Mar 012023
 
 March 1, 2023  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  61 Responses »


Paul Gauguin Blue Trees (Your Turn Will Come, My Beauty!) 1888

 

Zelensky Hints At Withdrawing From Russian-Encircled Bakhmut (ZH)
Situation In Bakhmut Much Worse Than Kiev Admits – CNN (TASS)
Most Front-Line Ukrainian Soldiers Killed Within ‘4 Hours’ (LI)
Kiev’s Troops Have Big Nazi Problem – Ex-US Soldier Who Escaped Ukraine (RT)
The Stage Is Set For Hybrid World War III (Escobar)
European Legislators Get Money From US Military Companies (TASS)
Afraid Some EU Countries May Send Troops To Ukraine – Orban (TASS)
Hungary Calls For Justice Over Pipeline Sabotage (RT)
Putin Accuses West Of Using ‘Extremists’ Against Russia (RT)
Berlin Left Unprotected As Air Defense Systems Sent To Ukraine (RT)
Ukraine Threatens Putin After Drone Attack Deep Inside Russia (Celente)
Hunter Biden Associate Arrested, Provided FBI With ‘Damning’ Information (TP)
Hunter Biden Business Partner Flips, Now ‘Cooperating’ With GOP Investigators (ZH)
Tucker Carlson, Staff NOT Allowed To Record or Remove J6 Footage (GP)
The Return of Oracles: Chatbots Are Coming! (Ugo Bardi)

 

 

 

 

Zel US

 

 

 

 

Macgregor Poles
https://twitter.com/i/status/1630603369223012362

 

 

Lula Iran

 

 

Wait until insurance companies have to change their long term mortality assumptions…that’s when the real losses get realized.
– Edward Dowd

 

 

 

 

“West” has been telling Z to withdraw. They portray it as his fight, not theirs, so they can’t lose face. But he can. Maybe the way out for him is attacking Crimea, saying that’s the bigger battle. He also started talking about American kids dying in Ukraine battles.

Zelensky Hints At Withdrawing From Russian-Encircled Bakhmut (ZH)

It was only in late January that Ukraine’s military General Staff emphasized that any potential forces withdrawal from the strategic city of Bakhmut in the east was “out of the question” as the situation was said to be under control. But a month later, the narrative has dramatically shifted amid reports that the Russians are shelling Ukrainian positions around the clock, and as complaints from Ukrainian front lines oersist of not enough ammo supplies to keep pace with the Russians. President Zelensky in fresh remarks on the situation has admitted that besieged Bakhut is running out of options. Within the past days he also said for the first time that he won’t seek to hold the city “at any cost” – strongly suggesting Ukraine has suffered a staggering loss in manpower.

He said Tuesday: “The situation is getting more and more difficult”… “The enemy is gradually destroying everything which can be used to protect our positions,” Zelenskiy said in his address, stopping short of announcing a pullout.” There have been emerging repots of gun battles deep within the city itself, which is a new development, also as Russian forces have it nearly fully encircled, as the NY Times also confirms: “The commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, on Tuesday described the situation around the city as “extremely tense” in a post on the Telegram messaging app.” And Reuters too for the first time presented a headline Tuesday which put the situation for the Ukrainian side in stark terms: “Russians tighten noose on Ukraine’s Bakhmut,” the news service reported.

On Monday Zelensky had described that “The enemy is constantly destroying everything that can be used to protect our positions for fortification and defense. Our soldiers defending the area around Bakhmut are true heroes.” Some soldiers cited in local reports are vowing to fight till the end, as military reports get more and more desperate. Meanwhile the Biden administration is still resisting demands to give Kiev F-16 fighter jets… “for now” that is. John Kirby had described in a Monday interview that “At no time have the Russians ever achieved air superiority over Ukraine” – though by many military observer accounts, this is a highly dubious statement.

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CNN pushing Z out of Bakhmut.

Situation In Bakhmut Much Worse Than Kiev Admits – CNN (TASS)

The situation near Artyomovsk, known in Ukraine as Bakhmut, is much worse for Ukrainian forces than Kiev officially admits, CNN reported on Tuesday, citing Ukrainian troops fighting for the town. “The situation in Bakhmut is very difficult now. It is much worse than officially reported,” a soldier who wished to remain anonymous told CNN on Tuesday. “We should add another 100% difficulty to the official reports. In all directions. Especially in the northern direction.” Another soldier said in a video that “the situation around the defense of Bakhmut is quite difficult”. A third soldier described the fighting as “hellish.” Artyomovsk is located in the Kiev-controlled part of the DPR and is an important transportation hub for supplying Ukrainian troops in Donbass. Fierce fighting has been raging for the town. Denis Pushilin, the interim head of the Donetsk People’s Republic said on February 16 that Russian forces had seized control of all key heights near Artyomovsk.

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We knew already.

Most Front-Line Ukrainian Soldiers Killed Within ‘4 Hours’ (LI)

A retired American Marine fighting in Ukraine told ABC News the frontlines are a “meat grinder” where soldiers survive an average of “four hours.” Troy Offenbecker is fighting alongside Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region. Moscow and Kiev have been battling around Bakhmut for several months as Russia’s forces have slowly made gains around the city. In January, Germany estimated Kiev was losing a “three-digit number” of soldiers daily fighting for Bakhmut. At that time, the White House believed President Volodymyr Zelensky was committing too many lives and resources to defend the city. Offenbecker’s commentary suggests that the situation may be getting worse for Ukrainian soldiers. “It’s been pretty bad on the ground. A lot of casualties.” He assessed, “the life expectancy is around four hours on the frontline.”

He said the Russian attack on the city is not letting up and had turned into a “meat grinder.” “[The artillery] is nonstop.” Offenbecker explained the Russian forces are fighting around the clock. “[The Russians] have maybe run into a shortage of shells lately, but the past couple of weeks, it’s been nonstop. All day and night,” he told ABC. Meanwhile, Kiev’s Western backers have expressed to Zelensky in recent weeks that NATO countries are struggling to find artillery shells to send to Ukraine. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the US will train Ukrainian forces on fighting methods that use fewer munitions. The Kremlin ordered a mobilization of 300,000 troops last year. Western leaders have anticipated Moscow will order an offensive this winter.

Ukrainian officials say that the Russian offensive is now underway, and Offenbecker agrees. “With the amount of shelling, the amount of armor that they’ve brought in, I think it’s started,” he explained to ABC. Due to Moscow’s and Kiev’s tight control over their countries’ presses, it is unclear how substantial the death toll is for each country. Since the start of the war, Zelensky has nationalized Ukraine’s media, outlawed his political opposition and jailed citizens who opposed his administration. Commenting on the state of journalism in Ukraine, press-union leader Serhiy Guz explained, “We never know what’s the basis of these accusations, what’s the pro-Russian link…It starts to look like a political accusation rather than a genuine crime.” “A lot of journalists self-censor now,” he added.

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Could be a plant. For either side.

Kiev’s Troops Have Big Nazi Problem – Ex-US Soldier Who Escaped Ukraine (RT)

The Nazi influence in the Ukrainian military is omnipresent, John McIntyre, a former US soldier who served in various Ukrainian military units for a year, has told RT. He defected to Russia after witnessing the actions of the Ukrainian troops amid the ongoing conflict between Kiev and Moscow. “When I came, I was really surprised. Everybody had tattoos and Nazi symbolism,” the former American soldier-turned-mercenary told RT’s Murad Gazdiev in Moscow. McIntyre also admitted he did not believe Nazi ideology was “that big of a problem” for Ukraine until he saw things on the ground himself. The soldier also said he had to conceal his own anti-fascist and communist views to fit in with the Ukrainian troops. Some other Western mercenaries also directly told him: “The Russians aren’t the Nazis, we are the Nazis,” according to McIntyre.

The ex-US soldier served with the Ukrainian forces for a year, although now he claims he had always planned to defect to Russia once he gathered enough intelligence. At a certain point, he was “compromised as a whistleblower” after talking to someone about the war crimes committed by the Ukrainian forces. According to McIntyre, whistleblowers are treated in Ukraine even more harshly than spies. “Anybody who confesses or is known to be about to confess is shot in the back of the head,” he claimed, adding that “a lot of people go missing … including foreigners.” McIntyre himself managed to flee to Russia through Moldova after finding out that Ukraine had snipers hunting down defectors trying to cross the frontlines.

The former soldier, who previously served in Fort Bliss, Texas, for two years, claims the Ukrainian forces actively use civilians as human shields as they station their troops in basements next to residential buildings and then blame Russia if the area gets targeted in a strike. When such attacks happened, news crews covering the incidents “would not show you the houses to the left and right full of soldiers,” he said. The former mercenary also said he had heard about the Ukrainian nationalists, including the members of the infamous Azov battalion and another military formation called Carpathian Sech, who torture and kill Russian POWs by cutting off their genitalia or cutting their stomachs open and slitting their throats. McIntyre, who served with the Carpathian Sech, said he personally knew people who executed POWs, including foreigners from Portugal, France, and Argentina.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1630573543544049664

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“..Russia’s pivot to the East, towards the rising sun, now irreversible, was the only logical path to follow..”

The Stage Is Set For Hybrid World War III (Escobar)

A powerful feeling rhythms your skin and drums up your soul as you’re immersed in a long walk under persistent snow flurries, pinpointed by selected stops and enlightening conversations, crystallizing disparate vectors one year after the start of the accelerated phase of the proxy war between US/NATO and Russia. That’s how Moscow welcomes you: the undisputed capital of the 21st century multipolar world. A long, walking meditation impregnates on us how President Putin’s address – rather, a civilizational speech – last week was a game-changer when it comes to the demarcation of the civilizational red lines we are all now facing. It acted like a powerful drill perforating the less than short, actually zero term memory of the Collective West.

No wonder it exercised a somewhat sobering effect contrasting the non-stop Russophobia binge of the NATOstan space. Alexey Dobrinin, Director of the Foreign Policy Planning Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Russia, has correctly described Putin’s address as “a methodological basis for understanding, describing and constructing multipolarity.” For years some of us have been showing how the emerging multipolar world is defined – but goes way beyond – high speed interconnectivity, physical and geoeconomic. Now, as we reach the next stage, it’s as if Putin and Xi Jinping, each in their own way, are conceptualizing the two key civilizational vectors of multipolarity. That’s the deeper meaning of the Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership, invisible to the naked eye.

Metaphorically, it also speaks volumes that Russia’s pivot to the East, towards the rising sun, now irreversible, was the only logical path to follow as, to quote Dylan, darkness dawns at the break of noon across the West. As it stands, with the wobblin’, ragin’ Hegemon lost in its own pre-fabricated daze, the real runners of the show feeding burning flesh to irredeemably mediocre political “elites”, China may have a little more latitude than Russia, as the Middle Kingdom is not – yet – under the same existential pressure Russia has been put under. Whatever happens next geopolitically, Russia is at heart a – giant – obstacle on the warmongering path of the Hegemon: the ultimate target is top “threat” China.

Putin’s ability to size up our extremely delicate geopolitical moment – via a dose of highly concentrated, undiluted realism – is something to behold. And then Foreign Minister Lavrov provided the sweet cherry on top, calling the hapless US ambassador for a hardcore dress down: oh yeah, this is war, hybrid and otherwise, and your NATO mercenaries as well as your junk hardware are legitimate targets. Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council, now more than ever relishing his “unplugged” status, made it all very clear: “Russia risks being torn apart if it stops a special military operation (SMO) before victory is achieved.” And the message is even more acute because it represents the – public – cue to the Chinese leadership at the Zhongnahhai to understand: whatever happens next, this is the Kremlin’s unmovable official position.

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“..some MEPs received pensions, for example, from US corporations Raytheon, Honeywell International and Textron Inc – military companies that develop, produce and sell, among other items, cluster munitions..”

European Legislators Get Money From US Military Companies (TASS)

The European parliament’s members receive money from US military companies, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on her Telegram channel on Tuesday. “Corruption in the European Parliament thrives. EUObserver journalists have discovered that some MEPs received pensions, for example, from US corporations Raytheon, Honeywell International and Textron Inc – military companies that develop, produce and sell, among other items, cluster munitions,” she said. “It is noteworthy that the focus is on the US military-industrial complex (not even European), which is the embodiment of the term ‘dealers in death’.


Moreover, as it has turned out, MEPs are sponsored with money from the sale of precisely those types of weapons which EU member-states seek ban. For some reason they do not refuse to take the money,” Zakharova added. She also noted that the MEPs had invested their pension savings in the oil and gas company Royal Dutch Shell after another oil spill from its pipeline. “How about the ‘green transition’ and nature conservation? There is a very special story about this. MEP Jutta Paulus (of Germany) directly lobbies for the interests of Boston’s NGO Clean Air Task Force. In drafting legislative amendments, she obediently and without hesitation used the documents prepared by that organization,” Zakharova said.

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“We need a ceasefire, we need peace talks. That is why Hungary insists on peace at all international forums..”

Afraid Some EU Countries May Send Troops To Ukraine – Orban (TASS)

Hungary’s government is worried to see weapons supplies to Ukraine and is afraid that some of the EU countries may send its troops there, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Monday. He expressed serious concern that “entire Europe is sliding into a war step by step” as EU countries are sending tanks to Ukraine and are looking at supplying it with fighter jets. “If things continue this way, there will be those who may want to send troops to Ukraine,” he said at the opening of the Hungarian parliament’s spring session. He stressed that his government insists on settling the Ukrainian conflict by peaceful means and called on lawmakers to advocate this position. “They want to drag us into this war, but I am calling on you not to yield to provocations,” Orban said.


“We need a ceasefire, we need peace talks. That is why Hungary insists on peace at all international forums,” he said, adding that for these reason Hungary supports China’s peace plan for Ukraine. He reiterated that he continues to be against the European Union’s anti-Russian sanctions, especially in the energy sector. He recalled that restrictions on fuel supplies had provoked a dramatic price rise and Hungary’s spending on energy sources had increased by ten billion euro in 2022. “Brussels has taken this money from the pockets of Hungarians with the use of sanctions,” he added.

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“What we need to know is, if they did it in the north just to stop the Russian gas coming to Europe … then they could do it in the south as well.”

Hungary Calls For Justice Over Pipeline Sabotage (RT)

Hungary needs to watch out for potential sabotage on pipelines that deliver Russian natural gas to the country, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Monday, pointing to the September 2022 blasts on the Nord Stream pipelines connecting Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea. “The blowing up of the Nord Stream was a simple act of terrorism,” Orban said in a speech to parliament in Budapest. “What we need to know is, if they did it in the north just to stop the Russian gas coming to Europe … then they could do it in the south as well.” Orban said that Hungary, together with neighboring Serbia, must “make clear that if this were to happen, it would not be easy to get away with, like they are doing now with the Nord Stream explosions.”

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto this week called for the UN to investigate the “scandalous” attack on the pipelines. Budapest wants to know “who committed it and why,” the minister said. Hungary and Serbia, whose economies heavily depend on Russian oil and gas, have opposed sanctions that would have prevented them from receiving supplies from Moscow. Both nations have also refused to impose any restrictions of their own. On Thursday, US state-run news outlet RFE-RL reported that South Stream Transport, which operates the TurkStream gas pipeline, would not be able to repair the infrastructure in the event of damage, as the Dutch government has revoked its license.

The Black Sea pipeline delivers Russia gas to Hungary and Serbia. Veteran US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claimed earlier this month that the Nord Stream sabotage was orchestrated by Washington with help from Norway. The US has denied any involvement, and rejected the allegations as “complete fiction.” Russia has also called for a thorough investigation into the “terrorist attack.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused Western countries last week of trying to bury the issue.

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“Active attempts are currently being made by the Western special services to restore terrorist cells inside Russia, he warned.”

Putin Accuses West Of Using ‘Extremists’ Against Russia (RT)

The West never shied away from using extremists against Russia and is doing so again during the conflict in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin has said. He claimed that western intelligence agencies are aiming to restore terrorist cells inside Russia. Countering this terrorist threat remains “an urgent” task for the country, Putin said while chairing a board meeting of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) in Moscow on Tuesday. “Over the past year, the number of such crimes has increased, which is obviously connected to the attempts of the Kiev regime to employ terrorist methods. We are well aware of that. They have been using them in Donbass for a long time,” he said.

The West, which is backing Kiev in the conflict against Moscow, has “never shied away from using both radicals and extremists in their interests, despite all their loud statements about fighting international terrorism,” the president said. “They always use whatever’s at hand against us. They use everything that’s possible. It was always like this and it remains so,” he said. Active attempts are currently being made by the Western special services to restore terrorist cells inside Russia, he warned. It’s essential to intensify counter-intelligence work and keep the Russian-Ukrainian border under extra supervision to prevent the smuggling of weapons and ammunition into Russian territory, Putin told the leadership of Russia’s main security agency.

