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Debt Rattle September 3 2025

Sep 032025
 
 September 3, 2025  Posted by at 10:06 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  51 Responses »


Cy Twombly Fifty Days at Iliam: Like a Fire that Consumes All before It 1978

 

• ‘Western Liberal Dictatorships’ Spreading Hate In The World – Moscow (RT)
• Did You Notice The EU Just Lost Its Gas Lifeline? (RT)
• The West Has Just Been Given A Rude Awakening (Amar)
• Gazprom Chief Reports Progress On ‘World’s Biggest Project’ With China (RT)
• Russia, China and North Korea ‘Conspiring’ Against US – Trump (RT)
• Are Ukrainian Vigilantes Rising Up Against The Kiev Regime? (Romanenko)
• Von der Leyen Is Lying About Russian GPS Interference (MoA)
• Why Can’t We End the War on Drugs? (Pinsker)
• CNBC Just Spilled the Awful Truth About California (Green)
• Trump Epically Trolls Biden Again (Margolis)
• This Explosive Revelation Could Bury Lisa Cook (Jeff Charles)
• Israel Had ‘Total Control’ Over Congress – Trump (RT)
• Democrat Judge Rules Trump Deployment of National Guard To LA Was Illegal (ZH)
• Woke Rats Jump Ship As Trump Puts CDC Under A Microscope (ZH)
• The Penguin Quits – Fast Action Needed (CTH)
• Trump to Give Giuliani Presidential Medal of Freedom (Salgado)

 

 

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1962678023959761031

Siberia2

https://twitter.com/mog_russEN/status/1962775725402136920

France
https://twitter.com/Megatron_ron/status/1962810022586466400

AfD

Elon

 

 

Nap Scott

 

 

 

 

i wonder how many Westerners recognize themselves in this.

“Russia is determined to preserve the memory of WWII, as well as defend international law and “the true values that our world is built on.”

• ‘Western Liberal Dictatorships’ Spreading Hate In The World – Moscow (RT)

Moscow is committed to countering the xenophobia promoted by the West, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told RT. She made the remarks as President Vladimir Putin concluded his four-day visit to China by attending a military parade in Beijing on Wednesday, marking the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II. She argued that efforts by some politicians and media outlets to downplay or “distort” the victory of Russia and China in World War II show that “fascism, Nazism, racism, and xenophobia have not been completely eradicated.”

“These were the views our country fought against 80 years ago, and we are still confronting them on the international stage today,” she said. Zakharova added that Russia is determined to preserve the memory of WWII, as well as defend international law and “the true values that our world is built on.” “They haven’t yet been crippled by the Western liberal dictatorships that try to sway us towards a distorted understanding of people,” she said.

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Europe built its entire existence on this for 50+ years. Now they’ve given it all away, “inspired” by some weird kind of Russophobia, or Putinphobia perhaps. And it’s not coming back, if they have second thoughts. It was sold to China in a binding agreement. They will have to replace it with US LNG at 4-5 times the price.

“Self-deindustrializing” is an apt term. When the current grossly unpopular leaders have been chased out of their plush seats, their successors will be left with a third world continent. You want me to believe this was NOT done intentionally? I find that hard.

• Did You Notice The EU Just Lost Its Gas Lifeline? (RT)

The EU’s cheap-gas lifeline just got handed to Beijing instead. With three signatures, Russia, China and Mongolia rerouted half a century of energy history eastward. On Tuesday, the three countries signed a legally binding memorandum for the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline – a roughly 2,600-km line, at an estimated cost of around $13.6 bn, that will carry 50 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas every year through Mongolia into northern China’s industrial heartland. While the pricing structure has yet to be fixed, the signatories have effectively redrawn the European energy map. For decades, this gas was the bedrock of German and Western European industry, piped from Russia’s Yamal fields in the Arctic through Nord Stream 1 directly into Germany. Now, that same supply is being redirected east.

Isn’t there already a pipeline? Yes. Power of Siberia 1, which came online in 2019, snakes east from Yakutia into northeastern China. What makes this deal different? Power of Siberia 2 is different: it will run a more direct route through Mongolia, which will gain access to the gas, tapping the very Yamal fields in western Siberia that once connected to Germany through the Nord Stream and Yamal-Europe pipelines, as well as transit revenues. Unlike POS1, which sources Russia’s Asian-facing fields, POS2 will draw gas from Arctic reserves that once fed Europe’s factories.

In other words, it closes the chapter of Europe as the main customer for Russian gas and hard-wires China as the new anchor market. What’s the timeline? The memorandum is binding but still vague. Key details such as pricing formulas, financing structures, and construction deadlines have not been finalized. One thing is clear though: once the backbone of EU’s growth, the gas will instead be sent into pipelines running east through Mongolia to China. For Brussels and Berlin, it’s not just a loss of supply but a structural break: the age of cheap Siberian gas for Europe is over.

As well as as the Power of Siberia 2 signing, Moscow also pledged to boost flows on existing lines. POS1 volumes will rise from 38 to 44 billion cubic meters a year – roughly a quarter of what the EU once bought from Russia. Russia’s Far Eastern route, piping gas in from the Sakhalin mega-projects, will rise from 10 to 12 billion cubic meters – about a tenth of what Europe used to purchase from Moscow annually. But the big figure is Power of Siberia 2: 50 billion cubic meters annually, slightly less than the Nord Stream 1 pipeline once carried into Germany before it was blown up. Add it all together and China will be importing over 100 billion cubic meters of Russian gas every year – volumes comparable to the flows that for decades underpinned Europe’s industrial base.

For the EU, the symbolism is brutal. The same Arctic molecules that drove the post-war boom and kept German factories competitive are now earmarked for China. The EU attempted to cut itself off from Russian supply after 2022, in a rupture that was allegedly tacitly backed by NATO. Since then, the bloc has been forced to buy US LNG at much higher prices than Russian pipeline gas, triggering an energy price crisis across the bloc and helping drive Germany into recession. With Power of Siberia 2 signed, the option of reversing course and reconnecting Europe to Russian gas has effectively vanished.

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“..it will amplify and cement a massive shift in the flow of affordable Russian energy, away from lustily self-deindustrializing NATO-EU Europe to dynamic China and Asia.”

• The West Has Just Been Given A Rude Awakening (Amar)

Oswald Spengler, eccentric German arch-conservative, brilliant author of “The Decline of the West,” and proud pessimist extraordinaire (“optimism is cowardice”), could also be rather woke: You will find no more disdainful scorn or biting derision for the West’s navel-gazing than his. Skewering the Occident’s “provincial presuppositions,” naïve vanity, and self-crippling narrow-mindedness, Spengler dismissed its compulsive solipsism as producing a “prodigious optical illusion” of self-importance. Today, a little over a hundred years after these observations, Spengler would feel grimly vindicated. The string of international events – on a scale from “remarkable” to “game-changing” – that has just unfolded first at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin, then around Beijing’s massive 80th-anniversary World War II victory parade, should bring home to even the most somnambulant inhabitant of the Western mainstream media bubble two key facts about our world as it really is.

First, a new global order centered on Eurasia (minus a small, odd, and dismal peninsula, compulsively fixated on the Atlantic and masochistically obedient to the US) and the Global South is emerging unstoppably. China’s President Xi Jinping made clear in Tianjin that its custodians will relegate the West’s farcical “rules-based international order,” this ugly aberration that has facilitated the Gaza genocide and other mass crimes, to the rubbish heap of history. And second, the West is missing its chance to play a role in shaping what is coming after its half-delusional and entirely brutal “unipolar moment.” Stuck in self-defeating complacency, as illustrated by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s bigoted dismissal of the SCO meeting as a “performative” get-together of “bad actors,” current Western establishments are determined to keep self-marginalizing.

In Slovak leader’s Robert Fico’s apt terms, most of the Western leadership will go on playing “frog at the bottom of the well,” all too happy to live without a clue. Maybe that’s all for the better: It is hard to see them make a sincere contribution to a world built on “sovereign equality,” “international rule of law,” and “multilateralism” (Xi Jinping), “valid and unshakable” UN principles (Russia’s Vladimir Putin), and a type of “connectivity” that respects “sovereignty and territorial integrity” (Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi).

In this regard, one of the two most spectacular developments in Beijing has been that China and Russia are now getting close to constructing one of the most ambitious pipeline projects in history: The Power of Siberia 2, connecting Russian gas fields to China via Mongolia, “could,” Bloomberg admits, “redefine the global gas trade,” including, the Financial Times points out, that of the LNG-trading US, Australia, and Qatar. That is an understatement. At a projected capacity of 50 billion cubic meters per year for at least 30 years, Power of Siberia 2 will affect all of the above. In essence, it will amplify and cement a massive shift in the flow of affordable Russian energy, away from lustily self-deindustrializing NATO-EU Europe to dynamic China and Asia.

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“The Power of Siberia 2 project, which transits Mongolia, moved forward after the participants signed a “legally binding memorandum..”

• Gazprom Chief Reports Progress On ‘World’s Biggest Project’ With China (RT)

Russia and China have advanced plans for the construction of the Power of Siberia 2 natural gas pipeline, which will transit Russian gas from Siberia to the Asian powerhouse, Gazprom CEO Aleksey Miller said Tuesday. Miller is in China this week as part of a Russian delegation led by President Vladimir Putin, who on Tuesday met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh for trilateral talks in Beijing. At the meeting Xi highlighted the importance of “hard connectivity” through cross-border infrastructure for shared development. The Power of Siberia 2 project, which transits Mongolia, moved forward after the participants signed a “legally binding memorandum,” Miller told reporters. The project will be the “biggest, largest-scale and capital-intensive project in the world’s gas industry,” Miller said.

Power of Siberia 2 is intended to connect gas fields of western Siberia with consumers in western China. The section passing through Mongolia, known as the Soyuz Vostok pipeline, would also allow supplies to be sold to Mongolian buyers. Talks on the pipeline have been underway since at least 2006, with route options and pricing terms repeatedly debated. Officials said the project is expected to deliver 50 billion cubic meters of gas annually for at least 30 years. China has become the leading buyer of Russian pipeline gas after the European Union declared reliance on Russian energy a threat to its member states and moved to cut imports. The EU’s policy shift – promoted as a response to Moscow’s role in the Ukraine conflict – aligned with long-time US efforts to boost American liquefied natural gas exports to Europe.

The Power of Siberia 1 pipeline, which was launched in 2019, has already delivered over 100 billion cubic metres of gas to China from eastern Siberia. Miller said Moscow and Beijing have agreed to significantly increase the supplies. Gas presently being delivered to China – and to Mongolia in the future – is objectively cheaper than supplies previously sent to Europe thanks to shorter transportation routes, Miller noted.

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But I thought Little Rocket Man was your friend?!

• Russia, China and North Korea ‘Conspiring’ Against US – Trump (RT)

President Donald Trump has accused China, Russia and North Korea of conspiring against the United States. He made the remarks on his Truth Social platform during a military parade in Beijing on Wednesday marking the victory over Japan in World War II. “Many Americans died in China’s quest for Victory and Glory. I hope they are rightfully honored and remembered for their bravery and sacrifice!” Trump wrote. He also wished Chinese President Xi Jinping “a great and lasting day of celebration.” “Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, as you conspire against the United States of America,” he added.

Trump did not attend the celebrations in Beijing, which are said to be the largest in decades. US relations with both China and Russia remain strained by his trade war, sanctions, and the Ukraine conflict. Trump met with Putin in Alaska last month as part of his push to mediate a ceasefire in Ukraine. Although there were no breakthroughs, both sides hailed the summit as a positive step.China and Russia have repeatedly accused the US of trying to impose its will on the global stage and denounced what they call “unilateral” sanctions. At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit on Monday, Xi renewed his call to end the “Cold War mentality” and to work toward building an “equitable” system of international relations.

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“Far-right politician Andrey Paribuy was killed not by a Russian agent, but by a grieving father desperate for justice..”

• Are Ukrainian Vigilantes Rising Up Against The Kiev Regime? (Romanenko)

When the news broke that a suspect had been arrested in the assassination of former Rada speaker, far-right Maidan figure Andrey Parubiy, much of the initial discussion revolved around Russia. Ukrainian authorities are predictably looking for a “Russian footprint.” But the suspect’s own words tell a very different story – a story of a grieving father who turned his despair into violence, and in doing so, revealed a deeper crisis within Ukrainian society itself.The man accused of murdering Parubiy, one Mikhail Stselnikov, is not a shadowy foreign agent, but a Ukrainian whose son went missing in the war against Russia. His confession was blunt: his act was driven by personal revenge against the Ukrainian authorities. He says he chose Parubiy because he lived nearby, and he would’ve chosen former president Petro Poroshenko if that were more convenient.

This choice of target is not random: these are men who, since the 2014 Maidan revolution, took Ukraine down the path the path toward confrontation with Russia, NATO aspirations, and ultimately, a devastating war.For this father, the tragedy is bitterly ironic. His son died fighting the Russians, yet he places blame not on Moscow, but on his own government. His child became a casualty not of “Putin’s aggression,” but of decisions made by Kiev’s political elite a decade earlier. In killing Parubiy, a key figure of the Maidan, he struck at the heart of the establishment that, in his view, had condemned his son to die.,This crime cannot be brushed aside as the madness of one man. It speaks to a growing disillusionment among Ukrainians, who have borne the brunt of the war’s human cost. Forced conscriptions, brutalized bystanders dragged from streets into military vans, families torn apart by mobilization – such practices have deepened anger at the government.

Even more painful is the perception that Kiev drags its feet on prisoner exchanges and the recovery of fallen soldiers’ remains. For parents like Stselnikov, this adds a layer of cruelty to an already unbearable loss. It is not only that their children die; it is that the state remains indifferent to their suffering.Polling data backs up this mood. According to a survey by Rating Group in August 2025, a staggering 82% of Ukrainians now favor negotiations with Russia, while only 11% support continuing the war. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky commands just 35% support. Ukrainians are exhausted, embittered, and increasingly view their leaders not as protectors but as obstacles to peace.Answering reporters’ questions in the courtroom, Stselnikov said: “I want to be judged quickly, exchanged as a prisoner of war, and go to Russia to look for my son’s body.”

These words should chill anyone who still clings to the narrative of a united Ukraine standing firm against Russia. Here is a man who fought no battles but lost everything – and he trusts Russia, the supposed enemy, more than his own government. He admitted to having been in contact with Russians while searching for his son, but he insisted they did not influence his crime. His grievance was not geopolitical but deeply personal: a loss compounded by his own state’s callousness. In the absence of hard evidence, Ukrainian officials defaulted to the familiar refrain of Russian involvement. Police chief Ivan Vyhivskyi hinted at it, but the very vagueness of the accusation betrays its weakness. If there was any clear indication the Kremlin had orchestrated this assassination, one would expect Ukraine’s leadership to loudly seize upon it. Instead, the rhetoric has been strangely subdued.

This muted response suggests what many Ukrainians already suspect: blaming Russia here is a fig leaf. It deflects attention from the uncomfortable truth that this killing was a homegrown act of despair. The system created by Ukraine’s post-Maidan elites is now cracking from within.The death of Andrey Parubiy at the hands of an ordinary Ukrainian grieving father points to the alienation of the people from their government. The legitimacy of Zelensky’s administration, already battered by polling numbers and public resentment, is further eroded when citizens believe Moscow to be is more trustworthy than Kiev. A regime that forces its sons to die, fails to return their bodies, and silences the grief of their families cannot endure such wounds forever. Ukraine’s leaders would do well to heed this message – before more fathers decide that revenge is the only way left to be heard.

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“GPS navigation is based on receiving radio signals from satellites. There is no way to selectively block or disturb these for just a single receiver..”

• Von der Leyen Is Lying About Russian GPS Interference (MoA)


There is reason why the name of the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen is often mangled into von der Lying. She is notoriously negligent with facts. Here she is caught outright lying to spread fake anti-Russian propaganda. When I read the headline below, first published by the Financial Times, I immediately thought that something was very wrong with it. Ursula von der Leyen’s plane hit by suspected Russian GPS interference (archived) – FT, Sep 1 2025 “A suspected Russian interference attack targeting Ursula von der Leyen disabled GPS navigation services at a Bulgarian airport and forced the European Commission president’s plane to land using paper maps. A jet carrying von der Leyen to Plovdiv on Sunday afternoon was deprived of electronic navigational aids while on approach to the city’s airport, in what three officials briefed on the incident said was being treated as a Russian interference operation.”

GPS navigation is based on receiving radio signals from satellites. There is no way to selectively block or disturb these for just a single receiver. If someone would have manipulated GPS in that area it would effected every GPS receiver in the same geography. But I could not find any reports from Bulgaria that taxi drivers or other people using GPS navigation had any trouble with it. There was not a single tweet on X complaining about it. “The whole airport area GPS went dark,” said one of the officials. After circling the airport for an hour, the plane’s pilot took the decision to land the plane manually using analogue maps, they added. “It was undeniable interference.” The Bulgarian Air Traffic Services Authority confirmed the incident in a statement to the Financial Times. “Since February 2022, there has been a notable increase in [GPS] jamming and recently spoofing occurrences,” it said.

“These interferences disrupt the accurate reception of [GPS] signals, leading to various operational challenges for aircraft and ground systems.” The three anonymous “officials” the FT is quoting (which likely include von der Leyen) are lying. The statement by the Bulgarian Air Traffic Services Authority is just a general one. It does not say anything about the alleged incident. GPS failure does not mean that one has to use “paper maps”. (There are by the way no longer any “paper maps” on professional airliners. Maps are stored digitally.) Modern planes do not depend on GPS. They mainly use their Inertial Reference System. They can also navigate by following ground radar signals. Airports for regular landing of jets have Instrument Landing Systems installed. Short range radio signals from the ground will guide the plane onto the runway. There is no need to wait “for an hour”.

As Simple Flying summarizes:
• The IRS, or Inertial Reference System, is the main navigational system in aircraft, independent of outside signals or input.
• GPS is crucial for navigation in modern aircraft, with other aids like VOR and NDB used for backup.
• Aircraft navigational systems are highly independent, with [Flight Management Systems] processing multiple positional data for precise navigation.

The claims of “paper maps” and “an hour” on hold, just like the whole story, did not make any sense to me.It has now been confirmed that the story is wrong. It is a lie, made up out of whole cloth.

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Was it Michael Moore who said ‘you can’t declare war on a noun’?

• Why Can’t We End the War on Drugs? (Pinsker)

After the GOP obliterated President Clinton in the 1994 midterms, his party put the liberal wing to pasture. For the final six years of his presidency, the Clinton administration “triangulated” its way through various legislative, budgetary (and, ahem, “personal”) entanglements. Never again would a leading Democrat dare say, “The era of big government is over.” Today, it’d be utterly unfathomable! Next came eight years of President George W. Bush. His failures in Iraq and the economic crisis gave the radical leftists the opening they coveted. And on Election Day 2008, they took control of everything. Meanwhile, the GOP embraced the banner of conservatism under Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) in the 1960s and President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. We’ve been operating under these ideals for most of the last 100 years: The Republican Party is the conservative party. We believe in limited government, personal liberty, and rugged individualism.

At this point, it’s hardwired into our DNA. Like many of you, I became a conservative because I believe these values will maximize peace, prosperity, and opportunity for my countrymen — it’s how we safeguard our God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I firmly, wholeheartedly believe that conservatism is our best defense against tyranny. (Probably our last defense, too.) But as a conservative, I’ve always struggled with the War on Drugs. For purely ideological reasons, I’m troubled by the government banning adults from living how they want or having the freedom to make their own decisions — especially in the privacy of their own homes. We ought to have the right to make our own choices, even if those choices are destructive and unhealthy. Look, if you wanna eat Twinkies, smoke pot, scroll Instagram, and drink Jack Daniels all day, you should have the right. (Just don’t ask the rest of us to subsidize your lifestyle.) Freedom of choice necessarily implies the freedom to make bad decisions, too.

Such is the horror — and the curse — of free will. But do you really have free will if you’re a drug addict? By definition, an addict is addicted, so probably not: Your brain, body, and soul are enslaved in chemical bondage, which makes it absolutely antithetical to free will! And I’m unsure how to reconcile this contradiction. There’s also more pragmatic concerns: The two most heavily abused drugs in America are alcohol and nicotine, and their commonality is obvious: They’re both legal. Seems reasonable to assume that if you make more drugs legal, there’d be more Americans using (and abusing) drugs. We already see this with the pro-marijuana movement: As more states legalized marijuana, its usage skyrocketed. There are now more daily pot-smokers in America than daily alcohol drinkers. By some metrics, the number of cannabis-involved ailments and emergency room visits has jumped by nearly 50%. It’d be stupid to assume that’s purely coincidental.

Should we suspend the War on Drugs, we’d better double down on rehab centers and medical facilities, because the number of U.S. drug users will grow considerably. The social cost will be in the billions. Maybe even trillions! Then again, the Drug War has ALREADY cost taxpayers over a trillion dollars. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. There really aren’t any good options, alas; it’s a choice between what’s bad and what’s (likely) worse.Full disclosure: I used to serve on the board of directors of Drug Free America. Despite my misgivings, I liked ‘em and (mostly) supported their efforts. (I was also very honest about my own background when they recruited me: I’ve done PR for liquor brands, alcohol products, gambling, and other “sins.” They told me that was fine — they needed help with their messaging.)

So if you want to call me a hypocrite, you’d have a point. I’m far more passionate about expanding personal liberty than curtailing it. So, in the immortal words of Axl Rose, “Where do we go? Where do we go now?” What, if anything, should we change about our Drug War? Post-Obama, conservatism and liberalism are both North Stars — ideologies that push their adherents in a specific direction. And because they’re both North Stars, they also share the same weakness: Some ideas work far better as theories than as “real-world” policies, because the social cost is simply too great. And my suspicion is that’s why we can’t end the War on Drugs. Not today, not tomorrow, not next week. Probably not ever. Too many people would be hurt. And, paradoxically, too much freedom would be lost.

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“Gavin Newsom likes to boast that his state is the world’s fourth-largest economy.”

• CNBC Just Spilled the Awful Truth About California (Green)

Question: What do you call “key sectors” of the world’s fourth-largest economy when they rely on illegal alien labor working for substandard wages, fewer benefits, and at greater risk of exploitation? I’d call it a crime. But in California, they call it “putting billions of dollars at risk” when President Donald Trump actually enforces the law. You know, like the chief executive takes an oath to do. With California’s $4 trillion gross domestic production, Gov. Gavin Newsom likes to boast that his state is the world’s fourth-largest economy. But a new CNBC report by Kate Rogers reveals more than it meant to about how “Trump’s immigration policy threatens key sectors” of Newsom’s state.One in four Californians is an immigrant, and, according to the Bay Area Economic Institute and the University of California-Merced, one in five of those is here illegally. In other words, California is home to around two million or more illegal aliens.

“As the Trump administration continues to ramp up immigration enforcement, industries key to the state’s $4 trillion economy like agriculture, construction and hospitality could be among those hardest hit by the loss of California’s immigrant workforce,” Rogers reported. “These are the workers that are keeping our economy afloat. They’re keeping businesses open,” Abby Raisz, research director at the Institute, told CNBC. Joe Garcia, president of the California Farmworker Association and CEO of Jaguar Labor Contracting, said in the report, “The lettuce, the strawberries, all the wine we drink on a daily basis, fruit juices– everything that a farmworker picks, packs, pre-harvest– they do the jobs all year round that put food on your table.”

Did he mean to repeat the “Who will pick our cotton?” trope? Regardless, CNBC said that Garcia’s firm “connects farmworkers to growers,” which I guess makes Jaguar Labor a profitable middleman in the market for illegal workers. “Sectors like construction and farming are staring down worker shortages that predate any change to immigration policy. In California, more than sixty percent of construction workers are immigrants and a quarter of them are undocumented,” according to the story. California’s unemployment rate is among the highest in the nation, and according to a Public Policy Institute last June, “about 10% of Californians — almost 2 million — are un- or underemployed as of the last quarter.” Two million illegals. Two million unemployed citizens. Does anybody else see the problem here?

Can anyone else taste the crocodile tears when Los Angeles restaurant owner (and illegal alien employer, apparently) Courtney Kaplan complained, “The biggest challenge for us, aside from the lost revenue and the decrease in business, has been the uncertainty of every day.” Overregulation and overtaxation jack up the price of everything in California, including labor. Now, business and political leaders swear to God the state’s economy can’t function without the underpaid workers they euphemistically call “undocumented.”Could we not use “undocumented,” please? The correct legal term — as in, it’s written into our immigration laws — is “illegal alien.” “Alien” because they’re foreign to this country. “Illegal” because they entered illegally. Here’s the exit question — not for you or me, dear reader, but for California. If your four-trillion-dollar behemoth is built on the backs of illegal aliens, is it really worth that much?

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“By giving Biden’s “portrait” in the Rose Garden to a machine, Trump is doing more than just mocking his former opponent..”

• Trump Epically Trolls Biden Again (Margolis)

President Donald Trump has never been one to miss an opportunity for humor at the expense of his political rivals, and his latest idea may be his boldest act of trolling yet. In a conversation with Reagan Reese in the Oval Office, Trump revealed his vision for the redesigned Rose Garden, where presidential portraits will line the walkways in ornate gold frames. But when it came to Joe Biden, Trump had something very different in mind. As he showed Reese the new portraits, she remarked, “I love the frames, I love the gold.” Trump explained, “So that was done for very high-end paintings. I’m looking at frames and saying, ‘what about that one?’” Then, Reese pressed him on whether Biden would also get a spot in the display. Trump paused, then grinned. “Isn’t that an interesting question,” he said. “And I’ll listen to you too, because it’s a decision I have to make. We put up a picture of the autopen.”

The room erupted in laughter. “Oh, that’s hilarious,” Reese told him. Trump didn’t miss a beat. “He didn’t win the race. He lost badly. He was a horrible president.” To prove he was serious, Trump even showed Reese a mock-up of what the so-called “Biden Autopen” portrait would look like hanging in the Rose Garden alongside the greats. “So what do you think?” he asked her. “I think you got to,” Reese responded. “I gotta do it,” Trump said. The autopen has been around since the 1950s, but its constitutional legitimacy has always been questionable. Barack Obama tested the limits in 2013, signing a bill into law from a Hawaiian vacation with cover from a Bush-era legal memo. But the Biden administration took things much further, routinely using the device in ways that raise doubts about whether the president himself even approved pardons or executive orders issued in his name.

https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1962668061128863812?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1962668061128863812%7Ctwgr%5Eaa928af76cfb59d98c6436ee59841090050b7320%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fmatt-margolis%2F2025%2F09%2F02%2Fthis-might-be-trumps-most-epic-trolling-of-joe-biden-ever-n4943251

No president had ever relied on the autopen so often — or under such a veil of secrecy. The revelation was especially troubling given that it happened during a presidency already clouded by widespread doubts about the commander-in-chief’s mental capacity.In June, it emerged that the Biden administration used the autopen for pardons and executive orders even while Biden was physically present in Washington, a glaring inconsistency that suggests he may not have known, or consented to, what was being done in his name. The crisis deepened in July when the New York Times revealed that Biden had not personally approved every pardon or act of clemency attributed to him.

That exposé left the most chilling question unanswered: during Biden’s presidency, was the constitutional power of the executive branch quietly transferred from the elected president to a machine and to unelected aides who controlled it? By giving Biden’s “portrait” in the Rose Garden to a machine, Trump is doing more than just mocking his former opponent; he’s cementing Biden’s legacy as a president defined by absence, detachment, and failure. Future generations walking through the Rose Garden would see Washington, Lincoln, and Reagan staring proudly from gilded frames and then, in Biden’s place, a cold mechanical autopen.

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She has 3 properties. One listed as secondary residence, that in reality is rented out. Which is illegal -1. The other two are listed as primary residence. You can’t have two. Illegal 2. Moreover, one of those is also rented out. Illegal 3.

• This Explosive Revelation Could Bury Lisa Cook (Jeff Charles)

Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook is going to have some ‘splainin’ to do after it was revealed that she is renting out a home she listed as her “primary residence” when filling out mortgage applications. Charlie LeDuff of the Michigan Enjoyer in a post and video on X exposed Cook’s alleged misdeeds, noting that she “has a bank loan on a ‘secondary home in Massachusetts, which the Trump administration alleges she rents out full-time.” “A judge might call that mortgage fraud,” LeDuff added. Cook also owns a condo in Atlanta, which she claims is her primary residence on banking and government documents. The Trump administration alleges there is evidence that she rents that one out too. And that also could be mortgage fraud. But Cook also has a THIRD home in Ann Arbor, which she also lists as her primary residence on banking and government papers.

Lisa must be living in Ann Arbor in the tidy brick house with a columned portico on Jackson Avenue, right? LeDuff, who visited the third home, indicated it was not exactly in tip-top condition. “The glass in the storm door was filthy with neglect,” he wrote. “A metal lockbox—the kind used by realtors—hung on the door knob. From the porch, I could see a figure sitting at the dining room table. When I knocked, the door slightly cracked open, only to reveal a white man partially visible behind the filthy glass.”One of the individuals LeDuff spoke to at the home indicated he was renting the home. The author wrote, It’s hard to believe Cook got confused over her mortgage paperwork” because she “is a financial sophisticate, a member of the board of governors of the world’s most powerful central bank.” Cook allegedly listed two of her properties as primary residences in her 2025 government ethics filings.

Cook is facing allegations of mortgage fraud involving properties she owns in Massachusetts, Georgia, and Michigan. Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte said she misrepresented her properties to obtain more favorable mortgage rates. President Donald Trump fired Cook “for cause” last month after demanding that she resign. Cook responded by filing a lawsuit against the president, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and Fed Chair Jerome Powell. The suit alleges that the president does not have the authority to fire her.

This isn’t looking good for Cook. Yes, it is likely that many Americans make these types of mistakes when filling out paperwork. But, as LeDuff pointed out, Cook is definitely not one of those people. A person in her position would know better than to list a rental property as a primary residence. However, it appears many like Cook get away with this because they are in powerful positions. New York Attorney General Letitia James is facing similar allegations, and there are likely plenty more who have done the same. Perhaps at least some of these people might face accountability.

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Is this just trying to make us think things have improved? Because we sure don’t seem to see proof of that.

• Israel Had ‘Total Control’ Over Congress – Trump (RT)

Israel previously had “total control” over the US Congress, and it was impossible for someone speaking “badly” of the Jewish state to be in politics, US President Donald Trump has said. Trump said that in an exclusive interview with the Daily Caller published on Monday, repeatedly stating that Israel used to have the “strongest lobby I’ve ever seen” in the US. “If you go back 20 years. I mean, I will tell you, Israel had the strongest lobby in Congress of anything or body, or of any company or corporation or state that I’ve ever seen. Israel was the strongest. Today, it doesn’t have that strong a lobby. It’s amazing,” Trump explained.

There was a time where you couldn’t speak bad, if you wanted to be a politician, you couldn’t speak badly [of Israel]. Times have changed, and US politics now has all sorts of critics of Israel, namely “AOC plus three” and “all these lunatics,” Trump added. The US president referred to the so-called ‘Squad’, an informal progressive left-wing faction of the Democratic Caucus in the US House, originally composed of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, known for their strong anti-Israel stance.

The conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, prompted by a surprise assault on southern Israel mounted by the Palestinian group on October 7, 2023, has further eroded West Jerusalem’s influence in the US, Trump suggested. “They may be winning the war, but they’re not winning the world of public relations, you know, and it is hurting them,” he said. At the same time, Trump praised himself for what he had done for Israel, claiming that “nobody has done more” for the country. The US president said Israel was “amazing” since he has been enjoying “good support” from them in return as well.

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Next, he’ll send them to Chicago and Baltimore. Saying it’s his job as a president to keep people safe. It’ll all end up at SCOTUS.

