May 102023
 


Vincent van Gogh Stairway at Auvers 1890

 

Ukraine’s Future Lies in the Great Reset (Pabst)
Any Ideology of Superiority Is Criminal – Putin (TASS)
Globalist Elites Provoke Bloody Conflicts And Coups – Putin (RT)
UN Chief Says Peace Talks Between Ukraine And Russia Impossible Now (RT)
UN Skeptical About China Helping To End Ukraine Conflict (RT)
‘All’ NATO Members Support Ukraine Membership – Stoltenberg (RT)
Can BRICS Save Argentina From Disaster? (Vargas)
“We’re Back”: Tucker Carlson Moves Show To Twitter (ZH)
Journalists-on-Journalists Crime (Patrick Lawrence)
War for Profit: A Very Short History (Brad Wolf)
Jury Rejects Rape Claim Against Trump But Finds Liable For ‘Sexual Abuse’ (ZH)
If Hunter Is Indicted (Lipson)
House Committee Prepares to Hold Blinken in Contempt (Turley)
Australian Lawmakers Call On US To Drop Assange Extradition Bid (RT)
Why the Release of Julian Assange Is Crucial for Our Future (Scheidler)

 

 

JFK WWII
https://twitter.com/i/status/1656006128722141185

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1656072328277573634

 

 

The power of propaganda.

 

KJP
https://twitter.com/i/status/1656000904959791104

 

 

Zel cartoon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1655688459590172674

 

 

Trunews

 

 

Note: he doesn’t confirm anything.

 

 

 

 

It’s all a literally bloody experiment.

Ukraine’s Future Lies in the Great Reset (Pabst)

“Ukraine 2030 — the freest and most digital country in the world. Without bureaucracy, but with strong tech industry. Cashless & paperless. This is the future we are building.” These were the words of Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov, who posted a glossy video showcasing Ukraine’s sci-fi-esque future to Twitter. The video boasts of Ukraine’s plans (after its victory over Russia, of course!) to become the “freest and most convenient country in the next 10 years.” In this theoretical scenario, Ukraine is “the first country to abandon paper money,” tele-health and tele-education programs abound, courts’ decisions are guided by artificial intelligence, and cities can even defend themselves with an “ultra-modern iron dome.”

But the juxtaposition between the video’s boasts and Ukraine’s dire reality on the ground grows more uncanny by the day.November 2022 reports quietly admitted that roughly 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed or wounded in action, and apparently leaked documents from April 2023 exposed Ukraine’s especially weak wartime positioning, where Ukrainian casualties outnumber those of the Russians four to one. Meanwhile, complaints of low ammunition — with Ukraine running through ammo faster than the US and NATO can replace it — run amok, and in Bakhmut’s “meat-grinder,” the estimated lifespan of Ukrainian soldiers in battle was reported as being a grim four hours in late February. Meanwhile, millions of Ukrainians have fled home as sky-high inflation rates and energy prices have slashed living standards in Europe and internationally.

But as the war drudges on, Ukrainian officials have zeroed in on the conflict’s alleged “silver linings,” bragging about the new technological developments and investment possibilities that have surfaced during the conflict, such as Ukraine’s “state in a smartphone” Diia app, the e-hryvnia, mounting technological capabilities spurred by corporate war-time involvement in Ukraine, a further crystallization of the public-private partnership as a civil society instrument, and Ukraine’s budding “green” revolution, which is slated to blossom during its prospective elite-backed reconstruction. While these and other initiatives taking place as part of Ukraine’s war-time and reconstruction efforts are being done in the name of modernization, convenience, and democracy, these efforts instead contribute to a technological and political terrain that is conducive to depriving the civilians of Ukraine, and all nations, of their sovereignty, privacy, and dignity.

As I illustrate in this investigative piece, such efforts are part of the larger drive towards the related phenomena of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, today’s technological revolution that blurs the physical, digital, and biological spheres, and the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset, an elite-driven initiative to establish Klaus Schwab’s vision of stakeholder capitalism, where corporations are positioned as “trustees of society” to address the world’s economic and social woes.

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“..in essence, a system of robbery, violence and oppression.”

Any Ideology of Superiority Is Criminal – Putin (TASS)

Any superiority ideology is, by definition, repulsive, deadly, and criminal, Russian President Vladimir Putin said during the Victory Day parade on the Red Square on Tuesday. “We believe that any ideology of superiority is inherently disgusting, criminal, and deadly,” he said. At the same time, Putin added that Western elites “still talk about their exclusivity, put people against each other and divide society, provoke bloody conflicts and coups, sow hatred, Russophobia, aggressive nationalism, destroy those family, traditional values that make humans human.” All this, he said, is done in order “to continue dictating, imposing their will, rights and rules on the peoples – in essence, a system of robbery, violence and oppression.” “They seem to have forgotten what the Nazis’ insane claims to world domination led to,” the president added. “They have forgotten who defeated this monstrous, total evil, who stood as a wall for their homeland and did not spare their lives for the liberation of the peoples of Europe,” he said.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1655836194713006080

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“The Ukrainians became“hostages” of the coup that took place in the country in 2014 and were turned into “a bargaining chip” by the West..”

Globalist Elites Provoke Bloody Conflicts And Coups – Putin (RT)

Western elites have forgotten the consequences of the Nazis’ “insane ambitions,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said during his Victory Day Parade speech on Red Square in Moscow. Russia believes that “any ideology of superiority is by its nature disgusting, criminal and deadly,”the president pointed out. “The globalist elites keep insisting on their exceptionalism; they pit people against each other, split societies, provoke bloody conflicts and coups, sow hatred, Russophobia and aggressive nationalism, destroy traditional family values that make human a human,” Putin said. According to the Russian leader, all this is being done by the US and allies in order to “further dictate their will, their rights and their rules” and implement what is basically “a system of robbery, violence and suppression” on the international stage.


“It seems that they have forgotten what the insane ambitions of the Nazis led to. They have forgotten who defeated this monstrous, total evil,” he stressed. Referring to the conflict in Ukraine, Putin said that “a real war has been unleashed against out Motherland. But we resisted international terrorism. We’ll also defend the residents of Donbass and assure our security.” The aim of the West is “to achieve the disintegration and destruction of our country, nullify the results of World War II, completely break down the system of global security and international law, and strangle any sovereign centers of development,” he insisted. The US and its allies are to blame for the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine, the head of state said. “Overwhelming ambitions, arrogance and permissiveness inevitably lead to tragedies. This is the reason for the catastrophe that the Ukrainian people are now experiencing,” he pointed out. The Ukrainians became“hostages” of the coup that took place in the country in 2014 and were turned into “a bargaining chip” by the West, which uses the country to implement its “cruel selfish plans.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1655948103206465539

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The UN does not want peace.

UN Chief Says Peace Talks Between Ukraine And Russia Impossible Now (RT)

The peace talks between Ukraine and Russia are impossible now, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in an interview with Spain’s El Pais published on Tuesday. “Unfortunately, I think that the talks on peace are impossible now,” he said. According to him, “both sides are convinced that they can win.” “We are in dialogue with both sides as far as possible to solve specific problems. The most important initiative was the export of grain from Ukraine… And now I do not see the possibility of an immediate ceasefire and peace negotiations,” Guterres stated.

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And if peace were to break out regardless, then China should not be its agent. That would threaten the UN.

UN Skeptical About China Helping To End Ukraine Conflict (RT)

Offers to mediate in the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine are unlikely to come to fruition at the moment since both parties seem to be “fully involved” in continuing the war, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has said. “Peace negotiations are not possible at this time,” Guterres told Spain’s El País newspaper in an interview. Asked whether the peace initiatives floated by China and Brazil, were “doomed to fail,” the UN chief said both parties to the conflict seemed to be too resolved to continue the hostilities for the mediation offers to work. “I already said that peace negotiations at this time are not going to happen. I hope in the future, yes. There was talk of a Russian offensive in the winter and a Ukrainian one in the spring. It is evident that the parties are fully involved into the war,” Guterres stated.

The grim prediction comes amid an apparent uptick in fighting, with both Moscow and Kiev ramping up long-range attacks against each other in recent days. The increase in military activities comes amid the long-hyped looming counteroffensive by Kiev’s forces, repeatedly cheered by the country’s top officials. Early this year, China unveiled a 12-point peace roadmap designed to bring the conflict, which has been raging since February 2022, to an end. The initiative got a positive reception in Moscow, with Russia’s top leadership signaling its readiness to discuss it further. However, the roadmap was received poorly by Kiev and its Western backers, who accused Beijing of allegedly already siding with Russia and, therefore, having no say on potential peace talks.

Brazil has also been actively pushing for Moscow and Kiev to come to the table, with the country having taken a neutral stance on the conflict. Brazilian President Lula da Silva has condemned both Russia’s military operation and the collective West for “encouraging war,” urging them to stop arming Kiev and to push for a ceasefire instead. “There is no use now in saying who is right, who is wrong. What we have to do now is stop the war,” Lula said late in April, claiming that “no one in the world is talking about peace except for me.”

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NATO wants no peace either. It wants to cross Russia’s no. 1 red line.

‘All’ NATO Members Support Ukraine Membership – Stoltenberg (RT)

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has told the Washington Post that all member states have agreed to welcome Ukraine after it defeats Russia. He also revealed that the US-led military bloc had started backing Kiev in 2014. In the interview, conducted last week at the bloc’s Brussels headquarters and published on Tuesday, Stoltenberg told the WP’s editorial staff that “all NATO allies agree that Ukraine will become a member of the alliance.” “Then the question is when, and I cannot give you a timetable on that,” Stoltenberg added. The NATO head has made this claim once before, last month when he visited Kiev. This prompted a one-word response from Hungarian PM Viktor Orban, who suggested that the bloc had not actually bothered to obtain consent from Budapest.

Stoltenberg told the Post that NATO was currently helping Kiev “transition from Soviet-era equipment, doctrines and standards” and become “interoperable with NATO forces,” while reforming and modernizing their military and defense institutions. “The urgent task now is to ensure that Ukraine prevails as a sovereign, independent nation, because if Ukraine doesn’t prevail, then there is no issue to discuss at all.” According to Stoltenberg, NATO has two fundamental tasks “in the war,” one being to “support Ukraine,” the other to prevent escalation “by making absolutely clear that we are not party to the conflict.” The deployment of 40,000 troops to eastern Europe is also helping avoid escalation with Russia, he argued. The former Norwegian prime minister, who has been running NATO since October 2014, also revealed that the US, Canada, and the UK have provided 78% of the bloc’s support to Ukraine, and have been training Kiev’s troops since 2014.

“The war in Ukraine has fundamentally changed NATO, but then you have to remember the war didn’t start in 2022. The war started in 2014,” Stoltenberg told the Post, noting that all members of the bloc have “significantly increased” their military spending since then. Ukraine’s government was overthrown by US-backed nationalists in a February 2014 coup. The new authorities quickly moved to violently crush any opposition, leading Crimea to seek protection from Moscow. Protests against the coup government were met with a massacre in Odessa, terror in Kharkov, and a “punishment expedition” against Donetsk and Lugansk, which responded by declaring independence.

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“.. the more Argentina wants to produce, the more US dollars it needs..”

Can BRICS Save Argentina From Disaster? (Vargas)

Argentina recently announced that it will be adopting the Chinese yuan, rather than the US dollar, for trade with the Asian giant – the latest development in a wider global process of de-dollarization. This comes as Argentina is currently pushing to formally join BRICS, for which it says it has the support of Brazil, India, and for which Russia and China have hinted at possible support in the past. Argentina is South America’s second-largest economy with significant potential to contribute to BRICS, but the country is also in the grips of an increasingly extreme economic crisis with runaway inflation that’s hitting new highs every week. Can a multipolar financial system help struggling economies like Argentina? Can this move away from the dollar, and membership of BRICS, save the country from potential disaster? Yes, but only if Argentina stops flip-flopping on economic and foreign policy decision-making.

Argentina’s economic turmoil has reached desperate levels, a result of debt slavery to the International Monetary Fund, lack of access to dollars, and a historic drought that has battered crucial agricultural exports. While the official exchange rate with the US dollar is 222 pesos for 1 USD, the ‘Dollar Blue’, the unofficial rate offered on the black market, reached up to 500 Pesos in recent days. For context, in 2014 under leftist President Cristina Kirchner, the official rate was 8 pesos for 1 USD and the unofficial rate hovered around 12-14 pesos. Annual inflation stands at 104% and Argentinians have attempted to combat this by holding their savings in US dollars, and even in cryptocurrency. The crypto market is not as bullish as it was a couple of years ago, and the Fed’s interest rate increases along with speculation within Argentina has made dollars very hard and expensive to access.

More importantly, the colossal debt built up with the IMF is dollar-denominated. Argentinian economist Gisela Cernadas, now working in China with Dongsheng News, spoke exclusively to RT and explained the perilous situation caused by dependency on the dollar. “Argentina has been suffering, for an extended period of time, from a structurally unbalanced current account,” she said. “This means that the country needs more US dollars to function than what it has. “To carry out its productive activities, Argentina needs immediate inputs that have to be imported, such as machinery and equipment that has to be imported in dollars,” Cernadas explained.

“Therefore, the more Argentina wants to produce, the more US dollars it needs. So, this structurally unbalanced current account puts pressure on the currency exchange market.” In this context, the move to de-dollarize trade with China is clearly a positive move, in so far as it will ease the stranglehold that the US dollar has on the country. It will also help protect the central banks’ foreign reserves. “Paying part of the imports from China using Chinese currency instead of the US dollar will help relieve the pressure on the current account deficit,” said Cernadas. “It’s not going to solve the structural problem of needing more foreign currency to produce and carry out its productive activity, but at least it will relieve parts of the demand they have.”

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“The rule of what you can’t say defines everything..”

Huge boost for Musk as well; he can showcase new Twitter features..

“We’re Back”: Tucker Carlson Moves Show To Twitter (ZH)

According to Twitter owner Elon Musk, Twitter and Carlson have not signed “a deal of any kind whatsoever,” which we assume means that Tucker has found a clever way around his Fox contract which stipulated that he has to stay off the air until 2025 insofar as other networks are concerned. “Rewards means subscriptions and advertising revenue share (still working on software needed for latter), which is a function of how many people subscribe and the advertising views associated with his content,” Musk tweeted.

As hinted at in a Sunday Axios report, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced on Tuesday that he’s moving his show to Twitter. “There aren’t many platforms left that allow free speech. The last big one remaining in the world is Twitter,” Carlson said in a monologue – in which he took a shot at Fox, saying “If you bump up against the limits [in the news business] you will be fired for it.” “The rule of what you can’t say defines everything,” he said, adding “You can’t have a free society if people aren’t allowed to say what they think is true… There aren’t many platforms left that allow free speech. The last big one… is Twitter, where we are now.”


“Twitter has long served as the place where our national conversation incubates and develops,” he continued, adding that other networks are “thinly disguised propaganda outlets.” “You see it on cable news, you talk about it on Twitter,” said Carlson. “The result may feel like a debate, but actually the gatekeepers are still in charge. We think that’s a bad system. We know exactly how it works and we’re sick of it.”

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“..the hoards of flunkies working for corporate media have it in for Tucker Carlson because he takes positions that are forbidden to them..”

Journalists-on-Journalists Crime (Patrick Lawrence)

I’ve read a lot of smear since Fox News dismissed Tucker Carlson as its premier evening news presenter late last month. How could I not? It was everywhere, and more fecal matter is being flung Carlson’s way as we speak. My favorite in this line so far comes from The American Prospect. “Farewell to a Neo–Nazi Blowhard” was the head on its piece last week. Carlson, you see, is a “neofascist,” TAP wants us to know. What hollow hyperbole. How few are the level heads in mainstream media these days. How cavalierly do our liberal media debase the English language. How difficult it is to take journalists seriously as they attack another journalist because his views do not match theirs. What can we learn from all the unhinged denunciations we read daily?

What do they tell us about the predicaments of independent minds in journalism—and no matter what you think of Carlson, he has one—and by extension independent journalism altogether? In my read, independent media are in a state of siege that has escalated markedly of late. Although he worked for a corporate-owned cable network, I take Carlson’s fate as symptomatic of an intensifying attack on any media that deviate from the national security state’s ever more rigorously enforced orthodoxies. The past week brings grim news of the determination of political elites and deeply insecure mainstream media to stifle dissent in wall-to-wall fashion. It is time to pay close attention. This is more now than the grousing of a few independent journalists such as your columnist. Everything up to how we live and think is at stake.

Setting aside all the dross casting Carlson as the Beelzebub of our profession, the remarks that stay in my mind are of another kind. Diana Johnstone, the distinguished Europeanist who has corresponded from Paris for decades, sent a brief note after Fox’s announcement, calling Carlson “the last free voice on mainstream television.” I paused and wondered if I agreed. And then decided I did. “The TV host paid the price because he tried the impossible: straddling the divide between corporate media and critical journalism,” Jonathan Cook, who I hold in the same high regard I have for Johnstone, wrote last week on his blog. “He exposed ordinary Americans to critical perspectives, especially on U.S. foreign policy, that they had no hope of hearing anywhere else—and most certainly not from so-called ‘liberal’ corporate media outlets like CNN and MSNBC.

[..] the hoards of flunkies working for corporate media have it in for Tucker Carlson because he takes positions that are forbidden to them. Among these many, Carlson opposes the war in Ukraine, the military-industrial complex, covert coup operations in Cuba and elsewhere, Washington’s subterfuge at the United Nations and America’s imperialist project altogether. Carlson took Seymour Hersh’s report on the Biden’s regime’s covert op to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines for what it is: a tour de force piece of work by the premier investigative reporter now writing. Corporate-paid journalists detest Carlson for these things. I imagine there is a lot of subliminal envy attaching to Tucker Carlson’s professional performance over the years.

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“Senator Nye suggested that upon a declaration of war by Congress, taxes on annual income under $10,000 should automatically be doubled and higher incomes should be taxed at 98%.”

“If such policies were enacted, businessmen would become our leading pacifists.”

War for Profit: A Very Short History (Brad Wolf)

TIn 1934 a book written by Helmuth Engelbrecht called The Merchants of Death became a best seller. The book exposed the unethical business practices of weapons manufacturers and analyzed their enormous profits during World War I. The author concluded that “the rise and development of the arms merchants reveals them as a growing menace to World Peace.” While not the only reason for the US entering the war, it became clear the Merchants of Death lobbied both Congress and the President for war. The American public was incensed. In 1934 almost 100,000 Americans signed a petition opposing increased armament production. Veterans paraded through Washington DC in 1935 in a march for peace. And Marine Major General Smedley Butler, two-time Medal of Honor winner, published his book War is a Racket, claiming he had been “a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers.

In short, I was a racketeer; a gangster for capitalism.” His book too became a bestseller. The growing wave of public outrage led Senator Gerald Nye to initiate congressional hearings investigating whether US corporations, including weapons manufacturers, had led the United States into World War I. In two years, the Nye committee held 93 hearings and called more than 200 witnesses to testify, including JP Morgan and Pierre S. DuPont. The committee conducted an extensive investigation searching the records of weapons manufacturers. They uncovered criminal and unethical actions including bribery of foreign officials, lobbying the United States government to obtain foreign sales, selling weapons to both sides of international disputes, and the covert undermining of disarmament conferences.

“The committee listened daily to men striving to defend acts which found them nothing more than international racketeers, bent upon gaining profit through a game of arming the world to fight itself,” Senator Nye declared in an October 1934 radio address. The Senate Nye Committee recommended price controls, the transfer of Navy shipyards out of private hands, and increased industrial taxes. Senator Nye suggested that upon a declaration of war by Congress, taxes on annual income under $10,000 should automatically be doubled and higher incomes should be taxed at 98%. A journalist wrote at the time, “If such policies were enacted, businessmen would become our leading pacifists.” The American public was outraged at the committee’s findings and so created some of the largest peace organizations the country had ever known.

Committed to staying out of all future European wars, American college campuses in the 1930s had thousands of students taking oaths swearing they would never fight in a foreign war. Farmers, laborers, intellectuals, ministers, people from all walks of life declared they would never again participate in a war fought to increase the profits of corporations. And then, business fought back. They lobbied those in Congress to cut off funding for the Nye committee, which they soon did. A smear campaign was orchestrated against Senator Nye. The committees’ days were numbered. In the end, the Nye Committee demonstrated that “these businesses were at the heart and center of a system that made going to war inevitable. They paved and greased the road to war.”

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2012 episode of Law and Order SVU.

Jury Rejects Rape Claim Against Trump But Finds Liable For ‘Sexual Abuse’ (ZH)

A New York City jury has found former President Trump liable for sexual assault, but not rape, in a New York defamation case brought by accuser E. Jean Carroll. The jury awarded Carroll $20,000 in punitive damages for a battery claim, and $2.7 million in compensatory damages for defamation by Trump. The verdict came after less than three hours of deliberation by jurors in US District Court in lower Manhattan. The jury did not find Trump liable for rape, as Carroll alleged. Trump, who has long-denied her allegation dating back to the mid-90s, accused Carroll of using false claims as a way to promote her book. “I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened,” the-then president told The Hill in an interview at the White House in June 2019.

“U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan read instructions on the law to the nine-person jury before the panel began discussing Carroll’s allegations of battery and defamation shortly before noon. If they believe Carroll, jurors can award compensatory and punitive damages. Trump, who did not attend the trial, has insisted he never sexually assaulted Carroll or even knew her. Kaplan told jurors that the first question on the verdict form will be to decide whether they think there is more than a 50% chance that Trump raped Carroll inside a store dressing room. If they answer yes, they will then decide whether compensatory and punitive damages should be awarded. If they answer no on the rape question, they can then decide if Trump subjected her to lesser forms of assault involving sexual contact without her consent or forcible touching to degrade her or gratify his sexual desire. If they answer yes on either of those questions, they will decide if damages are appropriate.” -AP

The nine-member panel began discussing verdicts at 11:50 a.m. ET after Judge Lewis Kaplan gave his final instructions and a 10-question verdict form. Carroll, 78, sued Trump in 2019, claiming the Republican sexually assaulted her in 1995 or 1996 in a dressing room at a Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan. Because the alleged attack happened decades ago, Carroll was originally barred from suing over sexual battery, pushing her to sue for defamation over allegedly disparaging comments Trump made about the rape allegation. Trump denied her allegation at the time and accused her of using false claims as a way to promote her book. “I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened,” the-then president told The Hill in an interview at the White House in June 2019. The D.C. Court of Appeals was then asked to weigh in on whether Trump was acting within the scope of his presidential duties when he denied raping Carroll and dismissed her during the interview. Trump last October called her claims “a hoax” and “a lie.”

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Today is Comer’s day.

If Hunter Is Indicted (Lipson)

First, a pardon would set off the biggest political firestorm since Watergate. It would look worse than self-dealing, bad as that is. It would look like the president is covering up his family’s corruption, not only to get Hunter off the hook but to prevent the disclosure of damning evidence in court. That evidence is likely to touch many more Biden family members than Hunter, and perhaps the president himself. The more Biden family members who are implicated, the more the whole operation looks like a concerted operation to monetize Joe’s political position. It also might threaten to shred Joe’s repeated claim that he knew nothing about any family business interests or influence peddling. The wider the sleaze, the harder it is to sell that story.