He praised the FSB’s operatives, who have worked at the frontlines and “behind enemy lines” during the conflict in Ukraine, for their “personal courage, professionalism and determination in ensuring the security of Russia.” The agency, he said, has obtained “priceless experience” that will allow it to execute its duties even more effectively. Putin has previously blamed Ukraine for using “terrorist tactics” following the explosion on the Crimean Bridge in early October, which Moscow insists was masterminded by Kiev. That led to a major ramping up of Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure and military targets, causing rolling blackouts across the country and significantly damaging Kiev’s air defense capabilities.

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Germany doesn’t have much defense to speak of. Maybe by 2050?!

Berlin Left Unprotected As Air Defense Systems Sent To Ukraine (RT)

Germany is sending two air defense systems to Kiev in a move that may leave Berlin unprotected, Armin Papperger, CEO of Germany’s leading military contractor Rheinmetall said in an interview with the Pioneer podcast on Tuesday. The two systems in question, Skynex and Skyranger, were commissioned by the German government in order to protect the airspace over Berlin, the arms manufacturer revealed. The two units cost around €200 million ($212 million) and they are to be sent to Kiev within the year. “We had two whole systems that could have certainly defended Berlin,” Papperger said, as quoted by RIA Novosti. According to Papperger, four of the systems would be enough to protect Berlin, but now there will not be enough.

On Saturday, thousands of protesters rallied in the German capital, calling for Chancellor Olaf Scholz to “stop the escalation in weapons deliveries.” Germany also pledged Western-made tanks to Ukraine in late January, promising 14 of their Leopard 2 tanks and pledging to work with partners to create two armored battalions containing 30 tanks each. However, Germany’s EU and NATO allies have been reluctant to deliver. Similarly to Germany sacrificing their own protection for the sake of solidarity with Ukraine, Denmark opted in January to send its 19 French-made Caesar howitzer artillery systems to Kiev, compromising their own defensive capabilities. The artillery systems had been a key component of Denmark’s plan to field a heavy infantry brigade.

Officials in some NATO nations have been cautioning that the constant supply of arms and ammunition to Ukraine on such a massive scale would eventually come at a cost to their own defensive capabilities. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has warned on numerous occasions that providing Kiev with military aid will not change the course of the conflict, and will instead just “prolong the suffering of the Ukrainian people.”

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“..more than 500km away from Russian border with Ukraine..”

Ukraine Threatens Putin After Drone Attack Deep Inside Russia (Celente)

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Tuesday that he will increase border security after the Kremlin blamed Ukraine for launching a drone attack deep inside Russia as the U.S. and NATO continue to provide more advanced weapons to escalate the conflict. The Associated Press, citing a nearby governor, reported one drone “fell near the village of Gubastovo, less than 60 miles from Moscow.” Anton Gerashchenko, advisor to Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, tweeted a photo of the drone that matches that of the UJ-22 Airborne, a product of Ukrainian manufacturer Ukrjet, the BBC reported. “It is more than 500km away from Russian border with Ukraine. Soon Putin might get very afraid to show himself in public as drones can reach far distances,” he wrote alongside the photo.

Andrei Vorobyov, the governor, noted that the Russian Defense Ministry identified two Ukrainian drones that were downed near the village of Gubastovo, where Gazprom operates a key facility. The BBC said Ukraine does not claim responsibility for attacks inside Russia. The Trends Journal has reported extensively how Ukraine has been accused of expanding the war deeper inside Russia after receiving the green light from the U.S. Dmitry Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister who has been one of the most outspoken advocates of more weapons and war, was caught in a prank Zoom video admitting to being behind attacks on civilian infrastructure in Crimea and Belgorod. Reports said Kuleba was evidently under the impression that he was talking to a former American ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul, who himself has been a major supporter of U.S. intervention.

“Well, if you were to ask me who blows up things in Crimea or Belgorod, then speaking privately, as much privacy we can have in a Zoom call, I’d tell you, yes, that was us,” Kuleba said. The Western media embraced the bridge bombing as though it was another major setback for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who days later approved airstrikes in about a dozen Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv. Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland, who was a major player in the U.S.-led coup in Ukraine back in 2014, continued down her path of destruction last week when she called Crimea a legitimate target for Ukrainian forces. Nuland told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that the U.S. supported Ukrainian strikes on these targets because Washington believes Kyiv is “owed and due all of their territory within their international borders,” which she said included Crimea. “Ukraine is not going to be safe unless Crimea is—at a minimum, at a minimum—demilitarized,” she said.

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“..he had been cooperating with an investigation into Hunter Biden’s business activities when he was apprehended under an Interpol Red Notice..”

Hunter Biden Associate Arrested, Provided FBI With ‘Damning’ Information (TP)

Gal Luft, a former adviser to a Chinese energy conglomerate now claims to have provided the FBI with incriminating information about the Biden family’s foreign business dealings. He is now calling himself a whistleblower and has announced his intention to reveal the names of those involved, after being detained on what he believes are politically motivated charges. According to him, he has given information to the DOJ about the Biden family’s foreign business deals. Luft was arrested on Friday. A defense expert has stated that the recent arrest of Prof. Gal Luft in Cyprus due to charges linked to the illegal exportation of arms to Libya and China is part of an attempt by the Biden administration to silence him. Luft, an Israeli professor, claims that he had been cooperating with an investigation into Hunter Biden’s business activities when he was apprehended under an Interpol Red Notice at the behest of the US.

According to reports, Gal Luft claims to have provided the Justice Department with information about Hunter Biden, his father, and his uncle, Jim Biden in March 2019. Although some may be quick to disregard Luft’s allegations as an empty threat, his association with CEFC China Energy suggests that he may possess pertinent information about the Bidens. Additionally, an attorney representing Luft has indicated that he intends to offer information about Luft’s situation to Congress. According to Luft’s lawyer, Mordechai Tzivin, the arrest of his client was politically motivated and aimed at stifling him for providing compromising information in a corruption case purportedly linked to Hunter Biden, the son of US President Joe Biden. “The arrest came four years after Luft cooperated with FBI and Department of Justice investigators to help them with information about the case,” he claimed.

On Sunday, Tzivin said that Luft could “bury Hunter Biden, that’s why they’re trying to bury him first.” He continued by claiming that “if it were Russia, this would’ve already been a diplomatic collision… it’s not unreasonable to think that the Democrats or some of their peers would like him gone.” “His testimony will be very devastating, it will divert attention to the president himself as well,” Tzivin claimed. On February 18, 2023, Luft tweeted out, “I’ve been arrested in Cyprus on a politically motivated extradition request by the US. The US, claiming I’m an arms dealer. It would be funny if it weren’t tragic. I’ve never been an arms dealer. DOJ is trying to bury me to protect Joe,Jim&Hunter Biden. Shall I name names?”

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A few days earlier.

Hunter Biden Business Partner Flips, Now ‘Cooperating’ With GOP Investigators (ZH)

Eric Schwerin, a close business associate of Hunter Biden who also dealt with Joe Biden’s business and tax affairs, is now working with House GOP investigators looking into Biden family dealings – particularly in Ukraine and China, where the family collected millions of dollars, Just the News reports. “He is cooperating with us,” House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) told the outlet. “His attorneys and my counsel are communicating on a regular basis. Now, I feel confident that he’s going to work with us, and provide us with the information that we have requested,” Comer continued. “I think that Schwerwin is going to be a very valuable witness for us in this investigation.”

Of note, Schwerin, the former president of Hunter Biden’s now-dissolved investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners, visited the White House at least 19 times from 2009 to 2015, according to White House visitor log records reviewed by The Epoch Times and first reported by the New York Post. Emails between Hunter and Eric Schwerin, his business partner at consultancy Rosemont Seneca, show Schwerin was working on Joe’s taxes. The emails were recovered from Hunter’s laptop
Schwerin’s cooperation comes after the committee received word that Hunter and his uncle, James Biden, don’t plan to be forthcoming with all the information Comer’s committee has sought in their wide-ranging probe. According to Comer, subpoenas are imminent for non-cooperating witnesses.

“We know individuals, many are cooperating with us now, but others, not so much,” he said. “We’re going to start subpoenaing people in the private sector, we’re going to start subpoenaing financial institutions to get us the information. And then we’ll go from there.” Comer then suggested that if innocent, Hunter Biden would want to clear his name in front of the committee. “He could come in front of the House Oversight Committee right now and defend his good name,” Comer said. “He would have 20 Democrats that would definitely support him, and he could make 26 Republicans look bad if all this information we have from his laptop, all the emails that were in his own words, all the audio that are in his own voice, if for some reason we’re misinterpreting that, then he could make us look bad.

“But we all know that this family was involved in influence peddling. And this administration is doing everything in its ability to try to block oversight.” Both Joe Biden and Hunter Biden have denied the family did anything wrong, although Hunter Biden has acknowledged he is under federal criminal investigation on tax issues. Comer said while the committee battles the White House and the Biden family for information, Schwerin’s cooperation was a breakthrough that could spur other key witnesses to cooperate. -Just the News According to White House visitor logs, Schwerin met directly with then-Vice President Joe Biden in the West Wing on Nov. 17, 2010, and had several meetings with White House aides during times when Hunter Biden was securing multi-billion dollar deals overseas, including in China.

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There could be legal reasons?!

Tucker must come clean.

Tucker Carlson, Staff NOT Allowed To Record or Remove J6 Footage (GP)

On February 20, 100 Percent Fed Up reported about the newly elected House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s decision to release all of the 44,000 hours of footage from January 6, 2021, to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, giving him exclusive access to Capitol surveillance footage. “I’ve watched what Nancy Pelosi did, where she politicized [Jan. 6],” said McCarthy. “Where for the first time in the history as a speaker, not allowing the minority to appoint to a committee.” “We watched the politicization of this,” McCarthy said. “I think the American public should actually see all that happened instead of a report that’s written for a political basis.” Carlson, who has continuously called for a probe into the actual events of Jan 6., has been granted exclusive access to 41,000 hours of surveillance footage from the Capitol protests.

“[T]here was never any legitimate reason for this footage to remain secret,” Carlson told Axios reporter Mike Allen. “If there was ever a question that’s in the public’s interest to know, it’s what actually happened on January 6. By definition, this video will reveal it. It’s impossible for me to understand why any honest person would be bothered by that.” In January, Carlson slammed the U.S. government for hiding information from the American public. He also pointed out the ridiculous logic of those who warn that releasing the Jan. 6 Capitol footage could threaten national security.

100 Percent FedUp reports- If you’re like most Americans, you were overjoyed to hear that Tucker Carlson, who is not afraid of exposing government corruption in either party, would be allowed to view all 44,000 hours of the Capitol surveillance tapes and were hoping that finally, we would be allowed to discover what really happened on that day. The majority of Americans never trusted the partisan, Trump-hating Jan 6 Witch Hunt Committee to give an accurate picture of what happened on January 6th at our nation’s Capitol. Those who want the truth exposed have been waiting patiently for Tucker to begin showing surveillance footage on his show, believing he would, once and for all, destroy the Left’s narrative that the so-called “insurrection” was pre-planned by Trump and his supporters.

We’re now learning that Tucker Carlson’s staff will NOT be allowed to freely record footage from January 6, but may request particular clips and that his staffers are not allowed to record or remove any videos from a specific screening area. CBS News – “Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s staff was permitted to view but not record portions of some 41,000 hours of police videos documenting the events of Jan. 6, 2021, with the opportunity to request copies of some of the clips under an agreement reached with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s office, according to the high-ranking Republican member of the committee that oversees the U.S. Capitol Police.”

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Do AI chatbots have the same function as the Oracle of Delphi?

The Return of Oracles: Chatbots Are Coming! (Ugo Bardi)

With the second millennium, society became more and more complex, and the state propaganda system started becoming too rigid and oversimplified. The development of the World Wide Web was an existential challenge for the mass media: people didn’t need anymore to be told what they had to know in a one-size-fits-all, form. They could actively search for knowledge using general-purpose search engines. The epistemic battle rapidly moved to the Web, where states tried to crack down on independent thought by using the tools they know best. Demonization, using terms such as “fake news,” “disinformation,” and “Russian trolls,” was extensively and successfully used to censor and eliminate non-standard sources. It was not possible to completely eliminate independent communication, but the search engines could be bent to suit the needs of the state without the need for direct censorship. Those sites that provide independent data could be simply “soft-banned” or “shadowed.” They are still there, but they are nearly impossible to be found.

And now, there came the new oracles. They came with the name of artificial intelligence-based “chatbots.”(**) A new epistemic revolution, they bypass the search engines, seeking for an answer to direct questions, just like the old oracles did. And they are flexible, adaptable, and changing as a function of the questions they receive. In principle, chatbots are the death knell for search engines, which were the earlier death knell for propaganda. We are in the midst of this new epistemic change, and it is unclear what AI chatbots can and cannot do. For the time being, a good chatbot acts like a good (albeit a little dull) librarian and, at the same time, a meticulous editorial assistant (again, a rather dull one). But, in principle, a good chatbot can bypass the shadow-banning of the search engines: they are much more powerful and sophisticated tools for searching information on the Web. They work on the same principle as the old oracles: they pay for information with information. Every time you ask the bot a question, you provide it with a precious element of information.

Eventually, the question is always the same: who controls the flow of information? Can chatbots be controlled by the state? Maybe but, again, they are very sophisticated tools; they are not easily manageable by the brute force that can be used with the old mass media. They have already scared the elites, who may soon crack down on them. Or, on the other hand, they may be used for even stricter control of people. For one thing, be careful with what you say to your chatbot. A general-purpose chatbot such as “chatGPT” does not keep a record of who asked it what. But others, such as “Replika,” do build a database of your questions that may be used to profile you, or much worse. History teaches us that epistemic revolutions cannot be stopped for a long time. And also that their consequences are always unexpected, and not always pleasant. And, as always, we march into the future with blinds on our eyes, in the darkness, not realizing that both sides of the paths are deep chasms. But we keep walking onward.

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A world I don’t recognize.

 

 

Moose

 

 

 

 

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Feb 212023
 
 February 21, 2023  Posted by at 10:12 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  53 Responses »


Pierre Dumonstier II The right hand of Artemisia Gentileschi holding a brush 1625

 

Recognizing The War Is Lost The ‘West’ Seeks An Exit (MoA)
Between That Rock and The Hard Place (Kunstler)
Trump Reveals How He Would End Ukraine Conflict (RT)
Biden’s Visit To Ukraine Aimed To Encourage Kiev To Start Offensive Soon (TASS)
Medvedev Says Biden Received Security Guarantees Before Going To Kiev (TASS)
Kiev Must Send People To Slaughter As Part Of Biden Election Campaign (TASS)
Joe Biden Is Making Europe Great Again – For The US (Marsden)
Merkel Confirms Minsk Agreements Were Meant To Give Ukraine ‘More Time’ (TASS)
American Projects Against Background Of Biden’s Kiev Visit – Zakharova (TASS)
Germany Comments On Fighter Jet Supplies For Ukraine (RT)
Kevin McCarthy Gives Tucker Carlson 41,000 Hours Of Jan. 6 Footage (ZH)
James O’Keefe Out At Project Veritas (ZH)
US Food Additives Banned In Europe (CBS)

 

 

 

 

Macgregor
https://twitter.com/i/status/1627835225442226176

 

 

 

 

Hersh
https://twitter.com/i/status/1627630558334398464

 

 

 

 

Benny Johnson

 

 

Donbass
https://twitter.com/i/status/1627890489247539200

 

 

 

 

“.. the short period of U.S. global hegemony has ended. The time for multi-polarity has come..”

“..if Russia would seem to lose the war China would have to intervene. It would otherwise become the very next country that the U.S. would try to obliterate.”

Recognizing The War Is Lost The ‘West’ Seeks An Exit (MoA)

U.S. President Joe Biden is in Kiev today to rescue his lunatic project of destroying Russia by proxy war. But there is no good way to do that. A review of ‘western’ media shows that the inevitable outcome of the war is now recognized. The only still open alternatives are to risk a large nuclear war or to retreat from ‘western’ dreams of its permanent hegemony. Few ‘western’ officials will admit that the war is lost, that Russia has won in Ukraine. But it has. It had won the war when it successfully trapped the Ukrainian army into a war of attrition. As the Russian commentator Sacha Rogers writes (in Russian, machine translation):

“This war has already been won (moreover, what is most offensive for various “unrecognized geniuses”, without their participation and contrary to their foolish ideas of how it should be won). It was won at the moment when, instead of a highly maneuverable war, our General Staff imposed a positional “standing” with an attrition war on the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Strictly by the textbook: Attrition warfare is a military strategy consisting of belligerent attempts to win a war by wearing down the enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel and material.” Ukraine has already lost two armies and it is begging for a third one. But the ‘West’ is unable to deliver it:

“Less than a quarter of the modern battle tanks the West has promised to Ukraine are likely to arrive in time to counter an anticipated Russian spring offensive. Kyiv is expecting its supporters to send up to 320 western tanks in total but estimates suggest barely 50 will reach the front lines by the start of April, prompting concerns they will not be enough to have a substantial impact on the fighting. The recognition that the Ukraine has lost the war is creating a panic in those quarters that are committed to ‘western’ uni-polarity.