• Democrat Judge Rules Trump Deployment of National Guard To LA Was Illegal (ZH)

A federal judge in California ruled on Tuesday that President Donald Trump violated a 19th century law when he mobilized 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 marines to Los Angeles in June. “The evidence at trial established that Defendants systematically used armed soldiers (whose identity was often obscured by protective armor) and military vehicles to set up protective perimeters and traffic blockades, engage in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrate a military presence in and around Los Angeles,” wrote US District Court Judge Charles Breyer (Clinton) in a 52-page ruling. “In short, Defendants violated the Posse Comitatus Act,” he continued. Breyer’s ruling follows a three-day trial last month, in which lawyers for the state of California argued that Trump had exceeded his authority when he deployed the federal troops to deal with thousands of protesters who took to the streets of downtown LA against his immigration policies.

California asked Breyer to order the Trump administration to return control of the remaining troops to Gov. Gavin Newsom, and to halt the use of the military “to execute or assist in the execution of federal law.” Of note, Breyer’s order is limited to California, and Trump doesn’t have to withdraw the 300 National Guard troops currently on the ground in LA. Those troops can continue to protect federal property under the Posse Comitatus Act – an 1878 law that prevents a president from using the military as a domestic police force without Congressional approval. According to Breyer, Trump “deployed the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles, ostensibly to quell a rebellion and ensure that federal immigration law was enforced,” adding “There were indeed protests in Los Angeles, and some individuals engaged in violence,” but that “there was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law.”

The Trump administration is now prevented from using military troops in the Golden State “to execute the laws, including but not limited to engaging in arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation, or acting as informants,” unless the situation falls under the Posse Comitatus Act. And while the order only applies to California, Breyer wrote that Trump’s intention to deploy National Guard troops in other cities would be “creating a national police force with the President as its chief.”

While the judge’s decision may have minimal impact on the ground in California, the case could still have nationwide implications as Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth deploy National Guard members in Washington, D.C., and threaten to do so in other blue cities to address street crime. The Trump administration is likely to appeal Breyer’s decision, which could result in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and even the Supreme Court weighing in on the administration’s unconventional use of the National Guard. -Fox News. Breyer’s decision comes shortly after the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit halted one of his emergency orders issued in June in which he ordered Trump and Hegseth to hand the National Guard back to Newsom.

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What a rathole. How is it possible?

• Woke Rats Jump Ship As Trump Puts CDC Under A Microscope (ZH)

The covid pandemic was an exceptional example of the abuse of government power and the classic error of putting blind faith in scientific institutions that are vulnerable to political and corporate manipulation. To put it simply, the hysteria over covid was entirely fabricated and the CDC played a primary role in perpetuating the fear. The CDC knew as early as October of 2020 that the median Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of covid was a tiny 0.23% (meaning 99.8% of the population was not under threat). The death rate was far below the 3% initially predicted by the World Health Organization. The data also didn’t take into account the fact that the majority of deaths were people with comorbidities – Meaning many of them likely died of a different illness or long term health problems, but covid was officially assumed to be the cause.

The CDC response should have been focused on caring for the older subset of the American population which was at greater risk. Instead, the organization tried to terrorize the public with tales of hospitals “packed to capacity with the unvaccinated” while suffering on respirators (no evidence has ever been produced to support this claim). The CDC joined with Democrats to fear monger over “mass deaths in the streets”. They initially lied about the effectiveness of the shot (it is now well known that the covid vaccine does not prevent transmission). They lied about the effectiveness of natural immunity. They lied about the effectiveness of the masks. They lied about the effectiveness of social distancing. They defended the lockdowns (which were an abject failure). Almost every aspect of the pandemic response ended up being a farce.

The CDC and many of its employees act as a political propaganda mechanism, not as an objective scientific guardian of the public good. The organization functions like a cult that worships far-left bureaucratic leadership instead of adhering to the scientific method. This has become even more apparent in recent months as the agency faces scrutiny. After the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez for refusing to institute Trump’s policy changes, the rush for the exits has begun. The woke creatures are now slithering out of the weeds to escape RFK Jr’s lawnmower.

A glaring example is the resignation of Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a CDC director who has attacked Trump’s policies as dangerous and “unscientific”. It is perhaps no coincidence that Daskalakis is a LGBT activist that promotes transgender treatments for children (a highly unscientific practice). This is the kind of person that rises through the ranks at the CDC:

Because of the CDCs behavior during the pandemic as well as the woke agenda of their staff, the American populace has demanded accountability and reform. Trump’s decision to make RFK Jr the Secretary of the Department of Health was widely applauded because of the trespasses of the CDC and affiliated agencies during covid. Only Democrats and Big Pharma are opposed to an audit of CDC policies. It’s no surprise that the agency is facing a wave of mass firings and a wave of mass walkouts. Democrats seem to believe that the Trump Administration has no say in underlying federal operations. After all, the system has functioned this way for generations. Presidents come and go; the real power is among the unelected armies of bureaucrats. The moment these people are faced with actual oversight, they become enraged.

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The entire man looks calcified, not just the brain.

• The Penguin Quits – Fast Action Needed (CTH)

New York Representative Jerry “The Penguin” Nadler has announced he is not going to seek reelection in 2026. 78-year-old Nadler was going to face a significant primary threat from the far-left.
NEW YORK – “Watching the Biden thing really said something about the necessity for generational change in the party, and I think I want to respect that,” Mr. Nadler said, adding that a younger successor “can maybe do better, can maybe help us more.” Rep. Jerry Nadler, was the former chair of the House Judiciary Committee who joined forces with Adam Schiff and spearheaded President Donald Trump’s impeachment effort. Nadler and Schiff formed a joint House impeachment committee and then hired Mary McCord as the lead staff for the effort. Mary McCord previously worked as DOJ-National Security Division head with Michael Atkinson as her office lawyer.

When McCord quit the DOJ and went to work for Schiff and Nadler, Atkinson was moved to Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG). As the ICIG, Michael Atkinson then changed the rules for whistleblowers within the CIA permitting a false assertion by Eric Ciaramella, who subsequently told a fictional story presented by Alexander Vindman. The fake “Ukraine Impeachment” effort stemmed from this political scheme. Vindman lied, Eric Ciaramella advanced the lie to ICIG Michael Atkinson who then spun the false allegation back to his colleague Mary McCord. That’s the origin of the fraud behind the first impeachment effort.

1/ Who told President Trump to appoint Michael Atkinson as ICIG? The appointment of Michael Atkinson was not a mistake. The impeachment was pre-planned. Find the person who put his name in front of President Trump, and you find one of the internal operatives within the Trump administration specifically working to hurt President Trump in his first term. Is that person around in term #2?

2/ Where is Michael Atkinson’s transcript? ICIG Michael Atkinson testified to the joint House subcommittee on impeachment about why he changed the rules for CIA whistleblowers. Atkinson testified about his activity to the Schiff/Nadler committee, IN FRONT OF MARY McCORD.Adam Schiff promptly classified and sealed the Atkinson deposition transcript in an attempt to forever bury it. The equity stakeholders are: (1) the House of Representatives, and (2) the CIA.NEEDED ACTION – House Speaker Mike Johnson should be able to find that Atkinson transcript, declassify and make it public. However, the CIA is likely also the equity stakeholder. So, give it to Director John Ratcliffe who then declassifies it and gives it to DNI Tulsi Gabbard for release.

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That was one weird accident.

• Trump to Give Giuliani Presidential Medal of Freedom (Salgado)

After a car crash hospitalized Rudy Giuliani just after he stopped to help a crime victim, Donald Trump announced he would be giving his long-time ally a very great honor.The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest honor that an American civilian can receive, and Giuliani, famous for his successful tenure as New York mayor and his years of providing legal support to Donald Trump, will receive it.Trump posted on Truth Social Monday, “As President of the United States of America, I am pleased to announce that Rudy Giuliani, the greatest Mayor in the history of New York City, and an equally great American Patriot, will receive THE PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM, our Country’s highest civilian honor. Details as to time and place to follow. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

State Department Ambassador and Chief of Protocol Monica Crowley responded to the news, “Congratulations to America’s Mayor and a truly great patriot @RudyGiuliani! This is so well deserved and the best news, my friend.”Article III Project founder Mike Davis celebrated, “Well-deserved recognition for an iconic American leader. Every mayor in America should follow the broken-windows strategy @RudyGiuliani, the greatest mayor ever, developed and deployed to Make New York City Great Again in the 1990s.”Michael Ragusa, head of Giuliani’s security, released a statement on X Sunday, stating, “On the evening of August 30, 2025, in New Hampshire, Mayor Giuliani was involved in a motor vehicle accident. Prior to the incident, he was flagged down by a woman who was the victim of a domestic violence incident. Mayor Giuliani immediately rendered assistance and contacted 911. He remained on scene until responding officers arrived to ensure her safety.”

Then, Giuliani resumed his journey, and “while traveling on the highway, Mayor Giuliani’s vehicle was struck from behind at high speed. He was transported to a nearby trauma center, where he was diagnosed with a fractured thoracic vertebrae, multiple lacerations and contusions, as well as injuries to his left arm and lower leg.” Ragusa said Giuliani was recovering well, but his injuries sound pretty severe.Giuliani’s account subsequently posted an update, reporting that the woman Giuliani tried to help was actually the aggressor in the situation, and her boyfriend was the person who needed aid and medical attention. Also, as of today, Giuliani is still in the trauma center because of the severe injuries he sustained. It is unclear when he will be enough recovered to receive his award from Trump.

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Bloom

Horns

Trees

 

 

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Debt Rattle December 20 2023

Dec 202023
 
 December 20, 2023  Posted by at 9:25 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  53 Responses »


Edward Hopper Hotel by a railroad 1952

 

• Colorado Supreme Court Disqualifies Trump From 2024 Ballot (ZH)
• This Is What An *Actual* Attack On Democracy Looks Like (Ramaswamy)
• The Colorado Supreme Court 4-3 Decision Is Pure Nonsense (CTH)
• Trump Could Leave NATO – Reuters (RT)
• Russia Is Counting On Donald Trump’s Return – Czech President (RT)
• We Are Well Beyond Hypocrisy (Victor Davis Hanson)
• US Escalation in the Red Sea – A Lose/Lose Proposition (Bentley)
• Ukraine – Another Lost US/NATO War With No Regrets (Sp.)
• Ukrainians Tell MP They Would Give Up Citizenship To Avoid Conscription (RT)
• The Multifront Attack on Elon Musk (Jeffrey Tucker)
• Media Matters Sues Texas AG In Federal Court (ET)
• Giuliani Sued Again By Election Workers Over Latest False Claims (BBC)
• The Terror Watchlist Prepared the Way to Tyranny (Paul Craig Roberts)
• US National Debt Jumps $2.6 Trillion In Six Months (RT)
• US Judge Orders More Than 170 Jeffrey Epstein Associates To Be Named (BBC)
• Imran Khan Uses AI To Deliver Speech From Prison (RT)
• Assange Appeal Hearing Set for February (Lauria)

 

 

 

 

Macgregor

 

 

 

 

Vigano
https://twitter.com/i/status/1735060540333113441

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And you thought things were crazy before…

• Colorado Supreme Court Disqualifies Trump From 2024 Ballot (ZH)

The Colorado Supreme Court has disqualified Donald Trump from Colorado’s 2024 presidential election ballot, and in a 4-3 ruling has effectively blocked Trump from seeking the presidency because of his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, citing the post-Civil War-era 14th Amendment to the US Constitution that bans insurrectionists from holding public office. The Colorado case was the first constitutional challenge to Trump’s 2024 run to go through a full trial. Voters, represented by the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, had argued he should be barred from the ballot for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. Colorado’s highest court – whose seven-member bench was entirely appointed by Democratic governors – overturned a ruling from a district court judge who found that Trump incited an insurrection for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but said he could not be barred from the ballot because it was unclear that the provision was intended to cover the presidency.

In its ruling, the Democrat-controlled court found that Trump engaged in insurrection by inflaming his supporters with false claims of election fraud and directing them to the Capitol. The state justices determined that the office of the president is covered under the insurrection clause, which specifically lists those who previously took oaths to support the Constitution as “a member of Congress,” “officer of the United States,” “member of any State legislature” or an “executive or judicial officer of any State.” The district court had previously ruled that the office of the president was not covered under the clause. The majority opinion was unsigned but joined by four of the seven justices. [..] Three justices dissented from Tuesday’s decision: Chief Justice Brian Boatright, Carlos Samour and Justice Maria Berkenkotter. Each wrote separate dissents taking issue with how the plaintiffs brought their 14th Amendment lawsuit using a provision of Colorado election law.

Berkenkotter wrote that “the majority construes the court’s authority too broadly.” “The questions presented here simply reach a magnitude of complexity not contemplated by the Colorado General Assembly for its election code enforcement statute,” wrote Boatright. “The proceedings below ran counter to the letter and spirit of the statutory timeframe because the Electors’ claim overwhelmed the process.” Samour similarly wrote that Colorado’s election law provides no “engine” for such a lawsuit, also noting that no federal legislation existed to enforce the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause. “Even if we are convinced that a candidate committed horrible acts in the past—dare I say, engaged in insurrection—there must be procedural due process before we can declare that individual disqualified from holding public office. Procedural due process is one of the aspects of America’s democracy that sets this country apart,” Samour wrote.

Ironically, all this ruling will do is further cement Trump’s status as leading presidential candidate as it not only affirms his status as target #1 of the Biden Department of Justice and liberal court system, but will test the Conservative-dominated Supreme Court appeal over its interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which according to many including a Colorado District court, does not apply to the Presidency. Indeed, as Vivek Ramaswami observed, the 14th Amendment was part of the “Reconstruction Amendments” that were ratified following the Civil War. “It was passed to prohibit former Confederate military and political leaders from holding high federal or state office. These men had clearly taken part in a rebellion against the United States: the Civil War. That makes it all the more absurd that a left-wing group in Colorado is asking a federal court to disqualify the 45th President on the same grounds, equating his speech to rebellion against the United States.”

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X thread.

• This Is What An *Actual* Attack On Democracy Looks Like (Ramaswamy)

This is what an *actual* attack on democracy looks like: in an un-American, unconstitutional, and *unprecedented* decision, a cabal of Democrat judges are barring Trump from the ballot in Colorado. Having tried every trick in the book to eliminate President Trump from running in this election, the bipartisan Establishment is now deploying a new tactic to bar him from ever holding office again: the 14th Amendment. I pledge to *withdraw* from the Colorado GOP primary unless Trump is also allowed to be on the state’s ballot, and I demand that Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Nikki Haley to do the same immediately – or else they are tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver which will have disastrous consequences for our country.

Today’s decision is the latest election interference tactic to silence political opponents and swing the election for whatever puppet the Democrats put up this time by depriving Americans of the right to vote for their candidate of choice. The 14th Amendment was part of the “Reconstruction Amendments” that were ratified following the Civil War. It was passed to prohibit former Confederate military and political leaders from holding high federal or state office. These men had clearly taken part in a rebellion against the United States: the Civil War. That makes it all the more absurd that a left-wing group in Colorado is asking a federal court to disqualify the 45th President on the same grounds, equating his speech to rebellion against the United States.

And there’s another legal problem: Trump is not a former “officer of the United States,” as that term is used in the Constitution, meaning Section 3 does not apply. As the Supreme Court explained in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (2010), an “officer of the United States” is someone appointed by the President to aid him in his duties under Article II, Section 2. The term does not apply to elected officials, and certainly not to the President himself. The Framers of the 14th Amendment would be appalled to see this narrow provision—intended to bar former U.S. officials who switched to the Confederacy from seeking public office—being weaponized by a sitting President and his political allies to prevent a former President from seeking reelection. Our country is becoming unrecognizable to our Founding Fathers.

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“..psychological lawfare stuff – intended for media consumption..”

• The Colorado Supreme Court 4-3 Decision Is Pure Nonsense (CTH)

Three main points before getting to the substance.
#1) It was a 4-3 decision. Meaning it was the politics of the court, literally the political makeup and perspective therein, that determined the outcome of the decision. This is showcased in point #3, which is the funniest part.
#2) The entire framework of the case against Trump in the Colorado decision is predicated on this: “[the complainants] asserted that he was ineligible under Section Three because he engaged in insurrection on January 6, 2021, after swearing an oath as President to support the U.S. Constitution.” [pdf, page 6] REMINDER – President Donald Trump was not charged with “insurrection,” is not accused of “insurrection,” does not fit the complaint under the definitions of “insurrection,” and has never been found guilty of insurrection. The complaint is moot before the court. But hey, it’s Lawfare… and we all know Lawfare is created for public media consumption, so that takes us directly to the biggest point.
#3) Instead of me writing it, let me screengrab it so we can all laugh together.

Wait, what? Yes, that’s correct. As long as President Trump appeals the decision to the Supreme Court, the appeals court stays their own ruling – essentially indefinitely. The Colorado primary ballots printed, and the primary election will be over, before the Supreme Court puts this on their docket. In addition to the virtual guarantee the high court will overrule this political nonsense, SCOTUS can make the entire issue moot before them by following their own normal schedule for submissions, arguments, deliberation and opinions delivered by the court. The Colorado appellate court knows this, that’s why they put this self-stay into their 4-3 ruling. It’s a politically correct way of giving the optics of telling their tribe, ‘hey we’re with you,’ without the ramifications of the political backlash. In other words, psychological lawfare stuff – intended for media consumption.

Making the issue that much better for Donald Trump, the efforts of the Prescott-Bush clan (look it up – they live in CO) will backfire bigly. The public backlash against a judicial ruling that interferes with the right of the citizens to determine their own election candidates plays perfectly into the sunlight operation against the Lawfare left. This backlash will be epic, albeit hidden by MSNBC and the rest of the insufferable media. Why? Because it doesn’t fit the Lawfare narrative. I’m not even going to highlight the nonsense from the leftists who are in a frenzy over this one. Just smile, pretend it’s the end of the world, eat your favorite foods and live your best life while trying not to laugh. Seriously, this is just that level of goofy. Remember what I said about Ron DeSantis in 2022, and everyone looked at me funny. Well, this is way more predictable than me saying DeSantis will collapse in sunlight.

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“If he defeats Biden, he “would likely install loyalists in key positions in the Pentagon, State Department and CIA whose primary allegiance would be to him..”

• Trump Could Leave NATO – Reuters (RT)

Donald Trump’s potential second term in the White House might see Washington stop funding Ukraine, withdraw from NATO, and further cut economic ties with China, Reuters reported on Monday, citing anonymous sources. During his 2017-2021 presidency, many of Trump’s policies ended up obstructed by unelected government officials and sometimes even his own appointees, according to numerous insider accounts. He seeks to get around that problem by appointing “loyalists” more amenable to his “isolationist policies and whims,” the outlet claimed. Reuters admitted that Trump himself has offered “few clues” about his intentions. The article was based on interviews with almost 20 current and former aides and diplomats, most of whom were not named.

According to eight European diplomats, there are “acute fears” that the second Trump administration would cut off aid to Ukraine and doubts whether it would honor the US commitment to “defend NATO allies.” “There are rumors that he wants to take the US away from NATO or withdraw from Europe, of course it sounds worrying but… we are not in a panic,” said a diplomat from one Baltic country. Another diplomat, representing a northern European NATO member state, outlined the options his and some other embassies have sent to their capitals about the November 2024 election. If the incumbent president, Democrat Joe Biden, is reelected, “Things might go rather well: the US keeps on rehabilitating herself,” he said.

A “mild” version of the second Trump presidency would be “a repetition of his first term with some aggressive overtones.” If he actually follows through on pledges to dismantle the ‘Deep State’ apparatus, that would be the “doomsday option,” according to the diplomat. Trump is currently the favorite for the Republican presidential nomination. If he defeats Biden, he “would likely install loyalists in key positions in the Pentagon, State Department and CIA whose primary allegiance would be to him,” the anonymous aides told Reuters. That would enable him to “advance his foreign policy priorities faster and more efficiently than he was able to when previously in office.”

Making political appointments is the constitutional prerogative of US presidents. However, Trump has hinted he might purge the lower ranks of the federal bureaucracy, on many occasions describing the “Washington swamp” as an impediment to genuine reforms. “President Trump came to realize that personnel is policy,” Robert O’Brien, Trump’s fourth national security advisor, told Reuters. “At the outset of his administration, there were a lot of people that were interested in implementing their own policies, not the president’s policies.” Four people who “converse” with the 45th president have said that he regularly gets advice from former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, Ambassador Richard Grenell, and his one-time deputy, Kash Patel. None of them responded to Reuters’ interview requests. Neither Trump nor his campaign commented on the story.

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“The Czech leader, who previously served as a senior NATO military official and is a staunch supporter of Kiev in its fight with Moscow..”

• Russia Is Counting On Donald Trump’s Return – Czech President (RT)

The Ukraine conflict may experience a “significant shift” next year, and not “in the good sense of the word,” Czech President Petr Pavel told the news service of the web portal Seznam.cz in an interview published on Monday. The Czech leader, who previously served as a senior NATO military official and is a staunch supporter of Kiev in its fight with Moscow, pointed to the 2024 presidential election in the US as the key moment for the confrontation. He claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin was counting on Donald Trump winning at the ballot box come November and then striking a deal with Russia on Ukraine, which would ignore the wishes of Kiev and other European nations. The outcome, according to Pavel, would be “some kind of compromise that would theoretically return Russia to the status of a key player, and the others would have to put up with it somehow.”

He described the scenario as “unfavorable” for EU nations, including his own. In his public statements, Putin previously rejected the analysis outlined by Pavel. He argued that the personality of the US president was largely irrelevant to the country’s policy vis-a-vis Moscow. “[Trump] was accused of having a special relationship with Russia, which is total nonsense and bulls**t. But he was the president who introduced the most sanctions against Russia,” Putin noted in September at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. The US elites perceive Russia as an existential enemy, he added. They suppress the voices of Americans, who want good relations with Moscow, the Russian leader claimed.

“We have no idea who will be elected, but whoever it is, the anti-Russian vector of US policy is unlikely to change,” Putin concluded. Kiev has recently suffered a series of setbacks in terms of securing Western aid on both sides of the Atlantic. In Washington, a partisan conflict over border security caused a White House request for over $60 billion in additional Ukraine assistance to be blocked. In Brussels, Hungary vetoed a European Commission proposal to allocate €50 billion ($54 billion) over four years to support Kiev. In his interview, Pavel also said Putin had “made it clear” that peace talks on Ukraine are only possible with the US, and not Kiev or any European nation. Moscow perceives the conflict to be part of a Washington-led proxy war against Russia and believes the US has the ultimate say on it.

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“Do we remember when, not long ago, whistleblowers were noble?”

• We Are Well Beyond Hypocrisy (Victor Davis Hanson)

The Left is saturating the airwaves with outrage over the current House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry. They allege that formally investigating Joe Biden’s role in the family grifting operation is somehow a poor constitutional precedent, if not out-of-bounds entirely. So we hear further arguments that it will be unwise to impeach a first-term president when he loses his House majority, that there is no reason to “waste” congressional time and effort when Biden will be automatically acquitted in the Democratically controlled Senate, and that the impeachment is cynically timed to synchronize with president’s reelection efforts. All of these are the precise arguments many of us cited when Donald Trump was impeached in December 2019 (as his reelection campaign began, and immediately after being cleared of the 22-month, $40-million-special-counsel Russian-collusion hoax).

The Democrats tried to remove an elected president over a phone call without a special counsel’s report. So Trump was impeached only after the 2018 election led to a Democratic House majority, which went from eating up nearly two years of his administration in the Russian-collusion hoax straight into the impeachment farce. There was no concern about the cost to the nation of putting an elected government into a continual state of siege. There is one difference, though, between the Trump impeachment and the Biden impeachment inquiry. Donald Trump was impeached because he accurately accused the members of the Ukrainian government of paying Hunter Biden, with his zero fossil fuel expertise, an astronomical sum to serve on the Burisma board—as the costly quid that earned the lucrative quo from his dad Vice President Joe Biden.

No one now denies that Joe Biden got prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired by threatening to cancel legislatively-approved U.S. aid. Shokin knew about the skullduggery through which the Biden family eventually received $6.5 million from Ukraine—and so Biden ensured his firing, and publicly bragged about it in performance-art fashion. In sum, Trump had a perfect right as commander in chief to delay (he did not cancel) aid to Ukraine, to ensure that its government was not still paying off the Bidens for their lobbying efforts on its behalf. It is also now clear that Biden serially lied about his ignorance of Hunter’s shake-down operation. In fact, he was, as Devon Archer emphasized, “the brand” central to Hunter’s scheme to coerce money from foreign governments. Joe was proverbially, in Hunter’s words “the man sitting next to me” and thus able to either punish or reward foreign interests, depending on the size of the checks they wrote to his various fronting family members.

The left is now furious that Hunter has been subpoenaed by the House to testify in private about how he earned his multimillion-dollar income, whether he fully paid taxes on it, and to whom he distributed his winnings. Hunter has refused to testify. He is now being held in contempt of the U.S. Congress—to the silence of the usually self-righteous former senator Joe “pay your fair share” Biden. We hear sanctimonious harangues that Joe is guilty of loving “his only son” Hunter too much, or that it is way out of bounds for a Department of Justice prosecutor to hound Joe Biden by going “after his family,” or that Republican congressional subpoenas and contempt findings should be summarily ignored. Ask Peter Navarro or Steve Bannon whether one can simply ignore a House subpoena. Ask Ivanka Trump whether she was, or was not, subpoenaed to appear before the January 6 committee. Ask the Trump sons whether they could breezily say “no” to Letitia James’s subpoenas in her farcical real-estate-valuation suit against Trump.

Do we remember when, not long ago, whistleblowers were noble? The alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella, an Obama holdover who had burrowed inside the Trump administration, had zero firsthand knowledge of the Trump phone call to Ukrainian president Zelensky. Ukrainian expatriate Lt. Col Alexander Vindman was on the call, as a member of the Trump national security team. He broke the law and apparently disclosed the classified call—in outrage that Trump was apparently too hard on his native Ukraine— to Ciaramella, and then hid the latter’s identity. Both met privately with Rep. Adam Schiff (D—CA) to engineer an impeachment writ. Instead, both came forward as whistleblowers to testify before Congress about how the Biden Justice Department deliberately and carefully ensured that the mountain of evidence for the prosecution of Hunter Biden that they had presented had simply been ignored—at least long enough for the statute of limitations to run out on his most egregious crimes.

When they both made their case that facts proved the Biden family received huge sums for selling access to or action from Joe Biden, they were roundly trashed by Democrats in congress and pilloried as disgruntled politicos by a toady press.

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“The choice is between demanding an end to the Gaza humanitarian tragedy or escalating the conflict into a war that will have global consequences.”

• US Escalation in the Red Sea – A Lose/Lose Proposition (Bentley)

The latest escalation in world military affairs, the situation in the Red Sea and Yemen, has the real potential to eclipse both the war in Ukraine and the invasion of Gaza, both in terms of military and economic impact, on a global scale. The hubris and abject idiocy of US plans to open yet another conflict that they cannot hope to win, and that cannot lead to anything but the destruction of the world economy can only be described as criminally insane. In a recent letter to “Dear America”, the Houthi leaders wrote, “A desperate plea for reflection. The consequences are dire, and the responsibility lies with the guardians of the American dream. Beware, for the path you tread upon carries weighty consequences, reverberating across oceans and continents. Choose wisely…” The choice is between demanding an end to the Gaza humanitarian tragedy or escalating the conflict into a war that will have global consequences. The US has already announced its intention to choose the latter. It is a choice for which the American people, if they allow it to happen, will suffer gravely.

The US and UK have moved at least 24 combat ships into the seas off the coast of Yemen, ostensibly “to protect global shipping lanes”. This is a lie. The Houthis have clearly stated that, one, that they are only targeting ships serving Israeli interests, and that all other shipping is under no threat, and two, that they are willing to cease all military operations against Israeli shipping as soon as Israel stops its attacks on Gaza and the West Bank. It is ONLY Israeli shipping that is under threat, and it is ONLY Israeli shipping that US and UK naval forces are deployed to protect. But by escalating the situation in the Red Sea, they are putting at risk ALL shipping passing through the Red Sea and Suez Canal, which accounts for 12% of all global trade and 30% of all container shipping, as well as about 8% of world trade in both oil and LNG, for a total annual value of over a trillion US dollars.

As things stand now, only Israel-linked shipping is at risk, and even that risk can be completely eliminated by the cessation of Israeli attacks on Gaza and the West Bank. But if the US attacks Yemen, the Houthis will respond, and they do have the capability to sink US Navy ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. And once that happens, the Red Sea becomes an active war zone, and then, all bets are off, along with all shipping in the Red Sea, and 12% of all global trade. Think about it… The economies of the EU nations are already in serious decline. The US national debt stands at over $33 TRILLION, and the era of the US dollar’s reserve currency status in global trade is closing fast. A 12% overnight decline in global trade would almost certainly lead these economies into economic depression equivalent to the Great Depression of almost 100 years ago.

As I have said many times before, economic war and military war are two sides of the same coin. The Houthis have a major economic advantage based on their geography to influence and even threaten global economic activity, and have proven their ability and willingness to use it. And it is by no means certain that the Western armada assembled along the Yemeni coast can even defeat the Houthis militarily without unacceptable and unsustainable losses. According to Fabian Hinz, a research fellow at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Houthis are known to possess two types of larger anti-ship ballistic missiles: The Asef, which has a ranger 450km range, and the Tankil,which has a range of 500km. These missiles can travel at speeds up to Mach 5, and carry warheads of between 300 to 500 kg. (By comparison, Chinese anti-ship missiles with 600 kg warheads have been dubbed “Aircraft Carrier Killers”.) The range of these missiles allows the Houthis to cover not only the southern third of the Red Sea, but all of the Gulf of Aden and much of the Arabian Sea as well.

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“No empires have lasted forever and that of the US/NATO world will be the last..”

• Ukraine – Another Lost US/NATO War With No Regrets (Sp.)

One of the enigmatic aspects of international politics is that big and militarily superior countries have systematically lost wars in smaller countries over the last 50 years, from Vietnam to Ukraine. “Losing” here means military defeat, being forced out, losing the struggle for the hearts and minds of the people, and facing fiasco when it comes to achieving the professed noble motives like introducing human rights, democracy, freedom or liberating women. And given the tremendous human costs, particularly in the Middle East, the US’ “Global War on Terror” since September 11, 2001 is also an intellectual and moral disaster. The US – by far the world’s largest military spender, interventionist, warrior, occupier, global base-builder with the most militarized foreign policy – is in a class of its own. In losing wars too.

It is now rapidly losing legitimacy, relevance and credibility in the eyes of most of the world outside US/NATO/EU/ANPO/AUKUS. Firstly, all these imperial militarist adventures have been woefully anti-intellectual and imbued with the arrogance of power, elements of racism and hubris. Secondly, after quite predictable fiascos and defeats – such as in Iraq – there comes a time when propaganda, psychological operations (PSYOPS), media influencing, and psycho-political projection no longer do the trick. There comes a time, too, when even the biggest military spender and economy cannot finance its weapons addiction and its arsenals of weapons and ammunition dry up.

It’s called over-extension and diminishing legitimacy in the eyes of others, it’s called militarism to death and is transforming into imperial decline and eventual fall. No empires have lasted forever and that of the US/NATO world will be the last. No one is so foolish to believe that, in an incredibly diverse world, everybody else would accept one player to be the all-dominating system and shape others into its own image. Missionary times are a thing of the past. Enter Ukraine. NATO set itself up in Kiev immediately after it became independent and declared in 2008 that it would become a member of the alliance. It was a gross violation of the promises indisputably given to the last Soviet President, Michael Gorbachev, but such was the unipolar we-can-do-whatever-we-want sentiment.

