, with fourth booster being proposed for Israel, and UK suggesting quarterly boosters.”

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“I have always said that mass vaccination would cause more infectious variants to expand in prevalence and become dominant.”

• In Reply To The Facebook Factcheck On My Dana Loesch Interview (Vanden Bossche)

Facebook wrote that my predictions of an ever-evolving virus, pressured by an ever-expanding population-level immune pressure caused by mass vaccination are wrong. I have always said that mass vaccination would cause more infectious variants to expand in prevalence and become dominant. Making it impossible for mass vaccination fanatics to ‘stay ahead of the virus’ as they always claim. The consecutive dominance of alpha, beta, gamma, delta and, more recently, the omicron variant is merely proof that my predictions have come true.

Even though the highly infectious Omicron does not seem to be highly virulent, there can be no doubt that continued mass vaccination campaigns that will soon use updated boosters against Omicron are at high risk of provoking ADE (antibody-dependent enhancement of disease) and will thereby dramatically enhance the incidence of severe disease in vaccinees. I have explained this in my most recent video message to the WHO, urging them not to allow vaccination against Omicron. (Second call to WHO: Please, don’t vaccinate against Omicron) Damania’s comments on my scientific analysis and predictions have already been proven void.

Furthermore, arguments he’s been trying to tease out from experts, like Paul Offit, have been seamlessly refuted in my interview with Del Bigtree (Geert Vanden Bossche Warns of Covid-19 Vaccination Catastrophe). Damania obviously has a big mouth, but has never been responsive to engaging in an open scientific debate, while being heavily paid to spout misinformation and misinterpretations on the evolutionary dynamics of this pandemic. Of which he clearly doesn’t understand due to his limited knowledge of virology, immunology and vaccinology. “Separating the wheat from the chaff” (Some guidance to separating the wheat from the chaff) is, therefore, a ‘must read’ for all those who are trying to find credible information enabling them to make informed decisions about their own health and that of their children. In that regard, cheap and hollow one-liners like those uttered by Damania are clearly not very helpful.

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Combine this with autoimmunity.

• Israel Sets Precedent With Fourth Booster Shot (RT)

Israel has begun administering a fourth Covid-19 vaccine dose to triple-vaccinated test subjects. The Jewish state is already planning on offering an extra booster shot to the elderly and vulnerable. 150 medical workers at the Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv began receiving a fourth dose of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine on Monday. These workers have all received three doses – an initial two plus a booster – already, and will be monitored for six months as researchers assess their antibody levels and monitor for potential side effects, CBS News reported. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to show here … that this fourth booster really provides protection against the Omicron,” Jacob Lavee, a professor at the prestigious hospital, told the Associated Press.


The trial is believed to be the first test of a fourth booster dose anywhere in the world, and comes at a time when the Omicron variant is rapidly becoming the dominant coronavirus strain worldwide. Although the new variant typically causes only mild to moderate symptoms in those it infects, it is believed to be highly transmissible, and studies have shown vaccines to be significantly less effective against it when compared to earlier variants. Israel was the first country on earth to vaccinate a majority of its citizens, and was one of the first countries in which the vaccines were shown to lose efficacy over time. Since then, the country has been an early trailblazer in administering booster shots, and around 45% of the Israeli population has received a third dose of the Pfizer shot.

Massie

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The Hill basically just posts Pfizer’s PR.

• Pfizer Antiviral Pill Could Be Risky With Other Widely Used Medications (Hill)

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently authorized two antiviral pills, one from Pfizer and one from Merck, making them the first at-home treatment for COVID-19 that has been touted as a game changer in the fight against the pandemic. However, experts told NBC News that the pills will require careful monitoring by doctors and pharmacists. While Pfizer’s Paxlovid has been authorized for use in children 12 and over with underlying health conditions including heart disease or diabetes, a component of the antiviral cocktail could have serious and life- threatening interactions with drugs including blood thinners, statins and depressants, NBC reported.

“Some of these potential interactions are not trivial, and some pairings have to be avoided altogether,” Peter Anderson, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Colorado told NBC News. “Some are probably easily managed. But some we’re going to have to be very careful about,” he added. In a statement to The Hill, a Pfizer spokesperson said, “The potential for drug-drug interactions (DDI) for Paxlovid was examined in a series of in vitro studies, as well as clinical DDI studies.” The spokesperson further elaborated on the antiviral pill and said that Paxlovid is comprised of the active protease inhibitor Nirmatrelvir, as well as a low-dose of 100 mg of Ritonavir.

“Its effect on drug metabolism may result in drug interactions, and some drugs may be contra-indicated. However, in light of the fact that Paxlovid has a short duration of treatment of five days, combined with a low dose of Ritonavir of 100 milligrams, we believe that healthcare professionals should find most DDIs to be generally manageable,” the statement reads. “The product’s emergency use authorization fact sheets include information on drug interactions and contraindications. Healthcare providers should consider the potential for drug interactions prior to and during PAXLOVID therapy and review concomitant medications during PAXLOVID therapy,” the spokesperson added.

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“We think that the documentation basis is really, really flimsy. We are afraid that we will have to use a remedy that is ineffective at best and, at worst, jeopardises people’s treatment..”

• Danish Doctors Decry Merck’s COVID Pills, Refuse to Use Them (Sp.)

Denmark has recently become the first EU country to approve a new COVID-19 treatment by the US pharmaceutical company Merck, but the decision has run into difficulties as the country’s general practitioners refuse to prescribe the treatment due to insufficient knowledge of how it works, calling it ineffective and potentially even harmful. The Danish Society for General Practice (DSAM), which is the professional community of general practitioners, has criticised the National Board of Health for its recommendations concerning COVID-19 treatment. Earlier, the Danish Health and Medicines Authority has approved the US drugmaker Merck’s anti-COVID pill molnupiravir, which also goes by the name Lagevrio, to treat at-risk patients with symptoms, making Denmark the first EU country to do so. So far, 50,000 pills have been purchased.

Explaining their reluctance to administer it, DSAM’s COVID-19 spokesman Anders Beich cited the drug’s poor documentation. “We think that the documentation basis is really, really flimsy. We are afraid that we will have to use a remedy that is ineffective at best and, at worst, jeopardises people’s treatment,” he told Danish Radio. According to him, patients may receive proper treatment too late. “There is a tendency to believe that once you have received your treatment, you will do well. It may be that both doctor and patient think that now the patient is in treatment. But if the treatment is ineffective, then you will waste time, and there is a risk that the disease will get worse without action being taken,” Beich mused.