[..] On the one side of the current discussion you have those, see above, who think of the outcome of the war in absolute terms. The U.S. must win in the proxy war it has caused, no matter what. But there are alternatives. They will require to acknowledge that the short period of U.S. global hegemony has ended. The time for multi-polarity has come. Count Secretary of State Anthony Blinken as one who is unwilling to admit that As soon as China ‘threatened’ to negotiate peace in Ukraine did he accuse it -without evidence- of aiding Russia in the war: “In his interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” which was taped on Saturday night for broadcast on Sunday, Mr. Blinken said the United States would soon be offering new information to demonstrate Beijing was “strongly considering providing lethal assistance to Russia.”

“Mr. Wang has been using the conference in Munich as a platform to tell European leaders and diplomats that China is ready to bolster ties with them and to try to play a role in ending the war in Ukraine. In his public remarks on Saturday, he said that China would soon offer a peace proposal to stop the fighting. But Mr. Blinken warned in a separate event against the allure of cease-fires that Russia might exploit to regroup for new offensives.” China has not yet supported Russia in the war. But if Russia would seem to lose the war China would have to intervene. It would otherwise become the very next country that the U.S. would try to obliterate.

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“..It leaves our country to stew in its own rancid economic and financial juices in abject isolation from, basically, the rest of the world..”

Between That Rock and The Hard Place (Kunstler)

One must conclude that NATO is looking for a way out of this. But there is no way out except to declare by word or deed, directly or otherwise, that NATO has outlived the reason for its existence. Any sane analysis by Europeans would arrive at the unnerving realization that the USA has become the enemy of NATO, not Russia. If all that is so, then a seismic shift is underway that will leave America hung out to dry on the Ukraine project. Germany will have to make a deal with Russia to rebuild the Nord Streams. What could the US do about that? Impose sanctions on Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the rest of the bunch? Where does that leave Western Civ?

I’ll tell you: it leaves Western Civ diminished. It leaves our country to stew in its own rancid economic and financial juices in abject isolation from, basically, the rest of the world. (Fare-the-well hegemonic dream; hello multi-polarity!) It leaves Ukraine neutralized and no longer a problem… It leaves Russia able to feel secure in its borders and free to get on with being a normal nation… and it leaves Europe the hope that it can resume modern life a while longer with the familiar comforts and conveniences. The end of the Ukraine conflict also exposes the rotten web of Globalist schemers who planted their operators in every niche of American life and all around Western Civ — George Soros’s empire of meddling NGOs, Bill Gates’s World Health Org puppet show, the ridiculous World Economic Forum’s network of stooges in high places from Justin Trudeau to BlackRock’s Larry Fink.

The end of the Ukraine conflict reveals the submission of the Democratic Party to nefarious interests intent on wrecking this country. Even the most benign end to the Ukraine conflict — such as, by default, Europe and Russia settling-up on their own to stop the fighting — will be another humiliation for “Joe Biden” and the crew behind him, as bad as the last days in Kabul. Their other crimes await full disclosure, everything from treasonous bribery to the fraud and genocide around Covid-19. There will have to be a severe political realignment in America. But before that can happen, expect many seasons of terrible disorder.

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“I’ll tell one guy this, and I’ll tell one guy that… We would have a deal made in 24 hours..”

Trump Reveals How He Would End Ukraine Conflict (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump claims he would end the Ukraine conflict within hours, if he wins the presidential election in 2024, by directly appealing to the presidents of Russia and Ukraine. Speaking at a rally in Florida on Monday, Trump was asked what he would do to put an end to the hostilities, and replied that he would spring into action even before being sworn into office. “I would literally start calling, not from the day I took over, but from the night I won. And I’ll call two people… [Russian President Vladimir] Putin… and [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky. And I’ll say we’re going to meet. I guarantee I could work that out.” “I’ll tell one guy this, and I’ll tell one guy that… We would have a deal made in 24 hours,” he said.


Trump went on to say that “continuing to pour money in” Ukraine is delaying a peaceful settlement and “getting a lot of people killed.” In recent months, Trump has repeatedly called for the US to lead the way in negotiating a peace settlement in Ukraine, while blasting the way President Joe Biden has handled the conflict. In late January, he claimed that his successor “has brought us to the brink of World War III” through “weakness and incompetence.” He also condemned the US’ decision to send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, saying the move could bring about a nuclear war. Trump’s comments come as Biden made a surprise visit to Kiev on Monday to personally meet with Zelensky, while promising another $500 million in security assistance to Ukraine, including more artillery ammunition, rockets, and anti-armor systems.

Tucker Trump

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Politico: “CIA warned Zelensky that the West can cut military aid if there is no progress on the Ukrainian side”.

Biden’s Visit To Ukraine Aimed To Encourage Kiev To Start Offensive Soon (TASS)

Dmitry Suslov, a deputy director of the Comprehensive European and International Studies at the Higher School of Economics, on Monday said that US President Joe Biden’s visit to Ukraine was designed to encourage Kiev to start a counteroffensive as soon as possible. The analyst told TASS that Biden’s visit was meant to underscore the importance of the current moment and reaffirm Washington’s commitment to support Ukraine over a long term. “The United States has recently been constantly saying that the military conflict in Ukraine has reached a pivotal phase and a turning point. Therefore, the West transfers to Ukraine a much larger number of weapons at the moment than it did last year.

Quantitatively, the supply of weapons at the beginning of this year has increased significantly, and they have also increased qualitatively: tanks are now being transferred, and there’s talk of long-range missiles. The United States constantly says that right here and now, no later than the beginning of spring, no later than March, the Ukrainian armed forces should start a decisive counteroffensive,” he said. “I think Biden’s visit is designed to stimulate Kiev to go on the offensive earlier. Second, to signal the United States’ commitment to protecting and supporting Ukraine in the medium and long term,” Suslov added. The analyst said it’s possible that some “sensitive issues” were discussed during the visit, such as providing planes by third countries and donations of longer-range missiles. Suslov also said there’s a chance the sides discussed political and diplomatic settlement.

According to the analyst, supplies of long-range missiles are more important than supplies of aircraft. “With aircraft, it’s necessary to train pilots, and that’s a long process. Ukraine doesn’t have the appropriate infrastructure to accommodate and maintaining these aircraft. There’s a lot of technical issues. I think there may be an announcement of aircraft supplies, but after the end of the conflict. And as for long-range missiles, some decisions can be made. At least they tend to think in Kiev that the conditions for the decision about tanks and Washington’s agreement to provide Ukraine with tanks occurred during the visit of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to Washington, and that during Biden’s visit to Kiev now there’s also potential to make serious progress with respect to long-range missiles,” the analyst said.

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“to ensure deconfliction.”

Medvedev Says Biden Received Security Guarantees Before Going To Kiev (TASS)

US President Joe Biden has received security guarantees before his trip to Ukraine, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said, without specifying who gave the American leader these guarantees. “Biden, having previously received security guarantees, finally went to Kiev. He promised many weapons and swore allegiance to the neo-Nazi regime to the grave,” Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel on Monday, “And, of course, there were mutual incantations of victory, which will come with new weapons and courageous people.”


Medvedev noted that Western countries are “quite faithfully” supplying Kiev with arms and money. “In huge quantities, allowing the military-industrial complex of NATO countries to make money and steal weapons to sell to terrorists all over the world,” he specified. Biden visited Kiev on Monday, February 20, to meet with his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky and express support for Kiev. The Associated Press earlier reported, citing the White House, that Washington had been in contact with Moscow shortly before Biden’s visit to Ukraine “to ensure deconfliction.”

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“..the show “Biden in Kiev” ended without incidents and without surprises, “despite the decorative air alarm over the center of Kiev, designed to give the whole action a much-needed shade.”

Kiev Must Send People To Slaughter As Part Of Biden Election Campaign (TASS)

Federation Council Deputy Speaker Konstantin Kosachev on Monday said the outcome of US President Joe Biden’s visit to Ukraine showed Kiev officials had no choice but to send people to the “senseless slaughter” as part of the US president’s reelection campaign. “The bottom line of the visit: Kiev has been left with no choice but to try and rush people to the senseless slaughter as part of Biden’s election campaign; Europe is paralyzed and totally deprived of initiative; and Biden in the role of a hero is going to Poland to show where that center of the European Union is, which is more desired by Washington. Not much. If you don’t count Biden’s ‘the Ukrainians helped us to get the meaning of democracy,’” the lawmaker said on Telegram.

According to the Russian politician, the show “Biden in Kiev” ended without incidents and without surprises, “despite the decorative air alarm over the center of Kiev, designed to give the whole action a much-needed shade.” Kosachev noted that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky “rushed to convert the arrival of the main sponsor into another encouraging comments for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, promising Biden that the results of the negotiations would significantly affect the situation on the battlefield.” “And this means that he correctly caught the signal, with which the US president came to Kiev: Show some achievements, and quickly,” the lawmaker said.

He said that the demand for “Ukrainian combat success” coming from Washington occurs in the context of statistics that show that less than half of Americans (48%) approve the supplies of American weapons to Ukraine, 29% are against them, and 22% remain undecided. Kosachev said that “in America, foreign policy is traditionally subordinated to domestic policy,” and Biden in Kiev launched his election campaign “in the most heroic surroundings in order to prove to everyone that he can still ‘do it just like in the good old days’,” the lawmaker said. He added that if Ukraine still doesn’t support Biden’s campaign with triumphs on the battlefields, then the current US president “still has more options for further actions that can then be presented as wisdom and flexibility, compared to Brussels or Berlin, which were forced to burn all bridges to Russia.”

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Making Europe Great Again = MEGA.

Joe Biden Is Making Europe Great Again – For The US (Marsden)

When Russia finally drew the line and the conflict went red hot, Biden was quick to hightail it over to Brussels to take that dirty authoritarian Russian gas off Europe’s hands and replace it with molecules of freedom. Captain America was going to save the day, and European bureaucrats ignored the fact that US-branded freedom has a price tag. For starters, it has ended up costing Europe an amount several times the typical domestic market price paid for US liquified natural gas. American gas exports to Europe have spiked 148% year on year. Biden also pushed Europe to go green as yet another reason not to ever again turn back to Russian gas. “Today we’ve agreed on a joint game plan toward that goal while accelerating our progress toward a secure clean energy future. This initiative focuses on two core issues: One, helping Europe reduce its dependency on Russian gas as quickly as possible. And, secondly, reducing Europe’s demand for gas overall,” Biden said last March during his EU visit.

However, now the US President has changed his tune. “We’re still going to need oil and gas for a while,” Biden declared, going off script to say the quiet part aloud in his State of the Union address. “We’re going to need oil for another decade. And beyond that.” Oh wow, in that case, maybe Europe should be turning the Nord Stream pipeline of cheap Russian gas back on so that European governments can stop shoveling cash out the door in an attempt to keep their industry and economy – not to mention consumers – from being crushed by exorbitant energy costs. Whoops, the pipelines were mysteriously blown up. “If Russia invades – that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine – then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it,” Biden said last February.

A new report by Pulitzer and Polk Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh now attributes the terrorist act to a covert American operation in cooperation with Norway, whose sales of gas to Europe have risen from $27 billion in 2021 to $109 billion last year, with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki accusing Oslo of war profiteering. Both countries have denied the accusations. But even without cheap gas, as Biden sees it, Europe has a bright future. “Time and again, Democrats and Republicans came together…to defend a stronger and safer Europe,” he said in his annual address. Maybe share that with French and German economic ministers who were just in Washington to tell big bipartisan Team America to lay off Europe and to stop shutting out European imports under the new Inflation Reduction Act favoring “made in America” products – particularly green ones. Screwing over the EU because, hey, “business is business” is one of the very rare concepts on which both Democrats and Republicans seem to agree.

Brussels could have at least stopped sanctioning its own natural resource supplies from Russia if it had realized, as Biden just admitted, that fossil fuels were here for the foreseeable future. But that would mean not being able to pretend to stick it to Russian President Vladimir Putin. If the EU’s commitment to its green energy fantasies to the detriment of its own economy has proven anything, it’s that blind ideology is the first and foremost criteria for decision making in the EU. So, the EU is staying the course while the US actively works to seduce its industry to relocate across the pond where energy is still plentiful because, unlike Europe, the US is not dumb enough to actually align reality with their lofty rhetoric if it’s going to be economically suicidal.

There’s no doubt that Europe is doing better than ever as far as US interests are concerned. Washington planted the idea of a divorce from Russia in Brussel’s ear, and then rushed in to take Moscow’s place before the ink was even dry. Europe is hardly more free than it was when it at least had the option to play the field between the two geopolitical spheres. Now it’s totally dependent on Washington with European citizens subsidizing American greatness and freedom at the expense of their own.

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Everyone talks to the pranksters…

Merkel Confirms Minsk Agreements Were Meant To Give Ukraine ‘More Time’ (TASS)

The signing of the Minsk agreements gave Ukraine time to develop between 2014 and 2021 and served to ensure that the West be able to furnish the necessary support to Kiev, Germany’s ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a conversation made public by Russian pranksters Vladimir Kuznetsov (Vovan) and Alexei Stolyarov (Lexus) on Monday. The pranksters telephoned the ex-chancellor on behalf Ukraine’s former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko. Being certain that she was talking to a former Ukrainian leader, Merkel said that now there was no point in “digging into 2014.” “Then (in 2014 – TASS), in order to prevent even worse things, everyone signed this agreement. Was it possible to stop the war then?


This question is no longer relevant. I believe that the Minsk agreements gave Ukraine more time to develop between 2014 and 2021. Now Ukraine can both make a response and also to get the necessary support,” she said. In an interview with the German daily Die Zeit, published on December 7, 2022, Merkel stated that the 2014 Minsk agreements were an attempt to let Ukraine gain time. She said “it was clear to everyone” that the conflict had been frozen and the problem had not been resolved. Russian President Vladimir Putin later said that he found Merkel’s statement completely unexpected and disappointing.

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“The fate of Saakashvili, the fate of [Venezuelan oppositionist Juan] Guaido – this is what awaits all those who have sold their souls to the Americans..”

American Projects Against Background Of Biden’s Kiev Visit – Zakharova (TASS)

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called to mind “the fate of American projects” in comments on US President Joe Biden’s visit to Kiev and his meeting with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. “Looking at today’s footage of Biden with his ward Zelensky from Kiev, do not forget the fate of all previous American projects,” the diplomat wrote on her Telegram channel on Monday. In this context, Zakharova mentioned former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, pointing out that the politician “is paying a steep price to be remembered in the West.” “The fate of Saakashvili, the fate of [Venezuelan oppositionist Juan] Guaido – this is what awaits all those who have sold their souls to the Americans: damned by their own people, needed by no one, forced to spend lavishly the money earned in America from betraying their countries on American lawyers,” she added.

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“..Earlier in February, Secretary of Defence Ben Wallace told Sky News that the UK would not send warplanes to Kiev anytime soon..”

Germany Comments On Fighter Jet Supplies For Ukraine (RT)

Germany can hardly meet Kiev’s requests for fighter jets since its Armed Forces do not possess the relevant aircraft types, its defense minister Boris Pistorius told journalists on Monday. When asked about potential aircraft deliveries to Ukraine, Pistorius said that, so far, the discussions about potential fighter jet deliveries have only covered the “fighter jet types that the Bundeswehr does not possess.” “That is a question for other nations rather than Germany,” the minister said. He did not rule out potential aircraft deliveries, though. “The military actions in Ukraine is something where one can never absolutely rule out anything,” he said, adding, though, that this idea hardly applies to German military aircraft right now. The German Armed Forces, the Bundeswehr, currently mostly relies on Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets.

Its Air Force, the Luftwaffe, has over 140 such aircraft, according to a 2021 report by Airbus. Produced since the early 1990s, these fourth-generation jet fighters are produced jointly by the UK’s BAE Systems, Airbus and Italy’s Leonardo. Apart from Typhoons, the German Air Force also has almost 90 older Panavia Tornado jets developed back in the 1970s. In January, Pistorius outright ruled out the idea of Germany sending fighter jets to Ukraine, saying it was “out of the question.” He also called such a move too risky, saying that it would “venture into dimensions that I would currently warn against.” Ukraine repeatedly called on its Western backers to supply it with heavier weapons like tanks and warplanes amid the ongoing military conflict with Russia. Kiev was mostly focused, however, on US-made F-16 jets.

Ukrainian officials recently expressed their optimism about overcoming Western reluctance to donate fighter jets. Last week, Financial Times reported that the US might still consider sending F-16 fighter jets to Kiev, or greenlighting their re-export from other nations that have them. On Monday, Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper also reported that Rome might consider sending five warplanes to Kiev. The deal could involve old AMX Ghibli fighter-bombers that the Italian Air Force plans to retire by the end of the year, the paper said, adding that Italy would only agree to send the jets to Ukraine if other nations provide it with Western-made military aircraft first. The UK, which otherwise spearheaded the Western-made tank delivery campaign for Ukraine, has so far ruled out sending jets to Kiev. Earlier in February, Secretary of Defence Ben Wallace told Sky News that the UK would not send warplanes to Kiev anytime soon.