The chairman of the House committee investigating these issues has said Hunter’s corruption was merely one part of the family business. And that business was selling influence. Rep. James Comer has publicly said that his House Oversight Committee has already collected evidence that nine Biden family members are involved in sketchy business deals, including substantial payments from foreign firms. Some of those firms are closely linked to the Chinese Communist Party. Comer added that his committee is investigating the possible involvement of at least three more family members, as well as Joe Biden’s own role. His conclusion: “The entire Biden family” is entrapped in the financial enrichment scheme. So far, however, Comer hasn’t named names or provided the evidence. He says he will provide much more at a major press conference Wednesday.

Comer’s principle suggestion is that the Biden family’s influence-peddling scheme is much broader, and their criminal actions more serious, than isolated schemes perpetrated by the president’s conniving second son. He adds that his evidence points to Joe Biden’s direct involvement, including possible payments for official actions. That is what he told Maria Bartiromo on Sunday, although he hasn’t yet provided the evidence for that incendiary allegation. Comer is also attacking the FBI for desultory investigation – which ignored much of the malfeasance – and calling out the mainstream media for its concerted silence.

The Internal Revenue Service might be implicated, too, since a lot of payments – and a lot of Hunter’s income – went through what Comer calls the family’s “web of LLCs.” A senior supervisory agent at the IRS is seeking whistleblower protection to tell Congress about “preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed” in investigating Hunter’s taxes. If political pressure really was applied to the IRS over Hunter’s taxes, or if senior agents acted improperly to curry favor, those would obviously be very serious matters, legally and politically. Comer and the House Republicans in the committee’s majority want that testimony under oath and are seeking responses from the IRS and DOJ.

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“The question is whether Blinken and the Administration really want to test this in court.”

House Committee Prepares to Hold Blinken in Contempt (Turley)

The House of Representatives and the Biden Administration appear in a staring contest waiting for any sign of Blinken. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) warned Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the House Foreign Affairs Committee is moving to hold him in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with subpoena requests related to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. There is no question that the Committee has a legitimate oversight interest in the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan at a huge loss of life, abandonment of thousands of allies, and seven billion dollars in military equipment. The committee specifically wants to review a full copy of a dissent cable that had been signed by nearly two dozen State Department officials warning Blinken of a Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan a month before the terrorist group’s takeover occurred.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the cable undermines the claims of the Biden Administration that it had no forewarning of the chaos that would unfold in the country. The State Department has stonewalled the Committee, offering oral testimony and a summary while refusing to turn over the document. In his letter, McCaul warned that “the Department is now in violation of its legal obligation to produce these documents and must do so immediately.” McCaul added that “It strains credulity to believe that the official responsible for preparing the cable summary and briefing Congress on it would be unable to provide this information.” This has not been a great month for Blinken. He was earlier identified as the Biden campaign associate who “triggered” the infamous letter of 51 former intelligence officials claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop was likely “Russian disinformation.”

He was then named as a contact of Hunter Biden in the Obama Administration as part of an alleged influence peddling operation. (Blinken previously denied such contacts and was accused of lying under oath). The withdrawal from Afghanistan has been condemned by Democrats and Republicans alike. Given the loss of lives and equipment (as well as the impact on U.S. standing), there could not be more obvious subject matter for congressional inquiry. The question is whether Blinken and the Administration really want to test this in court. Attorney General Merrick Garland would likely decline to prosecute Blinken for contempt (despite his green lighting such prosecutions against former Trump officials), but the Congress could go to court to compel production.

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“..during a meeting with US Ambassador Caroline Kennedy in Canberra on Tuesday..”

Australian Lawmakers Call On US To Drop Assange Extradition Bid (RT)

A delegation of Australian lawmakers called for the United States to end its attempts to extradite and prosecute Julian Assange during a meeting with US Ambassador Caroline Kennedy in Canberra on Tuesday. The ‘Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group’ informed Washington’s chief diplomat in Australia that its citizens had expressed “widespread concern” at the continued detention in Britain of the WikiLeaks founder, who is an Australian national, as well as attempts to extradite him to the United States to face espionage charges. In 2010, Assange’s WikiLeaks platform published sensitive US government documents leaked by former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. “There are a range of views about Assange in the Australian community and the members of the parliamentary group reflect that diversity of views,” the cross-party group said in a statement following the meeting with Kennedy on Tuesday.

“But what is not in dispute in the group is that Mr. Assange is being treated unjustly.” The group’s co-chair, independent MP Andrew Wilkie, added on Tuesday that the Australian parliament had also expressed “broad concern” for Assange, as outlined in statements of support last week by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and opposition leader Peter Dutton. Albanese, in particular, was a noted critic of Assange’s detention throughout his successful election campaign in 2022. Assange is currently in London’s Belmarsh prison as he continues a legal battle to fight extradition to the United States, where he is facing espionage charges related to WikLeaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of government documents pertaining to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, in addition to diplomatic cables. If convicted, Assange faces a sentence of 175 years in a maximum security prison.

Washington maintains that Assange’s actions put the lives of US servicemen in danger. His supporters, however, argue that Assange is being unfairly targeted by Washington following the damaging leaks, which exposed malfeasance by US personnel during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In April, 48 Australian lawmakers co-signed a letter addressed to US Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they said the United States’ pursuit of “journalist and publisher” Assange “set a dangerous precedent” for press freedom. US President Joe Biden is scheduled to visit Sydney on May 24 for the Quad Leaders’ Summit, where he will meet with the leaders of Australia, India and Japan. Albanese has not said whether he intends to raise the issue with Biden during his visit.

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“Wars cannot be fought without lies because most populations reject these wars as soon as they know the truth about them..”

Why the Release of Julian Assange Is Crucial for Our Future (Scheidler)

What is Julian Assange in prison for? He is in prison for showing the truth about our wars, in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. War and lies are very closely related. Wars cannot be fought without lies because most populations reject these wars as soon as they know the truth about them. Governments never tell the truth about their wars, because otherwise they lose the support of the population. Embedded journalists do not tell us the truth about the wars. After the disaster of the Vietnam War, various concepts have been developed to allow journalists to go to war theaters only embedded, accompanied by the respective military. We saw this in Iraq, we saw it in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Only a few journalists had the opportunity to look behind the scenes. That is why leaks, confidential sources and journalists like Julian Assange are so important.

Reporting the dirty truth about wars, no matter from which side they are waged, is crucial so that these wars can no longer be waged in the future. Let me give a few examples of this from history. In the Vietnam War, reporting by courageous journalists, often citing anonymous sources or using leaks, played a decisive role in ending the bloodshed. One of the most important steps was the story revealed by Seymour Hersh in 1969 about war crimes in My Lai, Vietnam. At that time, U.S. troops murdered hundreds of civilians, mostly women and children, in the village. This story and the images of it were instrumental in turning popular sentiment against this war. Another important revelation was the so-called Pentagon Papers, published by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg with the help of journalists.

They showed that several U.S. governments had systematically lied to the population about the Vietnam War, about its motives, about its scale, and about its methods. It came out that not only Vietnam was bombed, but also Laos and Cambodia. An estimated three to four million people died in that war. These reports and the largely anonymous sources on which they were based were instrumental in bringing this war to an end. This was later followed by the revelations of the secret programs used by the CIA to illegally spy on U.S. citizens. These revelations, again by Seymour Hersh, led to the establishment of the so-called Church Commission in 1975 to provide parliamentary oversight of the intelligence agencies – an important step in defense of democracy. We then saw a new phase of wars with the start of the so-called war on terror after September 11. In 2004, Seymour Hersh exposed U.S. torture practices at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

Wikileaks and Julian Assange are part of this long tradition. In 2010 and 2011, based largely on information from Chelsea Manning, Wikileaks exposed a whole series of crimes committed by our governments that shocked the world. Among them was a document that showed how the CIA tried to mobilize sentiment in Germany and France for the war in Afghanistan. A headline from this document is telling: “Why it is not enough to count on the apathy of the Germans.” The point was to mobilize people for an expansion of operations in Afghanistan through manipulated information.

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Yeadon

 

 

Bigotry porn

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https://twitter.com/i/status/1655975832450478081

 

 

 

 

Bird dog

 

 

 

 

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


Pablo Picasso The artist and his model 1933

 

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

 

 


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

 

 

 

 

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Lying under oath.

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

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

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

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

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I think Obama started that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Most of them, yes.

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

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


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

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

Three Physicians Are Suing Twitter (CHD)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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New Canada Day fines

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Jan 032022
 


Albert Bierstadt Storm in the Mountains c1870

 

 

In my first article of the year, I must thank everyone who has followed us, and read us, and commented, especially those of you who have made donations both to the Automatic Earth, and to the Monastiraki kitchen for the homeless in Athens, Greece. Both don’t reach millions of people, but the thousands we do connect with, we reach them well. Every reader who learns something is a win, and every homeless person who gets a good meal, well, that’s obvious.

Thank you so much. You are the ones who make this happen.

 

 

If I say that 2020 was the year of the virus, and 2021 the year of the vaccine, most people would probably agree. But 2021 was so much more than that; it was also the year of propaganda, media capture and narrative control at levels beyond anything we’ve ever seen. Even if many -most- people haven’t experienced it that way.

And that has likely had more negative impact on us than the vaccine itself. A close call perhaps, I know. The good thing that has come out of this is that so much of it has been exposed. Much of the underlying tendencies towards authoritarianism, and disregard for truth, and blind desire for profit, for a Great Reset, population control, abandonment of freedoms and human rights, it’s all there now for us to see.

We need to act upon that exposure. Get rid of Fauci, Walensky, Pfizer, CDC, and their peers across the planet, of the WHO, of all health “experts” that receive income from/via Pfizer et al (which is the vast majority), put a halt to the influence of money (Bill Gates) on health policy. A society, a country, need to be their own boss over their own fundamental policies. And that means paying for it ourselves.

And not have policies easily changed by a group of politicians and unelected officials (“experts”) who happen to have grabbed power at a particular point in time. A society needs roots, and ours have been uprooted. From principles, from laws, from rights. This will not be easy, we already gave them a 2 year advantage, but if we don’t use this time when the spotlights are directed at them, we will lose even much more than we have already lost. We’ve let them play their games, virtually uncontested, and we cannot afford that.

This appears to culminate in Twitter’s handling of Joe Rogan and Robert Malone recently, and that’s fine, Twitter is not big enough to tackle Rogan, while CNN and MSNBC audiences are drops in the ocean compared to Joe’s. They bit off one too big for them to chew.

But that’s just the US, and that’s just one podcaster, one voice. The control virus that has come with the corona virus has delved much deeper into the world’s various societies. Just yesterday, we saw video from my country of birth, Holland, where police set attack dogs on peaceful elderly protesters, and say what you will, but that country is neither free nor a democracy. That claim is 100% obsolete.

That it is accepted regardless gives credence, and a lot, to Matthias Desmet and his “Mass Formation Syndrome” theories, but we should not really need his analysis, useful as it may be, to figure out what is going on. All we need to do is take a step back and wonder what the hell is going on. To ponder how we saw our societies 2+ years ago, how we ourselves would have seen these recent developments in the light of back then. We can’t have forgotten all of it?!

 

 

That Anthony Fauci is still in his job is absolutely insane. He became head of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), 40 years ago, he’s 81, older than Joe Biden. He’s been building ties to Big Pharma, especially Pfizer, all that time, in the shadows, the best place for such deals.

He was in his position when Pfizer received the biggest criminal fine in US corporate history in 2012, of $2.3 billion, for lying and cheating and more. Now, a few years later, Fauci works with Pfizer and the rest of Big Pharma, and makes their owners billionaires and their shareholders very rich. He is the very last person who should have been in his where he is, both 2 years ago and now.

Fauci is not the best doctor in the US, he’s just the best connected to the pharma industry. That guarantees Americans the worst deal they could get, not the best. And of course anyone else at the upper echelons of the NIAID, CDC, FDA, they need to go too. Fauci et al put them there.

In the US and elsewhere, any politician, individual or through their party or otherwise, and any health experts, individual or through their organization or company, who have received funds from Big Pharma or Bill Gates, should be discarded, put out by the curb. We should be able to figure this out, because it’s NOW that they stand exposed. Perhaps not TO Covid, but certainly BY Covid.

It’s the only way we can cleanse the system. Which is needed if we want to survive, with our health, our conscience, and our freedoms and rights. We have let an enormous amount of mold, rot, grow at the pillars of our societies, and we should be glad we can see it now, because this allows us to exterminate it.

We cannot allow Pfizer to gain even more influence over our health systems. Which will be a very hard fight, because our politicians and experts handed them $100s of billions, which they are using as we speak to buy more politicians and lobbyists and influence, and profit.

You can’t stop this by voting for another party. Pfizer probably has more lobbyists on K Street than all of Big Oil put together. And they have them in party and every every country that matters, in every strategic position that matters, and they will soon have many more. No, you must cut their entire voice out of the politics and health care of your society. Yes, very difficult, sure. But today, you can at least see them. For a short time. That won’t last.

 

 

Along with all that the World Economic Forum, and their Great Reset, it will have to go. They don’t do anyone any good but themselves. A big club that we ain’t in. Which reminds me:

The Automatic Earth has shifted a lot towards Covid over the past 2 years, and surely many readers are not 100% happy with that. But the financial world is still captive to central banks that won’t allow price discovery, which makes “markets” just fake pantomimes that former investors get rich in while the poor suffer.

While the climate issue has been captured by the likes of COP 26, a toy for the rich who want to make you pay to “go green”, in accordance with Davos and the WEF. I feel sorry for the well-meaning people who expect anything from that set-up. Nobody who owes their money or their power to fossil fuels will voluntarily give up either, but they will make you fork over for windmills and solar cells whose energy dynamics you don’t actually understand.

Just like with Covid, if you want to free yourselves from the narrative, you will have to open your eyes and go to battle. An untested vaccine won’t set you free, and neither will an electric car. Those two are just things you are being sold by the narrative.

But believe you me, the no. 1 issue today is the vaccines. We need to stop those, before all of our children grow up with timebombs in their bodies. Every jab means more spike proteins, and boosters are worse because they come after your immune system has learned, and prepared for, how to attack those proteins, who by then may be in every organ in your body. And attack them it will, because they are toxic agents.

I don’t want to tell people to get a vaccine or not, but I do want to tell them to be very careful, to get informed well, and only then give their consent, if they decide to get jabbed. It’s just that you have to be confident that your immune system is strong enough to defend you from the effects of the vaccine, and that’s the opposite of what 99% of people understand is happening to them.

So, 2020 year of the virus, 2021 year of the vaccine, and 2022 year of the adverse effects of the vaccines?! And/or a grand awakening?

 

 

 

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Dec 202021
 


Berthe Morisot The old track to Auvers 1863

 

My Tweets With The Chairman Of The Sage Covid Modelling Committee (Nelson)
New York, UK: Covid Case Records, Hospitalizations And Deaths Remain Low (JTN)
The First 785 SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant Cases In Denmark (ES)
Runny Nose, Headache, And Fatigue Are Commonest Symptoms Of Omicron (BMJ)
CDC Forecast: Covid Cases Will Jump By 55%, Deaths Will Surge By 73% (DM)
Fauci Foresees Potential Record Death Rate From Omicron (NW)
COVID-19 Protocolists are Killing People. By-Demand NOW (Lyons-Weiler)
‘The Moment Of Truth Has Come’ For Russia & NATO – Moscow (RT)
Israeli-led Central Bank Simulation Preparation For Great Reset – Yeadon (DT.nz)
China & Russia Are Ready To End US Dominance Of Global Finance (Diesen)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RFKjr
https://twitter.com/i/status/1472536661116563457

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spectator Editor Fraser Nelson tweets with Graham Medley—chair of COVID modeling for UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).

Turns out SAGE doesn’t model mild scenarios, because those don’t require government actions. The gov’t sees only extreme scenarios.

My Tweets With The Chairman Of The Sage Covid Modelling Committee (Nelson)

The latest Sage papers have been published, envisaging anything from 200 to 6,000 deaths a day from Omicron depending on how many more restrictions we’ll get – up to and very much including another lockdown. Earlier today I had an unexpected chance to ask questions of Graham Medley, the chair of the Sage modelling committee. He’s a professor at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) which last weekend published a study on Omicron with very gloomy scenarios and making the case for more restrictions. But JP Morgan had a close look at this study and spotted something big: all the way through, LSHTM assumes that the Omicron variant is just as deadly as Delta. ‘But evidence from South Africa suggests that Omicron infections are milder,’ JP Morgan pointed out in a note to clients. Adjust for this, it found, and the picture changes dramatically:-

“Bed occupancy by Covid-19 patients at the end of January would be 33% of the peak seen in January 2021. This would be manageable without further restrictions.’ So JP Morgan had shown that, if you tweak one assumption (on severity) then – suddenly – no need for lockdown. Why was this scenario left out? Why would this fairly-important and fairly-basic fact on Omicron modelling not presented by SAGE modellers like Prof Medley to ministers – and to the general public? I was thrilled for the chance to speak to him on Twitter. It was kind of him to make the time (he’s still going, as far as I can make out). The Spectator data hub has a page devoted to past Sage modelling vs actual, and I wanted to make sure I was not being unfair to Sage in my selection or presentation of those charts.

The latest Sage paper-drop – the 6,000-deaths-a-day one – refers to ‘scenarios,’ not predictions. Prof Medley emphasises the distinction: saying something could happen is not saying that there’s a realistic chance of it happening. But then why do SAGE modellers publish some scenarios and not others? I then jumped to ask Prof Medley.

Revealingly, he seemed to think my question odd: if it’s quite plausible that Omicron is mild and doesn’t the threaten the NHS, what would be the point of including that as a ‘scenario’? He seemed to suggest that he has been given a very limited brief, and asked to churn out worse-case scenarios without being asked to comment on how plausible they are. “We generally model what we are asked to model. There is a dialogue in which policy teams discuss with the modellers what they need to inform their policy.” Might this remit mean leaving out just-as-plausible, quite-important scenarios that would not require lockdown? “Decision-makers are generally on only interested in situations where decisions have to be made.”


Note how careful he is to stay vague on whether any of the various scenarios in the Sage document are likely or even plausible. What happened to the original system of presenting a ‘reasonable worse-case scenario’ together with a central scenario? And what’s the point of modelling if it doesn’t say how likely any these scenarios are? From what Prof Medley says, it’s unclear that the most-likely scenario is even being presented to ministers this time around. So how are they supposed to make good decisions? I highly doubt that Sajid Javid is only asking to churn out models that make the case for lockdown. That instruction, if it is being issued, will have come from somewhere else.

Read more …

Mild. A four letter word.

New York, UK: Covid Case Records, Hospitalizations And Deaths Remain Low (JTN)

Authorities reported record-breaking COVID-19 case counts in multiple major regions across the world late this week, offering further signs of the omicron variant’s high transmissibility. However, hospitalizations and deaths attributable to the disease remained much lower than earlier surges, suggesting a shift in the pandemic after roughly two years of natural immunity and about a year of vaccinations. The United Kingdom had two back-to-back record-breaking days this week, posting case numbers tens of thousands higher than the earlier one-day record almost exactly a year ago in January. New York State had a less-dramatic yet still firmly record-breaking day as it struggles with its own surge there.


Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office said the has set another single-day positive COVID case record with nearly 22,000 positive cases reported in 24 hours, abc7ny.com reported Saturday. Yet in both cases, hospitalizations and deaths have remained markedly lower than in lower surges: In New York deaths have risen slightly since the beginning of the month but have continued on the largely flat trajectory they’ve held since the summer. Deaths in the United Kingdom have remained similarly low, and hospitalizations in both regions are lower than in earlier surges. “The omicron symptoms have been very mild,” Yves Derouseu, the emergency services director at Lenox Hill Hospital, told NBC4 New York. “The impact on those vaccinated has been clinically mild. It’s not converting to admissions to the hospital, or deaths.”

Read more …

The study is at the link. The text here is Robert Malone’s summary of it (https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/omicron-today).

The First 785 SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant Cases In Denmark (ES)

Denmark, as of December 9, 2021. Denmark has one of the highest RT-PCR testing capacities in the world and screens all positive RT-PCR tests with an Omicron-specific PCR – allowing screening for Omicron. There have been 785 SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant cases identified in Denmark. The earliest Omicron cases in Denmark occurred before South Africa announced the emergence of this variant. Most cases were fully (76%) or booster-vaccinated (7.1%); 34 (4.3%) had a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection. The majority of cases with available information reported symptoms (509/666; 76%) and most were infected in Denmark (588/644; 91%). One in five cases cannot be linked to previous cases, indicating widespread community transmission. Nine cases have been hospitalized, one required intensive care and no deaths have been registered.

Highlights:

· 1.2% of cases have been hospitalized

· 0.3% in intensive care

· 0% deaths.

· 83% were fully or booster vaccinated, 17% not vaccinated (including 2.6 vaccine started)

· 4.3% had previous SARS-CoV-2 infection

· 91% have no travel history, 9% reported travel

My take: this study is important because although there are studies and spokespeople from South Africa stating similar results, the Danish population in terms of age, body weight, life expectancy, etc. is more similar demographically to the US population. This Danish study suggests that Omicron will affect the American population similarly.

Read more …

The circle is round. If you can’t tell the difference bwteen Covid and a cold, you must get jabbed.

Runny Nose, Headache, And Fatigue Are Commonest Symptoms Of Omicron (BMJ)

The UK government has been urged to update its list of symptoms for covid-19, after early data showed that cold-like symptoms were the most commonly reported by people with the new omicron variant. Data released on 16 December by the Covid Symptoms Study,1 run by the health science company Zoe and King’s College London, show that the top five symptoms reported in the app for omicron infection were runny nose, headache, fatigue (either mild or severe), sneezing, and sore throat. This initial analysis was based on positive cases in London, which was selected because of its higher prevalence of omicron than in other parts of the UK. The government still lists fever, cough, and loss of sense of smell or taste—which were the most common with the alpha variant—as the covid symptoms to watch out for.

Tim Spector, lead scientist on the Zoe Covid Study app, who has been calling for the list of symptoms to be updated since the emergence of the delta variant,2 said a change was overdue. “The messaging from the government is just not clear on this,” he said. “I think most people know what cold-like symptoms are. I would probably just add [to the list]: ‘Have you got cold-like symptoms?’ We need to educate people, go back to the basics, and say that if you’ve got cold-like symptoms keep away from people. You shouldn’t be waiting for the three classic symptoms.” To compare delta and omicron, London data were selected from a week where delta was dominant (a sample of 363 cases from 3-10 October 2021) and compared with the most recent data (847 cases from 3-10 December 2021).

This initial analysis found no clear differences between delta and omicron in the early symptoms (three days after testing). Spector said it was vital that members of the public were aware of the symptoms to look out for, particularly in areas such as London that have very high rates of omicron infection. “If you do have symptoms of a mild or bad cold, it’s highly likely that you’ve got covid if you’re in an area like London at the moment,” he said. Spector said the UK was now an international exception in not listing cold-like symptoms as likely indicators of covid infection, noting that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, and European countries such as Spain and France had all updated their advice. “The UK is the odd one out,” he said. “They should amend it if the majority are presenting that way.”

Read more …

And after all that “mildness”, the CDC and Fauci think it’s still Halloween…

CDC Forecast: Covid Cases Will Jump By 55%, Deaths Will Surge By 73% (DM)

Grim new figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have predicted that US COVID-19 deaths will soar by 73 per cent to 15,600 a week by January 8, and that cases will rocket to 1.3 million a week by Christmas Day. The agency revealed projections on Wednesday afternoon that show America will suffer up to 15,600 new Covid deaths a week as of January 8 – or 2,228 deaths per day – a 58 per cent increase from 8,900 deaths currently being recorded each week, equivalent to 1,285 deaths a day. Another CDC prediction estimates that between 620,000 and 1.3 million Americans will have been diagnosed with Covid by the week that ends on December 25 – Christmas Day. That represents a 55% leap on the 840,000 cases that have been recorded over the last week.

