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Debt Rattle September 7 2023

Sep 072023
 
 September 7, 2023  Posted by at 9:09 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  38 Responses »


Edgar Degas Dancers in Blue 1895

 

• White House Rejects ‘Ridiculous Claim’ That Staffers Treat Biden ‘Like a Baby’ (Sp.)
• Kamala Harris ‘Ready To Take Over’ As President If Biden Can’t Do Job (ZH)
• Blinken’s Visit to Kiev a Sign of Trouble in Washington – Larry Johnson (Sp.)
• $100 Mln Per Day on Ukraine ‘A Lot of Money in Minds of US People (Sp.)
• ‘World Majority’ Sees Ukraine Conflict As Declining NATO Power (Lukyanov )
• Majority Of Russians Support Turning Away From West (RT)
• Mitch McConnell Warns US Not To ‘Go Wobbly’ On Ukraine (RT)
• Prigozhin’s Three Strikes – Khodorkovsky, Berezovsky, Last Africa Trip (Helmer)
• Bucharest Denies Ukrainian Claim That Russian Drone Hit Romania (Antiwar)
• Putin, MbS Note Cut in Oil Production Will Stabilize Market (Sp.)
• Eyesore Of The Month September 2023 (Jim Kunstler)
• Donald Trump’s Georgia Trial Expected To Take Four Months, 150 Witnesses (BBC)
• Debunking The Lies In ADL’s Response To Elon (Nawfal)
• Facebook Files: White House Lies About ‘Disinformation Dozen’ (ZH)
• French Court Turns Down Political Asylum Request For Assange (RT)
• CDC Warns Of New ‘Stealth’ COVID Variant: Test Negative, No Symptoms (BBee)

 

 

Real Cover, May 2012

 

 

Tucker SInclair

 

 

2016

 

 

 

 

TuckerWhitmer

 

 

Macgregor believes the Russians have simply decided to wait it out. In his opinion, European economies are on the brink of collapse, and their time is running out. Europe faces not only a severe recession but also catastrophic fuel shortages due to the winter. “I think the Russians have decided: let’s wait a bit until everything falls apart on its own over there. Putin is nothing like us. Putin wants to live peacefully with the West, peacefully with the Ukrainians.

But we say, we don’t want to live in peace with Mr. Putin. That’s where the problem lies,” the Colonel believes. “They are quietly building up troops. They are recruiting 750,000 to reach a force of 1.2 million. Everything we wanted to prevent with this war is happening in reverse. We have inadvertently given life to a force we always feared,” Macgregor concluded.

 

 

Ukraine draft

 

 

Russia MFA Spokeswoman Zakharova: “Since February 2022, over 5 million people have come to our country from Ukraine… Reasonable people who did not want to have anything to do with Kiev’s neo-Nazis, understand perfectly well that in Russia they can build a future for themselves and their children without being targeted for more psychological, gender-based or political experiments.”

 

 

Steven Donziger: BREAKING: In one of the great modern abuses of police power, prosecutors in Georgia filed a bogus RICO case against 61 Cop City activists. Pathetic attempt to silence a powerful movement. The real racketeers are officials who violate the law to persecute their own citizens

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Rather than own his failure,” Foer writes, “[Biden] fumed to friends about how he was treated like a toddler. Was John Kennedy ever babied like that?”

• White House Rejects ‘Ridiculous Claim’ That Staffers Treat Biden ‘Like a Baby’ (Sp.)

At 80, Joe Biden is the oldest person to ever serve as president of the United States. The first book covering his time as president is nearing its release and published excerpts have already begun to alarm some observers. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre recently said claims that US President Joe Biden is treated like a baby by White House staff are “ridiculous.” The comments came during a Tuesday press briefing after Jean-Pierre was asked about excerpts from a new White House biography by author Franklin Foer, titled The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future. In the book, Foer writes that Biden complained to friends about being treated like a “toddler” after White House staffers had to walk back statements he made about Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Rather than own his failure,” Foer writes, “[Biden] fumed to friends about how he was treated like a toddler. Was John Kennedy ever babied like that?” When asked why the White House staff treats the president of the United States like a baby, Jean-Pierre called the assertion “ridiculous.” “No one treats the United States president, the commander-in-chief, like a baby. That’s ridiculous, that is a ridiculous claim,” she said. The press secretary further added that the White House had seen the excerpts with more context and asserted that the quote was making the “opposite overall point” and lauded the value of his “experience and wisdom. In March 2022 during a speech in Warsaw, Poland, Biden discussed the conflict in Ukraine.

During his speech, he made comments about Putin that seemed to advocate for regime change, “for god’s sake this man cannot remain in power,” Biden proclaimed. White House officials quickly walked back the statement, claiming: “The president’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors in the region. He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.” Foer asserts in his book that Biden “knew that he had erred, but then resented his aids for creating the impression that they had to clean up his mess.”

A late August poll indicated 75% of registered voters believe Biden is too old to run for a second term, including two-thirds of Democrats. Another poll showed 70% of Americans do not want Biden to run for a second term, with half citing age as a major factor. Foer said during a media tour for the book that it “wouldn’t be a total shock” if Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race. Biden has downplayed his age as an impediment to his performance as president. “I can’t even say I guess how old I am, I can’t even say the number. It doesn’t register with me.”

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“.. I see how his ability to understand issues and weave through complex issues in a way that no one else can to make smart and important decisions on behalf of the American people have played out..”

• Kamala Harris ‘Ready To Take Over’ As President If Biden Can’t Do Job (ZH)

Vice President Kamala Harris is ready to serve word salad to the world as POTUS, should Joe Biden – the oldest president in US history at 80, croak or is otherwise unable to effectively govern (so, now?). “Joe Biden is going to be fine, so that is not going to come to fruition,” Harris told AP in an interview published Wednesday. “But let us also understand that every vice president — every vice president — understands that when they take the oath they must be very clear about the responsibility they may have to take over the job of being president.” “I’m not different,” Harris added. According to a Monday Wall Street Journal poll, 60% of registered voters don’t think Biden is “mentally up for the job” of being president, while 73% say Biden is just too old to be president.

Meanwhile, a Harvard Caps/Harris poll from May found that 61% of voters don’t think Biden would even make it through another term in office. If Biden wins reelection, he will be 82 at the time of his second inauguration and 86 at the conclusion of his term. The current oldest president at the end of his term was Ronald Reagan, who left office in 1989 at the age of 77. In the AP interview, Harris argued that Biden “delivers” when he’s in the Oval Office. “I see him every day. A substantial amount of time we spend together is in the Oval Office, where I see how his ability to understand issues and weave through complex issues in a way that no one else can to make smart and important decisions on behalf of the American people have played out, she said. “And so I will say to you that I think the American people ultimately want to know that their president delivers. And Joe Biden delivers.”

According to Boston University professor emeritus Tobe Berkovitz, “The problem with Biden being 80 is that he is acting more and more like a senior citizen without all of his faculties,” who added that Biden’s general demeanor “reinforces that he is an old 80-year-old, not a spry, competent 80-year-old.” [T]he age issue will be eagerly amplified by political opponents and their media allies if Biden makes any slip-ups during a taxing election campaign. The template has already been established in the extensive coverage given to Biden’s fall at a U.S. Air Force Academy graduation event in Colorado in early June. Verbal misfires — as when he twice in 24 hours referred to the war “in Iraq,” when he meant “in Ukraine” earlier this year — deepen the perception problem. -The Hill

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“Blinken is the message bearer in the first place. He is neither the driver of Washington’s foreign policy nor his stature is similar to that of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov: essentially Blinken is carrying the instructions that he’s been given to share.

• Blinken’s Visit to Kiev a Sign of Trouble in Washington – Larry Johnson (Sp.)

Antony Blinken arrived in Kiev to show Washington’s support to Ukraine and announce $175 million-$200 million in new US aid as well as a larger package amounting to $1 billion, according to the US press. The secretary of state’s visit came as the third month of Ukraine’s botched counteroffensive has wrapped up, with the Kiev regime unable to boast any military gains. However, the Ukrainian military claims that they made some progress here and there. Still, the topics mentioned by the Western media aren’t the centerpiece of Blinken’s visit, according to Larry Johnson, retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official. “I think this is just a sign of the trouble with the policy set,” Johnson told Sputnik. “They’re trying to figure out what to do next because the majority of American people do not support [the current policy].

“They’re coming into the political season, getting prepared for elections next year. The Biden administration is under pressure domestically. [A g]rowing number of Democrats are very upset and outraged with his border policy allowing all these illegal immigrants to flood across. They’re now hitting the states of New York, Massachusetts and California, and it’s creating problems for those governors. So, you know, I think when you take it all together, they’re trying to figure out what to do next.” Per Johnson, Blinken is the message bearer in the first place. He is neither the driver of Washington’s foreign policy nor his stature is similar to that of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, according to the CIA veteran: essentially Blinken is carrying the instructions that he’s been given to share.

Johnson does not rule out that the US secretary of state may also touch upon the issue of the anti-corruption fight in Ukraine, as details of bribery of Ukrainian officials and overbuying of weapons supplied to Ukraine are still being uncovered. Earlier this year, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh cited CIA sources saying that the Ukrainian president and his entourage embezzled around $400 million of US money in 2022 alone. US economic aid to Ukraine is at risk from corruption in the Kiev government and the Ukrainian private sector, the State Department Inspector General’s Office warned in July. Alas, the corruption in Ukraine goes well beyond Zelensky, noted the CIA veteran: “It’s endemic to the Ukrainian government, to the military.”

Most recently, Zelensky sacked Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov whose name is associated with several large-scale scandals, from inflated prices on army food and fuel supplies to a winter jacket procurement row, corruption-driven draft evasion and payoff schemes, and weapons pilfering and smuggling-related criminal allegations. On September 5, Ukraine’s authorities arrested Igor Kolomoisky – one of the country’s most powerful tycoons – who was rumored to be Zelensky’s former patron. Kiev is accusing Kolomoisky of fraud and money laundering. “There’s something just very off about getting rid of the previous defense minister for ‘corruption’,” noted Johnson. “Why wasn’t he arrested? Well, he wasn’t arrested. They’re talking about giving him another job. So this is political theater. I think he’s removing him so that they can at least maybe have a potential scapegoat to point to for this failed counteroffensive.

But if this is really about corruption, he would be arrested. I mean, heavens, they arrested Kolomoisky ostensibly for corruption. And he’s not even a government official.” The botched counteroffensive appears to have seriously undermined Washington’s Ukraine plan. What’s worse for Team Biden – US financial or military assistance cannot currently fix the situation on the ground, according to Johnson. “The only thing that would change is that the United States suspended, cut off all military and financial assistance. This war would end in two or three days, I think. They would not be able to sustain the fight. Otherwise, it does not matter what weapons system or how much aid the United States gives, it’s not going to change the situation on the battlefield with Ukraine losing,” Johnson concluded.

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“.. their own time is limited unless they can fix the election again and retain power. But then what do they have to offer? Nothing.”

• $100 Mln Per Day on Ukraine ‘A Lot of Money in Minds of US People (Sp.)

The next few weeks will most likely see the US House’s opposition to the Biden administration’s ongoing financial support of Kiev grow, Michael Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, told Sputnik. Kiev needs to supply coal to international markets for five months and 17 days in order to earn the sum necessary to finance just one day of the Ukraine conflict, calculations made by Sputnik have revealed. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, who was replaced by Rustem Umerov on Monday, claimed in an interview with a local media outlet that one day of the conflict costs Ukraine at least $100 million.

The next few weeks will most likely see the US House’s opposition to the Biden administration’s ongoing financial support of Kiev grow, Michael Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, told Sputnik. Kiev needs to supply coal to international markets for five months and 17 days in order to earn the sum necessary to finance just one day of the Ukraine conflict, calculations made by Sputnik have revealed. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, who was replaced by Rustem Umerov on Monday, claimed in an interview with a local media outlet that one day of the conflict costs Ukraine at least $100 million. He noted that when one expends $100 million per day “on a battlefield for a war that no one really understands, it’s going to raise a lot of questions.”

“I guess that might be one reason why [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky had to get rid of the defense minister because he was being truthful for once,” the ex-Pentagon senior security policy analyst argued. Maloof called the $100 million a day an “incredible amount”, warning that the quality of life in the US “is going to be affected by this”, something that he said would also cause “even greater inflationary trends in the US economy.” The ex-Pentagon analyst warned that the US’ ability to continue pumping Ukraine with money “is going to diminish greatly and it’s not going to be in the too distant future.” “The Biden administration is just totally oblivious and doesn’t have a response to all of this. They’re just acting now and doing what they can, knowing that perhaps their own time is limited unless they can fix the election again and retain power. But then what do they have to offer? Nothing.

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“..it can be argued that the Ukrainian crisis really does draw a line under colonialism in the broad sense.”

• ‘World Majority’ Sees Ukraine Conflict As Declining NATO Power (Lukyanov )

The Ukrainian crisis has several practical implications for the majority of the world.

Firstly, a power has emerged that openly and unreservedly challenges the West, and the West has been unable to do anything about it, despite considerable efforts. This allows the non-Western world to act more and more independently – right in front of our eyes.

The second is that when the states of the Global North start to conflict with each other, they still don’t care about how it affects the Global South.

Third, the policy of distancing in general but engaging on specific issues can pay dividends, but we just have to use it skillfully.

Fourth, fruitful relations are possible and necessary without grandees who insist on their indispensability, but often do not solve the problems of countries and regions, but instead drive them into a dead end in pursuit of their own interests.

These are all factors that will help shape a new international framework. It has not yet emerged. But when the current conflict comes to an end, whatever the concrete outcome for the immediate participants, it will be the majority countries of the world that will have strengthened their positions the most.

Not only China, which is often talked about as the real winner of the confrontation between Russia and the West (such a conclusion follows only from linear logic), but also a number of countries that previously played a subordinate role and are now emancipating themselves and coming out of this straitjacket.

We dare to believe that world politics could become more rational, because pragmatic interests would then be voiced openly and in a businesslike manner, and not under the Kool-Aid of various messianisms, which have been popular in the Global North for centuries. And in this sense, it can be argued that the Ukrainian crisis really does draw a line under colonialism in the broad sense.

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Most Russians don’t think “Russian and eastern cultures are very close”. But that’s still where they want to go.

• Majority Of Russians Support Turning Away From West (RT)

A vast majority of Russians are supportive of Moscow’s policy that prioritizes the development of ties with the countries of the global East rather than the West, a new survey by the state-owned Russian Public Opinion Research Center (WCIOM) shows. The findings of the survey, carried out in collaboration with the Kommersant daily, were published on Wednesday. The polling itself was conducted in late August, sampling the opinions of 1,600 randomly selected Russian nationals. Some 67% of the respondents approved the “turn to the East” policy, with only 11% weighing in against it. A further 15% remain indifferent to the ongoing major shift in Russian foreign policy, with the rest of respondents failing to provide any opinion on this matter, the poll results show.

Around 65% of those who were supportive or indifferent to the “turn to the East” believe that the best way to achieve it was through the development of trade and economic ties, major investment projects, the creation of joint enterprises, and so on. Tourism and scientific cooperation are also deemed to be important approaches to achieve the goal, with 36% and 32% of respondents, respectively, backing such activities. At the same time, only a fraction of those polled believe that Russian and eastern cultures are very close. Some 23% said they differed drastically, while a majority took a more balanced position, stating that the cultures have both common and differing features.

In recent years, Russia has been gradually developing ties with the countries of the global east and south. The process was greatly accelerated amid the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev, backed by the collective West and multiple waves of economic sanctions against Russia. The restrictions accelerated Russian efforts to even further reorient from Western markets to the East. As of the end of 2022, according to data from Chinese customs, Russia had become the top European country in terms of exports to China, fourth in terms of imports, and second in trade turnover. The country has also recently become the top exporter of oil to both China and India.

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When Mitch McConnell does one of his freeze routines, it’s not because he goes wobbly; he just quotes Thatcher on going wobbly. Did I get that about right?

• Mitch McConnell Warns US Not To ‘Go Wobbly’ On Ukraine (RT)

The US Congress should approve an additional $20 billion in funding for Ukraine, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Wednesday. The Republican senator from Kentucky argued that the aid provided by Washington to Kiev has been weakening Moscow “without firing a shot.” In a speech on the Senate floor, McConnell claimed that President Joe Biden “has not been as decisive as many of us have preferred” when it comes to funding Ukraine’s war effort, but that this was not a reason for Congress to “compound the administration’s failures with failures of our own.” “Helping Ukraine retake its territory means weakening one of America’s biggest strategic adversaries without firing a shot,” the senator argued.

With Kiev “eroding Russia’s capacity to threaten NATO,” McConnell claimed, “it is not the time to ease up,” and with NATO unified and European countries starting to spend money on their militaries, “it is certainly not the time to go wobbly.” That particular line was made famous in 1990 by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who used it to urge US President George H.W. Bush to launch a war against Iraq over Kuwait. McConnell also suggested that Congress would pass the supplemental government funding bill before the end of the month, which is intended to avoid a government shutdown before the new fiscal year starts in October.

The proposed spending bill has bundled $20.1 billion for Ukraine with disaster relief for fire-stricken Hawaii, despite objections from some Republicans who wanted to vote on the packages separately. The US Congress has approved over $130 billion in funds for Ukraine since February 2022. America’s aid to Kiev has included weapons, equipment and ammunition, as well as cash remittances to pay the salaries of government officials. When some Republicans tried to curtail the spending spree last December, McConnell insisted that aiding Ukraine was the “number one priority of the US,” and helped the Democrats to pass the 4,155-page omnibus spending bill.

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“It’s the gangster who thought he was the capo dei capi, boss of bosses; and was brought down to earth because he wasn’t.”

• Prigozhin’s Three Strikes – Khodorkovsky, Berezovsky, Last Africa Trip (Helmer)

On March 5, in Bangui, Central African Republic (CAR), there was a fire-bombing of a French–owned brewery which destroyed 50,000 bottles of beer. On August 23, a private jet of the Wagner Group was bombed in the air north of Moscow, and the Wagner leaders, Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin, were killed, along with five of their associates and three flight crew. The connection between the two incidents is that Prigozhin’s methods of doing business in Africa cost him his life in Russia. The African business, not the mutiny at Rostov on June 23-24, is the fatal link. It was the last straw. This is not a case of a soldier who lived by the sword and died by the sword. It’s the gangster who thought he was the capo dei capi, boss of bosses; and was brought down to earth because he wasn’t.

To ignore the warnings that he had reached his multi-billion dollar operating limit, that he should stop muscling in on the competition, retire and keep his money — these are well-known rules of American business, not to say mafia rules. But Prigozhin followed Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Boris Berezovsky in thinking Russian business is different. They thought there was no limit to their power to get what they wanted. There are two competing Russian press compilations of what exactly happened on August 23, and what the evidence reveals of who arranged the killing and how the operation was carried out. These are Konstantin Malofeyev’s Tsargrad on the national patriotic side, and Meduza, the anti-Putin opposition publication now based in Riga. The Anglo-American accounts in the mainstream press and the alt-media blogs, including Andrew Napolitano’s group of US military and CIA retirees, Douglas Macgregor, Tony Shaffer, Larry Johnson and Scott Ritter, do not come close to the Russian interpretation of the case.

In Tsargrad’s reconstruction of the flight of Prigozhin’s aircraft and of the doppelganger or decoy aircraft which flew ahead by 40 minutes, and then returned to Moscow 35 minutes after the crash, the cause was one or two bombs detonated on board Prigozhin’s flight. The destruction occurred so suddenly that the pilots had no warning and no time to signal air traffic control. The subsequent recovery and decoding of the aircraft black boxes, and the civilian and military radar track records appear to have confirmed this also, although there have been no official releases of this information, and no unofficial leaks. A report by FlightAware suggests that although the two flights appear to have followed the same flight path, tracking their precise locations is impossible “likely due to … interference (or) jamming in the area.”

Reuters reports that position locations were calculated from signals sent to multiple receivers in the area. In the Tsargrad report, the sources include former Russian civil aviation, military and intelligence veterans. They concur the assassination was the settling of “old scores”. They differ on whether these were domestic in origin, or Ukrainian, British or other foreign sources. They also agree that President Vladimir Putin did not order the killing and probably did not know in advance. “Putin forgave him; there are other enemies who did not”, Lieutenant General Leonid Reshetnikov, a veteran of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), told Tsargrad: “No special service of our country will ever go into an operation that leaves a ‘hint’ of the involvement of its leadership.

Of course, [if there was the operational order], another place would have been found — Africa is a big place and the circumstances more opportune there; for example, the crocodiles don’t have enough high-quality meat to eat. And so, there might be a terrorist attack with a subtext pointing away from those most likely to have done it.” A Moscow source believes that before the event Putin did not act and did not know. After the event he did not disapprove.

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Keep your false flags away from us!

• Bucharest Denies Ukrainian Claim That Russian Drone Hit Romania (Antiwar)

NATO member Romania has strongly denied a Ukrainian claim that a Russian drone detonated in Romanian territory during an overnight bombardment on one of Ukraine’s ports on the Danube River. Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko made the claim on Facebook. He said that according to Ukraine’s state border service, a Russian drone “fell and detonated on the territory of Romania” during an attack on the Ukrainian port of Izmail. “This is yet another confirmation that Russia’s missile terror poses a huge threat not only to Ukraine’s security, but also to the security of neighboring countries, including NATO member states,” Nikolenko said. Romania’s Defense Ministry quickly refuted the claim. “The Ministry of National Defense categorically denies information from the public space regarding a so-called situation that occurred during the night of September 3 to 4 in which Russian drones allegedly fell on the national territory of Romania,” it said.

The Romanian Defense Ministry added that “at no time did the means of attack used by the Russian Federation generate direct military threats to the national territory or the territorial waters of Romania.” Russian attacks in the region risk an escalation as the Danube River acts as a border between Ukraine and Romania. The Ukrainian port of Izmail that was targeted is just across the river from NATO territory. Ukrainian officials have previously made unfounded claims about Russian munitions hitting NATO territory. Last year, when a Ukrainian air defense missile hit Poland and killed two people, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy and his top aides claimed it was a Russian missile in an effort to get NATO to intervene directly.

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Powerful duo. And members of BRICS.

• Putin, MbS Note Cut in Oil Production Will Stabilize Market (Sp.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman noted that reduction in the oil production will stabilize the global market during a phone conversation on Wednesday, the Kremlin said. “A high assessment was given to the interaction of the two countries in the OPEC+ format. It was noted that the agreements reached on reducing oil production, combined with voluntary commitments to limit the supply of raw materials, make it possible to ensure the stability of the global energy market,” the Kremlin said in a statement. The sides also expressed satisfaction over development of relations between the countries and discussed a number of issues related to trade, logistics and investment. Moreover, the crown prince thanked the Russian side for supporting Riyadh’s bid to join the BRICS group.

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I’ve never understood the attraction of cruise ships.

• Eyesore Of The Month September 2023 (Jim Kunstler)

Behold, Royal Caribbean International’s new ship, Icon of the Seas. Well, okay, but icon of what, exactly, of the seas? Of the wretched excess that the cruise industry is sending forth to sail the oceans blue? I remind you: societies build their most extravagant monuments just before they collapse. This looks like the perfect vehicle for partying at the end-of-the-world (that is, the world as we know it). This monstrosity is so huge — equivalent of a 20-story building — that the promoters say it has “neighborhoods.” Below is the Royal Bay Pool in the new “Chill Island neighborhood.” Very posh, indeed. Excludes all the waddling, land-whales of the lower decks with their slushies and burritos in-hand.

Below: the ship’s Thrill Island Waterslide neighborhood, looking a little bit like the gastro-intestinal system of someone who subjected themselves to six days of round-the-clock, all-you-can-eat buffets.

This beast sets sail in January of 2024. Ask yourself: what sort of economy supports a venture like this? And what if it isn’t there anymore when this thing is ready to launch?

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They don’t want him campaigning.

Tom Fitton: “Fact check: Trump didn’t engage in insurrection/rebellion and, even if he did, the key 14th Amendment clause doesn’t apply to the president.”

• Donald Trump’s Georgia Trial Expected To Take Four Months, 150 Witnesses (BBC)

Prosecutors in Donald Trump’s Georgia racketeering case say that the trial would take four months and include approximately 150 witnesses. Mr Trump and 18 others are charged with a conspiracy to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results. A date for the trial has not yet been set, although prosecutors hope to begin on 23 October. The former president and his co-defendants have all denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty. In court on Wednesday, state prosecutor Nathan Wade said that the expected timeline does not account for jury selection, which could potentially add months to the process. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee said he hopes to decide questions regarding the trial’s schedule by “either the end of this week or early next week”. All 19 co-defendants in the case have pleaded not guilty and waived their right to in-person arraignments, which were due to take place on Wednesday.

During Wednesday’s court session, Judge McAfee also heard arguments on whether some of the defendants could sever their cases from the wider racketeering, or Rico, case. Attorneys for Kenneth Chesebro sought to sever the counts against him, as did attorneys for Sidney Powell, a former Trump lawyer, who has also asked for a speedy trial – a constitutional right in the US. Both will now go on trial together on 23 October after Judge McAfee denied a motion to sever their cases from one another. In court, he said that he does not believe that “the severance for Mr Cheseboro or Ms Powell is necessary to achieve a fair determination of the guilt or innocence for either defendant in this case”. He added that two separate trials would “inconvenience” jurors and complicate scheduling. In total, six of the defendants in the case have sought to sever their cases, including Mr Trump and ex-Georgia Republican chair David Shafer.

Other defendants are seeking to have their cases moved to federal court. A federal judge has yet to decide on the issue, known by the legal term of “removal”. Mr Chesebro and Ms Powell’s trial is slated to begin on 23 October – the same date being sought by district attorney Fani Willis for the other 17 defendants. Judge McAfee, however, said it seemed “a bit unrealistic” to try all the defendants together in October, noting that “we’ve got less than two months to figure this out”. In court, Mr Chesebro’s attorney Manubir Arora argued that the far-reaching racketeering case would mean that his client would have to be in court for “weeks, if not months” of testimony unrelated to the specific charges against him.

Additionally, Mr Arora said that Ms Powell – who famously vowed to “release the Kraken” after Mr Trump’s electoral defeat – was “sort of on a lark on her own” and not connected to Mr Chesebro. Speaking to CNN after the court hearing, Mr Chesebro’s second attorney, Scott Grubman, accused the government of “weaponising” the Rico statute to “connect three or four conspiracies into one”. Prosecutors allege that Mr Trump and his co-defendants were involved in a multi-pronged effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state, culminating with a phone call in which Mr Trump pressured the state’s secretary of state to “recalculate” the vote tally.

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X thread.

• Debunking The Lies In ADL’s Response To Elon (Nawfal)

ADL’s CEO broke his silence on X and Elon by lying and trapping the host: 1) He claimed that Elon brought and amplified anti-semitism and hate speech back to the platform. This is NOT TRUE. The X Safety team shared that an independent assessment by Sprinklr found that hate speech impressions on X to be 0.003% compared to Twitter’s estimate of 0.012%. 2) Greenblatt clarified that he has never claimed Elon or X are anti-Semitic: “I don’ t think Twitter as a platform is anti-Semitic”. 3) When Greenblatt was asked by the host (who also identified as Jewish) if he was seeking a position or donation from X to the ADL, he took offense to this, called it an anti-semetic trope, almost as if he was trying to cancel him, leaving the host uncomfortable and defensive.

4) Greenblatt claimed ADL is NOT publicly or privately talking to advertisers, BUT shortly after, said, “It is true we did call for a pause back in November, after the acquisition and since then” and in a previous interview he stated “if it remains a hellscape the advertisers won’t take part in [Twitter]” 5) Greenblatt said the ADL is a SMALL non-profit in NY. NOT TRUE. The ADL is an influential organization with over 100 years of history, and according to the ADL’s 2021 tax filings, the organization’s total revenue was $101 million with a balance sheet of $238 million. They ALSO received millions of dollars of indirect government funding via grants to groups in which the ADL has special interests.