In an autistic manner, NATO refused to listen to Russia’s legitimate security concerns and also did not bother about the fact that there was only a tiny minority among the Ukrainian people in favour of membership of NATO. Instead, a regime change in Kiev was all that was needed: installing a pro-Western leadership, paying it well and giving it an offer it could not refuse by wooing it step-by-step into the ever-expanding alliance. Russia then put its foot down, and insult had to be added to injury: We will help you, Ukraine, for as long as it takes for you to win “our” war against Russia and “weaken” it; you’ll be covered the whole way, just fight for us to the last Ukrainian.

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“..73% claiming that retaining their Ukrainian passport was not worth the risk..”

• Ukrainians Tell MP They Would Give Up Citizenship To Avoid Conscription (RT)

A majority of Ukrainians responding to a Facebook poll by a leading lawmaker have said they would be willing to renounce their citizenship in order to avoid being drafted into the military. In a series of Facebook posts on Monday, Mariana Bezuglaya, an MP from President Vladimir Zelensky’s ruling party, initially asked female followers if they would give up their Ukrainian passports to avoid potential forced mobilization to “rear positions” in the military industry. Even though the lawmaker emphasized that frontline combat positions are currently out of the question for women, some 65% of the more than 3,800 respondents said they would renounce their citizenship rather than take the risk.

In two follow-up polls, the MP wondered if women would at least consider registering with the military authorities for potential mobilization in the future, in exchange for reopening the borders for men, or for the demobilization of those who have already served for two years. Only 17% and 22% of respondents agreed, respectively. In her last “experimental survey” on Monday, Bezuglaya addressed men with a similar question: “In order not to be mobilized, am I ready to renounce Ukrainian citizenship?” Over 4,300 users took part in the poll, with 73% claiming that retaining their Ukrainian passport was not worth the risk. Bezuglaya is currently deputy chair of the parliamentary committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence, and is best known for proposing a bill in May 2022 that would have allowed Ukrainian officers to execute soldiers for insubordination without a trial.

Earlier this month, the lawmaker marked International Volunteer Day by thanking everyone who had already signed up to the military, but demanded more enlistment and urged women to join the ranks. The 35-year-old claimed she had undergone military training herself in 2015, when the government in Kiev was waging its “anti-terrorist operation” against the residents of Donbass. Kiev’s push to recruit more troops follows its underwhelming summer counteroffensive, which according to estimates by the Russian Defense Ministry has cost Ukraine over 125,000 troops. Last month, Zelensky promised a “comprehensive proposal” to reform the conscription system, which has yet to be announced. According to Russian intelligence, Ukraine’s backers in the West have demanded that the draft be expanded to teenagers, older men, and women.

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“The presumption here is preposterous: that Elon doesn’t care if his product is flawed and doesn’t desire improvement.”

• The Multifront Attack on Elon Musk (Jeffrey Tucker)

[..] Musk bought the Twitter platform and purged 4 out of 5 employees, including the many government agents who had been hired to turn Twitter into a government propaganda machine. Since then he has upheld the First Amendment and innovated a series of tools that allow for internal and crowd-source fact-checking to make his renamed platform the most reliable source of news and opinion in the world. Since he took over, he has faced a barrage of state-generated attacks. The SEC has sued Musk over the purchase of the platform. According to the New York Times, “his takeover has been the subject of several lawsuits and investigations by the federal authorities. The Federal Trade Commission has probed whether X had the resources to protect users’ privacy after he laid off much of its staff and several senior executives responsible for privacy and security resigned. The agency has also sought to depose Mr. Musk. Former Twitter shareholders have also sued Mr. Musk for fraud in a case related to his belated disclosure of his stake in the company.”

The FTC has demanded internal X documents. Says The Hill: “the FTC has sent more than a dozen letters to Twitter since Musk completed his acquisition in October. It states that the agency has demanded Twitter provide internal communications “relating to Elon Musk” from any Twitter employee, information about the platform’s Twitter Blue verification subscription service and the names of journalists who were granted access to Twitter records.” The Biden Department of Justice has sued SpaceX…get this…for not hiring refugees for secret rocket technology. CNN says: “The suit claims that ‘from at least September 2018 to May 2022, SpaceX routinely discouraged asylees and refugees from applying and refused to hire or consider them, because of their citizenship status, in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA),’ according to an August 24 DOJ news release.”

The Biden Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commision have sued Tesla over improper perks. Forbes says: “The widened investigation comes after federal prosecutors and the SEC began probing a secret Tesla project known as Project 42 that employees described as a glass house for Musk in the Austin, Texas, area near Tesla’s factory, the Journal reported in August.” The Biden Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation against Tesla over self-driving cars. Reuters reports: “The U.S. Department of Justice launched the previously undisclosed probe last year following more than a dozen crashes, some of them fatal, involving Tesla’s driver assistance system Autopilot, which was activated during the accidents, the people said.” The presumption here is preposterous: that Elon doesn’t care if his product is flawed and doesn’t desire improvement.

There is a federal investigation of Neuralink. Reuters again: “Elon Musk’s Neuralink, a medical device company, is under federal investigation for potential animal-welfare violations amid internal staff complaints that its animal testing is being rushed, causing needless suffering and deaths, according to documents reviewed by Reuters and sources familiar with the investigation and company operations.”Then there is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation over harassment at Tesla. The EEOC says: “Since at least 2015 to the present, Black employees at Tesla’s Fremont, California manufacturing facilities have routinely endured racial abuse, pervasive stereotyping, and hostility as well as epithets… Slurs were used casually and openly in high-traffic areas and at worker hubs.

“Black employees regularly encountered graffiti, including variations of the N-word, swastikas, threats, and nooses, on desks and other equipment, in bathroom stalls, within elevators, and even on new vehicles rolling off the production line.” Finally, we have the aggressive advertising boycott on the part of major corporations, including Disney, CNBC, Comcast, Warner Bros, IBM, and the Financial Times, among many others. Musk has refused to be intimidated by these people. He has said that he refuses to be blackmailed by money and instead told the companies to “Go f*** yourself.” Which is rather remarkable and really does speak to a major problem in social media today, which is the extent to which so many platforms are willing to do the bidding of the corporatist system in order to serve the bottom line.

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“..radical left-wing organizations who would like nothing more than to limit freedom by reducing participation in the public square..”

• Media Matters Sues Texas AG In Federal Court (ET)

Media Matters for America is suing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in federal court, arguing that reporting by its senior investigative reporter on Elon Musk’s X app is being “chilled” by the AG’s announced investigation. Media Matters, a progressive watchdog group, filed its lawsuit Tuesday. It had reported last month that, according to its analysis, X was a platform hosting bigots and that it had paid far-right extremists, warning advertisers that their content was running beside pro-Hitler and anti-Semitic content. The report was then cited by major companies, like Apple, Disney, Sony, and Fox Sports, who announced they were boycotting the platform from their advertising campaigns.

This triggered Mr. Paxton to announce on Nov. 21 an investigation into Media Matters “for potential fraudulent activity” in its report, after X responded to the allegations saying that the progressive group had manufactured its results. X has sued Media Matters for defamation over the report in a Texas federal court, citing advertising data showing that report author Eric Hananoki was among only two users to see an Apple ad next to the hateful content, while explaining that content follows the search history of users. “Attorney General Paxton was extremely troubled by the allegations that Media Matters, a radical anti-free speech organization, fraudulently manipulated data on X.com (formerly known as Twitter),” the Office of the Attorney General in Texas said in announcing its investigation following X’s comments.

Mr. Paxton argued that his case was to protect the First Amendment rights of Texans. X has come under attack from progressive groups after Mr. Musk’s takeover of Twitter and the release of internal communications that revealed the company censored speech in favor of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden in the run-up to the 2020 election. Mr. Paxton’s office explained in its statement that it was pursuing its investigation of Media Matters’s report under the Texas Business Organizations Code and the Deceptive Trade Practices Act, which allows his office to “vigorously enforce against nonprofits who commit fraudulent acts in or affecting the state of Texas.” “We are examining the issue closely to ensure that the public has not been deceived by the schemes of radical left-wing organizations who would like nothing more than to limit freedom by reducing participation in the public square,” Mr. Paxton said of the negative publicity directed at X since Mr. Musk’s takeover and efforts to reform the platform in favor of free speech for all Americans, regardless of political view.

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“Of course I don’t regret it,” Mr Giuliani told reporters on 11 December. “I told the truth. They were engaged in changing votes.”

• Giuliani Sued Again By Election Workers Over Latest False Claims (BBC)

Two Georgia poll workers have filed a new lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani, days after winning a $148m (£116m) defamation case against him. Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss allege that Mr Giuliani continued to lie when he repeated false claims mid-trial that “they were engaged in changing votes”. The mother-daughter pair are seeking an injunction to bar Mr Giuliani from making further false statements about them. “It must stop,” the lawsuit demands. An attorney for Mr Giuliani did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The new legal action says that Mr Giuliani “has engaged in, and is engaging in, a continuing course of repetitive false speech and harassment”.

They added in their filing that his “wrongful conduct was extreme and outrageous, and it was calculated to cause harm to Ms Freeman and Ms Moss”. The two women previously filed a defamation case against Mr Giuliani, who was found liable for spreading lies that the poll workers had tampered with votes during the 2020 election. A jury ultimately ordered Mr Giuliani to pay the women $148m (£116m) in damages.. During the trial, Mr Giuliani insisted numerous times that he told the truth about the women and reiterated falsehoods about them. These statements are the source of the new lawsuit. “Of course I don’t regret it,” Mr Giuliani told reporters on 11 December. “I told the truth. They were engaged in changing votes.”

In another instance on 15 December, he said his statements “were supportable and are supportable today”. The women’s new lawsuit notes several other instances where Mr Giuliani made allegedly defamatory statements during and after the trial, including in right-wing media appearances. Last week, a Washington DC jury heard hours of painful testimony from Ms Moss about the fallout of those claims. She testified that she and her mother were subjected to violent and racist threats that made them fear for their lives. Mr Giuliani did not testify during the trial, but Judge Beryl Howell, who presided over the case, warned his attorneys that his remarks could be defamatory.

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“..9/11, which was blamed without any evidence on Muslim terrorists when all evidence points to an inside job so that the US could remake the Middle East for Israel.”

• The Terror Watchlist Prepared the Way to Tyranny (Paul Craig Roberts)

Did you know that there are 2,000,000 names on the Federal government’s terror watchlist? The National Security Council claims most are not Americans, but the Department of Homeland Security admits that there have been tens of thousands of Americans who have been treated like terrorists. It does not occur to the National Security council that there are no terrorist events corresponding to two million terrorists. If there truly were two million terrorists, the US would be in chaos. So what is the list for? It expands the security bureaucracy. The list has grown from 120,000 to two million, seventeen times larger than its original figure. Is this in response to terrorists events? You name the events.

The list enables the FBI to pressure people into becoming informants and false witnesses in frame ups by threatening to add them to the terror list, The list allows authorities to punish and to silence truth-tellers who expose the official narratives for the lies that they are. You can add your own explanations. Remember, the Nazi-sounding Department of Homeland Security and the terror watchlist were the creations of 9/11, which was blamed without any evidence on Muslim terrorists when all evidence points to an inside job so that the US could remake the Middle East for Israel.

In other words, a false flag attack was used to strip Americans of their rights to travel. It is unclear to me how the watchlist can continue to exist after Federal Judge Anthony Trenga declared the watchlist unconstitutional. Did the federal nazis appeal his decision and get it over-ruled? The watchlist is just a way of controlling people. Its other useful function is to acclimatize Americans to the warrantless invasion of their privacy and accustom them to obeying arbitrary orders. The watchlist is a way of preparing Americans for tyranny.

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“.. It is likely to grow by $5.2 billion daily for the next ten years..”

• US National Debt Jumps $2.6 Trillion In Six Months (RT)

US national debt has continued to mount, jumping by $2.6 trillion in the six months through December to reach $33.8 trillion, according to the Treasury Department. The Treasury indicated that factors such as tax cuts, stimulus programs, increased government spending, and decreased tax revenues have been driving up debt. “The national debt just exceeded $100,000 per citizen,” Republican Congressman John James said last week. “This should send a message to the White House that this reckless federal spending is at a breaking point.” The latest fiscal data showed that as of November 2023, it cost $169 billion for the US to maintain the debt, which equates to 16% of total federal spending. Interest payments on the national debt are estimated to have surged above $1 trillion on an annualized basis as of the end of October, according to Bloomberg calculations based on US Treasury data.

According to Bank of America (BoA), public debt could surge by $20 trillion over the next decade. It is likely to grow by $5.2 billion daily for the next ten years, which would put it at around $54 trillion by 2033, BoA warned last month. The US exceeded its debt ceiling, which was legally set at $31.4 trillion, in January 2023. After months of warnings of a potentially disastrous default from the Treasury, President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan debt bill in June that allowed the limit to be lifted until January 2025. This effectively permitted the government to continue unlimited borrowing through next year. Debt spiked to $32 trillion less than two weeks after the bill was approved, and has been piling up ever since. The situation has caused major international credit ratings agencies Fitch and Moody’s to cut their outlooks for the US this year.

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“..Judge Loretta Preska calls for Epstein’s connections to be “unsealed in full”.

• US Judge Orders More Than 170 Jeffrey Epstein Associates To Be Named (BBC)

The names of more than 170 associates of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein could be made public next month after a ruling from a US judge. Prince Andrew is expected to be among them, if evidence is released from a woman who claims he groped her in 2001. The identities are being revealed under a settled lawsuit against sex trafficker and Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell. Anyone on the list has until 1 January to appeal to have their name removed. Epstein, a millionaire financier known to mix with high-profile figures like Prince Andrew, died in jail in 2019. His death, as he awaited federal sex-trafficking charges, was ruled to be a suicide by the New York medical examiner. The 51-page ruling issued on Monday by New York Judge Loretta Preska calls for Epstein’s connections to be “unsealed in full”.

It is the latest filing in the case brought by Ms Giuffre against Maxwell, a former British socialite who is serving a 20-year prison term for the crimes she committed with Epstein. Ms Giuffre’s defamation lawsuit was brought in 2015 and settled in 2017, leaving the names of scores of Epstein associates under a court-ordered seal. They include 40 documents of evidence from Johanna Sjoberg, who has claimed Prince Andrew groped her breast while sitting on a couch inside Epstein’s Manhattan apartment in 2001. Buckingham Palace has previously said the allegations are “categorically untrue”. Last year, the Duke of York paid millions to Ms Giuffre to settle a lawsuit she filed claiming that he sexually abused her when she was 17 years old.

Prince Andrew said he had never met Ms Giuffre and denied her allegations. In her ruling, Judge Preska noted that many of the individuals named in the lawsuit have already been publicly identified by the media or in Maxwell’s criminal trial. She added that many others “did not raise an objection” to the release of the documents. Some of the names on the list will remain sealed, including those belonging to child victims, the judge said in her ruling. US congressional Republicans are pushing to subpoena the flight logs for Epstein’s private plane. Convicted in 2008 for soliciting prostitution from a minor, Epstein had moved in social circles that included key figures in the world of business and politics.

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“The US officials allegedly hinted to the Pakistani diplomat that if the prime minister lost an impending no-confidence vote in parliament, “all will be forgiven in Washington.”

• Imran Khan Uses AI To Deliver Speech From Prison (RT)

Former Pakistani Prime Minister, who is currently imprisoned, has used artificial intelligence to deliver a speech to his supporters. The four-minute address was broadcast during a ‘virtual rally’ attended by more than 4.5 million people across Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube. Pakistani authorities have clamped down on gatherings organized by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party since he was briefly arrested for the first time in May. The former prime minister was sentenced to three years behind bars in August for illegally selling state gifts. The 71-year-old faces a slew of other charges, all of which he claims are politically motivated. According to PTI representatives, the cricket-star-turned-politician wrote a script for the speech and passed it on to his supporters through lawyers. It was then dubbed with the help of a tool developed by the AI firm ElevenLabs, which can create a ‘voice clone’ of a person based on speech samples.

In his message, Khan accused the Pakistani government of kidnapping and harassing activists from his party.He also stressed that his “determination for real freedom is very strong,” thanking the PTI social media team for “this historic attempt” to circumvent government restrictions. Meanwhile, the NetBlocks watchdog reported that it had detected disruptions in social media availability in Pakistan, starting late on Sunday. The group alleged that this may have been due to deliberate “internet censorship.” Khan was charged by a special court in October with breaching state secrecy laws over an alleged conspiracy to reveal what he characterized as proof of US interference in orchestrating his removal from power last year.

The diplomatic cable at the center of the case was sent by then-Pakistani Ambassador to the US Asad Majeed Khan after his meeting with two senior US State Department officials in March 2022. According to multiple media reports purportedly based on the document, Washington made clear that it was unhappy about Khan’s failure to toe the West’s line. The US officials allegedly hinted to the Pakistani diplomat that if the prime minister lost an impending no-confidence vote in parliament, “all will be forgiven in Washington.”Khan was ousted about a month after the meeting, and has since mounted a major protest campaign. While the US has denied exerting any pressure on Pakistan, the International Monetary Fund unexpectedly extended a $3 billion bailout for Islamabad in July – a decision that The Intercept has claimed was influenced by Washington.

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“..what will likely be his last appeal against being extradited..”

• Assange Appeal Hearing Set for February (Lauria)

Imprisoned publisher Julian Assange will face two High Court judges over two days on Feb. 20-21, 2024 in London in what will likely be his last appeal against being extradited to the United States to face charges of violating the Espionage Act. Assange’s wife Stella Assange confirmed that the hearing will take place at the Royal Courts of Justice. Assange had had an earlier request to appeal rejected by High Court Judge Jonathan Swift on June 6. Assange then filed an application to appeal that decision and the dates have now been set. Assange is seeking to challenge both the home secretary’s decision to extradite him as well as to cross appeal the decision by the lower court judge, Vanessa Baraitser.

Baraitser had ruled in January 2021 to release Assange from Belmarsh Prison and deny the U.S. request for extradition based on Assange’s mental health, his propensity to commit suicide and conditions of U.S. prisons. On every point of law, however, Baraitser sided with the United States. The U.S. appealed her decision, issuing “diplomatic assurances” that Assange would not be mistreated in prison. The High Court, after a two-day hearing in March 2022, accepted those “assurances” and rejected Assange’s appeal. His application to the U.K. Supreme Court to hear the case was then denied. Assange then applied for a new appeal of Baraitser’s legal decisions and the home secretary’s extradition order.

Swift rejected Assange’s 150-page argument in a three-page ruling. The appeal of that decision will now take place in February. If convicted under the World War I-era Espionage Act, the WikiLeaks publisher and journalist is facing up to 175 years in a U.S. dungeon for publishing classified material revealing crimes by the U.S. state, including war crimes. Assange was also charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, though the indictment against him does not accuse him of stealing U.S. documents or even of helping his source, Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, to do so.

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Kory

 

 


https://twitter.com/goddeketal/status/1737200419397414943

 

 

Impawsible
https://twitter.com/i/status/1737082852989440073

 

 

Basket star

 

 


The Cashew of Pirangi is the world’s largest cashew tree located in Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. It covers an area between 7,300 and 8,400 square meters. Having the size of 70 normally sized cashew trees, it has a circumference of 500 meters. The spread over a hectare of land was, unlike other trees, created by the tree’s outward growth. When bent towards the ground (because of their weight), the branches tend to take new roots where they touch the ground. The tree is said to have been planted in 1880s. However, based on its growth characteristics, the tree is estimated to be more than a thousand years old.

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle September 27 2023

Sep 272023
 
 September 27, 2023  Posted by at 9:04 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  46 Responses »


Frederick Carl Frieseke Girl In Blue Arranging Flowers 1915

 

• Hersh Reveals US Motive For Destruction Of Nord Stream Pipelines (MoA)
• Biden Planned On Blowing Nord Stream Before Ukraine Conflict Began – Hersh (RT)
• Nord Stream Blast: Why the West Still Can’t Name the Culprit (Sp.)
• Canadian Parliament Speaker Resigns After Honoring Ukrainian Nazi (RT)
• Russian Foreign Ministry Responds To Canada Honoring Nazi Veteran (RT)
• Nazi Hunter: Canada Failed Miserably in Bringing Nazis to Justice (Sp.)
• Russian Black Sea Fleet Commander Seen Alive and Well (Sp.)
• Nothing Is Off Table To Get Ukraine Into EU – Parliament President (G.)
• How Russia Will Deal With American Tanks in Ukraine (Sp.)
• US Judge Finds Trump Committed Fraud by Inflating Wealth, Assets (Sp.)
• Hunter Biden Sues Rudy Giuliani for Spreading Contents From Laptop (Sp.)
• Hunter Biden Used Dad’s Classified Doc House For $250K China Wire Transfer (ZH)
• EU Warns Elon Musk After X Found To Have Highest Rate Of Disinformation (G.)

 

 

 

 

NYC Sanctuary

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yeadon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1706538481135104245

 

 

 

 

Russell

 

 

 

 

On the first anniversary of the Nordstream blast, lots of articles. Also about “alternative explanations”. But Sy Hersh doesn’t make things up. That’s not his MO at all.

“And thus followed the ultimate fear: that America would lose its long-standing primacy in Western Europe.”

• Hersh Reveals US Motive For Destruction Of Nord Stream Pipelines (MoA)

It was no surprise to the agency’s secret planning group when on January 27, 2022, the assured and confident Nuland, then undersecretary of state for political affairs, stridently warned Putin that if he invaded Ukraine, as he clearly was planning to, that “one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” The line attracted enormous attention, but the words preceding the threat did not. The official State Department transcript shows that she preceded her threat by saying that with regard to the pipeline: “We continue to have very strong and clear conversations with our German allies. … The German leader was considered then—and now—by some members of the CIA team to be fully aware of the secret planning underway to destroy the pipelines.
…
What I did not know then, but was told recently, was that after Biden’s extraordinary public threat to blow up Nord Stream 2, with Scholz standing next to him, the CIA planning group was told by the White House that there would be no immediate attack on the two pipelines, but the group should arrange to plant the necessary bombs and be ready to trigger them “on demand”—after the war began. “It was then that we”—the small planning group that was working in Oslo with the Royal Norwegian Navy and special services on the project—“understood that the attack on the pipelines was not a deterrent because as the war went on we never got the command.” After Biden’s order to trigger the explosives planted on the pipelines, it took only a short flight with a Norwegian fighter and the dropping of an altered off-the-shelf sonar device at the right spot in the Baltic Sea to get it done.

By then the CIA group had long disbanded. By then, too, the official told me: “We realized that the destruction of the two Russian pipelines was not related to the Ukrainian war”—Putin was in the process of annexing the four Ukrainian oblasts he wanted—“but was part of a neocon political agenda to keep Scholz and Germany, with winter coming up and the pipelines shut down, from getting cold feet and opening up” the shuttered Nord Stream 2. “The White House fear was that Putin would get Germany under his thumb and then he was going to get Poland.”
…
All of this explains why a routine question I posed a month or so after the bombings to someone with many years in the American intelligence community led me to a truth that no one in America or Germany seems to want to pursue. My question was simple: “Who did it?” The Biden administration blew up the pipelines but the action had little to do with winning or stopping the war in Ukraine. It resulted from fears in the White House that Germany would waver and turn on the flow of Russia gas—and that Germany and then NATO, for economic reasons, would fall under the sway of Russia and its extensive and inexpensive natural resources. And thus followed the ultimate fear: that America would lose its long-standing primacy in Western Europe.

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“We realized that the destruction of the two Russian pipelines was not related to the Ukrainian war..”

• Biden Planned On Blowing Nord Stream Before Ukraine Conflict Began – Hersh (RT)

US President Joe Biden initially planned on destroying the Nord Stream gas pipelines to deter Russia from launching its military operation in Ukraine, American journalist Seymour Hersh reported on Tuesday. However, Hersh alleged that the sabotage operation went ahead later not to deter Russia, but to harm the German economy. The Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, which connected Russia and Germany under the Baltic Sea, were destroyed in a series of underwater explosions exactly a year ago on Tuesday. Competing theories have emerged as to who was to blame, with mainstream media in the West blaming a Ukrainian commando unit and Seymour Hersh claiming that the CIA carried out the operation under direct orders from Biden.

In a blog post on Tuesday, Hersh alleged that US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan convened a series of meetings in late 2021, tasking intelligence officials with coming up with a means of deterring Russian President Vladimir Putin from sending troops into Ukraine. “The White House’s policy was to deter Russia from an attack,” an intelligence source told Hersh. “The challenge it gave to the intelligence community was to come up with a way that was powerful enough to do that, and to make a strong statement of American capability.” By January, as Russian forces were massing on the Ukrainian border, the CIA had “solved the problem,” the source said. With a plan in place to plant remotely-detonated explosives on the pipelines under the Baltic Sea, Biden warned in early February that in the event of military action by Russia, “there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

Following Biden’s statement, which was delivered alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the CIA team tasked with sabotaging the pipelines received new orders, Hersh claimed. Instead of immediately destroying Nord Stream, the team was instructed to plant the explosives for detonation at a later date. “It was then that we understood that the attack on the pipelines was not a deterrent because as the war went on we never got the command,” a member of the team told Hersh. “We realized that the destruction of the two Russian pipelines was not related to the Ukrainian war,” the source continued. “But was part of a neocon political agenda to keep Scholz and Germany, with winter coming up and the pipelines shut down, from getting cold feet and opening up.”

According to Hersh’s earlier reporting, CIA divers planted the explosives last summer with the help of the Norwegian navy, using a NATO exercise in the region as cover. By the time the bombs were triggered in September, the flow of Russian gas to Germany via Nord Stream 1 had already been slowed to a trickle by Russia in response to Western sanctions, while Nord Stream 2 was never certified to begin operation by Scholz’s government. However, with the German economy heavily dependent on Russian gas, Biden reportedly feared that Scholz would choose reproachment with Moscow over support for Ukraine. “The President of the United States would rather see Germany freeze than [see] Germany possibly stop supporting Ukraine,” Hersh declared earlier this year.

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“Giraldi said that he feels that Hersh’s narrative is “correct in every detail.”

• Nord Stream Blast: Why the West Still Can’t Name the Culprit (Sp.)

Gas leaks from the Nord Stream pipeline system were detected on 26 September 2022, with the EU leadership admitting that this could be the result of a “deliberate attack”. Two days later, on 28 September, the Kremlin announced that Russia was ready to consider applications from EU countries for a joint investigation into the Nord Stream incident. However, not only did the West snub Moscow’s request but also blamed Russia for destroying its own pipelines. Later, European and American officials backtracked on their accusations but fell short of naming a potential perpetrator. On 12 October 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the incident “an act of international terrorism”. Meanwhile, as gas prices soared and US energy producers secured lucrative LNG contracts with European countries, it became clear that Washington had been the major beneficiary from the Nord Stream destruction. Furthermore, the US leadership had previously issued several threats that it would destroy the pipelines.

“We know that the United States President Joe Biden, threatened openly that he would stop Nord Stream 2 if the Russians were to militarily intervene in Ukraine,” Philip Giraldi, former CIA station chief and now an executive director of the Council for the National Interest, told Sputnik. “That was repeated by Victoria Nuland, who was Number Three at the State Department. She said basically the same thing. So we had the President and a senior official both saying that they would stop the pipeline if this were to happen. So we have a statement coming from the government itself saying it would do this.” “And then I would say on top of that, the United States – given its military capabilities – had the capability to do this. They sent divers down to attach explosives and to arrange for a drone satellite that would ignite the charges and blow up the pipelines.

“It had the capability to do it. And it also had the motive, which was basically to weaken Russia’s ability to use its energy resources to affect politics in Europe. So this is what it was all about,” Giraldi continued. On 8 February 2023, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh dropped a bombshell, detailing an apparent plot by Team Biden and the US intelligence community to blast the Nord Stream pipelines with the help of Norwegian operatives. Reflecting on Hersh’s version, Giraldi said that he feels that Hersh’s narrative is “correct in every detail.” “And I can confirm to you that Sy Hersh, whom I know somewhat, has excellent sources inside CIA and inside the Pentagon. So what he’s telling us comes straight from people who know about it,” the CIA veteran said.

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Scapegoat.

• Canadian Parliament Speaker Resigns After Honoring Ukrainian Nazi (RT)

Canadian House Speaker Anthony Rota stepped down on Tuesday after a Nazi veteran was his invited guest at a speech by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. The invitation has faced widespread condemnation. Rota apologized on Monday for the presence of 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka at Zelensky’s address to Canadian lawmakers on Friday, but refused to resign. Although lawmakers from all parties – including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – cheered and applauded Hunka at the event, calls for Rota’s resignation grew over the weekend as the incident drew worldwide attention, particularly from the governments of Russia and Poland. Rota eventually announced his resignation on Tuesday afternoon, stating that he would leave his position at the end of Wednesday’s session.

“The work of this house is above any of us. Therefore, I must step down as your speaker,” Rota said. “I reiterate my profound regret for my error.” Politicians from the opposition New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois parties issued the loudest demands for Rota’s resignation, with New Democrats leader Peter Julian describing the invitation as “an unforgivable error which puts the entire House in disrepute.” Trudeau, who leads the Liberal Party, of which Rota is a member, did not call for the speaker’s resignation, but described the ceremony as “deeply embarrassing for the House and for Canada.” During the event, Rota hailed Hunka as “a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero… who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians.”

Rota did not mention that Hunka fought in Hitler’s elite Waffen SS, but the nonagenarian was identified by the Associated Press as a member of the First Ukrainian Division, a volunteer unit created by the Nazis in 1943. Also known as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, the unit is known to have committed atrocities against Jews and Poles during its campaign on the Eastern Front. “There should be no confusion that this unit was responsible for the mass murder of innocent civilians with a level of brutality and malice that is unimaginable,” the Toronto-based Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) said in a statement on Sunday.


The Ukrainian Postal Service is now issuing stamps of Waffen SS Nazi Galicia Yaroslav Hunko

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“..the ultra-liberal ideology propagated in Canada and permeated with hatred for Russia, its culture, religious and traditional values, essentially has the same roots as Nazism.”

• Russian Foreign Ministry Responds To Canada Honoring Nazi Veteran (RT)

The Canadian Parliament’s public celebration of a Ukrainian Nazi veteran last week is a cynical abuse of the memory of the victims of Nazism and an example of the blatant Russophobia embraced by the Canadian government, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement published on Tuesday. The message comes after the Canadian House of Commons on Friday gave a standing ovation to 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka, a member of the 14th Waffen Grenadier division of the SS, which was responsible for countless war crimes during the second half of World War II. The commemoration took place during a visit by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. The Russian Foreign Ministry stated that the incident was “the best possible way to characterize the regime of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has embraced unbridled Russophobia.”

After facing backlash from Jewish and Polish communities over the incident, House Speaker Anthony Rota apologized for inviting the Nazi veteran, while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described the situation as “profoundly embarrassing.” The Russian ministry stressed, however, that despite Canada’s apologies, “the fact remains that the ultra-liberal ideology propagated in Canada and permeated with hatred for Russia, its culture, religious and traditional values, essentially has the same roots as Nazism.” Moscow added that it was “no coincidence” that Canada has monuments to Ukrainian nationalist leaders while the government allows the overwhelming majority of Nazi veterans like Hunka, who was granted asylum in Canada after the end of World War II, to live out their days “in safety, honored and cared for (in particular, by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland) as ‘fighters against Russian Communism.’”

The ministry concluded its statement by stressing that the “hostile actions” of the Canadian government, such as the continuous expansion of anti-Russian sanctions and blacklists of Russian nationals will not be left unanswered and that Moscow will not tolerate the fact that “Canadian liberals are flirting with Nazism.” “We expect that healthy forces in Canadian society will speak out against the ‘Nazification’ of history and daily life encouraged by the country’s officials, which goes hand-in-hand with aggressive Russophobia,” it said.