Omicron will likely become the dominant Covid strain in the coming weeks, and cause a massive surge of cases shortly after Christmas, one expert has warned, likely fueling the surge the CDC predicts. Dr Gregory Poland, a top epidemiologist at the Mayo Clinic told DailyMail.com that an Omicron-fueled surge in cases could be right around the corner. ‘As best any of us can model, we will have an explosion of cases after the holidays in the in the early-to-mid-January timeframe,’ he said. ‘This variant is hyper transmissible, it spreads exponentially in an environment of cold weather, massive holiday get togethers, no masking and insufficient immunization.’

He believes it will become the dominant strain in the UK – which recorded a record 78,610 cases on Wednesday – in the coming days, and that the U.S. will follow around two weeks later. Cornell University in upstate New York is suspected to be home to the first US Omicron cluster, after 930 students were diagnosed with the virus in recent days. The college says every one of the positive tests it has sequenced so far has been the Omicron variant. A Cornell spokesman hasn’t said exactly how many Omicron cases have been identified, but added that they expect most, if not all, the 930 cases to be caused by the new variant.

Read more …

There is absolutely nothing to justify a warning like this.

Fauci Foresees Potential Record Death Rate From Omicron (NW)

Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, said on Sunday that record-breaking death rates could occur as the COVID Omicron variant spreads across the U.S. Fauci made an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, where host Jake Tapper pressed the leading infectious disease expert on where he believes the pandemic is headed. Tapper asked, “Do you expect new record high numbers for cases? And what about hospitalizations and deaths?” “Yes, well, unfortunately, Jake, I think that that is going to happen,” Fauci replied. “We are going to see a significant stress in some regions of the country on the hospital system, particularly in those areas where you have a low level of vaccination, which is one of the reasons why we continue to stress the importance of getting those unvaccinated people vaccinated.”

The Omicron variant was first reported by researchers in South Africa last month, after being detected in several southern African nations. It was detected in the U.S. earlier this month and has now been reported in most states. Experts predict that it will overtake Delta as the dominant variant in the U.S. in a few weeks. Fauci predicted that the country is in for a difficult time as the Omicron variant continues to spread and take over. “It is going to be tough,” Fauci said. “We can’t walk away from that, Jake. We can’t, because, with Omicron that we’re dealing with, it is going to be a tough few weeks to months as we get deeper into the winter.” Fauci also refuted the notion, expressed this week by Vice President Kamala Harris, that officials did not see COVID-19 variants coming. He reiterated that what is surprising about Omicron is not that it happened at all, but rather the number of mutations it seems to possess.

“We definitely saw variants coming,” he explained. “What was not anticipated was the extent of the mutations and the amino acid substitutions in Omicron, which is really unprecedented. It kind of came out of nowhere, where you have a virus that has 50 mutations, 30 of which are in the spike protein, and 10 or 12 of which are in the receptor binding domain. I mean, to me, that’s really quite unprecedented.”

Read more …

“You’ll be told that your loved one cannot stay off the oxygen support long enough to get nutrition, and then you’ll be told they are not tolerating the feeding tube.”

COVID-19 Protocolists are Killing People. By-Demand NOW (Lyons-Weiler)

Once your loved one is admitted for COVID-19 to a hospital full of protocolists, monoclonal antibodies are no longer an option. No reason is given, it’s just protocol. Once your loved one is admitted to a hospital full of protocolists for COVID-19, you cannot get the doctors to vary from the protocol with options other than those they are told they can use. Those options? -O2 support -Lovenox -Remdesivir -Vitamin D&C -Nasal cannula feeding tube -Intubation (ventilator) -Palliative care -Comfort care -Cremation, or relocation for embalming. If your loved one does not want Acetaminophen (e.g., Tylenol, or Ibuprofen (e.g., Motrin), but instead wants aspirin, it’s a no-go. Aspirin, by the way, helps break up microclots in the lungs. You’ll only get push-back on the risk of bleeding with long-term use.

COVID-19 is an acute condition. But hey, they have their protocols. Forget about Ivermectin. Forget about Hydroxychloroquine; the faked studies and Fauci tanked that option with bullshit logic. Forget about N-Acetyl-Cysteine, which helps the body increase O2 saturation levels. Forget about The COVID-19 Frontline Doctors protocols, I-MASK+, MATH+, and forget about Dr. Peter McCullough’s amazing dynamic and multi-faceted approach to treating COVID-19. Forget about all of these unless you are in a conservative county and can get a conservative judge to back patient choice. If you have time. And you won’t. Your loved one will be on oxygen support, like a bipap, maybe for a day. And then some doctor will start talking about how important it is they get some nutrition.

You’ll be told that your loved one cannot stay off the oxygen support long enough to get nutrition, and then you’ll be told they are not tolerating the feeding tube. Then they will tell you they want to intubate your loved one because feeding them is easier that way. You’ll learn that no one comes off the ventilators. Protocolism is killing people. Protocolists are killing people.

Read more …

“We have taken this step and proceed from the fact that it will no longer be possible to somehow brush it [the security proposals] off.”

‘The Moment Of Truth Has Come’ For Russia & NATO – Moscow (RT)

Moscow’s new proposals for security guarantees are aimed at averting a potential military conflict with NATO, Russia’s deputy FM has said, noting that the country’s relations with the US-led bloc have reached a tipping point. The comprehensive deal, proposed to the US and NATO this week, serves the best interests of all the parties involved, and is designed to avoid a potential military showdown through political dialogue, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said Saturday. “[By proposing the deal] we make it clear that we are ready to talk about how to transform a military or a military-technical scenario into a political process that will strengthen the military security of all states within The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Euro-Atlantic area and Eurasia,” Grushko told the Soloviev LIVE YouTube channel.

Should the West ignore Moscow’s attempt to rein in the tensions, Russia will resort to “creating counter-threats” of its own, the minister said, referring to potential deployment of new weapons systems within Russia’s borders. “It will [then] be too late then to ask us why we’ve made such decisions, why we’ve deployed such systems,” he said. Arguing that increasingly strained Russia-NATO relations have reached “the moment of truth,” which calls for a “fundamental decision,” the minister stressed that the ball is now in NATO’s court. “We have taken this step and proceed from the fact that it will no longer be possible to somehow brush it [the security proposals] off.”

The idea of a comprehensive, legally binding security agreement with the West was first floated by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two separate draft documents, presented by Russia to Brussels and Washington on Wednesday, laid out the main principles of peaceful coexistence of Russia and the US-led military bloc in Europe, Moscow said. Unveiling the proposals, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov explained that Russia insists on written guarantees since the ties with the West currently suffer from “an almost total lack of mutual trust.” Ryabkov pointed out that many verbal promises, given by Western politicians to Russia back in 1990, including NATO’s pledge to not expand eastwards, have been subsequently broken.

Read more …

“..property, will be seized and people’s ability to purchase enough food not to starve, will depend upon them holding an up-to-date vaccine passport..”

Israeli-led Central Bank Simulation Preparation For Great Reset – Yeadon (DT.nz)

A banking crisis simulation conducted recently in Israel is preparation for the ‘Great Reset’, according to Mike Yeadon, former chief scientific officer for Pfizer and pandemic critic. The 10-day simulation concluded on 9 December in Jerusalem, and invovled central bank representatives from Israel, USA, UK, UAE, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Thailand, as well as representatives from the IMF, World Bank, and Bank of International Settlements. The simulation was based on a catastrophic cyber attack scenario, in which the entire world financial system was brought down, leading to a ‘run on banks’ requiring emergency liquidity in multiple currencies, paralysing the global financial system. Targets would included foreign exchange markets, bond markets, loss of data integrity and compromised transactions between exporters and importers.

The solution to such an event would require international cooperation and coordination of monetary policy. Measures would include a coordinated bank holiday, debt repayment grace periods, SWAP/REPO agreements and coordinated delinking from major currencies. Dr. Mike Yeadon believes the simulation is a front for a planned financial reset, which he expects to take place sometime after March 2022.= The financial reset itself is the actual manifestation of what the head of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Claus Schwab has called The Great Reset, where ‘You will own nothing and be happy’. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is a ‘graduate’ of the WEF. Yeadon believes electronic representation of individual currencies will end, and that it is entirely possible people will lose everything they think they own by way of financial assets.


Yeadon believes other real assets, mostly property, will be seized and people’s ability to purchase enough food not to starve, will depend upon them holding an up-to-date vaccine passport. According to Yeadon, that’s the ultimate tool of coercion: VaxPass or starvation. According to a post on Yeadon’s Telegram channel: • Banks will close for several days, and online banking will be offline. People won’t be able see their balances. • ‘Debt holidays’ will be implemented, including the cancellation of debts, noting that one person’s debt is another person’s savings. • ‘Coordinated delinking from major currencies’ will see the end of balances in USD, GBP and EUR. Individual currencies will presumably be rebased and ‘severely haircut’ into Central Bank Digital Currencies.

Read more …

Yeah, yeah, demise of the dollar and all that. What gives this guy’s ignorance away is this quote: “China has invested trillions of *dollars* into its Belt and Road Initiative..”

China & Russia Are Ready To End US Dominance Of Global Finance (Diesen)

De-dollarisation, the reduced reliance on the US dollar as a reserve and transaction currency, is immensely challenging as the dominant role of the US dollar has defined the international financial system for more than 75 years. The dollar has continued its strong position for three main reasons: the huge size of the US economy, the preservation of the dollar’s value by keeping inflation low, and the open and liquid financial market. As the US economy is in relative decline, inflation is out of control, and its financial markets are used as a weapon – the foundations for the enduring role of the dollar are quickly coming to an end.

A financial partnership between China and Russia, the world’s largest energy importer and the world’s largest energy exporter, is an indispensable instrument for dethroning the petrodollar. In 2015, approximately 90% of trade between Russia and China was settled in dollars, and by 2020, dollar-denominated trade between the two Eurasian giants had almost reduced by half, with only 46% of trade in dollars. Russia has also been leading the way in cutting the share of US dollars in its foreign reserves. The mechanisms for de-dollarizing China-Russia trade are also used to end the use of the greenback with third parties – with advancements being seen in places such as Latin America, Turkey, Iran, India, etc. The US has been pumping out dollars to the entire world for decades, and at some point, the tide will change as the sea of dollars return home with increasingly diminished value.

[..] China and Russia have also developed their own rating agencies and replaced the dominant position of Visa and Mastercard in their respective countries. This new financial architecture is complemented with an energy partnership and a technological partnership as neither China nor Russia wants to be reliant on American high-tech industries as they move into the fourth industrial revolution. Furthermore, China and Russia seek to avoid US-dominated transportation corridors. China has invested trillions of dollars into its Belt and Road Initiative for new land- and sea corridors, while Russia has advanced a similar but more modest program that includes developing the Arctic as a maritime route in partnership with China.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Lord Sumpton

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scripted?!

 

 

 

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Aug 012021
 
 August 1, 2021  Posted by at 9:10 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  51 Responses »


Ivan Aivazovsky Lac Maggiore 1892

 

Two Weeks (Denninger)
Vaccinated And Unvaccinated Individuals Have Similar Viral Loads (Medrxiv)
US Reports Almost 200,000 New Covid Cases In Worst Spike Since January (F.)
Why Are Globalists, Governments So Desperate For 100% Vaccination Rates? (AM)
Twitter Suspends Berenson For Postsing Results Of Pfizer Clinical Test (Turley)
Vaccine Mandates May Be Coming – But Will They Be Legal? (Turley)
French Protests Grow Against Extended Health Pass Scheme (R.)
Rare Earth Metals Have Become A Thorn In The Side Of The Green Agenda (RT)
CDC Still Baffled People Are Paying Attention To Them (BBee)

 

 

 

 

Delta Variant: They have NO idea what COVID variant anyone has unless they take a sample, grow the virus in a suitable cell line, and go through the sequencing process to find out what amino acids mutations have happened. Are they doing that in every patient across the world?

 

 

Must see.

Don’t Get Jabbed : JRickey Productions Studio


 

 

Vaccine Truth
@VaccineTruth2 – We think over 500K may have died from the vaccines in the first 6 months of 2021. But there isn’t an excess death bump in the weekly CDC data. But there is a bump in mortician data. So someone isn’t telling the truth. Can anyone help us confirm the anecdote below?

 

 

 

 

Sounds about right. In Britain they already have no idea what to say about falling numbers.

Except for: it’s the vaccines!. But we know it’s not.

Two Weeks (Denninger)

That’s about all their scheme has left, which is why the screaming and threats now. Note that I got jailed by Twatter for wishing that organizations mandating jabs go broke and starve when, in point of fact, they were advancing the very same thing toward their staff: Take a drug or be fired, go broke and starve. Why is this option for them about to expire? They’re about to get lynched and they know it. In another dispiriting setback for the nation’s efforts to stamp out the coronavirus, scientists who studied a big COVID-19 outbreak in Massachusetts concluded that vaccinated people who got so-called breakthrough infections carried about the same amount of the coronavirus as those who did not get the shots. The problem here is profound: The public was sold on these jabs as a solution; you will neither get seriously ill nor will you spread the virus to others if you get a “breakthrough”, therefore if you take the jab you get your life back.

[..] I was asked for evidence when my daughter started kindergarten that her “childhood” series was done, but never again. Not once. Now is it possible that the school had some “back door” access? Maybe. But never was I specifically asked to provide it beyond original enrollment for kindergarten. Never. It would have been stupid, however, for me not to have her get those shots. Why? Because there I can (and did) look at the data and it was trivially obvious that (1) the protection from them was durable, lasting decades if not life-long, (2) the disease(s) in question were in fact truly dangerous to healthy people and (3) the risk of a bad outcome from the jabs were trivially small. That makes the decision easy and you have to be somewhere off into crazyland to have a serious debate otherwise.

We can debate on the sequencing and timing, but not on a serious statistical level as to the rest. I argued before the first jab went into the first arm that none of this was true for this specific jab. There simply was no data to support the first point; three months is not enough time to determine durability and no amount of arm-waving can change that. The disease, by that time, was proved to be of trivial to statistically zero risk when it comes to healthy individuals, especially young healthy individuals, and there are effective and immediate treatments you can choose to use if infected (despite the screaming of many.) And third, the risk of adverse outcomes from the jabs was wildly higher, by several hundred times, that of other commonly used vaccines and this was with active interference in reporting the adverse effect rate.

Those who point to “flu shot mandates” in certain occupations are lying about their effectiveness too. We know that the morbidity and mortality profile from influenza has not been materially altered with the widespread use of flu vaccines. Yes, the CDC claims otherwise, but systemic review has repeatedly found confidence intervals that cross null. Cherry-picking results when statistical significance is not demonstrated with a strong “p” value is fraud. In other words the “mandates”, which in other than health-care workers are all “soft” and always have been (recommendations rather than actual mandates) all stand on the basis that statistically-speaking the flu shot has a vanishingly small risk of doing harm; therefore you can argue that since it’s almost never dangerous there’s no argument against it. That’s very different, however, than making an argument for it.

Finally, the history of attempting coronavirus vaccination is that it never works. We have tried before in both men and beast. We’ve never succeeded. Coronaviruses are notorious for both evading vaccination attempts and with their vaccine candidates being non-sterilizing, which in all viruses put evolutionary pressure on them and result in mutations that evade the protection. The problem with viruses in this regard is that their replication is exponential; while mutational evasion of protection for bacteria with antibiotics typically takes years or even decades to occur because bacteria replicate in a binary fashion, that is 1 becomes 2, which becomes 4 and so on with viruses 1 becomes 1,000 and if that one winds up in recombination due to cross-infection with something else at the same time then while the odds of a productive mutation are no higher than they are with any other the outcome when you get a productive mutation is much more-likely to result in escape and transmission because the replication factor is so large.

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Vaccines are useless.

Vaccinated And Unvaccinated Individuals Have Similar Viral Loads (Medrxiv)

SARS-CoV-2 variant B.1.617.2 (delta) is associated with higher viral loads [1] and increased transmissibility relative to other variants, as well as partial escape from polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies [2]. The emergence of the delta variant has been associated with increasing case counts and test-positivity rates, indicative of rapid community spread. Since early July 2021, SARS-CoV-2 cases in the United States have increased coincident with delta SARS-CoV-2 becoming the predominant lineage nationwide [3]. Understanding how and why the virus is spreading in settings where there is high vaccine coverage has important public health implications.

It is particularly important to assess whether vaccinated individuals who become infected can transmit SARS-CoV-2 to others. In Wisconsin, a large local contract laboratory provides SARS-CoV-2 testing for multiple local health departments, providing a single standard source of data using the same assay to measure virus burdens in test-positive cases. This includes providing high-volume testing in Dane County, a county with extremely high vaccine coverage. These PCR-based tests provide semi-quantitative information about the viral load, or amount of SARS-CoV-2 RNA, in respiratory specimens.

Here we use this viral load data to compare the amount of SARS-CoV-2 present in test-positive specimens from people who self-report their vaccine status and date of final immunization, during a period in which the delta variant became the predominant circulating variant in Wisconsin. We find no difference in viral loads when comparing unvaccinated individuals to those who have vaccine “breakthrough” infections. Furthermore, individuals with vaccine breakthrough infections frequently test positive with viral loads consistent with the ability to shed infectious viruses. Our results, while preliminary, suggest that if vaccinated individuals become infected with the delta variant, they may be sources of SARS-CoV-2 transmission to others.

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Worldometer reported fewer than 100,000 cases on the same day. And newsnodes.com has 59,000. Cui bono?

US Reports Almost 200,000 New Covid Cases In Worst Spike Since January (F.)

There were 194,608 new Covid cases reported around the U.S. on Friday, according to Johns Hopkins University, bringing the seven-day rolling average for new cases above 103,000, the highest it’s been since Feb. 7. More than 48,000 people are now hospitalized with Covid in the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which remains well below the more than 130,000 who were hospitalized during January’s record peak. The seven-day rolling average for deaths is around 300, according to the New York Times, up from an average of 175 deaths a day earlier this month.

A number of counties and cities across the U.S. have reversed course after easing restrictions earlier in the pandemic, with several reinstating mask mandates, while the U.S. Centers for Disease Control urged people in places with high transmission rates to wear masks in public indoor spaces, regardless of vaccination status, which could lead to more mask mandates. President Joe Biden announced Thursday that his administration will require all federal workers, contractors and members of the military to get vaccinated against coronavirus or submit to frequent testing — a precedent that could add to the momentum for vaccine mandates at private companies and the local government level.

The highly contagious delta variant is now responsible for nearly all Covid-19 cases in the U.S., leading to what public health officials have called a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” But while the vast majority of those being hospitalized and dying from Covid-19 are unvaccinated, concerns are growing over how easily the fully vaccinated might unwittingly spread the virus. A CDC study released Friday found that 74% of cases in a recent outbreak of the delta variant in Massachusetts were among vaccinated people, and they had viral loads as high as unvaccinated people who were infected. The study was a factor in the CDC’s tightening of its masking guidelines.

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I’m not buying into the scary Great Reset thing. They may have the money, but they ain’t got the brains.

Why Are Globalists, Governments So Desperate For 100% Vaccination Rates? (AM)

My concern is that Klaus Schwab’s reset agenda is impossible to enforce in a permanent way unless the human population is greatly reduced over a short period of time (a generation or two). Globalists are constantly talking about population control and reduction. Elites like Bill Gates are famous for it. Is it any wonder that they would devise a plan to institute it? What if, as many experts have suggested, the vaccine side effects create this condition of a diminishing population? What if they are meant to? We will not know for certain for a couple of years at least as autoimmune disorders and infertility take time to become visible in a population. The average timeline for actually diagnosing an autoimmune disorder is 4.5 years. Infertility can take six months to a year to diagnose.

If a large population of millions of people remain unvaccinated after the next couple of years, then they will represent a sizable and undeniable control group. A control group is a group of subjects that act as a pure sample untouched by a drug or vaccine experiment. If the vaccinated group becomes ill or dies from specific conditions and the control group does not have those same conditions, then that is a pretty good sign that your vaccine or drug is poison. The 50% of Americans and smaller percentages in other nations are a control group for the experimental vaccines. If something goes wrong with the vaccines, then we will be the proof. I suspect this is what the elites are really afraid of.

They have to force us to be vaccinated as well – ALL of us, so that there is no control group and thus no proof os what they have done. They could simply blame mass health disorders on covid itself, or some other false culprit. If the vaccines are a Trojan horse that causes widespread illness or infertility, and the globalists get caught because a control group exists, then it will mean outright rebellion along with ropes and lampposts for them. Their “Great Reset” will fall apart. To be sure, this might happen anyway. Vaccine passports are the line in the sand for most people. We are even seeing extensive protests and riots in places like Italy, France, UK and Australia over the draconian passport scheme. The US, though, is where the biggest fight will take place, in my opinion.

We have an armed population, millions upon millions of trained combat veterans and civilians, a military with around 70% conservatives and independents and a historical understanding of asymmetric warfare. As we have seen in places like Afghanistan, tanks, jets, missiles and drones are no guarantee of victory against a guerrilla force. Vaccine passports are not going to happen here. We simply won’t allow it.

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Some things take more than a purely legal view.

Twitter Suspends Berenson For Postsing Results Of Pfizer Clinical Test (Turley)

Just yesterday, we discussed the censoring of a commentator by Twitter for merely expressing an opinion over the need for a “pause” on any federal mandates on Covid-19 as new research is studied. Now, a former New York Times science reporter, Alex Berenson, has been suspended for simply quoting the results from a clinical trial by Pfizer and raising questions over any vaccine mandate. In the meantime, the White House accused both the Washington Post and New York Times of irresponsible reporting on Covid, but surprisingly Twitter has not suspended those accounts. It is the license of the censor. Twitter is unwilling to let people read or discuss viewpoints that it disagrees with as a corporation. Many on the left, however, have embraced the concept of corporate speech and censorship.

It turns out that the problem with censorship for many was the failure to censor views that they opposed. With the “right” censors at work, the free speech concerns have been set aside. I have little ability to judge the science on such questions. However, I welcome the debate. Yet, rather than answer such critics and refute their arguments, many people focus on silencing anyone with dissenting viewpoints like Berenson. Berenson has been effectively confined to Substack by Big Tech due to his discussing dissenting views on the science surrounding Covid-19. His latest offense against Big Tech came when he posted the results published by Pfizer of its own clinical data. He claimed that the research showed little difference in morality between those in the trial with a vaccine and those given a placebo.

[..] Now all three posters (Berenson, The Post, and The Times) were citing studies and accused on not putting them into context. However, only Berenson was suspended. Obviously, none of these posters should be suspended and Twitter should not be enforcing one of the largest censorship programs in history. However, the silence of free speech supports, academics, and journalists to this hypocrisy is deafening. The rise of corporate censors has combined with a heavily pro-Biden media to create the fear of a de facto state media that controls information due to a shared ideology rather than state coercion. That concern has been magnified by demands from Democratic leaders for increased censorship, including censoring political speech, and now word that the Biden Administration has routinely been flagging material to be censored by Facebook.

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No, but there’ll always be a judge who says they are.