6) Greenblatt says the ADL works WITH other social media platforms, including Facebook. We saw in the Politico article that @elonmusk posted that the ADL indirectly CONTROLS what can be posted on Facebook. 7) Greenblatt claimed he doesn’t know what prompted Elon’s tweets, but Elon was clear it was prompted by the 60% drop in advertising from the ADL’s interference, which Greenblatt admitted in the video. Doesn’t seem like the meeting with X CEO Linda Yaccarino went as well as Greenblatt is making it out to be.

Greenblatt

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Remember, “We saw in the Politico article that @elonmusk posted that the ADL indirectly CONTROLS what can be posted on Facebook.”

Well, so does the White House.

• Facebook Files: White House Lies About ‘Disinformation Dozen’ (ZH)

A UK-based, government-linked dark money nonprofit operated by a far-left British Labour Party operative fabricated statistics about the so-called ‘disinformation dozen’ – people with large social media footprints that expressed vaccine or lockdown skepticism, according to the latest Facebook Files released on Tuesday by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) run by a man named Imran Ahmed claimed that Robert Kennedy Jr. and 11 other people were responsible for 65% of “anti-vaccine content circulating on social media.” That claim itself was disinformation, according to Jordan – who notes that Facebook employees were highly skeptical of the CCDH’s claims, which they said were just Americans expressing “vaccine hesitancy,” which is often “not misinfo” even under Facebook’s policies.

What’s more, the Biden White House repeatedly peddled the 65% lie as Facebook employees were preparing to draft a memo to CEO Mark Zuckerberg to complain about “pressure from … the White House” to remove the so-called Disinfo Dozen, even though they did “not believe we currently have a clear path for removal.” According to the internal emails, Facebook continued to monitor the so-called disinformation dozen to justify censorship, only to find that the “majority” of them weren’t spreading misinformation. The Biden White house kept pushing for censorship despite Facebook’s clear policy against cross-platform punishments except in rare cases. The White House also wanted Facebook to remove all URL links to off-platform websites which would ”

The White House then pressured Facebook’s President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg, to censor the ‘disinformation dozen’ even more – which led to frustration among Facebook staff, who said that Biden himself helped ensure that the CCDH’s influence had “unrelenting staying power.” Longtime readers may also recall that the CCDH laundered lies about ZeroHedge through a trust-fund NBC News ‘journalist’ who immediately came under fire for peddling obvious propaganda against a competing outlet, and subsequently left to work for Al Jazeera (and now she’s gone from there too).

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The French Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti is Assange’s former lawyer, and still says no. What’s going on?

• French Court Turns Down Political Asylum Request For Assange (RT)

A court in France’s Creteil commune turned down a request to grant political asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the AFP news agency reported citing a court document, Report informs referring to TASS. The agency quoted the document as saying that “the fact that he [Assange] is being kept in custody” should not be viewed as a reason for an exception to the rule stating that “the applicant must be present on the territory of the country or the European Union” in order to apply for political asylum in France. The request was filed by members of the Robin des Lois association, who sought to challenge in court several regulations related to rules of entry, residence and political asylum for foreigners.

According to the organization, some provisions from French laws contradict the preamble to the country’s constitution, as well as several international conventions. Legal representatives of the French government were not present in the court. The association has no plans to appeal the ruling, but publicly urges French Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti – who is Assange’s former lawyer – to “at last take the matter into his own hands.” Assange was taken into custody after leaving the premises of Ecuador’s embassy in London in April 2019, and has since been held at the Belmarsh maximum security prison in London. Washington has been seeking his extradition for more than four years, but Assange’s defense team has so far managed to successfully fend off their moves in court.

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“This deadly variant has bypassed our most sophisticated tests by ingeniously becoming harmless to the human body..”

“Pfizer had announced early development of a new, 103% effective vaccine, followed 3.8 seconds later by approval from the FDA.”

• CDC Warns Of New ‘Stealth’ COVID Variant: Test Negative, No Symptoms (BBee)

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky held a press conference to warn the public about a deadly new “stealth” COVID-19 variant that causes negative test results and causes no symptoms. “This deadly variant has bypassed our most sophisticated tests by ingeniously becoming harmless to the human body,” said Director Walensky, “It is estimated that eight billion people have caught this variant. We must prevent it from spreading further by closing schools and locking up kindergarten children.”

The CDC director’s guidance to close schools and stem the tide of this “stealth” variant is backed by data that has been thoroughly and rigorously altered, proving that public school teachers are the most susceptible, testing negative a whopping 100% of the time and often succumbing to the worst symptom-free symptoms. At publishing time, Pfizer had announced early development of a new, 103% effective vaccine, followed 3.8 seconds later by approval from the FDA.

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Jump

 

 

Age gap

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle June 29 2023

Jun 292023
 
 June 29, 2023  Posted by at 9:06 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  58 Responses »


Gustav Klimt Lady with a fan 1917-18 (sold for $108.4m June 27 2023)

 

• Standoff Between Russia And West Is ‘War Of Worlds’ – Lavrov (RT)
• What Happens In Russia After The Longest Day? (Pepe Escobar)
• US Hawks Lose Momentum Amid Faltering Ukrainian Counteroffensive (Sp.)
• West’s Foolish Regime Change Policy Only Drives Russia and China Closer (Sp.)
• Russia Can’t Give Up Goals Of Special Military Operation – Lavrov (TASS)
• Russia Asks States To Boycott Zelensky’s ‘Peace Forum’ (RT)
• Will US Use New Pretext to Prolong Proxy War in Ukraine? (Sp.)
• Europe Must Break Out Of Its War Psychosis – Hungary (RT)
• Russian General Arrested Following Wagner Mutiny (MT)
• RFK Jr: Bill Gates, WEF Use Climate Narrative For Totalitarian Controls (JTN)
• Pfizer Vaccine Batches in the EU Were Placebos, Say Scientists (DS)
• Comer: Overseas Payments To Biden Family Could Exceed $40M (NYP)
• New Source in Hunter Biden Probe Points Finger at AG Garland (Sp.)
• Pressure Grows On Judge To Reject Hunter Biden Plea Deal (JTN)
• Kamala Harris Worst VP in Polling History – NBC (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

Milley
https://twitter.com/i/status/1673729065243623432

 

 

Biden: Putin “is clearly losing the war in Iraq.”

 

 

Habba

 

 

 

 

Putin

 

 

Wallace

 

 

“Ukr sources report that the entry of PMC Wagner into Belarus is directed against the plans of Ukraine/Poland/Lithuania to deploy a corps on the borders of Western Ukraine. British intelligence warned Zelensky’s Office that a new military unit of 30-40 thousand people will be formed in Belarus, the main task of which will be a new campaign against Kyiv at the time of difficulties of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the southern front. The equipment for these units has long been in Belarus, it was filled up during 2022-2023.”

 

 

 

 

“When it comes to our former Western partners, though, we cannot rely on any agreements with them, including those of a legally binding nature..”

• Standoff Between Russia And West Is ‘War Of Worlds’ – Lavrov (RT)

Washington and its allies will never allow any nation to pursue a sovereign policy based on national interests if it conflicts with their own plans, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday. The ongoing standoff between Russia and the Western nations is a “war of worlds” involving incompatible approaches to international politics, he added. “Should any other nation try and defend its national interests just as staunchly and decisively, the West would turn against it as well,” the minister told the Great Game show aired on Russia’s Channel 1. The US and its allies still treat the “threat” posed by Russia to their plans as a “tactical” one but believe that Moscow’s victory would make this threat “unacceptable.” Western nations claim to defend a supposed “rules-based order,” the Russian minister said, adding that such an order is nothing but a dictate by Washington and its allies.

“It is when they [the West] decide on which globalization system applies to the world, what are its mechanisms… how trade disputes are resolved,” Lavrov said. The top Russian diplomat also said Washington and its allies had easily exploited principles they had previously declared to be inviolable. “The West has trampled on all its principles in an instant… free trade, fair competition, presumption of innocence… were all turned into weapons when they [the West] needed to punish the Russian Federation,” he said. “When it comes to our former Western partners, though, we cannot rely on any agreements with them, including those of a legally binding nature,” Lavrov maintained. The US and its allies have repeatedly bent the rules of the “order” they were supposedly defending and neglected their commitments under agreements struck with Moscow, the minister stated.

Washington and many Western nations recognized Kosovo’s independence without any referendums on the basis of a unilateral declaration by Pristina, Lavrov said, adding that the same countries dismissed the results of the referendum in Crimea, arguing that the principle of the territorial integrity of Ukraine supposedly takes precedence in this particular case. In February 2014, when the Ukrainian opposition broke their obligations under a deal struck with then-president Viktor Yanukovich, none of the Western guarantors of the agreement “lifted a finger,” Lavrov said, adding that the list of guarantors included France, Germany and Poland at that time. Now, the West is trying to pin all the blame on Russia, accusing it of “unprovoked aggression,” the minister said, describing this as nothing but an attempt to shift the responsibility from Washington and its allies.

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“The rebellion” turned out to be a Western P.R. stunt, a series of (ultimately faded) pictures for global consumption.”

• What Happens In Russia After The Longest Day? (Pepe Escobar)

The first draft of the extraordinary events that took place in Russia on The Longest Day – Saturday, June 24 – leads us to a whole new can of worms. The Global Majority badly wants to know what happens next. Let’s examine the key pieces in the chessboard. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is cutting to the chase: he has reminded everyone that the Hegemon’s modus operandi is to back coup attempts whenever it can benefit. This dovetails with the fact that the FSB is actively investigating whether and how Western intel was involved in The Longest Day. President Putin could not have been more unequivocal: “They [the West and Ukraine] wanted Russian soldiers to kill each other, so that soldiers and civilians would die, so that in the end Russia would lose, and our society would break apart and choke on bloody civil strife (…) They rubbed their hands, dreaming of getting revenge for their failures at the front and during the so-called counter-offensive, but they miscalculated.”

Cue to the collective West – from Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on down – frantically trying to distance itself even as the CIA leaked, via its trademark mouthpiece, the Washington Post, that they knew about “the rebellion.” The agenda was painfully obvious: Kiev losing on all fronts would be ritually buried by wall-to-wall coverage of the fake Russian “civil war.” There’s no smoking gun – yet. But the FSB is following several leads to demonstrate how the “the rebellion” was set up by CIA/NATO. The spectacular failure makes the upcoming NATO July 11 summit in Vilnius even more incandescent. The Chinese, much like Lavrov, also cut to the chase: the Global Times asserted that the idea of “Wagner’s revolt weakening Putin’s authority is wishful thinking of the West,” with the Kremlin’s “strong capacity of deterrence” further increasing its authority. That’s exactly the reading of the Russian street.

The Chinese reached their conclusion after a crucial visit by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Rudenko, who promptly flew to Beijing on Sunday, June 25. This is how the iron-clad strategic partnership works in practice. Arguably the best explanation so far of the nuts and bolts of The Longest Day has been offered by Rostislav Ischenko. The Global Majority will rejoice that Prighozin’s theatrics, in the end, left the collective West dazed, confused, and shattered: wasn’t the whole thing supposed to unleash total chaos inside Russian society and the army? Even as the fake, lightning-quick “mutiny” was in progress, Russia continued to pound Kiev’s forces – which, by the way, were spinning that the main phase of the “counter-offensive” was being launched exactly on June 24 at night. That was, predictably, yet another bluff.

Back to the Russian street. “The rebellion” – inbuilt in a very convoluted plot – in the end was widely interpreted as just another military demonstration (by master of ceremonies Prighozin, not by the overwhelming majority of Wagner soldiers). “The rebellion” turned out to be a Western P.R. stunt, a series of (ultimately faded) pictures for global consumption.

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“..it will be difficult for the Biden administration to justify increased military aid packages to Ukraine without some success story to tell the American people..”

• US Hawks Lose Momentum Amid Faltering Ukrainian Counteroffensive (Sp.)

Ukraine has failed to demonstrate much progress in its counteroffensive so far, putting the brakes on those US lawmakers who agree that new funding should depend on such. “I agree with most observers that it will be difficult for the Biden administration to justify increased military aid packages to Ukraine without some success story to tell the American people,” retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former analyst for the US Department of Defense, told Sputnik. “At this point, the Ukraine project is easily portrayed as a waste of time and money, and is something that NATO countries may not be able to support without continued massive US domination in the provision of aid and cash,” she said.

Currently, US military assistance comes to Ukraine via two main routes: first, direct supplies from the Pentagon stockpiles under the Presidential Drawdown Authority; second, the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) – a Pentagon-led funding program to increase Kiev’s military prowess. However, “there’s no additional money in the base budget,” as per defense officials as quoted by the US media. As per the Pentagon, the US has invested $41.2 billion in security assistance to Kiev since January 2021 which includes more than $40.5 billion since the beginning of Russia’s special military operation to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine. For its part, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy estimates that since the start of the Ukraine conflict, the Biden administration has directed over $76 billion in humanitarian, financial and military assistance to Ukraine.

Around $47 billion of that has been allocated to Kiev’s military needs, including $18.5 billion (through USAID); $23.5 billion (through the presidential drawdown authority); and $4.7 billion (through the Foreign Military Financing program). The generous military packages for Ukraine included: numerous infantry arms and equipment; artillery (hundreds of howitzers, 38 HIMARS systems, in particular); tanks and armored carriers (109 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, 31 Abrams tanks, 45 T-72B tanks, 90 Stryker carries, etc.); ground support vehicles; air defenses (one Patriot air defense battery, 12 Avenger air defense systems, 8 NASAMs, and 1,600 Stingers, in particular); air-to-ground missiles; manned aircraft (20 Mi-17 helicopters); explosive and surveillance drones; coastal defenses (including two Harpoon defense systems and 62 coastal and riverine patrol boats); radars and communications; as well as satellite services, as per Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) chart.

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“..a stable and successful Russia is important for China because without Russia on its side, the Western powers would be able to totally isolate China.”

• West’s Foolish Regime Change Policy Only Drives Russia and China Closer (Sp.)

In the wake of the aborted mutiny by Wagner PMC chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, China has voiced its support for the Russian Federation and Moscow’s efforts to stabilize the situation. “As Russia’s friendly neighbor and comprehensive strategic partner of coordination for the new era, China supports Russia in maintaining national stability and achieving development and prosperity,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in a Sunday statement. Thomas W. Pauken II, a Beijing-based geopolitical consultant with expertise in crisis management, told Sputnik that China has “an understanding that for their very own survival, they need Russia to succeed.”

“China supports a strong and stable Russia for many important reasons, obviously, because Russia is north of China and Russia and China are both facing pressure from the Western powers in regards to sanctions, while the US and other European countries are increasing their pressure on China,” he explained. “So because of this pressure, basically, China needs to rely more on its real partners, including Russia, because they can work together to strengthen both sides. If Russia and China split apart, that will not only create hardships for Russia, but will also create hardships for China.” Pauken explained that a stable and successful Russia is important for China because without Russia on its side, the Western powers would be able to totally isolate China.

“Political stability in Russia is important to China for a key reason: China has become a major manufacturer in the world. It is a major exporter to the world. But currently, there are many Western powers who are trying to contain China and contain China’s rise. Therefore, the Western powers are pushing and pressuring China to move against Russia. But China does not support this because they realize that if the Western powers are successful at knocking out Russia, then they will simply move on to China and attack China. So China does itself no favors by turning against Russia or by supporting instability in Russia. Obviously, they would want to see Russia succeed and for Putin to succeed, and for the mutiny that was led by Prigozhin to fail. It’s very logical for them. And it makes common sense,” he said.

On Sunday, after the situation had been defused, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko flew to Beijing to meet with Chinese leaders and reaffirm their close partnership and political trust. Pauken said it was “very significant” and sent a message to the Western powers that the Prigozhin affair had not created any “friction or tensions” between the two states. The official underscored that the recent meet between Chinese and Russian figures proved a “very important event because it shows their close relationships, and that they are not going to be driven or come apart over recent events, and the West is going to be unable to drive them apart.” “Instead, what’s really going on is that China and Russia are drawing closer together and we will see their relations get even stronger in the months to come,” he added.

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“..the destruction of all things Russian in Ukraine continues to be their stated goal.”

• Russia Can’t Give Up Goals Of Special Military Operation – Lavrov (TASS)

Russia can’t give up the goals of its special military operation in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. The minister said Russian President Vladimir Putin “in the past few days has spoken at length to give an assessment of the current situation, especially stressing that, as we overcame the attempted mutiny, we haven’t made the slightest concessions with respect to the goals of the special military operation and haven’t lost any positions on the battlefield. <…> It’s impossible to give them up – the goals that have been set,” Lavrov said on Channel One. The minister said that Russia cannot change its approaches to the conduct of the special operation as long as the West is purposefully creating threats to Russia’s security, funneling lethal weapons into Ukraine, and as long as “the destruction of all things Russian in Ukraine continues to be their stated goal.”

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..a “document that combines all the nonsense their propaganda has promoted in one place.”

• Russia Asks States To Boycott Zelensky’s ‘Peace Forum’ (RT)

Countries of the Global South should not dignify with their presence the so-called peace summit the West wants to hold without Russia, the country’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday. During the regular briefing at the ministry, Zakharova pointed out the “wild logic” of holding a peace summit without Moscow, calling it an attempt to “ritually discuss” the Western agenda and get moral and propaganda support from the rest of the world. “We call on responsible states, those that truly strive for peace and express the desire and readiness to play a constructive role in finding a political and diplomatic solution to the conflict, not to participate in this provocative scheme,” Zakharova told reporters.

“The West needs you at the ‘summit’ only to create the impression its policy has widespread support. This very thing will make the prospects for peace that much more distant.” The Russian diplomat pointed out that the West is trying to push the so-called peace formula of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky as the only path to resolving the conflict. However, Moscow has repeatedly pointed out that the ‘formula’ has nothing to do with peace, but is a propagandistic set of demands based on absolutely false pretenses. Zakharova reminded reporters that Zelensky’s formula envisions Russia withdrawing from its own territory – including Donbass, Kherson, Zaporozhye and Crimea – paying reparations to Ukraine and submitting to ‘war crimes tribunals,’ among other things. She described it as a “document that combines all the nonsense their propaganda has promoted in one place.”

She compared the ‘peace summit’ with the countless round tables the US has organized over the years regarding the conflict in Syria, none of which produced any results whatsoever. To make peace, one must end the bloodshed and stop the supply of weapons, the diplomat noted, but the US and its allies continue to fuel both.“Attempts to determine the outcome of the Ukraine conflict without Russian participation are doomed to failure. Otherwise this would have been done long ago,”Zakharova pointed out. She also pointed out that Kiev has a history of reneging on its international obligations, mentioning specifically the Minsk Agreements concerning Donbass, which were even endorsed by the UN Security Council. “One can’t believe a word they say,”Zakharova said.

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“Ukraine still remains nothing short of being a “testing grounds” for the US military-industrial complex and justifies huge future investments in the militarization of Europe..”

• Will US Use New Pretext to Prolong Proxy War in Ukraine? (Sp.)

The Biden administration needs a new pretext to enhance support to Kiev. Even though there is some bipartisan consensus in the US Congress on the “necessity” to back Kiev, there is opposition from the right-wing Freedom Caucus to further spending. US national polls also show that the US public is steadily losing appetite for prolonging the conflict. Two Republican presidential front-runners – Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis – as well as Democratic candidate Robert Kennedy, Jr., who commands the support of at least 15-20% of Democratic voters, openly express their opposition to Biden’s adventurism in Ukraine. Previously, Washington substantially stepped up military spending on Ukraine in the wake of the Bucha events groundlessly pinned on Moscow, as well as the derailment of the Russo-Ukrainian preliminary peace agreement of March 2022.

The Russian forces’ partial retreat in autumn 2022 also provided Team Biden with an opportunity to renew calls for further arming of Kiev under the pretext of Ukraine’s “imminent” victory. As Ukraine’s much-anticipated counteroffensive largely stalled in summer 2023, it appears that the Democrats are trying to capitalize on the Wagner mutiny of June 23-24 even though its quick settlement has seemingly caught Team Biden off guard, according to Paul E. Vallely, retired US Army major general and chairman of Stand Up America US Foundation. The US mainstream press expressed hopes that Kiev would be able to benefit from Russia’s “unrest”. However, despite Wagner’s mutiny, the Russian army has managed to keep the situation on the frontlines stable, repelling several Ukrainian attacks over the weekend.

“I don’t think Ukraine was going to be successful in the counter offensive anyhow,” Vallely said. “So I think the Wagner group, what they tried to do, probably surprised Ukraine as well. But I don’t think Ukraine was in a position to do anything to take advantage of it.” For her part, Karen Kwiatkowski noted that Washington was apparently hoping that “the Ukrainian forces would achieve at least one breakthrough along the lines of control, something to justify the massive Biden investment in Ukraine’s political leadership.” “Hope, as they say, is not a strategy, and I do believe that the Biden Security Council is and has been preparing plans for the post-combat phase, with talk of an Israel-like ‘outpost’, of a ‘green’ rebuild of western Ukraine, and a NATO practice arena over the long term.

Plans for hundreds of billions of US taxpayer money administered by Blackrock in the rump state of Ukraine have been in place for over six months at this point,” she continued. Nonetheless, despite the much-advertised counteroffensive having failed so far, what’s left of Ukraine serves NATO’s mission needs for the foreseeable future, Kwiatkowski noted. Ukraine still remains nothing short of being a “testing grounds” for the US military-industrial complex and justifies huge future investments in the militarization of Europe, according to the ex-Pentagon analyst. “I think we’re going to see a crescendo or some kind of, I don’t know whether they’re going to cease operations, but we think at the end of July, August, there’s going to be a new phase in this conflict,” Vallely said.

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“Ukraine is no longer a sovereign country. They don’t have any money. They have no weapons. They can only fight because we in the West support them.”

• Europe Must Break Out Of Its War Psychosis – Hungary (RT)

Europe is moving closer to “catastrophe in every sense,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto declared on Monday, before extending Budapest’s veto on EU arms transfers to Ukraine. “Europe is moving closer to a catastrophe – in every sense, unfortunately,” Szijjarto wrote on Facebook before meeting with EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg on Monday. “Now even bigger trouble could be prevented and many thousands of lives could be saved,” he continued, “but to do this one would have to break out of the war psychosis.” “I have no illusions that this will happen at the meeting of the EU Foreign Ministers in Luxembourg today,” he concluded. Szijjarto’s prediction played out on Monday. After an address by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, the bloc’s top diplomats voted to increase their joint weapons fund for Ukraine by an additional €3.5 billion ($3.85 billion).

Known as the ‘European Peace Facility’ (EPF), the fund is a €5.6 billion ($6.08 billion) purse that the bloc uses to finance foreign militaries and reimburse its own members who send arms to foreign conflicts. Before the conflict in Ukraine, the ‘Peace Facility’ had only been used to supply non-lethal equipment to Georgia, Mali, Moldova, Mozambique, and Ukraine, for a total of less than $125 million. While the EPF’s ceiling will be increased, Szijjarto confirmed on Monday that Hungary will maintain its veto on the latest €500 million ($546 million) tranche of arms from the fund for another month. Budapest is currently blocking the transfer of EU weapons to Ukraine due to Kiev’s blacklisting of Hungarian companies doing business in Russia.

Szijjarto and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban have both repeatedly called for a ceasefire and peace deal in Ukraine, while insisting that anti-Russia sanctions hurt Europe more than they hurt Russia. In an interview with German tabloid Bild on Tuesday, Orban stated that the idea of a Ukrainian victory on the battlefield is “impossible” and that without an immediate ceasefire, Ukraine will “lose a huge amount of wealth and many lives, and unimaginable destruction will occur.” “What really matters is what the Americans want to do,” Orban said, explaining that “Ukraine is no longer a sovereign country. They don’t have any money. They have no weapons. They can only fight because we in the West support them.”

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Can’t find this in the Russian press, other than this in Moscow Times.

“Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday dismissed the report as “speculation” and “gossip..”

• Russian General Arrested Following Wagner Mutiny (MT)

Russian General Sergei Surovikin has been arrested, The Moscow Times’ Russian service reported Wednesday, citing two sources close to the Defense Ministry who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The Defense Ministry has yet to comment on the alleged arrest of Surovikin, who has not been seen in public since Saturday, when Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin launched an armed rebellion against Russia’s military leadership. “The situation with him was not ‘OK.’ For the authorities. I can’t say anything more,” one of the sources said. According to the second source, the arrest was carried out “in the context of Prigozhin.” “Apparently, he [Surovikin] chose Prigozhin’s side during the uprising, and they’ve gotten him by the balls,” the source said.

When asked about the general’s current whereabouts, the source replied: “We are not even commenting on this information through our internal channels.” Earlier Wednesday, pro-war military blogger Vladimir Romanov said Surovikin was detained Sunday, the day after Prigozhin’s aborted mutiny. Romanov claimed that Surovikin is now being held in Moscow’s Lefortovo detention center. Alexei Venediktov, editor-in-chief of the shuttered Ekho Moskvy radio station, wrote on Telegram that Surovikin has not been in contact with his family for three days and that his guards are not responsive. The New York Times reported Tuesday, citing unnamed U.S. officials, that Surovikin had prior knowledge of Prigozhin’s plan to instigate a rebellion against Russia’s military leadership.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday dismissed the report as “speculation” and “gossip,” suggesting that Putin had not given in to Prigozhin’s demands for an imminent reshuffle of the Russian military’s top brass. Wagner’s uprising set off Russia’s most serious security crisis in decades before Prigozhin agreed to stand down Saturday night in exchange for immunity in exile, as part of a deal brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Surovikin commanded Russia’s forces in Ukraine for three months between October 2022 and January 2023 until he was replaced by Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.

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“..we should reward the cheapest, most efficient energy sources,” which he “generally” feels to be renewables..”

• RFK Jr: Bill Gates, WEF Use Climate Narrative For Totalitarian Controls (JTN)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2024, didn’t mince words when discussing certain “elites” like Bill Gates and leaders of the World Economic Forum (WEF), whom he accused of using the “climate narrative” to gain “top-down totalitarian controls” of societies. Kennedy made his remarks in a Tuesday “Virtual Health Policy Roundtable” on Zoom, which featured several doctors and others Kennedy described as “critics of prevailing health policy.” During the round table, Kennedy was asked how he would ease the minds of the next generation surrounding climate change, to which he responded by criticizing those he views as responsible for the climate hysteria.


“I think that the climate narrative has been hijacked by the World Economic Forum and by Bill Gates,” Kennedy said. “Crises are used by elites within societies to consolidate their power, to diminish democracy, to constrict civil rights and human rights, and to impose top-down totalitarian controls.” “I think the climate crisis is being used in that way by those people,” he added. Kennedy proceeded to offer his solution to climate issues. “My approach to climate has always been a free market approach… we should use marketplace rules rather than top-down controls, we should reward the cheapest, most efficient energy sources,” which he “generally” feels to be renewables. He then said he doesn’t try “scaring people” with CO2 emissions but has focused on “getting off of coal.”

RFK

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Not sure why this happened the way it did.

• Pfizer Vaccine Batches in the EU Were Placebos, Say Scientists (DS)

Scientists have uncovered startling evidence that a substantial portion of the batches of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine deployed in the European Union may in fact have consisted of placebos – and that the German regulator knew this and did not subject them to quality-control testing. The scientists, Dr. Gerald Dyker, Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Ruhr University Bochum, and Dr. Jörg Matysik, Professor of Analytical Chemistry at the University of Leipzig, are part of a group of five German-speaking scientists who have been publicly raising questions about the quality and safety of the BioNTech vaccine (as it is known in Germany) for the last year and a half. They recently appeared on the Punkt.Preradovic online programme of the German journalist Milena Preradovic to discuss batch variability. Their starting point was the recent Danish study showing enormous variation in the adverse events associated with different batches of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, or BNT162b2 per its scientific codename. The below figure from the Danish study illustrates this variation.

It shows that the batches used in Denmark, which are represented by the points in the graph, essentially break down into three groups. The ‘green batches’ clustered around the green line have a moderate or moderately-high level of adverse events associated with them. In the discussion with Preradovic, Gerald Dyker takes the example of the green point furthest to the right. As he explains, it represents the batch that was the used the most in Denmark, with somewhat over 800,000 doses having been administered. These 800,000 doses are associated with around 2,000 suspected adverse events, which gives a reporting rate of one suspected adverse event per approximately 400 doses. As Dyker puts it, “That’s not a small amount if we compare to what we know otherwise from influenza vaccines.” According to Dyker’s calculation, the green batches account for more than 60% of the Danish sample.