The same criticism was echoed by Danish Medicines Agency, an independent council that makes recommendations to the regions on the use of various drugs. “We already have treatments that work for the group of patients where the pill is intended for use. Treatments that work much better and are documented much better than this pill,” chairman Steen Werner Hansen said. “So in the worst case, this would prevent some patients from getting a relevant treatment,” he concluded.

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I am not a fan of melatonin, but others are.

• Protective Effect of Melatonin Administration against SARS-CoV-2 (MDPI)

Justification and Objectives: the serious health, social and economic consequences of COVID-19 have forced an urgent search for preventive methods, such as vaccines, among others, and therapeutic methods that could be alternatives to the drugs currently used. In this sense, it must be accepted that one of the most recommended has been the administration of melatonin. The present study proposes to carry out a systematic review of its possible role in the treatment and/or prevention of COVID-19.

Material and methods: a systematic review of the literature related to the prevention of COVID-19 through the administration of melatonin was carried out, following the sequence proposed by the Prisma Declaration regarding the identification and selection of documents, using the specialized health databases Trip Medical Database, Cochrane Library, PubMed, Medline Plus, BVS, Cuiden and generic databases such as Dialnet, Web of Science and Google Scholar for their retrieval. Appropriate inclusion and exclusion criteria are described for the articles assessed. The main limitation of the study has been the scarcity of works and the lack of defining a specific protocol in terms of dosage and administration schedule.

Results: once the selection process was completed, and after an in-depth critical analysis, 197 papers were selected, and 40 of them were finally used. The most relevant results were: (1) melatonin prevents SARS-CoV-2 infection, (2) although much remains to be clarified, at high doses, it seems to have a coadjuvant therapeutic effect in the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection and (3) melatonin is effective against SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Discussion: until group immunization is achieved in the population, it seems clear that we must continue to treat patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection, and, in the absence of a specific and effective antiviral therapy, it is advisable to continue researching and providing drugs that demonstrate validity based on the scientific evidence. In this regard, we believe that the available studies recommend the administration of melatonin for its anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, immunomodulatory, sleep-inducing, CD147, Mpro, p65 and MMP9 protein suppressing, nephrotoxicity-reducing and highly effective and safe effects.

Conclusions: (1) melatonin has anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, immunomodulatory, and Mpro and MMP9 protein-inhibitory activity. (2) It has been shown to have a wide margin of safety. (3) The contributions reviewed make it an effective therapeutic alternative in the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection. (4) Further clinical trials are recommended to clearly define the administration protocol.

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“In some instances, the virus stayed in “regions throughout the brain” for up to 230 days following symptom onset.”

• Study Reveals How Covid Affects The Brain (RT)

The SARS-CoV-2 virus can within days move from the respiratory system into the brain, heart, and nearly every organ system in the body, and stay there for months, a new study says. A team from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) described their research as the “most comprehensive analysis” to date of how the virus spreads through the human body. The results were published online on Saturday in a manuscript, which was submitted under review in the Nature journal. The scientists based their findings on autopsies of 44 patients who died after contracting Covid. The autopsies were performed between April 26, 2020 and March 2, 2021. “Our results collectively show while that the highest burden of SARS-CoV-2 is in the airways and lung, the virus can disseminate early during infection and infect cells throughout the entire body, including widely throughout the brain.”


The viral RNA was “widely distributed” even among patients who died with asymptomatic or mild cases of Covid, the researcher wrote. In some instances, the virus stayed in “regions throughout the brain” for up to 230 days following symptom onset. Ziyad Al-Aly, the director of the clinical epidemiology center at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System in Missouri, told Bloomberg the study may provide an answer to why some patients suffer from so-called ‘long Covid’, when symptoms stay persistent for months. “For a long time now, we have been scratching our heads and asking why long Covid seems to affect so many organ systems. This paper sheds some light, and may help explain why long Covid can occur even in people who had mild or asymptomatic acute disease,” Al-Aly said.

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“You could draw blood and actually see the blood clotting very quickly in the tubes..”

“Since those early days, the disease seems to have changed considerably. We don’t see the high rates of blood clotting anymore..”

• Outpatient Treatments for COVID-19 Reviewed (Mercola)

Dr. Pierre Kory is one of the leaders in the movement to provide early treatment for COVID infection. Kory is a critical care physician (ICU specialist), triple board certified in internal medicine, critical care and pulmonary medicine, and is part of the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), which was among the first to publish COVID treatment guidance. Kory spent most of his career at the Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, New York, where he helped run the intensive care unit. He also had a busy outpatient practice. About six years ago, he was recruited to the University of Wisconsin Medical Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he led the critical care service. “When COVID hit, I was in a leadership position,” he says. “I resigned, because of the way they were handling the pandemic.”

University of Wisconsin Medical Center, like most hospitals across the U.S., insisted on providing supportive care only, and Kory refused to remain in a leadership position under those circumstances. Patients were, for the first time in modern medical history, told to just suffer at home until they were near death, then go to the hospital where they were placed on deadly ventilator treatment. “I knew there was a variety of treatments that we could use [yet] we were using nothing,” he says. Doctors were even told to not use anticoagulants, even though blood clotting was “through the roof” in many patients. “You could draw blood and actually see the blood clotting very quickly in the tubes,” he says. Since those early days, the disease seems to have changed considerably. We don’t see the high rates of blood clotting anymore, for example, which is good news.

But for some reason, from the very start, “they were literally telling us that we needed randomized controlled trials to do anything,” Kory says, and to this day, health authorities are refusing to acknowledge any treatment protocol outside of the drug remdesivir, and COVID vaccins. “People were dying, [yet] all of my ideas were getting shouted down. My superiors were showing up [to my clinical meetings] and getting me to stand down, because I was entertaining the idea that we should do this, that and the other thing, and they didn’t want anything to be done. And so, I said, ‘I’m done.’ I resigned mid-April 2020. I then went to New York for five weeks and ran my old ICU in New York.”