Vaccine Mandates May Be Coming – But Will They Be Legal? (Turley)

There clearly are good reasons why many companies and schools demand vaccinations to rejoin workplaces or classrooms. As expected, those rules have been upheld, including a recent favorable ruling for Indiana University. More concerning are those calls to use mandates to make life miserable for anyone who still has doubts. German Chancellor Angela Merkel told her citizens that they will have fewer “freedoms” until they consent. Some in the media have echoed these calls, and some private organizations are following the same strategy. The NFL, for example, has been openly making life “a living hell” for NFL players who prefer to be tested but not vaccinated.

For the most part, the motivation behind government and private mandates are hard to litigate. Courts tend to defer to measures ostensibly protecting others from risk of illness; even in criminal cases, the government has been allowed to conduct “pretextual traffic stops” if it can cite an objective basis. There may be new legal challenges ahead, however. First, those with religious or medical concerns can challenge mandated vaccination programs. CNN’s Don Lemon this week called for barring unvaccinated people from offices and businesses, insisting “It has nothing to do with liberty. You don’t have the freedom and the liberty to put other people in jeopardy.” In truth, there are constitutional questions when you force people to take medications or vaccinations that violate their religious beliefs or that fail to satisfy a rational basis.

States also are moving to counter private mandates or to bar mandatory masking rules; Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) just signed an executive order allowing parents to ignore masking orders for their children in the state’s public schools. That could force the hand of the Biden administration on implementing federal mandates or executive orders — a conflict that would raise core federalism issues. The federal government is on shaky ground in mandating hood behavior or inactivity. In 2012 in NFIB v. Sebelius, Chief Justice John Roberts declared that “Construing the Commerce Clause to permit Congress to regulate individuals precisely because they are doing nothing would open a new and potentially vast domain to congressional authority.”

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Hot August for Macron.

French Protests Grow Against Extended Health Pass Scheme (R.)

Thousands of people have protested in Paris and other French cities over a mandatory coronavirus health pass for entry to many public venues, introduced by the government as it battles a fourth wave of infections. Protesters injured three police officers in Paris, a police spokesperson said. The interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, said on Twitter that 19 demonstrators were arrested, including 10 in Paris. It was the third weekend in a row that people opposed to President Emmanuel Macron’s new Covid-19 measures have taken to the streets. The number of demonstrators has grown steadily since the start of the protests, echoing the “yellow vest” movement that started in late 2018 against fuel taxes and the cost of living.


An interior ministry official said 204,090 had demonstrated across France, including 14,250 in Paris. This is about 40,000 more than last week. “We’re creating a segregated society and I think it is unbelievable to be doing this in the country of human rights,” said Anne, a teacher who was demonstrating in Paris. She declined to give her last name. “So I took to the streets; I have never protested before in my life,” she added. “I think our freedom is in danger.” Visitors going to museums, cinemas or swimming pools are already denied entry if they cannot produce the health pass showing they have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 or have had a recent negative test. Parliament approved a new law this week that will make vaccinations mandatory for health workers and extend the health pass requirement to bars, restaurants, trade shows, trains and hospitals.

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No, they’ll destroy the entire agenda. Green equals dumb these days.

Rare Earth Metals Have Become A Thorn In The Side Of The Green Agenda (RT)

Many regions, including within the EU, do indeed have an abundance of these resources. However, they either lack the expertise in extraction and processing, or perhaps more wisely, lack the willingness to destroy and blacken their landscape and poison their citizens. And that brings us to the highly ironic price of the proposed ‘green initiative’ – that of extreme pollution and abject environmental disaster. There are many highly toxic derivatives that come from the extraction and processing of these metals. It is highly disruptive to ecosystems, while releasing hazardous acidic and radioactive by-products into the atmosphere and the water table.

Rare earth ore often contains radioactive thorium, but in order to process, the metal requires an even deadlier cocktail of toxins. Processing a single ton produces 2,000 tons of toxic waste. In Baotou, there is now the world’s largest mine tailings pond. It is a vast death-lake of poisonous, grey, slime, and for 20 years it has been leaking its toxic contents into the groundwater supply. In Bayan Obo, where the Baotou rare earths are processed, sheep grow abnormally (they grow extra rows of teeth, are unable to close their mouths and their wool is ugly). Crops wither and the drinking water has a horrid smell which blackens gums and teeth. Locals die from cancer at an inordinate rate. The mine itself is a massive, apocalyptic black crater – much larger than the lonely nearby apartment block – 1,000 metres deep and spanning 48 sq km. It is a landscape of smoky smelters and dark, lifeless, mud.

China has introduced new, stricter environmental regulatory policies as of late, and is showing signs of simply becoming sick of poisoning its own land and people in pursuit of these minerals. It has attempted to outsource its own production to corporate-colony-mines in Africa, where no doubt – if successful – invaluable rare wildlife already nearing extinction can look forward to poisoned water, radioactive waste, and smoke-stack horizons. Looking at the rare-earth metals situation brings up many tricky and politically unwelcome questions about our supposed low-carbon future. How will we handle waste water for that level of demand? Who exactly will be willing to poison themselves and their land, at the lowest prices going? How can a limited mineral resource be considered a sustainable solution? And how can it be considered environmental when it is one of the most polluting processes imaginable?

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“The CDC is a group of bureaucrats used to working a 9-to-5 job of complete pointlessnes..”

CDC Still Baffled People Are Paying Attention To Them (BBee)

The CDC has once again changed course, recommending that people wear masks indoors, even those who have received the COVID-19 vaccination. Many people have reacted angrily to this decision—greatly confusing the CDC, which is used to being completely ignored. “This whole pandemic has been bizarre for us,” said CDC spokesman Dexter Park. “Normally, we put out recommendations like only cook a steak well-done and only fry eggs over-hard, and people don’t even pay enough attention to make fun of us, so people acting like what we say during the pandemic matters is really confusing.”


The CDC is a group of bureaucrats used to working a 9-to-5 job of complete pointlessness, making lists of recommendations that are fated to be crumpled up and thrown in a wastepaper basket. Thus, the pandemic turning them into experts whose opinions matter has caught them completely by surprise. “People keep saying our suggestions on masking are dumb and make no sense,” said CDC regulator Lyle Howell. “But that’s all of our suggestions on everything. We have to keep making recommendations, though, to justify our existence and get a budget. But no one listens to them—not even us. So can’t you all just go back to ignoring us and stop yelling at us? I’m just here until I get my pension.”

Read more …

 

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Bill Maher

 

 

Children
https://twitter.com/i/status/1421239009334923275

Tucker children Kansas

 

 

 

 

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Jun 212021
 


Theodoor Rombouts (1597-1637) Prometheus

 

The Pandemic Is Over; Shots are Worthless (Denninger)
The Failure of PCR Mass Testing (SPR)
Is a COVID Vaccine for Children Still Necessary? (WebMD)
What I Know (And Don’t Know) About SARS-CoV-2 (Curtin)
Study On The Electromagnetism Of People Vaccinated In Luxembourg (D.fr)
Manufacturing (New Normal) “Reality” (CJ Hopkins)
Have The Great Reset Technocrats Really Thought This Through? (SCF)
Meet the Censored: Bret Weinstein (Taibbi)
Assange Receives A Visit From His Family For The First Time In 8 Months (Welt)

 

 

 

 

McCullough

 

 

“That was a risk we ran but fortunately the shots were both too late and there are too many hold-outs for this to happen.”

The Pandemic Is Over; Shots are Worthless (Denninger)

Sorry folks, the screamers lose. As I pointed out when this began the natural evolutionary pressure on a virus causes more-easily transmitted and less-virulent strains to “win.” The reason for this is not that a virus has intelligence, but simply mathematics: Each person can get infected once, after which they have immunity. Even if that immunity is not perfect it prevents nearly all serious harm on re-infection; ergo, whatever strain gets you first is the only one you have to worry about. A more-transmissible mutation makes it more-likely for you to get that mutation first. However, a more-virulent strain makes it more-likely that a thinking organism, that is, a human, will shun the person in question because they are visibly ill.

Nobody deliberately exposes themselves to a possibly-deadly pathogen if they see someone who is ill; ergo, once it is established that some disease can kill rather than inconvenience (e.g. the sniffles) anyone displaying symptoms is actively avoided. This makes it less-likely for the virus to “succeed” in infecting the next person. If you tamper with this process with non-sterilizing vaccines that have nearly-universal coverage you can cause highly-virulent strains to circulate without being suppressed since the vaccinated person is both unlikely to be visibly ill and being vaccinated, if you make a public spectacle of it, means people won’t be afraid of them if they display symptoms even though they should be. This is how you get a break-through of a highly-virulent strain that has many times higher fatality rates, and if it happens you’re ****ed.

That was a risk we ran but fortunately the shots were both too late and there are too many hold-outs for this to happen. When uptake started to slow in the US I pointed out that a Marek’s disease nightmare, which was originally one of my concerns, was almost impossible because there was a large reservoir of people who refused the shots (myself included); their side effect profile bothered me a lot, they looked more dangerous compared to my risk from the virus and, in addition, I knew of and had early treatment options the media, government and pharma wanted suppressed and did suppress including HCQ, Ivermectin and now, it appears, some SSRIs.

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“..by the time someone gets a ‘positive’ test result, the infectious virus is already being neutralized, or in some cases is already long gone.”

The Failure of PCR Mass Testing (SPR)

In March 2020, SPR warned that PCR mass testing in the general population (“test, test, test”) would be a serious mistake. The issue never was that PCR tests didn’t work or that the Drosten PCR paper was “peer-reviewed” in just one day. The issue is that PCR tests cannot determine an acute infection, ongoing infectiousness, and actual disease, especially if ct values are not taken into account. Several studies have since shown that national PCR testing rates have had no influence at all on covid mortality. In addition, a new German study re-analyzed PCR tests of 160,000 people and concluded: “In light of our findings that more than half of individuals with positive PCR test results are unlikely to have been infectious, RT-PCR test positivity should not be taken as an accurate measure of infectious SARS-CoV-2 incidence. Our results confirm the findings of others that the routine use of ‘positive’ RT-PCR test results as the gold standard for assessing and controlling infectiousness fails to reflect the fact ‘that 50-75% of the time an individual is PCR positive, they are likely to be post-infectious.’” (Stang et al, Journal of Infection, May 2021)


Why has mass PCR testing failed so badly? Most likely because of the role of pre-symptomatic transmission: by the time someone gets a ‘positive’ test result, the infectious virus is already being neutralized, or in some cases is already long gone. Hence PCR testing really only makes sense in targeted, preemptive high-risk settings, such as hospitals, nursing homes or early border controls, or possibly in Chinese-style preemptive, pooled mass testings of entire 10-million-people cities. Overall, PCR mass testing has achieved essentially nothing but hundreds of billions in unnecessary costs and large-scale psychological trauma, especially in children. Nevertheless, with millions of deaths, covid was not just a “casedemic” or a “fake pandemic” (as the 2009 swine flu), but a PCR-driven “casedemic” on top of a real pandemic – or in other words: a “strange pandemic”.

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Was it ever?

Is a COVID Vaccine for Children Still Necessary? (WebMD)

Testing COVID-19 vaccines in young children is going to be tricky. Deciding how to approve them and who should get them may be even more difficult. So far, the vaccines available to Americans ages 12 and up have sailed through the FDA’s regulatory checks, taking advantage of an accelerated clearance process called an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). EUAs set a lower bar for effectiveness, saying the vaccines may be safe and effective based on just a few months of data. But with COVID cases plummeting in the United States and children historically seeing far less serious cases than adults, a panel of expert advisors to the FDA was asked to discuss whether the agency could consider vaccines for this age group under the same standard.

Said another way: Is COVID an emergency for kids? There’s another wrinkle in the mix, too — heart inflammation, which appears to be a very rare side effect tied to vaccination. It seems to happen more often in teens and young adults. To date, cases of myocarditis and pericarditis appear to be happening in 16 to 30 people for every 1 million doses given. But if it is conclusively linked to the shots, some wonder whether it might tip the balance between benefits and risks for kids. That left some of the experts who sit on the FDA’s advisory committee for vaccines and related biological products urging the FDA to take its time and more thoroughly study the shots before they’re given to millions of children.

Clinical studies of the vaccines in teens and adults have relied on some straightforward math. Researchers take two groups of similar people, giving half of them the vaccine and the other half a placebo, then wait to see which group has more symptomatic infections. To date, the vaccines have dramatically cut the risk of getting severely ill with COVID for every age group tested. But COVID infections are falling rapidly in the US, and that may make it more difficult for researchers to conduct a similar kind of experiment in children. The FDA is considering different approaches to decide whether a vaccine would be effective in kids, including something called an “immunobridging trial.”

In bridging trials, researchers don’t look for infections; rather, they look for proven signs that someone has developed immunity, like antibody levels. Those biomarkers are then compared to the immune responses of younger adults who have demonstrated good protection against infection. The main advantage of bridging studies is speed. It’s possible to get a snapshot of how the immune system responds to a vaccine within weeks of the final dose. The drawback? Researchers don’t know exactly what to look for to judge how well the shots are generating protection.

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” I do not know if the alleged virus has ever been isolated in the sense of being purified or detached from everything else aside from being cultured in a lab. Therefore I do not know if the virus exists.”

What I Know (And Don’t Know) About SARS-CoV-2 (Curtin)

I know that vast numbers of people have been hypnotized by fear, threats, and bribes to accept the corporate mainstream media’s version of COVID-19. I have concluded that many millions are moving in a trance state and do not know this. They have been induced into this state by a well-organized, very sophisticated propaganda campaign that has drawn on the human fear of death and disease. Those behind this have no doubt studied the high incidence of hypochondriasis in the general population and the fear of an invisible “virus” in societies where belief in God and the spiritual invisible has been replaced by faith in science. Knowing their audience well, they have concocted a campaign of fear and confusion to induce obedience.

I do not know, but suspect, that those who have been so hypnotized tend to be mainly members of the middle to the upper classes, those who have invested so much belief in the system. This includes the highly schooled. I know that to lockdown hundreds of millions of healthy people, to insist they wear useless masks, to tell them to avoid human contacts, to destroy the economic lives of regular people have created vast suffering that was meant to teach people a lesson about who was in control and that they better revise their understanding of human relations to adjust to the new digital unreality that the producers of this masquerade are trying to put in place of flesh and blood, face to face human reality. I know that the PCR test invented by Kary Mullis cannot test for the alleged virus or any virus and therefore all the numbers of cases and deaths are based on nothing. They are conjured out of thin air in a massive act of magic.

I know that the belief that it can so test began with the unscientific PCR Corona protocol created by Christian Drosten in Germany in January 2020 that became the standard method for testing for SARS-CoV-2 worldwide. I am sure this was preplanned and part of a high-level conspiracy. This protocol set the cycle threshold (amplification) at 45 which could only result in false positive results. These were then called cases: An act of fraud on a massive scale. I do not know if the alleged virus has ever been isolated in the sense of being purified or detached from everything else aside from being cultured in a lab. Therefore I do not know if the virus exists.

I know that the experimental mRNA “vaccines” that are being pushed on everyone are not traditional vaccines but dangerous experiments whose long-term consequences are unknown. And I know that Moderna says its messenger RNA (mRNA) non-vaccine “vaccine” functions “like an operating system on a computer” and that Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of mRNA vaccine technology, says that the lipid nanoparticles from the injections travel throughout the body and settle in large quantities in multiple organs where the spike protein, being biologically active, can cause massive damage and that the FDA has known this.

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Google translated. Just for the fun of it.

Study On The Electromagnetism Of People Vaccinated In Luxembourg (D.fr)

Summary presentation of results for the week of study 1 st June to 5 June 2021: Only 30 vaccinated people and 30 unvaccinated people were finally interviewed while the objective was to interview 100 for the first group and 100 for the second. The condition of gender distribution has been respected. In each group, 15 women and 15 men were interviewed. In the non-vaccinated group, out of the 30 individuals questioned, the number of people with magnet attraction is 0 (zero). The experience therefore stops there for this group. In the vaccinated group, on the other hand, out of the 30 individuals questioned, 29 showed attraction to the magnet. That is, the magnet adheres to their skin without difficulty. All of them are vaccinated at the vaccinodrome. NB : The 30 th person, which does not grip the magnet, has not made vaccinate vaccinodrome like any other. She was vaccinated by a nurse with whom she has worked for many years.

Of these 29 individuals, 22 had the magnet adhering to only one shoulder and only to the area of the injection. These 22 people are the ones who only received one injection. The 7 other people of this same group have the magnet which adheres on the two shoulders.

In this group called vaccinated, domiciled or working in Luxembourg, it appears that: 17 received at least one injection from the Pfizer laboratory 7 received at least one injection from the Astra Zeneca laboratory 3 received at least one injection from the Moderna laboratory 3 received the single injection of Johnson & Johnson 6 received the 2 injections from the Pfizer laboratory 1 received the 2 injections from the Astra Zeneca laboratory 1 received the 2 injections from the Moderna laboratory 2 of the individuals in this group, a nurse working at the CHL and having been one of the first to be vaccinated, and a financial analyst, presented totally abnormal electric field emissions.

For the nurse, a video was even made which shows the values emitted by the tester around his left shoulder. For the analyst, the values issued by the tester were approximately the same but the individual abruptly ended his participation in panic. Of the 30 people questioned who were part of the vaccinated group, 29 live or work in Strassen. Only 1 lives in Metz but works in Strassen. It would appear that people who were vaccinated earlier in the government immunization schedule are much more electromagnetic than people who were more recently. The magnet adheres faster and holds much better than in newly vaccinated people.

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“This is the crucial period for the totalitarian movement. It needs to negate the old “reality” in order to implement the new one, and it cannot do that with reason and facts, so it has to do it with fear and brute force. ”

Manufacturing (New Normal) “Reality” (CJ Hopkins)

The global capitalist ruling classes are implementing a new official ideology, in other words, a new “reality.” That’s what an official ideology is. It’s more than just a set of beliefs. Anyone can have any beliefs they want. Your personal beliefs do not constitute “reality.” In order to make your beliefs “reality,” you need to have the power to impose them on society. You need the power of the police, the military, the media, scientific “experts,” academia, the culture industry, the entire ideology-manufacturing machine. There is nothing subtle about this process. Decommissioning one “reality” and replacing it with another is a brutal business. Societies grow accustomed to their “realities.” We do not surrender them willingly or easily. Normally, what’s required to get us to do so is a crisis, a war, a state of emergency, or … you know, a deadly global pandemic.

During the changeover from the old “reality” to the new “reality,” the society is torn apart. The old “reality” is being disassembled and the new one has not yet taken its place. It feels like madness, and, in a way, it is. For a time, the society is split in two, as the two “realities” battle it out for dominance. “Reality” being what it is (i.e., monolithic), this is a fight to the death. In the end, only one “reality” can prevail.

This is the crucial period for the totalitarian movement. It needs to negate the old “reality” in order to implement the new one, and it cannot do that with reason and facts, so it has to do it with fear and brute force. It needs to terrorize the majority of society into a state of mindless mass hysteria that can be turned against those resisting the new “reality.” It is not a matter of persuading or convincing people to accept the new “reality.” It’s more like how you drive a herd of cattle. You scare them enough to get them moving, then you steer them wherever you want them to go. The cattle do not know or understand where they are going. They are simply reacting to a physical stimulus. Facts and reason have nothing to do with it.

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“It would seem that the desire to dominate others does not simply come to an end on its own. ”

Have The Great Reset Technocrats Really Thought This Through? (SCF)

The only thing left to destroy in a world populated by elites alone, are other elites. It would seem that the desire to dominate others does not simply come to an end on its own. With the UN World Food Program announcing that some 270 million people worldwide now face starvation, the ongoing debate about the real aims of the technocracy is profound. The question is whether their aim tends more towards major population reduction, or more towards a new type of slavery. It appears that philosophical and long-term practical questions remain a mystery. We will argue that evil, not simply the influence of the base upon the superstructure, is at the core of this endeavor. We have defined evil as inflicting the highest degree of pain upon the greatest number of resisting subjects. In short, we have defined evil as sadism, inflicting evil because it brings satisfaction to those inflicting it.

Because evil is fundamentally a destructive force, it cannot create anything: nothing in it is truly novel nor of use to humanity. Its pleasures are short-lived and spurious. It is unsustainable, self-defeating, ultimately leading to self-destruction. We have adequately assessed from any number of sources that nefarious interests are behind this process, who seek to make the process also about the exercise of power, in addition to several other aims (remaining in power, exercising power in ways consistent with their occult beliefs about evil, etc.). We understand that they are ‘evil’ because they involve a type of ‘power-over’ (as opposed to power-with/consent) which derives this power from fear-mongering and terrorism upon the population. Terrorism here is defined as the operationalized use of fear, pain, and other injury towards socio-political aims.

Had their plans not been rooted in evil, they would have used soft-power tactics like manufacturing consent, to arrive at their ends. The aim of the Great Reset is to transition the ruling plutocratic oligarchy into a technocratic one. The basis of plutocracy is finance, and the introduction of AI and automation eliminates the basis for finance as the foundation of an economy of scale. This is because automation and deflation move in tandem, making new technologies net losers. Therefore a new paradigm accounting for this post-financial ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, must be introduced. But the ideology of the Great Reset is based within the old financialist paradigm, which is one of cost externalization. When human beings are no longer involved in the valorization process in the production of goods and services, then humanity itself is the cost that requires externalization – elimination.

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“We are, for instance, vaccinated against yellow fever, typhoid, and rabies. We are not vaccinated against Covid..”

Meet the Censored: Bret Weinstein (Taibbi)

TK: Tech company executives have consistently said they intervene on this subject only for safety reasons, to prevent misleading information that might cause someone to avoid a lifesaving treatment. What is your answer to that? Are you an anti-vaxxer? Could a reasonable person infer from your broadcasts that you’re recommending that adults not get vaccinated?

Weinstein: We are biologists engaging material that is inherently evolutionary. Our upcoming book is on the problem caused by the interface of people with novel technology for which we are not evolutionarily prepared. No one is trained in even a majority of the disciplines relevant to the COVID Pandemic. Virologists aren’t clinicians, aren’t epidemiologists, aren’t evolutionary biologists, aren’t pharmacologists, aren’t data scientists. We state repeatedly that we are not medical doctors and are not making recommendations, but we are sharing our view of scientific material that we are qualified to analyze. It is true that some may become hesitant about the Covid vaccines from our discussions. That may cost lives, as we have taken pains to point out repeatedly. We also surely save lives. For example, it is especially likely that DarkHorse viewers who have had COVID would skip being vaccinated, greatly reducing their risk of adverse reactions without increasing their risk of future COVID.

The question is one of net effect. We have been way ahead of official guidance throughout the pandemic, and we have been very sharp in our criticism of those who have treated SARS-CoV2 casually. We have clearly sobered many up about the issue. Our refrain has been that although the case fatality rate from COVID is moderate, the damage to the body from a case of COVID—even if mild—is often substantial and likely implies reduced longevity. And we have given prescient advice on prevention. We were extremely early in recognizing that conducting business outside, opening windows (especially in cars), keeping conversation with strangers brief, wearing masks, removing masks outside, spending time in the sun, supplementing with vitamin-D, all have protective effects.

The best defense of what we have done on DarkHorse is simply to compare our prevention model with the official guidance. It is the low quality and slow improvement in the official model that constitutes the greatest danger. It takes far too long for official guidance to catch up to the evidence. As to the questions of whether we are vaccinated and/or would get vaccinated again: we (and our children) are more fully vaccinated than most people, in part due to the exposures that our (former) jobs as tropical biologists gave us. We are, for instance, vaccinated against yellow fever, typhoid, and rabies. We are not vaccinated against Covid, and do not intend to get vaccinated against Covid (unless, perhaps, a traditional vaccine were to be produced).