There are then the ‘blue batches’ clustered around the blue line, which are obviously associated with an extraordinarily high level of adverse events. As Dyker notes, no more than 80,000 doses of any of the blue batches were administered in Denmark – suggesting that these especially bad batches may perhaps have been quietly pulled from the market by public health authorities. Nonetheless, these batches had as many as 8,000 suspected adverse events associated with them. Eight thousand out of 80,000 doses would give a reporting rate of one suspected adverse event for every 10 doses – and Dyker notes that some of the blue batches are indeed associated with a reporting rate of as high as one suspected adverse event for every six doses! On Dyker’s calculation, the blue batches represent less than 5% of the total number of doses included in the Danish study.

Nonetheless, they are associated with nearly 50% of the 579 deaths recorded in the sample. Finally, we have the ‘yellow batches’ clustered around the yellow line, which, as can be seen above, barely gets off the x-axis. On Dyker’s calculation, the yellow batches represent around 30% of the total. Dyker notes that they include batches comprising some 200,000 administered doses which are associated with literally zero suspected adverse events. As Dyker puts it, “malicious” observers might note that “this is how placebos would look”. And malicious observers might be right. For Dyker and Matysik compared the batch numbers contained in the Danish study with publicly available information on the batches approved for release, and they made the startling discovery that almost none of the harmless batches, unlike the very-bad and not-so-bad batches, appear to have been subject to any quality-control testing at all.

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“This was organized crime. There’s no other way to define it,”

• Comer: Overseas Payments To Biden Family Could Exceed $40M (NYP)

Members of President Biden’s family may have accepted in excess of $40 million from foreign nationals in exchange for favorable policy decisions, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer suggested Wednesday. The Kentucky Republican said that his panel has identified “six specific policy decisions” where Biden, 80, took actions that indicate he may have been “compromised,” during an appearance on John Catsimatidis’ “Cats & Cosby Show” on WABC 770 Wednesday. Comer noted that of the six policy decisions, four of them “were made while Joe Biden was president early on — [where] we cannot come to any other conclusion as to why these decisions were made, other than the fact that this president is compromised.” “This was organized crime. There’s no other way to define it,” Comer alleged.

The Oversight Committee chairman explained that as recently as “in the last five days” his panel has obtained banking statements and suspicious activity reports that show “more bank accounts, more shell companies and more Bidens” being involved in the family’s overseas influence peddling scheme. “We’re going to try to determine how much money the Bidens took, and what role Joe Biden played in all of this … It’s a huge puzzle,” Comer said of the GOP-led committee’s investigation. “Around 30 to 40 different banks, and about that many different shell companies. This is an organized attempt by the Biden family to hide the source of money going into these shell companies, and to distract from the IRS so they wouldn’t have to pay taxes on it. And that’s exactly what the IRS whistleblowers alleged in the transcribed interview with the Ways and Means Committee — that the Biden family never paid money on any of these wires that came into these shell companies,” he added.

IRS whistleblower Gary Shapely told Fox News host Bret Baier on Wednesday that in 2017 and 2018 alone, first son Hunter Biden ducked a $1.2 million tax bill, and that there is likely hundreds of thousands of dollars more in income from previous years that he failed to report. “I mean to this day, there’s still around $400,000 of unreported income from Burisma [Holdings] in 2014,” Shapley said. “Hunter Biden was told by his partner, Eric Schwerin, that he needed to amend his returns, and he never did.” Comer told Catsimatidis that he’s “confident” his investigation will prove the Biden family raked in “at least $17 million” from overseas, but that the “transactions could exceed $40 million-plus.”

Shapley

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Garland should testify before the House. Simple.

• New Source in Hunter Biden Probe Points Finger at AG Garland (Sp.)

The New York Times has revealed that it had a new source confirming an IRS whistleblower’s claim about the Justice Department’s meddling in the Hunter Biden probe. While the US mainstream press has a record of ignoring reports concerning alleged misdeeds by the president and the first son, the NYT has claimed it has a source backing some of accusations voiced by IRS supervisory agent-turned whistleblower Gary Shapley. One of Shapley’s bombshell claims is that US Attorney David Weiss – assigned to conduct an investigation into Hunter Biden’s alleged tax crimes – was reportedly told by the DoJ that he could not bring charges against Hunter in California and Washington DC. Shapley’s former subordinate, who came forward as a second IRS whistleblower, made the same claim.

This story runs contrary to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s earlier assertions to the US Congress that Weiss has his hands untied when it comes to the Hunter probe in various state jurisdictions. Back in April, the IRS whistleblower placed emphasis on a false testimony to Congress made by a “senior political appointee.” Later, the New York Post reported that Garland was the appointee whose sworn testimony to congress is being challenged. Garland repeatedly denied having thrown any sand in Weiss’s gears. The attorney general even offered to ask Weiss himself to comment on the matter. “As I said at the outset, Mr. Weiss, who was appointed by President Trump as the US attorney in Delaware and assigned this matter during the previous administration, would be permitted to continue his investigation and to make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted to and in any district in which he wanted to,” Garland told reporters last week.

“Mr. Weiss has since sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee confirming that he had that authority. He was given complete authority to make all decisions on his own behalf.” However, the US mainstream newspaper has recently confirmed that Weiss indeed complained about being rebuffed by justice department officials. “In mid-2022, Mr. Weiss reached out to the top federal prosecutor in Washington, Matthew Graves, to ask his office to pursue charges and was rebuffed, according to Mr. Shapley’s testimony,” the newspaper wrote on Tuesday. “A similar request to prosecutors in the Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles, was also rejected, Mr. Shapley testified.

A second former IRS official, who has not been identified, told House Republicans the same story. That episode was confirmed independently to The New York Times by a person with knowledge of the situation.” US conservative outlets have drawn attention to the fact that the newspaper hid this very important piece of information concerning not just Hunter Biden but also AG Merrick Garland in the 21st paragraph of its lengthy report.


Shapley’s colleague, IRS whistleblower 2, the lead case agent, itemized the money precisely in his testimony

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“..and demands on an honest investigation and an honest prosecution as well.”

• Pressure Grows On Judge To Reject Hunter Biden Plea Deal (JTN)

Pressure is growing in congressional, legal and media circles for the federal judge in the Hunter Biden case to reject a plea deal that would spare the first son from serving prison time after evidence has emerged from two IRS whistleblowers that a more serious criminal tax case was sabotaged by the Justice Department. “I don’t understand how any judge could bless this plea agreement now that all of this evidence of obstruction and DOJ and FBI wrongdoing has surfaced,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told Just the News. “So I hope this judge does reject this, and then insists and demands on an honest investigation and an honest prosecution as well.”

Johnson, who with Sen. Charles Grassley led a two year probe into Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings, was reacting to testimony and evidence from IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley and another whistleblower that federal prosecutors blocked search warrants, interviews and more serious criminal charges. Shapley first made the allegations to the Justice Department inspector general and the House Ways and Means Committee. And in an interview to be aired Thursday on the John Solomon Reports podcast he detailed how career agents, career prosecutors, the DOJ tax division and lead U.S. Attorney David Weiss supported charging Hunter Biden with felonies alleging tax evasion and avoidance all the way back to 2014 totaling $2.2 million, including failing to pay taxes on $400,000 in income he got from the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings.

Shapley said President Joe Biden’s son was spared the more serious charges when the U.S. Attorneys in Washington D.C. and Los Angeles – both appointed by Biden – declined Weiss’ request for an indictment and then the statute of limitations on the older alleged offenses were allowed to expire. Hunter Biden has now struck a deal with Weiss to plead guilty to two misdemeanors tax evasion charges from 2017-18 and to enter a probation program that would result in a federal felony gun charge to be dismissed. Hunter Biden, 53, is slated to appear July 26 in federal court in Delaware before U.S. District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika, an appointee of former President Donald Trump.

Famed Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, an unabashed supporter of Joe Biden, agreed there is good reason for Noreika to set aside the plea deal and seek to investigate the whistleblower allegations. He said it was concerning that the whistleblowers’ testimony directly conflicts with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s testimony there was no interference in the probe. “If I were the judge on the Hunter Biden case, I would refuse to accept the plea bargain unless and until Garland and Weiss testify,” Dershowitz told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Tuesday. “What they’ve said is utterly incompatible.”

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Better be quick about replacing her.

• Kamala Harris Worst VP in Polling History – NBC (Sp.)

Nearly half of Americans have a negative view of Kamala Harris and only 32% of them have a positive opinion of the US vice president, a new poll by the US’ NBC News broadcaster has revealed. The survey showed that 49% of respondents are critical of Harris, of which 39% have a “very negative view” with respect to the 58-year-old politician. Only 11% said they have a “very positive” opinion of Harris. She received a net negative rating of -17, which NBC News said is “the lowest for any vice president in the poll’s history.” The poll was carried out from June 16 to June 20 with a total of 1,000 respondents participating in the survey. The poll’s margin of error was 3.1 percentage points. For comparison, Harris predecessor Mike Pence’s ratings sat at 34% positive vs. 38% negative (-4%) in October 2019.


Views of Joe Biden were at 34% positive to 33% negative (+1%) when he was Barack Obama’s vice president in December 2010, while then-US Vice President Dick Cheney checked in at 47% positive and 24% negative (+23%) in May 2003. Earlier this year, media reports quoted an unnamed White House official as saying that US President Joe Biden is reportedly growing increasingly annoyed that his second-in-command, who allegedly refuses to take on more responsibility over a fear of potentially “messing up.” “A point of tension in their relationship is that I don’t think that the president sees her as somebody who takes anything off of his plate” due to a “fear of messing up,” the official said. The US vice president, who adheres to a hawkish stance on the Ukraine conflict and calls for more hefty military packages, has in particular repeatedly been criticized for sitting on her hands when it comes to tackling the US migration crisis.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Carvey Spade
https://twitter.com/i/status/1674210937086046209

Wrasse

 

 

Baby rhino
https://twitter.com/i/status/1673803056968867842

 

 

Stop it
https://twitter.com/i/status/1674143751525081089

 

 

 

 

P&K
https://twitter.com/i/status/1674026415635808256

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle March 23 3022

Mar 232022
 
 March 23, 2022  Posted by at 9:38 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  49 Responses »


Jean-Francois Millet Charity 1859

 

• Ukraine’s Propaganda War: Int’l PR Firms, DC Lobbyists and CIA Cutouts (MPN)
• Biden Team: More Russia Sanctions Will Be Announced This Week (DM)
• The Lie of American Innocence (Chris Hedges)
• Joe Rogan Exposes How West Has Done A Complete 180 On ‘Corrupt’ Ukraine (SN)
• Medical Conspiracy: With Eyes Wide Open, They Killed, Maimed Thousands (TN)
• A Simple Way To End Vaccine Misinformation Immediately (Kirsch)
• Record Infections In Super-vaxxed UK Seniors (Blaze)
• Is Tinnitus A Rare Side Effect Of Covid Vaccines? (NBC)
• New Zealand’s Discrimination Against Unvaccinated Is Rampant (Bexte)
• Next Inflation Shock Comes From Resource Nationalism (Cerasuolo)
• White House Comms Director Blames Harris For Chaos In VP Office (JTN)
• SCOTUS Nominee: Lighter Sentences Pedophiles b/c Internet Makes It Easy (ZH)

 

 

Have a wonderfully happy wedding day, Julian and Stella.

 

 

 

 

Zelensky is a puppet
https://twitter.com/i/status/1506488050670579716

 

 

@MaajidNawaz challenges the mainstream narrative on Volodymyr Zelenskyy

 

 

 

 

K Street in Kyiv. “Agencies have offered up entire teams to support Kyiv in the communications war.”

• Ukraine’s Propaganda War: Int’l PR Firms, DC Lobbyists and CIA Cutouts (MPN)

Since the Russian offensive inside Ukraine commenced on February 24, the Ukrainian military has cultivated the image of a plucky little army standing up to the Russian Goliath. To bolster the perception of Ukrainian military mettle, Kiev has churned out a steady stream of sophisticated propaganda aimed at stirring public and official support from Western countries. The campaign includes language guides, key messages, and hundreds of propaganda posters, some of which contain fascist imagery and even praise Neo-Nazi leaders. Behind Ukraine’s public relations effort is an army of foreign political strategists, Washington DC lobbyists, and a network of intelligence-linked media outlets.

Ukraine’s propaganda strategy earned it praise from a NATO commander who told the Washington Post, “They are really excellent in stratcom — media, info ops, and also psy-ops.” The Post ultimately conceded that “Western officials say that while they cannot independently verify much of the information that Kyiv puts out about the evolving battlefield situation, including casualty figures for both sides, it nonetheless represents highly effective stratcom.” Key to the propaganda effort is an international legion of public relations firms working directly with Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to wage information warfare. According to the industry news site PRWeek, the initiative was launched by an anonymous figure who allegedly founded a Ukraine-based public relations firm.

“From the first hour of war, we decided to join the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to help them distribute the official sources to show the truth,” the nameless figure told PR Week. “This is a hybrid war: the mix of bloodily struggling fight with a huge disinformation and fake campaign lead by Russia [sic].” According to the anonymous figure, more than 150 public relations firms have joined the propaganda blitz. The international effort is spearheaded by public relations firm PR Network co-founder Nicky Regazzoni and Francis Ingham, a top public relations consultant with close ties to the UK’s government.

Ingham previously worked for Britain’s Conservative Party, sits on the UK Government Communication Service Strategy and Evaluation Council, is Chief Executive of the International Communications Consultancy Organisation, and leads the membership body for UK local government communicators, LG Comms. “We’ve been privileged to help coordinate efforts to support the Ukrainian Government in the last few days, “ Ingham told PRovoke Media. “Agencies have offered up entire teams to support Kyiv in the communications war. Our support for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine is unwavering and will continue for as long as needed.”

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As energy and food prices rise in US and EU. America is bankrupt in more than one way.

• Biden Team: More Russia Sanctions Will Be Announced This Week (DM)

President Joe Biden will unveil another round of sanctions on Russia and tighten existing ones during his visit to Europe this week, his national security adviser announced on Tuesday. Biden is due to leave the White House tomorrow ahead of a N.A.T.O. summit in Brussels on Thursday. ‘He will have the opportunity to coordinate on the next phase of military assistance to Ukraine,’ said National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. ‘He will join our partners in imposing further sanctions on Russia and tightening the existing sanctions to crack down on evasion and to ensure robust enforcement.’ The president will also unveil additional help for refugees and for civilians inside Ukraine, many of whom are trapped in besieged cities, he added.

‘From Brussels, President Biden will travel to Poland where he will engage with US troops, who are now helping to defend NATO territory, and he will meet with experts involved in the humanitarian response,’ said Sullivan. ‘He will also hold a bilateral meeting with President Duda of Poland.’ The U.S. and allies have already imposed sanctions on Russia, as part of an effort to weaken President Vladimir Putin’s position at home and starve funding from his war machine. Washington has also worked with European and N.A.T.O. governments to deliver billions of dollars of weapons and aid to Ukraine. During the briefing at the White House, Sullivan was also asked about Russia’s potential use of nuclear weapons.

‘We have not changed our nuclear posture today. But we are constantly monitoring for that potential contingency and of course we take it as seriously as one could possibly take it,’ he said. ‘We will be consulting with allies and partners on that potential contingency among a range of others and discussing what our potential responses are.’ Sullivan said Biden will use the trip to work with allies on strengthening N.A.T.O.’s defenses on its eastern flank. ‘He will announce joint action on enhancing European energy security and reducing Europe’s dependence on Russian gas,’ he said.

Peskov nukes

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“Tens of millions of people, who had no connection with the attacks of 9/11, were killed, wounded, lost their homes, and saw their lives and their families destroyed because of our war crimes. Who will cry out for them?”

• The Lie of American Innocence (Chris Hedges)

The branding of Vladimir Putin as a war criminal by Joe Biden, who lobbied for the Iraq war and staunchly supported the 20 years of carnage in the Middle East, is one more example of the hypocritical moral posturing sweeping across the United States. It is unclear how anyone would try Putin for war crimes since Russia, like the United States, does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. But justice is not the point. Politicians like Biden, who do not accept responsibility for our well-documented war crimes, bolster their moral credentials by demonizing their adversaries. They know the chance of Putin facing justice is zero. And they know their chance of facing justice is the same.

We know who our most recent war criminals are, among others: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, General Ricardo Sanchez, former CIA Director George Tenet, former Asst. Atty. Gen. Jay Bybee, former Dep. Asst. Atty. Gen. John Yoo, who set up the legal framework to authorize torture; the helicopter pilots who gunned down civilians, including two Reuters journalists, in the “Collateral Murder” video released by WikiLeaks. We have evidence of the crimes they committed. But, like Putin’s Russia, those who expose these crimes are silenced and persecuted. Julian Assange, even though he is not a U.S. citizen and his WikiLeaks site is not a U.S.-based publication, is charged under the U.S. Espionage Act for making public numerous U.S. war crimes. Assange, currently housed in a high security prison in London, is fighting a losing battle in the British courts to block his extradition to the United States, where he faces 175 years in prison.

One set of rules for Russia, another set of rules for the United States. Weeping crocodile tears for the Russian media, which is being heavily censored by Putin, while ignoring the plight of the most important publisher of our generation speaks volumes about how much the ruling class cares about press freedom and truth. If we demand justice for Ukrainians, as we should, we must also demand justice for the one million people killed — 400,000 of whom were noncombatants — by our invasions, occupations and aerial assaults in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan. We must demand justice for those who were wounded, became sick or died because we destroyed hospitals and infrastructure.

We must demand justice for the thousands of soldiers and marines who were killed, and many more who were wounded and are living with lifelong disabilities, in wars launched and sustained on lies. We must demand justice for the 38 million people who have been displaced or become refugees in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya, and Syria, a number that exceeds the total of all those displaced in all wars since 1900, apart from World War II, according to the Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs at Brown University. Tens of millions of people, who had no connection with the attacks of 9/11, were killed, wounded, lost their homes, and saw their lives and their families destroyed because of our war crimes. Who will cry out for them?


10 wars, 6 millions killed, 1 Nobel Peace Prize, 0 sanction

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“We’re supposed to just veer away from the narrative that was being pushed just a couple years ago..”

• Joe Rogan Exposes How West Has Done A Complete 180 On ‘Corrupt’ Ukraine (SN)

Joe Rogan noted on his podcast that the Western narrative on Ukraine has flipped 180 degrees in a few weeks from the country having a horrible corrupt government to being heroic allies against the Russian scourge. “I have this screenshot that someone sent me,” Rogan stated, “about the way the people on the left were talking about the Ukraine situation before the war.” He continued, “This is one of the things that’s so weird is that they were very disparaging of Ukraine, and they were talking about the massive corruption of Ukraine, and how horrible it was over there.” “And now, all of a sudden, they’re looking at it like they’re heroes. The same exact people. This is what’s confusing,” the host added.


Rogan then read out points from the screenshot he referenced wherein Ukraine was labeled “the most corrupt nation in Europe” with an “increasingly corrupt and authoritarian” leader who is seeking to deepen an “alliance with the far right”. “We’re supposed to just veer away from the narrative that was being pushed just a couple years ago,” Rogan asserted. Rogan also went on to point out how insane it is that Facebook and other social media platforms are officially sanctioning violent rhetoric against Russians, exclaiming “What the f*ck is that? What is that?”

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“..about 158,000 different health problems in all..”

• Medical Conspiracy: With Eyes Wide Open, They Killed, Maimed Thousands (TN)

> A small batch of documents released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in mid-November 2021 revealed that in the first three months of the COVID jab rollout, Pfizer received 42,086 adverse event reports that included 1,223 deaths. The first really large tranche of Pfizer documents — some 10,000 pages — was released by the FDA March 1, 2022. Included are nine pages of recorded side effects, about 158,000 different health problems in all. An initial review of case report forms (CRFs) reveal significant data collection errors and anomalies. Problems included patients entered into the “healthy population” group who were far from healthy; serious adverse event (SAE) numbers that were left blank; sample barcodes that were missing; at least one death of a patient the day before being listed as being at a medical checkup; and second doses that were administered outside the three-week protocol window.


There also are questions as to whether participants were properly observed for an adequate amount of time; plus adverse events were listed as “not serious” despite extended hospital stay and much more. A majority of the CRFs in this release were from Ventavia-run trial sites. Ventavia is currently facing a lawsuit brought by Brook Jackson, a former Ventavia regional director. Jackson was fired shortly after she brought concerns about potential data falsification and poor laboratory management to the attention of the FDA and higher-ups in the company.

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Autopsies. Embalmers.

• A Simple Way To End Vaccine Misinformation Immediately (Kirsch)

If they truly wanted to end vaccine hesitancy, all they have to do is require autopsies if you die within 60 days of vaccination and require the medical examiners to make the required tests to determine vaccine involvement (as doctors Bhakdi and Burkhardt have done) and publish them. Publishing a fraudulent report would be a criminal offense. This would end the debate. Or they could simply require all licensed embalmers to check for the telltale clots and make the numbers public. Again, it would be a crime to falsify reports. Or they could do both. Why don’t they do this? I’ll tell you why they don’t do it: They don’t do it because they know the results would be devastating and would immediately halt the vaccine and discredit the FDA, CDC, the entire medical establishment, virtually all members of Congress, and the mainstream media.


Why doesn’t Florida Governor DeSantis require this in Florida? What is he afraid of? Why doesn’t Governor Newsom require this in California? What does he have to fear? DeSantis would be the most likely of any governor to do this. He could be a world hero if he did this. My suggestion isn’t limited to the US. Any public health official anywhere in the world could order this: local, state, federal. A state or federal legislature could require it. Any member of any legislature could introduce a bill. Why are California Assemblymember Evan Low and state Senator Dr. Richard Pan doing nothing? They have said they want to end medical misinformation. This is a perfect opportunity for them to walk the talk! Why aren’t members of the medical community calling for this? Will any of these people join me in calling for this? Or will they sit on the sidelines and say nothing?

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“Just because Volodymyr Zelenskyy is the new Fauci, it doesn’t mean COVID is over.”

• Record Infections In Super-vaxxed UK Seniors (Blaze)

Just because Volodymyr Zelenskyy is the new Fauci, it doesn’t mean COVID is over. In fact, cases are surging in many European countries, and U.K. seniors are now experiencing record numbers. “Covid infections surge to record high for over-70s in UK” was the title of a Financial Times article from Friday. But how can there be record infections precisely after nearly every senior was vaccinated and 90% were boosted, even though many already have had prior infection? Or are the record infections because of the shots, not despite them, and does this mean that they are preventing people from achieving immunity? Ireland is one of the most vaccinated countries in the European Union, yet hospitalizations are rising. There are now more people in Irish hospitals than at any point in 12 months.

Nearly 95% of all adults are fully vaccinated, and nearly 100% of seniors are vaccinated and boosted. The number of COVID cases has nearly tripled in the U.K. since the nadir of the post-winter drop four weeks ago. Moreover, deaths are still hovering around 125 a day, whereas after the 2021 winter wave (with a much lower prior infection rate), deaths were nearly reduced to zero. Furthermore, Scotland, which has the highest vaccination rate of anywhere in the U.K. and is the only region with mask mandates, seems to be worse off than ever before. “Scotland recorded its highest infection rates of the pandemic so far, with one in every 14 people infected with the virus in the week to mid-March, up from one in 18 a week earlier,” reported the Financial Times.

Roughly 90% of all people over age 12 in Scotland have two shots, and 73% have boosters. Among seniors, boosters are nearly universal. Thus, there is nowhere to run or hide from the vaccine failures. The negative efficacy is out of control. What about protection against death? Well, we can’t exactly see where the deaths are coming from because Scotland conveniently stopped providing that data, but the U.K. government will still offer the weekly reports for a few more weeks. According to the latest U.K. health surveillance report, roughly 95% of those over 70 are double-vaccinated and about 90%-93% of the age cohorts over 70 are boosted. Just 1.6% of the senior cases between weeks 7 and 10 of this year were among the unvaccinated, which is below the 5% share of the population pie they compose. The triple-boosted are 90% of the cases.

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NBC tries to obfuscate the issues.

• Is Tinnitus A Rare Side Effect Of Covid Vaccines? (NBC)

It was the shock of a loud whistle that almost caused Gregory Poland to veer off the road as he was driving home after getting his second Covid-19 vaccine. “It startled me,” said Poland, who is 66 years old. “I thought it was a dog whistle going off right next to me.” It was not a dog whistle; it was a piercing sound his brain conjured up for an unknown reason. Poland suspects it may have been a side effect of the vaccine. That was one year ago. The noise, he said, has been unrelenting ever since. For the record, neither Poland nor the medical community at large can prove that the mRNA Covid vaccine that he received had anything to do with his sudden onset of tinnitus, a condition that is often described as a ringing, buzzing or hissing noise in one or both ears. It can be constant or intermittent.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and vaccine manufacturers, have investigated anecdotal reports of tinnitus through programs such as the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, following Covid vaccination, but have found no evidence of cause and effect. And Poland’s tale might not carry much weight if he weren’t Dr. Gregory Poland — a globally respected physician who has dedicated his career to vaccine study and development as founder and director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group in Rochester, Minnesota. What’s more, Poland is a paid scientific adviser for Johnson & Johnson/Janssen Global Services, and acts as a consultant on vaccine development for Moderna, as well as other pharmaceutical companies.

Given Poland’s interests and the uncertainty of a true link between the vaccine and tinnitus — not to mention a strong anti-vaccine movement — why would he publicize his condition and suspicion that a vaccine could be involved? “As a physician who’s taken an oath to first do no harm, I think about these things,” Poland said. His day-to-day focus, he said, is to help patients work through the potential risks and benefits of any treatment, including vaccines. “I refuse to be anything less than transparent,” he said. “I refuse to cherry-pick the information that should be presented to people to make good decisions.” What does the science say? There is no known cause of tinnitus, though it is often associated with “acoustic trauma,” such as what is experienced by active duty military personnel.

There is some evidence that Covid-19 itself may worsen the condition in people who have previously suffered from ringing in their ears. When it comes to potential auditory side effects of vaccination, research is sparse. A study published last month in the medical journal JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, analyzed reports of hearing issues following Covid-19 vaccines. The reports had been submitted to VAERS. Such reports raise the issue of unexpected problems following any vaccine. Scientists are then tasked with reviewing the reports, looking for patterns of unusual side effects.

In a statement to NBC News, Pfizer said the company takes reported adverse events “very seriously.” “Tinnitus cases have been reviewed and no causal association to the Covid-19 vaccine has been established,” the statement read. A statement from Johnson & Johnson said that tinnitus was identified as an adverse event in its phase 3 clinical trials of the Covid-19 vaccine but also maintained that it was impossible to “establish a causal relationship to vaccine exposure.”

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“..a self-satisfied grin adorning her face…”

• New Zealand’s Discrimination Against Unvaccinated Is Rampant (Bexte)

New Zealand remains one of the most flagrantly discriminatory countries in the world due to its treatment of the unvaccinated. While much of the world opens up and ends the two-tiered systems put into place to coerce the unvaccinated to comply with the government’s agenda, New Zealand, under the rule of PM Jacinda Ardern, seems hellbent on dragging the ordeal out as long as possible. According to the government’s website, policies remain for nearly all public sector workers, and the government gives all private businesses the right to continue requiring up to three doses to retain employment. Additionally, during an interview on March 20, Ardern admitted that even if some restrictions are loosened, the vaccine passport will remain in the government’s back pocket just in case.

Perhaps inspired by the Freedom Convoy protests in Canada, New Zealanders took to the streets in early February and have been protesting their government’s restrictions ever since, causing Ardern noticeable concern. Much like other globalists, when finally faced with massive protests not just against mandates but against her as a leader, Ardern claimed that anyone opposed to her authoritarianism is simply being misled by “disinformation.” While Australia was extremely brutal in its crackdown against protesters, what made New Zealand, perhaps, most notable in addressing anyone who dissents, is how smug their PM was when stating the discriminatory policies she planned to implement.