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Now Tucker has to deliver.

Kevin McCarthy Gives Tucker Carlson 41,000 Hours Of Jan. 6 Footage (ZH)

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has given Fox News host Tucker Carlson exclusive access to 41,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage from January 6th, 2021, according to Axios, which reports that excerpts will begin airing in the coming weeks. Last week, Carlson’s producers were on Capitol Hill to begin reviewing the trove – which includes various camera angles from around the Capitol complex. The archive was previously reported at ‘just’ 14,000 hours. “[T]here was never any legitimate reason for this footage to remain secret,” Carlson told Axios. “If there was ever a question that’s in the public’s interest to know, it’s what actually happened on January 6. By definition, this video will reveal it. It’s impossible for me to understand why any honest person would be bothered by that.”


According to the report, the process to give Carlson access began in early February, according to a communication between the show and a McCarthy aide shown to Axios. In January, McCarthy told reporters in Statuary Hall that he thinks “the American public should actually see all [that] happened instead of a report that’s written [on] a political basis.” Carlson, meanwhile, railed against Washington’s “regime of secrecy and deceit.” Will the new footage shed light on whoever unlocked the doors and encouraged protesters to come inside the Capitol? Or what Ray Epps was up to during the entire day? Only time will tell…

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Brought to you by Pfizer.

James O’Keefe Out At Project Veritas (ZH)

Project Veritas founder and CEO James O’Keefe is exiting the organization. O’Keefe announced to his staff Monday that he was leaving over a conflict in vision between himself and the board in an poignant 15-minute video. “Throughout my 13 years doing this my mission has evolved,” O’Keefe said in his announcement. “Over the last few weeks I have felt a lot of despair and seen a lot of evil and felt overcome with various emotions.” A clearly emotional O’Keefe expressed gratitude for his employees, but noted that: “The external threats and pressure inflicted upon myself has been unimaginable,” O’Keefe continued. Employees had been dissatisfied by O’Keefe’s management and alleged he wasted money and was “outright cruel” to his staff, according to the The Daily Beast.

O’Keefe

Speculation has been rampant about the timing of this debacle as O’Keefe points out: “A few days after the Pfizer story, I was informed by an officer of Project Veritas that he would resign unless I step down as CEO. We’ve been having a conflict of vision over fundraising, there were tactical disagreements about the boldness of approach soliciting donations.” As The Epoch Times’ Zachary Stieber reports, O’Keefe said he confronted one executive at a meeting on Feb. 2 and said that if the person would not follow his lead, he would have to exit the group. O’Keefe then fired the man. Later that same day, a different officer informed O’Keefe he was going to the Project Veritas board to restructure the company.


O’Keefe said he received an agenda for the board meeting as he was set to depart on a flight, and that the meeting was scheduled for the moment he was due to land. “It became clear to me in that moment [that] I would be removed from my position at Project Veritas,” O’Keefe said.

Bannon PV
https://twitter.com/i/status/1627797517617479680

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“Titanium dioxide (also known as E171); Brominated vegetable oil (BVO) (E443); Potassium bromate (E924); Azodicarbonamide (E927a) and Propylparaben (E217)”

US Food Additives Banned In Europe (CBS)

From baguettes to focaccia, Europe is famous for its bread. But there’s one ingredient conspicuously missing: Potassium bromate. It’s a suspected carcinogen that’s banned for human consumption in Europe, China and India, but not in the United States. In the U.S., the chemical compound is used by some food makers, usually in the form of fine crystals or powder, to strengthen dough. It is estimated to be present in more than 100 products. “There is evidence that it may be toxic to human consumers, that it may even either initiate or promote the development of tumors,” professor Erik Millstone, an expert on food additives at England’s University of Sussex, told CBS News. He said European regulators take a much more cautious approach to food safety than their U.S. counterparts.

Asked if it can be said with certainty that differences in regulations mean people in the U.S. have developed cancers that they would not have developed if they’d been eating exclusively in Europe, Millstone said that was “almost certainly the conclusion that we could reach.” It’s not just potassium bromate. A range of other chemicals and substances banned in Europe over health concerns are also permitted in the U.S., including Titanium dioxide (also known as E171); Brominated vegetable oil (BVO) (E443); Potassium bromate (E924); Azodicarbonamide (E927a) and Propylparaben (E217). Millstone, who’s spent almost half a century researching food and agriculture science, said most Americans were likely completely unaware that they were being exposed on a daily basis to substances in their food viewed as dangerous in Europe.

“They probably just think, ‘Well, if it’s available or it’s in the store, it’s probably fine,'” he said. In a statement to CBS News, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said all food additives require “pre-market evaluation” and “regulations require evidence that each substance is safe at its intended level of use before it may be added to foods.” “Post-approval, our scientists continue to review relevant new information to determine whether there are safety questions and whether the use of such substance is no longer safe,” the agency added. [..] In a statement to CBS News, the FDA said that when used properly, potassium bromate converts into a harmless substance during food production. The FDA acknowledged, however, that not all of the compound used in any given recipe may convert during the production process, but that control measures were utilized to minimize the amount in final products.

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Great white

 

 

Green Turtle
https://twitter.com/i/status/1627672910960766977

 

 

Brain wash

 

 

Humming

 

 

 

 

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Jan 072023
 
 January 7, 2023  Posted by at 9:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  89 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Interieur au Pot de Fleurs 1953

 

Ukraine On ‘NATO Mission’ – Defense Minister (RT)
Ukrainian Political Scientist: Putin Needs Truce To Prepare New Offensive (Az.)
US To Send Ukraine Dozens Of Bradleys In $2.85b Aid Package (RT)
US To Arm Kiev With Sea Sparrows – Politico (RT)
WWIII HAS BEGUN: Medvedev Wants Hypersonic Missiles Near Washington (Celente)
McCarthy Elected House Speaker After Last-minute Call From Trump To Gaetz (PM)
Senators Make New Demand Regarding FBI, Hunter Biden, Obama White House (CB)
2 Yrs After Jan. 6: 1,000 Arrests; Zero ‘Insurrection’ Charges (Attkisson)
Jan. 6 Comm. Releases Social Security Numbers Of Trump Officials, Allies (Fox)
Adam Schiff’s Assault on the First Amendment (BB)
Ted Cruz Slams Joe Biden for Turning Pharmacies Into Abortion Centers (LN)
Biden Spokeswoman Blames Trump Ahead Of Border Visit (Fox)
Repentance (Kunstler)

 

 

 

 

VSRF

 

 

 

 

‘Unavoidably Unsafe’
https://twitter.com/i/status/1610373150767824901

 

 

Disturbing trend

 

 

 

 

 

 

What? Has NATO denounced this? Since when can NATO not do its own business?

Ukraine On ‘NATO Mission’ – Defense Minister (RT)

Kiev is shedding blood to carry out the mission NATO set for itself and expects the “civilized West” to provide weapons and ammunition in return, Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov has said in an interview for a domestic TV channel. Appearing on the 1+1 network’s TSN channel on Thursday evening, Reznikov pointed out that at the Madrid summit last summer, NATO declared Russia the greatest threat to the US-led bloc. “Today, Ukraine is addressing that threat. We’re carrying out NATO’s mission today, without shedding their blood. We shed our blood, so we expect them to provide weapons,” he said.

Reznikov also claimed that his NATO colleagues have told him, both in conversations and via text messages, that Ukraine is the “shield of civilization” and “defending the entire civilized world, the entire West.” Ukrainian officials, from President Vladimir Zelensky on down, routinely make public appeals for tanks, missiles, artillery and ammunition. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu told the General Staff in December that Moscow was de facto fighting the collective West. By his estimates, the government in Kiev has received almost $100 billion worth of weapons, ammunition and other supplies in 2022 alone. Reznikov has led that effort, boasting to the US outlet Politico in October that he had figured out the Pentagon’s political process. His goal, he said, was to keep raising the bar until Ukraine received main battle tanks.

While that particular threshold has yet to be crossed, on Friday Washington announced the delivery of 50 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, the most modern armor sent to Kiev so far, as part of a $3 billion weapons package. Earlier this week, France pledged a number of wheeled ‘light tanks’ as well. These shipments are intended to replace Ukraine’s battlefield losses. Last month, Kiev’s top general Valery Zaluzhny told The Economist he would need 300 more tanks, up to 700 infantry fighting vehicles, and 500 howitzers to conduct offensive operations. This is more than the number of such vehicles in British or German inventory. Moscow insists that Western weapon deliveries only serve to prolong the conflict, and has repeatedly warned Ukraine’s backers that this could result in an all-out military confrontation between Russia and NATO.

Read more …

Yeah, Putin needs just 36 hours for that.

Ukrainian Political Scientist: Putin Needs Truce To Prepare New Offensive (Az.)

On January 5, Vladimir Putin instructed the Russian Defense Ministry to introduce a ceasefire along the entire line of contact from 12:00 on January 6 to 24:00 on January 7. Kyiv rejected this proposal, calling it a cover and declaring Russia’s intention to bring equipment, ammunition and military personnel closer to the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The Ukrainian political scientist believes that Vladimir Putin needs this truce in order to prepare a new offensive in Ukraine by February-March. “Russia is now short of shells, and for them this truce was necessary,” Reichel said. According to him, Russia now has only one option for a mediator in the person of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, because Western leaders will not talk with Putin: “Negotiations with China made it clear that the country wants to distance itself from the conflict without providing special support either to Russia or to Ukraine.


India is not up to the war in Ukraine now, it already has so many internal and external problems with Pakistan and China. Therefore, Erdogan is now the only person with whom Moscow can talk and whom Kyiv can listen to. Using his mediating experience Turkiye has offered Russia the idea of a truce, thereby taking a step towards future negotiations, in which Putin is very interested,” he added. According to the expert, it was immediately obvious that Kyiv would not agree to a truce. “This truce is nothing but a political cover, Ukraine does not need it,” he said. Yuri Reichel explains this by the fact that any truce is beneficial for Russia, which is now trying to accumulate certain reserves in the Donbas, Zaporizhzhia in order to prevent a possible Ukrainian offensive, which, according to Western and Ukrainian experts, is being prepared in February-March.

Read more …

Do US taxpayers now pay twice for these obsolete machines?

US To Send Ukraine Dozens Of Bradleys In $2.85b Aid Package (RT)

The U.S. will send Ukraine nearly $3 billion in military aid, in a massive new package that will for the first time include several dozen Bradley fighting vehicles, U.S. officials said Thursday, in the Biden administration’s latest step to send increasingly lethal and powerful weapons to help Ukraine beat back Russian forces, according to AP. European allies also stepped up their weapons commitments. Germany announced it will provide armored personnel carriers and a Patriot missile battery to Ukraine, and France said it will soon hold talks to arrange for the delivery of armored combat vehicles.


All of the announcements, however, fall short of sending heavier battle tanks, which are more complex to use and have a longer-range gun. The Bradley, an armored carrier used to transport troops to combat, is not a tank but is known as a “tank-killer” because of the anti-tank missile it can fire. The latest U.S. aid — totaling about $2.85 billion and about 50 Bradleys — is the largest in a series of packages of military equipment that the Pentagon has pulled from its stockpiles to send to Ukraine. It is aimed at getting as much to the Ukrainian forces as possible during the winter months, before spring sets in and an expected increase in fighting begins.

Read more …

“..fitting US-made munitions onto Soviet-made launchers suggests heavy US involvement in such an upgrade..”

US To Arm Kiev With Sea Sparrows – Politico (RT)

The US may supply Ukraine with RIM-7 Sea Sparrow short-range anti-aircraft missiles, Politico reported on Thursday, citing unnamed officials. The missiles are expected to be fitted onto Soviet-made Buk launchers in an attempt to mitigate a shortage of munitions for the systems remaining in Kiev’s inventory. The missiles, developed in the early 1960s, are expected to be included in a new upcoming military aid package to prop up Ukraine in the ongoing conflict with Russia. “The package will for the first time include radar-guided Sea Sparrow anti-air missiles, which can be launched from the sea or on land to intercept aircraft or cruise missiles. In a bit of battlefield innovation, the Ukrainian military has managed to tweak its existing Soviet-era Buk launchers to fire the Sea Sparrow,” the outlet wrote, citing “two people familiar with the matter.”

Politico did not explain how Kiev came up with this “battlefield innovation,” but given that Ukraine has never been in possession of RIM-7 missiles, fitting US-made munitions onto Soviet-made launchers suggests heavy US involvement in such an upgrade. The missiles in question had previously been successfully fitted onto the Kub anti-aircraft launchers, the predecessor of the Buk system, in a collaboration between Raytheon and the Polish defense manufacturer WZU Sa. The upgrade to Soviet-made launchers was first unveiled in the early 2010s.

The inclusion of unspecified “surface-to-air” missiles into the new massive $3 billion aid package for Ukraine was confirmed by White House officials during a news briefing on Friday. In recent months, Western backers of Kiev have intensified their efforts to bolster Kiev’s anti-aircraft defenses, struggling to deal with a ramped-up bombing campaign against critical Ukrainian infrastructure launched by Moscow in the aftermath of the Crimean Bridge blast. Recent deliveries to Ukraine have included US-made short-range NASAMS systems, German IRIS-T air defense systems, while at least one battery of the US Patriot system, the backbone of NATO’s anti-aircraft defense, is expected to be transferred to Kiev in the near future.

Read more …

Seems a bit overdone.

WWIII HAS BEGUN: Medvedev Wants Hypersonic Missiles Near Washington (Celente)

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s national security council, on Thursday called for Moscow’s hypersonic Zircon missiles to be placed about 100 miles off of the coast of the U.S. in retaliation for Washington’s support of Ukraine. He called for these missiles to be in close striking distance to Washington, D.C. and called them a New Year gift. Business Insider reported that the Kremlin announced Wednesday that it will sail the Admiral Gorshkov warship armed with the Zircons “on a long-range voyage that would pass through the Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, and Mediterranean Sea.” The ship is one of Russia’s most advanced warships. In 2019, the ship docked at a Havana, Cuba, the port.


The AP reported at the time: All of the Russian naval missions to Cuba have been seen as a projection of military power close to U.S. shores, although neither Cuba nor Russian have described them as anything other than routine. His threat came after a U.S. embassy video emerged that supported Russians who oppose the war in Ukraine, Reuters reported. We reported in May that Moscow said it successfully fired its Zircon from a warship in the Barents Sea that traveled 625 miles and hit its target in the White Sea. The missile can reportedly travel nine times the speed of sound. In April, Russia also successfully test fired its new Sarmat superheavy Intercontinental Ballistic Missile that can reportedly deploy 10 or more nuclear warheads on each missile.

Read more …

Theater.

McCarthy Elected House Speaker After Last-minute Call From Trump To Gaetz (PM)

California Rep. Kevin McCarthy won a late night vote to become Speaker of the House on Friday night after Donald Trump called Matt Gaetz, a source familiar with the situation confirmed to The Post Millennial. Gaetz was leading the charge to oppose McCarthy along with Rep Lauren Boebert, and had opposed McCarthy in nearly every vote since Monday. This after McCarthy made major concessions to the 20 GOP holdouts who spent the week vocally opposing his leadership. Those concessions, however, were not as key as the head of the MAGA movement insisting its members stop rejecting the victory of a GOP-led House.


The final vote saw the hold-outs Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Andy Biggs, Crane, Good and Rosenthal not stand in the way of McCarthy’s leadership This after a vote earlier on Friday saw the flip of 14 in the GOP who had been consistently voting against his speakership. Florida’s freshman Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna posted some of the concessions made by McCarthy. She had offered her vote for McCarthy on Friday, making a note in the House of the successful negotiations between the Trump-backed speaker hopeful from California and the MAGA contingent.

Read more …

What investigations will we see?

Senators Make New Demand Regarding FBI, Hunter Biden, Obama White House (CB)

Two GOP senators who have been investigating alleged Biden family corruption for years have stepped up their efforts. After Facebook and Twitter suppressed, to an extent, explosive revelations about Hunter Biden’s laptop in October 2020, Republican Sens. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin want more answers. Grassley and Johnson have sent a letter to Zuckerberg noting that in October 2020, “when the New York Post published articles based on evidence from Hunter Biden’s laptop, many news and social media organizations inappropriately rushed to censor and discredit the initial reporting and falsely labeled it as ‘disinformation.’” Mainstream media outlets have finally admitted that the information gleaned from the laptop was not Russian disinformation but was in fact real.