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Google translated.

Assange Receives A Visit From His Family For The First Time In 8 Months (Welt)

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange received a visit from his fiancée and two young sons for the first time in eight months in the British maximum security prison in Belmarsh. 38-year-old Stella Morris said after Saturday’s visit that Assange’s situation was “utterly unbearable and grotesque.” “It can’t go on like this,” said Morris. Assange torments himself, the detention drives him into a “deep depression and despair”. 49-year-old Assange has been in the maximum security prison in south London for more than two years. He was arrested in the UK in April 2019 after holing up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for seven years.


In January, a court in London rejected a US extradition request for Assange. The judge justified her decision with the mental state of the Australian and the strict prison conditions that would await him in a trial in the USA. There is a “considerable” risk that Assange would commit suicide while in US custody, she said. Because the US government appealed the verdict, Assange was not released for the time being. It is still unclear whether the US application will be granted. She hoped, said Morris to the British news agency PA, that the government in Washington would give in and refrain from extradition. The US administration under President Joe Biden has shown signs that it is committed to freedom of expression, said Morris, adding: “The only logical step would be to drop this entire prosecution (…)”.

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Feb 262021
 


Jean-Francois Millet The flight into Egypt 1864

 

Ivermectin Could Cut Covid Deaths By Up To 75% (DM)
CDC Reports Shocking Data About Asymptomatic Spread (Fed.)
Report Says Spirulina Algae Could Reduce Covid Mortality Rate (JPost)
Latin American Govts ‘Held To Ransom’ By Pfizer During Vaccine Talks (RT)
US Bombs Facilities In Syria Used By Iran-Backed Militia (AP)
Russia Is ‘Existential Threat’ To West That NATO Must Neutralize (RT)
Senate Parliamentarian: Minimum Wage Can’t Be In Covid Relief Bill (CNN)
Secret Memo Shows How Harris Must Now Advance Minimum Wage Hike (DP)
In Final Days, Trump Gave Up on Forcing Release of Russiagate Files |(Maté)
The Great Reset Is Here (Rickards)
Boeing 777 Makes Emergency Landing In Moscow Due To Engine Trouble (ZH)
700+ Children In Detention at US Border, Spike In Unaccompanied Crossings (RT)
Atlantic Ocean Circulation At Weakest In A Millennium (G.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

We need more testing! Only 100s of millions of people have taken it! Who knows if it’s safe?

Ivermectin Could Cut Covid Deaths By Up To 75% (DM)

A cheap and safe drug widely used against parasites cuts Covid infections, hospitalisations and deaths by about 75 per cent, a study shows. More than 30 trials across the world found that ivermectin causes ‘repeated, consistent, large magnitude improvements in clinical outcomes’ at all stages of the disease. The peer-reviewed study, to be published in the US journal Frontiers of Pharmacology, says the evidence is so strong that the drug – used to treat head lice and scabies – should become a standard therapy everywhere, so hastening the global recovery.

Study co-author Professor Paul Marik, director of emergency and pulmonary care at the Eastern Virginia Medical School in the US, said: ‘The data is overwhelming – we are in a pandemic, and this is an incredibly effective way to combat it. If we use ivermectin widely, our societies can open up.’ Other medications have been touted as effective treatments for combating coronavirus, only for trials to dash hopes – notably with hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug. An earlier study by Professor Andrew Hill of Liverpool University also concluded that ivermectin cuts death rates by around three-quarters. He recommended there should be larger trials before it was approved by UK regulators. A new trial of ivermectin as a Covid treatment is due to start shortly at Oxford University.

Dr Tess Lawrie, director of the Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy in Bath, convened an online summit of international experts last weekend to discuss the new data. It included evidence that widespread use of ivermectin in parts of India and South America has led to a big reduction in infections and deaths. Yesterday Dr Lawrie submitted a 97-page report to the World Health Organisation, urging it immediately to recommend ivermectin to treat Covid. The drug, taken in tablet form or as drops, is licensed in Britain only as a treatment for parasitic worms, head lice and scabies. It has been used by hundreds of millions of patients over the past 30 years, mainly in developing countries, and at around £50 per patient – less in some countries – is far cheaper than other new Covid treatments, such as the rheumatism drug tocilizumab, which costs £1,000 per patient.

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”If the contagiousness of people without symptoms is not what drives the spread of SARS-COV-2, then no COVID restriction on public life besides staying home when you are clearly sick could be justified..”

CDC Reports Shocking Data About Asymptomatic Spread (Fed.)

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control slipped in a shocking piece of evidence in a recent report on low in-school COVID-19 transmission that severely undercuts the rationale for most COVID restrictions, including lockdowns. The Jan. 29 report’s conclusion seems to fit the pro-mask narrative, of course: “Schools might be able to safely open with appropriate mitigation efforts [such as masking and not allowing student cohorts to mix] in place.” In the 17 rural Wisconsin schools surveyed, only seven cases were linked to in-school transmission out of 4,876 pupils, and no staff members were infected at school during the study period.

While the report spends ample time explaining the mitigation strategies employed in the schools and the high reported mask compliance (92%) among students, the authors later discuss something you probably have not seen in any of the mainstream media’s coverage of this report . “Children might be more likely to be asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 than are adults…This apparent lack of transmission [in schools] is consistent with recent research (5), which found an asymptomatic attack rate of only 0.7% within households and a lower rate of transmission from children than from adults. However, this study was unable to rule out asymptomatic transmission within the school setting because surveillance testing was not conducted”

The “recent research” the study authors cite is a meta-analysis of 54 household COVID-19 transmission studies that observed 77,758 participants, which was posted as a pre-print this summer and published in December. The text of the analysis is even more consequential than the CDC’s reference makes it seem: “Estimated mean household secondary attack rate from symptomatic index cases (18.0%; 95% CI, 14.2%-22.1%) was significantly higher than from asymptomatic or presymptomatic index cases (0.7%; 95% CI, 0%-4.9%; P<.001), although there were few studies in the latter group. These findings are consistent with other household studies, reporting asymptomatic index cases as having limited role in household transmission”.

The 0.7 percent figure includes not just people who never show symptoms of COVID-19, but people who haven’t yet shown symptoms—two groups that have been alleged to be major factors driving the spread of the virus. This is a major data point often underplayed or even challenged in much media coverage of the virus. The key, if not central, rationale for non-pharmaceutical interventions such as masking, distancing, and staying at home is allegedly significant transmission from people who don’t show symptoms. If the contagiousness of people without symptoms is not what drives the spread of SARS-COV-2, then no COVID restriction on public life besides staying home when you are clearly sick could be justified, considering the obvious negative consequences of these restrictions.

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Anti-inflammatory.

Report Says Spirulina Algae Could Reduce Covid Mortality Rate (JPost)

A team of scientists from Israel and Iceland have published research showing that an extract of spirulina algae has the potential to reduce the chances of COVID-19 patients developing a serious case of the disease. The research, published in the peer-reviewed journal Marine Biotechnology, found that an extract of photosynthetically manipulated Spirulina is 70% effective in inhibiting the release of the cytokine TNF-a, a small signaling protein used by the immune system. The research was conducted in a MIGAL laboratory in northern Israel with algae grown and cultivated by the Israeli company VAXA, which is located in Iceland. VAXA received funding from the European Union to explore and develop natural treatments for coronavirus. Iceland’s MATIS Research Institute also participated in the study.


In a small percentage of patients, infection with the coronavirus causes the immune system to release an excessive number of TNF-a cytokines, resulting in what is known as a cytokine storm. The storm causes acute respiratory distress syndrome and damage to other organs, the leading cause of death in COVID-19 patients. “If you control or are able to mitigate the excessive release of TNF-a, you can eventually reduce mortality,” said Asaf Tzachor, a researcher from the IDC Herzliya School of Sustainability and the lead author of the study. During cultivation, growth conditions were adjusted to control the algae’s metabolomic profile and bioactive molecules. The result is what Tzachor refers to as “enhanced” algae.

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Anyone surprised?

Latin American Govts ‘Held To Ransom’ By Pfizer During Vaccine Talks (RT)

A number of Latin American countries have reportedly experienced extremely aggressive negotiating tactics by US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which has demanded full immunity from any civil claims and state assets as a guarantee. The questionable negotiating tactics by the pharmaceutical giant have been highlighted in a fresh report by the UK-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ). Officials from Argentina, as well as from another unspecified Latin American country, talked to the outlet, describing Pfizer’s approach to negotiations as “high-level bullying” that made the governments feel like they were being “held to ransom.” Argentina was among the first countries to begin negotiations with the company.

The talks started last June, yet ultimately flopped as Pfizer’s demands became less and less reasonable, an official told the BIJ. The pharmaceutical giant assertively demanded additional clauses that would make it immune against any civil claims citizens might file over side effects from receiving the Pfizer jab. While a new bill regulating the vaccination process was adopted in October, the company was still unhappy with its wording, as it did not grant full immunity to pharmaceutical companies but rather allowed a change of jurisdiction established in advance in the contract. Pfizer ultimately requested a “new law” from the government, then-Health Minister Gonzalez Garcia said in December, describing the demands as “somewhat unacceptable.”

“Argentina could compensate for the vaccine’s adverse effects, but not if Pfizer makes a mistake,” the official, cited by BIJ, said. “For example, what would happen if Pfizer unintentionally interrupted the vaccine’s cold … and a citizen wants to sue them? It would not be fair for Argentina to pay for a Pfizer error.” The company then urged Argentina to take out international insurance to pay for potential future cases against the manufacturer, and ultimately demanded that it put up unspecified sovereign assets as collateral in December. “We offered to pay for millions of doses in advance, we accepted this international insurance, but the last request was unusual: Pfizer demanded that the sovereign assets of Argentina also be part of the legal support,” the official said.

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Who are in reality Iraqi troops fighting ISIS?

US Bombs Facilities In Syria Used By Iran-Backed Militia (AP)

The United States launched airstrikes in Syria on Thursday, targeting facilities used by Iranian-backed militia groups. The Pentagon said the strikes were in retaliation for a rocket attack in Iraq earlier this month that killed one civilian contractor and wounded a U.S. service member and other coalition troops. The airstrike was the first known military action undertaken by the Biden administration, which in its first weeks has emphasized its intent to put more focus on the challenges posed by China, even as Mideast threats persist. “This proportionate military response was conducted together with diplomatic measures , including consultation with coalition partners,” the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, John Kirby, said in announcing the strikes.

“The operation sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and coalition personnel. At the same time, we have acted in a deliberate manner that aims to deescalate the overall situation in eastern Syria and Iraq.” Biden administration officials condemned the Feb. 15 rocket attack near the city of Irbil in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish-run region, but as recently as this week officials indicated they had not determined for certain who carried it out. Officials have noted that in the past, Iranian-backed Shiite militia groups have been responsible for numerous rocket attacks that targeted U.S. personnel or facilities in Iraq. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, had said Tuesday that Iraq is in charge of investigating the Feb. 15 attack.

“Right now, we’re not able to give you a certain attribution as to who was behind these attacks, what groups, and I’m not going to get into the tactical details of every bit of weaponry used here,” Kirby said. “Let’s let the investigations complete and conclude, and then when we have more to say, we will.”

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Syria, Iran, Russia.

Russia Is ‘Existential Threat’ To West That NATO Must Neutralize (RT)

The Cold War ended decades ago, but Moscow is still working to maintain its Soviet-era influence over Eastern Europe, one of Washington’s top generals has claimed, warning that the US must take on Russia to deliver world peace. In a speech published by the Pentagon’s press service on Wednesday, the head of the country’s European Command, Air Force General Tod D. Wolters, claimed that, when it comes to projecting American force abroad, “everything we do is about generating peace.” However, he caveated, “we compete to win … and if deterrence fails, we’re prepared to respond to aggression, primarily through NATO.”

Wolters is also the US-led bloc’s supreme allied commander on the continent, and recent weeks have seen its members stage drills and engage in a series of stand-offs with Russian sailors in the Black Sea. “Beyond exercises,” he added, “we conduct operations and other activities to compete, deter and prepare to respond to aggression,” including maintaining a presence in the disputed region. The general insisted that the West is locked in a struggle for dominance with Moscow, and it has to come out on top. “We’re in an era of global power competition. Winning in this era is ensuring that global power competition does not become a global power war,” he argued. “Despite widespread international condemnation and continued economic sanctions, Russia engages in destabilizing and malign activities across the globe, with many of those activities happening close to home,” he said.

The US Department of Defense has since added a caveat to the transcript to make it clear he meant to refer to shadowy Russian schemes in Europe, rather than, say, an American presidential election. In that context, Wolters claimed, “Russia remains an enduring existential threat to the United States and our European allies,” he said. “Russia… and China – having declared itself a near-Arctic power – continued to militarize the region and seek to establish economic footholds to gain influence over regional governance,” he suggested. This, Wolters said, underlined the need to “maintain a credible Arctic deterrence and ensure vital sea lines of communication remain open by securing the Greenland, Iceland and United Kingdom gap.”

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They’re hiding behind a guy who only gives advice?

Senate Parliamentarian: Minimum Wage Can’t Be In Covid Relief Bill (CNN)

The Senate parliamentarian has ruled against including the increase in the minimum wage in the Covid relief bill. While Democrats had pushed for the increase to be included — and leadership expressed its disappointment in the ruling Thursday evening — its removal may actually make it easier to pass the bill, senior Democratic sources believe, because it’ll avoid a messy fight over whether to strip it out of the bill and whether to compromise. “President Biden is disappointed in this outcome, as he proposed having the $15 minimum wage as part of the American Rescue Plan,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement. “He respects the parliamentarian’s decision and the Senate’s process.”


For now, far from being a defeat, the ruling is viewed as clearing the way for the bill’s passage in the Senate, a Biden administration official told CNN. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday evening the provision will remain in the House bill on which the chamber is voting Friday. However, the parliamentarian ruled that the increase to $15 per hour did not meet a strict set of guidelines needed to move forward in the Senate’s reconciliation process. That means that the House will pass its bill, the Senate will have to strip the minimum wage provision out, and then eventually the House will have to pass that bill again at the end of the process.

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Well, they can’t. Kamala can do it. And she won’t.

Secret Memo Shows How Harris Must Now Advance Minimum Wage Hike (DP)

On Thursday, a key Senate official advised Democratic lawmakers that the chamber’s rules do not allow them to include a minimum wage increase in President Joe Biden’s first COVID-19 relief legislation. The ruling from the parliamentarian means that Vice President Kamala Harris could decide the fate of one of the Democratic Party’s most significant campaign promises — but it remains unclear what she will end up doing. As the presiding officer of the Senate, Harris — who has long touted her support for a $15 minimum wage — can now use the power her predecessors have used to ignore the advisory opinion and fulfill Biden’s campaign promise to boost the wage. A confidential memo obtained by The Daily Poster now circulating on Capitol Hill spells out exactly how that could be accomplished.

However, White House chief of staff Ron Klain this week declared that Harris will refuse to use that power — a decision that would effectively put the Biden-Harris administration in the position of potentially killing the prospect of minimum wage legislation for the foreseeable future. Immediately after the parliamentarian’s ruling, the White House issued a statement reiterating Klain’s comment, declaring that “Biden respects the parliamentarian’s decision.” Some congressional Democrats have already been arguing that the Biden administration’s refusal to overrule the parliamentarian would be immoral and a political disaster for their party. “It’s been 12 years since we’ve raised the minimum wage, and if we’re going to make those promises, we have to be able to deliver on them,” Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal said Wednesday on MSNBC.

“Because, I’ll tell you what, in two years… when people vote in the midterms, you’re not gonna be able to say, ‘Well, I’m sorry, we couldn’t raise the minimum wage because the parliamentarian ruled that we couldn’t do it.’ That’s not gonna fly.” The maddening process conversation surrounding a $15 minimum wage increase is the result of Democrats refusing to eliminate the legislative filibuster, which means Republicans can block most legislation unless Democrats find 60 votes. As such, Democrats are working to pass the COVID bill using the convoluted budget reconciliation process. The process will allow for a simple majority vote on the final legislation, but it also allows Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough to recommend tossing certain provisions if she decides they violate the so-called Byrd Rule, which is designed to prohibit extraneous matters outside of federal spending issues to be added to budget legislation.

The minimum wage, however, has budget implications, according to the Congressional Budget Office — which is why proponents had hoped MacDonough would advise that it is in order, especially since the nonpartisan parliamentarian has previously ruled that other less significant budget-related issues were in order. MacDonough, however, refused to do so on Thursday evening. The development is not catastrophic for the $15 minimum wage provision — if Harris simply uses her power to ignore the opinion and clear the path for the measure she has long insisted she supports. The problem is that the White House is signaling she will do the opposite.

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We will never know.

In Final Days, Trump Gave Up on Forcing Release of Russiagate Files |(Maté)

After four years of railing against “deep state” actors who, he said, tried to undermine his presidency, Donald Trump relented to U.S. intelligence leaders in his final days in office, allowing them to block the release of critical material in the Russia investigation, according to a former senior congressional investigator who later joined the Trump administration. Kash Patel, whose work on the House Intelligence Committee helped unearth U.S. intelligence malpractice during the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane probe, said he does not know why Trump did not force the release of documents that would expose further wrongdoing. But he said senior intelligence officials “continuously impeded” their release – usually by slow-walking their reviews of the material. Patel said Trump’s CIA Director, Gina Haspel, was instrumental in blocking one of the most critical documents, he said.

Patel, who has seen the Russia probe’s underlying intelligence and co-wrote critical reports that have yet to be declassified, said new disclosures would expose additional misconduct and evidentiary holes in the CIA and FBI’s work. “I think there were people within the IC [Intelligence Community], at the heads of certain intelligence agencies, who did not want their tradecraft called out, even though it was during a former administration, because it doesn’t look good on the agency itself,” Patel [said]. Although a Department of Justice inspector general’s report in December 2019 exposed significant intelligence failings and malpractice, Patel said more damning information is still being kept under wraps. And despite an ongoing investigation by Special Counsel John Durham into the conduct of the officials who carried out the Trump-Russia inquiry, it is unclear if key documents will ever see the light of day.

Patel did not suggest that a game-changing smoking gun is being kept from the public. Core intelligence failures have been exposed – especially regarding the FBI’s reliance on Christopher Steele’s now debunked dossier to secure FISA warrants used to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. But he said the withheld material would reveal more misconduct as well as major problems with the CIA’s assessment that Russia, on Vladimir Putin’s orders, ordered a sweeping and systematic interference 2016 campaign to elect Trump. Patel was cautious about going into detail on any sensitive information that has not yet been declassified.

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“Once the cattle (that’s us) have been herded into the digital slaughterhouse, we will be told to “use it or lose it” when it comes to our own money. In other words, either we spend the money, or the government will take it away.”

The Great Reset Is Here (Rickards)

In 1999, the euro replaced the individual currencies of Germany, France, Netherlands, Italy and other major economies in Europe. Today, the number of countries that have joined the euro is up to 19, and more countries are awaiting admission. The euro is the second largest reserve currency asset after the U.S. dollar. The creation of the euro can be thought of as a stepping stone from national currencies to a single world currency. Now, the euro (along with the Chinese yuan) is moving quickly to become a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). A CBDC combines a traditional currency with the blockchain technology of a cryptocurrency. It’s an important move in the direction of eliminating cash and forcing users into a 100% digital system using credit cards, debit cards, and smartphone apps.

Why are China and Europe so focused on eliminating cash? I’ve said all along that you cannot put negative interest rates on consumers until you eliminate cash. Otherwise, savers would just withdraw cash from the banks and stuff it in mattresses to avoid the negative rates. Implicitly, the European Central Bank (ECB) seems to agree. One of the ECB Board members says that negative rates (really confiscation) will be applied as a “penalty” against “hoarding” cash. In plain English, that means they will create digital money, force you to spend it, and if you don’t spend it, they will take it away as a “negative rate.” Now all of the pieces of the global elite plan are converging. The IMF SDR issuance will reliquify global central banks that cannot print dollars. Then CBDCs will be used to eliminate cash.

Once the cattle (that’s us) have been herded into the digital slaughterhouse, we will be told to “use it or lose it” when it comes to our own money. In other words, either we spend the money, or the government will take it away. Of course, the spending can be channeled into politically correct causes by excluding unpopular vendors such as gun dealers or conservative social media platforms from the payment system. This represents total domination of human behavior through world money + digital currencies + confiscation. This is not speculation anymore; it’s happening in front of our eyes. The Great Reset is coming fast. The future is here.

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“designed by clowns…supervised by monkeys”

Boeing 777 Makes Emergency Landing In Moscow Due To Engine Trouble (ZH)

It really has not been a good year for Boeing. Or a good decade for that matter. Just days after a Boeing-777 became the latest symbol of all that is wrong with the once almighty aircraft maker, when the plane’s right engine exploded (with debris striking houses below it in a scene right out of Breaking Bad) and only a miracle prevented a tragedy, moments ago another Boeing-777 made an emergency landing in Russia’s Sheremetyevo airport outside of Moscow, Interfax reports, adding that the plane crew requested the landing after one of left engine control channels failed The news service doesn’t name the airline operator; but said that the plane was flying from Hong Kong to Madrid. Luckily, no injuries were reported.

The latest mishap followed even more bad news for the aerospace giant, which earlier on Thursday agreed to pay $6.6 million to U.S. regulators as part of a settlement with the Federal Aviation Administration over the planemaker’s failure to comply with a 2015 safety agreement including quality and safety-oversight lapses going back years, a setback that comes as Boeing wrestles with repairs to flawed 787 Dreamliner jets that could dwarf the cost of the federal penalty. As Reuters reported, Boeing is beginning painstaking repairs and forensic inspections to fix structural integrity flaws embedded deep inside at least 88 parked 787s built over the last year or so. The inspections and retrofits could take up to a month per plane and are likely to cost hundreds of millions – if not billions – of dollars, though it depends on the number of planes and defects involved.

The penalties include $5.4 million for not complying with the agreement in which Boeing pledged to change its internal processes to improve and prioritize regulatory compliance and $1.21 million to settle two pending FAA enforcement cases. “The FAA is holding Boeing accountable by imposing additional penalties,” FAA Administrator Steve Dickson said in a statement. But the biggest challenge facing Boeing is whether or not it can find passengers for its 737 MAX now that the infamous deadly airplane which was reportedly “designed by clowns…supervised by monkeys” is set to fly again. While the plane may indeed have gotten a green light from the FAA, a far bigger question is whether Boeing has by now lost the trust of the public for good.

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The “left wing” press will bury it.

700+ Children In Detention at US Border, Spike In Unaccompanied Crossings (RT)

Hundreds of unaccompanied minors have been held at the US border waiting to be processed, Axios reported. Almost a third of them have been lingering in detention for more than two days, as the backlog piles up. Around 700 minors who crossed into the US on their own were kept in Border Patrol Custody as of Sunday, Axios reported on Wednesday, citing an internal Customs and Border Protection document. By that time, around 200 children had already been held up for over 48 hours, and in the case of nine child migrants, for over 72 hours, which exceeds the maximum limit under the Flores Settlement Agreement, which stipulates that CBP cannot hold children for more than three days. Per the same agreement, asylum-seeking children transferred to ICE detention centers cannot spend more than 20 days there, after which they must be released.