During an interview from October 24, 2021, Ardern unambiguously stated that she was creating an apartheid state to discriminate against the unvaccinated — of course, under the guise of public health. “So, you’ve basically said, you probably don’t see it like this, but two different classes of people. If you’re vaccinated or unvaccinated. You have all these rights if you are vaccinated,” an interviewer asked. “That is what it is. Yep,” Ardern stated, a self-satisfied grin adorning her face.

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Stop calling it inflation. It’s embarrassing.

• Next Inflation Shock Comes From Resource Nationalism (Cerasuolo)

First there was supply-chain disruption brought on by the coronavirus, then war in Ukraine further rocked commodity markets. The next bout of inflation via raw material prices will be brought on by resource nationalism. While the cost pressures brought on by the difficulty in moving goods in a world in lockdown are fading, other factors are more enduring. For instance, the post-Cold War spread of e-commerce allowed companies to treat the world as both factory floor and marketplace. Comparative advantage, strategic partnerships and the success of globalization led to growth and prosperity. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine jarred that dynamic and has set in motion a series of quasi-isolationist responses. What started as economic sanctions on Russia has tipped the balance: we are no longer in a uni-polar world.

We have entered into a multi-polar one where traditional economic superpowers can no longer call the shots. Service-driven economies are price takers and have far less leverage over those producing raw materials. The geopolitical landscape has changed and economic incentives along with it. The growing emergency that sanctions on Russia have caused over energy supply security will be inflationary for years to come. Nowhere is this more evident than in Europe, given its direct exposure to Russia energy, with individual countries prioritizing domestic energy security as a first port of call. The European Union entered an era of energy inflation given its commitment to address climate change and fossil fuel dependence by “greening” the economy. Such aims create price pressure, and has led to discussion at the European Central Bank on whether its inflation target should be adjusted.

Russia and Ukraine are two of the globe’s top grain producers. Conflict has triggered panic and price squeezes on everything from fertilizer to cooking oil, and has also led nations to rethink their approach to national stockpiling. Energy security pulls into focus security of other commodities. The list of countries restricting agriculture exports is growing. It includes Indonesia, Hungary, Argentina, and Turkey. China’s begun stockpiling corn and soybeans while sources mention state refiners are considering pausing exports of gasoline and diesel in April. Effectively, every resource a nation produces has the potential to become a bargaining chip. There is a price to meet security of resources. As more economies step away from globalization that cost will get steeper as isolationist tendencies produce greater trade frictions.

Read more …

NYT turns on Kamala?

• White House Comms Director Blames Harris For Chaos In VP Office (JTN)

Kate Bedingfield, the White House communications director, reportedly pins the blame for disfunction in the vice president’s office squarely on the shoulders of Kamala Harris, according to a new book. “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future,” by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns, was profiled in Politico on Tuesday and reported details about chaos in the vice president’s office were on display. Harris’ office has lost 10 staffers since summer of 2021 and is reportedly a difficult environment in which to exist. Some of Harris’ staffers reportedly blamed the issue primarily on mismanagement of the vice president, to which Bedingfield responded.

Martin and Burns write that “Bedingfield had taken to noting that the vice presidency was not the first time in Harris’s political career that she had fallen short of sky-high expectations.” “Her Senate office had been messy and her [2020] presidential campaign had been a fiasco. Perhaps, she suggested, the problem was not the vice president’s staff,” write the pair. Politico notes that Bedingfield unequivocally denies making such remarks. “The fact that no one working on this book bothered to call to fact check this unattributed claim tells you what you need to know. Vice President Harris is a force in this administration and I have the utmost respect for the work she does every day to move the country forward,” wrote the White House comms director.

The book reports that frustration between the White House and the office of the vice president began to grow last year after Harris’ widely panned trip to Mexico and Guatemala to assess the “root causes” of the migration crisis at thee U.S. southern border. The vice president has since been tasked with leading a number of political missions, most of which have ended in abject failure – most notably, the election reform bill that failed in the senate after months of political back-and-forth.

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It’s already nuts to insist on a black woman, like two wrongs make one right. But this woman herself is nuts too. Lighter sentences for child porn because there is so much of it? The internet has tons of bomb-making instructions too. Now insert that same logic….

• SCOTUS Nominee: Lighter Sentences Pedophiles b/c Internet Makes It Easy (ZH)

Supreme Court Nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson defended her record of giving pedophiles light sentences, arguing that it’s easier for them to procure large volumes through the internet – vs. the effort required to obtain child porn through the mail. “The guideline was based originally on a statutory scheme and directives, specific directives from Congress at a time in which more serious child pornography offenders were identified based on the volume, based on the number of photographs they received in the mail. And that made total sense before, when you didn’t have the internet.

“When we didn’t have distribution. But the way that the guideline is now structured, based on that set of circumstances, is leading to extreme disparities in the system because it’s so easy for people to get volumes of this material now by computers. So it’s not doing the work of differentiating who is a more serious offender in the way that it used to.” Brown Jackson, who notably served as the judge in the ‘Pizzagate’ shooting, was responding to Sen. Josh Hawley’s (R-MO) claim last week that her legal record “endangers our children.” “As a mother and a judge who has had to deal with these cases, I was thinking that nothing could be further from the truth,” Jackson said Tuesday. “These are some of the most difficult cases that a judge has to deal with because we’re talking about pictures of sex abuse of children, we’re talking about graphic descriptions that judges have to read and consider when they decide how to sentence in these cases.”


As Tuesday’s confirmation hearing of Ketanji Brown Jackson continued, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) got into heated exchanges with the nominee over several issues – including her views on Critical Race Theory and her record on child predators. When Cruz asked her opinions on CRT, referring to a 2020 speech she gave at the University of Michigan where she mentioned Nikole Hannah-Jones’ revisionist 1619 project, Brown responded: “It doesn’t come up in my work as It’s never something that I have studied or relied on, and it wouldn’t be something that I would rely on if I was on the Supreme Court.” She also says she hasn’t reviewed “any of those books” that are available at Georgetown Day School, where she sits on the board. Cruz also pressed her over her record on pedophiles.

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Europe changes time this weekend.

 

 

Why is Ukraine America’s fault? | Nicolai N. Petro

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle August 23 2021

Aug 232021
 
 August 23, 2021  Posted by at 9:24 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  120 Responses »


Vasily Polenov Moscow courtyard 1878

 

• The FDA Is Begging You Not to Take Horse Dewormer for Covid-19 (RS)
• How Does Covid-19 Affect The Brain? (NatGeo)
• Potential Use Of Ivermectin For Treatment And Prophylaxis Of SARS-CoV-2 (SD) /span>
• Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of COVID-19 Infection (AJT)
• Stop The Mandates Or People Die (Denninger)
• Molecular Determinants of SARS-CoV-2 Variants (Cell)
• Biden Team’s Misguided And Deadly Covid-19 Vaccine Strategy (WT)
• 100s Of Doctors Sign Open Letter: Need Debate On ‘Flawed Covid Guesses’ (Exp.)
• Rescue Dogs Shot Dead By NSW Council Due To Covid-19 Restrictions (SMH)
• Afghan Staff At US Embassy Losing Faith In Evacuation Efforts (NBC)
• White House Announces They’ve Lost Kamala Harris (BBee)

 

 

 

 

A drug safely used by an estimated 3 billion people has been relabeled a horse dewormer. This is a dangerous campaign. Lives are being lost.

• The FDA Is Begging You Not to Take Horse Dewormer for Covid-19 (RS)

“You are not a horse. You are not a cow,” the Food and Drug Administration tweeted on Saturday alongside a link to a page on their website explaining “Why you should not use Ivermectin to treat or prevent Covid-19.” Why? Because Ivermectin, a medication usually reserved for deworming livestock, is responsible for a spike in poison control calls in Mississippi as people duped by conspiracy theories have purchased the drug and ingested it, hoping it will treat or prevent Covid-19 — something the drug is not proven to do. According to an alert issued by the Mississippi Department of Health on Friday, 70 percent of all recent calls to poison control in the state “have been related to ingestion of livestock or animal formulations of ivermectin purchased at livestock supply centers.”

Although most callers (85 percent) only reported mild symptoms, one person was advised to seek additional treatment. “Animal drugs are highly concentrated for large animals and can be highly toxic in humans,” the alert said. Ivermectin is sometimes used in humans to treat parasites or scabies, but in much smaller doses than are given to livestock. The calls have clearly baffled health officials in the state. “I think some people are trying to use it as a preventative which is really kind of crazy,” Dr. Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi’s state health officer, said. “So please don’t do that.”

“You wouldn’t get your chemotherapy at a feed store,” Dobbs added. “You wouldn’t treat your pneumonia with your animal’s medication. It can be dangerous to get the wrong doses of medication, especially with something meant for a horse or a cow.” But the obvious risks of humans ingesting Ivermectin haven’t stopped people at Fox News — including hosts Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson — from dangerously suggesting that it is a safe and effective treatment for Covid-19, as Rachel Maddow pointed out on her Friday night show where she showed clips of Fox personalities pushing the drug consistently over the last six months.

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Very little is clear. Only thing to do is keep people from being infected. And the vaccines don’t do that:

..an internal document from the C.D.C. states that some 35,000 vaccinated people experience symptomatic coronavirus infections each week..

• How Does Covid-19 Affect The Brain? (NatGeo)

If SARS-CoV-2 doesn’t infect brain cells, how is so destructive to cognition? There are two leading hypotheses. The first is that the infection somehow triggers inflammation in the brain. Some COVID-19 patients have suffered encephalitis, or swelling of the brain, which can cause confusion and double vision, and in serious cases, speech, hearing, or vision problems. If left untreated, patients can develop cognitive problems. Viruses like West Nile and Zika can cause encephalitis by directly infecting the brain cells, but how COVID-19 may lead to brain inflammation is less clear. An immune response run amok, known as autoimmunity, might be to blame for some instances of inflammation throughout the body, including the brain.

When the immune system is fighting a disease like COVID-19, it unleashes antibodies to do battle against the infection. But sometimes a person’s immune system becomes hyperactive and instead starts making self-attacking antibodies, known as autoantibodies, which can contribute to inflammation and blood clots. These autoantibodies have been found in the cerebrospinal fluid of COVID-19 patients with neurological symptoms. In the Columbia study, researchers found clusters of microglia—special immune cells in the brain whose job is to clear out damaged neurons—that appeared to be attacking healthy neurons. The phenomenon is called neuronophagia. Most of these rogue microglia were in the brain stem, which regulates heartbeat, breathing, and sleeping.

The researchers think these microglia may get activated by signaling molecules called inflammatory cytokines found in patients with severe COVID-19. These molecules are supposed to help regulate the immune system, but some people’s bodies release too many inflammatory cytokines in response to a viral infection. When researchers at Stanford looked at brain tissue from eight patients who died of COVID-19, they also observed signs of inflammation compared to 14 control brains. Using a technique called single-cell RNA sequencing, they found that hundreds of genes associated with inflammation were activated in brain cells from COVID-19 patients compared to controls.

They also noted molecular changes in the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain involved in decision-making and memory that suggested signaling imbalances in neurons. Similar imbalances have been seen in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The results were published in Nature in June. A second explanation for cognitive issues is that COVID-19 may restrict blood flow to the brain and deprive it of oxygen. In patients who have died of COVID-19, researchers have found evidence of brain tissue damagecaused by hypoxia, or the lack of oxygen.

Read more …

Slow but sure take-up by serious medical journals.

Science Direct (Elsevier). Current Research in Translational Medicine
Volume 69, Issue 4, October 2021, 103309

• Potential Use Of Ivermectin For Treatment And Prophylaxis Of SARS-CoV-2 (SD)

Ivermectin performs its function mainly through inhibition of nuclear transport mediated by the imported heterodimer a/b1 , which is responsible for the translocation of proteins of several viral species (Human Immunodeficiency Virus, type 1- HIV1, and Simian Virus 40 – SV40; a known oncogenic DNA), and such translocation is, in turn, essential for viral replication [7,8]. This inhibition appears to affect a considerable number of RNA viruses. It has recently been shown that ivermectin inhibits the replication of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in vitro [8, 9], although it is not clear how this occurs. However, since the causal agent of COVID-19 is an RNA virus, the interference with the same proteins and molecular processes described above can reasonably be expected.

However, these studies were conducted at concentrations substantially higher than expected in the plasma and lungs of humans who receive the approved dose of ivermectin. Pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies suggest that in order to achieve the plasma concentrations required for in vitro antiviral efficacy, it would be necessary to administer doses up to 100 times higher than approved for human use. However, increasing the dose/kg of body weight may be a strategy to increase efficacy, the increase of the risk of toxicity is not conclusive. Currently, there is a noteworthy absence of efficacious treatments for patients with early infection. Although most patients present mild or moderate symptoms, up to 5-10% may have a bad disease progression, so there is a pressing need for effective drugs to be administered early in the course of infection, even before the appearance of severe symptoms, i.e. when the course of the disease is more modifiable to prevent disease progression and longer-term complications.

In fact, it is known that the earlier the antiviral therapies are started, the greater the benefits for patients, in both influenza [15] and SARS infections [16], as well as, more generally, for all infections. Given the need to find an effective drug that can mitigate the harmful consequences of COVID-19, a large number of studies are being carried out in order to assess the effectiveness of different existing drugs, including ivermectin, with promising results. This narrative review summarizes and outlines the evidence-based effectiveness and safety of ivermectin in patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection, recommending the drug for the treatment of COVID-19 especially in the early stages of the disease.

Read more …

American Journal of Therapeutics: July/August 2021

• Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of COVID-19 Infection (AJT)

Ivermectin is a well-known medicine that is approved as an antiparasitic by the World Health Organization and the US Food and Drug Administration. It is widely used in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to treat worm infections. Also used for the treatment of scabies and lice, it is one of the World Health Organization’s Essential Medicines. With total doses of ivermectin distributed apparently equaling one-third of the present world population, ivermectin at the usual doses (0.2–0.4 mg/kg) is considered extremely safe for use in humans. In addition to its antiparasitic activity, it has been noted to have antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties, leading to an increasing list of therapeutic indications.8

Since the start of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, both observational and randomized studies have evaluated ivermectin as a treatment for, and as prophylaxis against, COVID-19 infection. A review by the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance summarized findings from 27 studies on the effects of ivermectin for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 infection, concluding that ivermectin “demonstrates a strong signal of therapeutic efficacy” against COVID-19.9 Another recent review found that ivermectin reduced deaths by 75%. Despite these findings, the National Institutes of Health in the United States recently stated that “there are insufficient data to recommend either for or against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19,”and the World Health Organization recommends against its use outside of clinical trials.

Ivermectin has exhibited antiviral activity against a wide range of RNA and some DNA viruses, for example, Zika, dengue, yellow fever, and others.13 Caly et al14 demonstrated specific action against SARS-CoV-2 in vitro with a suggested host-directed mechanism of action being the blocking of the nuclear import of viral proteins that suppress normal immune responses. However, the necessary cell culture EC50 may not be achievable in vivo.16 Other conjectured mechanisms include inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 3CLPro activity(a protease essential for viral replication), a variety of anti-inflammatory effects,19 and competitive binding of ivermectin with the viral S protein as shown in multiple in silico studies. The latter would inhibit viral binding to ACE-2 receptors suppressing infection. Hemagglutination via viral binding to sialic acid receptors on erythrocytes is a recently proposed pathologic mechanism that would be similarly disrupted. Both host-directed and virus-directed mechanisms have thus been proposed, the clinical mechanism may be multimodal, possibly dependent on disease stage, and a comprehensive review of mechanisms of action is warranted.

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You can’t force people. And you shouldn’t be trying.

• Stop The Mandates Or People Die (Denninger)

Better watch this one folks and let it sink in.

“If I don’t show up for my job, as I just explained to you, people die. On Saturday night at 10 p.m. I got a page. I did not want to go to work. Somebody was having a very critical problem, they were dying. I worked until 6 a.m. the next day. If I had not of showed up, there would have been nobody to do my job. These guys can’t show up to their job, and I’m sorry, your jobs are not as important as mine.” There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of people just like him They’re everywhere in the health care system. They have unique skills without which the system does not function, and when you need those skills you need them now, not later. There is no “later”; there is either now or death. Take someone on dialysis. This is not a “robotic procedure”; each patient has specific levels of various drugs and their specific metabolic reactions to them that must be individually managed.

The people who do that job are not replaceable on short notice, if at all. If you need dialysis and do not get it, you die. This is not a “maybe” or “might die” you WILL die with absolute, 100% certainty. Things happen at odd hours of the day and night. Most real medical emergencies are not scheduled — heart attacks, strokes, car wrecks, gunshots and similar. They happen when they happen and either someone is there to respond to it and deal with it or the person in question dies. Those hundreds of thousands of people who are utterly essential to people not dying every single day — hundreds if not thousands who will otherwise die if those employees refuse to show up — and exactly zero of those people can be compelled to work. This is America. It is not the Soviet Union. It is not North Korea.

NOBODY is a slave and EVERYONE has the right to say “**** you” and walk out. EVERYONE. ALL THE TIME. Then there are of course both cops and firefighters. You want someone to put your house out if its on fire, right? What if the firefighters say “**** you” to a jab mandate and quit? Who’s going to put the fire out? Do you even have a wrench to get the hydrant open, say much less the correct fittings and hose? What happens when your child is in that burning house and there is no firefighter to put it out? He or she dies. You cannot arrest and jail someone for quitting their job or refusing a mandate and being fired. All employment is voluntary, no matter how “essential” the position. THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS and there is no way to replace the people who do these jobs without which hundreds of people per day WILL DIE.

Therefore you have a choice to make America and you have to make it NOW. You will stand up and stop these mandates. You will do it now. You will do it or every single person who dies as a result of your failure to do so, and the refusal of others to consent, is YOUR responsibility. Not their person who quits — YOURS. THEY are not slaves. THEY cannot be compelled to consent. THEY have NO obligation to put up with your bull****. You’d better get this through your thick ******n skull RIGHT NOW. YOU are why that person who needs dialysis will be dead. YOU are why the person who is in critical trouble in a hospital and there is no perfusionist available right now will die. YOU either stop this madness, right now, by whatever means are necessary, without exception from top to bottom or YOU are responsible for those deaths and those deaths WILL come.

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“While replication-associated mutations generate small changes in the viral genome, recombination may introduce more important modifications, leading to dramatic changes in the phenotype of SARS-CoV-2..”

• Molecular Determinants of SARS-CoV-2 Variants (Cell)

Accumulation of genomes with replication-associated random mutations within the same cell has the potential to generate a heterogeneous mix of viral proteins, including spike protein, which brings into question the true diversity of the spike on the surface of individual virions and subsequent tissue-level spread of SARS-CoV-2 and its variants. If a more orderly molecular process to regulate the homogeneous distribution of spike protein variants on individual virions exists, it remains to be identified. Regular RNA sequencing analyses are unable to identify these differences since they can only be captured by ultra-high-resolution single-virion protein sequencing, the technology for which is in its infancy.


The SARS-CoV-2 genomic mutation rate in humans is estimated at 0.8-2.38 x 10-3 nucleotide substitutions per site per year largely based on analysis of sequencing data archived in public repositories. Emerging studies are attempting to confirm this mutation rate using experimental investigations. By comparison, mutations rates for influenza A virus and Middle East respiratory syndrome CoV (MERS-CoV) are 2.3 x 10-3 and 1.12 x 10-3 nucleotide substitutions per site per year, respectively. Human CoVs (HCoV)-OC43 and HCoV-229E have an average mutation rate of 3-6 x 10-4 nucleotide substitutions per site per year. Emerging experimental data suggest that SARS-CoV-2 is capable of mutating and accumulating changes when facing a new cell type, albeit in the absence of immune surveillance in a single-cell-type infection model. A clinical study also reported the rapid evolution of SARS-CoV-2 variants in the presence of antibodies from convalescent plasma therapy. While random errors during replication may induce genetic mutations in SARS-CoV-2, multiple extrinsic factors, such as individual and population-level immunity, play a vital role in the selection of these variants. More research is warranted to fully understand the cellular and molecular drivers of genomic mutation and selection in SARS-CoV-2. As SARS-CoV-2 accumulates new genetic changes, we shall need to reassess the mutation rate to better understand the contribution of replication-associated random mutations and its impact on SARS-CoV-2 transmission and emergence of new variants.


Figure 1 Replication-Associated Generation of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Variants.

While replication-associated mutations generate small changes in the viral genome, recombination may introduce more important modifications, leading to dramatic changes in the phenotype of SARS-CoV-2 (Figure 2). Discontinuous transcription of CoV genomes enables recombination in a cell coinfected with more than one CoV species or variant via ‘strand switching’ by the viral RdRp (Figure 2A). This process leads to the production of chimeric subgenomic RNA and proteins. Chimeric proteins may have consequences for the fate of infected cells and for cellular and tissue tropism of progeny virions. As technology evolves, we might be able to track the spread of individual virions, along with deciphering the heterogeneity of their composition.


Figure 2 Recombination-Induced Variants.

Read more …

Dr. Robert Malone and Peter Navarro.

• Biden Team’s Misguided And Deadly Covid-19 Vaccine Strategy (WT)

The Biden administration’s strategy to universally vaccinate in the middle of the pandemic is bad science and badly needs a reboot. This strategy will likely prolong the most dangerous phase of the worst pandemic since 1918 and almost assuredly cause more harm than good – even as it undermines faith in the entire public health system. Four flawed assumptions drive the Biden strategy. The first is that universal vaccination can eradicate the virus and secure economic recovery by achieving herd immunity throughout the country (and the world). However, the virus is now so deeply embedded in the world population that, unlike polio and smallpox, eradication is unachievable. SARS-CoV-2 and its myriad mutations will likely continually circulate, much like the common cold and influenza.

The second assumption is that the vaccines are (near) perfectly effective. However, our currently available vaccines are quite “leaky.” While good at preventing severe disease and death, they only reduce, not eliminate, the risk of infection, replication, and transmission. As a slide deck from the Centers for Disease Control has revealed, even 100% acceptance of the current leaky vaccines combined with strict mask compliance will not stop the highly contagious Delta variant from spreading. The third assumption is that the vaccines are safe. Yet scientists, physicians, and public health officials now recognize risks that are rare but by no means trivial. Known side effects include serious cardiac and thrombotic conditions, menstrual cycle disruptions, Bell’s Palsy, Guillain Barre syndrome, and anaphylaxis.

Unknown side effects which virologists fear may emerge include existential reproductive risks, additional autoimmune conditions, and various forms of disease enhancement, i.e., the vaccines can make people more vulnerable to reinfection by SARS-CoV-2 or reactivation of latent viral infections and associated diseases such as shingles. With good reason, the FDA has yet to approve the vaccines now administered under Emergency Use Authorization. The failure of the fourth “durability” assumption is the most alarming and perplexing. It now appears our current vaccines are likely to offer a mere 180-day window of protection – a decided lack of durability underscored by scientific evidence from Israel and confirmed by Pfizer, the Department of Health and Human Services, and other countries.

Here, we are already being warned of the need for universal “booster” shots at six-month intervals for the foreseeable future. The obvious broader point that militates for individual vaccine choice is that repeated vaccinations, each with a small risk, can add up to a big risk. It’s an arms race with the virus.

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Still not sure what they’re mad about, other than lockdowns.

• 100s Of Doctors Sign Open Letter: Need Debate On ‘Flawed Covid Guesses’ (Exp.)

A hundred and thirty three doctors, nurses, psychiatrists paramedics and midwives signed the letter released today which states that despite a “complete lack of widespread approval among health professionals,” of the pandemic policies, “no attempt” has been made to measure the harms of lockdown policies. The letter, also addressed to the Health Secretary and First Ministers for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland states: “You have failed to engage in dialogue and show no signs of doing so. You have removed from people fundamental rights and altered the fabric of society with little debate in Parliament.” The signatories, from a broad range of specialities, came forward despite the risk of doing so to both their jobs and reputations.

Founding signatory Dr Ros Jones, a retired paediatric consultant said: “We wrote the letter as a group of healthcare professionals, connected only by our deep concern and shared commitment to “first do no harm.” We can no longer stand by in silence. We are not the first group of medically and scientifically qualified professionals to write in such terms to the Government. In March, 22 eminent scientists publicly called for drastic policy change. We sincerely hope we will be the last who feel the need to write such a letter.” Dr Alan Mordue, another founding signatory said: “To move forward now our governments urgently need to facilitate a wider and open debate within the medical and scientific community, for the short term as we lift restrictions, and the longer term to improve how we manage winter respiratory viruses and pandemics in the future.”

Concerns voiced in the letter include accusations that no Minister responsible for policy “has engaged in an open and full discussion of alternative ways of managing the pandemic,” despite being aware of other medical and scientific viewpoints. It adds the pandemic response policies have caused “significant, permanent and unnecessary harm” to the UK and “must never be repeated.” The letter focuses on 10 areas where the UK’s approach to COVID failed. It argues the nature of the covid threat has been exaggerated, it claims the use of behavioural science to generate fear was “inappropriate and unethical” and it argues the role of asymptomatic spread has been overplayed and used to promote public compliance with restrictions.

Finally it states that restrictions have been imposed with an overreliance on modelling data whilst ignoring real world data. The signatories called for a “sea change within the Government “which must now pay proper attention to those esteemed experts outside its inner circle who are sounding these alarms.”

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New normal. I see videos every day from Australia that make me want to vomit.

• Rescue Dogs Shot Dead By NSW Council Due To Covid-19 Restrictions (SMH)

Several impounded dogs due to be rescued by a shelter have instead been shot dead by a rural council in NSW under its interpretation of COVID-19 restrictions, alarming animal activists and prompting a government probe. Bourke Shire Council, in the state’s north-west, killed the dogs to prevent volunteers at a Cobar-based animal shelter from travelling to pick up the animals last week, according to council’s watchdog, the Office of Local Government. “OLG has been informed that the council decided to take this course of action to protect its employees and community, including vulnerable Aboriginal populations, from the risk of COVID-19 transmission,” a spokesman from the government agency said.

The spokesman said the agency was examining the circumstances of the incident to find out whether companion animal and cruelty prevention laws had been broken. The Herald attempted to contact the council administration multiple times, but received no response, and a member of Rural Outback Respite/Rescue – the shelter that was supposed to receive the dogs – declined to comment. A source who is familiar with the arrangement said the shelter volunteers are distressed and had COVID-safe measures in place to handle the dogs, one of which was a new mother. According to NSW Health, there have been no recent locally acquired COVID-19 cases in Cobar, although fragments of the virus have been found in the area’s sewerage system.

The Office of Local Government Minister Shelley Hancock, who has previously faced questions in Parliament over the shooting of animals in council pounds, did not comment. However, animal liberation campaigner Lisa Ryan called for an urgent investigation. “We are deeply distressed and completely appalled by this callous dog shooting and we totally reject council’s unacceptable justifications that this killing was apparently undertaken as part of a COVID- safe plan,” Ms Ryan, Animal Liberation’s regional campaign manager, said.

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“It would be better to die under the Taliban’s bullet” than face the crowds again..”

• Afghan Staff At US Embassy Losing Faith In Evacuation Efforts (NBC)

Local staff members at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul are “deeply disheartened” by U.S. evacuation efforts and have expressed a sense of betrayal and distrust in the U.S. government, according to a State Department diplomatic cable obtained by NBC News. The cable, which was sent Saturday, said memos were sent Wednesday inviting Afghan staff members at the embassy to head to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. It told them to take food and to prepare for difficult conditions. “However, no one anticipated the brutal experience that occurred,” the cable said.

Staffers reported being jostled, hit, spat on and cursed at by Taliban fighters at checkpoints near the airport, it said, adding that criminals were taking advantage of the chaos while the U.S. military tried to maintain order “in an extremely physical situation.” Some staff members reported that they were almost separated from their children, while others collapsed in a crush of people and had to be taken to hospitals with injuries, the cable said. Others said they had collapsed on the road because of heat exhaustion, it said. “It would be better to die under the Taliban’s bullet” than face the crowds again, a staff member was quoted as saying in the cable.