In May 2020, Kory testified before the U.S. Senate, stressing how critical it was to use steroids during the hospital phase of this infection. At that time, he was still employed by the University of Wisconsin. His resignation date had not yet happened, and they “were livid that I was speaking in public, giving my opinion.” This is remarkable, because when you’re an expert in a field, “you’re actually responsible to share your insight and expertise,” Kory says. “Yet they were very unhappy that I was doing that.” Seven weeks later, Kory was vindicated when the British Recovery trial results came out, showing the benefits of corticosteroids. Since then, steroids have become part of standard of care in the hospital phase.

Steroids are an effective tool for reducing inflammation in general, but they appear particularly important for advanced COVID infection. I had a close friend who contracted a very serious case of COVID-19 and kept worsening despite taking everything I suggested. He knew Dr. Peter McCullough, so he texted him and was told to add prednisone and aspirin to his current regimen. As soon as he took the prednisone, he started getting better. As explained by Kory, this is a common experience. Importantly, the evidence shows that when used early, during mild infection, corticosteroids do more harm than good. But once you are entering into moderate illness, as soon as you start to see lung dysfunction or the need for oxygen, steroids are critical and are clearly lifesaving.

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“And Dr. Fauci is beseeching the twice-vaxxed to go get boostered? Is he determined to wreck absolutely every immune system in the land?”

• Stop and Assess (Kunstler)

Reality is penetrating the fog and fury of propaganda spewed out over cable-TV news in what may be the last desperate full-out campaign to sell “vaccines” to the credulous. Omicron is a bust, despite the shrieking about overstuffed hospitals (they’re not) in The New York Times. Just as there is a crack-up boom in the final stage of a financial crisis, there is a climactic surge of hysteria in the Covid-19 war against Western Civ. Now, Dr. Anthony Fauci is pushing proof-of-vaxx for US air travel because, “[a] vaccine requirement for a person getting on the plane is just another level of getting people to have a mechanism that would spur them to get vaccinated…” he laid it out on ABC News’s This Week show Sunday with Jonathan Karl.

Monday morning on NPR, Dr. Fauci was beating the drum about the unvaxxed being a menace to society as maxi-spreaders of omicron. Is it possible he hasn’t heard that the vaxxed are catching it at a greater rate despite their vaxxes than the unvaxxed? Do you know why? Because their previous vaxxes have de-tuned their immune systems, that’s why. By the way, so far, one death has been attributed to omicron in the US — and even that case is a muddle. And Dr. Fauci is beseeching the twice-vaxxed to go get boostered? Is he determined to wreck absolutely every immune system in the land? Kind of looks that way, a little bit.

I confess I am torn between two views of this fiasco. The first is that the notoriously incompetent Dr. Fauci and his colleagues (read RFK, Jr.s book) simply blundered through the Covid-19 disaster making a series of reckless choices, and about halfway through the crisis made the dastardly decision to cover-up their errors by doubling and tripling down on these mistakes. For instance, the policy to suppress and ban cheap and effective treatments that would have un-horsed their stupendously profitable “vaccines” from the emergency use authorization that got the mRNA cocktails into the public’s arms without proper testing. Some months down the road we will learn that this Fauci combine caused millions of people to die unnecessarily both from treatments withheld and from the adverse effects of vaxxes themselves.

The other view — that is becoming ever-harder to disregard — is that the Covid-19 pandemic was a deliberate program by a gang of powerful international adventurers to install a regime of surveillance and extreme control over formerly free citizens — all in the service of “re-setting” the ailing global financial system, reducing the population of elder pensioners to relieve the West’s payment obligations, and stifling industrial economies as a cure for climate change. It has sounded a little preposterous to me that such manifest evil, as otherwise seen only in James Bond movies and newsreels of the Nazis, could actually be true.

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Which can’t be mandated.

• Pfizer Still Distributes Covid Vaccine Version Not Fully Approved By FDA (JTN)

Despite there being no chemical or ethical differences between Comirnaty and Pfizer-BioNTech, however, the FDA acknowledges the two “are legally distinct.” The agency explained in a statement to the Ohio Star that statutory authorities governing EUAs and biologics license applications, which are necessary for official FDA approval, “provide different legal requirements.” Those requirements, such as more paperwork for a full approval, mean the two products are labeled differently. Labeling differences, while important for the company, mean little in practice for those receiving the vaccine, explained Riley. But legal differences between the EUA-sanctioned and FDA-approved vaccines have potentially significant implications for vaccine mandates.

The Department of Defense, for example, mandates that service members become fully vaccinated against COVID-19 but directs that only FDA-approved vaccines be used for mandatory vaccination. (Service members may also volunteer to receive a EUA vaccination to meet the requirement.) And in Ohio, a recently signed law states that “a public school or state institution of higher education shall not … require an individual to receive a vaccine for which the [FDA] has not granted full approval.” Such measures have led to debates over the precise nature of the legal differences between the two types of vaccines — and whether FDA approval should legally be a limitation for vaccine mandates. R. Davis Younts, an attorney based in Lemoyne, Penn., who represents dozens of clients resisting vaccine mandates, said the government can’t compel people to take vaccines that have only been authorized under EUA.

“Government agencies do not have the legal authority to mandate any of the EUA vaccines,” Younts told Just the News. He explained how Section 564 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act requires that vaccine recipients must be informed of “the option to accept or refuse” the product. Younts, focusing on military personnel, added that, in order to make an EUA drug mandatory, the president must issue a waiver under a certain federal statute. That statute states, “Administration of a product authorized for emergency use under section 564 … to members of the armed forces” requires informed consent absent a determination by the president that “complying with such requirement is not in the interests of national security.”

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The guidance just changes every day, on the fly.