Russia to Canada
https://twitter.com/i/status/1706499953432924204

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“Canada is not a unique situation. Ten thousand Nazi war criminals emigrated to the United States, thousands to Australia, Great Britain, and in fewer numbers to New Zealand.”

• Nazi Hunter: Canada Failed Miserably in Bringing Nazis to Justice (Sp.)

Ninety-eight-year-old Ukrainian Nazi veteran Yaroslav Hunka, who fought in the ranks of the Schutzstaffel’s (SS) 14th Waffen Grenadier Division, was enthusiastically hailed by Canadian lawmakers and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The incident triggered a wave of fierce criticism, prompting House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota to apologize for featuring a Nazi soldier in the Canadian legislature. Sputnik reached out to Dr. Efraim Zuroff, a legendary Nazi hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the director of its Israel Office, to ask why the scandalous honoring of a Nazi became possible in a modern Western state. “It’s no secret that hundreds, at least hundreds, if not thousands of people who committed Holocaust crimes and/or collaborated with the Nazis were able to emigrate to Canada,” Dr. Zuroff told Sputnik.

“And by the way, Canada is not a unique situation. Ten thousand Nazi war criminals emigrated to the United States, thousands to Australia, Great Britain, and in fewer numbers to New Zealand.” Dr. Zuroff is unfamiliar with the particular case of Yaroslav Hunka, but it is still well known that the Waffen SS Galicia Division was “very involved in the mass murder of Jews and Poles in eastern Poland and Galicia,” he pointed out. “And it’s a very sad thing that the heroes, the leadership of the Ukrainian nationalists during World War II, which was headed by Stepan Bandera, for example and the UPA*, the army raised by the Ukrainians to fight with the Germans, with the Waffen SS, which was led by Roman Shukhevych, these are the heroes of Ukraine,” the Nazi hunter highlighted.

It is common knowledge that Nazi Germany played the lead role in the Holocaust – the systematic state-sponsored killing of European Jews in the Second World War. Still, Westerners are not fully aware of the incredibly important role played by local collaborators in the mass murder of the Jewish people, according to Dr. Zuroff. Nazi Germany’s Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing units organized by the SS (tasked with the “final solution of the Jewish question, i.e. the genocide of the ethnic group), “covered an area from Tallinn in the north of Estonia, all the way down to Odessa, near the Black Sea, a front of 1,500 kilometers, and murdered 1.5 million, primarily Jews, in less than two years,” the expert said.

“There were only several thousand people who served in the Einsatzgruppen, and they were working in territory, which they didn’t know the language, they didn’t know the topography. They needed help from the locals,” he explained, adding that this help was provided. “And they’re [locals] the ones who carried out these murders, in many cases without any Germans present. We know in Lithuania, for example, that there were less than a thousand Germans in Lithuania. In Lithuania, there were 220,000 Jews who lived under the Nazi occupation, of whom 212,000 were murdered, 90% of them by shooting near their homes.”

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The Black Sea Fleet command convenes in an underground bunker.

• Russian Black Sea Fleet Commander Seen Alive and Well (Sp.)

Western media reported that Russian Black Sea Fleet commander Admiral Viktor Sokolov was killed in Ukrainian attack on Sevastopol, citing Ukrainian officials, without verifying the information. Ukraine used several British-sourced Storm Shadow cruise missiles to target the HQs building of the Russian Fleet in Sevastopol, Crimea last Friday. Russian Black Sea Fleet commander Admiral Viktor Sokolov has turned up alive and well, taking part in a Defense Ministry board meeting alongside Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Tuesday. Sokolov’s appearance follows claims in dozens of Western media outlets quoting Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces claiming that he had been killed in last week’s strike on the Black Sea Fleet’s HQ in Sevastopol.

The Russian Defense Ministry said six people were injured in the September 22 attack, with one person unaccounted for and the HQ’s historic building suffering damage. These figures are a far cry from estimates made by Kiev – which claimed that dozens of servicemen and officers were killed and over 100 injured. US reconnaissance forces were spotted in the area near the HQ two days prior to the attack, prompting Russian and US military observers to tell Sputnik that they suspect direct NATO involvement in the strike. The UK approved the delivery of Storm Shadow cruise missile systems to Ukraine in May, with Ukraine’s armed forces subsequently using them liberally, including to attack built-up civilian areas in the Donbass. Despite generous arms deliveries, intelligence and other support to Kiev, the United States and most of its allies refuse to admit that the Ukrainian crisis is a NATO proxy war against Russia.

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Where do they find these people?

• Nothing Is Off Table To Get Ukraine Into EU – Parliament President (G.)

The European Union must begin a major wave of change to prepare for the arrival of Ukraine as a member state, the leader of its parliament has said, with “nothing off the table”, including removing trade tariffs and giving Kyiv access to internal markets before full membership. Speaking exclusively to the Guardian, Roberta Metsola, an MEP from Malta who became the European parliament’s youngest ever president last year, said she expected member states to begin formal negotiations with Ukraine as soon as December. “If they are going fast, we should match that speed,” she urged. Metsola was the first political leader to visit Ukraine after Russia’s invasion, meeting the country’s president, President Zelenskiy, in Kyiv on 1 April 2022, when the capital was still under curfew and surrounded by tanks.

She has made the images of that encounter a symbol of her presidency: a poster of the pair in military green, shaking hands, hangs over the Parliament courtyard. Defying caution and outright antagonism from some member states, she has given unequivocal support to Ukraine’s attempt to join the EU, a process which has advanced even as the country’s attempts to join Nato have stalled. Ukraine is one year into a what many expect will be four or five year journey. But Metsola reflects fresh thinking among some EU leaders that the bloc needs to accelerate access to Ukraine- and the Balkan states that have also applied- in order to curb the risk of Russian interference in these former Soviet territories.

“Pushing the can down the road” on enlargement will only fuel nationalism and the far-right, she warned. “It increases the extremes on the political spectrum, the Euroscepticism. Campaigns in accession countries are fought, and lost or won, on the basis of the dream and hope of the EU.” Metsola wants formal talks to begin before Christmas. The decision rests with EU ministers, who will meet formally in December after a public report in October on Ukraine’s progress in reforming its judiciary, curbing corruption and opening its markets. “I expect a concrete outcome because the worst signal could be that we have given these people targets and deadlines which we can’t meet ourselves,” said Metsola.

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They strip off the protective parts before shipping them to Kiev.

• How Russia Will Deal With American Tanks in Ukraine (Sp.)

Ukraine has received some of its long-promised Abrams tanks, with the rest scheduled to be delivered later this fall. The long wait began in January, when US President Joe Biden announced that a battalions’ worth of America’s best tanks would be sent to “improve” Ukraine’s “ability to maneuver in open terrain.” The Abrams are the last of three NATO heavy tank platforms to be delivered to Ukraine to date, with Washington using promises about their deployment to get the alliance’s European members, particularly Germany, to approve the sending of their Leopard series MBTs (hundreds of Leopard 1 and Leopard 2 tanks have been sent to Kiev since then). The UK also joined in, sending 14 of its fearsome Challenger 2s – boasting the status of one of the only major MBTs in NATO armies’ service never to have been destroyed by the enemy in battle.

Russian forces taking on Ukraine’s NATO-equipped army during the summer counteroffensive soon changed all that, with dozens of Leopard 1 and Leopard 2s knocked out, and at least two of Britain’s “unbeatable” tanks taken out in fierce fighting in Zaporozhye after finally appearing on the battlefield earlier this month. [..] The Abrams tanks that Ukraine is getting aren’t up to the same standard as those used by the US military. While its tanks are receiving the same controversial depleted uranium munitions which the US and NATO have already successfully used to poison vast swathes of the former Yugoslavia and Iraq, they are not equipped with the same layer of ultra-thick DU armor plates for enhanced protection of the tank and its crew that US Army Abrams have.

Ukraine’s Abrams are made from refurbished hulls and turrets from California’s Sierra Army Depot, with their DU armor plating removed for secrecy reasons. With the tanks proving vulnerable to enemy anti-tank systems even with the DU armor installed, Russian forces should have no problem using any or all of the above-mentioned weapons systems to target them.

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Wonder what’s in the tax filings (not inflated numbers!). Wonder if the banks saw those. And if not, why.

• US Judge Finds Trump Committed Fraud by Inflating Wealth, Assets (Sp.)

A New York state judge on Tuesday found former US President Donald Trump liable for fraud in a civil lawsuit that accuses the one-time commander of intentionally inflating his wealth and asset value. The 35-page ruling, brought forward by the New York Attorney General’s Office, determined Trump and company submitted multiple misleading valuations for real estate assets in official statements to insurers and other financial institutions in order to secure favorable loans and lower insurance premiums throughout the years. Properties listed in the suit included Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Florida resort, his golf course in Scotland, Trump Park Avenue, and his Seven Springs property in New York’s Westchester County, among other sites.

“In defendants’ world, rent-regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air,” Judge Arthur Engoron wrote in the decision. “That is a fantasy world, not the real world.” In granting a partial summary judgement to NY Attorney General Letitia James, Engoron outlined that such business maneuvers violated the law and as such canceled the business certificates of Trump and listed defendants, including those of his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. Also named were Allen Weisselberg, who served as the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, and company executive Jeff McConney. Additionally, Engoron ordered individual sanctions of $7,500 against lawyers who represented the listed Trump defendants and required that within 10 days’ time each defendant submit three independent receivers to manage the dissolution for the business certificates.

The Trump camp has argued claims laid out in the civil filing are barred due to the statute of limitations, with lawyer noting banks involved in the Trump-affiliated deals were far from victims as the same entities turned profits. The former president has also rejected committing any wrongdoing, instead claiming James’ suit is a politically-driven attack. The Tuesday ruling, which denied a request by Trump to end the civil fraud lawsuit, did not settle six other claims at the center of James’ lawsuit. In fact, a non-jury trial set to start on October 2 will address the remaining key points. The New York attorney general is seeking about $250 million in damages and is looking to enforce a ban on Trump doing any business in the Empire State.

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He should have given the laptop to WikiLeaks.

• Hunter Biden Sues Rudy Giuliani for Spreading Contents From Laptop (Sp.)

The lawsuit, which relies on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, was filed in the Central District of California. Neither Rudy Giuliani nor Hunter Biden live in that district and the alleged crimes took place in Delaware. Whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld told Sputnik the choice was the result of “venue shopping.” Embattled first son Hunter Biden is continuing to file lawsuits against individuals he blames for the release of the contents of a laptop he reportedly abandoned at a Delaware computer repair store. The lawsuit is against former New York City mayor and Donald Trump lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. The suit, filed in the Central District of California, accuses the former mayor of “looking for, hacking into, tampering with, manipulating, copying, [and] disseminating … data that was taken or stolen,” thereby violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

It is the latest string of lawsuits brought by Hunter Biden against individuals surrounding his laptop. He also sued the owner of the non-profit Marco Polo, which has been publishing the contents of the laptop, the owner of the computer repair shop where Biden reportedly abandoned the laptop and the FBI for allegedly violating his privacy when two FBI agents told Congress and the media they were concerned the agency was slow-walking the investigation. The laptop in question first made headlines in October 2020, shortly before the 2020 presidential election. Reportedly, the computer repair shop owner had given the laptop to the FBI months before, but after not hearing anything about it on the news, contacted Giuliani’s lawyer at the time Bob Costello and provided him a copy of the computer’s hard drive. Costello is also a defendant in Biden’s latest lawsuit.

Contents of the laptop were published by the New York Post, showing the future first son smoking what appears to be crack cocaine, fornicating with suspected prostitutes and other salacious details. Further reporting on the laptop revealed emails related to Hunter Biden’s foreign business deals and financial records showing the Biden family received millions of dollars from foreign businesses, including those in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, China and Russia. Some of the email and text messages found on the iPhone backup implied that current US President Joe Biden may have joined in on some business calls with his son and references to payments made to “the big guy” have been pointed to by critics as proof the elder Biden was more involved in his son’s business deals than the president claimed. As recently as August, the US president has reiterated he “never talked business” with his son.

The laptop was originally called “Russian disinformation” by multiple media outlets in the United States, and more than 50 former senior intelligence officers signed a letter saying it had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” One by one, the various outlets who discredited the laptop as disinformation quietly admitted it was legitimate and a former CIA official testified to the House Judiciary Committee that former Biden campaign adviser and now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken “played a role in the inception.” Giuliani’s spokesman Ted Goodman pointed to the changing story of the laptop’s detractors when responding to the lawsuit. “Hunter Biden previously refused to admit ownership of the laptop. I’m not surprised he’s now falsely claiming his laptop hard drive was manipulated by Mayor Giuliani, considering the sordid material and potential evidence of crimes on that thing,” Goodman said.

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My son is the smartest man I know.

• Hunter Biden Used Dad’s Classified Doc House For $250K China Wire Transfer (ZH)

Hunter Biden used his Dad’s Delaware home where classified documents were found strewn about the garage to receive more than $250,000 in Chinese wire transfers, according to the House Oversight Committee. The wires were from Wang Xin and Jonathan Li, the latter of whom ran a Chinese private equity fund (BHR) which Hunter was listed as being on the board of directors. Hunter also arranged for a meeting between Li and Joe Biden while Joe was VP, while Joe allegedly gave Li’s son a letter of recommendation. Here’s the breakdown of events from the Committee:

• 2009-2017: During his time as Vice President and prior to later payments to Hunter Biden, evidence shows Joe Biden developed a familiar relationship with Jonathan Li. Devon Archer, a Biden business associate, described how Joe Biden met with Jonathan Li for coffee in Beijing, China, had a phone call with him, and wrote college recommendation letters for his children.
• April 25, 2019: Joe Biden announced his candidacy in the 2020 presidential election.
• July 26, 2019: Wang Xin wired $10,000 with Joe Biden’s home listed on the wire.
• August 2, 2019: Jonathan Li wired $250,000 with Joe Biden’s home listed on the wire.
• October 13, 2019: George Mesires, who served as Hunter Biden’s lawyer, stated, in part, that Hunter Biden served with BHR “only as a member of its board of directors,” which was purportedly an “unpaid position.”
• October 22, 2020: During a presidential debate, Joe Biden said, “My son has not made money […] in China.”

Of note, Hunter was living at the Wilmington house while he was raking in millions of dollars from CCP-linked business dealings. Hunter was living there… Seamus Bruner (researcher for legendary bombshell-dropper Peter Schweizer), reports via Breitbart News, that “While addicted to drugs, cavorting with prostitutes, and making deals with businessmen tied to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence, Hunter Biden lived in the house where Joe Biden stored classified documents.” Second, the Washington Free Beacon reported in January that photos from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop place him at the Wilmington House in July, 2017. Of note, the classified documents were reportedly brought to the house in January of that year. The photos ‘are the most concrete evidence to date’ that Hunter – who was actively negotiating a deal with a CCP-linked Chinese energy company – had access to areas of his father’s home where classified documents were stored.

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I know there’s the EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation, and I know there’s the Digital Services Act, but I don’t know who decided that Musk is violating either.

Oh, and it’s basically all Russia Russia. Ring a bell? It’s like Trudy reacting to the Nazi he celebrated by saying we should all be wary of Russian disinformation. Same thing. Diversion. Squirrel!

• EU Warns Elon Musk After X Found To Have Highest Rate Of Disinformation (G.)

The EU has issued a warning to Elon Musk to comply with sweeping new laws on fake news and Russian propaganda, after X formerly known as Twitter was found to have the highest ratio of disinformation posts of all large social media platforms. The report analysed the ratio of disinformation for a new report laying bare for the first time the scale of fake news on social media across the EU, with millions of fake accounts removed by TikTok and LinkedIn. Facebook was the second worst offender, according to the first ever report recording posts that will be deemed illegal across the EU under the Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into force in August.

Nevertheless, Facebook and other tech giants, including Google, TikTok and Microsoft, have signed up to the code of practice the EU drew up to ensure they could get ready in time to operate within the confines of the new laws. Twitter left the code of practice but it is obliged under the new law to comply with the rules or face a ban across the EU. Mr Musk knows he is not off the hook by leaving the code of practice, said the European commissioner Vera Jourova, who is responsible for the implementation of the new anti-disinformation code. There are obligations under the hard law. So my message for Twitter/X is you have to comply. We will be watching what you do.

X, formerly Twitter, is the platform with the largest ratio of mis/disinformation followed by Facebook, she told reporters. The 200-page report is an account of the work the large platforms have done in the first six months of 2023 to prepare for compliance with the new law and lifts the lid on the behind-the-scenes efforts made by Facebook and others to crack down on Russian propaganda, hate speech and other disinformation. The Russian state has engaged in the war of ideas to pollute our information space with half truth and lies to create a false image that democracy is no better than autocracy, said Jourova.

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This five-month-old bar-tailed godwit smashed the record for long-distance migration following a non-stop, 11-day flight from Alaska to Tasmania: a 13,560 km journey beating the previous record, a godwit which flew 13,000 km

 

 

Burzynski

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle June 29 2021

Jun 292021
 
 June 29, 2021  Posted by at 9:01 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  67 Responses »


Rembrandt van Rijn The Adoration of the Magi 1634

 

• Conflict of Interest in WHO Recommendation Against Ivermectin (TSN)
• Evidence of Antibody Dependent Enhancement? (DE)
• Did Pfizer Fail to Perform industry Standard Animal Testing? (TSN)
• More Crazy (Denninger)
• Singapore Doctors Call To Halt Covid Vaccination Of Teens (RT)
• Abu Dhabi To Ban Unvaccinated People From Most Public Places (F.)
• Greece Offers Youngsters 150 Euros To Get Vaccinated (K.)
• Falsehood Rules (Kunstler)
• Google Tumbles As Biden Revives Trump-Era Antitrust Probe (ZH)
• Why Giuliani’s Suspension Should Worry All Lawyers (Turley)
• Manhattan DA Says No Charges For Trump: Lawyer (ZH)
• Biden’s Lawless Bombing of Iraq and Syria (Greenwald)
• Nike Partners WIth CCP With New Slogan ‘Just Obey It’ (BBee)
• Olympics To Kick Off With Ceremonial Lighting Of The American Flag

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trusted News Initiative (TNI).

The WHO is funded by Big Pharma. “Originally funded entirely by member states, the organization now receives less than 20% of its budget from these states and the rest from donors with their own financial and strategic agendas.”

• Conflict of Interest in WHO Recommendation Against Ivermectin (TSN)

All dangerous diseases are best treated early. A major failure of the global COVID-19 strategy has been to wait a week for the disease to become dangerous, when breathing becomes a problem. Early treatment of COVID, even for those with mild symptoms, prevents later hospitalization. There are several early treatment drugs showing promise but ivermectin leads the pack regarding safety, effectiveness and price. Unfortunately, the biggest players in Western mainstream media are members of the Trusted News Initiative (TNI). The TNI is a story for another day but it’s remarkable that big media companies barely report that they have agreed to promote global vaccination and to make sure any “disinformation myths are stopped in their tracks”[i].

Unfortunately, as a result early treatment seems to be seen as a disinformation myth and is not mentioned. Early treatment is vital in treating serious diseases and COVID-19 is no exception. Considering the human and economic cost, the avoidance of early treatment with a very safe, effective and off-patent drug is a criminal tragedy of immense proportions and a winning lottery ticket for some pharmaceutical companies that are designing and selling novel patented drugs that could not compete with ivermectin in a free market. Mercks’ molnupiravir, for instance, is seeking an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the FDA and “Merck will receive approximately $1.2 billion to supply approximately 1.7 million courses of molnupiravir to the United States government.”[ii]

Ivermectin doesn’t need an EUA because it passed trials in 1986. It just needs to be recommended to treat COVID-19. However, if ivermectin was officially recognized as an effective treatment, it would legally prevent molnupiravir’s EUA until it passes trials and thus delay or endanger the $1.2 billion deal. An aggravating factor is the fact that molnupiravir (EIDD-2801) could cause harmful genetic mutations. [iii]

In the face of a public health crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, government authorities and international organizations have traditionally looked to the World Health Organization (WHO) for guidance – trusting that the WHO is free of commercial interests. Originally funded entirely by member states, the organization now receives less than 20% of its budget from these states and the rest from donors[iv] with their own financial and strategic agendas. Margret Chan, the previous Director General of the WHO, said in 2015: “I have to take my hat and go around the world to beg for money and when they give us the money [it is] highly linked to their preferences, what they like. It may not be the priority of the WHO, so if we do not solve this, we are not going to be as great as we were”. [v]

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“Majority of Covid deaths are the fully vaccinated and A&E attendance is breaking records”

• Evidence of Antibody Dependent Enhancement? (DE)

Are we beginning to see evidence of ‘Antibody Dependent Enhancement’ (ADE) due to the Covid-19 vaccines in the United Kingdom? The latest data on hospitalisations and deaths allegedly due to Covid-19 certainly suggests so. ADE can arise in several different ways but the best-known is dubbed the ‘Trojan Horse Pathway’. This occurs when non-neutralizing antibodies generated by past infection or vaccination fail to shut down the pathogen upon re-exposure. Instead, they act as a gateway by allowing the virus to gain entry and replicate in cells that are usually off limits (typically immune cells, like macrophages). That, in turn, can lead to wider dissemination of illness, and over-reactive immune responses that cause more severe illness. Barry Bloom, MD, PhD, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health explanation of ADE is as follows – “The cause of ADE is having antibodies to a virus that don’t neutralize it. That enables the virus to be gobbled up by cells that have receptors for antibodies, but not the virus. That’s the way of getting virus into cells that it ordinarily would not infect,”.


ADE can also occur when neutralizing antibodies (which bind the virus and stop it from causing infection) are present at low enough levels that they don’t protect against infection. Instead, they can form immune complexes with viral particles, which in turn leads to worse illness. [..] In previous clinical trials of vaccine candidates to combat SARS and MERS, the studies each failed during the animal phase due to ADE also known as pathogenic priming or a cytokine storm. Phase three clinical trials are designed to uncover frequent or severe side effects before a vaccine is approved for use, including ADE. But here in lies the problem, none of the Covid-19 vaccines have completed phase three clinical trials. The Pfizer phase three trial is not due to complete until April 6th 2023.

Neurological issues

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Excellent article. Recommended.

• Did Pfizer Fail to Perform industry Standard Animal Testing? (TSN)

The current mRNA vaccines are theorized to act locally in draining lymphoid tissue. Formulated lipid nanoparticles that contain mRNA able to produce the spike protein are syringe injected into a muscle such as the deltoid (shoulder muscle). Once the injection occurs, the muscle cells near the injection site are impacted by the mRNA-based vaccine (e.g. the lipid nanoparticles), while much of the dose moves into the intracellular fluid surrounding the muscle cells and consequently drains to lymph nodes. According to this theory, a properly functioning mRNA-based vaccine is delivered into and drives production of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein in muscle and lymph node cells. The cells then produce the Spike protein, which is then moved to the surface of these cells where it becomes attached.

The foreign virus Spike protein then triggers the immune system to recognize and attack any cell in the body that is either infected by SARS-CoV-2 or has Spike protein on its surface. The vaccine was designed so that the Spike protein is affixed via a transmembrane anchor region, so that it cannot circulate around the body via the bloodstream. The same general scenario applies to all mRNA-based vaccines as well as recombinant adenoviral vectored vaccines (such as the J&J vaccine) designed to use gene-therapy technology to express Spike protein in cells and tissues. This general strategy is designed to reduce the risk that any residual vaccine dose that does somehow end up in the bloodstream (or organs and tissues) ends up not being a safety risk due to unintended biologic effects.

Spike protein will remain affixed to cell surfaces, and therefore is not released into the blood where circulating Spike might cause problems by binding to its natural target, ACE-2 receptors. However, any cell that has Spike protein (or protein fragments) anchored on its membrane or displayed on MHC antigen-presenting molecules becomes a target for vaccine-activated immune cells and antibodies, which would then attack, damage or kill those cells in the same way that SARS-CoV-2 virus-infected cells would be attacked. In other words, if very active mRNA delivery particles or recombinant adenoviral-vectored vaccines spread throughout the body, the resulting production of the vaccine antigen (Spike, in this case) will both stimulate immunity and also cause those same cells to be attacked by the immune system. If this actually happens, the resulting “vaccine reactogenicity” could resemble clinical symptoms seen with autoimmune syndromes.

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“A consenting adult has the right to choose to do dangerous things.”

• More Crazy (Denninger)

HCQ, I remind you, is used by millions of people with Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis in the United States alone. If it caused heart attacks in one person out of 150 and screwed up the hearts of 10% of the rest not one doctor would prescribe it for either condition as that is wildly dangerous and will kill people outright a decent percentage of the time. Ivermectin, I remind you, has a record across several billion doses administered of one serious adverse event (defined: lands you in the hospital) in roughly every 600,000 people who take it. It is for this reason that it is considered safe enough to buy over the counter in many nations and is handed out by non-medical personnel all over sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed doing that has basically eliminated river blindness, a disease that formerly devastated entire regions.

As for Covid and other viral infections there is plenty of science on multiple mechanisms of action that are likely involved. Yet pharma, the FDA, NIH and CDC all are aligned against it and did not run large, formal studies for early treatment despite being safer to do so than recommending you take Tylenol or aspirin because there’s no money in it; the drug costs pennies. HCQ is similarly cheap and it too was never formally studied by these so-called “agencies” either. Now let’s talk about the shots. We never give a measles shot to someone who had the measles. Why not? The scientific evidence is that they cannot get any benefit from it. While the measles vaccine is extremely safe and definitely safer than getting the measles there is no such thing as a completely safe drug. Ever.

If you cannot get the measles because you’ve already had it and are immune then irrespective of how low the risk is it is unethical and gross malpractice to give you said shot because it is scientifically impossible for you to benefit from it. The question is always one of risk and benefit, both potential since no drug or vaccine is 100% effective and the risk of contracting an illness is never 100% for the person taking the drug. There is never any other evaluation, which is inherently personal to each individual’s medical situation, that is appropriate, ethical, moral or legal – period. For any drug, vaccine or other medical procedure or act where the benefit is statistically zero it is thus never, under any circumstance, acceptable to recommend, cajole or coerce someone into accepting it because if the potential benefit is zero then any amount of risk is unacceptable, no matter how low.

(Incidentally for the religiously-bent about vaccines generally who have been flooding my email inbox you’re wasting your time; I have long since told my spam filter to throw your repeated screaming into the trashcan unread. My objection is with this specific set of shots because the data says they’re wildly dangerous in healthy people compared with the illness itself, even without early treatment and definitely when compared to outcomes with treatment.) For comparison Tylenol kills about 500 people in the US a year. If every person in the US had used Ivermectin for the last year it would have killed fewer people than that. That is what the data says, and we could have easily handed it out to any and all who wanted it and get the natural data resulting from it.

There was no statistically-measurable risk in doing so compared against common over-the-counter medicines that anyone can buy anywhere at any time and thus there was no ethical, moral or legal justification for failing to do so in the face of a pandemic for which there were no approved and known-effective treatments. A consenting adult has the right to choose to do dangerous things. This is why we test drugs on consenting adults first even through we know they might not only fail to work they might harm you. Only after years or even decades of such testing do we contemplate testing them on children and only when we have a reasonably-full understanding of the risks.

Rogan Kory

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“The medics who signed the letter argued that that the CDC should be given “a few weeks to produce robust and convincing data”

• Singapore Doctors Call To Halt Covid Vaccination Of Teens (RT)

A group of medics have penned an “urgent open letter” to Singapore’s expert committee on Covid-19 vaccination, calling for the inoculation of youths to be ceased until the US CDC clarifies why a teenage jab recipient died. Written on “on behalf of many concerned pediatricians, primary care physicians, specialists, surgeons and GPs” and signed by a number of Singaporean medical professionals, the letter was posted on Facebook on Saturday. Its authors urged the authorities to “consider a short delay” in vaccinating youths with messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) jabs in view of the recent incident in the US. Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) started an investigation into the death of a 13-year-old from Saginaw, Michigan, which occurred three days after he got his second shot of an unnamed coronavirus vaccine.

Vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson have received emergency approval in the US, and all three of them are also in use in Singapore. The medics who signed the letter argued that that the CDC should be given “a few weeks to produce robust and convincing data” on the teen’s death and the possibility of a link to the inoculation. They insist the issue is urgent because Singapore is pursuing “one of the most aggressive” mRNA programs in the world, in which at least 200,000 teenage boys are expected to be vaccinated. “Certainly, we do not want to see any more suspected vaccine-related deaths in any young persons in the prime of their life,” the letter said.

As concerns spread, Singaporean parents have also launched a petition, asking the authorities of the island city-state to suspend the vaccination of those under 30, especially school kids from 12 to 15 years of age, until the CDC probe is complete. It has so far been signed by some 2,000 people.

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“The UAE has the highest vaccination rate in the world..”

• Abu Dhabi To Ban Unvaccinated People From Most Public Places (F.)

The United Arab Emirates has introduced some of the world’s harshest restrictions for unvaccinated people in its push to encourage uptake of the shot, announcing Monday that residents of its capital city Abu Dhabi who aren’t yet inoculated will be banned from most public places. The emirate’s media office said in a series of tweets that it is introducing the ban to encourage vaccinations and preserve public health, though 93% of target groups have been vaccinated. The ban will go into effect Aug. 20, giving the city’s residents some time to get vaccinated against the virus before the measures are enacted. Once that date rolls around, those without the shot will not be allowed to enter public and private schools, universities, nurseries, shopping centers, restaurants, cafes, gyms, museums, theme parks, resorts and all other retail outlets. The main exceptions are retail outlets selling essential goods, such as supermarkets and pharmacies, which all people will still be allowed to enter regardless of their vaccination status.


The order—which the media office said was approved by the Abu Dhabi Emergency, Crisis and Disaster Committee—will not apply to children under the age of 16 and those who have an official reason to be exempt from vaccination. “The committee stated the decision would enhance safety in areas that have been subject to additional precautionary measures and provide enhanced protection for community members,” the Abu Dhabi Government Media Office said in its statement. The UAE has the highest vaccination rate in the world, boasting a rate of 154 doses administered per 100 people, according to a tracker run by The New York Times. Though it has not shared updated data on how many people have been fully or partially vaccinated, Reuters estimates the number of doses it has administered (over 15 million) means around 77.1% of the country’s population has been fully inoculated.

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Immoral or amoral?

• Greece Offers Youngsters 150 Euros To Get Vaccinated (K.)

The Greek government announced it will offer a pre-paid card with 150 euros to young people aged 18-25 to get at least one shot of a vaccine against Covid-19, as an incentive to increase the number of inoculations in the country. The card, dubbed “freedom-pass” by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, will cover costs in travel and entertainment, such as plane and ferry tickets, hotel bookings, music, theatre and cinema, museums and archaeological sites. Presenting the card at the start of a meeting with ministers on Monday, the prime minister said he acknowledged the toll the long months of lockdown have had on the social life of young people.


“This is a debt to our youth, a gift of gratitude, particularly ahead of the summer. [It is] a ‘thank you’ for their patience and perseverance,” he told the ministers at the televised message. “At the same time, however, it is also an incentive for young people in particular to be vaccinated, who, by their very nature, contribute more to movement. And the more they are shielded [against the virus], the more we will limit the transmission of the virus.” Mitsotakis said this is especially true as countries are facing the more transmissible delta variant of the coronavirus, which targets primarily those who have not been vaccinated “but is threatening everyone.”

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“..a private Chicago-based non-profit called the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which received $350-million from Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg to arrange grants targeted at swing districts in Democratic strongholds such as Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta, for the purpose of hiring ballot harvesters, among other activities.”