“You recently appeared to indicate that the reason why Facebook made the unwise decision to censor articles about Hunter Biden’s laptop was based on an alert from the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the senators wrote. Whistleblowers have also alleged to Senator Johnson that local FBI leadership instructed its employees not to look at the Hunter Biden laptop immediately after the FBI had obtained it,” the senators noted further, going on to say that Americans “deserve to know whether the FBI used Facebook as part of their alleged plan to discredit information about Hunter Biden.” “Congress and the American people require clarity with respect to the extent the FBI communicated with Facebook during the 2020 election about Hunter Biden-related information,” they added.

Expected incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan believes there’s been a seismic shift regarding the ongoing federal investigation of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden. The Ohio Republican suggested “something is up” with the probe because of a new interest in the story by many of the same media outlets that initially dismissed reports of corruption evidence stemming from materials and emails obtained from a laptop he reportedly abandoned at a computer repair store in Delaware in 2019. “It sure looks like Joe Biden was involved,” Jordan added. “So, my, how this story has changed. And now, we find out these text messages and emails that link the entire family, not just Hunter and Joe and — but also uncle, the — Joe’s brother, James Biden, is involved in this as well.”

Read more …

“..there was no evidence proving that Byrd did not fear that Babbitt could kill him..”

2 Yrs After Jan. 6: 1,000 Arrests; Zero ‘Insurrection’ Charges (Attkisson)

Two years after the January 6 pro-Trump rally and Capitol riots, the Dept. of Justice has charged nearly 1,000 people with crimes. However, nobody has been formally accused of “sedition,” “treason,” or “insurrection,” according to officials. Sedition is defined as: Conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch. Insurrection is defined as: A violent uprising against a government or authority. Treason is defined as: Betrayal of one’s own country by attempting to overthrow the government through waging war against the state or materially aiding its enemies. The closest related charge made is “seditious conspiracy,” which is planning or plotting with at least one other person to incite rebellion against the authority; not necessarily, personally, committing an act of sedition.

Several suspects pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy. At least one of them, a member of the “Oath Keepers” group, was not present at the US Capitol on January 6. To date, it is inaccurate and arguably libelous to refer to January 6 defendants as “insurrectionists.” Most of the defendants, approximately 860, are charged with entering or remaining in a restricted federal building or grounds. Typically, when Congress is conducting business on the House or Senate floor, the public has a right to enter the US Capitol and watch the proceedings. However, members of the public were blocked from attending on January 6, and there would not have been space for the many thousands to observe in the normal gallery seats. So far, the Dept. of Justice reports, about 192 people have been sentenced to jail or prison.

Officials say 52 people have pleaded guilty to federal charges of assaulting law enforcement officers. The only person shot at the US Capitol on January 6 was an unarmed protester named Ashli Babbitt. The US Capitol Police officer who killed her, Lt. Michael Byrd, was not charged with a crime. Officials kept his identity secret for weeks while they investigated the shooting. Prosecutors eventually found there was no evidence proving that Byrd did not fear that Babbitt could kill him. A shooting by an officer in fear of his life is typically considered to be justified. In an interview, Byrd claimed he’d “saved countless lives” by killing Babbitt, even though Babbitt was unarmed, and there was no evidence she attacked or intended to attack anyone.

July 6th
https://twitter.com/i/status/1611491464537862144

Read more …

“..inadvertently..”

Jan. 6 Comm. Releases Social Security Numbers Of Trump Officials, Allies (Fox)

When the House Jan. 6 committee released hundreds of documents from its investigation online at the end of the year, it inadvertently made public nearly 2,000 Social Security numbers belonging to high-profile individuals who visited the White House in December 2020, according to a report. The Washington Post reported Friday that the leaked Social Security information was included in a spreadsheet buried within the “massive cache” of records from the committee’s work. Social Security numbers belonging to at least three members of Trump’s cabinet, a few Republican governors, and several Trump associates were reportedly compromised. The data was part of the White House visitor logs published by the committee.


While many Social Security numbers in the logs were redacted, the Post reported that around 1,900 of them were not. The Government Publishing Office (GPO), which was responsible for publishing the file, does not appear to have notified any of the individuals whose private information was released, the report said. Those whose Social Security information was made public include South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) and her family, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R), former Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson. Others include an unnamed federal district court judge and a federal appeals court judge, at least half a dozen people who testified before the Jan. 6 committee, and a lawyer who represented another witness before the committee, the Post reported.

Read more …

“..Sperry’s reporting was never refuted..”

Adam Schiff’s Assault on the First Amendment (BB)

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) violated the First Amendment and, arguably, his oath to uphold the Constitution in 2020 when his office demanded that Twitter suspend the account of Paul Sperry, an investigative journalist. Sperry happens to be the journalist who reported in 2019 that the “whistleblower” who worked with Schiff to engineer the impeachment investigation against President Donald Trump was Eric Ciamarella, a CIA analyst who had worked at the White House. Though Democrats convinced the media and Silicon Valley to suppress the story, Sperry’s reporting was never refuted, and the article remains live at RealClearInvestigations today.

This week, investigative journalist Matt Taibbi revealed in the “Twitter Files” that Schiff’s office at the House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee sent a list of requests to Twitter, including that it suspend Sperry. Schiff claimed, without evidence, that Sperry was spreading “QAnon conspiracy theories.” (Sperry denies he has ever done so, anywhere.) Twitter declined that request, but suspended Sperry in 2022 with no explanation. The attempt by any member of Congress to suppress the freedom of expression of a journalist is a flagrant violation of the First Amendment, which specifically restricts Congress from interfering in a free press. That violation is even more egregious when perpetrated by a congressional leader with unique access to secret information, and who implies that he has evidence no one else does and is acting to protect national security.

Schiff, who is now considering a run for U.S. Senate, is a frequent guest on mainstream media news programs, who have given him wide latitude for years to promote unfounded claims, such as the “Russia collusion” hoax. These journalists, who described Trump as a threat to press freedom merely for insulting the media, have a professional and ethical duty to demand that Schiff explain why he thought he could censor any journalist. It is also worth revisiting Schiff’s egregious record on civil rights in general. Last year, this author outlined five reasons that a new Republican-run Congress should subpoena Schiff — as he has subpoenaed so many others.

Read more …

“This decision was not made with the wellbeing and health of women in mind..”

Ted Cruz Slams Joe Biden for Turning Pharmacies Into Abortion Centers (LN)

Senator Ted Cruz, a longtime pro-life Texas senator, is not happy with Joe Biden’s recent ruling from his FDA that essentially turns pharmacies into abortion centers. As LifeNews reported, the FDA will allow pharmacies to sell the dangerous abortion drug that has killed millions of babies and injured thousands of women. Previously, mifepristone could only be dispensed by clinics, medical offices, and hospitals or under the supervision of a licensed physician. Following the decision, Walgreens and CVS announced they will sell the abortion drug that has killed millions of babies. Cruz slammed the decision, saying that not only will it expand abortions that kill babies, it will put women’s health at risk because the mifepristone abortion pill has killed at least dozens of women and injured countless thousands more.


“This decision was not made with the wellbeing and health of women in mind,” he said. “We should all be able to recognize that these pills can cause very serious side-effects, and should never be taken without medical supervision.” Cruz continued: “This is a reckless decision that puts the lives of women and girls in Texas and America in danger in order to push a pro-abortion agenda. This decision is not based on science, but on radical politics, and I am deeply disappointed by the callousness of the FDA.” The FDA has already lifted its in-person requirement for a doctor visit which is a medical necessity because taking the abortion pill in a variety of situations such as an ectopic pregnancy can be fatal for women. The decision will set up the ability of customers to purchase the abortion pill via teleconference — denying women the doctor’s visit they should be getting to avoid potential death or major complications.

Read more …

After two years of absence…

Biden Spokeswoman Blames Trump Ahead Of Border Visit (Fox)

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Friday blamed the previous administration for the immigration crisis facing the Biden administration, accusing Republicans of making the problem worse by opposing Democratic proposals for comprehensive immigration reform. Ahead of President Biden’s first visit to the southern border as president, Jean-Pierre told reporters that immigration reform is a “high priority” for the administration and that Biden is looking for Congress to act in the face of historic rates of illegal immigration overwhelming resources at the border.

“The president inherited a mess because of what the last administration did. We inherited a mess. And, you know, Republicans in Congress made it worse by blocking comprehensive immigration reform,” Jean-Pierre said at the daily White House press briefing. “And so what you’re seeing from this president is he’s acting. He’s acting to protect, to continue to protect the border, secure the border, and also deal with irregular migration.” Biden announced several changes to his immigration policies Thursday in a major speech from the White House. His speech came after more than 2.3 million migrant encounters were reported in FY 2022, breaking the historic 1.7 million record encountered in FY 2021.

So far in FY 2023, which began in October, the first two months have outpaced the same period last year — with 233,740 encounters in November, compared to 174,845 in 2021 and 73,994 in 2020. To address this crisis, Biden will expand a humanitarian parole program for Venezuelan nationals to include Haitians, Cubans and Nicaraguans, allowing some 30,000 individuals per month from those countries to be paroled into the U.S. for a two-year period if they meet certain conditions. Those who attempt to cross the border illegally will be ineligible for the program.

Read more …

“..Something will emergently replace this monster we call “health care.”

Repentance (Kunstler)

And what are they going to do now? Pretend that none of this is happening? Continue to demonize, discredit, and punish the few doctors who won’t pretend? My PC doc doubles as Chief Health Officer of his group practice. He’s fired doctors and others on the staff who refused to take the shots his company mandated. He’s dishonored his Hippocratic oath. He’s in mid-life with, one would assume ordinarily, many working years ahead of him. The information about vaccine deaths and disabilities is going to get worse, and his own behavior around the crisis is going to look worse, probably even to himself. There are hundreds of thousands of doctors like him. As of now, early 2023, there is no general movement among them to explain or apologize for their actions. What will happen?

I’ll tell you what will happen: medicine as we’ve known it is going to collapse, along with most other activities in our society. Apart from ethical offenses against the public in the single instance of the Covid-19 emergency, doctors and their administrative cohorts have stealthily surrendered to a racketeering business model that had already badly damaged the practice of medicine before Covid-19 came on the scene. Remember: as a general principle, organisms and systems often assume their greatest size just before the go extinct or fail. That’s exactly what you’re seeing in the conglomeratization of hospitals in the USA. If the idea was to remove redundancies for the sake of “efficiency,” then they did exactly what destroys ecosystems. Anyway, the net effect of all that hospital consolidation was just to make access to health care much more difficult for the average citizen, and the only benefit was to make multi-millionaires of the executives who run the hospitals.

Then Covid-19 came along and they decimated their own workforce with vaccine mandates. Now, many hospitals can barely function, and many have had to shut down specific services. Quite a few hospitals are going bankrupt, which only feeds the predatory consolidation still ongoing. When the financial, banking, and insurance disorders ahead start to bite later this year, hospitals will be shutting down. In the meantime, a lot of people will lose their lives to the disastrous side-effects of the vaccines. It is already the case, that the vaccine-injured who seek help from the medical system are lied-to, mis-treated, or ignored. Some of these are the doctors themselves and other health professionals who collide with reality the hard way. Something will emergently replace this monster we call “health care.”

Maybe it will still think of itself medicine, but it will operate at a much smaller scale, minus a lot of the expensive and rather miraculous high-tech developed in our time, but also minus a lot of hazardous high-tech interventions, especially pharmaceuticals, that were used as revenue streams despite the adverse blowbacks they induced. Will the doctors recover the trust of the public? It’s going to be a slog for them. They’ll have a long way to go just to recover their own honor and self-respect. Some sort of organized act of apology and repentance will have to happen first.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

It takes time

 

 

 

 

Speed
https://twitter.com/i/status/1611121105640505350

 

 

Ant hill

 

 

 

 

Glass octopus

 

 

Tiger mom

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Mar 032022
 


Pablo Picasso Mandolin and guitar 1924

 

Casualties Worse than WW1 & WWII Combined – Charles Nenner (USAW)
Ukraine And The New Al Qaeda (Whitney Webb)
Ukraine Has Been Bombing Its Own Population For 8 Years; 13,000 Deaths (LM)
There Will Be Many Ghosts In Kiev (AC)
Putin Is Not Crazy And The Russian Invasion Is Not Failing (Roggio)
The Importance Of The Russian Peacekeeping Operation In Ukraine (Milacic)
The Universal Boosting of Putin (Craig Murray)
US Army Pushing Mandatory Gender Pronoun Training (Rebel)
The US and NATO Have Never Been Sanctioned For Starting Wars. Why? (Bridge)
Jan. 6 Panel Accuses Trump Of Engaging In ‘Criminal Conspiracy’ (JTN)
New Zealand Reckons With Aftermath As Smoke Clears On Violent Protests (G.)
Corruption of Healthcare, Informed Consent, Doctor-Patient Relationship (GMS)
Ukraine on Fire (Lopatonok/Oliver Stone)

 

 

 

 

Zelensky:
6,000 Russian soldiers killed

“[Russia] have orders to erase our history, erase our country, erase us all.”

Gonzalo Lira – What Russia Wants From Its Invasion of Ukraine—and Why Zelensky Is Evil

 

 

 

 


WTI – Spread between the current contract future vs the December contract

 

 

In case you weren’t scared enough.

Casualties Worse than WW1 & WWII Combined – Charles Nenner (USAW)

Renowned geopolitical and financial cycle expert Charles Nenner says his analysis shows the world is entering into a huge war cycle that could last for many years. Nenner says, “The war cycle is such that there is great danger for a huge war. . . . What I have been writing about is the big danger that Russia, Iran and China will get together. China is watching how we deal with Ukraine before they start with Taiwan. I think that is the big one. . . . The West is in disarray, and it does not have a line on where to go or what to do. . . . This war cycle is going to be bad, and I’ll tell you why. We do price targets on markets and war cycles, and if you look at the price targets, it tells me that the casualties are going to be much higher than in the First and Second World War. So, it’s not going to be a joke.”

Nenner says his cycles are telling him the casualties in the next war could top 175 million. Nenner also sees that world leaders are not taking this seriously and points out, “What’s going on in this country (America), what are they busy with and what is it compared to a nuclear war? —Nothing. Even Biden’s decisions now are based on public relations. If the United States were independent with oil, like it was before with the pipeline and like Trump pushed, we would not be in this situation that oil could go up another $50 per barrel. It looks like now oil can go to $150 per barrel, and it can even get to $250 per barrel.”

War abroad is not the only thing to look out for. Nenner says, “I think there is going to be a lot of civil unrest. When Rome was burning, and we are talking about 2,000 years ago, the Senators were discussing if angels were male or female. This is while Rome was burning. This world is burning, and we are discussing now what kind of a sign you have to put on a public restroom. It’s the same situation. Nobody takes the lead in the big situations. . . .The cycle for civil unrest has just turned up, and it’s going to get much worse. You can imagine if Biden loses to Trump (in 2024), what is going to happen over here? I have never seen people so much on the edge. . . . Look at what going on with masks. People are ready to kill you because you disagree on what you think about masks.”

Read more …

“The CIA seems determined to manifest a prophecy propagated by its own ranks over the past 2 years -that a “transnational white supremacist network” w alleged ties to the Ukraine conflict will be the next global catastrophe to befall the world after Covid.”

Ukraine And The New Al Qaeda (Whitney Webb)

As the conflict between Ukraine and Russia continues to escalate and dominate the world’s attention, the increasing evidence that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is and has been working to create and arm an insurgency in the country has received considerably little attention considering its likely consequences. This is particularly true given that former CIA officials and a former Secretary of State are now openly saying that the CIA is following the “models” of past CIA-backed insurgencies in Afghanistan and Syria for its plans in Ukraine. Given that those countries have been ravaged by war as a direct result of those insurgencies, this bodes poorly for Ukraine.

Yet, this insurgency is poised to have consequences that reach far beyond Ukraine. It increasingly appears that the CIA sees the insurgency it is creating as more than an opportunity to take its hybrid war against Russia ever closer to its borders. As this report will show, it appears the CIA is determined to manifest a prophecy propagated by its own ranks over the past two years. This prediction from former and current intelligence officials dates from at least early 2020 and holds that a “transnational white supremacist network” with alleged ties to the Ukraine conflict will be the next global catastrophe to befall the world as the threat of Covid-19 recedes.

Per these “predictions”, this global network of white supremacists – allegedly with a group linked to the conflict in the Donbas region of Ukraine at its core – is to become the new Islamic State-style threat and will undoubtedly be used as the pretext to launch the still-dormant infrastructure set up last year by the US government under President Biden for an Orwellian “War on Domestic Terror.” Given that this CIA-driven effort to build an insurgency in Ukraine began as far back as 2015 and that the groups it has trained (and continues to train) include those with overt Neo-Nazi connections, it seems that this “coming Ukrainian insurgency,” as it has been recently called, is already here. In that context, we are left with the unnerving possibility that this latest escalation of the Ukraine-Russia conflict has merely served as the opening act for the newest iteration of the seemingly endless “War on Terror.”