• US Officials Recommend Shorter Covid Isolation, Quarantine (AP)

U.S. health officials on Monday cut isolation restrictions for asymptomatic Americans who catch the coronavirus from 10 to five days, and similarly shortened the time that close contacts need to quarantine. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials said the guidance is in keeping with growing evidence that people with the coronavirus are most infectious in the two days before and three days after symptoms develop. The decision also was driven by a recent surge in COVID-19 cases, propelled by the omicron variant. Early research suggests omicron may cause milder illnesses than earlier versions of the coronavirus. But the sheer number of people becoming infected — and therefore having to isolate or quarantine — threatens to crush the ability of hospitals, airlines and other businesses to stay open, experts say.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said the country is about to see a lot of omicron cases. “Not all of those cases are going to be severe. In fact many are going to be asymptomatic,” she told The Associated Press on Monday. “We want to make sure there is a mechanism by which we can safely continue to keep society functioning while following the science.” Last week, the agency loosened rules that previously called on health care workers to stay out of work for 10 days if they test positive. The new recommendations said workers could go back to work after seven days if they test negative and don’t have symptoms. And the agency said isolation time could be cut to five days, or even fewer, if there are severe staffing shortages.

Now, the CDC is changing the isolation and quarantine guidance for the general public to be even less stringent. The change is aimed at people who are not experiencing symptoms. People with symptoms during isolation, or who develop symptoms during quarantine, are encouraged to stay home. The CDC’s isolation and quarantine guidance has confused the public, and the new recommendations are “happening at a time when more people are testing positive for the first time and looking for guidance,” said Lindsay Wiley, an American University public health law expert. Nevertheless, the guidance continues to be complex.

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Must be Christmas.

• NASA Hired 24 Theologians To Study Human Reaction To Aliens (NYP)

Between heaven and Earth, where do aliens fit in? That’s the question that NASA hopes theologians at the Center for Theological Inquiry (CTI) in Princeton, New Jersey, can answer, in a recent effort to understand how humans will react to news that intelligent life exists on other planets. University of Cambridge religious scholar Rev. Dr. Andrew Davison, who also holds a doctorate in biochemistry from Oxford, is one of the 24 theologians enlisted to help with the project, the Times UK reported last week. In a recent statement on the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Divinity blog, Davison says his research so far has already seen “just how frequently theology-and-astrobiology has been topic in popular writing” during the previous 150 years.

Davison’s upcoming book, “Astrobiology and Christian Doctrine,” due out in 2022, according to the Times, will cover part of CTI and NASA’s joint spiritual exploration, in which his “most significant question” is how theologians would respond to the notion “of there having been many incarnations [of Christ]” in the universe, he added in the blog post. This is the latest dispatch to come in a partnership between the US space agency and the religious institute. In 2014, NASA awarded CTI a $1.1 million grant to study worshippers’ interest in and openness to scientific inquiry called the Societal Implications of Astrobiology study. Studies have shown links between religiosity and belief in extraterrestrial intelligence.

Research published in 2017 found that people with a strong desire to find meaning, but a low adherence to a particular religion, are more likely to believe aliens exist — indicating that faith in either theory may come from the same human impulse. With NASA’s support, CTI’s director Will Storrar said they’d hoped to see “serious scholarship being published in books and journals” to come out on the subject, answering to the “profound wonder and mystery and implication of finding microbial life on another planet.” According to the Times, Davison’s book notes that a “large number of people would turn to their religions traditions for guidance” if extraterrestrials were found, and what that means “for the standing and dignity of human life.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

A virus so strong that it can get past 3 vaccines but can’t get past your paw patrol mask.

 

 

Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.
– George Orwell, 1984

 

 

Billy Connolly – Politically correct – Was it something I said?

 

 

Elon Musk- Bill

 

 

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

 

Debt Rattle December 8 2021

Dec 082021
 
 December 8, 2021  Posted by at 9:29 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  81 Responses »


Gustave Caillebotte Paris Street, Rainy Day 1884

 

• Judge Blocks Biden’s Vaccine Mandate For Federal Contractors Nationwide (JTN)
• South Africa Healthcare Chief Says Omicron May Signal the End of COVID-19 (SN)
• Green Pass and COVID-19 Vaccine Booster Shots in Israel (SSRN)
• Beyond Omicron: What’s Next For Covid’s Viral Evolution (Nature)
• SARS-CoV-2 Breakthrough Infections In Vaccinated Individuals (Nature)
• WHO Europe Says Covid Vaccine Mandates Should Be ‘Last Resort’ (Y!)
• Vaccine-Resistant Mutations Correlate Strongly With Vaccination Rates (NIH)
• Study Shows Omicron Variant Partially Evades Vaccine’s Protection (GR)
• FDA Wants Until at Least 2096 to Fully Release Pfizer’s Vaccine Data (Siri)
• New NIH Records Reveal Information About Research Into Coronavirus (JW)
• Controversial Biden Banking Nominee Omarova Bows Out (JTN)
• Apple Signed Secret $275 Billion Deal With Chinese Government (ZH)
• Putin To Biden: ‘Finlandize’ Ukraine, Or We Will (Pat Buchanan)

 

 

 

 

EU ministers conference: After February 1, free travel in all of EU for every citizen who’s had a booster shot within 9 months of their second shot.

BUT: people already know the Omicron shot is supposed to come in 100 days.

 

 

Yeah, the unvaxxed occupy all hospital beds… Just not in Wales?!

 

 

 

The judge ruled that federal contractors nationwide are no longer subject to Biden’s vaccine mandate.

This prevents a lot of misery.

• Judge Blocks Biden’s Vaccine Mandate For Federal Contractors Nationwide (JTN)

A U.S. district court judge blocked the Biden administration on Tuesday from enforcing a COVID-19 vaccine mandate on employees of government contractors across the nation. This conservative win adds to a string of losses for President Joe Biden in federal courts. Southern District of Georgia Judge R. Stan Baker ruled in favor of multiple contractors across seven states – Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia. A district judge in Kentucky last week issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the Biden administration from enforcing their vaccine mandate on contractors, but it only applied to three states – Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. Because one of the plaintiffs in the Georgia decision, Associated Builders and Contractors, Inc., is a trade group with members across the United States, Baker’s decision applies nationwide.


Baker, a Trump appointee, wrote that the plaintiffs “will likely succeed in their claim that the President exceeded the authorization given to him by Congress” when Biden issued an executive order on Sept. 9 mandating federal contractors to receive COVID-19 vaccines. The White House announced last month that it was delaying federal contractors’ vaccine mandate deadline until January, not December as previously planned. Last week the Biden administration also pushed back its deadline requiring federal workers to be vaccinated. Federal workers now have until January to be vaccinated. A federal judge in Louisiana issued a preliminary injunction earlier this month to stop “Biden’s national vaccine mandate for healthcare workers,” Just the News reported.