“Happy to die here, but with dignity and pride,” another said, while a third accused the U.S. of prioritizing Afghan government elites with contacts in the U.S., who already had the correct paperwork and other ways to flee the country. A local embassy staff member reported that his home had been tagged with spray paint — a tactic the Taliban have used in the past to identify homes’ occupants for further questioning, the cable said, adding that the family had been forced to flee their home but was unable to get to the airport. Others shared concerns about conditions in Qatar, where many refugees have been flown before they make their way to other locations.

The U.S. began evacuating its citizens, diplomatic staff members and Afghans who aided its mission in the country last week after the Taliban seized control of much of Afghanistan before they finally walked into Kabul last Sunday without firing a shot. A State Department spokesperson said the U.S. has a “special commitment” to local embassy staff members who “have suffered hardship, pain and loss because of their dedication to working with us to build a better future for all Afghans.”

Read more …

… But They’re Also Not Looking For Her Very Hard

• White House Announces They’ve Lost Kamala Harris (BBee)

In an interview with Morning Joe, White House communications director Kate Bedingfield revealed they have lost Kamala Harris and have no idea where she’s gone, although she admitted nobody is really looking for her all that hard. “Yeah, I dunno. She’s somewhere, I guess. I mean, she didn’t just disappear,” said Bedingfield. “We have some people looking for her I think, but we’re not too worried, honestly. I’m sure she’ll turn up sooner or later.” “Wait, wait, wait,” said the show’s host. “You mean to tell me that in this time of crisis, you have literally no idea where the Vice President of the United States is?”

“Well, it sounds bad when you put it that way,” replied the Communications Director. “I don’t really see how this is a big deal. It’s been kind of nice and quiet around here since she left… we’re not even quite sure what she does, anyway,” she said with a shrug. Anonymous sources have suggested Kamala may be somewhere around Camp David, as locals reported the sound of cackling through the night.

Read more …

 

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Debt Rattle August 18 2021

Aug 182021
 
 August 18, 2021  Posted by at 9:05 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  137 Responses »


Salvador Dali Meditative rose 1958

 

• Leaky Vaccines, Super-spreads, And Variant Acceleration (Gato Malo)
• A Grim Warning From Israel: Vaccination Blunts, But Does Not Defeat Delta (SM)
• Delta Spike P681R Mutation Enhances SARS-CoV-2 Fitness Over Alpha Variant (Bx)
• Here’s Your (Dead) Canary (Denninger)
• Malaysia’s Prime Minister Resigns Amid Skyrocketing COVID-19 Cases
• The Authoritarian Takeover of Australia (Spiked)
• Growing New Zealand Covid Cluster Linked To Sydney Delta Outbreak (G.)
• Vaccine Mandate Protest Letter (Barnes Law)
• One Of The Most Dangerous, Unpredictable Times In Modern History (BDW)
• My Heart Is Broken by Biden’s Afghanistan Failure (Michael Flynn)
• Biden’s Polling Takes Massive Hit Following Collapse Of Afghanistan (JTN)
• Kamala Harris Is The Most Unpopular Vice President In 50 Years (DW)
• Biden To Increase Food Stamp Benefits By 25%, Largest Hike In History (ZH)
• US Gov’t Tells Americans In Afghanistan It ‘Can’t Guarantee’ Their Safety (DW)
• Every American Stuck In Afghanistan To Receive A Mail-In Ballot (BBee)

 

 

DATA SHOWS COVID VARIANTS BEGAN AFTER VACCINATIONS STARTED

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..you keep its host alive with a vaccine, then it can transmit and spread in the world. So it’s got an evolutionary future, which it didn’t have before.”

• Leaky Vaccines, Super-spreads, And Variant Acceleration (Gato Malo)

The rule of evolution is simple: make a copy of me and pass it on. Any species still around to notice is very, very good at this. That’s the test and it’s as simple as it is daunting. This evolutionary selector creates pressures and these pressures shape evolution. Useful traits are conserved, traits that work against replication and propagation are selected against. This creates a simple evolutionary gradient for viruses: become more contagious, spread further, infect more hosts. Many viruses and bacteria are incredibly good at this. The good news is that harming the host is maladaptive. It’s like burning down your own house and your car with it. You soon have nowhere to live and no way to move around easily. So the selection process drives viruses away from being deadly. Ebola is a fearsome virus, but poorly evolved. It kills too quickly and spreads too slowly. That’s why outbreaks are small, rare, and (relatively) easy to manage.


People who feel sick stay home, they stop mingling and carrying the virus to where others are. It’s a built in societal and species level trait to mitigate pandemic. But what if you could break that trait? What if you could prevent a carrier from realizing it was infected? Well, then you’d spread virus far more effectively, wouldn’t you? You could do a lot of damage and the natural brake on the spread, harm, and lethality of a viral evolutionary vector would be removed. You’d supercharge a pandemic. This is a long discussed and hypothesized problem with “leaky” vaccines. A leaky vaccine is one that lacks sterilizing immunity. It prevents severe infection and perhaps death, but it does not stop infection and colonization by virus. So, the vaccinated become a carrier but remain unaware of it. This is a massive accelerator of disease spread and possibly/probably of overall fatality rates. You can see discussion here: (from 2015)

This is another example of “science we tossed out the window this year” and is exactly the sort of thing the fda should have been laser focused on from day one. “But a chicken virus that represents one of the deadliest germs in history breaks from this conventional wisdom, thanks to an inadvertent effect from a vaccine. Chickens vaccinated against Marek’s disease rarely get sick. But the vaccine does not prevent them from spreading Marek’s to unvaccinated birds. “With the hottest strains, every unvaccinated bird dies within 10 days. There is no human virus that is that hot. Ebola, for example, doesn’t kill everything in 10 days. In fact, rather than stop fowl from spreading the virus, the vaccine allows the disease to spread faster and longer than it normally would, a new study finds. The scientists now believe that this vaccine has helped this chicken virus become uniquely virulent.”

Stop for a minute and absorb what this means. By turning the vaccinated into essentially perfect carriers of virus, it transformed them into a set of plague rats to infect the rest. A disease so deadly it would burn itself out rapidly becomes one capable of endemic spread so long at there are more vaccinated carriers around. ““Previously, a hot strain was so nasty, it wiped itself out. Now, you keep its host alive with a vaccine, then it can transmit and spread in the world,” Read said. “So it’s got an evolutionary future, which it didn’t have before.”

Read more …

Even Science Mag. joins in.

“There are so many breakthrough infections that they dominate and most of the hospitalized patients are actually vaccinated..”

• A Grim Warning From Israel: Vaccination Blunts, But Does Not Defeat Delta (SM)

Israel is being closely watched now because it was one of the first countries out of the gate with vaccinations in December 2020 and quickly achieved a degree of population coverage that was the envy of other nations— for a time. The nation of 9.3 million also has a robust public health infrastructure and a population wholly enrolled in HMOs that track them closely, allowing it to produce high-quality, real-world data on how well vaccines are working.

Israel’s HMOs, led by CHS and Maccabi Healthcare Services (MHS), track demographics, comorbidities, and a trove of coronavirus metrics on infections, illnesses, and deaths. “We have rich individual-level data that allows us to provide real-world evidence in near–real time,” Balicer says. [..] Now, the effects of waning immunity may be beginning to show in Israelis vaccinated in early winter; a preprint published last month by scientists at MHS found that protection from COVID-19 infection during June and July dropped in proportion to the length of time since an individual was vaccinated. People vaccinated in January had a 2.26 times greater risk for a breakthrough infection than those vaccinated in April. (Potential confounders include the fact that the very oldest Israelis, with the weakest immune systems, were vaccinated first.)

At the same time, cases in the country, which were scarcely registering at the start of summer, have been doubling every week to 10 days since then, with the Delta variant responsible for most of them. They have now soared to their highest level since mid-February, with hospitalizations and intensive care unit admissions beginning to follow. How much of the current surge is due to waning immunity versus the power of the Delta variant to spread like wildfire is uncertain. What is clear is that “breakthrough” cases are not the rare events the term implies. As of 15 August, 514 Israelis were hospitalized with severe or critical COVID-19, a 31% increase from just 4 days earlier. Of the 514, 59% were fully vaccinated. Of the vaccinated, 87% were 60 or older.

“There are so many breakthrough infections that they dominate and most of the hospitalized patients are actually vaccinated,” says Uri Shalit, a bioinformatician at the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) who has consulted on COVID-19 for the government. “One of the big stories from Israel [is]: ‘Vaccines work, but not well enough.’” “The most frightening thing to the government and the Ministry of Health is the burden on hospitals,” says Dror Mevorach, who cares for COVID-19 patients at Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem and advises the government. At his hospital, he is lining up anesthesiologists and surgeons to spell his medical staff in case they become overwhelmed by a wave like January’s, when COVID-19 patients filled 200 beds. “The staff is exhausted,” he says, and he has restarted a weekly support group for them “to avoid some kind of PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] effect.”

Read more …

The picture is getting painfully clear.

• Delta Spike P681R Mutation Enhances SARS-CoV-2 Fitness Over Alpha Variant (Bx)

SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant has rapidly replaced the Alpha variant around the world. The mechanism that drives this global replacement has not been defined. Here we report that Delta spike mutation P681R plays a key role in the Alpha-to-Delta variant replacement. In a replication competition assay, Delta SARS-CoV-2 efficiently outcompeted the Alpha variant in human lung epithelial cells and primary human airway tissues. Delta SARS-CoV-2 bearing the Alpha-spike glycoprotein replicated less efficiently than the wild-type Delta variant, suggesting the importance of Delta spike in enhancing viral replication. The Delta spike has accumulated mutation P681R located at a furin cleavage site that separates the spike 1 (S1) and S2 subunits.


Reverting the P681R mutation to wild-type P681 significantly reduced the replication of Delta variant, to a level lower than the Alpha variant. Mechanistically, the Delta P681R mutation enhanced the cleavage of the full-length spike to S1 and S2, leading to increased infection via cell surface entry. In contrast, the Alpha spike also has a mutation at the same amino acid (P681H), but the spike cleavage from purified Alpha virions was reduced compared to the Delta spike. Collectively, our results indicate P681R as a key mutation in enhancing Delta variant replication via increased S1/S2 cleavage. Spike mutations that potentially affect furin cleavage efficiency must be closely monitored for future variant surveillance.


Read more …

Saw the article Karl talks about, on an outlet called Wesh(?!). But “Not available in your region”.

• Here’s Your (Dead) Canary (Denninger)

She said, up until two weeks ago, she was able to successfully treat every patient who contracted COVID-19. But, since then, she said seven fully vaccinated patients died from complications, such as pneumonia or stroke, caused by the virus. “They were all fully vaccinated, which was disturbing… For one, I got to the hospital, the initial report, he was doing well. 2 liters of oxygen, sitting up, good saturation rate, crashed in 72 hours and died,” Seemann said. This sort of ridiculous acceleration of disease progression is a screaming safety signal. It strongly implies, but does not prove, that the vaccine turned on the recipient and when later exposed made the progression of disease worse.

This was repeatedly demonstrated in animal testing with the original SARS virus when vaccine development was attempted. It was believed the cause of it was evaded by the current vaccines developed for Covid-19 but the only way to know for sure was to take years of testing to make certain that the ordinary mutational patterns that all viruses undergo did not result in such an outcome down the road. This is one of the many reasons it takes 10+ years to qualify a vaccine; you can’t un-take the shot, and if something like this happens and then you get infected you’re ****ed. She said the vaccine isn’t 100 percent effective and there is a 4 percent chance of failure, but she still recommends it.

She has no evidence to support that these patients had an actual failure to build an effective antibody response. None. Zero. Determining that would require a fairly significant amount of lab and pathology work, which simply can’t be done that fast. These people need to be autopsied and exactly what happened determined. It won’t be done because if it is, and it turns out that they had circulating titers of binding antibodies for Covid in their system then it will be scientifically-irrefutable evidence that there are millions of Americans walking around with ticking bombs in their veins and there is nothing that can be done about it. The reason you don’t short-time vaccine studies, ever, is that THE VIRUS ALWAYS BATS LAST.

Read more …

“..despite a seven-month state of emergency and a lockdown since June to tackle the crisis..”

• Malaysia’s Prime Minister Resigns Amid Skyrocketing COVID-19 Cases

Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin resigned less than 18 months into his tenure Monday, becoming the country’s shortest-ruling leader after conceding that he lost majority support to govern. Science Minister Khairy Jamaluddin wrote on Instagram that “the Cabinet has tendered our resignation” to the king, shortly after Muhyiddin left the palace after meeting the monarch. Deputy Sports Minister Wan Ahmad Fayhsal Wan Ahmad Kamal also thanked Muhyiddin for his service and leadership in a Facebook message. Muhyidddin’s departure will plunge the country into a fresh crisis amid a worsening COVID-19 pandemic. Political leaders have already begun to jostle for the top post, with his deputy Ismail Sabri rallying support to succeed Muhyiddin and keep the government intact.


His resignation comes on the back of mounting public anger over what was widely perceived as his government’s poor handling of the pandemic. Malaysia has one of the world’s highest infection rates and deaths per capita, with daily cases breaching 20,000 this month despite a seven-month state of emergency and a lockdown since June to tackle the crisis. Local media said the national police chief, the Election Commission chairman and the attorney-general were also summoned to the palace Monday before Muhyiddin arrived. Muhyiddin, who chaired a Cabinet meeting at his office earlier Monday, waved at reporters at the palace gate and left 40 minutes later.

Read more …

“Some of us thought: who the bloody hell is this sheila? Not only had I never heard of her, I hadn’t listened to anything anyone like her had said since I’d been kicked out of high school.”

• The Authoritarian Takeover of Australia (Spiked)

People who once thought they’d won the lottery of life by being born in Australia now wake in fright every day to the sudden realisation that they are living in a 21st-century penal colony. The country they once loved has been replaced by something they barely recognise. The restrictions imposed in response to the pandemic are just the start of it. People have been confined to their houses, prevented from going to school or work, denied the freedom to cross state borders even to see a dying relative, and coerced to take a vaccine in order hopefully to regain the freedoms that were once their birthright. Worse, these restrictions are being imposed by authoritarians who have seemingly come from nowhere and now dominate all of Australia’s positions of power, from the government to big business.

These people are unlike any ruling elite Australia has ever known. There were, to be sure, harsh authoritarians in middle levels of power during the nation’s initial 19th-century incarnation as a penal colony, especially at Port Arthur and Norfolk Island. But they never actually ran Australia. [..] Australians have, like the original settlers, never felt the need to explain the ideas on which their nation was founded. They have simply believed their version of Enlightenment truths to be self-evident in the standard of living they enjoyed and the audacious disrespect they showed for other, older cultures. I grew up in a country where such confidence was ubiquitous. A lack of academic achievement was never an impediment as long as you worked hard. Obstacles that were insurmountable to people from other countries were mere challenges to us. And we approached it all with a fatalistic humour that seemed all our own.

New South Wales chief health officer Kerry Chant became world famous recently when a video of her went viral. In it, she said, in the patronising tone of a school matron: ‘It is human nature to engage in conversation with others, to be friendly. Unfortunately, this is not the time to do that. So even if you run into your nextdoor neighbour, in the shopping centre, at Coles, Woolworths or Aldi or any other grocery shop, don’t start up a conversation.’ Some of us thought: who the bloody hell is this sheila? Not only had I never heard of her, I hadn’t listened to anything anyone like her had said since I’d been kicked out of high school. My robust upbringing among ratbags and larrikins in the Australian suburbs had instilled in me an instinctive and entirely rational distrust of anyone who, like her, placed an undue significance on obedience above personal freedom and responsibility. My life has been, and continues to be, all the better for it.

New South Wales residents were surprised to learn they had been paying Chant’s wages since she joined the public service in 1991. Like many of her fellow neo-authoritarians, she had spent her entire career cloistered away from the freely enterprising general population, biding her time until the opportunity arose to exercise the powers none of us knew she had. Now she and her type are all around us, telling us what to do every minute of the day. She is emblematic of Australia’s new elite, from the cops who told me to ‘move on’ when I was enjoying the sunshine by myself at Bondi Beach recently, to prime minister Scott Morrison, who peppers his updates on the latest panicking policies with reminders that ‘we are all in this together’. No, we’re not.

Read more …

Weirdest thing is they stopped vaccinations. Don’t really believe in those, I guess?

But also, what is the idea here? That they can have zero cases? And then? Lock the door?

• Growing New Zealand Covid Cluster Linked To Sydney Delta Outbreak (G.)

New Zealand’s coronavirus cluster has grown to 10, with genomic sequencing linking it to the Delta outbreak that began in Sydney, as the country woke up to day one of a snap lockdown stemming from just one case. The prime minister’s office confirmed three new cases on Wednesday evening. The Covid-19 response minister, Chris Hipkins, told broadcaster RNZ “we’re seeing more cases coming through, I don’t have details of those cases. But yes, I can confirm that we have further positive test results since the press conference today.” He expected more cases to emerge overnight. The country went into a snap level four lockdown – the highest level of restrictions – on Tuesday night, after detecting one case with no obvious links to the border.

New Zealand has not had a level four lockdown in more than a year, and the case is the country’s first instance of Delta transmission in the community. The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, warned on Wednesday that there would be more cases given the activity of those infected and that a link to the border had yet to be established, adding “there is more to be done to help piece together this puzzle”. “Our ability to narrow down that this is a case that is linked to New South Wales outbreak, gives us a lot of leads to chase down as quickly as we can,” she said. The seven community cases are all linked to the 58-year-old man who tested positive on Tuesday. One person is a fully vaccinated nurse at Auckland city hospital and another is a teacher at an Auckland high school.

[..] The vaccine rollout will also continue from Thursday morning, after momentarily being paused. The country’s Covid-19 vaccine rollout has faced scrutiny. As of Monday, 22.9% of the population had been fully vaccinated, with 40% having had at least one dose. The numbers are lower for fully vaccinated Maori (14%) and Pasifika (20%) populations, and New Zealand has the lowest vaccination rate in the OECD, according to the World Health Organization.

Read more …

Attorney f @barnes_law i has put together a warning letter for people to use (free of charge) when their employers force them into getting the jab.

• Vaccine Mandate Protest Letter (Barnes Law)

No authorship claim or copyright asserted…this letter just came to me in a bottle, and I have no idea who might have penned it, nor can I possibly vouch for it, and what you fine folks do with it is entirely in your own hands, as the Gentlemen of the Bar remind me I can proffer no general legal advice in the matter, and must officially disclaim proffering any such advice here…edit and excise as you see fit, amend and append as you desire, and claim authorship or anonymity as may best befit you…as always, as you wish…

Dear Boss,

Compelling any employee to take any current Covid-19 vaccine violates federal and state law, and subjects the employer to substantial liability risk, including liability for any injury the employee may suffer from the vaccine. Many employers have reconsidered issuing such a mandate after more fruitful review with legal counsel, insurance providers, and public opinio n advisors of the desires of employees and the consuming public. Even the Kaiser Foundation warned of the legal risk in this respect. (https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/key-questions-about-covid-19-vaccine-mandates/)

Three key concerns: first, while the vaccine remains unapproved by the FDA and authorized only for emergency use, federal law forbids mandating it, in accordance with the Nuremberg Code of 1947; second, the Americans with Disabilities Act proscribes, punishes and penalizes employers who invasively inquire into their employees’ medical status and then treat those employees differently based on their medical status, as the many AIDS related cases of decades ago fully attest; and third, international law, Constitutional law, specific statutes and the common law of torts all forbid conditioning access to employment upon coerced, invasive medical examinations and treatment, unless the employer can fully provide objective, scientifically validated evidence of the threat from the employee and how no practicable alternative could possible suffice to mitigate such supposed public health threat and still perform the necessary essentials of employment.

At the outset, consider the “problem” being “solved” by vaccination mandates. The previously infected are better protected than the vaccinated, so why aren’t they exempted? Equally, the symptomatic can be self-isolated. Hence, requiring vaccinations only addresses one risk: dangerous or deadly transmission, by the asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic employee, in the employment setting. Yet even government official Mr. Fauci admits, as scientific studies affirm, asymptomatic transmission is exceedingly and “very rare.” Indeed, initial data suggests the vaccinated are just as, or even much more, likely to transmit the virus as the asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic. Hence, the vaccine solves nothing.

Read more …

Twitter thread. Bryan Dean Wright is a former CIA Ops. officer.

• One Of The Most Dangerous, Unpredictable Times In Modern History (BDW)

Former US intelligence colleagues are angry and deeply worried at what has happened in Afghanistan. Here’s what I’m hearing, and why there’s nearly universal belief that America and the world are in for one of the most dangerous, unpredictable times in modern history. Afghanistan has shown the world — enemies & allies alike — that our military & intel assets are largely irrelevant because we can’t deploy them successfully. The blame lays at the feet of multiple Presidents. The Generals. The Spies. The Congress. America’s Elites are trash. China knows it. They will become emboldened, covertly & overtly. War over Taiwan and contested islands in the S. China Sea and E. China Sea is now more likely. Russia will consider similar covert & overt moves, focused on Crimea, & former Soviet satellites. The fear is that China & Russia will act in concert.

Why? America was whipped by a tiny rebel force and couldn’t even retreat properly. Meanwhile, the American people are angry, COVID weary, & divided. If there were ever a time to push American hegemony aside, this is it. If Cold War III grows hot, America will need to quickly build up & work with foreign counterparts. But who will trust America after Afghanistan? Who believes we have the leadership to use our military might well? Who will trust us when we say “We Will Stand With You”? Beyond China/Russia, others will take gambles too. Terror orgs like al-Qa’ida & ISIS are degraded but not dead. Their ideology is very much alive. Iran’s Hizballah — with terror cells throughout the US — may see an opening to create chaos too. Meanwhile, the disaster inside Afghanistan is only just beginning.

The Taliban will launch a terror campaign against American collaborators. The pictures will shock the conscience of the world, further degrading American moral authority. Biden & Co will struggle to respond. There’s also the nightmare of tactical weaponry now awash in Afghanistan, in the hands of the Taliban and — soon — on the global black market. These arms will fuel chaos around the world for decades. The Pentagon has no idea where this stuff is and no plans to destroy it. Finally, if Afghani refugees pour into the US, there are profound implications for security, culture, the economy, & politics. Are they properly vetted? Do they hold Western / tolerant values re: women, gays? Do they bring skills / education? Which party will they support?

The existential problem is that America needs good leadership to right its ship but there is none. Our federal bench is weak. Biden is a corrupt old man. Impeachment is a long shot; VP Harris is an unpopular paperweight. The Legislature is a feckless cabal of empty suits. Leadership could come from a state Governor, it’s true, but not soon enough. The above threats by China, Russia, & Co will metastasize well before the 2024 elections, and even a heroic new President will need years to clean things up. Again, our enemies and allies know this. Upshot: There is fear and outrage streaming through former intel officers over the Afghanistan debacle. America is rudderless. And the world now knows it. Grave dangers lie ahead, some predictable, others unimaginable. Keep your loved ones tight. Pray. And vote for change.

Read more …

The military comes to resent Biden, because he squandered all their efforts, and also to avoid being thrown under the bus.

• My Heart Is Broken by Biden’s Afghanistan Failure (Michael Flynn)

My heart breaks as I see the Afghan people flood the Kabul airport in the hope of escaping the Taliban. President Biden’s assurances — supposedly based on what he was told by his intelligence community — that the Afghan Armed Forces were fully able to defeat the Taliban proved to be colossally wrong. Americans want to know whether President Biden and Defense Secretary Austin’s military-wide “stand-down” order to root out insufficiently woke “extremists” in the armed forces has caused our Defense Department to ignore what is unfolding in Afghanistan, as well as other real threats to our nation. After Afghanistan, I believe we can no longer rely on neocon senior military leaders, talking heads and politicians.

We have allowed military and civilian lawyers (read: rules of engagement restrictions) to become all-powerful, and many of our generals have been so indecisive and risk-averse that they are acting as little more than career-seeking politicians. We have been trained at participating in wars but untrained at winning wars since WWII. Afganistan is a tragic situation, much like the Kurds in Iraq, but at least President Trump drove up our respect internationally, which proves that being tough and smart is better than being tough and stupid. Today I don’t believe America is respected the way we were only a few short months ago. More countries visit China these days than come to the U.S., and China is prepped to recognize the Taliban once they declare the Islamic State — if only to embarrass us.

Seeing our defeat, my sense is Taiwan is having some incredibly uncomfortable internal discussions — as are a lot of U.S. allies in Europe. I also believe China is doing a lot of wargaming of costs and benefits with respect to future moves in the South China Sea and Europe. America is now in a fully engaged information war. Soon it may be worse. I pray our senior military leadership is intensely planning all options; the best plan offers the most options at the last possible moment. Trust me, our enemies are not waiting. They plan and they don’t care about stupid mask policies or fake insurrection show trials. Our enemies will be working on the next three vulnerabilities we haven’t even thought about. I believe Russia and China have a clear-eyed understanding of our corrupt political leadership that they and many other nations no longer respect or fear. America will come back soon, but it will come at a cost.

Read more …

46% approve? Of what?

• Biden’s Polling Takes Massive Hit Following Collapse Of Afghanistan (JTN)

According to several new polls, President Biden is in trouble following the collapse of the Afghan government as U.S. and western troops withdrew from the troubled country after 20 years. A Rasmussen Reports poll illustrates the president’s approval index is currently 17 points down from where he started in January – the lowest it’s been since he took office. A total of 46% of Americans approve of Biden’s performance while 53% disapprove – also the highest that number has been. A new report from Convention of States Action in conjunction with the Trafalgar group shows that 69.3% of Americans disapprove of the president’s handling of military operations – a supermajority of the population. Just 23.1% approve, and 7.5% have no opinion.


Even among Democrats, 48.2% disapprove, compared to just 39.8% who approve of Biden’s Afghan strategy. Among GOP voters a stunning majority at 88.8% disapprove, while just 7.1% of Biden’s actions. Numbers for political independents tilt closer to GOP figures, with a total of 74.8% disapproving of the handling of military operations, and 19.8% giving a nod of approval. Democrats in Congress are speaking out against the actions of the president, and though National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is set to brief the press corp today alongside Jen Psaki, none of Biden’s military leaders appeared alongside the Commander-in-Chief yesterday, as he deflected blame for the Afghan collapse during a brief speech.

Read more …

I had to look this up, but sure, maybe Spiro Agnew was at one point less popular than Kamala. Close call no doubt.

• Kamala Harris Is The Most Unpopular Vice President In 50 Years (DW)

Vice President Kamala Harris has only been in office for six months, but she is already the most unpopular vice president since at least the 1970s, according to recent polls. The Los Angeles Times on Monday reported that as of July 27, “45% of registered voters had a favorable opinion of Harris and 48% had an unfavorable opinion — a net rating of -3 percentage points, according to a Times average.” The most recent YouGov tracking poll shows that Harris’ unfavorability rating has hit 49%, while her favorability rating sits at just 45%. Harris’ unpopularity is worse than former Vice President Mike Pence’s was six months into his tenure, according to The Telegraph.


The outlet reported that around this same time in 2017, Pence’s unfavorability rating sat at 41.9%, while his favorability rating was 42.1%. Pence may have been helped by a massive media focus on then-President Donald Trump and false accusations that he was a Russian agent who colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. During the Biden administration, much more focus has been on Harris since she’s the first black female vice president. President Joe Biden, however, has put her in charge of some nearly impossible tasks, including handling the situation on the southern border. As the Times reported, Harris’ approval ratings started to decline after she was assigned the task, though Biden also received a small decline in job approval.

Read more …

Buying votes.

• Biden To Increase Food Stamp Benefits By 25%, Largest Hike In History (ZH)

Having solved domestic problems like inflation and foreign problems like the complete and total collapse of Afghanistan in minutes after the U.S. withdrew from the country, President Biden is now focused on offering the largest long-term increase in food stamp benefits in the program’s history. The program adds “billions of dollars in costs” to the government, Bloomberg noted in a writeup this weekend. But, in Biden’s defense, what are dollars anymore, after all? Benefits are set to rise more than 25% from pre-pandemic levels for some 42 million people enrolled in the program. Average monthly benefits will rise $36 per person, from $121, according to the report.