• Falsehood Rules (Kunstler)

Now there is one official forensic audit of the 2020 election underway in Maricopa County, Arizona, (the Phoenix metro area), ordered by the State Senate, and some conclusions from phase one, involving the paper ballots, are due to be released this week, with additional phases to come concerning the Dominion voting machines. Many other state legislatures sent delegations to Arizona to learn the ins-and-outs of conducting a forensic audit, and they are making noises about actually doing it. So, in stepped Attorney General Merrick Garland. At the start of the Arizona audit, he sent a letter to the Arizona State Senate threatening to use the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ to halt the audit on the basis of depriving voters of their civil rights. Arizona responded by promising to jail any federal officials who laid their hands on any ballots. That was the end of that gambit for now — they may try it again in phase two.

In the meantime, a county judge in Georgia (one Brian Amero) has ruled that 147,000-odd ballots alleged to have chain-of-custody problems must be made available for inspection, and also that five members of the Fulton County (Atlanta Metro Area) Board of Elections are now individually parties to the lawsuit brought by nine Georgia voters, and may be subject to deposition (being questioned under oath). That is believed to be the beginning of an effort to conduct a full audit in Georgia. So, again, in steps Attorney General Merrick Garland with his Civil Rights Division, led by political activist Kristen Clarke, bringing a lawsuit against the Georgia election reform act passed earlier this year — a shot over Georgia’s bow, shall we say. Ms. Clarke happens to be a colleague of Georgia activist Stacey Abrams, a former Democratic candidate for governor.

Ms. Abrams is also a part-owner of a company, NOWaccount, that does payroll for a private company called Happy Faces, which furnished dozens of poll workers to tally the 2020 election in Georgia, as well as the 2021 US Senate runoff election that put two Democrats, John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, in office. Elections are supposed to be conducted by public officials, not by private entities. Supposedly, the Georgia election officials turned to Happy Faces because it was a way to avoid hiring workers for less than 30 hours-a-week, which would have otherwise required providing them with health care under ObamaCare, the ACA Act. Was that legal? It has not been adjudicated.

Nor has the much bigger scandal of a private Chicago-based non-profit called the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which received $350-million from Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg to arrange grants targeted at swing districts in Democratic strongholds such as Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta, for the purpose of hiring ballot harvesters, among other activities. Mr. Zuckerberg met with Kristen Clarke, Stacey Abrams, Al Sharpton, and other Democratic activists at a dinner in 2019, at which he promised to help. Did his help cross any legal boundaries? It has not been investigated, nor has the use of the company he runs, Facebook, in its campaign to influence public opinion by blocking news and deleting accounts of non-Democrats exclusively.

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it’s the ads again.

• Google Tumbles As Biden Revives Trump-Era Antitrust Probe (ZH)

Minutes after news that a judge had dismiss an FTC anti-monopoly lawsuit against Facebook sent the social-media giant’s market capitalization past the $1 trillion mark, Google has just been hit by some disappointing news on the anti-trust front. Google shares tumbled heading into the close on reports that the Biden Administration was planning to revive a Trump-era investigation into Google’s display ad business. While a judge has granted some relief for Facebook, potentially taking it out of the sights of the FTC, which is now being led by anti-monopoly pioneer Lina Khan, it’s clear the Biden Administration hasn’t given up on scrutinizing American Big Tech.

According to Bloomberg, which broke the news Monday afternoon, antitrust investigators at the DoJ have stepped up scrutiny of Google’s digital advertising practices in recent months, a sign that the Biden administration is “actively pursuing a probe that started under former President Donald Trump.” DoJ sued Google last year over claims the Alphabet-owned company was abusing its dominance in the internet search market, its biggest business. Any additional legal action, including whether to bring a second suit, will likely depend on whoever is chosen as the assistant attorney general overseeing the antitrust division. It will be up to that person to decide whether to proceed, and it’s possible the government will bring no action against the company.

Staffers from the DoJ’s antitrust office have reportedly interviewed several of Google’s competitors about the firm’s practices in the advertising technology market. The probe places a target on the company’s second-most important business, according to people familiar with the action, who asked not to be identified discussing the early stage probe.

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“..the bar becomes “nothing but a continuation of politics by other means.”

• Why Giuliani’s Suspension Should Worry All Lawyers (Turley)

Lawyers often make sensational, false claims that inflame public opinion, such as insisting former Attorney General William Barr violently cleared D.C.’s Lafayette Square last year to arrange for Trump’s controversial photo op outside St. John’s Episcopal Church. The claim outraged many Americans, even though there was no evidence to prove it; several lawyers repeated the photo op myth as fact on TV. An inspector general and a federal court both later debunked the myth, but the damage was done: To this day, many people believe it. Nevertheless, I do not believe any lawyers should be suspended for such claims, which should be protected as free speech. The New York court brushes over the free speech implications of its ruling with a conclusory statement that Giuliani knowingly misrepresented facts, even though it did not afford him a hearing on that or other questions.

It is not enough to declare “Don’t be like Giuliani.” What is missing in this opinion is a clear standard for when the failure to establish a case — as Giuliani failed to do with his election fraud claims — is a disbarring offense. In reality, many cases collapse in court over insufficient evidence. Election challenges are made without access to critical records or data held by election boards or officials — indeed, litigants often go to court to gain such access. Likewise, public interest lawyers often bring cases against the government, which classifies or withholds evidence. When I litigated the Area 51 case, I was suing a base that the government claimed did not exist, and all information about it was classified; we prevailed in establishing environmental violations but only after years of intense litigation and denials.

The concern in this case is that we are seeing a weaponization of bar investigations after a wide (and well-funded) campaign to harass Republican lawyers, their firms and their clients after the 2020 election. And it has worked: Many law firms are unwilling to take on Republican or conservative causes for fear of being targeted. The Giuliani opinion fuels those concerns. Despite a damning account of exaggerations and falsehoods, it often reads more like a venting — rather than a vetting — of grievances against Giuliani. Instead of issuing a well-deserved reprimand, the court declared Giuliani to be a public menace if allowed to continue practicing law, even for the period of his own adjudication. The premature suspension made little sense.

The bar was focused on Giuliani’s public statements, which will continue unabated by any suspension. Nevertheless, the suspension thrilled many in today’s bloodsport politics. Yet while the court seemed to apply a special “Giuliani rule,” it is unlikely to stay that way if — to paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz — the bar becomes “nothing but a continuation of politics by other means.”

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“This is so small that I can’t believe I’m going to have to try a case like this.”

• Manhattan DA Says No Charges For Trump: Lawyer (ZH)

President Trump’s attorney said on Monday that Manhattan DA Cy Vance has indicated that he has no plans to charge the Trump Organization with crimes related to allegations of “hush money” payments or manipulated real estate values, according to Politico. New York attorney Ronald Fischetti said that during a meeting last week he asked Vance’s team for any details related to charges up for consideration, to which Vance’s team replied that while they are considering charges against the Trump Organization and individual employees related to alleged failures to pay taxes on corporate benefits – widely reported to include cars and apartments, the potential charges only involve a small number of executives. “We asked, ‘Is there anything else?” Fischetti told Politico. “They said, ‘No.’”


When asked if the meeting touched on allegations made by Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen and by adult film star and director Stormy Daniels, Fischetti replied, “Nothing. Not a word on that.” Fischetti also said that Vance’s team told him they will not bring charges against Trump himself when the first indictment comes down. “They just said, ‘When this indictment comes down, he won’t be charged. Our investigation is ongoing,’” he said. According to the Washington Post, Vance’s team is set to proceed with the charges unless otherwise persuaded not to. Fischetti says he expects them to drop this week or next. “It’s like the Shakespeare play Much Ado About Nothing,” he said, adding “This is so small that I can’t believe I’m going to have to try a case like this.”

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BAU. Twitter: “Defense stocks took off like a rocket when Biden was elected, now up 40%.”

• Biden’s Lawless Bombing of Iraq and Syria (Greenwald)

For the second time in the five months since he was inaugurated, President Joe Biden on Sunday ordered a U.S. bombing raid on Syria, and for the first time, he also bombed Iraq. The rationale offered was the same as Biden’s first air attack in February: the U.S., in the words of Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, “conducted defensive precision airstrikes against facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups in the Iraq-Syria border region.” He added that “the United States acted pursuant to its right of self-defense.” Embedded in this formulaic Pentagon statement is so much propaganda and so many euphemisms that, by itself, it reveals the fraudulent nature of what was done.

To begin with, how can U.S. airstrikes carried out in Iraq and Syria be “defensive” in nature? How can they be an act of “self-defense”? Nobody suggests that the targets of the bombing campaign have the intent or the capability to strike the U.S. “homeland” itself. Neither Syria nor Iraq is a U.S. colony or American property, nor does the U.S. have any legal right to be fighting wars in either country, rendering the claim that its airstrikes were “defensive” and an “act of self-defense” to be inherently deceitful. The Pentagon’s description of the people bombed by the U.S. — “Iran-backed militias groups” — is intended to obscure the reality. Biden did not bomb Iran or order Iranians to be bombed or killed.

The targets of U.S. aggression were Iraqis in their own country, and Syrians in their own country. Only the U.S. war machine and its subservient media could possibly take seriously the Biden administration’s claim that the bombs they dropped on people in their own countries were “defensive” in nature. Invocation of Iran has no purpose other than to stimulate the emotional opposition to the government of that country among many Americans in the hope that visceral dislike of Iranian leaders will override the rational faculties that would immediately recognize the deceit and illegality embedded in the Pentagon’s arguments.

Beyond the propagandistic justification is the question of legality, though even to call it a question dignifies it beyond what it merits. There is no conceivable Congressional authorization — none, zero — to Biden’s dropping of bombs in Syria. Obama’s deployment of CIA operatives to Syria and years of the use of force to overthrow Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad never had any Congressional approval of any kind, nor did Trump’s bombing of Assad’s forces (urged by Hillary Clinton, who wanted more), nor does Biden’s bombing campaign in Syria now. It was and is purely lawless, illegal.

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“Chief Marketing Officer Bingbong Van Hummus”

• Nike Partners WIth CCP With New Slogan ‘Just Obey It’ (BBee)

On the heels of the CEO proudly declaring Nike is a brand “of China, and for China,” the company has unveiled a new marketing campaign honoring the glorious Chinese Communist Party with the inspiring slogan “Just Obey It.” “The idea of obedience to brutal and murderous regimes really encapsulates the ethos Nike is going for as a brand,” said Chief Marketing Officer Bingbong Van Hummus. “The People’s Republic of China represents our highest ideals, and we hope to inspire athletes around the world to join us in the most important thing any high-performer can do: Just Obey.”


New apparel featuring the “Just Obey It” slogan is already being produced in Uyghur concentration camps by slaves, and Nike is optimistic about having their new products in the hands of progressive American athletes in the next few weeks. “As long as we don’t run into any delays– you know, from our slaves refusing to obey, we’ll be shipping from the beautiful and powerful country of China very soon!” said Van Hummus. Nike also announced they will be releasing a new Uyghur-inspired shoe with built-in iron shackles.

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“..a beloved pastime where American athletes who were given every opportunity to succeed get to show how much they hate America..”

• Olympics To Kick Off With Ceremonial Lighting Of The American Flag

The 2020 Olympic Games will be kicking off next month with the ceremonial lighting of the American flag, a beloved pastime where American athletes who were given every opportunity to succeed get to show how much they hate America. “Before the Games, American athletes will get to show much they hate their country by taking the ceremonial torch and burning the flag,” said one commentator on ESPN. “We always feel the importance and gravity of this moment at every Olympic Games. As the torchbearer approaches the flag and lights it up, solemnly declaring to everyone that the U.S. is a horribly racist and oppressive country, I can’t help but shed a few tears.” “Stunning and, you guessed it, brave.” One Chinese gymnast suggested she would burn her own country’s flag as well, since the government kidnapped her family and forced her to compete at gunpoint, but she has since disappeared.

Read more …

 

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“What made medicine fool people for so long was that its successes were prominently displayed and its mistakes (literally) buried.”
– Nassim Nicholas Taleb

 

 

 

 


The most detailed image ever of a human cell. It was made using 3D data from X-rays, nuclear MRI, and cryo-electron microscopy. The wildest part? We have 100 TRILLION of these inside us.

 

 

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Debt Rattle May 4 2021

May 042021
 
 May 4, 2021  Posted by at 7:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  45 Responses »


Franco Fontana Prague 1967

 

• US To Authorize Pfizer Vaccine For Ages 12-15 Early Next Week (R.)
• Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely In The US, Experts Now Believe (NYT)
• The Missing Piece of the Covid-19 Death Puzzle: Co-Infection (Sardi)
• The CDC, VUMC, Johns Hopkins Are All *DONE* (Denninger)
• England To Pilot Daily Covid Tests As Way To Avoid Self-isolation (G.)
• SARS-CoV-2 Variants Still Recognized by T Cells (NIH)
• Covid S Protein Impairs Endothelial Function via Downregulation of ACE 2 (AHA)
• Florida Gov. DeSantis Suspends All Local Coronavirus Emergency Orders (JTN)
• ‘Far More Likely’ Coronavirus Came From Lab, Ex-MI6 Chief (LBC)
• The Criminalization of Dissent (CJ Hopkins)
• Biden Family Justice (Kunstler)
• Moscow Has Plan To Ditch US Dollar & Axe Dependency On West (Gavin)

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Main reason for hesitancy to take Covid vaccine from average Americans is they assume ALL risk. If something goes wrong, you can’t sue Moderna/Pfizer. And without FDA approval government isn’t accountable, either. Therefore, the patient/citizen assumes ALL risk.”

 

 

 

This for me remains the scariest part of it all.

“Pfizer and Moderna have also launched trials in even younger children, from six months to 11 years old.”

• US To Authorize Pfizer Vaccine For Ages 12-15 Early Next Week (R.)

The US Food and Drug Administration is preparing to authorize the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine for adolescents between ages 12 and 15 years by early next week, the New York Times reported on Monday, citing federal officials familiar with the agency’s plans. An approval is highly anticipated after the drugmakers said in March that the vaccine had been found to be safe, effective and produced robust antibody responses in 12- to 15-year-olds in a clinical trial. Responding to a Reuters request for comment, the FDA said its review of expanding the vaccine’s emergency use authorization was continuing, but it did not provide further details. The vaccine has already been cleared in the United States for people age 16 and above.


The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) director, Rochelle Walensky, said earlier in April that the vaccine could be approved by mid-May. If an approval for the 12-15-year-olds is granted, the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel will probably meet the following day to review the clinical trial data and make recommendations for the vaccine’s use in adolescents, the report said. Approval of the vaccine would boost the country’s immunization drive and help allay fears of parents anxious to protect their children from Covid-19. Moderna and Johnson & Johnson are also testing their vaccines in 12- to 18-year olds, with data from Moderna’s trial expected to come soon. Pfizer and Moderna have also launched trials in even younger children, from six months to 11 years old. Both companies have said they hope to be able to vaccinate children under 11 as soon as early 2022.

Read more …

Vaccine promo (vaccine porn?) . One-dimensional. It’s a pattern: first promotion of hand cleaners, then masks, then of lockdowns, now of vaccines.

Where would we be if they had promoted vit. D and ivermection in the same fashion?

• Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely In The US, Experts Now Believe (NYT)

Early in the pandemic, when vaccines for the coronavirus were still just a glimmer on the horizon, the term “herd immunity” came to signify the endgame: the point when enough Americans would be protected from the virus so we could be rid of the pathogen and reclaim our lives. Now, more than half of adults in the United States have been inoculated with at least one dose of a vaccine. But daily vaccination rates are slipping, and there is widespread consensus among scientists and public health experts that the herd immunity threshold is not attainable – at least not in the foreseeable future, and perhaps not ever.

Instead, they are coming to the conclusion that rather than making a long-promised exit, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers. How much smaller is uncertain and depends in part on how much of the nation, and the world, becomes vaccinated and how the coronavirus evolves. It is already clear, however, that the virus is changing too quickly, new variants are spreading too easily and vaccination is proceeding too slowly for herd immunity to be within reach anytime soon. Continued immunizations, especially for people at highest risk because of age, exposure or health status, will be crucial to limiting the severity of outbreaks, if not their frequency, experts believe.

“The virus is unlikely to go away,” said Rustom Antia, an evolutionary biologist at Emory University in Atlanta. “But we want to do all we can to check that it’s likely to become a mild infection.” The shift in outlook presents a new challenge for public health authorities. The drive for herd immunity – by the summer, some experts once thought possible – captured the imagination of large segments of the public. To say the goal will not be attained adds another “why bother” to the list of reasons that vaccine skeptics use to avoid being inoculated.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the Biden administration’s top adviser on Covid-19, acknowledged the shift in experts’ thinking. “People were getting confused and thinking you’re never going to get the infections down until you reach this mystical level of herd immunity, whatever that number is,” he said. “That’s why we stopped using herd immunity in the classic sense,” he added. “I’m saying: Forget that for a second. You vaccinate enough people, the infections are going to go down.”

Read more …

“The so-called “super-spreaders” are the asymptomatic RNA-vaccinated (Pfizer/ Moderna) individuals that shed the virus. In an anticipated misdirection, the unvaccinated will then be mistakenly blamed for the spread of the virus and a predicted witch hunt will ensue for the anti-vaxxers..”

• The Missing Piece of the Covid-19 Death Puzzle: Co-Infection (Sardi)

Funny thing we realized on the way to the funeral parlor to bury our friends and loved ones who were vaccinated against COVID-19 coronavirus, that the vaccine didn’t work. COVID-19 vaccines, like flu shots, don’t work as well for new strains of the virus. For that, you will need perpetual immunization, say vaccine makers. Oh, there are people dying, 7700 every day in the US. But was their passing solely attributed to COVID-19? Since the COVID-19 fatality numbers are exaggerated by a PCR nasal swab test that results in 97% false positives (all of the COVID-19 PCR tests during the past 14 months have been found to be invalid), there is no way to confirm deaths were caused by COVID-19 or COVID-19 was a bystander, the difference between dying OF COVID-19 or dying WITH COVID-19! Deaths are being drummed up to create fear and false demand for vaccines.

Also, in case you hadn’t heard, “a resurgence in both hospitalizations and deaths will be ‘dominated by those that have received two doses of the vaccine,” says the respected Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group. “At least 60 percent of all new COVID-19 cases are occurring in people who were already vaccinated.” So far, hundreds who have been vaccinated got sick again and some have died. This is being reported in different locations. We have a vaccine that reduces severity of symptoms but not the ratio of hospitalizations and deaths among infected subjects! The so-called “super-spreaders” are the asymptomatic RNA-vaccinated (Pfizer/ Moderna) individuals that shed the virus. In an anticipated misdirection, the unvaccinated will then be mistakenly blamed for the spread of the virus and a predicted witch hunt will ensue for the anti-vaxxers, a development foreseen in my March 26, 2021 posting.

But how could a mutated common cold virus kill off humans like flies? Well, at no time were any human populations dying like flies. As stated in prior reports, the percentage of people dying of COVID-19 who reside outside of nursing homes is but one-quarter of one-percent. Vaccination, which is said to be 95% effective, but that is not 95 out of 100 in hard numbers. On an accumulated basis as of May 1, 2021 in the U.S., 31,889,171 laboratory- confirmed infections (9.7% of the population) with 568,836 questionable deaths (0.0017% or 1.7 per thousand). But even these numbers are fallacious. If the PCR nasal swab test were properly performed, then 97% COVID-19 infections as a cause of death cannot be confirmed.

Only 6% of deaths were without co-morbid conditions (diabetes, heart disease, etc.), meaning maybe only 34,130 COVID-19 deaths solely attributed to COVID-19 instead of 568,836 – for a true fatality risk 0.0001 or 1 in 10,000. That means 10,000 must be vaccinated to spare 1 life. While the serious side effect rate for the vaccines is very small, it exceeds the number who will potentially benefit from vaccination. Your chance of benefiting from vaccination is nil. And vaccination will not prevent infections or deaths if your immune system is not intact, or if the strain of the virus does not match the vaccine. [..] How are face masks, social distancing and hand washing, going to meaningfully reduce your risk of dying from COVID-19 when only 1 in 10,000 are at risk?

Read more …

“COVID-19 mRNA vaccines give instructions for our cells to make a harmless piece of what is called the “spike protein.” The spike protein is found on the surface of the virus that causes COVID-19.”

“The science says it’s not harmless; it is in fact pathogenic. The CDC is lying and as a result people are dying.”

• The CDC, VUMC, Johns Hopkins Are All *DONE* (Denninger)

There might be a few fathers left in this country. Maybe. If so it is my sincere hope that they hold people to personal account who inflicted these harms on their sons and daughters, of which there will be tens if not hundreds of thousands reasonably tied to these so-called “interventions”, including the shots, in the current and coming years. The ghouls involved did not give a crap about the law from the start. The EUAs were flatly illegal because we knew by summer of 2020 that there were decades-old proved safe and believed effective treatments. We didn’t use them, on purpose, for the explicit reason that doing so would prevent these EUAs from being issued. By deliberately lying the FDA, CDC and dozens of other organizations and individuals along with the corporate physician and hospital networks directly caused the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans who should not have died, and caused deliberate harm to hundreds of thousands more who are now left with what may well be a lifelong debilitating impact as a result of the scream-fest for “everyone” to go get these unproved and now-known-dangerous injections.

Nobody knows how bad, or for how long, those future disabilities and risk of death will be or for how long they will continue but that there is severe impact is now known; we are now down to trying to figure out how horrid. The CDC still claims the spike protein in the shots is “harmless” despite three scientific papers dating to December stating otherwise, one of which is peer reviewed and another from Salk, with the first known published evidence of a problem dating back to September of 2020. All were deliberately ignored and still are being ignored. “COVID-19 mRNA vaccines give instructions for our cells to make a harmless piece of what is called the “spike protein.” The spike protein is found on the surface of the virus that causes COVID-19.”

The science says it’s not harmless; it is in fact pathogenic. The CDC is lying and as a result people are dying. If you think this can remain “under wraps” and not get into the public consciousness you’re wrong. While the pharma firms may have legal immunity no private entity or public other entity does and the ambulance chasers will be out in droves to make the next $10 or $50 billion windfall asset-stripping colleges and their endowments, sports teams, concert venues and other commercial and government entities of every bit of flesh they can pick off. Unfortunately the injured will get little or nothing after the lawyers get done, as has always been the case. The destruction of these entities is both just and will happen, but it’s nowhere near the end game or best of outcomes.

The best of outcomes, which we will also obtain, will be the complete destruction of any sort of trust, belief or other willingness to listen to so-called “public health” authorities for years or even decades into the future. This is not a bad thing; they’ve been full of crap for decades, poisoning people slowly by advocating the consumption of a carbohydrate-rich diet, essentially cramming liquid milk into the gullets of children, many of whom are lactose intolerant to some degree and for which there is no evidence of benefit, calling “ketchup”, which is mostly sugar, a “vegetable” and other similar outrages. McDonalds and the rest of the fast food industry followed said “guidance” and stopped using beef tallow from their hamburgers to fry the potatoes; that switch alone has killed hundreds of thousands over the last few decades, as vegetable oils of this sort should never be consumed in any meaningful quantity. They do not occur in nature in anything similar to what we consume today and every one of them has a horrid inflammatory profile.

Read more …

Next up: hourly testing.

Do any of these tests look for the presence of T cells?

• England To Pilot Daily Covid Tests As Way To Avoid Self-isolation (G.)

Daily testing of the contacts of people who test positive for Covid is to be trialled, the government has announced, in an effort to reduce the need for people to self-isolate unnecessarily. People who test positive for Covid and their close contacts currently have to isolate for 10 days, but recent research has suggested compliance may be low. One study found that only about 50% of people who had Covid symptoms said they fully adhered to self-isolation. The trial, which launches on Sunday and is led by Public Health England (PHE) and NHS test and trace, will explore whether the use of daily testing of close contacts could reduce the need for people to isolate.


“We know that isolating when you have been in contact with someone who has tested positive for Covid-19 is challenging, but it remains vitally important to stop the spread of infection,” said Prof Isabel Oliver, PHE’s national infection service director and the study lead. “This study will help to determine whether we can deploy daily testing for contacts to potentially reduce the need for self-isolation, while still ensuring that chains of transmission are stopped. “Contacts of cases are at higher risk of infection, so testing them is a very effective way of preventing further spread. This study will play an important part of our evaluation of daily contact testing and how the approach to testing might evolve.” The government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) had previously noted the potential for daily testing.

Read more …

From March 31 2021. It appears to say T cells come from vaccines or infection, but we know many people (81%?!) have T cells regardless. I’m not sure of these are the specific CD8+ T cells.

• SARS-CoV-2 Variants Still Recognized by T Cells (NIH)

When variants of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) emerged in late 2020, concern arose that they might elude protective immune responses generated by prior infection or vaccination, potentially making re-infection more likely or vaccination less effective. To investigate this possibility, researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, and colleagues analyzed blood cell samples from 30 people who had contracted and recovered from COVID-19 prior to the emergence of virus variants. They found that one key player in the immune response to SARS-CoV-2—the CD8+ T cell—remained active against the virus. The research team was led by NIAID’s Andrew Redd, Ph.D., and included scientists from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Immunomics-focused company, ImmunoScape.

The investigators asked whether CD8+ T cells in the blood of recovered COVID-19 patients, infected with the initial virus, could still recognize three SARS-CoV-2 variants: B.1.1.7, which was first detected in the United Kingdom; B.1.351, originally found in the Republic of South Africa; and B.1.1.248, first seen in Brazil. Each variant has mutations throughout the virus, and, in particular, in the region of the virus’ spike protein that it uses to attach to and enter cells. Mutations in this spike protein region could make it less recognizable to T cells and neutralizing antibodies, which are made by the immune system’s B cells following infection or vaccination. Although details about the exact levels and composition of antibody and T-cell responses needed to achieve immunity to SARS-CoV-2 are still unknown, scientists assume that strong and broad responses from both antibodies and T cells are required to mount an effective immune response.

CD8+ T cells limit infection by recognizing parts of the virus protein presented on the surface of infected cells and killing those cells. In their study of recovered COVID-19 patients, the researchers determined that SARS-CoV-2-specific CD8+ T-cell responses remained largely intact and could recognize virtually all mutations in the variants studied. While larger studies are needed, the researchers note that their findings suggest that the T cell response in convalescent individuals, and most likely in vaccinees, are largely not affected by the mutations found in these three variants, and should offer protection against emerging variants. Optimal immunity to SARS-Cov-2 likely requires strong multivalent T-cell responses in addition to neutralizing antibodies and other responses to protect against current SARS-CoV-2 strains and emerging variants, the authors indicate. They stress the importance of monitoring the breadth, magnitude and durability of the anti-SARS-CoV-2 T-cell responses in recovered and vaccinated individuals as part of any assessment to determine if booster vaccinations are needed.

Read more …

Coincidentally, also from March 31 2021.

A comment: “Why spike protein containing or mRNA transcription to self-produce the spike protein (S-protein) is likely to increase blood clotting and inflammation, especially in at-risk individuals: The SARS-CoV2 (SARS2) spike protein is biologically active.”

• Covid S Protein Impairs Endothelial Function via Downregulation of ACE 2 (AHA)

Read more …

2024. Watch him.

• Florida Gov. DeSantis Suspends All Local Coronavirus Emergency Orders (JTN)

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday suspended local coronavirus emergency orders via an executive order. The Sunshine State Republican also signed a bill approved by the Florida legislature which will give the governor the power to invalidate local emergency orders. The bill is effective July 1 and the governor signed the executive order effective July 1st that will invalidate local emergency coronavirus orders. “The bill ensures that neither the state nor local governments can close business or keep kids out of in-person instruction unless they satisfy demanding and continuous justifications,” DeSantis said.


“It also says that any local emergency order, excluding hurricane emergencies, are capped at seven-day increments and may only be extended to a maximum duration of 42 days. And most importantly, as governor I’ll have the authority to invalidate a local emergency order if it unnecessarily restricts individual rights or liberties,” the governor said. Prior to signing the documents DeSantis explained that he would “sign the bill, it’s effective July 1st. I’ll also sign an executive order pursuant to that bill invalidating all remaining local emergency COVID orders effective on July 1st. But then to bridge the gap between then and now I am gonna suspend under my executive power the local emergency orders as it relates to COVID. I think that’s the evidence-based thing to do.”

Read more …

Context: MI6: Russia, China, Taliban.

• ‘Far More Likely’ Coronavirus Came From Lab, Ex-MI6 Chief (LBC)

Coronavirus was more likely to have escaped from a lab than to have come from an animal, the former head of MI6 has told LBC. Sir Richard Dearlove said aspects of the virus “point in the direction of it being somewhat tailored” though he warned this may never be proven. The former “C” of the Secret Intelligence Service – equivalent to “M” in James Bond – also told LBC’s Tom Swarbrick that more information on the coronavirus’ origin will soon come out. Some have theorised the coronavirus could have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Work to establish the origin of the virus is ongoing. Sir Richard, who headed up the spy agency between 1999 and 2004, told Tom the World Health Organisation’s report, which said a lab leak was highly unlikely but further work was needed, was a “farcical investigation”.

While he admitted “it’s possible” the virus jumped to humans from nature, Sir Richard said: “But the fact that… it’s far more likely, if you’re a scientist, that it was put together. “All right, put it like this… It’s a natural virus that’s been, as it were, mucked around with and the characteristics of things like the spike protein, which make it so highly infectious, also point in the direction of it being somewhat tailored.” He alleged that Chinese influence was hindering the publication of scientific articles on the matter. “I honestly don’t think that this issue can be resolved one way or another,” he continued. “I think there’s a balance of probability. Obviously, if it cannot be proven, and I don’t think it can, because the evidence that could have proved it one way or another has been destroyed, because of the extent of the Chinese clean up.

“Okay, so you can’t prove it’s zoonotic. You can’t prove it’s a lab escapee. What I’m saying is there’s a balance of probability.” He expects forthcoming books to further outline the argument for coronavirus’ lab origin. Sir Richard described China as a more “acute” threat, though he added that Russia presents the most immediate challenge. He also said the UK should commit to training the security forces in Afghanistan for another two decades, after President Joe Biden announced the Americans would leave ahead of the September 11 20-year anniversary. It is a “mistake” to leave and the UK had become safer by deposing the old Taliban regime, he argued. “It could be (another 20 year stay),” Sir Richard said.

Read more …

“The United Nations and the highest levels of governments must take direct, even confrontational, approaches with Russia, and move to dismantle anti-vaccine groups in the United States.”

• The Criminalization of Dissent (CJ Hopkins)

Here’s California State Senator Richard Pan, author of an op-ed in the Washington Post: “Anti-vax extremism is akin to domestic terrorism,” quoted in the Los Angeles Times: “These extremists have not yet been held accountable, so they continue to escalate violence against the body public … We must now summon the political will to demand that domestic terrorists face consequences for their words and actions. Our democracy and our lives depend on it … They’ve been building alliances with white supremacists, conspiracy theorists and [others] on the far right …” And here’s Peter Hotez in Nature magazine:

“The United Nations and the highest levels of governments must take direct, even confrontational, approaches with Russia, and move to dismantle anti-vaccine groups in the United States. Efforts must expand into the realm of cyber security, law enforcement, public education and international relations. A high-level inter-agency task force reporting to the UN secretary-general could assess the full impact of anti-vaccine aggression, and propose tough, balanced measures. The task force should include experts who have tackled complex global threats such as terrorism, cyber attacks and nuclear armament, because anti-science is now approaching similar levels of peril. It is becoming increasingly clear that advancing immunization requires a counter-offensive.”

We’ll be hearing a lot more rhetoric like this as this new, more totalitarian structure of global capitalism gradually develops. Probably a good idea to listen carefully, and assume they mean exactly what they say.

Read more …

“..the FBI was in possession of Hunter’s laptop from at least one month prior to the commencement of impeachment proceedings in December of 2019. And nobody was informed about that… not least the president’s lawyer?”