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“There have been zero deaths from Omicron worldwide and in countries like the UK it hasn’t even caused anyone to be hospitalized.”

• South Africa Healthcare Chief Says Omicron May Signal the End of COVID-19 (SN)

The CEO of South Africa’s largest private healthcare network says that the Omicron variant is “so mild” that it “may signal the end of COVID-19.” According to Richard Friedland, chief executive officer of Netcare Ltd., the early days of the variant suggest there is absolutely no need to panic and that it might actually be a good thing. “If in the second and third wave we’d seen these levels of positivity to tests conducted, we would have seen very significant increases in hospital admissions and we’re not seeing that. In our primary care clinics it is mainly people under 30-years-old,” he said. “So I actually think there is a silver lining here and this may signal the end of Covid-19, with it attenuating itself to such an extent that it’s highly contagious, but doesn’t cause severe disease. That’s what happened with Spanish flu.”

“We are seeing breakthrough infections of people who have been vaccinated, but the infections we’re seeing are very mild to moderate. So for health care workers who have had boosters, it’s mostly mild. I think this whole thing has been so poorly communicated and so much panic generated.” Friedland’s comments won’t be welcomed by Big Pharma, which continues to make vast profits from endless booster vaccines. Not will his remarks be amplified by the corporate media, which has enjoyed a huge boost in ratings from endless COVID fearmongering. However, the CEO’s statement correlates with what other health experts on the ground in South Africa have said about Omicron.

The doctor who first discovered the variant says the it is “mild” and hasn’t caused an uptick in hospitalizations. Angelique Coetzee, chair of the South African Medical Association, echoed Dr. Barry Schoub’s sentiments, noting that the patients infected with omicron had “symptoms (that) were so different and so mild from those I had treated before.” There have been zero deaths from Omicron worldwide and in countries like the UK it hasn’t even caused anyone to be hospitalized.

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Twitter comments: “Notably, the new Israel booster study finds highly negative VE for the first month after booster administered and only afterwards turns positive which makes overall VE low (35% for first 3 months).”

“This says vaccines not very effective for first three months, but boosters are being recommended at 3 months intervals for some. So right when they become most effective, get another one? Maybe I’m not understanding.”

• Green Pass and COVID-19 Vaccine Booster Shots in Israel (SSRN)

The paper describes an analysis based on data published on November 1, 2021, by the Israeli Ministry of Health (MOH) on its control dashboard about returning Israelis through the national airport. The data include the respective numbers of Vaccinated and Unvaccinated individuals and the number of positive COVID-19 cases identified in each group. These reflect the modified definitions of Vaccinated and Unvaccinated status after the Pfizer booster vaccination campaign in Israel (August-October). In particular, to maintain a Vaccinated status and specifically the “Green Pass”, individuals who received the initial 2 doses more than 6 months ago were required to receive the booster vaccine.

Israel national airport is a unique setting, where the Vaccinated and Unvaccinated individuals all have to test, which allows a more objective assessment of both the booster and Green Pass efficacy in preventing infections. The analysis suggests that the positivity rate (number of cases divided by number of tests) among the Vaccinated cohort throughout August-October is only 1.54-fold smaller than the one among the Unvaccinated cohort (about 35% relative protection). More specifically, compared to the Unvaccinated group, the Vaccinated group has a significantly higher positivity rate during the month of August, then in September it shows a 3.45-fold smaller positivity rate (71% relative protection), and this protection decreases to 2.66-fold (62% protection) during October.

The analysis suggests that the relative protection of the booster shot against infection is likely to be significantly smaller than the initial estimates of 10-11-fold (over 90%) reported by the MOH, probably around 60% at best. This also implies that the absolute number of infected individuals in the Vaccinated group is likely to be at least as high as in the Unvaccinated, raising serious concerns that the new Green Pass is inefficient in preventing infection spread, and could expose high risk individuals to risk.

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Two long and detailed articles from Nature. Which leave me with the impression that they’re more sophisticated sales jobs for the vaccines.

• Beyond Omicron: What’s Next For Covid’s Viral Evolution (Nature)

Delta and its descendants now account for the vast majority of COVID-19 cases worldwide. Most researchers expected these Delta lineages to eventually outcompete the last holdouts. But Omicron has undermined those predictions. “A lot of us were expecting the next weird variant to be a child of Delta, and this is a bit of a wild card,” says Aris Katzourakis, a specialist in viral evolution at the University of Oxford, UK. Teams in Botswana and South Africa identified the variant in late November — although researchers say it is unlikely to have originated in either country — and health officials have linked it to a rapidly growing outbreak centred in South Africa’s Gauteng province. The variant harbours around 30 changes to spike, many shared with the other variants of concern, and scientists worldwide are working to gauge the threat it poses.

The swift rise in cases of Omicron in South Africa suggests that the new variant has a fitness advantage over Delta, says Tom Wenseleers, an evolutionary biologist and biostatistician at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. Omicron carries some of the mutations associated with Delta’s sky-high infectivity. But if increased infectivity were the sole reason for its rapid growth, it would translate to an R0 in the 30s, Wenseleers says. “That’s very implausible.” Instead, he and other researchers suspect that Omicron’s rise may be largely due to its ability to infect people who are immune to Delta through vaccination or previous infection.

Scientists’ portrait of Omicron is still blurry and it will take weeks before they can fully assess its properties. But if the variant is spreading, in part, because of its ability to evade immunity, it fits in with theoretical predictions about how SARS-CoV-2 is likely to evolve, says Sarah Cobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois. As gains in SARS-CoV-2’s infectivity start to slow, the virus will have to maintain its fitness through overcoming immune responses, says Cobey. For instance, if a mutation or set of mutations halved a vaccine’s ability to block transmission, this could vastly increase the number of available hosts in a population. Cobey says it’s hard to imagine that any future gains in infectivity could provide the same boost.

That evolutionary path, towards immune evasion and away from gains in infectivity, is common among established respiratory viruses such as influenza says Adam Kucharski, a mathematical epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “The easiest way for the virus to cause new epidemics is to evade immunity over time. That’s similar to what we see with the seasonal coronaviruses.”

Read more …

Oh yeah, boosters!