The processing system is under increasing strain due to an influx of child migrants. In January, CBP encountered 5,707 child migrants at the southwest border, almost a thousand more than in December (4,855). President Biden, who was promising a U-turn from the Trump administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ immigration policy, has recently come under fire for reopening a child detention facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas. The Biden administration was quick to defend the move as a temporary fix in the times of pandemic, arguing that the infamous Trump facility was reopened since the Office of Refugee Resettlement cannot house as many asylum seekers as before due to the Covid-19 restrictions.

Read more …

If you say things like “..could reduce by about 34% to 45% by the end of this century..”, people will think: I won’t be alive by then, so would should I care?

Atlantic Ocean Circulation At Weakest In A Millennium (G.)

The Atlantic Ocean circulation that underpins the Gulf Stream, the weather system that brings warm and mild weather to Europe, is at its weakest in more than a millennium, and climate breakdown is the probable cause, according to new data. Further weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) could result in more storms battering the UK, more intense winters and an increase in damaging heatwaves and droughts across Europe. Scientists predict that the AMOC will weaken further if global heating continues, and could reduce by about 34% to 45% by the end of this century, which could bring us close to a “tipping point” at which the system could become irrevocably unstable. A weakened Gulf Stream would also raise sea levels on the Atlantic coast of the US, with potentially disastrous consequences.

Stefan Rahmstorf, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who co-authored the study published on Thursday in Nature Geoscience, told the Guardian that a weakening AMOC would increase the number and severity of storms hitting Britain, and bring more heatwaves to Europe. He said the circulation had already slowed by about 15%, and the impacts were being seen. “In 20 to 30 years it is likely to weaken further, and that will inevitably influence our weather, so we would see an increase in storms and heatwaves in Europe, and sea level rises on the east coast of the US,” he said. Rahmstorf and scientists from Maynooth University in Ireland and University College London in the UK concluded that the current weakening had not been seen over at least the last 1,000 years, after studying sediments, Greenland ice cores and other proxy data that revealed past weather patterns over that time.

The AMOC has only been measured directly since 2004. The AMOC is one of the world’s biggest ocean circulation systems, carrying warm surface water from the Gulf of Mexico towards the north Atlantic, where it cools and becomes saltier until it sinks north of Iceland, which in turn pulls more warm water from the Caribbean. This circulation is accompanied by winds that also help to bring mild and wet weather to Ireland, the UK and other parts of western Europe. Scientists have long predicted a weakening of the AMOC as a result of global heating, and have raised concerns that it could collapse altogether. The new study found that any such point was likely to be decades away, but that continued high greenhouse gas emissions would bring it closer.

Read more …

 

 

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Feb 022021
 
 February 2, 2021  Posted by at 1:21 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  22 Responses »


Roy Lichtenstein Woman With Flowered Hat 1963

 

 

Well, Dr. D is back again. You might want to sit down for this one.

 

 

Dr. D: In my last article I wrote about cows and hay and unrealistic estimates of production of the land. But surely that is all academic. What could possibly force Americans to once again eat by the sweat of their brow?

Insider military think tank Deagel.com. The think tank that in 2015 estimated the death of 200M Americans by 2025.

Deagel – Forecast 2025

The Great Reset; like the climate change, extinction rebellion, planetary crisis, green revolution, shale oil (…) hoaxes promoted by the system; is another attempt to slow down dramatically the consumption of natural resources and therefore extend the lifetime of the current system. It can be effective for awhile but finally won’t address the bottom-line problem and will only delay the inevitable. The core ruling elites hope to stay in power which is in effect the only thing that really worries them.


The collapse of the Western financial system – and ultimately the Western civilization – has been the major driver in the forecast along with a confluence of crisis with a devastating outcome. As COVID has proven Western societies embracing multiculturalism and extreme liberalism are unable to deal with any real hardship. The Spanish flu one century ago represented the death of 40-50 million people.

Today the world’s population is four times greater with air travel in full swing which is by definition a super spreader. The death casualties in today’s World would represent 160 to 200 million in relative terms but more likely 300-400 million taking into consideration the air travel factor that did not exist one century ago. So far, COVID death toll is roughly 1 million people. It is quite likely that the economic crisis due to the lockdowns will cause more deaths than the virus worldwide.

The Soviet system was less able to deliver goodies to the people than the Western one. Nevertheless Soviet society was more compact and resilient under an authoritarian regime. That in mind, the collapse of the Soviet system wiped out 10 percent of the population. The stark reality of diverse and multicultural Western societies is that a collapse will have a toll of 50 to 80 percent depending on several factors but in general terms the most diverse, multicultural, indebted and wealthy (highest standard of living) will suffer the highest toll.

The only glue that keeps united such aberrant collage from falling apart is overconsumption with heavy doses of bottomless degeneracy disguised as virtue. Nevertheless the widespread censorship, hate laws and contradictory signals mean that even that glue is not working any more. Not everybody has to die migration can also play a positive role in this.


We expected this situation to unfold and actually is unfolding right now with the November election triggering a major bomb if Trump is re-elected. If Biden is elected there will very bad consequences as well. There is a lot of bad blood in the Western societies and the protests, demonstrations, rioting and looting are only the first symptoms of what is coming. However a new trend is taking place overshadowing this one…

Six years ago the likelihood of a major war was tiny. Since then it has grown steadily and dramatically and today is by far the most likely major event in the 2020s. The ultimate conflict can come from two ways. A conventional conflict involving at least two major powers that escalates into an open nuclear war. …

If there is not a dramatic change of course the world is going to witness the first nuclear war. The Western block collapse may come before, during or after the war. It does not matter. A nuclear war is a game with billions of casualties and the collapse plays in the hundreds of millions.” – Deagel, September 25, 2020

Now clearly this is ridiculous. Even these new, revised estimates have population drop in the U.S. to 99 Million in 4 years.

 

 

So what do we see here? A catastrophic event that hurts only very specific nations, leaving nearby neighbors untouched or even improved. That is, not a climate event or asteroid strike. It hurts a few nations most specifically, that is, Britain, U.S., Germany, Israel, France, Australia, Italy, S. Korea, Saudi Arabia.

What do these nations all have in common? They are the Western Allies, and under the Western fiat central banking system. While India and Asia prosper most, conspicuous in the list is China and Russia, presumably the Axis in any new war. China takes a massive numbers hit, but a unimportant percentage hit. Russia is unmoved. That would seem to rule out wars of food, wars of money, and wars with Russia or in Europe.

What type of singular event can kill several billion people in just 4 years, leaving some nations erased and some nations untouched? Not economic wars. Not conventional wars.

That leaves nuclear and biological war, almost certainly a first-strike surprise war. Clearly this will not be with Russia, which would take more injury in a counter attack, so a first strike surprise war from China, perhaps via close proxy North Korea, as they are the only two Axis countries that (presumably) take any damage. They are counter-attacked, but weakly. Their own allies, in SE Asia, are unharmed. Australia is depopulated and easy to conquer. As is the United States, but not Canada or Mexico. Note if they attacked India they would be nuked again and open second front in a land war in Asia against an equal power, and China leaves them alone for this round, the presumed Deagel scenario.

Now what did I just tell you a few weeks ago?

If China doesn’t conquer and colonize the United States, they die.

That seems true for Australia, or at least corollary. Here’s the same phrase: If China DOES conquer and colonize the United States, WE die.

Now why would they do that? Their people are rioting with dissent, of increased expectations that have been capped. There are more riots and protests in China than anywhere on earth, both in percentage, and sheer numbers, and riot of 250,000 is rightfully identified as a mortal threat. There are no longer any food exports worldwide. The U.S. and to some extent Australia are the only ones. China is the net food importer, having everything else. If they do not solve their food and space problem, they – or rather the CCP – are overthrown and die. If the CCP can solve the food and space problem, they are heroes, stay in power, and prosper for a generation.

Is there any reason to believe China would undertake such a unprecedented, violent act? Well, when we ask if they would murder 70% of all Americans, they are presently erasing 70% of all Uighers who are their own citizens, and in the most brutal, appalling, and mercantile ways. Taking their property. Selling their slave labor. Harvesting their live organs. Selling their women to a man-heavy population thanks to an earlier wave of murder and genocide. So if they are happy to kill 70% of their own people – who they consider inferior, not being Han, and are proud to the world about the fact – how much easier is it to kill 70% of your major rival and solve all your problems for 100 years?

It’s your Lebensraum for a Socialist State-Corporate entity, totalitarian, race-based, using the fascio of combining government, industrial, and corporate power into one. There could hardly be any difference, and are along the same timeline as 1938. They are imprisoning their own people by ethnic origin and social-credit cooperation scores, then killing them for efficiency, while the West denies this is happening and refuses to prepare or respond, or in fact gleefully cooperates with open concentration camps, buying and selling cheap misery.

Surely this is slander, from a military-complex site selling military hardware and predictions. There is nothing from the Chinese to substantiate such an attack.

“A senior Chinese general has warned that his country could destroy hundreds of American cities if the two nations clash over Taiwan.” –The Guardian This week clashing over Taiwan as China has escalated buzzing Taiwanese and American ships and airspace.

In 2005 “Major General Zhu Shin Hu, Dean of the National Defense University, Speaking at a lecture, he said “War logic dictates that a weaker power needs to use maximum effort to defeat a stronger rival. If the Americans draw their missiles and position guided ammunition on to the target zone on Chinese territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons.” And goes on to describe destroying hundreds of American cities in a nuclear war over Taiwan. 15 years ago.

=
Deputy Chief PLA Juang Won Kai, “ Americans should worry more about Los Angeles than Taipei. They will be using nuclear weapons in the Taiwan conflict.” Kai later was diplomat to the United States.

“20 years of the idyllic theme of ‘peace and development’ have come to an end, and concluded that modernization under the saber is the only option for China’s next phase. I also mention we have a vital stake overseas.”

More alarmingly, General Chi Houtian in a speech to the CCP before 2003, said, “in an online survey asking if Chinese would shoot at women, children, and prisoners of war, more than 80% answered in the affirmative. …The purpose of the survey is to…If China’s development will necessitate massive deaths in enemy countries, will our people endorse that scenario [and] be for…it?”

After highlighting the similar youth propaganda departments he says,

China is alarmingly similar to Germany back then. Both of them regard themselves as the most superior races; both of them have a history of being exploited by foreign powers and are therefore vindictive; both of them have the tradition of worshiping their own authorities; both of them feel they have seriously insufficient living space; both of them raise high the two banners of nationalism and socialism and label themselves as ‘national socialists’; both of them worship ‘one party, one state, one leader, one doctrine.’”


“We don’t have to worry about the labels of ‘totalitarianism’ or ‘dictatorship’. Whether we [the CCP] can forever represent the Chinese people depends on whether we can succeed in leading the Chinese people out of China. …Whether we can lead the Chinese people out of China is the most important determinant of the CCP”.

Lebensraum. Living space. Down the Silk Road. Expansion, conquest that – according to their own party and generals – is the only way the CCP leadership survives. Nationalist, hypermilitary expansion is the last hallmark of fascist regimes, a most grave one, as other nations therefore cannot entirely respect national boundaries and sovereignty.

How will they lead the Chinese out and conquer new lands?

“Once we open our doors, the profit-seeking western capitalists will invest capital and technology in China to assist our development so they can occupy the largest market in the world. …the most favorable environment for foreign capital, foreign technology, and advanced experience in China. …China’s economic expansion will inevitably come with significant development in our military forces, creating conditions for our expansion overseas. …China…is advancing into the world and has become unstoppable.”

“Solving the issue of America is key to solving all other issues. This makes it possible for us to have many people migrate there and establish another China under the CCP. …America was discovered by the yellow race [and] we are entitled to the possession of the land.

…The residents of the yellow race have a very low social status in the United States. We need to liberate them. After solving the ‘issue of America’, the western countries of Europe will bow to us , not to mention Japan, Taiwan…” – General Chi Haotain

Lebensraum. The master race. Liberating nations as a duty to their racial brothers. At the expense of inferior races.

“We must transcend conventions and restrictions. In history, [one] could not kill all the people in the conquered land because you could not kill people effectively [enough]. …Only by using special means to ‘clean up’ America will we be able to lead people there. This is the only choice left to us. It is not a matter of whether we are willing.


…What kind of special methods do we have to ‘clean up’ America? …We are not as foolish as to want to perish together with America by using nuclear weapons… There has been a rapid development in modern biological technology, and new bio-weapons have been developed one after the other. …We are capable of ‘cleaning up’ America all of a sudden. Lethal weapons that can eliminate mass populations of the enemy country.”

But it’s not all bad:

“From a humanitarian perspective, we should issue a warning to the American people and persuade them to leave America and leave the land to the Chinese people. Or they should at least leave half of America to be China’s colony…but if this strategy does not work, there is only one choice left…”

“That is, use decisive means to ‘clean up’ America in a moment. …Historical experience has been that as long as we make it happen, nobody in the world can do anything about us. Furthermore, if the United States as leader is gone, then our other enemies have to surrender to us.”

If the Americans do not die, then the Chinese have to die. If the Chinese are strapped to the land, a total societal collapse is bound to take place. …[Then] more than half the Chinese people will die, and that figure will be 800 million. …The Great Collapse will occur at any time and more than half the population will have to go. …The population can be reproduced. But if the Party falls, everything is gone, and forever gone.”

How very like our own Western leaders.

Cool story bro. I feel for your position. Now let me ask you a question: If you knew you were running out of food and space, why did you pave every rice paddy and poison every river? Wouldn’t you rather take 6 time zones of Russian lands which are lush, actually empty, and on your own border? And how ARE you out of space when the entire Gobi desert, or indeed much of north and western China, are as empty as the United States?

You might not have heard, but most of the United States was also considered a desert, a wasteland from Iowa to San Diego that would never be occupied by humankind, yet through hard work and imagination we created the innovation that has made our prosperity and our population possible. It only seems easy now, in hindsight, like some automatic miracle we didn’t deserve. Yet, in the most high-tech era ever recorded, I think no less of the power of men on the Silk Road or Mongolia.

So perhaps I’m asking: are you really sure you NEED to do this? Or is it just that America is big, rich, and shiny and you WANT to do this? You WANT to do to Americans what you do to the Uighurs. Because I strongly suspect the latter.

The specifics of their plan was revealed elsewhere, the “1, 3, 5, 7, 9 Plan”
1 Create a bioweapon
3 Make it available in three years (from 2017)
5 Insure effectiveness for 5 years.
7 Paralyze the 7 Western countries including Japan and India.
9 Release vaccines 9 months later to blackmail the world.

Now, is that the plan that was just attempted in 2019? Or was that a beta test for a real, upcoming attack? Was this genocide deflected, the payload of the “China Virus”, hollowed out, only narrowly missed? Or is that mere slander? Do we know? Can we tell?

The West of course would fight such an attack. In 1994, in a world conference in San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel including H. Bush and M. Thatcher, Xin He reported, “The outstanding people of the world attendance thought that in the 21st century a mere 20% of the world’s population would be adequate to maintain the world’s economy and prosperity. The other 80% will be human garbage, unable to produce…high-tech means should be used to eliminate them gradually .”

That also sounds like our Western leaders.

Remember “Event 201”, promoted by these very same ‘outstanding people’? “ In the simulation, the virus infected the globe within six months, and killed 65 million people, triggering a global financial crisis. All of this took place just months before COVID-19 emerged.” Gee that sounds familiar. Good timing too. So good it almost defies credulity.

This goes along with the long-held rumor that the U.S. was planned and positioned to be in a war and to lose it. Many aspects, from causing unnecessary and unusual internal strife, to the complete erasure of our manufacturing and production – except for food – as well as our sale or loss of most military secrets to China, support such a hypothesis. Then there is the open exposure of Chinese agents with Feinstein for 20 years, and Swalwell, both of whom were on high-level committees.

Worse, when this was exposed, nothing was done, hinting at a much deeper level of capture, where some agents and proxies appear to be clearly covering and supporting other Chinese proxies against the interests of the people of the United States. They do not explain how they thought it remotely possible that with 20% of the population they could defend a rich, empty, unproductive West from complete, inevitable Chinese conquest. Perhaps China did not remind them.

The problem could be, it probably is, far deeper, harder, graver, and wider than we on the outside can contemplate. While I disagree – for in a democracy the people must be informed to make hard, informed decisions – we can see that many times the attempt has been made to inform people, and the facts are widely and regularly rebuffed and rejected. If you started here, where I have, the general population would say you were simply being political, ginning up for more war profits, or are simply lying and making it up simply because they haven’t heard it before. The truth has been intentionally withheld in favor of colored trinkets for 40 years. All attempts to prevent it have been shot down. That isn’t reversed in a day.

Now I’m not saying Deagel is right. Already they’ve had to update their 2015 prediction. However, we can infer from this that the present situation is far more complicated than cartoon. Far deeper and more grave than Twitter. It transcends one man, one party, or even one generation. And can help illuminate why certain positions, certain actions, certain reactions, and certain IN-actions, may have happened right now.

While I don’t personally feel this is our future, I do believe the situation as described is entirely true. There are such opinions and such plans and such weapons. Therefore it should be dealt with in our own lives, and in the actions of our country, in the firm, defensive preparations that Americans are known for. Regardless of such a war, which should naturally be avoided, a number of other responses are indicated:

1) Remove as much reliance on China as possible without crippling them either. We already learned we do not have medicines, masks, rare earths, or semiconductors here, as well as learning their steel and raw materials may be intentionally substandard and undermining. This especially includes communications infrastructure.

2) Our own nation needs much attention and support with the re-opening of our own parallel manufacturing that must also be dispersed so as not to be a single target for destruction or capture.

3) The U.S. Dollar and financial system is wholly established on financeering and imports. This comes from the too-high dollar and world reserve currency that necessitates the destruction of internal production and complete hollowing of business, culture, politics, psychology, society, and morality. Yet its reversal and replacement will be extremely disruptive, and the loss of the reserve currency will quite suddenly drop us from emperor to peer. Nevertheless, this can not be delayed or avoided.

4) The U.S. Military, with the loss of the reserve currency, must retreat home, and therefore needs to re-tool and re-position rapidly to a defensive role, while still maintaining the overwhelming deterrent effect on China, and helping allies – thus preventing China from taking over the world nation-by-nation. Defense is enormously cheaper and easier, and as an ally, not an empire, our position would be far easier and more supported. This published reality may cause other nations to take more action than we could alone. While at home we may follow the Swiss model of having every man capable of arms and the materials secretly cached and available in each town.

5) While we may not have to come back to God to have the internal sense of equality, justice, morality, and enthusiasm for self-denial and hardship this will require, historically nothing else has sufficed for the righting of the ship and return to a forgiving, cohesive unity, and not weakening, atomized discord.

6) Along with our own ports, canals, rivers, grids, and mines, we need to maintain our own food production and distribution, and counter-intuitively sell it to our own rival or enemy. First, cutting off food must cause a certain war just as the embargo of Japanese oil did in 1940. Second, and not innocently, food is a major export we already have when we are no longer an importer of exorbitant privilege. Not less, as equals, we can always promote ourselves as being a friend and thereby encourage our rivals to pass through where they are or what plans they may have in favor of a stable peace that advantages all. Or else, like Switzerland, we must be certain to communicate we will most assuredly make them wish they had for their plans will not succeed.

7) We must recognize that such weapons are a reality now that cannot be reversed but must be accounted for and avoided with new strategies and new consciousness that does not require gain at the expense of others. The experience of the U.S. in making deserts bloom with the simplest tools is a good example.

Now these are easily supported by all Americans, all except the very few who are profiting by the existing system. So should there be a war or no war, with China or no China, all these responses are good for the country, the individual, and the world.

They are also workable in our own lives. As we’ve seen recently with massive, unpredictable, and longstanding supply disruptions that are only cured with more local production, smaller businesses, and local food. We see how having far more preparation, far more resiliency, far more local support, are important, both in hardship, but in our daily lives as well. Producing more, with more meaning, and consuming less, but better, are the only ways we can exit both this peril, and our own national failings at home.

 

 

 

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Dec 112020
 


Pierre Bonnard Nude in an Interior c1935

 

“We Hadn’t Really Thought Through the Economic Impacts” – Melinda Gates (AIER)
Coronavirus Fact-Check #9: Is The Vaccine Safe? (OffG)
Sidney Powell Plans to Appeal Dismissal of Arizona Election Lawsuit (ET)
Judge Gives Benson OK To Intervene Antrim County Election Case (DN)
AG Barr Concealed Hunter Biden Probes From Public During Election (ZH)
Sen. Grassley Blasts MSM Over Hunter Biden Hypocrisy (ZH)
Sen. Cotton: Circumstances Warrant Special Counsel To Probe Hunter Biden (JTN)
Biden Taps Susan Rice For Top White House Domestic Policy Job (Pol.)
Is the Media Burying The Swalwell Story? (Turley)
Investigators Delve Into Suspected Chinese Spy Ties With Swalwell Staff (JTN)
Dianne Feinstein ‘Seriously Struggling’ With Cognitive Decline (NYP)
Sexual Misconduct Shakes FBI’s Senior Ranks (AP)
The “Great Reset” and Plans for a Global War on Savings (Lacalle)
Greece Is Setting Itself Up For Another Financial Crisis (Mises)
US Hits Search & Destroy Against The New Silk Roads (Escobar)
Australia Sabotaged Its Own Interests in China Relations (CN)

 

 

 

 

Jim Jordan

 

 

“..communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted.”

“We Hadn’t Really Thought Through the Economic Impacts” ~ Melinda Gates (AIER)

In a wide-ranging interview in the New York Times, Melinda Gates made the following remarkable statement: “What did surprise us is we hadn’t really thought through the economic impacts.” A cynic might observe that one is disinclined to think much about matters than do not affect one personally. It’s a maddening statement, to be sure, as if “economics” is somehow a peripheral concern to the rest of human life and public health. The larger context of the interview reveals the statement to be even more confused. She is somehow under the impression that it is the pandemic and not the lockdowns that are the cause of the economic devastation that includes perhaps 30% of restaurants going under, among many other terrible effects.

She doesn’t say that outright but, like many articles in the mainstream press over this year, she very carefully crafts her words to avoid the crucial subject of lockdowns as the primary cause of economic disaster. It’s possible that she actually believes this virus is what tanked the world economy on its own but that is a completely unsustainable proposition. Further, her comments provide a perfect illustration of the core problem all along: most of the people who have been advocating lockdowns in fact have no actual experience in managing pandemics. To many of these, Covid-19 became their new playground to try out an unprecedented experiment in social and economic management: shutting down travel, businesses, schools, churches, and issuing stay-at-home orders that smack of totalitarian impositions. Here is what she says:

“You can project out and think about what a pandemic might be like or look like, but until you live through it, it’s pretty hard to know what the reality will be like. So I think we predicted quite well that, depending on what the disease was, it could spread very, very, very quickly. The spread did not surprise us. What did surprise us is we hadn’t really thought through the economic impacts. What happens when you have a pandemic that’s running rampant in populations all over the world? The fact that we would all be home, and working from home if we were lucky enough to do that. That was a piece that I think we hadn’t really prepared for.”

There are plenty of specialists who have lived through pandemics in the past and managed them by maintaining essential social and economic functioning. A major case in point is Donald A. Henderson, who as head of the World Health Organization is given primary credit for the eradication of smallpox. He wrote as follows in 2006: “Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted. Strong political and public health leadership to provide reassurance and to ensure that needed medical care services are provided are critical elements. If either is seen to be less than optimal, a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.”