• Biden Family Justice (Kunstler)

The campaign of false witness against US citizens went into overdrive when Donald Trump strutted onto the scene and “seventeen agencies of the Intel Community” conspired with The New York Times and other news media to manufacture the RussiaGate hoax. No top official across the boards has been taken to law for the stupendous cavalcade of false accusations and deceitful investigations associated with that venture in sedition, and the nation is still waiting for the apparition known as Special Counsel John Durham to make a peep. In fact, since 2017 much of the publicly-reported activity around the DOJ and FBI has demonstrated only their attempts to suppress their own felonious misdeeds — cover-ups on top of cover-ups.

Now comes the curious case of Rudy Giuliani, whose apartment was raided on a warrant last week by the FBI seeking his computers and cell phones. The probable cause remains murky — something to do with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in representing Ukrainian clients in the US? So, the DOJ wants Rudy’s files, emails, and memoranda on that? Of course, Rudy was acting as the President’s lawyer in impeachment No. 1 over a telephone call to Ukraine, and what was that about? Hunter Biden’s grifting activities, his cumulatively receiving millions from the Burisma Company, of which Hunter’s dad was due to receive at least his usual ten percent cut? And concerning which activity, Joe Biden threatened former Ukraine President Poroshenko in withholding US aid, unless an investigation into Hunter’s Burisma grift was dropped.

It might be helpful to the current occupant of the Oval Office to know what kind of evidence Rudy has acquired on all that and more over the years — yes? But then, there’s plenty of evidence about it and much much much more on Hunter’s wayward laptop. Perhaps hundreds of millions in wide-ranging grifts beyond lowly Ukraine all the way to China, where to this day Hunter retains active and substantial financial connections through his Skaneateles LLC financial company. And it has become known that the FBI was in possession of Hunter’s laptop from at least one month prior to the commencement of impeachment proceedings in December of 2019. And nobody was informed about that… not least the president’s lawyer?

Read more …

Majority of trade between Russia and China is in euros these days.

• Moscow Has Plan To Ditch US Dollar & Axe Dependency On West (Gavin)

The characteristically blunt Zakharova told RT over the weekend that new economic barriers were “having a complex negative impact on both Russian and Western economies.” According to her, the price of playing out hostilities through the financial markets is high, and “estimates of the damage vary, but are well within the hundreds of billions of dollars.” “Unfortunately,” the diplomatic spokeswoman said, “the reality of our time has been the increased use of politically motivated unilateral measures by some Western states, mainly the US. We see the sanctions against Russia more and more as a ‘gesture of desperation’ due to the inability of elites to accept the new realities, abandon their collective groupthink, and recognize Russia’s right to determine its own development path and build relations with its partners.”

One reason behind this, she claimed, is that Washington and its allies “seem to find it difficult to accept the obvious successes of the Russian economy, the increase in its international competitiveness and the expansion of the presence of quality Russian goods and services on world markets.” While the ruble has been hit hard by falling oil prices, geopolitical uncertainty, and the global recession that has accompanied the Covid-19 pandemic, the country appears more resilient than most of its contemporaries. While a number of other European nations are still languishing in lockdowns, most Russian businesses have been trading consistently with few restrictions since an initial strict quarantine period in the first half of last year.

The governor of Russia’s Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina, has previously said that “the economy is bouncing back rather steadily” and, “given the current positive trends,” its analysts have maintained their outlook on GDP growth for 2021 at 3 to 4%. Her bullishness comes at a time when the path back to growth appears uncertain for many countries.

Read more …

 

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Debt Rattle May 3 2021

May 032021
 
 May 3, 2021  Posted by at 8:35 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  45 Responses »


The marine and the kitten, Korean War, 1952

 

• 100 Million Americans Now Fully Vaccinated—But The Pandemic Might Continue (F.)
• Decline In US Covid Vaccinations:, But How To Shrink Operations? (G.)
• There Are THREE Studies; All Showing Serious Harms (Denninger)
• Covid-19: Discrepancy Between ‘Cases’ And ‘Illness’ (P&L)
• Factories Around The World Stand Ready To Manufacture Covid-19 Vaccines (IC)
• Fake Covid-19 Vaccination Record Cards Are A Growing Problem, Says FBI (F.)
• Powerful Teachers Union Influenced CDC On School Reopenings (NYP)
• This Inflation Will Play Out Differently From Anything Before It (Peters)
• NYT, Wapo, NBC Retract Reports About Giuliani’s Contact With FBI (Hill)
• Court: EPA Delay “Exposed A Generation Of US Children” To Chlorpyrifos (IC)

 

 

The vaccination rollout is becoming tiresome, because it breaks too many laws to keep track of. There’s the Nuremberg code, and the Helsinki Declaration, and Unesco’s Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights. They all say the same thing: people can not be coerced, let alone mandated, into being part of a medical experiment. It’s highly illegal. Yet that is what’s happening with the so-called vaccines. And no, it’s not about the level of risk involved, it’s simply illegal. These codes and declarations were written to counter the acts of totalitarian regimes, remember that.

People can not be threatened with restrictions of any kind involving travel, or work, or anything else, if they don’t comply. They must be informed fully about the dangers inherent in the experiment, and only then perhaps agree to participate in the experiment. It’s called informed consent. Which of course precludes the participation of children in such an experiment, because they can’t be expected to fully understand the information offered, even if it is offered. But we are still talking about vaccinating children. It’s astonishing.

“The Nuremberg Code requires an individual’s informed consent before receiving experimental medical interventions. And that principle is in the 1964 Helsinki Declaration, which has been codified at Federal and State level in the USA [and many other countries].”

 

 

I agree with Nancy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1388639742674227201

 

 

Gottlieb kids vaccinations

 

 

Leigh Dundas: How an attorney stopped children being vaccinated

 

 

 

How many of the 100 million were jabbed after giving their informed consent?

• 100 Million Americans Now Fully Vaccinated—But The Pandemic Might Continue (F.)

More than 100 million Americans have now been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, according to the CDC—a major milestone for the U.S. that comes well ahead of schedule—but a sudden dropoff in the vaccination rate could mean a large number of people may not ever get the vaccination, making it impossible to eradicate the virus. Around 55% of U.S. adults have now received at least one shot, meaning the number of fully vaccinated will continue to steadily rise as second doses are administered. After an initial rush for shots, vaccine demand has waned—even though all U.S. adults are now eligible to receive a Covid vaccine. The 7-day rolling average for shots administered in the U.S. has dropped below 2.5 million, according to the CDC—down significantly from a high of more than 3.2 million on April 11.

47.7%. That’s the percentage of Americans who are still unvaccinated that said they’re likely to get a shot, according to the latest Household Pulse Survey from the Census Bureau. States and localities are moving ahead with easing restrictions and lifting mask mandates, despite warnings from federal health officials that it is far too early to do so. Officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci have especially emphasized mask wearing and social distancing need to continue while indoors, as contagious new variants keep spreading. President Joe Biden initially set a goal of having 100 million shots in Americans’ arms by his 100th day in office, but the U.S. blew by that mark—more than doubling it.

Over 237 million shots have now been administered, with “fully vaccinated” being defined as two weeks after someone receives a second dose of either Pfizer or Moderna or the single-dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. With around 30% of the population fully vaccinated, the U.S. is ahead of most other major countries in terms of vaccinations, such as the U.K. (21% fully vaccinated) and France (10% fully vaccinated). Only a handful of countries are ahead, like Israel (56%) and Chile (34%). But health experts have repeatedly emphasized widespread vaccinations are the only way to end the pandemic because it will create a level of herd immunity that will end Covid’s ability to spread widely.

Read more …

“Reaching the final percentage of herd immunity,” believed to be at least 70% of all adults, “is going to be dependent on outreach and addressing any vaccine hesitancy..”

• Decline In US Covid Vaccinations:, But How To Shrink Operations? (G.)

A decline in daily Covid-19 vaccination rates has left US public health authorities with a new problem – how to effectively shrink operations. In the campaign to immunize all American adults against the coronavirus, most of the difficulties to date have involved overwhelming demand and restricted supply. Now, with less than one-third of Americans fully vaccinated, local public health authorities described a sense of whiplash as they pivot from mass vaccination clinics to outreach campaigns, all within a couple of weeks. “We knew that when folks became eligible the vaccine-ready folks, or eager, [would] come out right away,” said Mary Jo Brogna, director of nursing at Harbor Health Services, which runs a community clinic in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

“Reaching the final percentage of herd immunity,” believed to be at least 70% of all adults, “is going to be dependent on outreach and addressing any vaccine hesitancy,” said Brogna. For most of 2021, the story of the vaccine campaign has been overwhelming demand. Emergency authorities took over stadiums, big-box stores and community centers staffed with dozens of nurses and volunteers to inoculate thousands of people per day. But in the last two weeks daily vaccination rates in the US have peaked and declined from a high of 3.2m daily vaccine administrations per day to 2.5m. Now, health authorities nationally are experiencing what red states such as Mississippi and Wyoming began to see early signs of – a major slowdown.

“Across the country we started out with mass clinics and those mass clinics worked very well for the older individuals,” said Gary Edwards, executive director of the Salt Lake County health department in Utah. However, he said, “we’ve reached a point, and it’s been very interesting how quick that happened, that the mass-clinic model is not reaching the segment of the population we’re trying to reach,” said Edwards. The phenomenon is repeated across the country. Local authorities in Los Angeles, California; Colorado; Florida; Nevada and Texas are poised to close mass vaccination sites by the end of May.

Read more …

”That wild reaction your body mounts when you get said shot is “your immune system” all right — it is trying to fight off the intentionally introduced harm you foolishly took.”

• There Are THREE Studies; All Showing Serious Harms (Denninger)

As it turns out there is not just one study, or even two documenting that the “S” (spike) protein from Covid causes damage. There are now at least three with one dating back in preprint to the first week of December 2020. We start our damning review of the science here, showing direct harms from the spike protein, and which from the date proves that said direct harm was known before the first shot went into the first arm and yet was not considered by the FDA nor discussed in the media. “We show here that S protein alone can damage vascular endothelial cells (ECs) in vitro and in vivo, manifested by impaired mitochondrial function, decreased ACE2 expression and eNOS activity, and increased glycolysis. The underlying mechanism involves S protein downregulation of AMPK and upregulation of MDM2, causing ACE2 destabilization. Thus, the S protein-exerted vascular endothelial damage via ACE2 downregulation overrides the decreased virus infectivity.”

Endothelial cells line every single blood-transporting element of the body and are essential for them. Intentionally producing them via injecting a substance into the muscle, which is highly vascularized and thus results in immediate transport through the body, is thus expected to cause serious and immediate harm. That wild reaction your body mounts when you get said shot is “your immune system” all right — it is trying to fight off the intentionally introduced harm you foolishly took. Some of this damage may be permanent and involve both the lungs and heart, along with the brain and other organs. Oh, and in case you’re wondering while endothelial cells are replaced they have a quite-long lifetime; the average is more than a year so the risk involved here does not rapidly dissipate.

Again, this was known on December 4th of 2020 or before virtually anyone had received a single shot. Not one mention of it was made in the major media nor has our criminal government at all levels, federal state and local, said one word about this paper. On March 8th this paper posted: “One of the most important pathologies, is hypercoagulation and microclots in the lungs of patients. Here we study the effect of isolated SARS-CoV-2 spike protein S1 subunit as potential inflammagen sui generis. Using scanning electron and fluorescence microscopy as well as mass spectrometry, we investigate the potential of this inflammagen to interact with platelets and fibrin(ogen) directly to cause blood hypercoagulation. Using platelet poor plasma (PPP), we show that spike protein may interfere with blood flow.”

In other words the spike protein alone causes blood clotting. Yet we still have the FDA, CDC, Fauci along with the pieces of crap at places like VUMC and myriad other locations including colleges claiming “there is no evidence of serious risk of these events from the vaccines” and some have said they’re going to mandate that college students intentionally be injected with a substance that causes blood clotting in the lungs and elsewhere — now conclusively demonstrated by scientific study. In other words to attend their event or institution you must risk serious and permanent injury or DEATH by a known-dangerous injection despite the fact that for most young people, and in fact most healthy people, Covid-19 never becomes a systemic infection at all.

We know this because on March 6th a study published showing that of professional athletes who had confirmed Covid-19 and recovered: “Findings In this cross-sectional study of RTP cardiac testing performed on 789 professional athletes with COVID-19 infection, imaging evidence of inflammatory heart disease that resulted in restriction from play was identified in 5 athletes (0.6%). No adverse cardiac events occurred in the athletes who underwent cardiac screening and resumed professional sport participation. In other words by natural infection among healthy people it is very rare for there to be systemic involvement. But among those who take said shots 100% of them have systemic involvement intentionally because unlike an infection that starts in the upper respiratory tract an injection deliberately and systemically involves the entire body.

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“I’ve still yet to see any better evidence that the (vast) majority of ‘cases’ (i.e. positive PCR test results) since the summer of 2020 have been false positives.”

• Covid-19: Discrepancy Between ‘Cases’ And ‘Illness’ (P&L)

It’s been a while since we last highlighted the difference between Covid-19 ‘case’ numbers (and by extension this means also hospitalisation numbers and death numbers) and actual Covid-19 illness. The NHS pathways coronavirus triages website (see https://digital.nhs.uk/dashboards/nhs-pathways) provides an accurate representation of actual illness due to Covid-19 as it combines all 999, 111, online and ambulance calls relating to Covid-19 triages. Previous articles make clear what the caveats are. The triage data confirms the real pandemic of spring 2020. I’ve still yet to see any better evidence that the (vast) majority of ‘cases’ (i.e. positive PCR test results) since the summer of 2020 have been false positives.

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But Pfizer’s bottom line!

• Factories Around The World Stand Ready To Manufacture Covid-19 Vaccines (IC)

The Drug Industry has strenuously argued that any legal proposal to allow the sharing of intellectual property and creation of generic coronavirus vaccines is pointless because there are no facilities around the world that can be tapped. Thomas Cueni, the president of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, said that sharing IP “wouldn’t give us the tools to produce more doses of vaccines.” Bill Gates, the billionaire philanthropist whose foundations help manage the United States and Europe’s primary Covid-19 outreach efforts to the developing world, known as Covax, was even more blunt. “It’s not like there’s some idle vaccine factory, with regulatory approval, that makes magically safe vaccines,” Gates said last weekend by way of explaining to Sky News why he thought the recipe for making coronavirus vaccine should not be shared.

Except it is exactly like that. Factory owners around the globe, from Bangladesh to Canada, have said they stand ready to retrofit facilities and move forward with vaccine production if given the chance. “We have this production capacity and it’s not being used,” said John Fulton, a spokesperson for Biolyse Pharma, a company based in St. Catharines, Ontario, that produces injectable cancer treatments. Fulton noted that Biolyse has spent years buying equipment to produce biologics and is uniquely prepared to start getting ready to produce vaccines. The company, which Fulton said is best suited for replicating the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, could produce as many as 20 million vaccines per year, he estimated.

Abdul Muktadir, chair and managing director of Incepta, a pharmaceutical firm based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, has told reporters that his firm has the capacity to fill vials for 600 million to 800 million doses of vaccine per year. He has reportedly reached out to Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and Novavax. “Now is the time to use every single opportunity in every single corner of the world,” Muktadir told the Washington Post. “These companies should make deals with as many countries as possible.” Other firms in South Korea and Pakistan have also reportedly expressed an interest in producing vaccines or vaccine components.

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Unintended pun by the author:

“When the FBI gets involved, you know that the words “breaking the law” or “oh bleep” may not be too far away. “

• Fake Covid-19 Vaccination Record Cards Are A Growing Problem, Says FBI (F.)

“Fake it till you make it” can be very questionable advice. “Fake a Covid-19 vaccination card because you can’t make a vaccination appointment” can be even worse. As I have covered previously for Forbes, a Covid-19 Vaccination Record Card is currently the only real proof that you’ve received the Covid-19 vaccine. In order to get a real version of this cardboard paper card, you have to, you know, actually get the Covid-19 vaccine. So when schools, businesses, and other organizations want to determine who’s really been vaccinated, all they have to do is check for people’s vaccination record cards, because no one lies and cheats in our society, correct?

Well, as you’ve probably seen, for every rule, requirement, or standard, there’s no shortage of people who are willing to break it. Whether it’s resumes, college applications, Avengers membership cards, or pretty much anything else, you’ll find at least some people trying to fake it. So it shouldn’t be a surprise to hear that people have been circulating instructions and means to create fake Covid-19 Vaccination Record Cards. Kevin Collier and Ben Collins reported for NBC News that such instructions and templates have appeared on “pro-Trump forums, like TheDonald.win, which was rebranded to Patriots.Win”, “the extremist forum 4chan”, and “QAnon forums.” Joseph Cox wrote an article for Vice entitled, “I Bought a Fake Covid-19 Vaccine Card on Etsy,” because that’s essentially what he was able to do pretty easily.

The Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG) and the FBI have noticed that such cards have been “advertised on social media websites, as well as e-commerce platforms and blogs,” and issued a stern warning about them: “If you did not receive the vaccine, do not buy fake vaccine cards, do not make your own vaccine cards, and do not fill-in blank vaccination record cards with false information.” In this case, FBI stands for Federal Bureau of Investigation and not Fun Bits Interactive or Fungi, Bacteria, and Insects. When the FBI gets involved, you know that the words “breaking the law” or “oh bleep” may not be too far away.

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Politics 101.

• Powerful Teachers Union Influenced CDC On School Reopenings (NYP)

The American Federation of Teachers lobbied the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on, and even suggested language for, the federal agency’s school-reopening guidance released in February. The powerful teachers union’s full-court press preceded the federal agency putting the brakes on a full re-opening of in-person classrooms, emails between top CDC, AFT and White House officials show. The emails were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the conservative watchdog group Americans for Public Trust and provided to The Post. The documents show a flurry of activity between CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, her top advisors and union officials — with Biden brass being looped in at the White House — in the days before the highly-anticipated Feb. 12 announcement on school-reopening guidelines.

“Thank you again for Friday’s rich discussion about forthcoming CDC guidance and for your openness to the suggestions made by our president, Randi Weingarten, and the AFT,” wrote AFT senior director for health issues Kelly Trautner in a Feb 1 email — which described the union as the CDC’s “thought partner.” “We were able to review a copy of the draft guidance document over the weekend and were able to provide some initial feedback to several staff this morning about possible ways to strengthen the document,” Trautner continued. “… We believe our experiences on the ground can inform and enrich thinking around what is practicable and prudent in future guidance documents.”

[..] “We are immensely grateful for your genuine desire to earn our confidence and your committment to partnership,” Trautner said in another email to Walensky on Feb 3. Emails show a call between Walensky and Weingarten — the former boss of New York City’s United Federation of Teachers — was arranged for Feb 7. The lobbying paid off. In at least two instances, language “suggestions” offered by the union were adopted nearly verbatim into the final text of the CDC document. With the CDC preparing to write that schools could provide in-person instruction regardless of community spread of the virus, Trautner argued for the inclusion of a line reading “In the event of high community-transmission results from a new variant of SARS-CoV-2, a new update of these guidelines may be necessary.” That language appeared on page 22 of the final CDC guidance.

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“..all of us will begin to increasingly wonder, whether digital assets, which have no real history, no anchors, are the first to provide a glimpse of what lays beyond the horizon.”

• This Inflation Will Play Out Differently From Anything Before It (Peters)

There are more differences between the 1970s and the 2020s than there are similarities. Demographics, technology, global trade, union membership, consumption patterns, environmental stresses, geopolitics, and domestic politics are all different. There are substantial similarities too. But one thing is identical – this planet remains inhabited by humans. And we never change. We despise iniquity. When Biden entered politics in 1973, the rich/poor divide in America had halved since the late 1920s high. It has since doubled. Returning to those highs. How this inflation plays out will be different from anything that has come before it. It is always so. Naturally, some aspects will resemble the past. This inflation will inevitably be volatile, such periods of price changes typically are. And in the early stages, nearly everyone will persuade themselves that it is transitory.

In the late stages, those same people will conclude that it is permanent. Throughout the process, each of us, individually, will see what we want to see, hear what we want to hear, and believe what we want to believe. Those things are always true, perhaps now more than ever. We will also find the period ahead deeply unsettling. Change is hard to process. And more things are changing now than at any time in our lives – such is today’s utterly unprecedented pace of innovation and disruption. In such a state, it is natural to cling to our anchors:

• Our policymakers will point to the inflation metrics that they themselves have engineered in such a way to ensure stability, even if they long ago diverged from reality.
• Bond investors will look to the spreads between overnight rates and two-year bonds, five-year, ten, thirty. And despite the reality that the government has run 15% deficits for two years, funded by the Fed which simply creates the money, they will cling to the anchors that have governed the well-behaved yield curve for the course of their careers.
• Equity investors will hold tight to the relationships that anchor their value relative to bonds.
• Not a solitary investor in the mainstream will be prepared to deviate from the benchmarks to which they have anchored their careers.
]
And yet, all of us will begin to increasingly wonder, whether digital assets, which have no real history, no anchors, are the first to provide a glimpse of what lays beyond the horizon.

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They can say what they want. And so they do.

• NYT, Wapo, NBC Retract Reports About Giuliani’s Contact With FBI (Hill)

The New York Times, The Washington Post and NBC News walked back their reporting about the FBI’s communication with President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani regarding Russia. The Washington Post was the first to report on Thursday that Giuliani was warned that he was the target of a Russian influence campaign last year. The newspaper, citing people familiar with the matter, also reported that One America News Network (OANN) was given a similar warning. But the Post issued a correction on Saturday saying it had removed assertions that Giuliani and OANN had received such warnings. “An earlier version of this story, published Thursday, incorrectly reported that One America News was warned by the FBI that it was the target of a Russian influence operation,” the correction reads.

“That version also said the FBI had provided a similar warning to Rudolph W. Giuliani, which he has since disputed. This version has been corrected to remove assertions that OAN and Giuliani received the warnings,” the paper said. A spokesperson for the Post had no additional comment when reached by CNN. The New York Times similarly reported on the FBI’s contact with Giuliani. The subject of the Times article was the FBI’s investigation into Giuliani, and it stated that the firing of former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was at the center of the probe. The Times had written that Giuliani had received a “formal warning” from the FBI about Russian disinformation. The newspaper ran a correction on Saturday saying Giuliani had not received a “so-called defensive briefing.”

“An earlier version of this article misstated whether Rudolph W. Giuliani received a formal warning from the F.B.I. about Russian disinformation. Mr. Giuliani did not receive such a so-called defensive briefing,” the newspaper said. NBC, which also reported that Giuliani received a defensive briefing about the Russian influence operation in 2019, ran a correction Saturday afternoon saying the FBI only prepared a briefing. The correction came after a source said the briefing wasn’t given because of concerns that it could complicate the investigation into Giuliani.

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“After 14 years of legal battles..!!”

• Court: EPA Delay “Exposed A Generation Of US Children” To Chlorpyrifos (IC)

After 14 years of legal battles, a federal court ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to take actions that will likely force the neurotoxic pesticide chlorpyrifos off the market. The federal agency has for years been considering mounting evidence that links the pesticide to brain damage in children — including loss of IQ, learning difficulties, ADHD, and autism — but, as the court acknowledged, has repeatedly delayed taking action. “Rather than ban the pesticide or reduce the tolerances to levels that the EPA could find were reasonably certain to cause no harm, the EPA sought to evade through delay tactics its plain statutory duty,” Judge Jed S. Rakoff wrote in his decision, which was released today by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“During that time, the EPA’s egregious delay exposed a generation of American children to unsafe levels of chlorpyrifos,” he wrote, and ordered the EPA to issue a final regulation within 60 days. While Rakoff stopped short of requiring the EPA to immediately ban the pesticide, he gave the agency little choice in how to respond. “The EPA’s obligation is clear: it must modify or revoke chlorpyrifos tolerances and modify or cancel chlorpyrifos registrations,” Rakoff wrote in his ruling in the case, which was filed by Earthjustice on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Pesticide Action Network, United Farm Workers, and other groups.

The decision marks the culmination of a prolonged and bitter legal battle over one of the most widely used and dangerous pesticides in U.S. agriculture. More than 5 million pounds of chlorpyrifos were applied to crops in 2017, according to the most recent data. Exposure to the pesticide through residue on food and drift near fields where it was applied has wreaked devastation on developing children. According to a team of researchers led by Leonardo Trasande, organophosphate pesticides, of which chlorpyrifos is the most widely used, accounted for an estimated $594 billion in societal costs, including added health care and education, between 2001 and 2016.

Read more …

 

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Debt Rattle February 17 2021

Feb 172021
 
 February 17, 2021  Posted by at 10:12 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  55 Responses »


Gutzon Borglum Repairing the Face of Abraham Lincoln, Mount Rushmore 1962

 

• New French Nasal Spray Eliminates 99% Of Covid Virus (CF)
• S–t Public Defenders See: The Great Covid-19 Jury Charade (Taibbi)
• The False and Exaggerated Claims About the Capitol Riot (Greenwald)
• Trump Acquitted (Again), But Trump Hatred Continues (Ron Paul)
• Trump Cuts Ties With Giuliani (F.)
• Trump Unleashes Scathing Statement Blasting Sen. Mitch McConnell (JTN)
• Comey Told Clapper FBI Unable To ‘Sufficiently Corroborate’ Steele (JTN)
• New Comey Email Raises More Questions About Steele Dossier (Turley)
• Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson Raised $64G For Anti-Trump Film (Fox)
• Is This the Greatest Bubble of All Time? (CHS)
• Who Bought the $4.5 Trillion Added in One Year to US National Debt? (WS)
• Bayer, US Officials Pressured Mexico To Drop Glyphosate Ban (G.)

 

 

This doesn’t often happen, but it did yesterday.

 

 

Biden said some strange things last night. His comments on China and the Uighurs were very weird.

But even then Trump steals the headlights.

 

 

Problem solved?!

• New French Nasal Spray Eliminates 99% Of Covid Virus (CF)

A French pharmaceutical company has developed a nasal spray that it says could eliminate up to 99% of the Covid-19 virus, with the product set to be available to buy within weeks. French group Pharma & Beauty (P&B) has been working on the spray for almost a year. It says that according to several studies it can eliminate 99% of the viral load in nasal passages within 30 seconds and reduce the spread of the virus by up to 90%. The company is set to begin selling the product from March 1. Production is scheduled to begin next week at the P&B site in Montélimar, Drôme; and then in four other P&B factories across France.


Between 1 million-3 million bottles are expected to be available in March, followed by 13 million-15 million each month from April. Each bottle of 30ml is expected to last one month, and will be sold at €14.90 each. A statement on the P&B LinkedIn page reads: “[The spray] prevents viral spread by mechanically dislodging infectious agents in the nasal cavity, and facilitating their evacuation – and locally reduces the viral load.” The spray is 40% ionised water with high antimicrobial properties and 60% purified water.

Read more …

Curious consequences: “This left a lot of people who had not even been convicted of a crime but couldn’t afford bail in a purgatory-like state of open-ended detention.

• S–t Public Defenders See: The Great Covid-19 Jury Charade (Taibbi)

When the world ground to a halt a year ago thanks to Covid-19, Americans quickly worried over the important questions. Will we still get to go to basketball games? Will McDonald’s only be Drive-Thru now? Do manicurists deliver? The parts of the country that were already out of sight to most receded further from view. Covid-19 struck at the elderly in rest homes, but the population that took perhaps the toughest hit was behind bars. By June, the rate of infection in America’s jails and prisons was seven times that of the general population. By this month, 612,000 cases had been reported in correctional facilities, with at least 2,700 deaths among prisoners and corrections officials.

In news reports, we mostly read that prosecutors and corrections officials were trying to find ways to reduce the risk of disease both in jails and in court, another institution that traditionally required people to congregate indoors. Many districts suspended jury trials indefinitely, a serious problem for those awaiting trial, and one that raised a question: if officials were too worried about the safety of jurors to schedule trials, what did that mean for grand juries? In other words, was the pandemic too dangerous for speedy trial rights, but not dangerous enough to slow indictments? Were there places where jury trials were canceled, but grand juries were not? In some select jurisdictions across the country, the answer appeared — and appears — to be yes.

“It highlights the way in which the pandemic is being used selectively,” says Scott Hechinger of Zealous, a national public defender advocacy organization. “In some places it’s used to perpetuate the system, in some places, to make it worse.” The significance of jury trials is obvious. Defendants have a right to them, and they also have a constitutional right to a speedy trial, i.e. the government is not allowed to charge a person and leave them under suspicion indefinitely. Cases must be adjudicated in a reasonable period of time. In some jurisdictions, the satisfaction of speedy trial rights means getting a defendant to trial within a concrete number of days, though the calculation is often complicated.

During the pandemic, however, jury trials were suspended in many jurisdictions. In some of those places, it was understood that speedy trial rights simply had to be put on hold until officials could, as Donald Trump would say, figure out what the hell is going on. This left a lot of people who had not even been convicted of a crime but couldn’t afford bail in a purgatory-like state of open-ended detention.

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Did they apologize? Or is that not done anymore in 2021?

• The False and Exaggerated Claims About the Capitol Riot (Greenwald)

What took place at the Capitol on January 6 was undoubtedly a politically motivated riot. As such, it should not be controversial to regard it as a dangerous episode. Any time force or violence is introduced into what ought to be the peaceful resolution of political conflicts, it should be lamented and condemned. But none of that justifies lying about what happened that day, especially by the news media. Condemning that riot does not allow, let alone require, echoing false claims in order to render the event more menacing and serious than it actually was. There is no circumstance or motive that justifies the dissemination of false claims by journalists. The more consequential the event, the less justified, and more harmful, serial journalistic falsehoods are.

Yet this is exactly what has happened, and continues to happen, since that riot almost seven weeks ago. And anyone who tries to correct these falsehoods is instantly attacked with the cynical accusation that if you want only truthful reporting about what happened, then you’re trying to “minimize” what happened and are likely an apologist for if not a full-fledged supporter of the protesters themselves.

One of the most significant of these falsehoods was the tale — endorsed over and over without any caveats by the media for more than a month — that Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick was murdered by the pro-Trump mob when they beat him to death with a fire extinguisher. That claim was first published by The New York Times on January 8 in an article headlined “Capitol Police Officer Dies From Injuries in Pro-Trump Rampage.” It cited “two [anonymous] law enforcement officials” to claim that Sicknick died “with the mob rampaging through the halls of Congress” and after he “was struck with a fire extinguisher.” A second New York Times article from later that day — bearing the more dramatic headline: “He Dreamed of Being a Police Officer, Then Was Killed by a Pro-Trump Mob” — elaborated on that story:

After publication of these two articles, this horrifying story about a pro-Trump mob beating a police officer to death with a fire extinguisher was repeated over and over, by multiple journalists on television, in print, and on social media. It became arguably the single most-emphasized and known story of this event, and understandably so — it was a savage and barbaric act that resulted in the harrowing killing by a pro-Trump mob of a young Capitol police officer.


It took on such importance for a clear reason: Sicknick’s death was the only example the media had of the pro-Trump mob deliberately killing anyone. In a January 11 article detailing the five people who died on the day of the Capitol protest, the New York Times again told the Sicknick story: “Law enforcement officials said he had been ‘physically engaging with protesters’ and was struck in the head with a fire extinguisher.”

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“Without the Chief Justice, there was no Constitutional impeachment trial. So they put on a show trial instead.”

• Trump Acquitted (Again), But Trump Hatred Continues (Ron Paul)

Last week’s second impeachment trial of former President Trump should serve as a warning that something is very wrong in US politics. Far from a measured, well-investigated, rock-solid case against the former president, America was again abused with day after day of character assassination, innuendo, false claims, and even falsified “evidence.” The trial wasn’t intended to win a conviction of Trump for “incitement” because the Democrats already knew that the votes were not there. So, just as with the last impeachment trial, the goal was to fling as much dirt at Donald Trump as they could while the cameras were rolling. Their hatred of Donald Trump is so deep and visceral that probably a psychologist would have been more beneficial to them than yet another impeachment trial.