• SARS-CoV-2 Breakthrough Infections In Vaccinated Individuals (Nature)

Vaccines against viruses work by generating immune responses that inhibit the infection process (mainly serum antibodies that bind and/or neutralize virus particles and, for mucosally applied vaccines, also mucosal secretory IgA) and by creating immune memory in the form of antigen-specific memory B cells and T cells that are primed to produce a rapid anamnestic response when the infection reintroduces the vaccine antigen into the body. These mechanisms can prevent initial proliferation of the virus or, failing that, rapidly control it, reducing the amount of virus to which the host is ultimately exposed and the duration of the exposure. While the amount of circulating antibody present following vaccination (or any antigenic stimulus) increases rapidly, on a timescale of days to weeks, it also declines rapidly from its peak on a timescale of weeks to months, and then more slowly over a time scale of decades.

The first phase reflects antibody secreted by short-lived plasmablast populations, which expand right after antigen exposure as a first line of defense. They typically die within 1–2 weeks after antigen exposure and the antibody they secreted declines based on the specific antibody half-life (approximately 21 days for IgG). The second, usually very slow, phase of decline likely reflects the kinetics of long-lived plasma cells, which migrate to the bone marrow and from there secrete antibody into the blood, often maintaining stable titres for many years. Importantly, although peripherally injected vaccines can induce low levels of IgG and monomeric IgA antibodies at the mucosal surfaces of the upper respiratory tract (which are the main entry portal for respiratory viruses) they do not induce secretory IgA efficientl2. The small proportions of IgG and IgA that land on the mucosal surfaces of the upper respiratory tract after intramuscular vaccination disappear relatively quickly as serum antibodies wane.

Whether a breakthrough infection occurs when a vaccinated host is exposed to an infectious person depends on whether the immune response present in that person at the moment of exposure is sufficient to abort or rapidly control the infection (Fig. 1). Given the kinetics of immune responses, it is not surprising that the amount of protection offered by a vaccine against infection might decline over time, allowing more breakthrough infections as the immune response wanes over months (as observed for influenza virus vaccines) and/or as immune memory wanes over years (as observed for mumps vaccines). Likewise, protection might increase after a breakthrough infection or after a subsequent vaccine dose, which enhances the person’s immune response. It is also unsurprising that older individuals, whose neutralizing antibody responses to COVID-19 vaccines are typically lower, appear to be at greater risk of breakthrough infections at any given time following vaccination.

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Covid has exposed the WHO as a failed entity.

• WHO Europe Says Covid Vaccine Mandates Should Be ‘Last Resort’ (Y!)

The World Health Organization (WHO) in Europe on Tuesday cautioned against making Covid vaccines mandatory, while urging better protection of children among whom cases are high. Europe is battling a fierce surge in the pandemic, with the WHO registering 120,000 Covid-related deaths on the continent since November 23 when it warned of up to 500,000 more deaths by March 2022. Regional director Hans Kluge said compulsory vaccines should be “an absolute last resort and only applicable when all other feasible options to improve vaccination uptake have been exhausted”. Noting that mandates have increased vaccine uptake in some cases, Kluge said these were “context specific”, and added that the effect mandates may have on “public confidence and public trust” must also be considered.

The regional health bloc also noted that the number of cases had increased “across all age groups, with the highest rates currently observed in the five to 14 years age group.” “It is not unusual today to see two to three times higher incidence among young children than in the average population,” Kluge told a press conference. “The health risks extend beyond the children themselves,” Kluge added, noting that children risk passing the infection to parents and grandparents in the home. Improved ventilation and the use of masks should be a standard at all primary schools as part of a safe learning environment, while avoiding school closures and remote learning, the regional director said. “Vaccinating children should be discussed and considered nationally,” Kluge added.

The WHO’s European region comprises 53 countries and territories, and includes several in Central Asia. The organisation also expressed concern about rising cases of the recently discovered Omicron variant of the virus, but stressed that the fight should still be focused on the currently dominant Delta variant. “The problem now is Delta and however we succeed against Delta today is a win over Omicron tomorrow, before it eventually surges,” Kluge said. Meanwhile in Norway, where 29 cases of the Omicron variant have been confirmed, health authorities warned that the new variant would likely add to the stress on health services to a “significant degree”.

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Is anybody tracking this on a broad scale?

• Vaccine-Resistant Mutations Correlate Strongly With Vaccination Rates (NIH)

The importance of understanding SARS-CoV-2 evolution cannot be overlooked. Recent studies confirm that natural selection is the dominating mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 evolution, which favors mutations that strengthen viral infectivity. Here, we demonstrate that vaccine-breakthrough or antibody-resistant mutations provide a new mechanism of viral evolution. Specifically, vaccine-resistant mutation Y449S in the spike (S) protein receptor-binding domain, which occurred in co-mutations Y449S and N501Y, has reduced infectivity compared to that of the original SARS-CoV-2 but can disrupt existing antibodies that neutralize the virus.


By tracking the evolutionary trajectories of vaccine-resistant mutations in more than 2.2 million SARS-CoV-2 genomes, we reveal that the occurrence and frequency of vaccine-resistant mutations correlate strongly with the vaccination rates in Europe and America. We anticipate that as a complementary transmission pathway, vaccine-breakthrough or antibody-resistant mutations, like those in Omicron, will become a dominating mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 evolution when most of the world’s population is either vaccinated or infected. Our study sheds light on SARS-CoV-2 evolution and transmission and enables the design of the next-generation mutation-proof vaccines and antibody drugs.

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Trying to confuse natural immunity and vaccine “protection”.

• Study Shows Omicron Variant Partially Evades Vaccine’s Protection (GR)

Researchers studying the effects of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine on the Omicron variant announced on Tuesday that the variant is partially capable of evading the vaccine’s protection. The team, which has been working in South Africa since the discovery of the new variant, said that those who have recovered from Covid and are fully vaccinated, as well as those who have received a booster shot, are well protected against the variant. The team conducted tests in lab dishes with samples from a dozen people who were fully vaccinated with Pfizer’s vaccine. The results indicated that Omicron is capable of escaping the vaccine’s protection– but only partially.