Soon after Russia began military operations in Ukraine, Foreign Affairs – the media arm of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) – published an article entitled “The Coming Ukrainian Insurgency.” The piece was authored by Douglas London, a self-described “retired Russian-speaking CIA operations officer who served in Central Asia and managed agency counterinsurgency operations.” He asserted in the article that “Putin will face a long, bloody insurgency that will spread across multiple borders” with the potential to create “widening unrest that could destabilize other countries in Russia’s orbit.”

Other notable statements made by London include his assertion that “the United States will invariably be a major and essential source of backing for a Ukrainian insurgency.” He also states that “As the United States learned in Vietnam and Afghanistan, an insurgency that has reliable supply lines, ample reserves of fighters, and sanctuary over the border can sustain itself indefinitely, sap an occupying army’s will to fight, and exhaust political support for the occupation at home.” London explicitly refers to models for this apparently imminent Ukrainian insurgency as the CIA-backed insurgencies in Afghanistan in the 1980s and the “moderate rebels” in Syria from 2011 to the present.

Read more …

Google translated from French.

Ukraine Has Been Bombing Its Own Population For 8 Years; 13,000 Deaths (LM)

Invited to the Cnews set of L’Heure des Pros on March 1, 2022, war reporter Anne-Laure Bonnel recounts what Europe has not said since 2014 about the Dombass martyrs: “It’s been a week since the we talk about this conflict, but it has been going on for eight years and there have been thirteen thousand deaths, people are exhausted and they are very surprised that Europe realizes the situation, whereas for them, who live in cellars and receive heavy artillery frequently – see Anne-Laure Bonnel’s documentary: Dombass – it has been a daily life since 2014. Totally incredible thing, the French will learn – not on BFMtv – that, currently, the government of Kiev bombards its own citizens in Donbass. This is the question that Pascal Praud is asking himself and he remains amazed by Anne-Laure Bonne’s answer: “I do not take sides and I do not defend Putin, it is factual.

The Ukrainian government bombed its people. There are eighteen-month-old children in cellars. Yesterday I was in a school and two teachers were cut in half, their bodies cut in half. » While Volodymyr Zelensky is applauded by MEPs, women, children and men are dying under Ukrainian bombs without worrying the European Union. These Ukrainians are deprived of their social rights, of the payment of their pensions, of their salaries for civil servants. Water pipes and transport networks are systematically destroyed, preventing the delivery of foreign humanitarian aid. Anne-Laure denounces on her Facebook page: “Kiev is blockading its Russian-speaking populations in the east of the country. Since last November 4, the Security Council of the government of Kiev has thus adopted a “plan of immediate measures for the stabilization of the socio-economic situation…” which consists of “the suspension of the operation of companies, institutions, representations, subsidiaries and state organizations in cities located in the “anti-terrorist zone” of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.”

Because the new authorities simply decreed that the millions of Ukrainian citizens who lived in the regions of Lugansk and Donetsk were terrorists. » We strongly advise our readers to watch Anne-Laure Bonnel’s documentary: Dombass

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“The tools of propaganda in mass society have only grown with the tools of mass communication.”

There Will Be Many Ghosts In Kiev (AC)

The tools of propaganda in mass society have only grown with the tools of mass communication. You cannot see the war in its entirety—where it comes from and where it will go and what may come of it, and most of all what is happening now, on the ground—but you can be made to think you see, told that you are a part of a great and noble effort, even from the sterile security of your office or the comfort of your home. There are two wars, which are in the end still really one war: that between Russia and Ukraine, and that waged in the information sphere by parties both known and unknown, state and non-state actors alike, around the world. Since history is written by the victors, the thinking goes, if you write away now you might just win.

Sometimes this second war of appearances itself appears obvious enough for anyone to recognize. Consider recent reports of potential prosecution by the Czech Republic of citizens who post pro-Russian statements—a country not formally involved in the war in Ukraine mobilizing the tools of a total war effort. Or look on in wonder at Canadians filling the streets of Ottawa again, this time with members of parliament and city counselors among them, demonstrating in “solidarity” with people who live in a country on the other side of the world, a week after the demonstrations and solidarity of their fellow citizens were crushed. Or gawk at CBS highlighting transgenderism in Ukraine right now. Propaganda is not always subtle, even if the final aims of the information war they are a part of seem obscure.

The vast technical improvements in the tools of its dissemination mean that propaganda need not be subtle at all now. One can and probably should debate whether it ever was—the American security state’s Cold War partnership with industrialists and cultural influencers was more tasteful than that of today, but was it really less obvious? But in our moment that is beside the point. What is clear, as Darryl Cooper of the MartyrMade podcast observed recently, is that “Modern propaganda doesn’t even bother trying to convince (if even by deception). It merely says if you think This, you’re good, if you think That, you’re bad, then encourages the Good People to go attack the Bad People.”

No fly zone

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“The West’s delusions about this war – and its failure to understand the enemy – will prevent it from saving Ukraine”

Putin Is Not Crazy And The Russian Invasion Is Not Failing (Roggio)

Once again, U.S. and Western officials are falling into the trap of failing to understand the enemy and his objectives. Allegedly, Putin believed that the Ukrainian government would collapse once Russian troops crossed the frontier and pushed to Kyiv, and that the operation has failed because the Ukrainian government remains in place. Putin certainly hoped for a swift victory, but he clearly was not relying on his opening salvo as the only plan for success. Rather, the Russian military was prepared to take the country by force if a swift decapitation strike fell short. This kind of plan should be familiar to Americans who remember the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In the first hours of the war, the U.S. Air Force launched its ‘shock and awe’ campaign in an attempt to kill Saddam Hussein and other key leaders and bring down the government. Saddam survived, but the U.S. military was fully prepared to follow up with a ground assault. A look at the Russian military offensive demonstrates there was a plan for a full-scale invasion, which Russia is now executing. Conventional, mechanized warfare is a time and resource consuming enterprise, and an operation of this scope isn’t cobbled together in days. The Russian offensive is taking place on four separate fronts. On a fifth front, in eastern Ukraine, which Putin declared independent last week, Russian forces are tying down Ukrainian troops that are needed elsewhere.

The bulk of the Russian forces are advancing southward from Belarus to Kyiv. Russian advance forces, including air, mobile and reconnaissance troops, have been engaged with Ukrainian troops outside of Kyiv since the start of the war. A massive column of Russian troops, estimated at over 40 miles long, is just 20 miles north of Kyiv, and is likely assembling to surround the capital. If Russian forces can take Kyiv and push southward to link up with forces on the Crimean front, thus splitting Ukraine in two, it would be a major blow to the Zelensky government. What matters more than a handful of setbacks is that Russian forces have pushed 70 miles into contested terrain in less than a week and are on the outskirts of the capital.

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“Ukraine is the core of the formation of the Russian state and nation.”

The Importance Of The Russian Peacekeeping Operation In Ukraine (Milacic)

Ukraine is the core of the formation of the Russian state and nation. And much more. In modern circumstances, the question of Ukraine is a question of Russia’s survival. Ukraine is the country that decides on Russia’s destiny because it is in the lobby of the Kremlin. In the modern conditions of modern weapons, it is a springboard for the dismemberment of Russia. These plans have existed for a long time and are even in the scientific literature. The main goals of the Russian peacekeeping operation are the protection of the Russian people in Ukraine, Ukraine’s commitment to neutrality, and the decentralization of the state in order to prevent an anti-Russian policy in the future in Kiev. Also, President Putin made it clear – that one of the goals is to denazify Ukraine.

For years, we have witnessed the strengthening of neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine, and it is not appropriate for a country like Russia, which has a fight against Nazism in its history, to have a country in its neighborhood that is pro-Nazi. And Ukraine was like that. And imagine what the impact of Ukraine would be if it remained on that course as Russia’s neighbor. The geopolitical goals are recognized in the geopolitics of Russia written in the books, and that is to expel the United States from Eurasia as a whole. That seems like a distant and impossible goal to us, but with the victory in the Second World War, the United States occupied the macro-bridgehead in Europe and after the Cold War, they tried to expand it. They succeeded in that after the fall of the Berlin Wall and reached the borders of Russia itself – Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia.

Now they are trying to expand that bridgehead even more. The Russians believe that the United States is a foreign body on the territory of Eurasia, under the formula “why would a non-Eurasian power rule Eurasia, where there is one Russia, China, India but also Germany and France. So goals can be much longer term. On the other hand, for US, this is a matter of confirming credibility. After several defeats, Washington is facing a new challenge – in Ukraine itself. If Russia succeeds, the United States will be in a cycle of defeat. Many countries will try to be neutral and give general commitments, their generalized words. But China, like any great power, says one thing – that the security interests of Russia, like any other state, must be respected. In translation, that NATO’s expansion to the east must be stopped.

After independence, Ukraine insisted on decommunization. From the demolition of the monuments, to the change of its orientation and policy. But only to those limits to stay within its borders which were determined by the – communists!

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“I was First Secretary at the British Embassy in Warsaw, I was British Ambassador in Tashkent, and I was taught to be fluent in both Polish and Russian, which included living in St Petersburg as a language student while Ambassador designate..”

The Universal Boosting of Putin (Craig Murray)

Putin’s image as the strong man of Eurasia is boosted out of all proportion by those on the right who benefit from portraying a powerful enemy: and by those on the left who yearn for a powerful friend. This is the universal boosting of Putin. But in real life he is a much smaller figure, controlling a waning power of very limited resources. He has just made his largest miscalculation. In the last hour the UN General Assembly has condemned the Russian attack on Ukraine. The UN General Assembly is a forum where the US and its allies can normally muster between 2 and 12 votes. They had 141. Russia mustered 5, the kind of position the US, Israel and the Marshall Islands frequently find themselves in. That is the extent of Putin’s diplomatic blunder.

History teaches us it is a huge mistake to attack Russia. The Russian people have an enormous capacity for wartime resilience when attacked. But the plain truth is NATO has never attacked Russia, and though I intensely dislike NATO’s pushing of weapons systems closer to Russia, NATO doctrine has never included plans to initiate war with Russia. Just as I have frequently stated Russia has never had any intent to attack the UK; to persuade the population otherwise is the everyday job of the military industrial complex. But the Russian military industrial complex is just as powerful within Russia as the western military industrial complex is here, and the Russian people are just as exploited by their elites as we are in the West.

On either side, the offices of heads of government are not the right place to search for the good guys. Everybody gets lied into war. It is of course a truism that Russian security concerns were made neuralgic by the ever tightening encroachment of NATO and its missiles. It is a valid point. But it is an equally valid point that NATO has never attacked Russia and none of those missiles has ever been fired at Russia. The point of the missiles was never to fire them at Russia. The point of the missiles was to manufacture and sell them at enormous profit margins and provide large salaries and cash funds for politicians, with endless revolving door jobs for ex-military and civilian defence personnel, who all keep the contracts flowing.

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I must admit I don’t get this.

US Army Pushing Mandatory Gender Pronoun Training (Rebel)

While the war in Ukraine rages on, the U.S. Army is pushing through a mandatory training program for enlisted soldiers on gender pronouns, coaching officers on how to offer servicemembers gender reassignment surgery. An explosive report by the Washington Free Beacon detailed an official military presentation titled, “Policy on the Military Service of Transgender Persons and Persons with Gender Dysphoria,” which was provided to officers in February along with instructions on how to train their subordinates on the material. Details of the presentation were leaked to the Free Beacon by a whistleblower who was forced to partake in the training as a high-ranking officer in the Army Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets.


Details of the leaked report were confirmed to the publication by a U.S. Army Spokesman, who said that it came from an official program “used to train Army personnel on the recent changes to the DoD and Army transgender service policy.” Under the policy, every enlisted soldier to officer, including commanders and supervisors, are mandated to undergo the transgender training by September 30, 2022. The introduction of the presentation comes months after the army’s shift in policies allowing transgender soldiers to openly serve and is part of a larger push by the Biden administration’s “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” initiative to make the military inclusive to transgender and non-binary identifying individuals. Despite the pushback from Republicans and military veterans, all three branches of the U.S. Military and the U.S. Marines have gone ahead to promote the woke initiative throughout the military.

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“.. just because NATO-bloc countries have been tearing a path of wanton destruction around the globe since 2001 without serious consequences, this does not give Russia, or any country, moral license to behave in a similar manner.”

The US and NATO Have Never Been Sanctioned For Starting Wars. Why? (Bridge)

If the current events in Ukraine have proven anything, it’s that the United States and its transatlantic partners are able to run roughshod across a shell-shocked planet – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, to name a few of the hotspots – with almost total impunity. Meanwhile, Russia and Vladimir Putin are being portrayed in nearly every mainstream media publication today as the second coming of Nazi Germany for their actions in Ukraine. First, let’s be clear about something. Hypocrisy and double standards alone do not provide justification for the opening of hostilities by any country. In other words, just because NATO-bloc countries have been tearing a path of wanton destruction around the globe since 2001 without serious consequences, this does not give Russia, or any country, moral license to behave in a similar manner.

There must be a convincing reason for a country to authorize the use of force, thereby committing itself to what could be considered ‘a just war’. Thus, the question: Can Russia’s actions today be considered ‘just’ or, at the very least, understandable? I will leave that answer up to the reader’s better judgment, but it would be idle not to consider some important details. Only to the consumers of mainstream media fast food would it come as a surprise that Moscow has been warning on NATO expansion for well over a decade. In his now-famous speech to the Munich Security Conference in 2007, Vladimir Putin poignantly asked the assembled global powerbrokers point blank, “why is it necessary to put military infrastructure on our borders during this [NATO] expansion? Can someone answer this question?”

Later in the speech, he said that expanding military assets smack up to the Russian border “is not connected in any way with the democratic choices of individual states.” Not only were the Russian leader’s concerns met with the predictable amount of disregard amid the deafening sound of crickets, NATO has gone on to bestow membership on four more countries since that day (Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia). As a thought experiment that even a dolt could conduct, imagine Washington’s reaction if Moscow were building a continuously expanding military bloc in South America, for example.

The real cause for Moscow’s alarm, however, came when the US and NATO began flooding neighboring Ukraine with a dazzling array of sophisticated weaponry amid calls for membership in the military bloc. What on earth could go wrong? In Moscow’s mind, Ukraine was beginning to pose an existential threat to Russia. In December, Moscow, quickly nearing the end of its patience, delivered draft treaties to the US and NATO, demanding they halt any further military expansion eastwards, including by the accession of Ukraine or any other states. It included the explicit statement that NATO “shall not conduct any military activity on the territory of Ukraine or other states of Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia.” Once again, Russia’s proposals were met with arrogance and indifference by Western leaders.

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One of the accused committed suicide after hearing what his verdict could be. Meanwhile, Pelosi still refuses to release the thousands of hours of video.

Jan. 6 Panel Accuses Trump Of Engaging In ‘Criminal Conspiracy’ (JTN)

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot alleged in a court filing Wednesday that former President Donald Trump participated in a “criminal conspiracy” related to the 2020 election as it sought to pierce his attorney-client privilege. The committee alleged that the former president and his campaign attempted to illegally obstruct Congress’ certification of electoral votes. “The Select Committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States,” the panel wrote in a brief that was filed in opposition to Trump attorney John Eastman’s claims of claims of attorney-client privilege. The committee also said that Trump “may have” been involved in other criminal acts as well with Eastman offering legal assistance. “[E]vidence and information available to the Committee establishes a good-faith belief that Mr. Trump and others may have engaged in criminal and/or fraudulent acts, and that Plaintiff’s legal assistance was used in furtherance of those activities.”


Jan. 6 Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., released a statement on the allegations Wednesday. “The Select Committee’s brief refutes on numerous grounds the privilege claims Dr. Eastman has made to try to keep hidden records critical to our investigation. The Select Committee is not conducting a criminal investigation. But, as the judge noted at a previous hearing, Dr. Eastman’s privilege claims raise the question whether the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege applies in this situation,” they wrote. “The facts we’ve gathered strongly suggest that Dr. Eastman’s emails may show that he helped Donald Trump advance a corrupt scheme to obstruct the counting of electoral college ballots and a conspiracy to impede the transfer of power,” the duo added.

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“Many protesters blamed the violence on police plants, outside agitators or “antifa” infiltrators..”

New Zealand Reckons With Aftermath As Smoke Clears On Violent Protests (G.)

“We will not be defined by this,” prime minister Jacinda Ardern said, as New Zealand’s parliament grounds descended into chaos, fire and violence in a shocking end to the anti-mandate protests that have occupied the capital city’s centre. An undercurrent of violence had simmered throughout the weeks-long Ottawa-inspired occupation, which was blighted by abusive behaviour, conspiracy theories, and death threats. On Wednesday, riot police moved in with pepper spray and rubber bullets, and the powder keg exploded. Protesters set their tents alight, and lit a bonfire beneath the parliamentary children’s playground. People could be heard whooping and yelling, “burn it down, burn it down.” As fires burned across the lawns, some protesters worked to spread them and set more tents alight, while a woman screamed “What are you doing? People will get hurt”.