It would be incorrect to say that the House managers’ case fell apart, because they had no case to begin with. They never had a case because they made no effort to develop a case. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court saw from the beginning that this was no legitimate impeachment trial and informed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that he would not preside. Without the Chief Justice, there was no Constitutional impeachment trial. So they put on a show trial instead. As Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley kept asking, why didn’t the House schedule a single hearing to investigate what really happened up to and on the day of the Capitol melee on January 6th? They had weeks to do so. Professor Turley believes they might even have been able to make a decent case if they had tried.

Why did they not call witnesses? Were there no rioters who could be called to explain under oath how Trump’s speech had inspired them to enter the Capitol building to overturn the election? Were they afraid that under cross-examination we might have found out more about Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows’ claim that Trump offered to deploy 10,000 National Guard troops in Washington before January 6th but that his offer was rebuked? What about reports that Capitol Hill Police were left without back-up and unprepared for what happened? House and Senate leadership is responsible for security at the Capitol and they obviously failed. Why?

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Can Michael van der Veen handle this one too?

• Trump Cuts Ties With Giuliani (F.)

Attorney Rudy Giuliani is “not currently” representing former President Donald Trump “in any legal matters,” Trump advisor Jason Miller said in a statement Tuesday, as the ex-president’s former personal lawyer faces multiple lawsuits against him for his role in Trump’s effort to overturn the presidential election results. Miller’s statement was in response to a lawsuit filed Tuesday against Trump, Giuliani and two far-right groups, which alleges the president and his lawyer violated the Ku Klux Klan Act in their attempt to stop the election results from being certified by Congress. Giuliani served as Trump’s personal attorney throughout his presidency and most recently helmed the president’s unsuccessful attempt to challenge the election results in court, including appearing on Trump’s behalf in a Pennsylvania case.


The former mayor said he did not represent Trump in his Senate impeachment trial—despite a willingness to do so—because he was a “witness” in the case and gave a speech at the rally that preceded Trump supporters’ seizure of the U.S. Capitol building. Giuliani has been sued for defamation twice in recent weeks for spreading unsubstantiated election fraud claims involving voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic. He is also reportedly under federal investigation by the Southern District of New York for his business dealings in Ukraine, and an ethics complaint has been filed that seeks to disbar Giuliani in New York.

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Power struggle: “Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack..”

• Trump Unleashes Scathing Statement Blasting Sen. Mitch McConnell (JTN)

Former President Donald Trump issued a scathing statement on Tuesday in which he excoriated Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “The Republican Party can never again be respected or strong with political ‘leaders’ like Sen. Mitch McConnell at its helm,” Trump said in the fiery statement. “McConnell’s dedication to business as usual, status quo policies, together with his lack of political insight, wisdom, skill, and personality, has rapidly driven him from Majority Leader to Minority Leader, and it will only get worse. The Democrats and Chuck Schumer play McConnell like a fiddle—they’ve never had it so good—and they want to keep it that way! We know our America First agenda is a winner, not McConnell’s Beltway First agenda or Biden’s America Last.”

“Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again,” the former president said elsewhere in his statement. “He will never do what needs to be done, or what is right for our Country. Where necessary and appropriate, I will back primary rivals who espouse Making America Great Again and our policy of America First. We want brilliant, strong, thoughtful, and compassionate leadership.” The nation’s 45th commander-in-chief also attacked Republicans Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and the Peach State’s GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in the statement.

“Many Republicans in Georgia voted Democrat, or just didn’t vote, because of their anguish at their inept Governor, Brian Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and the Republican Party, for not doing its job on Election Integrity during the 2020 Presidential race,” Trump said. “It was a complete election disaster in Georgia, and certain other swing states. McConnell did nothing, and will never do what needs to be done in order to secure a fair and just electoral system into the future. He doesn’t have what it takes, never did, and never will,” Trump declared.

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In a functioning society, there would be an investigation.

• Comey Told Clapper FBI Unable To ‘Sufficiently Corroborate’ Steele (JTN)

The very day in January 2017 that then-FBI Director James Comey signed a FISA surveillance warrant application declaring content from Christopher Steele’s dossier had been “verified,” he wrote President Obama’s outgoing intelligence community chief with a very different assessment of the British spy’s intelligence on Russia collusion, a newly released memo shows. “We are not able to sufficiently corroborate the reporting,” Comey wrote in a Jan. 12, 2017 email to then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper that was declassified and made public through an open records lawsuit by the Southeastern Legal Foundation. The memo recounts an internal debate inside the U.S. intelligence community during one of the most delicate moments in the FBI’s then six-month old Crossfire Hurricane probe.

CIA officials had already informed Comey’s FBI that the target of the FISA warrant, Carter Page, wasn’t a Russian spy but rather an asset helping U.S. intelligence. The bureau had received warnings about Steele and the reliability of his source network, including that it might have been compromised by Russian disinformation. Agents had also just recommended on Jan. 4, 2017 shutting down the probe’s inquiry into incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn for lack of evidence. The FBI had been warned the previous summer that Hillary Clinton’s campaign may have planted the false Russia collusion story as a way to “vilify” Trump and distract from her email scandal, and agents were about to interview Steele’s primary sub-source, who would discount much of the information in the dossier attributed to him as bar talk and unconfirmed rumor not worthy of official intelligence.

And the larger intelligence community had decided it did not want to vouch for the Steele dossier in its official Intelligence Community Assessment about Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election. It was in that environment in the final days of the Obama administration that Clapper had written Comey earlier on Jan. 12, 2017 to inform the FBI that Clapper had decided to release a public statement declaring that the Steele dossier was only mentioned in an appendix to the intel community’s report because the “IC has not made any judgment that the information in the document is reliable.” Comey tried to push back, suggesting Steele was deemed reliable (he actually had been terminated by the FBI for leaking by that time) and that his network included sources that might be in a position to know things (although the key source had already disavowed the information attributed to him in the dossier).

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“Comey signed a statement to the secret court that the information was “verified” on the same day that he admitted to Clapper that “We are not able to sufficiently corroborate the reporting.”

• New Comey Email Raises More Questions About Steele Dossier (Turley)

Justthenews has released a previously undisclosed email from former FBI Director James Comey that raises additional questions about his role in using the now discredited Steele dossier as part of the FBI Russian investigation. The email on Jan. 12, 2017 email to then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper falsely claims that Christopher Steele was found to be “reliable” but then states that the FBI could not “sufficiently corroborate the reporting.” The email went out the same day that Comey signed a FISA surveillance warrant application declaring that content from Christopher Steele’s dossier had been “verified.” We are still waiting for the results of the John Durham investigation but this email raised additional questions about Comey’s role.

Comey has testified that he would not have approved such surveillance if he knew then what he knew now about the Steele dossier. Comey signed a statement to the secret court that the information was “verified” on the same day that he admitted to Clapper that “We are not able to sufficiently corroborate the reporting.” Yet, he also did not tell Clapper what the FBI had already knew about Steele and Carter Page. While Comey later insisted that he was unaware of basic information, he was signing applications for secret surveillance and advising Clapper without either confirming or disclosing information. The CIA had already told the FBI that Page was a U.S. intelligence asset, not a Russian spy. It had also been warned that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was trying to plant a false Russian collusion story in the media.(The Clinton campaign and its attorney Marc Elias had reportedly denied that the campaign funded the dossier until after the election)

It was also told that Steele’s primary source was a suspected Russian agent and that is network was compromised by Russian intelligence. Steele had also been reportedly terminated by the FBI as a source because of his efforts to plant stories in the media. Comey mentioned none of this and instead cautioned Clapper against a statement saying that there was no judgment on the reliability of the Steele dossier. He was opposed to a public statement declaring that the Steele dossier was only mentioned in an appendix to the intel community’s report because the “IC has not made any judgment that the information in the document is reliable.” Comey insisted her was reliable:

“I just had a chance to review the proposed talking points on this for today. Perhaps it is a nit, but I worry that it may not be best to say ‘the IC has not made any judgment that the information in the document is reliable.’ I say that because we HAVE concluded that the source is reliable and has a track record with us of reporting reliable information; we have some visibility into his source network, some of which we have determined to be sub-sources in a position to report on such things; and much of what he reports in the current document is consistent with and corroborative of other reporting included in the body of the main IC report.” So Comey worked to preserve the public narrative in support of the Steele dossier, which was being widely disseminated and fueled what was later found to be an unsupported conspiracy theory. He did so while admitting later “That said, we are not able to sufficiently corroborate the reporting to include it in the body of the report.”

Read more …

“The GoFundMe page initially claimed the feature-length documentary would premiere in January 2018.”

• Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson Raised $64G For Anti-Trump Film (Fox)

Rick Wilson, co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project PAC, raised nearly $65,000 for a film called “Everything Trump Touches Dies” that has yet to be released. Wilson raised $64,766 from around 1,400 donors for the film – based on his book under the same title – on the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe, though donations have since been paused for the project. The GoFundMe page initially claimed the feature-length documentary would premiere in January 2018. But a January 2018 update from Wilson said filmmakers were still working on its “first round of interviews” and asked people to give more money to the project.

“Team Trump won’t like this, but we’re in the home stretch in this fundraising effort for [the film],” Wilson wrote. “Your support is more vital and appreciated than ever.”Wilson provided no updates for nearly two months, when he said in March 2018 that the film was in “final production” and again asked for more money. Nearly a year later in February 2019, Wilson insisted that the project was “still happening” and that he needed to “expand the scope of the project to truly tell the story.” “We will endeavor to keep our community more informed as the project goes forward,” he wrote, but no update has been posted to the page since then. [..] Ben Howe, who is listed as the project’s director and producer, told Fox News Tuesday that the film is still in production.

“Delays have caused issues, the primary one in the last year being the difficulty of filming the remaining interviews with location shooting being so limited due to quarantine,” Howe said, “An issue that’s affecting filming across all film-related industries – including Hollywood – so certainly not limited to this.” “The issue now is that, in almost every way imaginable, the world looks very different than when Rick first asked me to direct,” Howe continued. “So, what an interviewee might’ve offered as analysis at the end of 2019 is almost certainly different today and that has to be accommodated for the film to offer any value.”

Read more …

GBOAT.

• Is This the Greatest Bubble of All Time? (CHS)

[..] what’s the greatest bubble of all time (GBOAT)? The easiest way to measure speculative bubbles is the starting price and the peak price, but that may not do justice to the question. Perhaps the number of people drawn into the speculative frenzy is a better measure of GBOAT: after all, if only a handful of speculators lose their shirts, how that can be the greatest bubble of all time? To even qualify, a bubble must drawn the masses into the euphoria and then slaughter them as mercilessly as Hammurabi massacred the goat profiteers. Another qualifying factor is the scale of disconnect from reality. Even if you overpaid for a goat in a speculative mania, at least you can still milk the goat and make cheese. But tulips, which drove the remarkably excessive speculative Tulip Mania in 1636 Holland, are not even edible.

At least tulips offer a bit of beauty in a world besmirched by speculative ugliness, but the shares of the South Seas Company that sucked in the best and brightest in 1720 Britain and proceeded to lay waste to their wealth did not even have that saving grace. Another qualifying factor is the power of the delusion driving the bubble. To qualify as a contender for GBOAT, the mania has to be utterly convincing and persuasive to everyone involved. In other words, it isn’t even speculation to invest all your money in the bubble, it’s simply common sense due to the dead certainty of the proposition fueling the mania.

The 1999-2000 Dot-Com Bubble is a good example of the universality of belief in the obviousness of the gains to be reaped: the Internet was changing the world and would expand for decades, so obviously the companies involved would grow for decades, too, as would their profits (obviously!). The chart of the dot-com bubble offers a textbook example of how a bubble gathers momentum, spikes to insane heights, falters as the smart money exits but soars to a lower high as true believers buy the dip. Once the buying is exhausted, the bubble collapses back to its starting level.

But not all bubbles follow this trajectory. Here is a current chart of IWM, the Russell 2000 index, courtesy of NorthmanTrader.com. (I added the black box and the red line in the center panel to indicate the previous bubble top.) The violence and amplitude of this speculative mania over the past year makes the dot-com bubble appear quaintly staid in comparison.

So let’s make the case that we’re experiencing the greatest bubble of all time in real time. The magnitude of the price movement is extreme: check. The number of people sucked into the mania is extreme: check. The power of the delusion is extreme: check. (The Fed will print trillions forever, federal government will borrow and blow trillions forever, the world is about to enter Roaring 20s, technology is changing the world, etc. etc. etc.) The gains to be reaped are extremely obvious: check.

Read more …

Much more in the article.

• Who Bought the $4.5 Trillion Added in One Year to US National Debt? (WS)

Driven by stimulus and bailouts, and fired up by the tax cuts and by grease and pork, the Incredibly Spiking US National Debt has skyrocketed by $4.55 trillion in 12 months, to $27.86 trillion, after having already spiked by $1.4 trillion in the prior 12 months, which had been the Good Times. These trillions are all Treasury securities that form the US national debt, and someone had to buy every single one of these securities:

So we’ll piece together who bought those trillions of dollars in Treasury Securities that have whooshed by over the past 12 months. Tuesday afternoon, the Treasury Department released the Treasury International Capital data through December 31 which shows the foreign holders of the US debt. From the Fed’s balance sheet, we can see what the Fed bought. From the Federal Reserve Board of Governors bank balance-sheet data, we can see what the banks bought. And from the Treasury Department’s data on Treasury securities, we can see what US government entities bought. In the fourth quarter, foreign central banks, foreign government entities, and foreign private-sector entities such as companies, banks, bond funds, and individuals, reduced their holdings by $35 billion from the third quarter, to $7.04 trillion. This was still up from a year ago by $192 billion (blue line, right scale in the chart below). But their share of the Incredibly Spiking US National Debt fell to 25.4%, the lowest since 2007 (red line, right scale):

Japan (blue line), the largest foreign creditor of the US, reduced its holdings in Q4 by $20 billion, to $1.26 trillion. But compared to a year earlier, its holdings were still up by $102 billion. China (red line) continued on trend, gradually reducing its holdings. In Q4, its holdings ticked down just a tad, and over the 12-month period fell by $8 billion, to $1.06 trillion:

[..] All these holders of the monstrous US Treasury debt, combined into one mountain, and color-coded for your amusement by category of holder as of December 31:

Read more …

Go AMLO!

• Bayer, US Officials Pressured Mexico To Drop Glyphosate Ban (G.)

Internal government emails reveal Monsanto owner Bayer AG and industry lobbyist CropLife America have been working closely with US officials to pressure Mexico into abandoning its intended ban on glyphosate, a pesticide linked to cancer that is the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weed killers. The moves to protect glyphosate shipments to Mexico have played out over the last 18 months, a period in which Bayer was negotiating an $11bn settlement of legal claims brought by people in the US who say they developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma due to exposure to the company’s glyphosate-based products.

The pressure on Mexico is similar to actions Bayer and chemical industry lobbyists took to kill a glyphosate ban planned by Thailand in 2019. Thailand officials had also cited concerns for public health in seeking to ban the weed killer, but reversed course after US threats about trade disruption. So far the collaborative campaign to get the Mexican government to reverse its policy does not appear to be working.

The Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has given farmers until 2024 to stop using glyphosate. On 31 December, the country published a “final decree” calling not only for the end of the use of glyphosate but also a phase-out of the planting and consumption of genetically engineered corn, which farmers often spray with glyphosate, a practice that often leaves residues of the pesticide in finished food products. The moves are for the “purpose of contributing to food security and sovereignty” and “the health of Mexican men and women”, according to the Mexican government. But Mexico’s concern for the health of its citizens has triggered fear in the United States for the health of agricultural exports, especially Bayer’s glyphosate products.

Read more …

 

 

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Babylon Bee Wheel of Science

 

 

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Debt Rattle November 26 2020

Nov 262020
 
 November 26, 2020  Posted by at 10:14 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  17 Responses »


JMW Turner Lake Llanberis and Snowdon Color Study c.1800

 

• Pa. Commonwealth Court Orders Halt To Certification Process (PG)
• Sidney Powell Sues Georgia Officials: ‘Massive Scheme To Rig Election’ (JTN)
• Giuliani, Trump Pull Off ‘One Hell Of A Hearing’ On PA Election Fraud (ZH)
• Trump Pardons Ex-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn (JTN)
• Supreme Court Strikes Down Cuomo’s COVID Restrictions On Religious Services
• Should COVID19 Vaccines Be Mandatory? (Conv.)
• Cuba Could be on the Brink of a Revolutionary COVID Vaccine (MPN)
• WHO Names Line-up For International Team Looking Into Coronavirus Origins (SCMP)
• EU Parliament Votes Against Referring to Julian Assange in Rights Report (Sp.)

 

 


If the same percentage of votes were rejected as in 2016, Trump would win

 

 

A man does not yield when the mere universe has turned against him; he yields when his own heart has turned against him. We surrender, not when circumstances are miserable, but when we are miserable.

– G. K. Chesterton

 

 

Let the chips fall where they may.

• Pa. Commonwealth Court Orders Halt To Certification Process (PG)

Pennsylvania is prohibited from certifying the rest of its election results in down ballot races — and from taking any further action in regards to yesterday’s certification of the presidential race — pending a hearing on Friday in an appellate court, or intervention by the state Supreme Court. The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, in an order signed by Judge Patricia McCullough, issued an injunction Wednesday that stops the state from continuing its certification, and intends to hear evidence in a case filed by U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly and GOP congressional candidate Sean Parnell about the constitutionality of mail-in ballots. Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, Gov. Tom Wolf and the state — named as defendants in the suit — appealed the Commonwealth Court order to the state Supreme Court.

As it stands now, the hearing in Commonwealth Court is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. Friday. The state certified the results in the race for president on Tuesday, giving its 20 electoral votes to Democrat Joe Biden and his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris. The court order said the state is prohibited from acting “to the extent that there remains any further action to perfect the certification of the results” of the races for president and vice president. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro wrote on Twitter that the order “does not impact yesterday’s appointment of electors.” In their suit, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Parnell are arguing that state lawmakers violated Pennsylvania’s Constitution by adopting Act 77 last year, which expanded the mail-in balloting option to let all qualified voters to vote by mail without an excuse.

They allege that absentee voting — which required an excuse from a set of allowed reasons — was rebranded as no-excuse mail-in voting “absent any constitutional authority.” The Republican-controlled state Legislature responded, in legal filings, that the case should be dismissed because Act 77 didn’t alter the requirements of who constitutes a qualified voter, and that the Legislature is constitutionally authorized to prescribe the method by which those electors may cast their votes.

Read more …

And now you need evidence.

• Sidney Powell Sues Georgia Officials: ‘Massive Scheme To Rig Election’ (JTN)

Prominent defense attorney Sidney Powell sued Georgia’s top officials late Wednesday, alleging in federal court that the GOP-run state government permitted a massive voter fraud scheme that rigged the Nov. 3 election in favor of Democrat Joe Biden. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta on behalf of several Georgia residents, electors and Republican Party officials and named Gov. Brian Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and state election board members as defendants. The 104-page complaint asked the court to issue an injunction “prohibiting the Governor and Secretary of State from transmitting the currently certified results to the Electoral College based on the overwhelming evidence of election tampering.”

“The fraud was executed by many means, but the most fundamentally troubling, insidious, and egregious is the systemic adaptation of old-fashioned ‘ballot-stuffing,'” Powell’s suit alleged. “It has now been amplified and rendered virtually invisible by computer software created and run by domestic and foreign actors for that very purpose. Mathematical and statistical anomalies rising to the level of impossibilities, as shown by affidavits of multiple witnesses, documentation, and expert testimony evince this scheme across the state of Georgia. “This scheme and artifice to defraud affected tens of thousands of votes in Georgia alone and ‘rigged’ the election in Georgia for Joe Biden,” the suit added.

Powell’s suit made a variety of allegations, including that:

• At least 96,600 absentee ballots were requested and counted but were never recorded as being returned to county election boards by the voter. “Thus, at a minimum, 96,600 votes must be disregarded,” the suit said.
• Kemp and Raffensperger “rushed through the purchase of Dominion voting machines and software in 2019 for the 2020 Presidential Election” without due diligence and disregarded safety concerns.
• “There is incontrovertible physical evidence that the standards of physical security of the voting machines and the software were breached, and machines were connected to the internet in violation of professional standards and state and federal laws.”
• Fulton County election workers used a claim of a water leak to evacuate poll watchers and workers for several hours on Election night, even as “several election workers remained unsupervised and unchallenged working at the computers for the voting tabulation machines until after 1:00 AM.
• State officials in a settlement with Democratic parties made changes to election procedures that violated both state law and the U.S. Constitution.

Strenstrom Missing USB cards
https://twitter.com/i/status/1331678008210464768

Read more …

Quite the video footage.

• Giuliani, Trump Pull Off ‘One Hell Of A Hearing’ On PA Election Fraud (ZH)

Upon the request of Pennsylvania Senator Doug Mastriano (R), the state’s Senate Majority Policy Committee is holding a public hearing to discuss election issues and irregularities at 12:30 ET. Former NYC Mayor and current Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani will appear. President Trump was slated to join him, only to cancel following adviser Boris Epshteyn’s Covid-19 diagnosis.

[..] President Trump joined the PA hearing by phone and was immediately on the offense, saying that “this is an election we won easily. We won it by a lot. This election has to be turned around.” “What we saw on November 3rd was not the United States of America. Democrats cheated. It was a fraudulent election. It would be very easy for me to wait 4 years and try again. We can’t wait for 4 years. Don’t be intimidated by these people. They don’t love our country!” “They kept poll watchers in pens in Philadelphia and then they threw them out of the building. You couldn’t see a thing on those cameras. They could have been playing a baseball game.”

“It’s a disgrace this is happening to our country. We got 11 million more votes than we did 4 years ago. At 10pm in the evening we were way ahead. Everybody knows we won it. The whole world is watching us. We can’t let them get away with this. We have more votes than voters!” Trump ends his remarks by telling Giuliani over speakerphone: “This is going to be your crowning achievement because you’re saving our country.”

Read more …

Pardoned against his will. But the court case would never have finished, so he’s relieved all the same.

• Trump Pardons Ex-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn (JTN)

President Trump on Wednesday fully pardoned his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, bringing to end a tumultuous four-year criminal case that felled the three-star general before prosecutors reversed course and declared they had improperly pursued his prosecution. Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about talking with a Russian diplomat during the 2016 Trump administration transition period. Attorney General William Barr earlier this year asked a federal court in Washington, D.C., to allow the Justice Department to drop the case. However, the matter has since been tied up in legal proceedings.

Trump informed the general and his lawyer Sidney Powell of the decision Wednesday afternoon, ahead of Thanksgiving Day. Flynn was elated by the news and the two men talked “like they had never missed a day since the campaign or early White House days,” an eyewitness told Just the News. Trump announced the news on his Twitter page. “It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon. Congratulations to @GenFlynn, and his wonderful family, I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving!” he tweeted. Sidney Powell, the defense lawyer who doggedly sought to prove Flynn’s innocence post conviction, applauded the decision, suggesting it was necessary because the U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan had refused to dismiss the lying charge, even after DOJ pleaded it be done.

“The pardon of Michael Flynn is solely up to the President, but given the corruption we have witnessed in the judiciary and multiple agencies of government executed against General Flynn, this persecution should end,” she said. “The FBI and DOJ have been a national embarrassment for more than 15 years. It was my fervent hope to make our judicial system work to exonerate an innocent man–as all the Left would want were he anyone but Trump or Michael Flynn, but enough is enough. This is sick. It’s painfully obvious Judge Sullivan is playing an evil political game with a good man’s life and family. The entire country deserves better.”

Read more …

“But even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten.”

• Supreme Court Strikes Down Cuomo’s COVID Restrictions On Religious Services

The Supreme Court late Wednesday struck down New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s new COVID-19 restrictions on religious gatherings, as new Justice Amy Coney Barrett cast one of her first high-impact votes and Chief Justice John Roberts sided in dissent with the court’s liberal bloc. In a 5-4 decision, the court said Cuomo’s restrictions violated the Constitution’s First Amendment right to freedom of worship and granted an injunction barring the rules from being enforced. “Members of this Court are not public health experts, and we should respect the judgment of those with special expertise and responsibility in this area,” the majority opinion said. “But even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten. The restrictions at issue here, by effectively barring many from attending religious services, strike at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty.”


Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a separate opinion siding with the conservative majority, saying churches and synagogues were treated differently than commercial institutions by the state. “It is time — past time — to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues, and mosques,” Gorsuch argued. Roberts’ dissenting opinion accused the court of acting irrationally and disregarding the public health expertise of the state. “It is a significant matter to override determinations made by public health officials concerning what is necessary for public safety in the midst of a deadly pandemic,” he wrote.

Read more …

A for vs against discussion. Here’s the against part.

• Should COVID19 Vaccines Be Mandatory? (Conv.)

Mandatory vaccination does not automatically increase vaccine uptake. An EU-funded project on epidemics and pandemics, which took place several years before COVID-19, found no evidence to support this notion. Looking at Baltic and Scandinavian countries, the project’s report noted that countries “where a vaccination is mandatory do not usually reach better coverage than neighbour or similar countries where there is no legal obligation”. According to the Nuffield Council of Bioethics, mandatory vaccination may be justified for highly contagious and serious diseases. But although contagious, Public Health England does not classify COVID-19 as a high-consequence infectious disease due to its relatively low case fatality rate.

COVID-19 severity is strongly linked with age, dividing individual perceptions of vulnerability within populations. The death rate is estimated at 7.8% in people aged over 80, but at just 0.0016% in children aged nine and under. In a liberal democracy, forcing the vaccination of millions of young and healthy citizens who perceive themselves to be at an acceptably low risk from COVID-19 will be ethically disputed and is politically risky. Public apprehensions for a novel vaccine produced at breakneck speed are wholly legitimate. A UK survey of 70,000 people found 49% were “very likely” to get a COVID-19 vaccine once available. US surveys are similar. This is not because the majority are anti-vaxxers.

Despite promising headlines, the trials and pharmaceutical processes surrounding them have not yet been scrutinised. With the first trials only beginning in April, there is limited data on long-term safety and efficacy. We don’t know how long immunity lasts for. None of the trials were designed to tell us if the vaccine prevents serious disease or virus transmission. To disregard these ubiquitous concerns would be counterproductive. As a tool for combating anti-vaxxers – estimated at around 58 million globally and making up a small minority of those not getting vaccinated – mandatory vaccines are also problematic. The forces driving scientific and political populism are the same. Anti-vaxxers do not trust experts, industry and especially not the government. A government mandate will not just be met with unshakeable defiance, but will also be weaponised to recruit others to the anti-vaxxer cause.

Read more …

“Cuban immunization developments are being seriously hamstrung by the actions of the U.S. government, primarily due to the decades-long blockade on the island..”

• Cuba Could be on the Brink of a Revolutionary COVID Vaccine (MPN)

Cuba has announced positive and promising results for a number of separate COVID-19 vaccines it is currently developing, but U.S. sanctions against the small island nation are hampering the development and rollout of the potentially life-saving treatments. Two candidates, named Sovereign 1 and Sovereign 2, have generated antibodies blocking infection in animals and are showing similarly encouraging signs on tests on human subjects. Meanwhile, a separate vaccine, based on a protein from the hepatitis B virus, is unique in that it is delivered through the nasal tract and does not require a needle to administer.

Should any of these efforts ultimately succeed, the Caribbean nation — already a medical powerhouse that has developed a lung cancer vaccine and methods to stop mother-to-baby HIV and syphilis transmission— will likely become an important supplier to other Latin American and developing countries who have been effectively shut out from purchasing COVID vaccines from Western companies, as rich nations have already begun hoarding coronavirus medicines. Dr. Helen Yaffe of Glasgow University, author of “We Are Cuba!: How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World,” was impressed and heartened by the news, telling MintPress:

“Cuba now has four COVID-specific vaccine candidates under clinical trial. The fact that a small Caribbean island can achieve such a remarkable feat is testimony to its state-owned biotech sector, which is directed towards public health demands and integrated into its healthcare and education systems. After years of being told that only the market can lead to efficiency and innovation, Cuba’s socialist planned economy demonstrates what is possible when there is political will, good coordination, organization and the priority of social welfare.”

However, Cuban immunization developments are being seriously hamstrung by the actions of the U.S. government, primarily due to the decades-long blockade on the island, something which the Cuban government estimates has cost it over 750 billion U.S. dollars. As Reuters reported, cash-strapped Cuba cannot afford to buy the raw materials necessary to upscale its vaccine development to help other countries. Hospitals face huge obstacles importing lifesaving equipment from abroad due to the blockade, while the sanctions force the country, which imports the large majority of its staples, to spend far more on food than other nations. As a result, almost one third of young children suffer from anemia due to the monotonous and sub-par nutrition available, according to the World Food Program.

Read more …

The WHO continues to play a debatable role.

• WHO Names Line-up For International Team Looking Into Coronavirus Origins (SCMP)

The World Health Organization has named the scientists on an international team tracing the origins of the new coronavirus, as their mission gathers steam some 11 months after the virus was identified. The 10-person team includes public health experts, animal health specialists and virus hunters from Japan, Qatar, Germany, Vietnam, Russia, Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Britain and the United States. They will work alongside Chinese scientists on a set of investigations into how the virus that causes Covid-19 emerged and spilled over into humans, triggering a pandemic that has now claimed over 1.4 million lives.

The WHO on Monday said the names of the international team members had been shared with member states and released online, despite concerns about harassment given that the virus origins have become a highly contentious subject. “There has been a level of attack and abuse to people involved in international science. It is not an easy space to be in right now and let me be plain about that,” said Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme. He pointed to hate mail and threats within a climate of “anti-science movements” and “ideologic politics”. “We would like to thank them for their openness and transparency and for allowing us to release their names. That’s not an easy choice,” he said at a news briefing.

[..] One hanging question is when the international team will join field studies on the ground in China, considered a critical part of the mission, which was called for by over 130 nations at a May meeting of the WHO’s governing body.
Ryan on Monday said they “fully expect” the international team will be on the ground for this work, and they would like the scientists to be “deployed as soon as possible”. “We have reassurances from our Chinese government colleagues that … a field part of the mission will be facilitated as soon as possible, in order that the international community can be reassured of the quality of the science,” he said.

Read more …

Cowards.

• EU Parliament Votes Against Referring to Julian Assange in Rights Report (Sp.)

Any mention of the prosecution of Julian Assange has been removed from the EU’s latest report on fundamental rights, despite the best efforts of MEPs such as Ireland’s Clare Daly. The European Parliament passed the final version of the fundamental rights report for 2018 – 2019 on 25 November, excluding any mention of imprisoned publisher and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. An amendment to include reference to Mr Assange lost with 408 votes against its inclusion, 191 votes in favour and 93 abstentions. Chris Williamson, a former Labour MP and long-time supporter of Mr Assange, lamented the final vote, saying:

“This is a sad day for European democracy, freedom of speech and human rights. The European Parliament has failed to live up to its rhetoric about standing for fundamental rights. It has shown itself to be nothing more than a paper tiger that is content with being the US administration’s poodle”. The original draft of the fundamental rights report contained a passage saying that “the detention and criminal prosecution of Julian Assange sets a dangerous precedent for journalists as affirmed by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe” But, according to Irish MEP Clare Daly, a committee of European parliamentarians made up of the European People’s Party (EPP), the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) and the Renew Europe party voted to remove the passage from the report, on 23 November.