Read more …

Pfizer (and the producers of other vaccines), are immune from civil liability.

Coronavirus Fact-Check #9: Is The Vaccine Safe? (OffG)

There are dozens of articles all over the mainstream reassuring us that the brand new Sars-Cov-2 vaccine is safe. In the UK the vaccine rolled out is being hailed as “V Day”, in a shameless attempt to draw a parallel with World War II. Matt Hancock went on Good Morning Britain and attempted to “cry”. On the other side of that coin, many experts in the field have vociferously called for all vaccine trials to be put on halt, some medical researchers are questioning the data and others counsel people to refuse the vaccine under any and all circumstances. So – is the vaccine safe? The only rational answer is “we don’t know”. It’s certainly true some people who have received it have experienced unexpected side effects.

It was recently revealed that 4 people involved in the US-based trial suffered partial facial paralysis. In the UK, two NHS staff who have received the vaccine suffered allergic anaphylactoid reactions, as a result the NHS is now not recommending the vaccine for anyone who “suffers from allergies”. They don’t know what caused the reaction, and as far as we know so far, the people involved were not allergic to anything in the vaccine. It seems it’s not about being allergic to the vaccine, so much as the vaccine potentially causing problems for anyone with a sensitive or dysfunctional immune system. It’s essentially recommended that no one who is allergic to anything, ie. other food or medication, should have the jab. We’ve already had “explainers” appearing the media, saying vaccine allergic reactions are “rare and shortlived”.

To be clear, as of December 10th, the vaccine either has never been tested on, or is not recommended for:
• People under sixteen years of age.
• Pregnant women (or women intending to become pregnant in the near future).
• People with serious co-morbidities.
• People already taking other medications.
• People who have allergies.
So the official line already cedes that the vaccine may be harmful to some or all of those people.

Even on the fully-grown and totally healthy adults it was tested on, obviously, there has not been enough time to do any kind of long term studies on possible side-effects or complications It usually takes 5-10 years to fully develop and test a vaccine, where as this has been rushed out in less than 10 months. On top of that, of course, we have the fact all the vaccine producers have campaigned for – and won – total legal immunity in the UK, US and other nations around the world. In the event the vaccine does cause harm, Pfizer (and the producers of other vaccines), are immune from civil liability. Which means that, just like us, the producers themselves are well-aware the new vaccines might not be safe, and don’t want a repeat of 2009, when a rushed-out flu vaccine resulted in children suffering life-long complications and receiving millions in damages. In the final analysis, you have to ask yourself a simple question: Do you feel safer taking an untested vaccine, or risking getting a virus with a survival rate of over 99%?

Rob Swanda

Read more …

Let the dice roll. If they come up zero, so be it. But let them roll.

Sidney Powell Plans to Appeal Dismissal of Arizona Election Lawsuit (ET)

The legal team led by attorney Sidney Powell plans to appeal the dismissal of an Arizona election lawsuit by an Obama-appointed federal judge on Dec. 9. Powell’s Arizona co-counsel Alex Kolodin told The Epoch Times in an interview that his team plans to fast-track the case to the Supreme Court and will file a petition for appeal in the coming days. The Arizona case, filed on Dec. 2 by former federal prosecutor Powell on behalf of the state’s 11 Republican electors and others, alleged that manipulation of election software and other fraud in the state resulted in violations of the U.S. Constitution and state election laws. The lawsuit also claimed that more than 412,000 votes were cast illegally in the state’s 2020 general election.

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and Gov. Doug Ducey were named as defendants in the case, which highlighted what it said was an “especially egregious range of conduct” in Arizona’s Maricopa County, and other counties using Dominion Systems. The lawsuit alleges that Dominion Voting Systems violated election laws by having their machines connected to the internet. The case is supported by a redacted affidavit from a former electronic intelligence analyst, alleging that the voting system software was accessed by agents from China and Iran. Powell’s team also filed a temporary restraining order seeking to immediately block Ducey from delivering the certified election results to the Electoral College while the court hears the case. Arizona certified its presidential election results on Nov. 30.

Judge Diane Humetewa threw out the lawsuit on Dec. 9, saying that its allegations “are sorely wanting of relevant or reliable evidence” and that it sought extraordinary relief. “If granted, millions of Arizonans who exercised their individual right to vote in the 2020 General Election would be utterly disenfranchised,” Humetewa wrote. In dismissing Powell’s case, Humetewa said the lawsuit doesn’t contain a “plausible” allegation that Dominion Voting Systems voting machines were hacked in the state during the Nov. 3 election, however, she described the team’s allegations of fraud as “conceivable.” The proposed Trump electors “have not moved the needle for their fraud theory from conceivable to plausible,” the federal judge said. Kolodin told The Epoch Times that the chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party granted his team approval to appeal the case to the Supreme Court, and that they plan to soon file a petition for a writ of certiorari asking for the case to be heard.

A petition for a writ of certiorari is a document that a losing party files with the Supreme Court asking it to review the lower court’s decision on its merits. The provision would request from the Supreme Court an emergency transfer and would allow the case to be heard without waiting for a decision from the U.S. Courts of Appeals. The Supreme Court is usually not under any obligation to hear such cases unless the case could have national significance, might harmonize conflicting decisions in the federal Circuit courts, or could have precedential value. “I thought she [Humetewa] took the case very seriously. She treated it very professionally, and she was very fair, but I disagree with her decision,” Kolodin said. “My clients disagree with her decision, and we’ve always known that this will ultimately be decided in the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Greg Kelly

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From a local perspective.

Judge Gives Benson OK To Intervene Antrim County Election Case (DN)

A Northern Michigan judge granted Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson permission to intervene in a case questioning results in Antrim County and the security of tabulators used there on Nov. 3. Judge Kevin Elsenheimer ruled Thursday that Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office could intervene on behalf of Benson, who had argued she had supervisory control over the Antrim County clerk, had an interest in any audit discussions the case may raise and was party to the county’s contract with Dominion Voting Systems. The Secretary of State’s office is concerned particularly with forensic imaging performed on Antrim County’s 22 Dominion tabulators earlier this week by a Village of Central Lake resident and Allied Security Operations Group, said Assistant Attorney General Heather Meingast.

“We’d like to know more about what was obtained, what the intent is for the use of the images obtained,” Meingast said, noting the disclosure of some elements of the tabulators could compromise their security in future elections. Elsenheimer, a Republican former lawmaker and member of former Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration, granted Meingast’s request but warned the case would proceed in haste. “I intend to move this matter quickly, aggressively,” Elsenheimer said. Benson shouldn’t be allowed to intervene because she had missed the opportunity to do so earlier and did not have direct involvement in local elections, said Matthew DePerno, a lawyer for Antrim County resident William Bailey. In fact, a state Court of Claims judge earlier this month dismissed a case against Benson on those grounds, DePerno said.

“The court concluded there was no relief to be granted because elections are local and run by local officials,” he said. DePerno said the investigation is ongoing and data are being reviewed. But based on what had been reviewed so far, Bailey would move to decertify the Antrim County certification and push the issue to the GOP-led Legislature, he said. “We think there are serious issues, and we’re preparing right now a motion to seek relief from the court from the protective order,” DePerno said. Elsenheimer last week granted Bailey’s request to take take forensic images of 22 tabulators and review those along with flash drives, software and a “master tabulator” that the county said does not exist. Bailey and members of the Allied Securities Operation Group spent about eight hours on Sunday at county offices obtaining the material.

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Money laundering is a serious crime.

AG Barr Concealed Hunter Biden Probes From Public During Election (ZH)

Attorney General William Barr knew about several investigations into Hunter Biden since at least this spring – and “worked to avoid their public disclosure during the heated election campaign,” according to the Wall Street Journal. According to ‘a person familiar with the matter,’ Barr “staved off pressure from Republicans in Congress for information into the investigations,” while President Trump and his allies pressured Barr into pursuing Joe and Hunter Biden. This week, Hunter Biden revealed the existence of one of the investigations after federal investigators served him with a subpoena seeking detailed financial information in connection with a criminal tax investigation by the Delaware US attorney’s office. The next day, CNN and Politico confirmed that the probe was wider than that, and covered potential money laundering and bribery in probes that date back to 2018, according to ‘people familiar with the matter.’ According to the report, none of the investigations implicate Joe Biden.

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“It shouldn’t take subpoenas and confirmation from Hunter Biden himself to get the rest of the press to pay attention.”

Sen. Grassley Blasts MSM Over Hunter Biden Hypocrisy (ZH)

Chuck Grassley is one pissed off Senator. After the Iowa Republican and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) produced a long-awaited Senate report which concluded that Hunter Biden’s financial dealings with Ukrainian, Chinese and Russian businesses created “criminal financial, counterintelligence and extortion concerns” concerning everything from sex-trafficking to bribery – the MSM panned it as a partisan attack on a presidential candidate’s son. Now that Hunter has admitted he’s under investigation for tax fraud (and, as Politico and CNN have added, money laundering and accepting bribes), Grassley is having the last laugh. In Thursday remarks on the Senate Floor, Grassley blasted the media after months of covering for the Bidens.


“For over a year, Senator Johnson and I investigated the Biden financial family dealings,” said Grassley, adding “We found that they engaged in potential criminal financial deals across the globe, including China, which created counterintelligence concerns.” Grassley then turned his attention to the MSM, saying “Those same liberal outlets that disparaged our investigation now report that Hunter Biden’s financial deals in China raise counterintelligence concerns.” He went on to say that the media should have been covering concerns raised by Republicans instead of covering them up. “So you can understand why I think it’s very outrageous that the fourth estate would choose to ignore facts when they are uncovered by Republicans,” Grassley continued. “It shouldn’t take subpoenas and confirmation from Hunter Biden himself to get the rest of the press to pay attention.”

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Would have to happen within 5 weeks or so. Just like the Special Counsel for election irregularities. Not sure I can see Barr comply.

Sen. Cotton: Circumstances Warrant Special Counsel To Probe Hunter Biden (JTN)

Sen. Tom Cotton indicated during an interview Thursday on Fox News that he believes circumstances warrant a special counsel to investigate issues pertaining to Joe Biden’s son Hunter. Hunter Biden issued a statement Wednesday which noted that the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware is looking into his “tax affairs.” “I learned yesterday for the first time that the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs,” the statement said. “I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors.”

“I know the Biden campaign released details of a tax fraud investigation in Wilmington,” said Cotton during the Fox News interview. “I think that was just to show maybe the least damaging part of the investigation.” “There’s allegations of securities fraud and money laundering related to Hunter Biden’s Chinese businesses, a crooked hospital deal with Jim Biden, Joe Biden’s brother, out in western Pennsylvania. These investigations span multiple jurisdictions,” Cotton said, remarking that in the event that Joe Biden becomes the nation’s next president, “those prosecutors are in line to be fired next month. If there were ever circumstances that create a conflict of interest and called for a special counsel, I think those circumstances are present here.”

The Arkansas Republican said that the Biden family has leveraged Joe Biden’s government posts for their benefit in the past and would continue to do so if Biden serves as president. “Look, the Biden family has been trading on Joe Biden’s public office for 50 years. Valerie Biden Owens, his sister, and Jim Biden, his brother, and Hunter Biden his son,” he said. “Do we really think that that will change if Joe Biden becomes president, the highest office in the land?”

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Predictable and terrible. She should be under investigation for Russiagate, not occupy some top job.

Biden Taps Susan Rice For Top White House Domestic Policy Job (Pol.)

President-elect Joe Biden has tapped Barack Obama’s former national security adviser Susan Rice to run the White House Domestic Policy Council, according to people familiar with the decision.Rice, who also served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was vetted to serve as Biden’s vice president and was a contender to be secretary of State, a position that went to Antony Blinken. Democrats had concerns about Rice’s ability to get confirmed in a Republican-controlled Senate, and the director of the Domestic Policy Council is not a Senate-confirmed position. The Biden team had been looking to find a high-profile role for Rice, but the top domestic policy job comes as a surprise given her expertise and experience in foreign policy.

[..] In her position, Rice, 56, will play a large role in implementing Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, a wide-ranging set of policy proposals that would invest trillions of dollars in American infrastructure and manufacturing, clean energy, caregiving, education and racial equity.A person familiar with Biden’s thinking said he chose Rice for the role because of her deep experience in crisis management and interagency processes. The person said Biden does not see foreign, economic and diplomatic realms as separate and discrete and her deep knowledge of how the federal government works will be an asset to implementing his domestic policy agenda.

Biden officially announced Rice’s appointment Thursday morning, along with his nominations of Marcia Fudge to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Tom Vilsack as Agriculture secretary, Katherine Tai as U.S. trade representative and Denis McDonough as secretary of Veterans Affairs. “The roles they will take on are where the rubber meets the road — where competent and crisis-tested governance can make a meaningful difference in people’s lives, enhancing the dignity, equity, security, and prosperity of the day-to-day lives of Americans,” Biden said in a statement. Rice’s decision to take the domestic policy job also signals that she still harbors political ambitions. She floated the possibility of running for Senate in Maine against Susan Collins and was a finalist to serve as Biden’s running mate.

The top domestic policy job will fill out her foreign policy-heavy resume. Though Rice’s job does not require Senate confirmation, the Biden administration will need the support of Republicans to implement its far-reaching domestic policy agenda. Rice, however, has long been the target of the GOP because of he comments after the attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi and unmasking requests related to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and foreign interference. Rice has never been charged with doing anything improper, but she has been the subject of withering criticism from Republicans, which could complicate the administration’s efforts to pass policies in Congress.

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The media has buried so many stories this year, who would notice another one?

Is the Media Burying The Swalwell Story? (Turley)

We often discuss media coverage and accuracy on developing legal and political controversies. Much of this discussion recently has focused on the bias shown by the media in the last four years. I have worked for the media as a legal analyst and columnist for years, but I have never before seen this raw and open bias in major media. At the same time, academics are rejecting the very concept of objectivity in journalism in favor of open advocacy. This morning, Fox News called out all of the networks for zero coverage of the bombshell story from Axios that Rep. Eric Swalwell may have had a close relationship with a suspected Chinese spy who fled to China a few years ago. Many of us were struck by the lack of coverage, particularly given the position of Swalwell on the House Intelligence Committee and his former bid for the presidency.

It was particularly striking when the media is now reluctantly covering the Hunter Biden story after a long blackout before the election. Yet, the most stark comparison is with the exhaustive coverage given the highly analogous story involving an alleged spy, Maria Butina, who had an affair with a high-ranking figure in the National Rifle Association. Swalwell is alleged to have had a close relationship with Chinese national, Fang Fang or Christine Fang, who not only raised money for him but placed at least one intern in Swalwell’s congressional office, according to Axios. Bizarrely, Swalwell has refused to confirm or deny that he had an intimate relationship with his office claiming that such an answer could compromise classified information. Even that ridiculous comment did not prompt ABC, NBC, or CBS to cover the story.

Obviously, Fang and the Chinese already know if she had a sexual relationship with Swalwell. The only people in the dark are the voters. Swalwell himself explained why this is news. The congressman was one of the most vocal voices calling out a June 2016 meeting that President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., with Natalia Veselnitskaya, who was accused of being an asset for the Russian government. Swalwell declared on MSNBC in January 2019: “Stated plainly, the President’s son met with a Russian spy. We now have the best evidence of that in our minority report the Democrats put out that Ms. Veselnitskaya was going all over the world and bumping into Dana Rohrabacher, which is a sign of a spy, someone who tries to create a coincidence encounter, and now we know that she was working at the behest of the Russian government.”

Not even the utter hypocrisy of Swalwell’s position or the lunacy of his classification claim was enough to generate minimal coverage. There is also no interest in Swalwell remaining on the intelligence committee given his ill-considered relationship.

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He’s still on the House Intelligence Committee.

Investigators Delve Into Suspected Chinese Spy Ties With Swalwell Staff (JTN)

The investigation into suspected Chinese spy Christine Fang’s relationship with Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell included monitoring her activities with others in the California congressman’s office, according to security authorities. “There were concerns about who else in his office she was close to,” one intelligence official told Just the News. “Who could give her information or help her achieve her goals?” These concerns applied overall to people who worked for Fang’s suspected targets, the official said. “These were deeply cast nets,” the official said. The woman, also known as Fang Fang, reportedly infiltrated the inner circles of several U.S. politicians, mainly targeting those based in California. She is believed to have worked for years under a Communist Chinese spy boss in California, and also to have managed her own line of sub-agents, the official confirmed.


“There was considerable interest in learning who those agents were, and where they worked,” the official said. Swalwell would be a prime target for foreign spies because he sits on the House Intelligence Committee — where he remains so far — despite the recent revelations about his dealings with Fang. According to a report from Axios, Fang began her relationship with Swalwell early in his political career, while he was a city council member in Dublin, California. She helped raise funds for him, and came to know his family members in some capacity. In 2015, Fang fled the U.S. while the FBI was investigating her overall activities. Although Fang has not been charged with espionage, her behavior fits a suspicious pattern, according to one expert. “Christine Fang has left the U.S.,” said author Gordon Chang, who has studied China extensively. “She apparently left abruptly, which is an indication that she was working with Chinese intelligence.”

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Set term limit, set age-limit. Easy.

Dianne Feinstein ‘Seriously Struggling’ With Cognitive Decline (NYP)

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the oldest member of the Senate at age 87 and the most senior Democrat on its powerful Judiciary Committee, is “seriously struggling” with cognitive decline, a new report says. People familiar with the California lawmaker’s situation told the New Yorker on Wednesday that Feinstein’s short-term memory has grown so poor that she “often forgets she has been briefed on a topic, accusing her staff of failing to do so just after they have.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has had several “painful” discussions with Feinstein about stepping aside, but the octogenarian reportedly soon forgets about their talks, forcing Schumer to confront her again, one source said. “It was like Groundhog Day, but with the pain fresh each time,” the source said.


Overtures were also reportedly made to Feinstein’s billionaire husband, Richard C. Blum. Grumblings over Feinstein’s performance have grown increasingly loud, leading to her decision to step down last month as ranking member of the elite Judiciary Committee. Pundits were unhappy with Feinstein’s handling of the confirmation of President Trump’s most recent Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett. The lawmaker bungled several questions and then caused a furor when she concluded Barrett’s hearings by hugging Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and praising him for “one of the best set of hearings that I have participated in.” Schumer was reportedly so concerned about Feinstein’s performance that he “installed a trusted former aide, Max Young, to ’embed’ in the Judiciary Committee to make sure the hearings didn’t go off the rails,” the New Yorker reported.

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Inevitable when no-one can investigate the investigators.

Sexual Misconduct Shakes FBI’s Senior Ranks (AP)

An assistant FBI director retired after he was accused of drunkenly groping a female subordinate in a stairwell. Another senior FBI official left after he was found to have sexually harassed eight employees. Yet another high-ranking FBI agent retired after he was accused of blackmailing a young employee into sexual encounters. An Associated Press investigation has identified at least six sexual misconduct allegations involving senior FBI officials over the past five years, including two new claims brought this week by women who say they were sexually assaulted by ranking agents. Each of the accused FBI officials appears to have avoided discipline, the AP found, and several were quietly transferred or retired, keeping their full pensions and benefits even when probes substantiated the sexual misconduct claims against them.

Beyond that, federal law enforcement officials are afforded anonymity even after the disciplinary process runs its course, allowing them to land on their feet in the private sector or even remain in law enforcement. “They’re sweeping it under the rug,” said a former FBI analyst who alleges in a new federal lawsuit that a supervisory special agent licked her face and groped her at a colleague’s farewell party in 2017. She ended up leaving the FBI and has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. “As the premier law enforcement organization that the FBI holds itself out to be, it’s very disheartening when they allow people they know are criminals to retire and pursue careers in law enforcement-related fields,” said the woman, who asked to be identified in this story only by her first name, Becky.

The AP’s count does not include the growing number of high-level FBI supervisors who have failed to report romantic relationships with subordinates in recent years — a pattern that has alarmed investigators with the Office of Inspector General and raised questions about bureau policy. The recurring sexual misconduct has drawn the attention of Congress and advocacy groups, which have called for whistleblower protections for rank-and-file FBI employees and for an outside entity to review the bureau’s disciplinary cases. “They need a #MeToo moment,” said U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat who has been critical of the treatment of women in the male-dominated FBI. “It’s repugnant, and it underscores the fact that the FBI and many of our institutions are still good ol’-boy networks,” Speier said. “It doesn’t surprise me that, in terms of sexual assault and sexual harassment, they are still in the Dark Ages.”

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“Only three words spoil the entire positive message: “directing the market.”

The “Great Reset” and Plans for a Global War on Savings (Lacalle)

Global debt is expected to soar to a record $277 trillion by the end of the year, according to the Institute of International Finance. Developed markets’ total debt—government, corporate, and households—jumped to 432 percent of GDP in the third quarter. Emerging market debt-to-GDP hit nearly 250 percent in the third quarter, with China reaching 335 percent, and for the year the ratio is expected to reach about 365 percent of global GDP. Most of this massive increase of $15 trillion in one year comes from government and corporates’ response to the pandemic. However, we must remember that the total debt figure had already reached record highs in 2019, before any pandemic and in a period of growth. The main problem is that most of this debt is unproductive debt.

Governments are using the unprecedented fiscal space to perpetuate bloated current spending, which generates no real economic return, so the likely outcome is that debt will continue to rise after the pandemic crisis is ended and that the level of growth and productivity achieved will not be enough to reduce the financial burden on public accounts. In this context, the World Economic Forum has presented a roadmap for what has been called “the Great Reset.” It is a plan that aims to take the current opportunity to “to shape an economic recovery and the future direction of global relations, economies, and priorities.” According to the World Economic Forum, the world must also adapt to the current reality by “directing the market to fairer results, ensur[ing] investments are aimed at mutual progress including accelerating ecologically friendly investments, and [starting] a fourth industrial revolution, creating digital economic and public infrastructure.”

These objectives are obviously shared by all of us, and the reality shows that the private sector is already implementing these ideas, as we see technology, renewable investments, and sustainability plans thriving all over the world. We are witnessing in real time the proof that businesses adapt rapidly and provide better goods and services at affordable prices for everyone achieving a level of progress in environmental targets and welfare that would be unthinkable if governments were in charge. This crisis shows that the world has escaped the risk of scarcity and hyperinflation thanks to a private sector that has surpassed all expectations in a seemingly unsurmountable crisis.

The overall message of the World Economic Forum sounds promising. Only three words spoil the entire positive message: “directing the market.” The risk of governments taking these ideas to promote massive interventionism is not small. The idea of the Great Reset has been quickly embraced by the most bureaucratic and government-intervened economies as a validation of rising government implication in the economy. However, this is incorrect.

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“The OECD has estimated that the unemployment rate will reach roughly 20 percent by the end of the year.”

Greece Is Setting Itself Up For Another Financial Crisis (Mises)

The Greek economy shrunk by a record 14 percent in the second quarter of 2020 while at the same time government efforts to ‘’cure’’ the economy have set the country on the road to cross the 200 percent debt-to-GDP ratio as the IMF forecasts. In the meantime, government budget deficits have reached new heights (around 7 percent). The Greek government tried to combat the economic downturn with a loose fiscal and monetary policy (through the European Central Bank). The initial aim was to support pretty much everyone from the public and private sector for the bad months of the covid-19 lockdown and hope for economic recovery when the summer arrived, with the tourist industry saving the day. It soon became evident, however, that this was wishful thinking.