“There is a very large drop in neutralization of Omicron by BNT162b2 [Pfizer/BioNTech] immunity relative to ancestral virus,” said Alex Sigal, the study’s lead author, on Twitter. Sigal works for the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban. “Omicron escape from BNT162b2 neutralization is incomplete. Previous infection + vaccination still neutralizes,” Sigal said. Sigal told CNN that these results were much better than what he and his team had expected: “I thought this news was very positive. I expected worse,” Sigal said in an interview. Many experts were expecting Omicron to almost completely bypass the protection of vaccines. “This is not a variant that has completely escaped. It certainly escapes. It is certainly bad. But it looks to me like there are ways of dealing with it.”

The study analyzed human lung cells and blood to find their results. It has yet to be peer-reviewed. “Previous infection, followed by vaccination or booster, is likely to increase the neutralization level and likely confer protection from severe disease in Omicron infection,” the study read. Some of the samples had a 41-fold reduction in neutralizing antibodies deployed against the Omicron compared to the levels of antibodies present in earlier Covid-19 variants. But Sigal said that that number is fluid and subject to change with further tests and variables, including if the person had been previously infected. The news comes as evidence is mounting that Omicron may be producing less severe infections than previous Covid-19 variants, like Delta.

On Saturday, the South African Medical Research Council published a report about an Omicron-driven outbreak in the Tshwane district in South Africa’s northern Gauteng Province, one of the first areas in the world where Omicron has overtaken Delta as the dominant strain. The researchers wrote that in the last two weeks there has been an “exponential” rise in caseloads, but significantly, the surge has not corresponded to a significant uptick in hospitalizations and deaths. “The relatively low number of COVID-19 pneumonia hospitalizations in the general, high care, and ICU wards constitutes a very different picture compared to the beginning of previous waves,” the report said, examining data from the Steve Biko and Tshwane District Hospital complex.

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How does “never” sound to you? Just dump Pfizer, it’s the only way out of the pandemic.

• FDA Wants Until at Least 2096 to Fully Release Pfizer’s Vaccine Data (Siri)

A prior post explained that the FDA has asked a federal judge to make the public wait until the year 2076 to disclose all of the data and information it relied upon to license Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. Literally, a 55-year delay. My firm, on behalf of PHMPT, asked that this information be disclosed in 108 days – the same amount of time it took for the FDA to review and license Pfizer’s vaccine. The Court ordered the parties to submit briefs in support of their respective positions by December 6, 2021. The FDA’s brief, incredibly, doubles down. It now effectively asks to have until at least 2096 to produce the Pfizer documents. Not a typo. A total of at least 75 years. Other than producing an initial ~12,000 pages in around two months, the FDA thereafter only wants to commit to producing 500 pages per month. The FDA also disclosed that it actually has approximately at least 451,000 pages to produce.*


Each side gets to file response briefs on December 13, 2021, and then there is oral argument on December 14, 2021 before the Judge. If you want to read the response to the FDA’s position, a copy of the introduction in the brief my firm filed is below. And below that, a downloadable copy of each side’s full briefing is available. Enjoy. And if you find what you are reading difficult to believe – that is because it is dystopian for the government to give Pfizer billions, mandate Americans to take its product, prohibit Americans from suing for harms, but yet refuse to let Americans see the data underlying its licensure. The lesson yet again is that civil and individual rights should never be contingent upon a medical procedure.

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Why is all this stuff heavily redacted? Who has the right to be kept secret, and what is that based on?

• New NIH Records Reveal Information About Research Into Coronavirus (JW)

Judicial Watch announced today that it received 221 pages of records from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which include a grant application for research involving the coronavirus that was submitted in 2018. The grant application appears to describe “gain of function” research involving RNA extractions from bats, experiments on viruses, attempts to develop a chimeric virus and efforts to genetically manipulate the full-length bat SARSr-CoV WIV1 strain molecular clone. The documents were obtained by Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for records of communications, contracts and agreements with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The lawsuit specifically requests records about National Institute of Health (NIH) grants that benefitted the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

On January 27, 2020, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) official David Morens emailed Chief of Staff Greg Folkers in a heavily redacted thread, writing: “[S]ome background on our support of the Ecohealth group (Peter Daszak et al), which has for years been among the biggest players in coronavirus work, also in collaboration with Ralph Baric, Ian Lipkin and others. [Redacted]”. NIAID has been funding Peter’s group for coronavirus work in China for the past 5 years through [grant] R011R01A|110964: “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” That’s now been renewed, with a specific focus to identify cohorts of people highly exposed to bats in China, and work out if they’re getting sick from CoVs.… Collaborators include Wuhan Institute of Virology (currently working on the nCoV) and Ralph Baric.

The results of the work to date include: • [Redacted] • Discovered Swine Acute Diarrheal Syndrome Virus (SADS-CoV) killing >25,000 pigs in Guangdong Province (Published in Nature) • Found SARS-related CoVs that can bind to human cells (Published in Nature), and that cause SARS-like disease in humanized mouse models. • [Redacted] Also, prior to the above R01, Peter’s folks worked under an R01 with Eun-Park as Program Officer on viral discovery in bats, and originally identified SARS-CoV as having a likely origin in bats (published in Science). Folkers forwards the message to Anthony Fauci and others.

In a “Notice of Award” dated July 13, 2020, the NIH increased the amount of NIH money going to Peter Daszak’s firm, EcoHealth Alliance, by $369,819 with a project period that runs from June 1, 2014, through June 30, 2025, for Daszak’s project “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” EcoHealth was to receive $637,980 in each of the years 2019 through 2024 under the grant.

Read more …

Did they really think they could push through Marx in the US?

• Controversial Biden Banking Nominee Omarova Bows Out (JTN)

Cornell Law Professor Saule Omarova withdrew her nomination for comptroller of the currency following Senate Republicans voicing concerns about her Marxist ties. In Omarova’s withdrawal letter posted Tuesday by the White House, she wrote that while it was an honor to be nominated by President Joe Biden, “it is no longer tenable” for her to continue as a nominee and ultimately lead the agency in charge of regulating American banks. Biden responded that he accepts Omarova’s withdrawal, and says she “was subjected to inappropriate personal attacks that were far beyond the pale.” Biden described his former nominee as “a strong advocate for consumers and a staunch defender of the safety and soundness of our financial system” who would have “brought invaluable insight and perspective to our important work on behalf of the American people.”