The Left group of MEPs (European United Left/Nordic Green Left) and Ms Daly, who was actually in charge of preparing the original draft report, lobbied heavily for the passage to be returned into the final draft. In a video published on 23 November, Ms Daly called upon EU citizens to contact their MEPs and push them to reinsert the paragraph mentioning Mr Assange, via Amendment 44, in their final vote. “I believe that no report on the situation of fundamental rights in the European Union could possibly be taken seriously if it fails to mention the Trump administration’s radical and dangerous prosecution of a journalist for important journalism that was carried out in the European Union”, Ms Daley said in her message.

Read more …

 

 

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Click at the top of the sidebars for Paypal and Patreon donations. Thank you for your support.

 

 

Maradona

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle November 23 2020

Nov 232020
 
 November 23, 2020  Posted by at 10:29 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  20 Responses »


Egon Schiele Port of Trieste 1907

 

 

Don’t miss the update on our support for the Monastiraki social kitchen in Athens.. And please consider donating to our efforts for this Christmas season.

 

 

 

• US, Germany, UK Could Start COVID Vaccinations As Early As December (G.)
• AstraZeneca’s COVID19 Vaccine Shows Average Efficiency Of 70% (RT)
• Most Coronavirus Cases Are Spread By People Without Symptoms – CDC (CNN)
• WHO Envoy Predicts Third Wave Of COVID19 In Europe Next Year (RT)
• Portuguese Court: PCR Tests “Unreliable” & Quarantines “Unlawful” (OffG)
• Rudy Giuliani: Sidney Powell Not Part Of Trump Legal Team (JTN)
• Michael Flynn Jr. on Trump Team’s Sidney Powell Statement (GP)
• Nunes Claims Obama Is Joe Biden’s ‘Overlord’, Calls For Special Counsel (DM)
• Taxpayers Face $435 Billion in Student-Loan Losses Already Baked In (WS)
• China Daily Paid US Newspapers Millions To Publish Propaganda This Year (DC)
• The US Has Withdrawn From The Treaty On Open Skies (JTN)

 

 

Save a puppy

 

 

But will it all take a whole year?

• US, Germany, UK Could Start COVID Vaccinations As Early As December (G.)

As G20 leaders pledged to ensure the equitable distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, drugs and tests so that poorer countries are not left out, the US, UK and Germany each announced plans to begin vaccinations in their countries in December, while Spain said it would start administering the vaccine to its citizens in January. Britain could give regulatory approval to Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine as early as this week, even before the US authorises it, the UK’s Telegraph newspaper reported on Sunday. Pfizer and BioNTech could secure emergency US and European authorisation for their Covid-19 vaccine next month after final trial results showed a 95% success rate and no serious side effects. Moderna last week released preliminary data for its vaccine showing 94.5% effectiveness.


The better-than-expected results from the two vaccines, both developed with new messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, have raised hopes of an easing of a pandemic that has killed more than 1.3 million people. In the US, the head of the US vaccine program, Moncef Slaoui, said the first Americans to receive a vaccine could get it as soon as 11 December, CNN reported on Sunday. “Our plan is to be able to ship vaccines to the immunisation sites within 24 hours from the approval, so I expect maybe on day two after approval on the 11th or the 12th of December,” he said in an interview to CNN. Citing government sources, the Telegraph also said the UK’s National Health Service had been told to be ready to administer it by 1 December. Britain formally asked its medical regulator, the MHRA, last week to assess the suitability of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Read more …

That’s not very high. How about the Russian vaccine?

• AstraZeneca’s COVID19 Vaccine Shows Average Efficiency Of 70% (RT)

The coronavirus vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and drug maker AstraZeneca has shown an average efficiency of 70 percent, depending on dosage, the partners said as they announced clinical trial results. The developers revealed the preliminary results on Monday, following trials conducted in the UK and Brazil. Depending on the dosage, the vaccine showed varying efficiency of up to 90 percent, while the Pfizer vaccine is 95 percent effective and Russia’s Sputnik V is 92 percent effective. “One dosing regimen showed vaccine efficacy of 90 percent when AZD1222 was given as a half dose, followed by a full dose at least one month apart, and another dosing regimen showed 62 percent efficacy when given as two full doses at least one month apart,” the AstraZeneca developers said in a statement, adding, “analysis from both dosing regimens resulted in an average efficacy of 70 percent.”


AstraZeneca’s CEO Pascal Soriot said the vaccine’s “efficacy and safety” showed it will be highly effective against the coronavirus and it will have an “immediate impact” on the Covid-19 crisis. The announcement was welcomed by UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock who said the preliminary trial results were “fantastic news.” “These figures … shows that the vaccine in the right dosage can be up to 90 percent effective,” he told Sky News. “We’ve got 100 million doses on order and should all that go well, the bulk of the rollout will be in the new year.”

Read more …

Confusion over droplets vs arerosols.

Most COVID transmission by people without symptoms
– Ppl w/o symptoms don’t cough and sneeze much
– When talking, aerosols dominate over droplets by x100-2000
– Surfaces transmit inefficiently (per CDC)

• Most Coronavirus Cases Are Spread By People Without Symptoms – CDC (CNN)

Most coronavirus infections are spread by people who have no symptoms, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in newly updated guidance. It’s one of the main reasons mask use is so important, the CDC said. “Most SARS-CoV-2 infections are spread by people without symptoms,” the agency said in a section of its website devoted to explaining the science of how to use masks to control the spread of the virus. “CDC and others estimate that more than 50% of all infections are transmitted from people who are not exhibiting symptoms,” it added in the guidance posted Friday. “This means at least half of new infections come from people likely unaware they are infectious to others.”


According to the CDC, 24% of people who transmit the virus to others never develop symptoms and another 35% were pre-symptomatic. It also said 41% infected others while experiencing symptoms. Peak infectiousness comes five days after infection, the agency said on the website. “With these assumptions, 59% of infections would be transmitted when no symptoms are present but could range (from) 51%-70% if the fraction of asymptomatic infections were 24%-30% and peak infectiousness ranged 4-6 days.” It cited a study published in July in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and as-yet unpublished CDC data. Previously, the health organization has not characterized what percentage of infections are spread by symptomless people. “Infection is spread primarily through exposure to respiratory droplets exhaled by infected people when they breathe, talk, cough, sneeze, or sing,” the agency added.

Read more …

WHO still not in favor of lockdowns. But that falls on deaf ears.

• WHO Envoy Predicts Third Wave Of COVID19 In Europe Next Year (RT)

With Europe already suffering a second wave of coronavirus infections, World Health Organization envoy David Nabarro has warned that the region could see another spike in infections next year In an interview on Saturday with Swiss newspaper Solothurner Zeitung, Nabarro said that European governments failed to build up the “necessary infrastructure” to keep the virus under control after the first wave of infections this spring. Now we have the second wave. If they don’t build the necessary infrastructure, we’ll have a third wave early next year. Infections are once again surging throughout Europe, after a lull this summer.


France and Germany recorded some 33,000 new cases combined on Saturday, while the UK reported nearly 20,000 cases on the same day, and Spain announced more than 15,000 on Friday. Deaths remain proportionally lower throughout Europe than during the first wave, however. Despite Nabarro’s stark prediction, the WHO has cautioned against responding too heavy-handedly to the pandemic. In a briefing on Thursday, the organization’s European director, Hans Kluge, called for “systematic and general mask-wearing” and “strict controls on social gatherings,” but described national lockdowns as a “last resort” policy.

Read more …

“The reddit Covid19 board actually removed the post, because it was “not a reliable source”, despite relying on the official court documents.”

• Portuguese Court: PCR Tests “Unreliable” & Quarantines “Unlawful” (OffG)

An appeals court in Portugal has ruled that the PCR process is not a reliable test for Sars-Cov-2, and therefore any enforced quarantine based on those test results is unlawful. Further, the ruling suggested that any forced quarantine applied to healthy people could be a violation of their fundamental right to liberty. Most importantly, the judges ruled that a single positive PCR test cannot be used as an effective diagnosis of infection. The specifics of the case concern four tourists entering the country from Germany – all of whom are anonymous in the transcript of the case – who were quarantined by the regional health authority. Of the four, only one had tested positive for the virus, whilst the other three were deemed simply of “high infection risk” based on proximity to the positive individual.

All four had, in the previous 72 hours, tested negative for the virus before departing from Germany. In their ruling, judges Margarida Ramos de Almeida and Ana Paramés referred to several scientific studies. Most notably this study by Jaafar et al., which found that – when running PCR tests with 35 cycles or more – the accuracy dropped to 3%, meaning up to 97% of positive results could be false positives. The ruling goes on to conclude that, based on the science they read, any PCR test using over 25 cycles is totally unreliable. Governments and private labs have been very tight-lipped about the exact number of cycles they run when PCR testing, but it is known to sometimes be as high as 45. Even fearmonger-in-chief Anthony Fauci has publicly stated anything over 35 is totally unusable.

[..] The media reaction to this case has been entirely predictable – they have not mentioned it. At all. Anywhere. Ever. The ruling was published on November 11th, and has been referenced by many alt-news sites since…but the mainstream outlets are maintaining a complete blackout on it. The reddit Covid19 board actually removed the post, because it was “not a reliable source”, despite relying on the official court documents.

Read more …

Looks a bit sloppy.

• Rudy Giuliani: Sidney Powell Not Part Of Trump Legal Team (JTN)

Rudy Giuliani, the lead attorney for President Trump’s election challenges, and Trump Campaign Senior Legal Adviser Jenna Ellis said Sunday that high-profile attorney Sidney Powell does not work for the president personally or for his campaign. “Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own,” the statement from Giuliani and Ellis said. “She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team. She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity.” Powell on Thursday spoke during a press conference where Giuliani and Ellis also spoke. “I look forward to Mayor Giuliani spearheading the legal effort to defend OUR RIGHT to FREE and FAIR ELECTIONS!” President Trump tweeted on November 14. “Rudy Giuliani, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis, a truly great team, added to our other wonderful lawyers and representatives!”

Powell, who has alleged that massive corruption occurred during the 2020 election, said during an interview on Newsmax that a “biblical” filing is forthcoming regarding the state of Georgia. “Georgia is extremely bad,” Powell said. “We’ve got ballots being shredded, ballots being thrown out in trash bags…the votes being switched, the algorithms being run: You name the manner of fraud and it occurred in Georgia,” she said. While media outlets have projected Joe Biden to be the winner of the 2020 presidential contest, President Trump has not conceded and has made allegations of election fraud.

The Peach State is “probably gonna be the first state I’m gonna blow up,” Powell said, remarking that “Mr. Kemp and the secretary of state need to go with it because they’re in on the Dominon scam with their last minute purchase or award of a contract to Dominon of $100 million dollars. The state bureau of investigation for Georgia oughta be looking into the financial benefits received by Mr. Kemp and the secretary of state’s family about that time.”

Read more …

She was suspended by Twitter too.

• Michael Flynn Jr. on Trump Team’s Sidney Powell Statement (GP)

As we suspected, the news this evening about Sidney Powell not being on the Trump team is an act to protect Sidney and the Trump team and not a message of disappointment in her latest interviews and actions at all. The Trump campaign issued a statement Sunday night announcing Sidney Powell is not a member of President Trump’s legal team. The statement was posted online by campaign attorney Jenna Ellis on behalf of lead campaign attorney Rudy Giuliani. Powell had appeared at a campaign legal team press conference earlier this week alongside Giuliani and Ellis. Statement:

Attorney Sidney Powell was not able to respond tonight. Sidney was censored and suspended by Twitter earlier today. Mike Flynn, Jr. released a statement tonight.

Sidney released a statement to CBS News. She signed off — #KrakenOnSteroids

General Michael Flynn’s son, Mike Jr., followed up with a message tonight on Parler noting that the earlier message from the President’s team is not a reflection of any misstatements on Sidney’s part:

Read more …

‘President Obama is the only president that I know that only moved about a mile from the White House – set up shop, has all his people there..’

• Nunes Claims Obama Is Joe Biden’s ‘Overlord’, Calls For Special Counsel (DM)

Rep. Devin Nunes has claimed former President Barack Obama is President-elect Joe Biden’s ‘overlord’ and called for a special counsel to take over the investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe. Nunes, a California Republican and staunch ally of President Donald Trump, appeared on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures in an interview with host Maria Bartiromo. ‘President Obama is the only president that I know that only moved about a mile from the White House – set up shop, has all his people there,’ Nunes said, referring to the Obama family’s rented mansion in Washington DC. ‘Most of his people were promoting Kamala Harris to run before she bombed out, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars, and then they propped up Joe Biden,’ Nunes claimed.

Later in the interview, Nunes referred to Obama as Biden’s ‘overlord.’ Nunes also called on Attorney General Bill Barr to appoint a special counsel to take over U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation into potential malfeasance in the Russian collusion investigation. ‘Now we’re sitting waiting for Durham to complete this investigation. I think people are getting not only very frustrated but also, there’s a growing concern that Durham is not going to come out with anything and then Biden and Obama are going to be back in, and they’re going to shut this investigation off,’ Nunes said. Durham was appointed by Barr more than a year and a half ago to investigate any misconduct by the FBI and others others related to the inquiry into links between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

So far, Durham’s investigation has secured one guilty plea from a former FBI lawyer, who admitted to doctoring a document used to obtain surveillance warrants on a Trump campaign aide. Trump has raged that the Russian collusion probe, which cast a shadow over much of his presidency, was a ‘failed coup,’ and expressed fury that Durham did not issue more indictments prior to the November election. Nunes said that he feared Biden’s administration would shut down the Durham probe before it could be concluded. ‘I’ve been very clear about this,’ the congressman said. ‘Every day that ticks by, it’s going to become an absolute necessity that a special counsel is appointed on the way out.’

‘Now that doesn’t mean that Biden wouldn’t fire the special counsel, but at least you’d have a special counsel office set up, with money, so that this investigation can continue, because I’m not seeing the indictments that I should be seeing when you take into the account that I’ve made 14 criminal referrals involving dozens and dozens of people,’ he continued.

Read more …

“Most of the losses would come from the already established income-based repayment programs and the debt forgiveness at the end of their term.”

• Taxpayers Face $435 Billion in Student-Loan Losses Already Baked In (WS)

In 2009, the US government entered the business of reckless, no-matter-what lending to students, even to older students with subprime credit ratings and to students at iffy for-profit colleges with dubious degree programs. And then tuition soared, and student housing went upscale and became a global asset class with its own commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) that are now experiencing record delinquency rates. And Apple and textbook publishers and everyone began feeding at the big trough, with students just being the conduit for this money. Student-loan balances on the government’s financial statement skyrocketed from $147 billion in 2009 to $1.37 trillion at the beginning of 2020, despite the 11% decline in student enrollment since 2011.


Taxpayers face a loss of $435 billion on the $1.37 trillion in student loans on the government’s financial statement at the beginning of this year, even if no additional loans are issued going forward, according to an internal study by the Department of Education, reported by the Wall Street Journal which reviewed the documents. Most of the losses would come from the already established income-based repayment programs and the debt forgiveness at the end of their term. The expected loss of $435 billion is far larger than the rosy estimates released previously, including the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate in May 2019 of a loss of $31 billion, including administrative costs. The student loan balances in the chart above do not include student loans carried by private lenders that are guaranteed by the US government and that will produce additional losses for taxpayers.

Read more …

Is this legal?

• China Daily Paid US Newspapers Millions To Publish Propaganda This Year (DC)

An English-language newspaper controlled by the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda department paid U.S. media companies nearly $2 million for printing and advertising expenses over the past six months, even amid heightened scrutiny over Beijing’s disinformation efforts in the West. China Daily paid The Wall Street Journal more than $85,000 and the Los Angeles Times $340,000 for advertising campaigns between May and October 2020, according to a disclosure that the propaganda mill filed this week with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). China Daily also paid Foreign Policy magazine $100,000, The Financial Times, a U.K.-based newspaper, $223,710, and $132,046 to the Canadian outlet Globe & Mail for advertising campaigns, according to the filing.


The Beijing-based outlet paid several newspaper companies a total of $1,154,666 for printing costs, including $110,000 to the Los Angeles Times, $92,000 to The Houston Chronicle and $76,000 to The Boston Globe. Overall, China Daily spent more than $4.4 million on printing, distribution, advertising and administration expenses over the past six months, according to the FARA filing. China Daily, which is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party’s State Council Information Office, its propaganda agency, has for years paid newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and other Western countries to publish advertorials designed to look like legitimate news articles. China Daily paid The Washington Post more than $4.6 million from late 2016 through October 2019, according to a FARA disclosure China Daily filed in June. The Journal received $6 million for advertorials from 2016 through April 2020, according to the disclosure.

Read more …

RussiaRussia.

• The US Has Withdrawn From The Treaty On Open Skies (JTN)

The U.S. departed the Treaty on Open Skies on Sunday, following an announcement earlier this year that the nation planned to withdraw from the treaty. “On May 22, 2020, the United States exercised its right pursuant to paragraph 2 of Article XV of the Treaty on Open Skies by providing notice to the Treaty Depositaries and to all States Parties of its decision to withdraw from the Treaty, effective six months from the notification date,” a press statement from the State Department’s Cale Brown notes. “Six months having elapsed, the U.S. withdrawal took effect on November 22, 2020, and the United States is no longer a State Party to the Treaty on Open Skies.”


In a statement earlier this year, Secretary of State Mike Pompo accused Russia of violating the treaty. “While the United States along with our Allies and partners that are States Parties to the Treaty have lived up to our commitments and obligations under the Treaty, Russia has flagrantly and continuously violated the Treaty in various ways for years,” Pompeo said. “This is not a story exclusive to just the Treaty on Open Skies, unfortunately, for Russia has been a serial violator of many of its arms control obligations and commitments.”

Read more …

 

 

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Debt Rattle November 22 2020

Nov 222020
 
 November 22, 2020  Posted by at 10:12 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  24 Responses »


William Blake Europe Supported by Africa and America 1796

 

 

 

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• Pennsylvania Judge Throws Out Trump Campaign Lawsuit (ZH)
• Chicago Election Board Gave Dominion Complete Access for 2020 Election (NF)
• Dominion Transferring Vote Ratios between Precincts in PA (Rumble)
• Request To Declare Mail-In Voting Unconstitutional In PA (CBS)
• Do Trump Supporters Live in an Alternate Universe? (Bryce Buchanan)
• Biden’s Deep State (Brown)
• Biden Advisors Promise Smarter, More Secretive Permanent War Policy (GZ)
• FDA Emergency Approval For COVID19 Antibody Serum Used To Treat Trump (JTN)

 

 

Glenn Beck Sidney Powell

 

 

 

 

Steve Cortes

 

 

Going through the motions?!

• Pennsylvania Judge Throws Out Trump Campaign Lawsuit (ZH)

A federal judge on Saturday dismissed the Trump campaign’s lawsuit in Pennsylvania seeking to invalidate millions of votes, rejecting the “startling” request due to a lack of evidence and ruling that the state can move forward with certifying its election results. U.S. Middle District Judge Matthew Brann, an Obama appointee, ruled that the campaign presented “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations” that were “unsupported by evidence.” The ruling is a major blow to the Trump campaign’s efforts to overturn election results, with Biden leading Trump by more than 81,000 votes in Pennsylvania.

“In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more,” the judge wrote. Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani personally argued against the state’s motion to dismiss before Brann on Tuesday, arguing that the commonwealth should not certify its results and making claims of a vast Democratic conspiracy to steal the election. In reaching his conclusion, Brann said the campaign was not “formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption” needed to win such a case.

“This court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence,” the judge wrote. The suit’s core claim was that certain Democratic-led counties had more lenient rules in accepting “defective” ballots or letting voters “cure” such ballots than Republican-led ones, which the campaign claimed violated the Constitution’s due process and equal protection guarantees. The state denied those claims and also said the campaign’s proposed remedy of disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters was implausible.

Read more …

Votes: very clever young man
https://twitter.com/i/status/1329935870691069955

• Chicago Election Board Gave Dominion Complete Access for 2020 Election (NF)

As the nation is focused on the lack of system security in the 2020 General Election, now comes news that not only did Dominion Voting Systems have access to the entirety of the Chicago voting system and database, they had that access for over half a year. In a March 2020 video of an emergency meeting of the Chicago Election Board (CEB), that body approved a motion to provide Dominion Voting Systems the right and capability to remotely access their machines in an administrative role during the 2020 election. Eric Coomer, the Director of Product Strategy & Security for Dominion Voting Systems, was a full participant on the call suggesting that, from the start, Dominion was the one running the elections in Chicago, the thirds-largest city in the United States and one that glows cobalt blue in its politics.

According to the Chicago Tribune, the votes in Chicago went lopsided toward Democrat presidential hopeful Joe Biden. Biden received 74.34 percent of the vote with 1,714,792 ballots cast in his name, to President Trump’s 24.06 percent with 555,001 ballots cast in his name. The video, titled “Chicago Election Board – Emergency Meeting – 2020-03-19” and available on YouTube, finds Dominion Voting executives Coomer and Nicole Nollette, Executive Vice President of Dominion Voting Systems on the call. In the meeting the CEB approves allowing election personnel, including Dominion Voting System contractors, to telework and “work from home” – or work remotely – due to the COVID emergency. This move by the CEB allowed Dominion Voting Systems contractor personnel, including election systems administrators and technicians from Dominion, full remote access to Chicago’s election systems, files, and databases from anywhere at any time.

Dominion Voting Systems administrators had free, open, and unfettered access to Chicago’s election systems, files, and data for 7-1/2 months prior to the election. They had full access to all voter registration information poll books, requests for absentee ballots, voter mailout lists, and virtually everything related to elections. If Chicago’s election results were invalidated because of vote fraud and ballot manipulation, Biden’s total of 3,450,333 votes in Illinois would be reduced to 1,735,541 while President Trump’s total of 2,434,252 votes in that state would be reduced to 1,879,251. President Trump would win Illinois’ 20 Electoral College votes by 143,710 votes, a comfortable margin.

Now This voting machines hacked
https://twitter.com/i/status/1330303845096951810

Read more …

If it can be done, it will be done.

• Dominion Transferring Vote Ratios between Precincts in PA (Rumble)

In this video you will see data from the NYT feed from PA on November fourth. In this data, particular vote ratios are transferred between random sets of seized precincts throughout the day. A total of nine exhibits are presented in this video, but there are in fact several hundred of these precincts seizures and ratio transfers on the day of November 4th alone, and the same ratios continue to be transferred for several more days within the overall dataset spanning an entire week. Original data sets: https://gofile.io/d/qZcQl6. “The Dominion System isolated a “Flip Set” from the expected vote count and the expected percentage.


It then splices the Flip Set into multiple “ratio sets” and assigns them to precincts throughout the day. Once a particular “ratio set” receives the votes it needed, it releases that set, and then Dominion injects it into the city wide count. To hide it’s trail, Dominion reassigns the same “ratio set” to different (random) precincts throughout the day, so that the same precinct doesn’t keep getting the exact same ratio (or the same set of precincts). During a particular period of time while a precinct is selected, it gives Trumps an EXACT NUMBER of votes, it gives Biden a MINIMUM number of votes, and splits the small remainder to a third party or to Biden (via random assignment).

Read more …

Would also need the Supreme Court.

• Request To Declare Mail-In Voting Unconstitutional In PA (CBS)

Congressman Mike Kelly and congressional candidate Sean Parnell are requesting the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania to declare universal mail-in voting unconstitutional in the state and deny the votes of the majority of Pennsylvanians who voted by mail in the Nov. 3 election. In the official request, the plaintiffs specifically cite issue with Act 77 and its “universal mail-in ballot provisions.” They allege that the provisions that allow all qualified electors to vote by mail in Pennsylvania are unconstitutional. As such, they are calling for mail-in ballots that they allege do not meet “Constitutional requirements” to not be certified and for only “legal votes” to be certified or for the Pennsylvania General Assembly to choose the electors and compensate the legal costs of the plaintiffs. Both Kelly and Parnell are registered Republicans.

Read more …

How the media splits the nation.

• Do Trump Supporters Live in an Alternate Universe? (Bryce Buchanan)


It is instructive to make a list of ‘Things That Are True’, as asserted by the leftist media and contrast it with the ‘Delusions’ that are commonly held by the foolish Trump supporters. In the list below, “T” indicates the certainly ‘True Things’, as reported by the very wise people in leftist media. “D” indicates the ‘Delusions’ held by the Trump supporters, who “are not able to differentiate between fantasy and reality.”

The List:
T: This was a very clean and honest election. There is no evidence of fraud. Claims to the contrary are baseless conspiracy theories.
D: There is massive evidence of election fraud of every type, including programmed computer cheating, dead people voting, and massive dumps of Biden votes in the middle of the night. There is also extremely strong statistical evidence of vote total manipulation.

T: Biden is “President Elect” because the news media have declared that to be the case. He will be the next President, and there is no room at all for dispute about that fact.
D: The media do not determine who is President. The next President will be determined when he has enough certified and unchallenged votes. We are nowhere near that point.

T: The story about Hunter Biden’s laptop is “Russian disinformation”. It’s designed to make you think Joe Biden did something wrong, but Joe doesn’t do things that are wrong. Joe will bring integrity back to the White House.
D: The laptop belongs to Hunter Biden. Russia has nothing at all to do with it. There is a massive amount of information on the laptop demonstrating schemes to enrich the Biden family by selling influence. Tony Bobulinski, worked closely with the Bidens to set up some of the questionable transactions. Tony met with Joe and said Joe was fully onboard with these business plans. Joe got a percentage of the foreign money. Hunter made deals with high ranking Chinese communists, plus lucrative deals with several other countries. Joe is thoroughly compromised. The way that the MSM and all of social media worked to hide this story is shocking.

T: President Obama set a good example of peaceful transition of power. He did everything he could to help President Trump.
D: President Obama, and ‘dirty cops’ at the head of his intelligence and law enforcement agencies planned and orchestrated a plan to damage the incoming President. “The Resistance” has continued to this day. Trump has never had a single day when he was not under attack by these forces.

T: Trump and his supporters are white supremacists. Trump said the white supremacists in Charlottesville were “good people”. He seems unwilling to condemn them. Trumps desire to protect our southern border proves that he is racist. His desire to ban all Muslims from the country proves that he is a bigot.
D: Biden started his campaign with the Charlottesville lie and he repeated it often. He once told a black audience that Republicans wanted “to put y’all back in chains”. He works hard to keep blacks on the Democrat Voting Plantation, even going so far as to telling a black person, “you ain’t black” if you don’t vote for Joe. Trump condemned white supremacists in Charlottesville and has done so many times since then. Borders are not racist. Countries have borders. Trump did not ban Muslims. He wanted to restrict entry from a few pro-Jihadist countries.

Read more …

Victoria Nuland!

• Biden’s Deep State (Brown)

Philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote about the banality of evil, and there’s never been a more banal bunch than the foreign policy and security state crew Barak Obama surrounded himself with for eight years beside the possible exception of Bush’s own Neocons. Now after three years screaming about “Russian collusion” it appears the Evil Empire is about to regain its lost ground, championing new wars and more interventionist expansionism with a much greater role for the US military in the world. Let’s name names.

Pentagon For the defense chief post, the Washington Post has portrayed the banal face of Michele Flournoy as the pick to ‘restore stability’ to the Pentagon, an entirely false assertion. Recall that Fluornoy promotes unilateral global US military intervention, and advocated the destruction of Libya in 2011. By the military-industrial revolving door, Flournoy enabled many Corporate weaponry contracts amounting to tens of millions. Likewise Fluornoy is on the Booz-Hamilton board, where the swamp cannot get any deeper. As if this wretched example of an agent-provocateur for war and destruction were not bad enough, Biden is reportedly considering Lockheed-Martin banal kingpin Jeh Johnson for the DoD position, too.

Lockheed director Johnson was employed by Rob Reiner and Atlantic editor arch-Neocon David Frum to run the Committee to Investigate Russia which mysteriously blew up as soon as the Mueller Report was released. Jeh Johnson has continued to warn of “Russian interference” in the US presidential election until now. Biden’s anointing as president-elect has ended that. As Homeland Security head, Johnson authorized cages for holding immigrant children. He also supported the assassination of General Suleimani, and has voiced support for US wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

State From Libya to Syria, Yemen, Ukraine and beyond, the banality of evil is perhaps best personified by Susan Rice – apparently Biden’s premiere pick for Secretary. Rice was an abject failure at the United Nations, but all seems forgiven, probably at the behest of Biden’s donors. After her failure at the UN, Obama kicked Rice upstairs to be his National Security Advisor, a position that does not require Senate approval. An obvious war hawk in the mold of the Democrat’s donor class, a Rice appointment could reinforce the liberal mantra that women can be just as good at interventionism as men, and ensure full re-establishment of the Neoliberal agenda in Washington. John Kerry has been flagged as a potential for State (again) too, but at age 77 and subsequent to the failure of the JCPOA Kerry is an unlikely pick.

Another potential pick among the banal Daughters of Darkness is Victoria Kagan-Nuland, architect of the 2014 debacle in Ukraine (among other things). Outed at State in an embarrassing act of what she called impressive statecraft and other embarrassing incidents, Nuland seems an unlikely choice. But Kagan-Nuland is as banal as banal can be, and Biden may somehow wish to reinforce his solidarity with the JTF and his donor class, on Israel.

Read more …

More Deep State.

• Biden Advisors Promise Smarter, More Secretive Permanent War Policy (GZ)

Throughout his campaign, Joe Biden railed against Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ foreign policy, claiming it weakened the United States and left the world in disarray. “Donald Trump’s brand of ‘America First has too often led to America alone,” Biden proclaimed. He pledged to reverse this decline and recover the damage Trump did to America’s reputation. While Donald Trump called to make America Great Again, Biden seeks to Make the American Empire Great Again. Joe Biden: “Tonight, the whole world is watching America. And I believe at our best, America is a beacon for the globe. We will lead not only by the example of our power, but by the power of our example.”

Among the president-elect’s pledges is to end the so-called forever wars – the decades-long imperial projects in Afghanistan and Iraq that began under the Bush administration. “It’s long past time we end the forever wars which have cost us untold blood and treasure,” Biden has said. Yet Biden – a fervent supporter of those wars – will delegate that duty to the most neoconservative elements of the Democratic Party and ideologues of permanent war. Michele Flournoy and Tony Blinken sit atop Biden’s thousands-strong foreign policy brain trust and have played central roles in every U.S. war dating back to the Bill Clinton administration. During the Trump era, they’ve cashed in through WestExec Advisors – a corporate consulting firm that has become home for Obama administration officials awaiting a return to government.

Flournoy is Biden’s leading pick for Secretary of Defense and Blinken is expected to be the president’s National Security Advisor. Since the 1990s, Flournoy and Blinken have steadily risen through the ranks of the military-industrial complex, shuffling back and forth between the Pentagon and hawkish think-tanks funded by the U.S. government, weapons companies, and oil giants. Under Bill Clinton, Flournoy was the principal author of the 1996 Quadrinellial Defense Review, the document that outlined the U.S. military’s doctrine of permanent war – what it called “full spectrum dominance.” Flournoy called for “unilateral use of military power” to ensure “uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources.”

As Bush administration officials lied to the world about Saddam Hussein’s supposed WMD’s, Flournoy remarked that “In some cases, preemptive strikes against an adversary’s [weapons of mass destruction] capabilities may be the best or only option we have to avert a catastrophic attack against the United States.”

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What’s the cost?

• FDA Emergency Approval For COVID19 Antibody Serum Used To Treat Trump (JTN)

The Food and Drug Administration on Saturday evening gave emergency approval for a COVID-19 antibody treatment used to treat President Trump. Regeron’s antibody serum was authorized for treating mild to moderate coronavirus in adults, as well as children 12 years or older who have a high risk of progressing to severe disease. Regeron applied for emergency FDA approval in October after Trump praised the treatment in a Twitter video.
The FDA earlier this month also issued an emergency use authorization for another COVID-19 antibody treatment made by Eli Lilly.

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“Hope” is the thing with feathers

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.

– Emily Dickinson

 

 

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