Yet despite the rise, there are still “anti-hunger advocates” that believe it isn’t enough. The Agriculture Department is responsible for the hike in benefits – which can be done without congressional approval – but adjusting the estimated costs of food. The USDA makes a “shopping list” to determine benefits which, when updated, can adjust the amount of benefits issued to recipients. The basket of food items used for the list was started in 1961 and then updated in 1975. Its latest review was in 2006. Benefits were set to drop prior to the planned update as a result of a September 30 expiration of a 15% boost in pandemic relief. Even with the boost, the USDA budget for a family of four amounts to about $22 in food per day. As Bloomberg notes, food stamps used to be bipartisan common ground, but have since “evolved into a partisan flashpoint”. Biden’s plans stand at odds with how President Trump attempted to limit eligibility for the aid. Trump’s attempts were overturned by courts.

Read more …

Most popular president.

• US Gov’t Tells Americans In Afghanistan It ‘Can’t Guarantee’ Their Safety (DW)

President Joe Biden’s administration told American citizens trapped in Afghanistan that the administration cannot guarantee their safety if they travel to the airport in Kabul to be evacuated. The news comes as thousands of American citizens remained trapped as Taliban terrorists have now taken control of the country. The Biden administration sent the following message to Americans trapped in Afghanistan: “To American Citizens, Thank you for registering your request to be evacuated from Afghanistan. The U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan has confirmed that an undefined number of U.S. government provided flights will begin soon. Please make your way to Hamid Karzai International Airport at this time. PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT CANNOT GUARANTEE YOUR SECURITY AS YOU MAKE THIS TRIP.”

Read more …

“The Air Force will conduct a daring airdrop at night to deliver hundreds of pallets of paper ballots..”

• Every American Stuck In Afghanistan To Receive A Mail-In Ballot (BBee)

Congress passed emergency legislation today to address the thousands of U.S. citizens still trapped in Afghanistan. The new legislation will mobilize the Air Force to drop much-needed absentee ballots for Americans eager to vote in the 2022 election. “Our heart goes out to the helpless Americans still stuck in Taliban-controlled Kabul,” said Senator Chuck Schumer. “We know they are eager to vote for us in the upcoming elections, and we will not rest until they receive the ballots they deserve. To our American friends overseas, help—in the form of easy-to-fill-out ballots—is on the way!” The Air Force will conduct a daring airdrop at night to deliver hundreds of pallets of paper ballots into the waiting hands of American citizens, eager to vote for their favorite Democrat politicians. To make things easy, Democrats have ensured all the ballots will be pre-marked for Democrats.

Read more …

 

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Debt Rattle August 2 2021

Aug 022021
 
 August 2, 2021  Posted by at 9:34 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  146 Responses »


René Magritte Empire of light 1950

 

• Stupid Is Supposed To Hurt (Denninger)
• Only Half Of Israelis Want A Third Covid-19 Vaccine Shot (JPost)
• 233 Staff at 2 San Francisco Hospitals Test Positive in July (NW)
• Pfizer, Moderna, Hike Prices For Covid Jabs By Up To A Quarter For EU (RT)
• Apple Removes Dating App For The Unvaccinated (RT)
• Is Covid-19 On The Run In The UK? (G.)
• Experts Fear Unlocked UK Could Become Incubator For New Covid Variants (CNBC)
• Major Unions Push Back Against Biden’s Vaccine Mandates (ZH)
• Kamala Harris A ‘Historically Unpopular’ VP (RT)
• Keeping Freedom Alive (Craig Murray)

 

 


Fort Mill South Carolina 1902. Smallpox, an actual vaccine.

 

 

The Sake of Freedom

 

 

But can my stupid hurt someone else please?

• Stupid Is Supposed To Hurt (Denninger)

I’m getting reports from all over the place, including on my forum and mailbag. Nurses are walking out en-masse over vaccine mandates in hospitals and other care settings. This of course leads to demand shifting to other places where they haven’t done so (yet), but that’s a problem too because they’re short-staffed as well. This isn’t a big deal — other than wildly increasing wait times — until and unless you have something going on where waiting could kill you, such as a heart attack. You aren’t seeing these events in the news. Guess why? Yeah, that’s why.= Guess where else this is going to happen? “You didn’t want the firemen to show up and put out your house that’s on fire, did you?


Well, better buy more garden hose because in several large cities it’s been made clear that they will not comply either. Ditto for Streets/San guys. Oh, you want the garbage hauled away? Too bad so sad.” Stupid is supposed to hurt. It’s going to, especially now that it has been admitted that (1) the CDC lied about “unvaccinated are 98% of deaths” when they knew damn well the jabbed were dying on a vertically-accelerating basis in May, we’re two months further down the road now and (2) the CDC has also admitted that those who get “breakthrough” cases are ending up with equal or higher viral loads than unvaccinated people, which means there is no public health argument for the jabs at all since at best they can only protect you and not others.

Read more …

Back to last night’s discussion:

Yes, they were sold as protecting against infection of both you and those around you. Or no-one would have accepted the term “vaccine”.

“*Only* 59% of respondents said the vaccine protects against infection, 69% said it prevents the spread of the virus and 82% said it protects against developing symptoms.”

And even the most vaccinated country in the world is only at 60%. Try get that to 70%. Good luck. “But it’s our only chance!” No, it’s not. We’re lucky.

• Only Half Of Israelis Want A Third Covid-19 Vaccine Shot (JPost)

Only 52% of Israelis who received two shots of the COVID-19 vaccine said they would take advantage of the opportunity to receive a third shot, according to a survey released Friday by Prof. Michal Grinstein-Weiss, director of the Social Policy Institute (SPI) at Washington University and a visiting professor at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. When looking at those under the age of 60, only 47% said they would take the shot. Among those 60 and older, 67% said they would get the booster. “We decided, ‘yalla,’ [let’s go] even before the Food and Drug Administration [gives emergency approval], and I think the Health Ministry thought there would be more inclination” to get the shot, Grinstein-Weiss said. “But there is a big drop in the number of people who are interested in vaccinating. It’s surprising, but there is not a real desire for a third vaccination.”

Israel opened up third shots to people over the age of 60 last week. Several thousand people were inoculated on Friday and, despite what the survey shows, already more than 40,000 elderly have signed up to get the jab this coming week. Surveys taken before the COVID vaccine came to the country showed there would be high degree of vaccine hesitancy among the public, but Israel became the quickest country in the world to vaccinate the majority of its people. [..] The survey also asked whether or not parents would give their younger children between the ages of five and 11 a vaccination if it became available and the majority (54%) said they would not. Only 23% said they would vaccinate, while 23% said they were wavering. When broken down between parents who vaccinated themselves versus those who didn’t, no parents who did not receive the vaccine said they would vaccinate their children, while only 27% of those vaccinated said they would.

[..] When it comes to children, parents are most concerned that health officials still do not know the long-term impact of the vaccine. To date, only 35% of people under the age of 20 are fully vaccinated versus 90% of those over the age of 60. However, the survey also found that as the Delta variant spreads across the country, including reinfecting a high percentage of vaccinated individuals, more people believe that the vaccine does not work. Only 59% of respondents said the vaccine protects against infection, 69% said it prevents the spread of the virus and 82% said it protects against developing symptoms. Around 53% of all new cases are people who were fully vaccinated, according to the Health Ministry.

Read more …

Twist and turn all you want, but it’s the vaccinated.

• 233 Staff at 2 San Francisco Hospitals Test Positive in July (NW)

At least 233 staff members at two major San Francisco hospitals, most of them fully vaccinated, tested positive for the coronavirus this month, and most, according to a hospital official, involved the highly contagious Delta variant. Some of the cases were asymptomatic, most involved mild to moderate symptoms and only two required hospitalization, officials said. The infections were determined to be Delta-related because most samples in San Francisco were tested for the variant, which is now dominant in the city. About 75 to 80 percent of the more than 50 staff members infected at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital were fully vaccinated, Dr. Lukejohn Day, the hospital’s chief medical officer, said in an interview on Saturday. The University of California, San Francisco Medical Center said in a statement issued on Friday that 153 of its 183 infected staff members had been fully vaccinated.

The statement from the U.C.S.F. Medical Center said that two of the infected staff members required hospitalization. None of the infected staff members at San Francisco General have been hospitalized and most had mild to moderate symptoms, Dr. Day said. The asymptomatic cases were discovered through contact tracing. Without vaccinations, Dr. Day said, the hospitalization rate would be much worse. “We’re concerned right now that we’re on the rise of a surge here in San Francisco and the Bay Area,” Dr. Day said. “But what we’re seeing is very much what the data from the vaccines showed us: You can still get Covid, potentially. But if you do get it, it’s not severe at all.”

On July 11, San Francisco ordered that workers in high-risk workplaces, including hospitals, be vaccinated by Sept. 15. The U.C.S.F. statement said that the hospital was “doubling down on our efforts to protect our staff. This includes requiring all employees and trainees to comply with the new UC-systemwide Covid-19 vaccination mandate, with limited exceptions for medical or religious exemptions.” Staff members at both hospitals have continued to wear personal protective equipment, Dr. Day said. But the number of staff infections reported in July is about as many as during the peak of the winter surge. “We’re nervous that we could potentially exceed it,” Dr. Day said.

Read more …

Before they all find out these things don’t work, might as well squeeze out what we can.

• Pfizer, Moderna, Hike Prices For Covid Jabs By Up To A Quarter For EU (RT)

Pfizer has reportedly raised the price of its Covid vaccine dose by a quarter, with Moderna also ramping up the price in its latest deal with the European Union. The two are making tens of billions of dollars in pandemic profits. According to the Financial Times, which has seen contracts between the two pharmaceutical companies and the EU, Pfizer’s latest price for one vaccine dose was €19.50, or around $23 – up by four euro from the previous unit price of €15.50 euro. Meanwhile, Moderna’s latest price is around €21.50 ($25.50) per dose, up from the previous price of €19 ($22.60). Despite this, the Moderna price is still lower than previously expected – $28.50 – because of the EU purchasing more doses.


Pfizer and Moderna – which earn a profit from the vaccines, unlike AstraZeneca, which is sold at cost – have pulled in tens of billions of dollars from the vaccines, with Pfizer forecasting $33.5 billion in revenue from its doses in this year alone. The forecast is up $7.5 billion from its previous prediction in the last quarter. Moderna, though behind Pfizer in sales, is forecasting $19.2 billion in Covid-19 vaccine revenue for 2021. Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine still hasn’t been approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) despite having been registered in 69 of the world’s countries to date, including EU members Hungary and Slovakia.

Read more …

No worrries, Big Brother shall protect you.

• Apple Removes Dating App For The Unvaccinated (RT)

Apple has removed the dating app Unjected, marketed as a “safe space” for unvaccinated Americans, from its store, saying it “inappropriately refers to the Covid-19 pandemic.” The app’s developers say this amounts to censorship. Unjected describes itself as a “platform for like-minded humans that support medical autonomy.” The dating app has been pitched as a ‘safe space’ of sorts for unvaccinated Americans looking to date without the pressure of being or not being inoculated against Covid-19. Critics, however, have viewed the app as a growing social-media platform for anti-vaxxers and a hotspot of Covid misinformation. After the app was removed from Apple on Saturday, the company blasted the move as “censorship.”

“Apparently, we’re considered ‘too much’ for sharing our medical autonomy and freedom of choice,” the company said in a Saturday statement posted to Instagram. The app remains on the Google Play store, but they acknowledge that the move by Apple may mean a website may be Unjected’s best option moving forward so that they are not reliant on app stores. Other dating apps such as Tinder and Bumble have introduced features to encourage vaccinations, making Unjected stand out even more after launching in May. But the boiling point for the platforms was reached after Unjected added a social feature that allowed more general postings. It was flagged by Google after Unjected’s moderators were accused of not doing enough to police misinformation on Covid-19 and the vaccines available.

In response to Google’s concerns, the social feed was removed, though co-founder Shelby Thompson wants to soon reintroduce it and the flagged posts. “We’ve had to walk a censorship tightrope,” she said, according to Bloomberg News, which first reported Apple removed Unjected on Saturday after being contacted by a reporter about the app. The app also includes lists of businesses that disagree with vaccine mandates. Apple has already had issues with Unjected, initially denying approval for the app during its initial review process. Changes had to be made for it to get approval to be in compliance with the company’s strict policy on Covid-19 “misinformation,” but a spokesperson for Apple said updates to the app, as well as statements made to its thousands of users, have brought it back out of compliance.

Read more …

That can’t be! How are we going to sell our clickbait?

• Is Covid-19 On The Run In The UK? (G.)

The fact that we are a year and a half into the pandemic and are still being wrongfooted by Covid-19 may seem surprising. After all, in that time, we have developed powerful vaccines to protect against it and have pinpointed critically important drugs to treat patients. Science has worked wonders. Nevertheless, researchers are still very unsure about how Covid-19 will progress in the UK in the coming months. The statistics have certainly been startling. First, case numbers rocketed at the beginning of July. Then they reversed and began to fall, leaving statisticians and scientists struggling to make sense of the fluctuating figures. For good measure, a host of conflicting factors has been put forward to explain Covid case numbers.

Has the opening up of society on 19 July had a major impact? Did Euro 2020 propel the virus through the homes and pubs of England? Could the UK be approaching herd immunity? And what impact have the school holidays had on the progress of the disease? Untangling these factors, as well as understanding the exact impact vaccines have had on society, has now become a complex, urgent business. “It will tell us just how bad things are likely to get when society really opens up in September and October and as winter approaches,” said Edmunds. There is clear agreement on one factor, however. All the evidence indicates that vaccines are now playing a pivotal role in controlling the disease. Had the government completely opened society on an unprotected populace, daily death tolls would by now have soared into their thousands. But just how far has our vaccine protection reached?

It is a crucial question, whose answer will determine just how severe will be the return of Covid-19 in the autumn as schools reopen, the weather chills and people head indoors. A key factor is the degree to which the country has achieved herd immunity. In other words, will we have reached the point where so many people have been either infected or vaccinated – and therefore possess some immunity to the disease – that viral transmission falls or even stops? “You can run some very simple models to see if the case numbers that we saw earlier this month are consistent with effective herd immunity,” said Prof Mark Woolhouse of Edinburgh University. “And in my view the answer is, yes, it is. There are some big caveats but the bottom line is that those figures are consistent with the impact of herd immunity.”

Read more …

Amid all the fear, new infections were down 37% in one week. Like a deflating puffed-up balloon.

• Experts Fear Unlocked UK Could Become Incubator For New Covid Variants (CNBC)

England’s relaxation of Covid-19 restrictions is risking the emergence of new, potentially more dangerous variants of the virus, scientists have warned. England lifted most of it last remaining restrictions on July 19, including mandatory mask-wearing and social distancing. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland still have some restrictions in place. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has previously described the easing of restrictions as “irreversible.” However, the reopening policy has been publicly criticized by a consortium of more than 1,200 scientists from around the world. One concern is around the possible consequences of unlocking society amid high infection rates and a partially vaccinated population, and how unrestricted mixing under those circumstances could shape the way the virus evolves.

“If I were to design a massive experiment to create a more dangerous virus, one that is capable of blasting through our vaccines, I would do what the U.K. is proposing to do,” Michael Haseltine, a U.S. virologist and chair and president of ACCESS Health International, told news show Good Morning Britain on so-called “Freedom Day”. “Half the population vaccinated in the midst of a rampant pandemic, which would allow the virus to learn how to avoid our vaccines. That’s what I would do, and the rest of the world is justifiably concerned.” Each time a person is infected with Covid-19, they go from having a few copies of the virus to hundreds of thousands or even tens of millions of copies in their system. When the virus makes a copy of itself, there’s a chance it might make a mistake in the new copy that could inadvertently give the virus an advantage.

“You’re rolling the dice every time someone’s infected,” Charlotte Houldcroft, a scientist working on virus evolution at the University of Cambridge, told CNBC via telephone. “In a big population with lots of infections going on, you’re just rolling the dice more often — any population with lots of people infected at once is a worry, which is obviously why a lot of the rest of the world is watching the U.K.” During the week ending July 29, 204,669 people tested positive for Covid-19 in the U.K., down 37% from the previous week.

Read more …

US mandates is/are asking for disaster.

• Major Unions Push Back Against Biden’s Vaccine Mandates (ZH)

Last week, the Biden administration announced sweeping vaccine requirements for federal workers (except, oddly, postal workers). The day before, the nation’s biggest union boss, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, parroted Biden’s push to vaccinate, and said that the union organization supports vaccine mandates. As it turns out, much like in California – not all unions are on board. While labor groups representing federal workers have urged their members to get the jab, most of the leading public sector unions either oppose vaccine mandates or say that it must be negotiated first, according to The Hill. Groups representing educators, postal workers, law enforcement officers, Treasury Department personnel and other government employees expressed unease about the vaccine requirement this week.

Only a few public sector unions outright endorsed the measure. “We expect that the particulars of any changes to working conditions, including those related to COVID-19 vaccines and associated protocols, be properly negotiated with our bargaining units prior to implementation,” said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents nearly 700,000 workers. Meanwhile, National Treasury Employees Union President Tony Reardon says that his group has “a lot of questions about how this policy will be implemented and how employee rights and privacy will be protected.” And in yet another example, Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association President Larry Cosme said in a statement that mandating vaccinations “is not the American way and is a clear civil rights violation no matter how proponents may seek to justify it.”

According to the report, most public sector unions sounding the alarm over Biden’s vaccine mandates previously supported most aspects of his policy. “In order for everyone to feel safe and welcome in their workplaces, vaccinations must be negotiated between employers and workers, not coerced,” said American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten earlier this week. And the American Postal Workers Union said “it is not the role of the federal government to mandate vaccinations for the employees we represent,” adding that any new rules for its workers would need to be run past union leaders.

Read more …

Put her in charge of the mandates.

• Kamala Harris A ‘Historically Unpopular’ VP (RT)

Kamala Harris has become the most unpopular vice president six months into an administration in years, according to recent unfavorable polling for the former senator. Harris found her future hopes of ever becoming president a point of mockery over the weekend as critics jumped on a report indicating that recent polling shows she has become the least popular vice president six months into an administration since the 1970s. According to a report from the Telegraph, Democrat strategists have internal worries about the controversial politician, describing her polling as “underwater” at this point. Two recent polls cited by the report show approval ratings of 46% in both, but disapproval ratings of 47% and 48%.

Harris is also struggling with support among significant and influential voting groups, such as young people and Hispanics. An Economist/YouGov poll showed only 36% of respondents between the ages of 18-29 viewed Harris “favorably.” In a recent aggregate put together by RealClearPolitics, 46% also said they viewed Harris unfavorably, three points higher than Biden at the same time. In a poll posted by the Telegraph on Twitter in a thread regarding worries about Harris’ unfavorable view among much of the public, over 50% of over 40,000 voters – as of this writing – said Harris is doing a “bad job.” Approximately 20% said she is doing a “good job,” and another 27% were “not sure.”

Harris has made some noticeable stumbles as vice president. She was heavily criticized for continually avoiding the southern border when put in charge of historic levels of migrants being detained there. When questioned why she hadn’t visited months after being named a leader on the crisis by Biden, Harris responded by saying she also hadn’t visited Europe yet. Harris is still being handed opportunities to succeed as she will soon become the first US vice president to visit Vietnam next month. Harris’ polling and reports on Democrats’ concerns about the California senator who once attempted to run for president and even clashed with Biden made the vice president a point of mockery for critics.

“You have the media on your side and basically nothing to do except for optics and you just can’t do it. It’s amazing,” Federalist editor Christopher Bedford tweeted. “So weird that making her Border Tsar didn’t work,” Texas Monthly editor Christopher Hooks added.

Read more …

Craig Murray reported to prison yesterday. Who in the UK stands up for him?

• Keeping Freedom Alive (Craig Murray)

I want to make one or two points for you to ponder while I am in jail. This is the last post until about Christmas; we are not legally able to post anything while I am imprisoned. But the Justice for Craig Murray Campaign website is now up and running and will start to have more content shortly. Fora and comments here are planned to stay open. I hope that one possible good effect of my imprisonment might be to coalesce opposition to the imminent abolition of jury trials in sexual assault cases by the Scottish Government, a plan for which Lady Dorrian – who wears far too many hats in all this – is front and centre. We will then have a situation where, as established by my imprisonment, no information at all on the defence case may be published in case it contributes to “jigsaw identification”, and where conviction will rest purely on the view of the judge.

That is plainly not “open justice”, it is not justice at all. And it is even worse than that, because the openly stated aim of abolishing juries is to increase conviction rates. So people will have their lives decided not by a jury of their peers, but by a judge who is acting under specific instruction to increase conviction rates. It is often noted that conviction rates in rape trials are too low, and that is true. But have you ever heard this side of the argument? In Uzbekistan under the Karimov dictatorship, when I served there, conviction rates in rape trials were 100%. In fact very high conviction rates are a standard feature of all highly authoritarian regimes worldwide, because if the state prosecutes you then the state gets what it wants. The wishes of the state in such systems vastly outweigh the liberty of the individual.

My point is simply this. You cannot judge the validity of a system simply by high conviction rates. What we want is a system where the innocent are innocent and the guilty found guilty; not where an arbitrary conviction target is met. The answer to the low conviction rates in sexual assault trials is not simple. Really serious increases in resources for timely collection of evidence, for police training and specialist units, for medical services, for victim support, all have a part to play. But that needs a lot of money and thought. Just abolishing juries and telling judges you want them to convict is of course free, or even a saving.

Read more …

 

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Debt Rattle July 18 2021

Jul 182021
 
 July 18, 2021  Posted by at 9:01 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  83 Responses »


Pablo Picasso The blue room 1901

 

• Infections in Vaccinated Overtake Those in Unvaccinated For the First Time (LDS)
• British Ministers Decide Against Mass Vaccination For Teens (R.)
• The CDC Owes Parents Better Messaging on the Vaccine for Kids (Wired)
• Fauci: US Might ‘Still Have Polio’ If Media Back Then Opposed Vaccine (Y!)
• Biden Denounces Big Tech as “Killing People” By Not Censoring Speech (Turley)
• Sheriff In California Won’t Enforce Mask Mandate: ‘Not Backed By Science’ (RT)
• Game Postponed After 6 New York Yankees Test Positive For Covid-19 (CNN)
• Kamala’s Husband Spreads Misinformation (ZH)
• US-Backed Tech Restores Internet To More Than 1 Million Cubans (ZH)
• Does Japan Control The Trigger For US Nuclear War On China? (Ritter)

 

 

`

 

 

There is never a single source of truth. Other than in dictatorships.

 

 

 

 

At what point can this no longer be ignored?

• Infections in Vaccinated Overtake Those in Unvaccinated For the First Time (LDS)

Health Secretary Sajid Javid has tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, despite being vaccinated – and he is far from alone. The latest ZOE data shows that, as of July 12th, infections in the vaccinated (with at least one dose) in the U.K. now outnumber those in the unvaccinated for the first time, as the former continue to surge while the latter plummet (see above). (Note that 68% of the population has had at least one vaccine dose, so there are still at this stage disproportionately more new infections in the unvaccinated, though on current trends that may soon change.) At what point will the Government accept that these vaccines have limited efficacy in preventing infection and transmission, and thus the whole rationale of being vaccinated to protect others – vaccine passports, compulsory vaccination, and so on – is suspect?

The above graph was in yesterday’s report, so I downloaded today’s report (you can get it by signing up to the app and reporting your symptoms) to get the new update. I was dismayed to find the graph was gone. At the bottom, a note explains: Removed incidence graph by vaccination status from the report as there are very few unvaccinated users in the infection survey, the Confidence Intervals are very wide and the trend for unvaccinated people is no longer representative. Which I would say is very convenient, just as infections in the vaccinated became the majority. Perhaps ZOE should try to recruit some more unvaccinated people for its survey, so it can continue to report on this as well as have a control group for its vaccine data? That would seem the scientific thing to do, rather than just stop reporting it because it is suddenly “no longer representative”.

It’s doubly odd because Tim Spector, lead scientist on the ZOE app, made the decline among the unvaccinated a feature of his video this week. So the realisation that the trend is “no longer representative” appears to have been rather sudden, even invalidating the contents of a ZOE ‘data release‘ two days earlier.

Read more …

Rare light.

• British Ministers Decide Against Mass Vaccination For Teens (R.)

Britain has opted against mass COVID-19 vaccinations for all children and teenagers, with ministers instead preparing to offer doses to vulnerable 12 to 15-year-olds and those about to turn 18, the Telegraph newspaper reported late on Saturday. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) is believed to have advised ministers against the rollout of vaccines to all children until further evidence on the risks is available, the report added. Under guidance the newspaper said are due to be issued on Monday, vaccine doses will be offered to children between 12 and 15 who are deemed vulnerable to COVID-19 or who live with adults who are immunosuppressed or otherwise vulnerable to the virus.


They will also now be offered to all 17-year-olds within three months of their 18th birthday, according to The Telegraph, which reported that the committee would keep the possibility of vaccinating all children “under review.” In response to the report, Britain’s Health Department said that “no decisions have been made by ministers on whether people aged 12 to 17 should be routinely offered COVID-19 vaccines.” Britain on Saturday reported 54,674 new COVID-19 cases, a rise on the 51,870 new cases reported on the previous day to post a fresh highest daily total in six months.

Read more …

Yeah: Don’t!

• The CDC Owes Parents Better Messaging on the Vaccine for Kids (Wired)

On June 23, an advisory committee to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention met to discuss, among other topics, vaccine-related cases of myocarditis, which have hospitalized hundreds of adolescents. Evidence of a correlation between the condition, an inflammation of the heart muscle, and the vaccines had been mounting for months. Numerous countries had altered or withheld recommendations for pediatric vaccination, with some citing an ambiguous risk-benefit. One day after the committee meeting, however, CDC director Rochelle Walensky went on TV and calmly reassured viewers that there was nothing to worry about: Vaccinating kids age 12 and up, at the full dosage and same schedule as adults, should continue with alacrity.

Walensky cited a string of statistics that showed “the benefits of vaccination far outweigh any harm.” But some epidemiologists, public health experts, pediatricians, cardiologists, and other scientists dispute the CDC’s numbers, characterizations, and conclusion. The agency, they variously contend, is both exaggerating the risks of Covid-19 to young people and underplaying the potential risks of the vaccine to them. Much data that would support the CDC’s declarations are either unknown, unrevealed, or far messier than the agency and its director portray. And the data that are known and clear have been projected through a specific lens with blunt certainty. The absolute risk of the vaccine still appears to be extremely small for young people but, on balance, when the data are seen through a different frame, the relative individual risk from vaccination, particularly for healthy young males, may be higher than it is to not be vaccinated at this time.

There is no debate among most experts critical of the CDC about the value of vaccines on a societal level to help usher in the end of the pandemic, which is the ultimate goal of the vaccine. Rather, the matter at hand is the CDC’s messaging, which fails to help parents and children make properly informed decisions about the vaccines on an individual level. As Stefan Baral, an epidemiologist and physician at Johns Hopkins, recently tweeted, “One can be both very pro-Covid-19 vaccination and also be worried about the individual risk:benefit profile of Covid-19 vaccines in <16 yo.”

First, the link between the mRNA vaccines and myocarditis, particularly in young males, is sufficiently clear that the FDA revised its vaccine fact sheets to include a warning about it. As of June 11 (the latest date most data were collected for the meeting), 128 cases within seven days of the second dose had been reported in boys aged 12 to 17, when the CDC’s expected number for that same population was zero to four cases. VAERS, the reporting database for vaccine-related adverse events that these statistics are drawn from, has limitations. Some portion of the events reported may be unrelated to the vaccines. But the differential between expected and observed cases within certain cohorts is the statistical equivalent of a blaring siren. (A detailed analysis in Israel estimated the incidence of myocarditis following vaccination in young males to be around one in 5,000, equating to 200 cases per million.)