Republicans, moderate Democrats and banking industry officials disagreed with Biden’s nomination. Omarova, a Kazakh native educated in the USSR, was under scrutiny for a history of leftist statements, as previously reported by Just the News. In 2019, she tweeted, “Until I came to the US, I couldn’t imagine that things like gender pay gap still existed in today’s world. Say what you will about old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn’t always ‘know best.'” A video surfaced earlier this year of the Moscow State University alumna cheering for oil and gas companies to go bankrupt. Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas) responded by calling on Biden to withdrawal Omarova’s nomination. As recently as October of this year, a paper by Omarova was published titled, “The People’s Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy.”

The professor called for “replacing commercial bank reserve accounts with universally available deposit accounts” so “all U.S. citizens and law-abiding citizens and lawful residents, local governments, nonbanking firms and nonbusiness entities” can bank at the Federal Reserve. Her proposed plan would have the Federal Reserve take money from these accounts when “it is necessary to expand the money supply in order to stimulate economic activity.” Her thesis at Moscow State University was “Karl Marx’s Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution in The Capital,” but she declined to provide it to the Senate Banking Committee to review.

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No word on what is in the deal. Over a quarter of a trillion dollars.

• Apple Signed Secret $275 Billion Deal With Chinese Government (ZH)

Investors and journalists have been openly questioning whether Apple CEO Tim Cook, once praised for his deep-rooted connections within the CCP, has allowed his relationships in China to sour as the US has stepped up criticisms over human rights – treatment of the Uyghers in Xinjiang and elsewhere – and Taiwan. These ties have grown intensely controversial, eliciting criticism from lawmakers, rivals and even the company’s own employees. And just as the SEC prepares to boot dozens of Chinese companies off of US stock exchanges for refusing to comply with US audit standards (something the CCP has expressly forbidden under the auspices of data privacy), reporters with the Information have just published a bombshell: At some point in the not-too-distant past, Cook struck a $275 billion deal with the Chinese government while facing pressure from the CCP.

The deal emerged after a series of meetings between Cook and Chinese officials back in 2016. China is Apple’s second-biggest market after the US, and has long been targeted as a critical market for growth. Apple’s iPhones have seen growing popularity despite rising tensions with the US. This year, Apple became the second-biggest smartphone maker in China. The deal, which was forged over the span of years, represents a five-year plan, according to documents from inside Apple that have been seen by the Information. Whether talks on another five-year plan are in the works isn’t yet clear.

The fact that Apple never disclosed this deal to the US – it’s only just now being publicied – will likely trigger an angry response from lawmakers, who are bound to question Apple’s loyalty to the US, along with whether it prioritized profits and growth over respecting human rights (so much for all that climate virtue signaling). Before the deal was struck, documents show, Apple executives were scrambling to salvage their relationship with Chinese officials, who had accused Apple of not contributing enough to the local economy. Amid the government crackdown and the bad publicity that accompanied it, iPhone sales plummeted, though they have since bounced back.

Read more …

Yesh, just try and put US missiles on Ukraine soil. Buchanan’s view is from the Cold War.

• Putin To Biden: ‘Finlandize’ Ukraine, Or We Will (Pat Buchanan)

Either the U.S. and NATO provide us with “legal guarantees” that Ukraine will never join NATO or become a base for weapons that can threaten Russia — or we will go in and guarantee it ourselves. This is the message Russian President Vladimir Putin is sending, backed by the 100,000 troops Russia has amassed on Ukraine’s borders. At the Kremlin last week, Putin drew his red line: “The threat on our western borders is … rising, as we have said multiple times. … In our dialogue with the United States and its allies, we will insist on developing concrete agreements prohibiting any further eastward expansion of NATO and the placement there of weapons systems in the immediate vicinity of Russian territory.” That comes close to an ultimatum. And NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg backhanded the President of Russia for issuing it:

“It’s only Ukraine and 30 NATO allies that decide when Ukraine is ready to join NATO. … Russia has no veto, Russia has no say, and Russia has no right to establish a sphere of influence trying to control their neighbors.” Yet, great powers have always established spheres of influence. Chinese President Xi Jinping claims virtually the entire South China Sea that is bordered by half a dozen nations. For 200 years, the United States has declared a Monroe Doctrine that puts our hemisphere off-limits to new colonizations. Moreover, Putin wants to speak to the real decider of the question as to whether Ukraine joins NATO or receives weapons that can threaten Russia. And the decider is not Jens Stoltenberg but President Joe Biden.

In the missile crisis of 60 years ago, the U.S., with its “quarantine” of Cuba and strategic and tactical superiority in the Caribbean, forced Nikita Khrushchev to pull his intermediate-range ballistic missiles, which could reach Washington, off of Fidel Castro’s island. If it did not do so, Moscow was led to understand, we would use our air and naval supremacy to destroy his missiles and send in the Marines to finish the job. Accepting a counteroffer for the U.S. withdrawal of Jupiter missiles from Turkey, Khrushchev complied with President John F. Kennedy’s demand. Russia’s missiles came out. And Kennedy was seen as having won a Cold War victory. Now it is we who are being told to comply with Russia’s demands in Ukraine, or Russia will go in to Ukraine and neutralize the threat itself.

When the Warsaw Pact collapsed and the USSR came apart three decades ago, Russia withdrew all of its military forces from Central and Eastern Europe. Moscow believed it had an agreed-upon understanding with the Americans. Under the deal, the two Germanys would be reunited. Russian troops would be removed from East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. And there would be no NATO expansion into Eastern Europe. If America made that commitment, it was a promise broken. For, within 20 years, NATO had brought every Warsaw Pact nation into the alliance along with the former Soviet republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Neocons and Republican hawks such as the late John McCain sought to bring Ukraine and two other ex-Soviet republics, Georgia and Moldova, into NATO.

Putin, who served in the KGB in the late Soviet era and calls the breakup of the USSR the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century, is now saying: Enough is enough. Translation: “Thus far and no further! Ukraine is not going to be a member of NATO or a military ally and partner of the United States, nor a base for weapons that can strike Russia in minutes. For us, that crosses a red line. And if NATO proceeds with arming Ukraine for conflict with Russia, we reserve the right to act first. Finlandize Ukraine, or we will!”

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