People from the tourist industry admitted that it could take years for the industry to recover its past numbers. The situation looked even worse once people realized how dependent the whole economy is on tourism: it accounts for 20 percent of GDP and provides 22 percent of all employment in Greece. Furthermore, the Greek government’s solutions, like those of most of the other governments in Europe, were primarily demand-side policies. As I predicted in one of my past articles, these measures could only provide short-run relief, only postponing the pain until later. The unemployment rate saw a 1.2 percent increase from March to April, of 1.3 percent from April to May, and it saw a minor decrease during the summer tourist period. The OECD has estimated that the unemployment rate will reach roughly 20 percent by the end of the year.

The ECB’s balance sheet had a massive increase from 39 percent of the GDP to 54 percent during the summer. In comparison the Fed’s balance sheet is around 32 percent of GDP. The injections of liquidity via the ECB have effectively zombified a considerable number of companies in the EU, with corporate debts reaching new highs. In the case of Greece, the government has exploited its new, EU-sanctioned fiscal leeway, which has allowed it to perpetuate structural problems in its economy along with large deficits. During the tourist season, the costs were so high that a considerable segment of the tourist industry decided to not even work this summer since they would lose less money this way.


[..] People need to understand that when you have an economy with weak productivity that’s highly indebted, shutting down the economy two times in one year has repercussions that will be here to stay for years depending on the recovery policies. The economy needs major structural reforms. Labor laws need to be liberalized. Budget surpluses are indeed the correct goal, especially now, to avoid another debt crisis, but the surpluses need to come from cuts made in the public sector. Tax cuts need to become permanent and even bigger for the economy to grow and expand. Last but not least, making foreign and domestic investments easier, less expensive, and minimizing the potential risk is a matter of utmost urgency, since Greece is being outcompeted by neighboring countries.

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Isn’t China merely replacing predatory IMF behavior with predatory Beijing behavior?

US Hits Search & Destroy Against The New Silk Roads (Escobar)

Seven years after being launched by President Xi Jinping, first in Astana and then in Jakarta, the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) increasingly drive the American plutocratic oligarchy completely nuts. The relentless paranoia about the Chinese “threat” has much to do with the exit ramp offered by Beijing to a Global South permanently indebted to IMF/World Bank exploitation. In the old order, politico-military elites were routinely bribed in exchange for unfettered corporate access to their nations’ resources, coupled with go-go privatization schemes and outright austerity (“structural adjustment”). This went on for decades until BRI became the new game in town in terms of infrastructure building – offering an alternative to the imperial footprint.

The Chinese model allows all manner of parallel taxes, sales, rents, leases – and profits. This means extra sources of income for host governments – with an important corollary: freedom from the hardcore neoliberal diktats of IMF/World Bank. This is what is at the heart of the notorious Chinese “win-win”. Moreover, BRI’s overall strategic focus on infrastructure development not only across Eurasia but also Africa encompasses a major geopolitical game-changer. BRI is positioning vast swathes of the Global South to become completely independent from the Western-imposed debt trap. For scores of nations, this is a matter of national interest. In this sense BRI should be regarded as the ultimate post-colonialist mechanism.

BRI in fact bristles with Sun Tzu simplicity applied to geoeconomics. Never interrupt the enemy when he’s making a mistake – in this case enslaving the Global South via perpetual debt. Then use his own weapons – in this case financial “help” – to destabilize his preeminence.

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Five Eyes only?

Australia Sabotaged Its Own Interests in China Relations (CN)

The address to Federal Parliament by Chinese President Xi Jinping on Nov. 17, 2014, marked a highwater mark in bilateral relations. Xi was in Australia for the G-20 summit in Brisbane hosted by Prime Minister Tony Abbott. His theme was that China was committed to peace but ready to protect its interests. Since then, the relationship has gone downhill — first slowly and haltingly, but over the past two years with sickening acceleration. Now the relationship seems irretrievable. For educated Chinese, Australia is now an object lesson in Western arrogance, hypocrisy and betrayal of friendship. The dinner party has ended in upended chairs, shouts and bitter accusations as both sides angrily walk away. After the high symbolism of the Xi speech, all seemed well. In 2015 the Darwin Port was leased to a Chinese company for 99 years.

Growing numbers of Chinese students and tourist visitors to Australia were becoming mainstays of Australia’s thriving higher education, tourism and property sectors. China as an Australian export market grew steadily in significance: last year it represented nearly 50 percent of Australian commodity export earnings. Victoria in 2018 signed a memorandum of understanding with China to work with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. From the beginning, there were signs that powerful forces were determined to cripple Australian-Chinese engagement: and they have now seemingly won. The present breakdown is tragic for Australian economic and political interests. Many innocent Australians’ livelihoods are being harmed by our own government’s and political class’ stupidity. It is hard to see now how the damage done to Australia-China relations may be healed anytime soon.

Controversially, I contend that Australia has over the past six years lived through a textbook experiment of covert foreign policy interference by powerful Anglo-American influences, subtly working through local sympathizers in public life here. Australian political elites — already culturally predisposed to trust Anglo-American friends, and naive as to their power and guile — have been persuaded to adopt increasingly adversarial positions against China across a broad front. This essay can only hint at the breadth and skill of this classic Five Eyes information warfare operation: it would take a book to expose it fully.


“Five Eyes” intelligence network including the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand. (@GDJ, Openclipart)

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Nov 132020
 


Pablo Picasso Les femmes d’Alger 1955

 

PA Court: Secretary Of State Lacked Authority To Change Voting Deadline (Fox)
Michigan State Senators Request Full Election Audit (ET)
Trump’s New Pentagon Sets Up Clash Over Afghanistan Pullout (Pol.)
Trump Could Be Banned From Twitter After He Leaves Office (Ind.)
Obama: ‘Americans Spooked By Black Man In White House’ (JTN)
This Is What Happens To Us When The Great Global Reset Comes (Kitco)
Three-Quarters Of England’s Care Workers Earn Below ‘Real’ Living Wage (G.)
Unemployment Fiasco in Europe Is Kept out of Official Rates (WS)
Introduction to The New Economics: A Manifesto (Steve Keen)
Watch This! (Dmitry Orlov)

 

 

Prof Appel Dominion

 

 

 

 

Limited impact.

PA Court: Secretary Of State Lacked Authority To Change Voting Deadline (Fox)

A Pennsylvania judge ruled in favor of the Trump campaign Thursday, ordering that the state may not count ballots where the voters needed to provide proof of identification and failed to do so by Nov. 9. State law said that voters have until six days after the election — this year that was Nov. 9 — to cure problems regarding a lack of proof of identification. After the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that mail-in ballots could be accepted three days after Election Day, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar submitted guidance that said proof of identification could be provided up until Nov. 12, which is six days from the ballot acceptance deadline. That guidance was issued two days before Election Day.


“[T]he Court concludes that Respondent Kathy Boockvar, in her official capacity as Secretary of the Commonwealth, lacked statutory authority to issue the November 1, 2020, guidance to Respondents County Boards of Elections insofar as that guidance purported to change the deadline … for certain electors to verify proof of identification,” Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt said in a court order. This was in line with the Trump campaign’s argument, which was that there was no basis in the state’s law to extend the identification deadline, and that Boockvar did not have the power to unilaterally change it. The court had previously ordered that all ballots where voters provided proof of identification between Nov. 10 and 12 should be segregated until a ruling was issued determining what should be done with them.

Matt Gaetz: Dead people don’t always vote. But when they do, they prefer to vote by mail.

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“Every citizen deserves to have faith in the integrity of the election process and its outcome..”

Michigan State Senators Request Full Election Audit (ET)

At least two Michigan Republican state senators have requested a full election audit, asking the Michigan secretary of state’s office for a full recount before the election results are certified, according to a letter they sent to her office on Thursday. State senators Lana Theis and Tom Barrett wrote that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and canvassers that are reviewing allegations of irregularities and voter fraud made in lawsuits filed by President Donald Trump’s campaign. They are requesting a “full audit” of the election, saying it needs to be done before the state certifies the election results. “Every citizen deserves to have faith in the integrity of the election process and its outcome,” they said in letters.

“It is our responsibility, as elected public servants, to assure the people of Michigan of the process’s integrity through complete transparency and the faithful investigation of any allegations of wrongdoing, fraud, or abuse.” Their letters made reference to allegations made by Trump’s legal team, claims of witnesses about irregularities at polls, and a glitch that switched 6,000 votes from a Republican official to a Democratic official in Antrim County that was later corrected and acknowledged by the secretary of state’s office, although the Michigan GOP said the same software – Dominion Voting Systems – was used in dozens of other counties.

“The erroneous reporting of unofficial results from Antrim county was a result of accidental error on the part of the Antrim County Clerk. The equipment and software did not malfunction and all ballots were properly tabulated. However, the clerk accidentally did not update the software used to collect voting machine data and report unofficial results,” Benson said in a statement last week about Antrim County’s election results. Other allegations from the two lawmakers include ineligible ballots being counted, poll workers being told to backdate ballots, counting the same ballots several times, and other claims.

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The shameless backlash against bringing the troops home is stunning.

Trump’s New Pentagon Sets Up Clash Over Afghanistan Pullout (Pol.)

President Donald Trump’s decapitation strike on the Pentagon this week is raising fears that the U.S. will accelerate the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, putting newly installed leaders on a collision course with top generals and others who are urging a more deliberate drawdown. Current and former administration officials say Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper Monday in part over his opposition to accelerating troop drawdowns worldwide, and especially in Afghanistan. The upheaval accelerated on Tuesday with the resignation of three high-level civilians and the installation of loyalists who are expected to ram through Trump’s agenda, and continued on Wednesday when retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor, an outspoken critic of the war in Afghanistan, was brought on as senior adviser to new acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller.

Any move to accelerate withdrawals would set up a clash with the nation’s top generals and other civilians, who have argued publicly against leaving Afghanistan too quickly while the security situation remains volatile. It would also complicate President-elect Joe Biden’s pledge to leave a small number of troops in the country to guard against terror attacks.

“A precipitous and what appears to be near total withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan — not on a conditions-based approach advocated by our military, political and intelligence leadership but rather on an old campaign promise by President Trump now carried out by hyperpartisan Trump loyalists installed in a last-minute purge of DoD — is both reckless and will not make America safer,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired CIA senior operations officer. Concerns are also growing within the national security community that the personnel churn portends other major policy shifts, such as military actions abroad and in the U.S. Yet current and former administration officials believe the moves were more about rewarding allies and punishing those who resisted the president’s agenda than they were about major changes in direction.

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And the New York Times will stop writing about him?

Trump Could Be Banned From Twitter After He Leaves Office (Ind.)

Donald Trump will no longer be protected by Twitter’s public interest guidelines when he leaves office in January, meaning he will be suspended or banned if he continues to break the platform’s rules. Twitter’s policy regarding public figures, which was formalised last year, means only “current or potential member of a local, state, national, or supra-national governmental or legislative body” receive special treatment . The US President’s Twitter account was flagged more than a dozen times in the days following the election for posting misinformation and misleading claims about the election. Several prominent Democrats called for Twitter to suspend Mr Trump’s account until all states finish counting the votes, however the platform’s public interest guidelines prevent it from being suspended or removed.


After his lead in several key states began to dwindle to challenger Joe Biden, Mr Trump attempted to undermine the electoral process by calling for a halt to the counting of mail-in ballots. “They are trying to STEAL the Election,” he tweeted. Democratic Congressman David Cicilline described Mr Trump’s tweets as a “threat to democracy”, while fellow congressman Gerry Connolly tweeted, “This is pure disinformation.” Warnings placed on Mr Trump’s tweets meant they were not immediately visible on his timeline and engagement with the tweets was restricted. One warning explained: “Some or all of the content shared in this tweet is disputed and might be misleading about how to participate in an election or another civic process.” The rate of violations would typically lead to an account suspension, either temporarily or permanently. However, public figures are protected by a “public-interest exception” policy.

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Not by his politics?

Oh well, Barry has a new book out.

Obama: ‘Americans Spooked By Black Man In White House’ (JTN)

Just before President George W. Bush left the White House after two terms, he declared he wouldn’t be weighing in with thoughts on his successor, following the model of his father, George H.W. Bush. But Barack Obama made no such pledge. And now, just days after the 2020 election, the 44th president is hawking a new book so get ready to hear a lot more from him. Obama, the first biracial man to be elected president, makes an incendiary charge in his book, “A Promise Land,” which comes out Tuesday. President Trump, he claims, “promised an elixir for the racial anxiety” of “millions of Americans spooked by a black man in the White House.”

Those Americans – whom Obama implies appear racist – were prey to “the dark spirits that had long been lurking on the edges of the modern Republican party – xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, paranoid conspiracy theories, an antipathy toward black and brown folks.” Obama continues: “It was as if my very presence in the White House had triggered a deep-seated panic, a sense that the natural order had been disrupted. Which is exactly what Donald Trump understood when he started peddling assertions that I had not been born in the United States and was thus an illegitimate president.” Obama writes that “he came to regard Trump’s media ubiquity and characteristic shamelessness as merely an exaggerated version of the Republican Party’s attempts to appeal to White Americans’ anxieties about the first Black president – a sentiment he said ‘had migrated from the fringe of GOP politics to the center – an emotional, almost visceral, reaction to my presidency, distinct from any differences in policy or ideology,'” CNN reported.

The 768-page memoir is reportedly just volume one of his latest memoirs. Obama also writes about his shortcomings, like his failure to pass immigration reform, which he called “a bitter pill to swallow.” But he said his agenda was always correct, though voters swept out a slew of Democrats in the 2010 midterm election, two years into his presidency. “As far as I was concerned, the election didn’t prove our agenda had been wrong,” Obama writes of 2010. “It just proved that … I’d failed to rally the nation, as FDR had once done, behind what I knew to be right. Which to me was just as damning.”

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“..we have created so much debt and this is a worldwide phenomenon, so we can’t have normal interest rates anymore”

This Is What Happens To Us When The Great Global Reset Comes (Kitco)

We’re in the end game of a dollar-based system, and a new monetary system will emerge with gold as the anchor, said Willem Middelkoop, founder of the the Commodity Discovery Fund. “We’re in a rough period. It doesn’t matter which president will be next, he can only avoid a deep depression by printing trillions and trillions. As an investor, we concentrate on that part of the story,” he said. Fixing the fundamental problems in our economy, including excessive debt, will require more than just a continuation of past policies. “I think we have created so much debt and this is a worldwide phenomenon, so we can’t have normal interest rates anymore. We have seen the IMF coming out with a statement last week saying that we need a new Bretton Woods moment,” he said.


“We had a cover on Time magazine calling for the Great Reset. We had the World Economic Forum calling for a Great Reset. I wrote a book on the topic, published in 2014, it was called The Big Reset.” A new global system will require an overhaul of many monetary pillars that we currently have, Middelkoop noted. “We need a debt restructuring. IMF and the United Nations have been quite clear about that; we need debt restructuring first for the poor countries but later for the rich countries, we all have too much debt on our books. We need to find a new anchor for the world monetary system,” he said. Until then, trillions more in stimulus will be issued by governments around the world to avoid a global depression like that of the 1930’s, Middelkoop said.

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Without COVID, this would have gotten zero attention.

Three-Quarters Of England’s Care Workers Earn Below ‘Real’ Living Wage (G.)

Almost three-quarters of frontline care workers in England are earning below the “real” living wage, which experts say is the bare minimum to allow families basics such as a secondhand car and a week’s annual UK self-catering holiday, research has revealed. The proportion of care workers below the threshold is even higher in northern areas, where care homes have been hit hardest by Covid-19. In the north-east, 82% of care staff earned less than the England-wide real living wage of £9.50 per hour, while the proportion was 78% in the north-west. One care worker in Lancashire earning £8.72 per hour who recently had her pay cut told the Guardian some colleagues have been using food banks.

The figures apply to more than 832,000 frontline care workers, more than 600,000 of whom are earning below the minimum thresholds. In Hillingdon, the borough that contains Boris Johnson’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip parliamentary constituency, more than 3,000 care workers earn so little that if they are the main breadwinner in a family of four with their partner on similar wages, they could not afford the £112 a week they require for food, according to analysis by Loughborough University that underpins real living wage calculation. When Johnson was London mayor he supported the London living wage campaign as “making economic sense”.

The figures were calculated by the Living Wage Foundation and come amid growing calls for reform of the social care sector to create parity with the NHS, where all nurses earn above the threshold. On Thursday, Jeremy Hunt, the chairman of the Commons health and social care committee, called for a 10-year funding plan for social care akin to the national consensus that established the NHS in 1948. New polling revealed 82% of the public now back government investment in social care to fund a pay rise for care workers according to new polling by Survation for Citizens UK.

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But what are the true rates?

Unemployment Fiasco in Europe Is Kept out of Official Rates (WS)

In Europe, people who are furloughed are paid under government programs via their employers. Many of these programs have been created during the Pandemic. In theory, these people still have jobs. In practice, they’re not working, or are working heavily reduced hours. But they do not count as “unemployed” and are not reflected in the “unemployment” numbers. So throughout the Pandemic, the official unemployment rates barely ticked up, compared to the last crisis, and remain low for the EU era, despite tens of millions of people who’d stopped working due to the lockdowns (chart via Eurostat):

The UK adopted a sweeping job retention program at the beginning of its last lockdown. Each government pays companies, who in turn pay employees between 60% and 84% of their monthly wage. In some cases, the workers work fewer hours for less pay; in others, they don’t work at all. The workers take a hit to their income but their jobs remain intact, at least for the duration of the program. Under the UK program, businesses can claim 80% of a staff member’s regular monthly salary, up to a maximum of £2,500. The money must be passed on to the employee and can also be topped up by the employer.


But the unemployment rate has begun to rise as people come off furlough, and those whose jobs disappeared entered official unemployment. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.8% in the three months to September, from 4.5% in Q2 and from 3.9% a year earlier, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). In London, the unemployment rate surged by 1.2 percentage points from the previous quarter, to 6%. It was the largest quarterly increase in unemployment since the ONS started tracking the data in 1992.

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“I’m writing a book for Polity Press entitled The New Economics: A Manifesto. It has a long way to go, but this is the reasonably complete first chapter.”

Introduction to The New Economics: A Manifesto (Steve Keen)

Even before the Covid-19 crisis began, the global economy was not in good shape, and nor was economic theory. The biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression began late in first decade of the 21st century. Called the “Global Financial Crisis” (GFC) in most of the world and the “Great Recession” in the USA, it saw unemployment explode from 4.6% of the US workforce in early 2007 to 10% in late 2009. Inflation turn into deflation— inflation of 5.6% in mid-2008 fell to minus 2% per year in mid-2009—and the stock market collapsed, with the S&P500 Index falling from 1500 in mid-2007 to under 750 in early 2009. The economy recovered very slowly after then, under the influence of an unprecedented range of government interventions, from the “cash for clunkers” scheme that encouraged consumers to dump old cars and buy new ones, to “Quantitative Easing”, where the Federal Reserve purchased a trillion-dollars-worth of bonds from the financial sector every year, in an attempt to stimulate the economy by making the wealthy wealthier.

This crisis surprised both the policy economists who advise governments on economic policy, and the academic who develop the theories and write the textbooks that train the vast majority of new economists. They had expected a continuation of the boom conditions that had preceded the crisis, and they in fact believed that crises could not occur. In his Presidential Address to the American Economic Association in January 2003, Nobel Prize winner Robert Lucas declared that crises like the Great Depression could never occur again because “Macroeconomics … has succeeded: Its central problem of depression prevention has been solved, for all practical purposes, and has in fact been solved for many decades. (Lucas 2003 , p. 1 ; emphasis added). Just two months before the crisis began, the Chief Economist of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the world’s premier economic policy body, declared that “the current economic situation is in many ways better than what we have experienced in years”, and predicted that “sustained growth in OECD economies would be underpinned by strong job creation and falling unemployment.” (Cotis 2007 , p. 7; emphases added)

How could they be so wrong? Economists could be excused for this failure to see the Great Recession coming if the crisis were something like Covid-19, when a new pathogen suddenly emerged out of China. That such a plague would occur was predicted as long ago as 1995 (Garrett 1995). But predicting when the pathogen would emerge, let alone what its characteristics would be, was clearly impossible. However, the epicentre of the Great Recession was the US financial system itself: the crisis came from inside the economy, rather than from outside. Surely there were warning signs? As Queen Elizabeth herself put it when she attended a briefing at the London School of Economics in 2008, “If these things were so large, how come everyone missed them?”

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Good to see Dmitry!

Watch This! (Dmitry Orlov)

I first realized that the USA was going to follow the general trajectory of the USSR back in 1995. I also immediately realized that the USSR was rather well prepared for collapse whereas the USA was about to be blindsided by it, and so, as a public service, I thought I should warn people. “And a fat lot of good that did!” some of you might immediately exclaim. [..] And so I had my “Eureka!” moment in 1995, and a decade later, in 2005, I went public with my observations. I got a surprisingly sympathetic response from some particularly enlightened people (even if they said so themselves). And now, a quarter of a century after my initial insight, as the US enters national bankruptcy and institutional collapse, the whole world is being treated to an end-of-empire spectacular election extravaganza starring none other than the consummate showman and impresario extraordinaire Donald Trump.

He used to run beauty pageants, while this one is more of an ugliness pageant, but then beauty is rare and always fades while ugliness is commonplace and usually just gets uglier, making it a much safer bet. And so let’s accept it as a parting present to the world from a vanishing nation that gave us horror flicks, reality television and three-ring circuses with sideshow freaks. Within the sweeping panoramic tableau of the 2020 election, Trump (our hero) appears bathed in a golden sunset glow of nostalgia for lost American greatness which he forever promises to rekindle. Rest assured, Trump or no Trump, America will never be great again. But Trump’s magic halo extends out from his resplendent orange cranial plumage and enfolds all those who pine for the lost Pax Americana and fear and loathe what America is fast becoming—which is, to put it bluntly, a holding tank for degenerates of every stripe presided over by a freak show.

They pine for a time when men were manly and women womanly, when secretaries were flattered when their bosses took time away from their busy schedules to rub up against them, and when everyone was either a WASP, or worked hard on trying to look and act like one, or kept to their assigned station in life and knew better than to get too uppity. Arrayed against our fearless orange-hued leader, who at 74 is no spring chicken himself, is a ghoulish gaggle of geriatric gerontocrats. There is Joe Biden, 77, whose brain ran away and joined a circus some years ago but who imagines himself to be president-elect, or senator, or vice-president, or something. Having spent eight years lurking in the shadows as Obama’s VP, Biden is as fit to lead as a pig is kosher after rubbing its side against a corner of a synagogue. To assist Biden in his dodderings there is his party-appointed nanny, Kamala Harris, a mere slip of a girl at 56.

Also haunting the balcony of the American mausoleum is Nancy Pelosi, 80, who still runs the House of Representatives even though proper employment for her at this point would be up on a pole keeping the birds off the corn. There is also Bernie Sanders, 79, a sad pagliaccio whose permanent role in the political Commedia dell’Arte that the Democratic Party stages every four years is to simulate democracy by cheerleading crowds of young imbeciles in Act I, to feign death after falling off his pogo stick in Act II, and to stagger to his feet, wave and smile for the curtain call. Last but not least, there is the horrid harpy Hillary Clinton, who is relatively young at 73 but whose putrid smell and cadaverous, ghastly visage are not longer fit for public display except in most delicately contrived circumstances. Hidden even further backstage is the suppurating cadaver of George Soros who, at 90, is still pulling the strings and wreaking havoc in the US and around the world.

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