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It took Salk 7 years to get a real vaccine, which you still don’t have, and maybe never will. Nuff said. How did this crazed loose cannon become the most trusted voice, and what does that tell us about America?

• Fauci: US Might ‘Still Have Polio’ If Media Back Then Opposed Vaccine (Y!)

Top US scientist Anthony Fauci on Saturday blasted commentators who sound an anti-vaccination theme, saying America might still be battling smallpox and polio if today’s kind of misinformation existed back then. The comments from the country’s leading infectious disease expert reflected mounting frustration over the sharp slowdown in the Covid-19 vaccination rate in the United States, even as the disease has been surging in states with low rates. It also came days after President Joe Biden expressed his own visible frustration, saying social media that carry widely heard misinformation about vaccines are “killing people.”


Fauci was responding to a CNN interviewer who asked if he thought “we could have defeated the measles or eradicated polio if you had Fox News, night after night, warning people about these vaccine issues that are just bunk.” Fauci said: “We probably would still have smallpox and we probably would still have polio … if we had the kind of false information that’s being spread.” Initial vaccine skepticism in many areas has increasingly evolved into outright hostility, a message magnified by baseless conspiracy theories regularly aired on Fox and other conservative networks. “Maybe it doesn’t work and they’re simply not telling you that,” Tucker Carlson, one of Fox’s most popular commentators, said recently.

Read more …

“Biden is accusing these companies of actually killing people for refusing even more extensive censorship of speech. The statement equates free speech with death itself.”

• Biden Denounces Big Tech as “Killing People” By Not Censoring Speech (Turley)

President Joe Biden slammed Big Tech companies this week for “killing people” by failing to engage in even greater censorship of free speech on issues related to the pandemic. It was a surprising condemnation of companies who have been loyal allies of Biden, including killing stories embarrassing to his family like the Hunter Biden laptop scandal before the election. It also has censored stories questioning his victory in 2020. Nevertheless, Biden denounced the range of uncensored free speech as the cause of death for many — the ultimate anti-free speech trope for those seeking to convince people to embrace their own censorship. Biden was asked by a reporter what his message was to “platforms like Facebook” on the subject of “COVID misinformation.”

He responded “They’re killing people. The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and they’re killing people.” This comes as these companies have been criticized for censoring debates over the origin or treatment of Covid-19. For a year, Big Tech has been censoring those who wanted to discuss the origins of pandemic. It was not until Biden admitted that the virus may have originated in the Wuhan lab that social media suddenly changed its position. Facebook only recently announced that people on its platform will be able to discuss the origins of Covid-19 after censoring any such discussion. The White House recently admitted that it was flagging “misinformation” for censorship by companies like Facebook. Moreover, White House press secretary Jen Psaki has called for people to be banned from all social media if any one company bans them.

Biden is accusing these companies of actually killing people for refusing even more extensive censorship of speech. The statement equates free speech with death itself. We have seen this type of reckless rhetoric in other areas where disagreement with a policy or proposal is treated as de facto racism or hate speech. That was the case recently with the NAACP official who denounced those of opposing what is commonly referred to as critical race theory lessons as haters of a long litany of groups from the disabled to children to “help people.” This was followed by the chilling words “Let them die.”

Rather than seek to convince the skeptical, Biden wants to silence them and use these companies to control what is read and discussed about the pandemic. What is chilling is the degree to which reporters and academics have supported the massive censorship system in the United States. However, that system is clearly not (to use Sen. Blumenthal’s words) “robust enough” for Biden who wants these companies to carry out a more complete censorship of opposing views.

Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH about censorship

Read more …

A sheriff who can read. They didn’t count on that. How much did John Wayne ever read when he played one?

• Sheriff In California Won’t Enforce Mask Mandate: ‘Not Backed By Science’ (RT)

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva has made waves and caused outrage by refusing to enforce the city’s reinstated mask policy, saying the decision is “not backed by science.” Los Angeles County health officials shocked many this week when they announced that their mask mandate would be returning. Similar to the restriction in place before the county began reopening last month, residents have been told to wear masks in indoor settings and large gatherings, regardless of one’s vaccination status. County officials reinstated the mask mandate due to new Covid-19 daily cases reaching over 1,000 every day for a week. Health officials also cited the Delta variant as a reason why people “need to reduce our risk of infection and our risk for potentially infecting others.”


Villanueva, who is up for reelection next year, was quick to respond to the mandate, and made it clear that he and his officers would have no part in helping the county enforce the new rule. “Forcing the vaccinated and those who already contracted COVID-19 to wear masks indoors is not backed by science and contradicts the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines,” he said in a statement. The “underfunded” department, the sheriff added, will not be using their “limited resources” to make sure people are in compliance, though he made sure to say they “have the authority” to enforce if they wanted to. The sheriff is asking for “voluntary compliance” from residents instead.

Read more …

All fully vaccinated.

• Game Postponed After 6 New York Yankees Test Positive For Covid-19 (CNN)

Six players on the New York Yankees have tested positive for Covid-19, general manager Brian Cashman told reporters Thursday, in the second instance this year of breakthrough cases occurring among some members of the baseball team. “We have three positives, and we have three pending that we’ve had rapid tests on,” Cashman said, saying the three positive rapid tests are being confirmed with additional lab work. The players with confirmed positive tests are pitchers Jonathan Loaisiga, Nestor Cortes Jr. and Wandy Peralta, according to the team. The three unnamed players have results pending.


The three named players were all vaccinated, according to the team. Two of the players received Johnson & Johnson vaccines and the other was from either Pfizer or Moderna, Cashman says. The pitchers are “doing well thus far,” Cashman said, while he declined to comment on the unnamed players until final confirmation of their positive tests are received by the team. Earlier this season, eight positive tests were recorded among coaching and travel staff, all of whom had previously taken the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Of the team members who tested positive, only one showed mild symptoms and his condition improved, the Yankees said.

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He’s as crazy as she is.

• Kamala’s Husband Spreads Misinformation (ZH)

Emhoff spoke to the 44-year-old man as if he was a toddler at the doctor’s office. “Don’t be nervous. It won’t hurt. I’ve had it. I can take it. So don’t be scared,” Emhoff told Posadas. The immigrant then stood off to the side while Emhoff shook hands with doctors and medical staff from Ochsner Health. After posing for photos, Emhoff turns back to Posadas. “Gustava, thank you so much. Muy importante,” Emhoff said in English-accented Spanish. “What do you have to say to people? And you’re going to tell a bunch of people…?” “I tell everybody,” Posadas said in Spanish-accented English. “I don’t want this before. But now I think this is real…” “This is real,” Emhoff says, completing his sentence. “And it’s the only thing that is going to prevent you, your family and others from dying or getting really sick.”

Say what? A vaccine is the only thing that is going to prevent people from dying from COVID? Is this what the Biden administration’s door knockers are telling people in private? The recovery rate for COVID is 98 to 99 percent. Almost all the deaths are due to age or underlying conditions. Johns Hopkins currently has the rate at 98.2 percent in America. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci testified before Congress that the survival rate is actually 99 percent because asymptomatic cases are under counted. Emhoff seemingly doesn’t care to give the facts to Posadas and put the success of the media stunt at risk. “I’m so grateful you’re doing this in front of the cameras so you can tell everyone it’s okay,” said Emhoff. Posadas nods his head. “Everything – my people – I thinks, we want the shot. This is real. I not believe you before, but I feel it now.”

No reporter asks questions. But the obvious one is: How long ago did Posadas not “believe” Emhoff? Who convinced him to take the vaccine? What was told to him in English or Spanish? Emhoff wastes no time with Posadas’s hesitancy. “Well let’s do it!” said the Second Gentleman while the medical staff and clergy applaud. Posadas is put in a white, folding chair. He keeps on the mirrored sunglasses. A woman in scrubs tells him to pull the mask over his nose. He rolls up his sleeve as the woman comes in with the needle. Posadas looks in the opposite direction. “Look at me! Look at me!” Emhoff tells him, while the shot is administered. The crowd applauds. Emhoff holds out his fist, and Posadas bumps him after he stands.

“Thank you for doing this,” Emhoff says, while Posadas rubs his arm and says something in Spanish. “Thank you for telling everyone to do this.” Emhoff walks away to do media interviews while a woman is heard off camera saying, “Gustava, did you get your card with your vaccination on it?” The Second Gentleman tells reporters that, “On the Covid piece, on the vaccinations, I’m not going to stop. This administration is not going to stop until we continue to get the word out here.” Emhoff continues but seems to not remember Posadas’s name. “You heard what he said – it’s real. He didn’t believe it. He believes it now….” Harris’s husband does a hard sell of the vaccines and adds, “We’re going to go door to door, bring the vaccines out to the people until we get this done.”

Biden/Kamala vaccines

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Ha ha ha! Think they installed a “misinformation” filter?

• US-Backed Tech Restores Internet To More Than 1 Million Cubans (ZH)

With summer uprisings in Cuba, the communist government has discovered ways to cut the internet off to millions of residents, so organized protesting on social media is near impossible. Let’s take a step back to early last week when reports of the Cuban regime used China-made technology systems to block internet and cell phone service to prevent pictures and videos of what was happening on the ground published online near impossible for the outside world to see. The regime also blocked popular social media channels that would make organized protesting impossible. Remember, a decade ago, during Arab Spring, Facebook and Twitter were critical for organizers to orchestrate uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Bahrain.

The Biden administration is finding ways to provide anti-censorship tools to Cubans to access social media during the blackouts. According to Bloomberg, the U.S. government supports a censorship circumvention tool designed to unblock content in Cuba and is powered by a company called Psiphon Inc. As of Thursday, Psiphon tweeted, “1.389 Million daily unique users accessed the open web from Cuba through the Psiphon network. Internet is ON; circumvention tools ARE working.” Psiphon uses proxy servers that disguise internet traffic so Cuban authorities cannot tell if people are accessing social media platforms. The Toronto-based nonprofit has received money from the U.S. government. Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn tweeted Saturday that the proxy service is working well:

The Biden administration has been strategizing on other ways to provide the people of Cuba with internet access. “They have cut off access to the internet. We are considering whether we have the technological ability to reinstate that access,” President Biden said on Friday. Biden commented after Florida Governor Ron Desantis told the president the federal government should restore internet on the island located in the northern Caribbean Sea. Desantis said there’s a technology that would allow the U.S. to broadcast internet access into Cuba remotely. “Technology exists to provide Internet access into Cuba remotely, using the innovation of American enterprise and the diverse industries here,” the governor wrote. He said this reminds him of the Cold War when the U.S. funded radio stations to broadcast information into the Soviet Union.

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A bunch of tiny islands and a dispute that no-one ever bothered to resolve. But now if the US wants to stand with Japan, it must stand against Taiwan. And the Chinese are thinking: let’s have that fun.

• Does Japan Control The Trigger For US Nuclear War On China? (Ritter)

Statements made by Japan’s Deputy Prime Minister about his country’s need to defend Taiwan have raised the specter of a “Japan exception” to China’s no-first-use policy on nuclear weapons. In April this year, Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide became the first foreign leader to visit the White House after the swearing in of Joe Biden as America’s 46th President. After private discussions, Yoshihide and Biden issued a joint statement entitled “US-Japan Global Partnership for a New Era.” What made it stand out from similar joint releases over the past decades of US-Japanese relations was the fact that, for the first time in over 50 years, the Japanese and American leaders made mention of Taiwan, declaring “we underscore the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and encourage the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues.”

While the statement was, on the surface, rather innocuous, the Chinese Embassy in the US immediately reacted, declaring Beijing’s resolute opposition to what it deemed to be interference in China’s internal affairs, and noting that the talks had gone beyond the scope of normal bilateral relations, harming third-party interests and threatening peace and stability in the region. While most observers might think the Chinese objection was centered on its long-standing claim on Taiwan proper, the trigger point was, more likely, the specific reference made in the statement to a tiny cluster of uninhabited rocky islands situated some 170 kilometers (105 miles) north of Taiwan and around 400 kilometers (248 miles) due west of Okinawa.

These islands, known in Japan as the Senkaku Islands and in China as the Diaoyu Dao Islands, are located not only in rich fishing waters, but also on top of economically viable underwater oil and gas deposits. While their ownership is a matter of ongoing legal dispute, with China viewing them as constituting part of Taiwan, and Japan as part of the Okinawa prefecture, at the present time the islands are administered by Japan. The US-Japanese joint statement reiterated Washington’s “unwavering support for Japan’s defense under the US-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, using its full range of capabilities, including nuclear.” It then went on to reaffirm “the fact that Article V of the Treaty applies to the Senkaku Islands,” adding that both the US and Japan “oppose any unilateral action that seeks to undermine Japan’s administration of the Senkaku Islands.”

Left to its own devices, the Sino-Japanese dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Dao Islands should have remained low-key. But on July 6, Japan’s Deputy Prime Minister, Taro Aso, reportedly stated that “If a major problem took place in Taiwan, it would not be too much to say that it could relate to a survival-threatening situation [for Japan],” citing language which specifically triggers Japan’s Constitutionally-mandated right of collective self-defense, where it would be permitted to deploy its armed forces in support of an ally who had been attacked. A “survival-threatening situation” occurs when an armed attack against a foreign country allied with Japan poses a clear risk of threatening Japan’s survival.

“We need to think hard that Okinawa could be the next,” Aso was quoted as saying, indicating the specific nature of the “survival-threatening situation” he spoke of. While China has never expressed any territorial interest in either Okinawa or the other populated islands contained in the Okinawa prefecture, the fact that Japan views the Senkaku Islands as part of Okinawa, and China views the Diaoyu Dao Islands as part of Taiwan, means that any Chinese move on Taiwan would, as a matter of course, include asserting its claim over the disputed islands. This, in turn, would trigger Article V of the US-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation, which is backed by the nuclear arsenal of the United States.

Read more …

 

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The Greek Freak is one win away from the NBA title.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle July 1 2021

Jul 012021
 
 July 1, 2021  Posted by at 8:49 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  68 Responses »


Ivan Aivazovsky Stormy Night at Sea 1850

 

• Want Me To LAUGH AT YOU? Do Stupid Things (Denninger)
• CDC Director: Vaccinated People ‘Safe’ From Delta Variant (Hill)
• Rand Paul Cites 0.08% Delta Variant Death Rate Among Unvaccinated (JTN)
• Man Dies of Severe Blood Clotting After Receiving Moderna COVID-19 Jab (TNA)
• Myocarditis ‘Higher Than Expected’ In Male Service Members After Jabs (JTN)
• Digital Travel Pass Comes Into Force In The EU (K.)
• Censorship Kills (AIER)
• ‘Not A Healthy Environment’: Kamala Harris’ Office Rife With Dissent (Pol.)
• FBI Fabrication Against Assange Falls Apart (Murray)
• US & UK Know They Can’t Win WW3 – Putin (RT)

 

 

Why the Delta scare? As a virus mutates, it becomes more contagious and less lethal. And then eventually it disappears…

 

 

Richard Fleming

 

 

Key date: May 12

 

 

“Statistically a significant percentage of such young persons who get hit by this “all cause” wind up needing a heart transplant within five years..”

• Want Me To LAUGH AT YOU? Do Stupid Things (Denninger)

Here you go folks, from a mainstream media outlet. “The US Food and Drug Administration added a warning about the risk of myocarditis and pericarditis to fact sheets for Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines Friday. The warning notes that reports of adverse events following vaccination — particularly after the second dose — suggest increased risks of both types of heart inflammation. Earlier this week, vaccine advisers to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention heard that the agency had received about 1,200 reports of such heart inflammation after 300 million doses of the two vaccines had been given. CDC has confirmed about 300 of those cases, many of them among young men and adolescents.”

I will point out that the odds of a healthy under-18 person being killed by Covid-19 are approximately 1 in 250,000 in the US. Only a small percentage of the total 150 million or so “vaccinated” (note that most are 2-dose, so the 300 million number is an attempt to cut the actual risk in half) are in kids thus far, perhaps 15 million or so. It is thus roughly 20 times as likely as you will get hit by this if you’re a young person as you will die of Covid. Further, a material percentage of these cases have reduced ejection fraction detected and materially elevated troponin values, both of which imply serious cardiac compromise. That damage is likely permanent and the mortality rate from this condition is not encouraging. Clearly, for an underlying disease that is almost-never fatal in healthy people under 30 that’s a bad bargain.

“But patients are recovering quickly, Dr. Matthew Oster, a pediatric cardiologist, told the advisers.” That’s an assumption made without evidence; yes, they may be clinically recovering but we have no idea what the longer term impact of that condition is. Statistically a significant percentage of such young persons who get hit by this “all cause” wind up needing a heart transplant within five years; if there is no heart available then you die, and if there is you’re on anti-rejection drugs (which wildly increase your risk from other infections) for the rest of your life, all at hideous and permanent, recurring cost which will be yours to pay. Never mind the cost of the original hospitalization and treatment. Yes, the shot is free but the treatment for myocarditis is not; you get to eat that.

Even if insured it still sucks to be you as your deductible and co-pay is yours to bear. The vaccine companies do not pay for that and neither does the government. In fact, neither does “insurance” in that all insurance is a risk pool spreading event and as such you pay all of it — maybe not right now, but with certainty over the years. Oh, incidentally, as I will remind you again the first papers showing that the spike protein was pathogenic and thus quite likely to cause this sort of event was published in September of 2020; that spurred more research papers and by December, before a single young person had a single jab put in a single arm there were several more papers that documented the mechanism by which this damage occurred. In other words both the FDA and everyone else who was capable of reading and took the time to do so knew before a single person under the age of 50 got jabbed that these shots carried this sort of risk.

[..] In the meantime the virus itself has done what ever pandemic virus in recorded history did; it has mutated to be less-lethal and more-transmissible. Delta, by the NHS data out of England, is 1/10th to 1/20th as deadly as the original strain and the first mutations, while being easier to transmit. The statistical risk of death if you get Delta and are not vaccinated is between 0.08% and 0.15% which is statistically identical to the seasonal flu. All of you screaming about “variants!” were and are flat-out wrong.

What’s worse is that there is emerging data that leads to some very troubling implications via that is known as “OAS”; the NHS data shows that someone partially vaccinated (e.g. starting or in-process with the shots) has a similar risk of adverse outcome to someone who has not taken them at all, but beyond 21 days after the last dose the risk is materially higher. What we don’t have is a cohort match that’s worth relying on — but that’s a serious signal indeed. If it ended there it would be bad enough but it doesn’t — there’s emerging evidence in the lab at least of cross-reactivity outside of coronaviruses so the jabs may well screw you with cross-reactivity that actually enhances mortality from other viral infections. The data on this is evolving but if it turns out to be correct and the risk is not limited to coronaviruses then if you took these jabs you may be truly and completely screwed with nothing you can do about it from a whole myriad of other viral infections — including influenza.

Read more …

Delta’s been around for 3 weeks?! No way she can know this. Utter BS.

• CDC Director: Vaccinated People ‘Safe’ From Delta Variant (Hill)

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday that fully vaccinated people are “safe” from the current variants and do not need to wear masks, doubling down on CDC guidance as some others call for a return to mask wearing. The question of mask wearing has come back to the forefront given recommendations from Los Angeles County health officials, and from the World Health Organization, that even fully vaccinated people should continue to wear masks indoors in public as a precaution due to the rise of the highly transmissible delta variant of the virus. But Walensky said that the CDC’s guidance has not changed and that fully vaccinated people do not need to wear masks, echoing other health experts who note that the vaccines are highly effective even against the delta variant.


“If you are vaccinated, you are safe from the variants that are circulating here in the United States,” Walensky said on NBC’s “Today,” adding it was “exactly right” that vaccinated people do not need to wear masks. She responded to the WHO by saying they are dealing with a worldwide situation where far fewer people are vaccinated than in the United States, given global vaccine disparities, and are therefore issuing more cautious advice. “We know that the WHO has to make guidelines and provide information to the world,” she said. “Right now, we know as we look across the globe that less than 15 percent of people around the world have been vaccinated and many people of those have really only received one dose of a two-dose vaccine. There are places around the world that are surging.”

McCullough

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He makes a lot more sense than Walensky. Just look at the UK/Israel graphs at the top of the post. Delta is very mild, according to all data we have so far.

• Rand Paul Cites 0.08% Delta Variant Death Rate Among Unvaccinated (JTN)

Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul is telling Twitter followers to not let the ‘fearmongers’ win, amid growing concerns about the newest delta variant of the coronavirus. Paul, who is a doctor with a degree in medicine from Duke University, cited a study of the strain that shows only a 0.08% death rate among unvaccinated people. “Don’t let the fearmongers win. New public England study of delta variant shows 44 deaths out of 53,822 (.08%) in unvaccinated group. Hmmm,” he tweeted Tuesday to his 3.2 million followers. The variant, which has caused virus outbreaks in Australia and other countries, has resulted in officials reimposing recently lifted health-safety orders including mask-wearing.

Ron Paul

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And there we go again. It’s what you get if you don’t test.

• Man Dies of Severe Blood Clotting After Receiving Moderna COVID-19 Jab (TNA)

One of the “the safe and effective” COVID-19 vaccines has claimed another life. Doctors in Pennsylvania revealed the first documented incidence of severe blood clotting suspected to be linked to Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine, after a man died within days of receiving his second dosage. Writing in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, medics from the Allegheny Health Network in Pittsburgh have reported that an unnamed 65-year-old man, who had high blood pressure and elevated fat levels in his blood, developed so-called vaccine-induced thrombosis and thrombocytopenia (VITT), or thrombocytopenia with thrombosis syndrome (TTS), 10 days after receiving his second Moderna jab.

The doctors said their findings “fulfill the interim case definition of VITT or TTS” set out by the CDC and that further blood tests “[strengthened] the likelihood” of a vaccine-linked condition. The patient reportedly arrived at the hospital with an array of serious conditions. First, a computed tomography angiogram of his chest showed large, bilateral, acute pulmonary emboli — a blockage in one of the pulmonary arteries in lungs. Most often, the condition results from a blood clot that forms in the legs or another part of the body and travels to the lungs. The patient had DVT in both lower extremities, which is noted to be “acute.”

The man developed a right ventricular strain, or a right ventricular dysfunction, where the muscle of the right ventricle of the heart is deformed. This type of heart failure develops when the right side of the heart does not pump blood as well as it should, causing blood to back up into the veins and limiting how much blood the heart can pump. The patient also had severe thrombocytopenia, or low platelet count. Platelets (thrombocytes) are cells that help the blood clot. The report in Pittsburgh is the first confirmed case of blood clotting linked to a vaccine based on mRNA technology, which includes those developed by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech. While a number of recipients of the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson shots have developed clotting, including some fatal cases, those vaccines use different technology and are instead based on a deactivated adenovirus.

In spite of this man’s death, Pittsburgh medics have stressed that the benefits of being immunized far outweigh any risks: “We believe it is important to note that many millions of people have received COVID-19 vaccines that use mRNA technology. This is the only report to date of possible VITT or TTS in those recipients, and such a rare event, even if confirmed by additional reports, should not prevent persons from receiving the benefits of these vaccines.”

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Prediction 8 cases, in reality 23.

• Myocarditis ‘Higher Than Expected’ In Male Service Members After Jabs (JTN)

A new medical study finds a “higher than expected” number of myocarditis or heart inflammation cases among male military members after receiving their second mRNA COVID-19 shot. The study, published in the peer-reviewed JAMA Cardiology journal Tuesday, found that 23 males 20 to 51, presented “acute onset of marked chest pain” within four days of receiving the second COVID-19 vaccine dose, according to The Epoch Times. The case studied patients in the U.S. military health system from Jan. 1 to April 30. Seven received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and 16 received the Moderna vaccine. According to the study, more than 2.8 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were administered by the military health system.


“The observed number of male military members who experienced myocarditis after their second dose of mRNA vaccine, while relatively small, is substantially higher than the expected number,” reads the study. The authors cited a prediction of eight or fewer cases of myocarditis from the 436,000 male military members who received two vaccine doses. The report said all the members who tested for myocarditis, a condition that causes the swelling of the heart muscle and can cause difficulty breathing, heart failure, and death, were all “physically fit by military standards and lacking any known history of cardiac disease, significant cardiac risk factors, or exposure to cardiotoxic agents.”

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Vaccine, negative test or recovered from the disease. How do the assess that last one? What test is used? Is it only people who have been hospitalized? Or do they test for T cells, antibodies, memory B cells?

“Its use will be suspended when the WHO declares an end to the international health emergency caused by Covid-19.”

• Digital Travel Pass Comes Into Force In The EU (K.)

The new EU-wide travel pass, aiming to facilitate movement across the bloc during the pandemic, came into force on Thursday. The Digital Covid Certificate — or Digital Green Certificate — is to be used as proof that travellers have been vaccinated against Covid-19, received a negative test result, or recovered from the disease. Its aim is to enable people to travel more easily for work and travel in the EU by reducing paperwork and skipping quarantine. The certificate is a temporary tool. Its use will be suspended when the World Health Organization (WHO) declares an end to the international health emergency caused by Covid-19.

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Popper is a good source for scientific integrity.

• Censorship Kills (AIER)

Big Tech routinely censors reports of vaccine harm and alternatives to vaccines. Censorship is the product of an illiberal, anti-science, authoritarian mindset. Censorship kills because decision-making is distorted. Consider the knowledge of the disinfecting properties of soap and water. In a world where that knowledge was censored in favor of antibiotic treatment for all wounds, people would die needlessly, and antibiotics would be overused. Popper interprets Kant’s principle of autonomy as the “realization that we must never accept the command of an authority, however exalted, as the basis of ethics. For whenever we are faced with the command of an authority, it is always up to us to judge, critically, whether it is morally permissible to obey.” Popper allows, “The authority may have the power to enforce its commands, and we may be powerless to resist.”

Today we are not yet powerless to resist the censors. We can acknowledge our ignorance and engage in inquiry. We can still seek out and find alternative views and consider disconcerting evidence. We can resist the urge to self-censor and instead share what we are observing and learning. We can reject authority as the basis for our personal ethics. Popper writes, “If it is physically possible for us to choose our conduct then we cannot escape the ultimate responsibility.” Lex Fridman is a research scientist at MIT and the host of a popular podcast. Recently he had Weinstein on his show to talk about censorship. Fridman said this: “Science is the striving of the human mind to understand and solve the problems of the world, but as an institution, it is susceptible to flaws of human nature, to fear, to greed, power, and ego.”

To reduce uncertainty about the best solutions to Covid, Fridman argues, “No voices should have been silenced, no ideas left off the table. Open data, open science, open scientific communication, and debate is the way, not censorship.” Censors claim the moral high road; they assure us they are coercing others for our own good. Fridman dismantles their authoritarian hubris: “There are a lot of ideas out there that are bad, wrong, dangerous. But the moment we have the hubris to say we know which ideas those are is the moment we lose our ability to find the truth, to find solutions.” The conversation he had with Weinstein is larger than Weinstein’s ideas. Fridman warns that at stake is “the very freedom to talk, to think, to share ideas.” Fridman believes, “This freedom is our only hope.”

Censorship distorts decision-making and destroys hope. For some, Covid is a matter of life or death. Censorship challenges our ability to make responsible health choices for ourselves and those in our care. In 1644 John Milton wrote, “He who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.” Today, acknowledge the destructive consequences of censorship. Speak out now or we risk allowing Big Tech’s algorithms and community guidelines to continue to destroy reason, hinder science, and undermine hope for humanity.

Malone mRNA

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Why does Politico go after Kamala? For narrative control, damage control. If they have the scoop, no-one else has. And then they can lead the narrative where they want it.

• ‘Not A Healthy Environment’: Kamala Harris’ Office Rife With Dissent (Pol.)

When Vice President Kamala Harris finally made the decision to visit the Mexico border last week, people inside her own office were blindsided by the news. For days, aides and outside allies had been calling and texting with each other about the political fallout that a potential trip would entail. But when it became known that she was going to El Paso, it left many scrambling, including officials who were responsible for making travel arrangements and others outside the VP’s office charged with crafting the messaging across the administration. The handling of the border visit was the latest chaotic moment for a staff that’s quickly become mired in them. Harris’ team is experiencing low morale, porous lines of communication and diminished trust among aides and senior officials.