Gas bottles exploded as they were consumed by the blaze. At a bonfire next to the cenotaph war memorial, protesters threw tents, trash and wooden pallets on the flames. Others hurled anything within reach at lines of riot police: chairs, fireworks, rubbish bins, and paving stones ripped from the parliamentary paths. By evening, firefighter hoses had dampened the flames and revealed a graveyard of burnt tents, blackened grass, and tipped-over portaloos. A small group of 150 protesters who were funnelled down a sidestreet continued to clash with police. As the smoke cleared, New Zealand was left reckoning with scenes without precedent in recent decades. Violence is a rarity at the country’s parliament, which has a tradition of openness, relatively light security and high levels of public access.

The protests marked a confronting shift in tone from the first two years of New Zealand’s pandemic, which were characterised by unusually high levels of consensus and support for government public health measures, as well as rising levels of trust in science and experts. Many protesters blamed the violence on police plants, outside agitators or “antifa” infiltrators. Christopher Best, a protester standing back from where the scuffles were breaking out, appeared shell-shocked. “What you’re seeing here is not the protesters that actually want to protest for the mandates, these are the extremists,” he said. Best had been at the encampment for 23 days and said the tone of the protest had shifted dramatically in the last 48 hours, but he struggled to articulate who the newcomers were. “We’ve seen another a group of people who just want to create trouble. These people are coming in and wrecking it.”

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James A. Thorp1*, Thomas Renz2, Christiane Northrup3, Charles Lively4, Peter Breggin5, Richard Bartlett6, Neil Karrow7, Steve Kirsch8, James Welsh9, Phil Euell10, Ryan Cole11, Jeff Childers12, Bryan Ardis13, Benjamin Marble14, Eric Feintuch15, Daniel Nagase16, Richard Urso17, Paul E Merik18, Peter A. McCullough

Corruption of Healthcare, Informed Consent, Doctor-Patient Relationship (GMS)

A recent publication in the British Medical Journal cast concern about the impropriety of the Pfizer data. The author, Paul D Thacker reviews a litany of breaches of expected experimental integrity [1]. Many mainstream medical journals and professional organizations receive financial support from pharmaceutical advertising and thus have financial incentives to collude with Big Pharma. Despite the global rollout of COVID-19 “vaccines”, the de-identified participant level data underlying the trials for these new products remain inaccessible to doctors, researchers, and the public [2]. Big Pharma is the least trusted industry [3] and at least three of the many companies making COVID-19 vaccines have past criminal and civil settlements costing them billions of dollars, with one pleading guilty to fraud [4].

The COVID-19 pandemic has made many new pharmaceutical billionaires and vaccine manufacturers report tens of billions in profit [5]. Doshi and Healy maintain that physicians should not recommend vaccines when full transparent data are not publicly available [6]. Appropriate testing was not completed prior to the roll out of the COVID-19 “vaccines” in women of reproductive age, nor was Big Pharma’s data made available to public scrutiny. The term “cartel” frequently conjures images of illegal drug activities engaged in by groups seeking to fix and control markets. However, a “cartel” is any group of independent corporations and/or entities who band together to control the production, distribution, and pricing of a market or commonly shared commodity [7].

Despite significant signs of danger about the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines, governing bodies of healthcare professionals have banded together in cartellike fashion, issuing threats to destroy the livelihood of physicians and other health care providers for alleged dissemination of “misinformation” about COVID-19. A term of deception crafted by various cartel entities “misinformation” is used to label anything that would tend to create COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. In other words, “misinformation” is used to discredit alternative views and seeks to prevent honest and truthful communication with a patient about the experimental gene therapy’s known and very real dangers. This honest and truthful communication is necessary for a physician to provide informed consent.

Using the cartel example, these commonly shared commodities are the COVID-19 vaccines – which are not traditional, immunizing vaccines at all [8], but prophylactic treatments for COVID-19 which carry serious and significant risks. The cartel-like entities seek to collectively control the market by promoting COVID-19 vaccines as the only option for pregnant patients, despite other prophylactics and treatments which have a proven safety record in pregnancy. The cartel-like entities in this instance seek also to prevent pregnant patients from being able to make decisions related to these experimental vaccines which is informed by the emerging scientific data. In what can be likened to “fixing” the market in favor of administration of universal COVID-19 vaccines – thereby maintaining their monopoly on COVID-19 vaccines as the only treatment – the cartel-like entities have banded together to falsely assert that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective, and necessary. However, this narrative is crumbling before the eyes of the entire world.

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Lopatonok is the director, Stone the executive producer.

Ukraine on Fire (Lopatonok/Oliver Stone)

I was a supporter of the Orange revolution in Ukraine in 2004, but with time I find more and more evidence that all “revolutions” were scripted and staged with big money and foreign government and non-government involved. The result was horrible for Ukraine, people lost their dream of free democracy – the democrats show such hunger for power and money –they look much worse that the predecessor. I remember a friend of mine calling me from Odessa during the first days of the “Euromaidan” events in November of 2013 and asking me – “Where is the CNN coverage??” and the coverage was delivered. At that time – November 2013 me and my team already had start gathering footage and evidence, but even in a nightmare I did not imagine this Coup De Taut being this bloody and violent.

I can’t name it a revolution. This was an organized, prepared, funded and staged Cope De Taut – and everybody who participated in that event looked out for they own goals, and my fellow Ukrainians were used as a force against the government. And they arranged a cover for those actions, and they blamed the police and the government, but they fought without hesitation because blood was already on their hands. I, as a citizen, can’t just sit and watch. We decided to shed some light on behind the stage helpers, who help achieve results but with totally different goals – Geopolitical goals. So we pay attention to that technology and find a lot of patterns in common around the world, and this leads us to a serious conclusion – that people in a free world need to know how their governments use they tax money for regime changing games around the world, and the consequences.

My biggest concern about all of this – Are we that stupid that we are going to let our differences and ideologies put the World on the brink of World War 3? Can we stop our politicians from those dangerous games of power? And I think so, if all of us will be aware and conscious, and don’t stay silent if we see neo-nazi’s presenting themselves as freedom fighters, and manipulators from neo-conservatives to neo-liberals use not only the citizens of Ukraine but all of us around the World to achieve they goals.

Igor Lopatonok, Director

Ukraine on fire full video

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Gonzalo Lira

 

 

 

 

WEF EU Parliament
https://twitter.com/i/status/1498846822961455104

 

 

Cat
https://twitter.com/i/status/1499125334314299396

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Jul 272021
 
 July 27, 2021  Posted by at 9:17 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , ,  84 Responses »


Roy Lichtenstein Woman in Bath 1963

 

Spike Protein Is Still Circulating 5 Months From Vaccination (VT)
Early Vaccinees Are Twice As Likely To Catch Covid As Later Recipients (ToI)
New Mandate That MUST Be Enforced NOW (Denninger)
About The French Guyana Paper From The CDC (IM Doc)
A Last Word of Caution (VanDen Bossche)
Journalists: Covid-19 News ‘Censored’ To Create ‘One Official Narrative’ (PG)
Here We Go Again (Berenson)
Most Covid Patients In UK Hospitals Only Tested Positive After Admission (ZH)
A Long-term Perspective On Immunity To COVID (Nature)
Decline In UK COVID Cases Signals Coming “Inflection” For US (ZH)
In a Hall of Mirrors You Have To Break Some Glass To See Clearly (Kunstler)
The Jan. 6th Show Trials Threaten All of Us (Ron Paul)

 

 

Science can flourish only in an atmosphere of free speech
– Albert Einstein

 

 

Pfizer Purchase Agreement

 

 

 

McCullough: 3-5 years of turmoil

 

 

 

 

Fleming: what’s in the vaccines?

 

 

 

 

Weinstein Tucker

 

 

Twitter thread.

Since the “vaccines” have only been used for some 5 months, this means: “To infinity and beyond!”.

And since Covid is so similar to the flu, what happens if you catch that next year, or the one after that?

Spike Protein Is Still Circulating 5 Months From Vaccination (VT)

Robert Malone has said you need to measure duration, distribution, and amount for the spike protein. FDA never did this; one of our researchers did. They found spike protein is still circulating 5 months from vaccination in 100% of patients tested (6 people; random pick). And yes, they plan to publish this. But I wanted to give our followers advance notice. One of the 6 had spike in 15% of his monocytes!!! This is NOT limited to 5 months out… This could last for years, we just don’t know yet. The 6 were randomly picked. They wanted to use them as “healthy controls.” Then the researchers freaked out when they found this. Whoa. Anyone can verify this but nobody in academia will attempt to do this. The results will be too embarrassing. It will prove Malone was right the whole time about importance of measuring those 3 things. He said this on the Darkhorse podcast that was censored on YouTube.


THIS IS NOT NORMAL. The antigen is supposed to stick around for a week or two and vanish. Is it any wonder why people who have been vaccinated have long term symptoms? Part of this is permanent damage caused by the inflammation (which causes scarring which doesn’t heal)… The antigen (in this case spike) is SUPPOSED to disappear in 2 weeks. So this can explain long-term vaccine symptoms (along with permanent or temp damage from the inflammation and blood clots caused by the vaccine). Permanent damage is from scarring caused by inflammation. Anyone can replicate this if they have the proper assays. Will anyone? Will they be able to get it published? That’s the big question. Journals censor by deeming unfavorable research as “out of scope” for the journal.

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The spike proteins stay, but they don’t protect you (any longer, if they ever did).

Early Vaccinees Are Twice As Likely To Catch Covid As Later Recipients (ToI)

People vaccinated before late February are twice as likely to catch the coronavirus than other inoculated Israelis, according to new research. “We looked at tens of thousands of people tested in the month of June, alongside data on how long had passed since their second shot, and found that those vaccinated early were more likely to test positive,” Dr. Yotam Shenhar, who headed the research, told The Times of Israel. “This definitely reinforces the argument for giving a third vaccine dose to the elderly.” The report, published by the healthcare provider Leumit, comes on the heels of other Israeli studies that suggest a decreasing vaccine effectiveness, partly as a result of the Delta variant and partly because of the passage of time. However, British data indicates the Israeli studies may be overstating the case.

Data released by the Health Ministry on Thursday suggested that people vaccinated in January were said to have just 16% protection against infection now, while in those vaccinated in April the effectiveness was at 75%. The Leumit study looked only at the apparent waning of protection over time, and divided the vaccinated population into two based on inoculation dates, comparing early vaccinators to late vaccinators. Shenhar, head of Leumit’s labs, acknowledged that the early vaccinators group includes many people who raced to get shots because they have underlying illnesses, which may make them more vulnerable to infection. But he said that could not fully account for the stark effect seen in the data. Shenhar said the data should prompt the government to seriously consider booster shots for over-70s.

[..] In his study, the apparent waning effect in immunity was felt across all ages. For all age groups, early vaccinators were 1.95 times more likely to be confirmed coronavirus positive. Among those aged 60-plus, early vaccinators are twice as likely to get infected. For those aged 40-59 early vaccinators are 2.1 times more vulnerable, and among under 39s they are 1.6 more likely to catch the coronavirus. “In a previous analysis we showed that as time passes since the vaccine, the level of antibodies drops at a rate of about 40% per month. This new study builds a clearer picture of the effect seen in the months after vaccination,” said Shenhar.

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As I said in Rage Against the Vaccine, we are finding out that the vaccinated are the spreaders. This is such a blow to the official story, they’ll deny it as long as possible.

New Mandate That MUST Be Enforced NOW (Denninger)

Work in health care? I don’t care if you are in direct patient-care or not; if you work in a medical facility of any sort this applies to you if you took the jab. We now know if you become infected with Covid, and you had the jab, you will have a higher viral titer before becoming symptomatic, if you become symptomatic at all. That is, you, compared against someone who did not take the jab where you are both infected, are much more likely to transmit the virus to someone else before knowing if you get infected. Since viral replication occurs in hours per cycle, not days, testing, unless on an every day basis, is not sufficient to detect the risk. Nearly everyone coming into a medical facility is at heightened risk of one sort or another; people do not, generally-speaking, go into medical facilities if all is well. This is certainly true for hospitals and “urgent care” facilities.

Masks cannot mitigate this risk as the virus is in aerosols and when you exhale you will thus project it into the environment if it is present. It does not matter if you use an N95 or surgical mask; an N95 will still break the seal around your face when you exhale to some extent and thus you will exhale virus if you are infected. Therefore if you work in such a facility and you took the jab, given what we now know, you are hereby obligated from now until forever into the future, until Covid and any future mutation of it is no longer of material concern, obligated to use both Ivermectin on an every 3-day basis, and Budesonide on an every day basis, both as prophylaxis. This obligation is now attached and permanent so long as you remain employed.

Since people believe that there is nothing wrong with mandating people take non-sterilizing shots to work in health care then, given that you ****ed up and are now putting people at grossly-enhanced risk there is also nothing wrong with this mandate either. Said prophylaxis is to take place on video and be recorded each day for the Budesonide and every three days for Ivermectin. If you refuse you are fired and your medical credentials are stripped. If you infect someone without documented proof that you have taken this prophylaxis as a medical worker and have been jabbed you are charged with felony assault and if they die you are charged with depraved indifference homicide, which in most jurisdictions is Murder 2. If law enforcement will not bring these charges then the relatives of said person who is impacted has every moral and ethical right to personally enforce the appropriate penalties.

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A comment at Naked Capitalism confirms it once more: it’s the vaccinated. Who are free to travel, eat indoors etc., … and free to spread the virus.

About The French Guyana Paper From The CDC (IM Doc)

This is how science – the actual process – not the Fauci version – should be working. I have repeatedly stated that I am seeing much much more vaccinated positives than one would ever have expected. As I have stated, they seem to be much sicker (though not critically so) and they tend to happen in clusters. For the past two months, this has stuck out from the dominant media narrative. I have never had to fight the cognitive dissonance between the media and my own eyeballs in my life. I belong to a large non-public alumni group of my residency program that has literally thousands of IM docs all over America. The first thing a scientist does is to confirm that your observations are general or something you are just seeing. It was quickly obvious from that group that I was far from alone despite the “minimal breakthrough cases” media narrative.

So, then you do everything you can to hypothesize reasons why you are seeing what you are. I have been a physician for 30 years and that experience plays a huge role as well. Having this gigantic number of breakthrough cases just simply does not happen. I continue to see more than half the cases in vaccinated patients and so do many others. UNHEARD OF IN VACCINES BEFORE NOW. Part of hypothesizing why is looking to the literature for evidence. Seldom is this found in RCT at this stage. Case reports and series like this paper are critical. They are seeing the same breakthrough ratio. And they have done a lot more viral research than you can. This is a gold mine for my own questions.

Is there anything in the paper that could possibly explain what I am seeing. Lots of times, it is not in the headline part but in all the test results and discussion. And yes, there is a very important finding deep in the results. Why would clustering and sicker patients be so much more common in the breakthrough patients. – there must be a reason for that? If you look at the brief discussion of cT or cycle threshold you will see that the vaccinated patients have a SIGNIFICANTLY lower cT than the unvaccinated. That is the way the PCR test works. It basically means the vaccinated have a much higher amount of viral active particles than the unvaccinated. That would account for the breakthroughs I and my colleagues are seeing being a bit more ill. And it would explain the clustering.

The vaccinated breakthroughs have much higher viral load so they are much more contagious and the higher viral load makes them more symptomatic. So we now have a suggestion and strong evidence that the vaccinated population may be spreading much more virus than the unvaccinated. I would say that is a critical public health issue and must be further researched immediately. This Certainly needs much more work. THis is not confirmatory of any conclusions. But it is consistent with observation on the ground – unlike most of what the media has been spewing to the American people. But this is how science works. This paper is about the gamma variant but a conference yesterday with experts discussed that similar findings were being found in delta and lambda.

The suggestion in this paper is now on the front of my mind. I am even now thinking of ways to confirm or falsify these conclusions going forward. This is science. Another issue. The writers make the point that the breakthrough rate is extremely divergent from the expected rate. The difference is this paper documents what is happening in REAL LIFE. So much of what we are hearing on our media about vaccine efficacy is research being done in vitro. It is presented as gospel truth. I just want to scream.

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Maybe the next big wave after Delta will make people listen to VanDen Bossche.

A Last Word of Caution (VanDen Bossche)

The current expansion in prevalence of infectious Sars-CoV-2 variants is highly problematic because it erodes natural Ab-based, variant-nonspecific immunity in the non-vaccinated part of the population. The high infectivity rate that results from this expansion not only further enhances the expansion of these variants but may also drive natural selection of viral variants that are featured by an even higher level of infectiousness. Erosion, therefore, of natural Ab-based, variant-nonspecific immunity promotes breeding and transmission of more infectious viral variants in the non-vaccinated part of the population. On the other hand, mass vaccination promotes natural selection of increasingly vaccine immunity (VI)-escaping variants in the vaccinated part of the population.