Much of the frustration internally is directed at Tina Flournoy, Harris’ chief of staff, a veteran of Democratic politics who began working for her earlier this year. In interviews, 22 current and former vice presidential aides, administration officials and associates of Harris and Biden described a tense and at times dour office atmosphere. Aides and allies said Flournoy, in an apparent effort to protect Harris, has instead created an insular environment where ideas are ignored or met with harsh dismissals and decisions are dragged out. Often, they said, she refuses to take responsibility for delicate issues and blames staffers for the negative results that ensue. While much of the ire is aimed at Harris’ chief, two administration officials said the VP herself also bears responsibility for the way her office is run.

“It all starts at the top,” said one of the administration officials, who like others requested anonymity to be able to speak candidly about a sensitive matter. “People are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses and it’s an abusive environment,” said another person with direct knowledge of how Harris’ office is run. “It’s not a healthy environment and people often feel mistreated. It’s not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like s—.” The dysfunction in the VP’s ranks threatens to complicate the White House’s carefully crafted image as a place staffed by a close-knit group of professionals working in concert to advance the president’s agenda. It’s pronounced enough that members of the president’s own team have taken notice and are concerned about the way Harris’ staffers are treated.

Symone Sanders, senior advisor and chief spokesperson for Harris, pushed back against the complaints and defended Flournoy saying she has an “open door policy” and that “Black women like me would not have the opportunity to work in politics without Tina.” Of the chief of staff’s anonymous critics, she added: “People are cowards to do this this way.” “We are not making rainbows and bunnies all day. What I hear is that people have hard jobs and I’m like ‘welcome to the club,’” Sanders added. “We have created a culture where people, if there is anything anyone would like to raise, there are avenues for them to do so. Whoever has something they would like to raise, they should raise it directly.”

Read more …

No better source than Murray on the topic.

• FBI Fabrication Against Assange Falls Apart (Murray)

On the final day of the Assange extradition hearing, magistrate Vanessa Baraitser refused to accept an affidavit from Assange’s solicitor Gareth Peirce, on the grounds it was out of time. The affidavit explained that the defence had been unable to respond to the new accusations in the United States government’s second superseding indictment, because these wholly new matters had been sprung on them just six weeks before the hearing resumed on 8 September 2020. The defence had not only to gather evidence from Iceland, but had virtually no access to Assange to take his evidence and instructions, as he was effectively in solitary confinement in Belmarsh. The defence had requested an adjournment to give them time to address the new accusations, but this adjournment had been refused by Baraitser.

She now refused to accept Gareth Peirce’s affidavit setting out these facts. What had happened was this. The hearings on the Assange extradition in January 2020 did not seem to be going well for the US government. The arguments that political extradition is specifically banned by the UK/US extradition treaty, and that the publisher was not responsible for Chelsea Manning’s whistleblowing on war crimes, appeared to be strong. The US Justice Department had decided that it therefore needed a new tack and to discover some “crimes” by Assange that seemed less noble than the Manning revelations. To achieve this, the FBI turned to an informant in Iceland, Sigi Thordarson, who was willing to testify that Assange had been involved with him in, inter alia, hacking private banking information and tracking Icelandic police vehicles.

This was of course much easier to portray as crime, as opposed to journalism, so the second superseding indictment was produced based on Thordarson’s story, which was elaborated with Thordarson by an FBI team. The difficulty was that Thordarson was hardly a reliable witness. He had already been convicted in Iceland for stealing approximately $50,000 from Wikileaks and with impersonating Julian Assange online, not to mention the inconvenient fact he is a registered sex offender for online activities with under-age boys. The FBI team was in fact expelled from Iceland by the Icelandic government, who viewed what the FBI was doing with Thordarson as wholly illegitimate.

Read more …

“Because those who are doing this know that they can’t get out of this war victorious. That’s a very important thing.”

• US & UK Know They Can’t Win WW3 – Putin (RT)

President Vladimir Putin has slammed the violation of Russian territorial waters by British warship HMS Defender as a “provocation.” He also claimed that London’s American allies had a hand in last week’s incident near Crimea. However, apparently casting doubt on NATO’s ‘Article V’ collective defense pact, the Russian leader claimed that, even if Moscow had sunk the vessel, it wouldn’t have led to World War III, because the “provocateurs” know they wouldn’t be able to win. Last week, the British naval ship HMS Defender entered the country’s territorial waters and traveled three kilometers (almost two miles) inside the frontier, near Cape Fiolent, in Crimea. According to Russia’s Ministry of Defense, the coastguard targeted warning shots at the boat. This has been disputed by the British, but video evidence suggests the Russian version of events is more accurate.


According to London, the destroyer was making a peaceful passage through the territorial waters of Ukraine in accordance with international law. The UK does not recognize Crimea as part of Russia. Speaking at his annual ‘Direct Line’ call-in show, Putin revealed that a US strategic airplane took off from an airfield on the island of Crete and flew towards Russia on the morning before HMS Defender entered Russian waters. However, despite the provocation, the two NATO members do not want a conflict, and it is not true to say that the world is now standing on the brink of a world war, he said. “Even if we had sunk that ship, it would still be hard to imagine that the world would be on the brink of World War III,” the president said. “Because those who are doing this know that they can’t get out of this war victorious. That’s a very important thing.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle March 26 2021

Mar 262021
 
 March 26, 2021  Posted by at 9:32 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  31 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Scène de rue à Montmartre 1887

 

• Biden’s Press Conference: Get Ready For President Kamala Harris (Malic)
• Better Not Vaccinate Everyone: The Virus Will Not Disappear Anyway (G.nl)
• Herd Immunity Is Near, Despite Fauci’s Denial (WSJ)
• US Lockdowns Didn’t Stop Covid – But That Doesn’t Mean They’re Pointless (F>)
• CNN’s Defense of Cuomo’s Special COVID Privileges is Grotesque (Greenwald)
• Secret Service Inserted Itself Into Case Of Hunter Biden’s Gun (Pol.)
• Tesla & Bitcoin Are Perfect Bedfellows (Mitch Feierstein)
• US Imports Record Volumes Of Russian Oil Amid Growing Political Tensions (RT)
• The Impending Saudi Defeat in Yemen (MPN)
• ‘It Might Take Weeks’ To Free ‘Beached Whale’ Ship Stuck In Suez Canal (RT)
• Free Us From The Roving Cavaliers of Credit (Steve Keen)

 

 

Boris Johnson, 2004

“If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am, when I have done nothing wrong then I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it”

 

 

Dana Carvey does Joe Biden

 

 

Actual Washington Post headline: “Biden Excels At His First News Conference. The Media Embarrass Themselves.”

• Biden’s Press Conference: Get Ready For President Kamala Harris (Malic)

Well, now we know why Democrat strategists were more than happy to let Joe Biden sit in his basement during the campaign, and kept him away from the press for the first 64 days in office – and it’s definitely not the coronavirus. Biden was almost 15 minutes late to his own very first “formal press conference” since taking office. He dodged questions, spouted platitudes and talking points, went off on tangents at times while getting angry and uttering what may have sounded like threats at others. No doubt some of that could be down to his advanced age, but let’s assume for lack of another explanation that the words were indeed his and that he truly meant what he said. And, oh brother, is the US in trouble.

In Thursday’s presser, Biden actually repeated – twice – the previous day’s talking points, down to the description of someone “sitting at their kitchen table” in Central America, about why tens of thousands of migrants are coming to the US. He knows why, better than they do. Never mind that the tide began the day he was announced winner of the 2020 election, or the migrants who literally told reporters they decided to come because Biden got elected, or wear T-shirts with his campaign logo and the words “please let us in.” Nope, you’re supposed to ignore your lying eyes and believe Uncle Joe, because his great-grandfather had no choice but to leave Ireland in a “coffin ship.” What are you, a lying dog-faced pony soldier? Come on, man!

This sort of emotionally manipulative imagery is nothing new for Biden; he did it in the pandemic speech earlier this month, as well as his inaugural and his convention address. The press keeps falling for it, though, every single time. No wonder Dana Carvey was catching flak this week; his impersonation of Biden – not just his voice, but his mannerism and verbal tics – was spot on.

Tucker

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Google translate

These people must have read VadenBossche. We need much more discussion like this.

Also in Holland: GPs will now be fined for prescribing HCQ or ivermectin. As infection numbers are soaring back up to where they were early January.

• Better Not Vaccinate Everyone: The Virus Will Not Disappear Anyway (G.nl)

Vaccinating children and young, healthy people against corona does not help. Group immunity is unfeasible, the corona virus will no longer disappear and will continue to appear in new variants. This is the opinion of Jona Walk, who recently obtained his PhD in vaccine immunology, and medical microbiologist Bert Mulder today in the magazine Medisch Contact. Both doctors of the Nijmegen Canisius-Wilhelmina Hospital therefore question the policy of the cabinet and health institute to vaccinate the entire population in order to return to “normal”. They are supported by a recent article “Five reasons why COVID herd immunity is probably impossible” in the leading scientific medical journal Nature.

Vaccinations can prevent people from becoming seriously ill and ending up in hospital, but it is an illusion to think that they also stop the virus from spreading. “Research done in Oxford shows that people can also be virus carriers after they have been vaccinated,” says Walk. More research needs to be done on this, but it is already clear that current vaccines do not work against all new variants of the virus. South Africa, for example, has already stopped using AstraZeneca because that vaccine does not work against the variant that is dominant there. “The effectiveness against that specific variant appears to be really zero,” says Mulder. The constant emergence of new variants therefore means that the vaccinations will be less effective in the future than appears at the moment.

“In fact, if a vaccine against a particular variant doesn’t work, only that version of the virus will continue to spread among people, and that refractory variant may eventually become dominant in the vaccinated population,” says Walk.“This happens especially if you vaccinate while a lot of virus is circulating, you create an ideal environment for new mutations,” Mulder adds. Walk: “The unnecessary vaccination is also against our medical principles. If you cannot become seriously ill from the virus and do not protect anyone with it when you get vaccinated, why would you run the risk of side effects that we are certainly not aware of in the long term? “” She points to the fact that for the time being there are only data on safety during the first two months after vaccination. Longer studies are needed to get a full picture of the benefits and risks.

“Another problem is that we do not yet know whether once someone has been vaccinated, they will later make good antibodies against other corona variants.” “A new vaccination against a new variant may therefore be less effective. “There is still a lot of research to be done in this area,” the researchers emphasize. But they are now coming up with their analysis because the vaccination policy is still aimed at vaccinating as many people as possible against corona by July. Mulder: ,, But we cannot eradicate corona. So you should rethink that policy: vaccinating only if someone benefits from it on an individual level, you should first focus on the elderly and at-risk groups and then look at who wants to be vaccinated further. “”

Ron Paul Testing

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Natural immunity.

• Herd Immunity Is Near, Despite Fauci’s Denial (WSJ)

Anthony Fauci has been saying that the country needs to vaccinate 70% to 85% of the population to reach herd immunity from Covid-19. But he inexplicably ignores natural immunity. If you account for previous infections, herd immunity is likely close at hand. Data from the California Department of Public Health, released earlier this month, show that while only 8.7% of the state’s population has ever tested positive for Covid-19, at least 38.5% of the population has antibodies against the novel coronavirus. Those numbers are from Jan. 30 to Feb. 20. Adjusting for cases between now and then, and accounting for the amount of time it takes for the body to make antibodies, we can estimate that as many as half of Californians have natural immunity today.


The same report found that 45% of people in Los Angeles had Covid-19 antibodies. Again, the number can only be higher today. Between “half and two-thirds of our population has antibodies in it now,” due to Covid exposure or vaccination, Mayor Eric Garcetti said Sunday on “Face the Nation.” That would explain why cases in Los Angeles are down 95% in the past 11 weeks and the positivity rate among those tested is now 1.7%. Undercounting or removing the many Americans with natural immunity from any tally of herd immunity is a scientific error of omission. When people wonder why President Biden talks about limiting Fourth of July gatherings, it’s because his most prominent medical adviser has dismissed the contribution of natural immunity, artificially extending the timeline.

Read more …

“The University of Chicago researchers said their study reached a different conclusion because of differing methodology.”

But what a warped logic. Destroying economies was useless, but not pointless.

• US Lockdowns Didn’t Stop Covid – But That Doesn’t Mean They’re Pointless (F.)

U.S. states with shelter-in-place orders and other strict Covid-19 rules did not report fewer infections and deaths last year, a study released Thursday argues, disputing other recent research about the pandemic—but this doesn’t mean social distancing efforts were ineffective. A team of researchers from the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy found states that imposed shelter-in-place orders, mandatory business closures and other tight restrictions didn’t see a significant difference in the number of coronavirus infections or deaths during the virus’ first U.S. surge last spring. Shelter-in-place orders also appeared to have very little impact on people’s mobility, which researchers measured using cell phone data.

However, researchers did not cast this as proof that social distancing is unnecessary: Instead, it could mean scores of Americans changed their habits regardless of whether their state imposed restrictions, often because health officials encouraged them to. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of social distancing measures was likely reduced because some people—partly due to politics—refused to comply with these efforts even if they came with a government mandate, the researchers noted in their paper, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The team said their results “should not be taken to imply that the actions of government officials had little effect on the pandemic.”

“To be clear, our findings do not mean that sheltering in place and social distancing behaviors had no effect on the disease,” the study’s authors wrote. “Indeed, the health benefits of [shelter-in-place] orders were likely limited because many people were already social distancing before the introduction of SIP orders.” This study contradicts two papers from last year—published in Nature and by the National Bureau of Economic Research—that found shelter-in-place orders significantly reduced Covid-19 infections in the United States and other countries, especially if they were imposed early. The University of Chicago researchers said their study reached a different conclusion because of differing methodology.

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While there were no tests available.

• CNN’s Defense of Cuomo’s Special COVID Privileges is Grotesque (Greenwald)

Ever since the COVID pandemic subsumed most countries on the planet, there have been numerous scandals and controversies relating to those who corruptly obtain medical privileges and other exemptions unavailable to ordinary citizens. These scandals typically arise when someone uses their wealth, power or connections to jump in front of others for access to potentially life-saving procedures or medications or grant themselves and their friends license to ignore what everyone else must endure. Right now in Brazil, for instance, there is a burgeoning scandal from reports that a group of businesspeople with ties to the government arranged to purchase their own private stash of vaccines for use for themselves, families and friends in violation of the law.

In the U.S., people were outraged when very young members of Congress were among the first to receive the vaccine (though the law permitted them to do so); those young Congressmembers justified their line-jumping on the ground that they were doing so selflessly to encourage others. Meanwhile, other members of Congress refused this privilege on the ground, as Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) put it, that it is “shameful” for young lawmakers to believe they “are more important” than workers. Repeatedly in the U.S., politicians were caught exempting themselves from lockdown orders they were imposing on everyone else. But those pale in comparison to the abuse of power by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) and his brother, CNN host Chris Cuomo, as reported on Wednesday by The Albany-Times Union and The Washington Post.

“High-level members of the state Department of Health were directed last year by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker to conduct prioritized coronavirus testing on the governor’s relatives as well as influential people with ties to the administration,” reported the Times-Union. “Members of Cuomo’s family including his brother, his mother and at least one of his sisters were also tested by top health department officials — some several times,” it added. In particular, Gov. Cuomo abused state resources to ensure that his then-49-year-old brother, Chris, received fast COVID testing at a time when tests were very scarce. “The CNN anchor was swabbed by a top New York Department of Health doctor, who visited his Hamptons home to collect samples from him and his family,” The Post reported. The article also contains these damning details:

“The same doctor who tested Chris Cuomo, Eleanor Adams, now a top adviser to the state health commissioner, also was enlisted to test multiple other Cuomo family members….The coronavirus test specimens were then rushed — at times driven by state police troopers — to the Wadsworth Center, a state public health lab in Albany, where they were processed immediately, the people said. At times, employees in the state health laboratory were kept past their shifts until late into the night to process results of those close to Cuomo, two people said.” All of this commandeering of state resources to provide the CNN host with very specialized medical attention occurred while “media reports were full of accounts from New Yorkers desperate to get tested — including some with symptoms and recent travel history who were turned away because of scarcity.”

Cuomo brothers

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Still no sign of Hunter.

• Secret Service Inserted Itself Into Case Of Hunter Biden’s Gun (Pol.)

On Oct. 23, 2018, President Joe Biden’s son Hunter and daughter in law Hallie were involved in a bizarre incident in which Hallie took Hunter’s gun and threw it in a trash can behind a grocery store, only to return later to find it gone. Delaware police began investigating, concerned that the trash can was across from a high school and that the missing gun could be used in a crime, according to law enforcement officials and a copy of the police report obtained by POLITICO. But a curious thing happened at the time: Secret Service agents approached the owner of the store where Hunter bought the gun and asked to take the paperwork involving the sale, according to two people, one of whom has firsthand knowledge of the episode and the other was briefed by a Secret Service agent after the fact.

The gun store owner refused to supply the paperwork, suspecting that the Secret Service officers wanted to hide Hunter’s ownership of the missing gun in case it were to be involved in a crime, the two people said. The owner, Ron Palmieri, later turned over the papers to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which oversees federal gun laws. The Secret Service says it has no record of its agents investigating the incident, and Joe Biden, who was not under protection at the time, said through a spokesperson he has no knowledge of any Secret Service involvement. Days later, the gun was returned by an older man who regularly rummages through the grocery’s store’s trash to collect recyclable items, according to people familiar with the situation.

[..] At the time of the gun incident, Hunter was in a romantic relationship with Hallie, the widow of his late brother, Beau. The incident began when Hallie searched Hunter’s pickup, which was parked at her home in Wilmington, because of unspecified “suspicions she had,” according to the Delaware State Police report. Inside the truck, she found a .38 revolver. Hallie took the gun to Janssen’s Market, a nearby high-end grocery store where the Bidens are longtime regular customers. There, she tossed the gun, wrapped in a black shopping bag, into a trash bin outside of the store. Later that day, Hallie informed Hunter of what she had done, and he instructed her to retrieve the gun, according to the police report. When Hallie returned to the grocery store, she found that the gun was missing from the garbage bin and reported the issue to the store.

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“Tesla’s valuation will one day be a Harvard Business School study on the irrationality of market manias.”

• Tesla & Bitcoin Are Perfect Bedfellows (Mitch Feierstein)

In 2021, Tesla has made over one billion dollars by speculating in bitcoin. That bet made bigger profits for Musk’s Tesla than the firm made selling its electric vehicles in a similar time frame (though, given its poor sales record, that’s perhaps not surprising). Now the multi-billionaire has created new headlines by announcing that the cryptocurrency will soon be accepted as payment for his cars, a move that saw the price of bitcoin enjoy a short-lived jump of almost 5%. There are some who say that Tesla and Bitcoin make perfect bedfellows. Both are decidedly risky ventures where you’re just about guaranteed to lose your whole wardrobe, let alone a shirt or two. Bitcoin has exhibited extreme volatility and has seen a stratospheric rise in its price during the past few months, hitting new highs approaching $60,000 and prompting some to claim it will go up by a further 500%.

Its surge illustrates how reckless central banks worldwide have destroyed fiat (paper) currencies that are backed by nothing other than a promise to repay debt by insolvent governments with a printing press. It signals a mania that will eventually see an end to US dollar hegemony. Bitcoin is binary – it can go to a million or zero – so no one speculating on it should risk what they cannot afford to lose. And as I’ve warned many times before: NEVER listen to the Musk-rat hype. It’s not the first time Musk has used Tesla’s balance sheet to speculate. In 2016, Tesla spent $2.6 billion bailing out one of his other companies, SolarCity, which was, according to Ernst & Young, completely insolvent.

Additionally, as chairman, CEO, CTO and majority shareholder of SpaceX, Musk used his position to leverage that company’s balance sheet by buying around $300 million of SolarCity bonds in 2015-16. In 2017, Tesla shareholders filed a lawsuit against the company’s directors and Musk. The basis of the lawsuit, according to Reuters, was: “Tesla shareholders have alleged Musk breached his fiduciary duties, squandered Tesla’s assets and unjustly enriched himself by pushing to buy the money-losing solar company in which he was the biggest investor.”

[..] Musk’s track record on autonomous driving, vehicle production numbers and Tesla profits has been abysmal. For example, Musk has said “Full Self Driving” hardware would be capable of a “coast-to-coast” autonomous trip by the end of 2017. In February of 2019, Musk promised, “Full self-driving would be available in 2020.” Tesla’s valuation builds in earnings from a non-existent robot taxi model. The point: Musk makes new bold claims nearly every quarter yet consistently fails to deliver. In fact, if it were not for the money Tesla has enjoyed from government subsidies and the selling of carbon-emission credits, the business would be profitless. Tesla’s valuation will one day be a Harvard Business School study on the irrationality of market manias.

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Ha ha ha.

• US Imports Record Volumes Of Russian Oil Amid Growing Political Tensions (RT)

Tough talk on energy issues doesn’t stop the US from purchasing a record share of Russian crude in 2020. American refineries reportedly loaded 538,000 barrels of Russian crude and oil products daily, breaking a decade-old record. According to the data tracked by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), the US has bought the most Russian crude since 2011, when the import volumes or Russian oil totaled 624,000 barrels per day (bpd). In 2020, Russia became the third-largest oil supplier to the US, outpacing Saudi Arabia, world’s biggest exporter, according to Bloomberg calculations based on customs and EIA data. Russia’s share of American oil exports currently stands at a record-high seven percent.


Meanwhile, Canada and Mexico were the leading exporters of crude to the US last year. Canada shipped 4.1 million bpd, while Mexico sold about 750,000 bpd. The average imports of oil from Saudi Arabia reportedly totaled just 522,000 bpd in 2020. The growth of oil exports from Russia was reportedly caused by the lack of access to Venezuelan crude, targeted by US sanctions. Moreover, shipments of crude from OPEC nations were significantly reduced amid the cartel’s pact on cutting output. US energy majors, including Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Valero Energy were among the key buyers of oil and petroleum products from Russian producers.

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Boeing and Raytheon will find another country to destroy.

• The Impending Saudi Defeat in Yemen (MPN)

Major advances by Houthi forces on the strategically vital oil and gas hub of Marib last week have forced Saudi Arabia to offer a ceasefire agreement to the rebels. The offer came on Monday, after the rebel army seized Mount Hilan, threatening the Yemeni military’s first line of defense and causing a disruption in global energy prices. The ceasefire proposal includes collecting “taxes, customs and other fees generated” by oil imports in the Red Sea port of Hodeida in a joint account that would be accessible to the Houthis. Further evidence that the Saudi-led coalition finds itself with their backs against the wall is the partial loosening of the oil blockade, as four fuel ships were given the go-ahead to dock at Hodeida on Wednesday.

The bid for a truce came two days after Saudi Coalition-manned American warplanes carried out airstrikes against Houthi targets in Marib, with Saudi media claiming heavy losses on the side of the rebel forces. But the partial lifting of the blockade by the Saudi Coalition and the UN-backed Yemeni government indicates that it is the Houthis who are making headway. The fall of Marib would mean Houthi control of one of the key production centers of natural gas in Yemen — one that supplies the entire country — as well as oil fields owned by Saudi Arabia’s Aramco. Given that the Houthis already control most of Yemen’s urban centers, taking Marib would likely tilt the momentum irreversibly in the Houthis’ favor.

In light of the Houthis’ bolstered position in the conflict, Biden’s decision to remove them from the list of global terrorist organizations, while overtly maintaining continued U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s “security” needs could very well be a signal that Washington has tacitly admitted that their proxy war in Yemen is not yielding the desired results. Meanwhile, in a joint statement, last week as preparations for Friday’s major attack on Marib were in the offing, Western governments attempted to make a show of strength in the press in lieu of actual results on the battlefield. “We, the governments of France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America,” said the statement, “condemn the sustained Houthi offensive on the Yemeni city of Marib and the major escalation of attacks the Houthis have conducted and claimed against Saudi Arabia.”

UNHCR Yemen

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March 25 11 AM EST: QUEUE OF SHIPS WAITING AT SUEZ CANAL NOW STANDS AT 237

• ‘It Might Take Weeks’ To Free ‘Beached Whale’ Ship Stuck In Suez Canal (RT)

The firm working to dislodge the container ship that’s blocking traffic in the Suez Canal has warned that “it might take weeks” to free the tanker, comparing it to trying to remove “an enormous beached whale.” The vessel, ‘Ever Given’, operated by Taiwan-based firm Evergreen, became lodged diagonally in the canal on Tuesday morning after losing control and running aground amid high winds, bringing traffic through one of the world’s busiest shipping channels to a halt. The CEO of Boskalis, a dredging firm that is working to try and free the ship, warned on Thursday that it “can’t exclude [that] it might take weeks,” as they may have to reduce the weight of the vessel, removing containers, oil and water, as well as using tug boats and clearing sand and mud from around it.


“It is like an enormous beached whale. It’s an enormous weight on the sand.” The 220,000-ton vessel was partially refloated on Wednesday, as tug boats worked to reopen the canal, which can see as many as 50 ships pass through it a day. However, the ship remains wedged on the sand, with its GPS tracking data showing that it has only experienced minor changes in its position in the past 24 hours. The incident has created a significant shipping backlog and some firms have warned that if the canal is not fully reopened in the next 24-48 hours, they will have to find a new route for their vessels, adding a week to their journey time and delaying the arrival of goods that rely on the Suez Canal.

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In honour of David Graeber

• Free Us From The Roving Cavaliers of Credit (Steve Keen)

As Graeber pointed out in Debt: The First 5000 Years, the assumption that money originated in barter is an enduring myth in economics: “First comes barter, then money; credit only develops later” (Graeber 2011, Chapter 2). This myth permeates the discipline, from Adam Smith’s assertion in 1776 that “the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another” (Smith 1776, Chapter 2) was an innate characteristic of humans, to modern economics textbooks, like Gregory Mankiw’s Macroeconomics, that argue that an economy without money would be “a barter economy” (Mankiw 2016, p. 82). Armed with this myth, economists have constructed a fantasy model of capitalism in which money plays no significant role: it is a mere trifle that sensible economists look through, to see the real face of barter lying behind the veil of money.

Consequently, mainstream economists ignore banks, debt and money, while credit plays no role in their mathematical models of the macroeconomy. This is why they not only didn’t see the 2007 Global Financial Crisis coming, but in fact expected 2008 to be a cracker of a year. The OECD’s Economic Outlook in June 2007 trumpeted that “sustained growth in OECD economies would be underpinned by strong job creation and falling unemployment” (Cotis 2007, p. 5). Yeah, right. Two months after this forecast was published, the biggest economic crisis before Covid-19 and since the Great Depression began. Why were they so wrong? Because they ignore Graeber’s central message that debt and credit drive the development, and sometimes the collapse, of economies.

Their logic rests, as usual, on a naïve assumption. They assume that banks are simply “intermediaries” between people who save money, and people who borrow money, and therefore that redistributing this money has little effect on economic activity. As ex-Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke put it, “Absent implausibly large differences in marginal spending propensities among the groups … pure redistributions should have no significant macroeconomic effects.” (Bernanke 2000, p. 24). What the hell does that jargon mean? It means that mainstream economists pretend that banks don’t create money when they lend—something that they can no longer do after The Bank of England categorically said that they do (McLeay, Radia et al. 2014)—or that this doesn’t really matter. A little arithmetic is enough to show they’re wrong, and David was right.

Read more …

 

 

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Jim Rickards – Great Reset
https://twitter.com/i/status/1375034375985901572

 

 

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Debt Rattle February 26 2021

Feb 262021
 
 February 26, 2021  Posted by at 9:36 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  22 Responses »


Jean-Francois Millet The flight into Egypt 1864

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

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

• CDC Reports Shocking Data About Asymptomatic Spread (Fed.)

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

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

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

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

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Anti-inflammatory.

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

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


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

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Anyone surprised?

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

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

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

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

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Who are in reality Iraqi troops fighting ISIS?

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

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

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

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

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Syria, Iran, Russia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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We will never know.

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

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

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

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

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

• The Great Reset Is Here (Rickards)

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

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

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

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“designed by clowns…supervised by monkeys”

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

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

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

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

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The “left wing” press will bury it.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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