Taken together, mass vaccination conducted on a background of high infectivity rates enables more infectious, increasingly VI-escaping variants to expand in prevalence. This evolution inevitably results in inclining morbidity rates in both, the non-vaccinated and vaccinated population and precipitates the emergence of circulating viral variants that will eventually fully resist vaccine-mediated immunity (VMI). This is why mass vaccination campaigns should not be conducted during a pandemic of a highly mutable virus, let alone during a pandemic of more infectious variants (unless transmission-blocking vaccines are used!). It is critical to understand that a rapid decline in viral infectivity rates that is not achieved by natural infection but merely results from expedited mass vaccination campaigns will only delay abrupt propagation of emerging, fully vaccine-resistant viral variants and hence, only delay the occurrence of a high wave of morbidity and mortality.

In contrast, mass vaccination campaigns that are progressing more slowly, especially when conducted on a background of relatively low infectious pressure, will result in a steadily growing propagation of increasingly VI-escaping variants and hence, cause a wave of morbidity and mortality that continues to grow bigger and larger as more and more people become vaccinated. It’s only when fully vaccine-resistant viral variants will become dominant that this wave will start to peak. To prevent more detrimental consequences of the ongoing evolution of Sars-CoV-2, we have no choice but to mitigate erosion of natural, Coronavirus (CoV)-nonspecific immunity in non-vaccinated individuals and exertion of strong immune selection pressure on immunodominant vaccinal epitopes in vaccinated individuals.

This is to say that we must stop mass vaccination and lower viral infectivity rates immediately. Continued mass vaccination will only lead to a further increase in morbidity and hospitalization rates, which will subsequently culminate in a huge case fatality wave when expansion of more infectious, vaccine-resistant variants will explode.

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No kidding.

Journalists: Covid-19 News ‘Censored’ To Create ‘One Official Narrative’ (PG)

Elijah, who came up with the group’s name and found it “therapeutic” to talk to others with the same concerns, told Press Gazette: “It’s been unprecedented the way Covid-19 has been reported in the UK but not just in the UK, worldwide. “There’s only been one official narrative played out in the mainstream media and that has not changed over time. “There’s only been one ‘scientific truth’ allowed to be discussed: the one endorsed by worldwide governmental regulatory bodies, even that has been very selective. This has given the public a distorted view of the truth which has been highly damaging.” Elijah said her biggest concern was about “censorship” of information online that goes against this narrative and referred to the Trusted News Initiative, through which the BBC, other publishers and tech giants flag up the most dangerous disinformation to each other.

“For a long time, we’ve been in this dark era of censorship that’s been embodied by the Trusted News Initiative which cuts across big tech and all mainstream media,” she said. “It’s been packaged around this war on disinformation or misinformation- where anything that’s gone against the official narrative has not just been ‘fact checked’ but has been suppressed or removed.” Ex-BBC radio journalist Gosling told Press Gazette he had interviewed two doctors who shared counter-narratives – Dr Tess Lawrie of the Evidence-based Medicine Consultancy in Bath who called for early treatment to take place post-Covid diagnosis, and Florida-based immunologist Dr Stanley Laham who called for the use of ivermectin and warned against the use of the approved but “experimental” vaccines – but that both were removed from Youtube on grounds of misinformation.

Gosling said he wanted to speak out against fear-inducing and sometimes inaccurate coverage. He pointed as one example to a BBC Newsround segment last month in which a contributor claimed the Pfizer vaccine was “100% safe” for 12 to 15-year-olds. Gosling submitted a complaint about the “shocking” and “disgusting” claim and the BBC has since removed the claim from the online article and video and published a correction. Gosling said: “Our main concern is that there’s a very powerful lobby behind many of these Covid measures, including treatment, lack of treatment and vaccines, obviously, but there isn’t much of a lobby in the other direction. And I think most of us feel that our employers of various sorts have not been representing both sides.”

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“Deaths began to fall in February. After March 1 – when only 1 in 13 Americans were fully vaccinated – they plunged further. In the five months since, perhaps 80,000 people have died from (or with) Covid – fewer than died in January alone.”

Here We Go Again (Berenson)

But as I said, even putting aside the issue of how we classify the partially vaccinated, Fauci and Murthy lied about what percentage of coronavirus deaths are now occurring in FULLY vaccinated people. It is much higher than the sub-1 percent figures they offered. This fact should have been obvious to anyone who has seen the data from England, Scotland, and Israel. Those countries vaccinated a greater percentage of their populations more quickly than the United States. They have also been much more transparent about reporting hospitalizations and deaths among vaccinated people. And in all three countries, hospitalizations and deaths have spiked since May – and vaccinated people have accounted for more than HALF of all deaths recently.

The difference does not come from the type of vaccines, either. Israel used only the Pfizer vaccine, which until recently was considered the better of the two mRNA vaccines. The United Kingdom gave many Pfizer doses too. So the comments from Fauci and Murthy defied credibility – how could other countries have so many more deaths in their vaccinated populations? The answer is that Fauci and Murthy are – intentionally – using the wrong denominator. They say “now” or “are.” But they are comparing deaths among the fully vaccinated – which have essentially been an issue only since May – with ALL deaths beginning from the day the United States offered its FIRST vaccine dose (or even possibly from the beginning of the epidemic).

The United States has had roughly a quarter-million deaths from Covid this year (the CDC reports 216,000, a number that will rise somewhat). It has had closer to 300,000 since the first dose was offered on Dec. 14. But more than half those deaths occurred in December and January, when essentially no one was fully vaccinated. Not even 2 percent of Americans were fully vaccinated as of February 1. Deaths began to fall in February. After March 1 – when only 1 in 13 Americans were fully vaccinated – they plunged further. In the five months since, perhaps 80,000 people have died from (or with) Covid – fewer than died in January alone.

Vaccine advocates rarely acknowledge the fact that deaths started dropping long before most people had received shots. In reality, even acknowledging that many people who received vaccines in January and February were older and vulnerable, seasonality and herd immunity seem to have had a greater impact on broad Covid trends than vaccinations.

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But are noted as Covid admissions.

Most Covid Patients In UK Hospitals Only Tested Positive After Admission (ZH)

Over half of those hospitalized with Covid-19 in the UK only tested positive after admission – suggesting that “vast numbers are being classed as hospitalised by Covid when they were admitted with other ailments, with the virus picked up by routine testing,” according to The Telegraph, citing leaked government figures. The takeaway? Oft-cited statistics published daily may far overstate Covid hospitalizations – and consequently, pressures on the National Health Service (NHS).

“The leaked data – covering all NHS trusts in England – show that, as of last Thursday, just 44 per cent of patients classed as being hospitalised with Covid had tested positive by the time they were admitted. The majority of cases were not detected until patients underwent standard Covid tests, carried out on everyone admitted to hospital for any reason. Overall, 56 per cent of Covid hospitalisations fell into this category, the data, seen by The Telegraph, show. Crucially, this group does not distinguish between those admitted because of severe illness, later found to be caused by the virus, and those in hospital for different reasons who might otherwise never have known that they had picked it up.” -Telegraph

In June, UK health officials instructed NHS trusts to provide “a breakdown of the current stock of Covid patients” between those who were hospitalized primarily for Covid and those admitted for other reasons. Thus far, the NHS has failed to publish this now-leaked information. Breaking it down, out of more than 780 hospitalizations dated last Thursday, 44% tested positive within 14 days prior to admission, while 43% tested positive within two days of admission, and 13% tested positive ‘in the days and weeks that followed’ – including those likely to have caught the virus in the hospital. “Experts said the high number of cases being detected belatedly – at a time when PCR tests were widely available – suggested many such patients had been admitted for other reasons,” according to the report.

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Plasma.

A Long-term Perspective On Immunity To COVID (Nature)

Immunological memory is not a long-lasting version of the immediate immune reaction to a particular virus; rather, it is a distinct aspect of the immune system. In the memory phase of an immune response, B and T cells that are specific for a virus are maintained in a state of dormancy, but are poised to spring into action if they encounter the virus again or a vaccine that represents it. These memory B and T cells arise from cells activated in the initial immune reaction. The cells undergo changes to their chromosomal DNA, termed epigenetic modifications, that enable them to react rapidly to subsequent signs of infection and drive responses geared to eliminating the disease-causing agent4. B cells have a dual role in immunity: they produce antibodies that can recognize viral proteins, and they can present parts of these proteins to specific T cells or develop into plasma cells that secrete antibodies in large quantities.

About 25 years ago5, it became evident that plasma cells can become memory cells themselves, and can secrete antibodies for long-lasting protection. Memory plasma cells can be maintained for decades, if not a lifetime, in the bone marrow6. The presence in the bone marrow of long-lived, antibody-secreting memory plasma cells is probably the best available predictor of long-lasting immunity. For SARS-CoV-2, most studies so far have analysed the acute phase of the immune response, which spans a few months after infection, and have monitored T cells, B cells and secreted antibodies7. It has remained unclear whether the response generates long-lived memory plasma cells that secrete antibodies against SARS-CoV-2.

Turner and colleagues took up the challenge of identifying antibody-secreting memory plasma cells in the bone marrow of people who have recovered from COVID-19 (called convalescent individuals). Memory plasma cells are rare, and those specific for a particular disease-causing agent will obviously be extremely scarce. Nevertheless, Turner and colleagues detected memory plasma cells that secreted antibodies specific for the spike protein encoded by SARS-CoV-2 in 15 of 19 individuals, approximately 7 months after infection. Notably, when the authors obtained samples 4 months later (11 months after SARS-CoV-2 infection), the number of such plasma cells had remained stable in all but one of the individuals analysed. Those plasma cells did not proliferate, which classifies them as bona fide memory plasma cells. Their numbers equalled those of memory plasma cells found in the individuals after vaccination against tetanus or diphtheria, and which provide long-term immunity to those diseases.

When Turner et al. tracked the concentrations of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in the individuals’ blood serum for up to one year, they observed a biphasic pattern (Fig. 1). In the acute immune response around the time of initial infection, antibody concentrations were high. They subsequently declined, as expected, because most of the plasma cells of an acute immune response are short-lived. After a few months, the antibody concentrations levelled off and remained more or less constant at roughly 10–20% of the maximum concentration observed. This is consistent with the expectation that 10–20% of the plasma cells in an acute immune reaction become memory plasma cells5, and is a clear indication of a shift from antibody production by short-lived plasma cells to antibody production by memory plasma cells. This is not unexpected, given that immune memory to many viruses and vaccines is stable over decades, if not for a lifetime8.

Figure 1 | The immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Data are becoming available that shed light on longer-term aspects of the human immune response to coronavirus infection. One component of the defence response is the production of antibodies that target viral proteins (red line). During the initial, acute phase of the immune response, antibody levels peak rapidly; this peak is generated by short-lived immune cells called plasma cells. Turner et al.1 present clinical evidence, from people who have had COVID-19, that long-lived, memory plasma cells that produce antibodies are generated in the bone marrow. These cells provide long-term antibody production that offers stable protection at a level of 10–20% of that during the acute phase (blue line). Memory plasma cells are a cell type that can be maintained for many years, if not a lifetime. Wang et al.2 have characterized antibody responses at between six months and a year in people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2; their results also provide evidence for the generation of immunological memory.

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Where finance and Covid meet. These guys are good at spotting trends.

Decline In UK COVID Cases Signals Coming “Inflection” For US (ZH)

Just one week ago, as Dr. Anthony Fauci was cranking the Delta variant “fearmongering” up to 11 once again, JPM’s Croatian quant Marko Kolanovic was telling the bank’s clients that a looming inflection point for new cases in the UK (widely seen as a leading indicator for the direction of new cases in the US) would soon arrive, kick-starting demand for value stocks and reopening plays. Although Kolanovic is a Wall Street quant, not an epidemiologist, it turns out his view was correct. Because one week later, the number of new cases being confirmed in the UK and EU has fallen, even as the UK’s “Freedom Day” has come and gone. Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid described the decline in new cases in the UK “nothing short of remarkable”.

According to Reuters data, the number of new cases fell for a sixth consecutive day, to 24,950 on Monday from 29,173 on Sunday. The total number of new cases over the past week, at just over a quarter of a million, is more than 20% lower than the prior week. While the UK’s economy-crippling “pingdemic” continues, and many have continued to isolate, meaning the UK is still a way’s away from achieving a return to “normality”. Additionally, despite the fast rise of cases to near peak levels, mortality is currently 95% lower than during the January peak. This should give confidence to investors that delta is not a serious threat to global growth. If the US follows the template of the UK, daily cases might be peaking in the next 12 days…while we think Energy-Epicenter stocks are going to start to rally beginning this week.

While the Delta variant continues to dominate “our discussions with clients,” Kolanovic claimed that fears about the variant are overblown. The UK, he added, appears to be following a timeline similar to what the world saw in India. This should give confidence to investors that Delta isn’t a serious threat to global growth. Well, that and the drop in mortality. Speaking of markets, Kolanovic suggested that this is the start of a rotation into cyclicals. Some might be tempted to attribute the drop in UK cases to a fluke, or the pingdemic, or some other factor. But as Kolanovic reminds us, the trajectory of India’s recent COVID flareup (the first national outbreak to be caused by the delta variant) was similarly swift, as JPM illustrates with a handy chart.

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Censorship is everywhere. Because it offers total control.

In a Hall of Mirrors You Have To Break Some Glass To See Clearly (Kunstler)

I’ll tell you what’s really funny: the new Sam Harris “Making Sense” podcast with Dr. Eric Topol, veep of Scripps Research. These two just can’t make sense of why the folks outside their Southern California smuggery bubble have any reservations about getting vaxed-up against Covid-19. It’s like a mental illness to them — all these selfish, Trump-driven, flag-smooching ignoramuses beyond the pale of Wokery, who are putting at risk their science-loving betters in the PhD hives of the New Normal, while that King Kong of Covid variants (code-name Delta) rages through the hillsides and canyons beneath Mulholland Drive. The insolence! Can’t these morons just follow simple instructions (available 24/7 at CNN)?

Okay, here’s why, Sam and Eric: Because every institution in American life has squandered its credibility in the service of a political program that seeks to destroy whatever used to be worth caring about in Western Civ, including free thought, free speech, free inquiry, free movement, truth, beauty, and the right to resist official coercion. Half the country has no trust in the government’s public health apparatus, led by the — shall we say — slippery Dr. Anthony Fauci. Should they believe NPR? The New York Times? CBS-News? Should they follow every bob and judder of Rachel Maddow’s Adam’s apple? Should they swallow every globule of obvious horse-shit served up by Jen Psaki?

Hey Sam and Eric, have you followed what went on in the US Department of Justice and the FBI the past five years, these supposed redoubts of rectitude? The manufactured “Russian Collusion” hoax? The official lying to FISA courts? The malicious prosecutions? The transparently seditious activities of CIA agent Eric Ciaramella & Co.? The hiding of Hunter Biden’s evidence-stuffed laptop? The enlistment of Facebook, Twitter, and Google in suppression of the news and censorship of opinion? Do you expect people to believe that the basement-haunting “Joe Biden” won an election with those slim victories in the Wokester-controlled, fraud-drenched city precincts of Philadelphia, Atlanta, Milwaukee, and Detroit? Or that Merrick Garland and Christopher Wray wouldn’t lie about it?

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Pelosi helping Putin ridicule America.

The Jan. 6th Show Trials Threaten All of Us (Ron Paul)

The recent felony conviction and eight month prison sentence of January 6th protester Paul Hodgkins is an affront to any notion of justice. It is a political charge and a political verdict by a political court. Every American regardless of political persuasion should be terrified of a court system so beholden to politics instead of justice. We’ve seen this movie before and it does not end well. Worse than this miscarriage of justice is the despicable attempt by the prosecutor in the case to label Hodgkins – who has no criminal record and was accused of no violent crime – a “terrorist.” As journalist Michael Tracey recently wrote, Special Assistant US Attorney Mona Sedky declared Hodgkins a “terrorist” in the court proceedings not for committing any terrorist act, not for any act of violence, not even for imagining a terrorist act.

Sedky wrote in her sentencing memo, “The Government … recognizes that Hodgkins did not personally engage in or espouse violence or property destruction.” She added, “we concede that Mr. Hodgkins is not under the legal definition a domestic terrorist.” Yet Hodgkins should be considered a terrorist because the actions he took – entering the Senate to take a photo of himself – occurred during an event that the court is “framing…in the context of terrorism.” That goes beyond a slippery slope. He is not a terrorist because he committed a terrorist act, but because somehow the “context” of his actions was, in her words, “imperiling democracy.” In other words, Hodgkins deserved enhanced punishment because he committed a thought crime.

The judge on the case, Randolph D. Moss, admitted as much. In carrying a Trump flag into the Senate, he said, Hodgkins was, “declaring his loyalty to a single individual over the nation.” As Tracey pointed out, while eight months in prison is a ridiculously long sentence for standing on the floor of the “People’s House” and taking a photograph, it is also a ridiculously short sentence for a terrorist. If Hodgkins is really a terrorist, shouldn’t he be sent away for longer than eight months?

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