Jun 172025
 
 June 17, 2025  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  76 Responses »


Rembrandt van Rijn Small self portrait 1627-28

 

Trump Warns ‘Everyone’ To Flee Tehran (RT)
How Iran Turned Israel’s Iron Dome Against Itself Using Clever Jamming (Sp.)
US Aerial Tankers Headed To Middle East – Media (RT)
Russia Should Be In G8 – Trump (RT)
The Crux of the Problem is NATO on Russia’s Borders (Paul Craig Roberts)
Kiev and London Plotting ‘Bloody Provocations’ – Russian Spy Agency (RT)
US Postpones Talks With Russia – Moscow (RT)
Russia Has Fulfilled Istanbul Promises – Medinsky (RT)
Russian Diplomats Facing ‘Nerve-wracking’ Situation In Israel – Envoy (RT)
Zelenskyy and Sheinbaum Travel to G7 Canada to Influence and Intercept (CTH)
Martin Kulldorff Named To CDC Vaccine Panel (ZH)
King-Less? (James Howard Kunstler)
Islam Growing Three Times As Fast As Christianity – Study (RT)
Happy Birthday Donald, Happy US Army and Flag Day (Helmer)
10 YEARS AGO: Donald Trump Announces Presidential Candidacy (DS)

 

 

 

 

Mossad

 

 

 

 

 

 

One day. the news is focused on one topic: Iran/Israel. The next, it’s all over again.

We wait: will Persia act next?

Note: Metro Tehran has 17 million people. It’s like evacuating New York City. No can do.

Trump Warns ‘Everyone’ To Flee Tehran (RT)

US President Donald Trump has issued a cryptic warning on Truth Social, urging “everyone” to leave Tehran as soon as possible, without confirming whether Washington will intervene in the ongoing tit-for-tat hostilities between Israel and Iran. The two states have been exchanging strikes since West Jerusalem bombed Iranian nuclear and military facilities last Friday, describing the move as a preemptive effort to halt the Islamic Republic’s alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons. Iran, which denies these claims, said the airstrikes amounted to a declaration of war and has retaliated with multiple volleys of ballistic missiles. “Iran should have signed the ‘deal’ I told them to sign. Such a shame and waste of human life. Simply stated, IRAN CANNOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again!” Trump wrote on Monday evening, as the conflict entered its fifth day.

“Everyone needs to evacuate Tehran immediately!” the US leader added, without elaborating on where the city’s roughly 10 million residents should go. Trump earlier insisted that the US “had nothing to do with the attack on Iran” but warned Tehran of retaliation “at levels never seen before” if it targets American assets in the region. He declined to clarify what might trigger US military involvement, telling reporters on Monday: “I don’t want to talk about that.” Earlier in the day, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed the deployment of additional “defensive capabilities” to the Middle East, without disclosing which military assets were sent over the weekend. “Protecting US forces is our top priority, and these deployments are intended to enhance our defensive posture in the region,” Hegseth posted on X.

According to Military Watch Magazine, the US has reportedly sent more than 30 aerial refueling tankers across the Atlantic toward the Middle East. The outlet described the buildup as “unprecedented,” suggesting it could signal broader US involvement in the Israeli-Iranian conflict. bIsrael has reportedly asked the US to participate directly in strikes on Iran. The IDF lacks the bunker-buster bombs required to destroy the Islamic Republic’s heavily fortified underground nuclear sites, but Washington could supply them, Axios reported Saturday, citing West Jerusalem officials.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to rule out an attempt to assassinate Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, telling ABC News on Monday: “It’s going to end the conflict.” Tehran has repeatedly stated that its nuclear program is peaceful and has accused Israel of undermining diplomatic efforts with the US. “Iran did NOT begin this war and has no interest in perpetuating bloodshed. But we will proudly fight to the last drop of blood to protect our land,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on X on Monday. He warned that “getting the US mired in the Mother of Forever Wars” would destroy any chance of a diplomatic solution.

Read more …

The reports are very one-sided on US/Israel power. But Iran is not some backwater anymore.

How Iran Turned Israel’s Iron Dome Against Itself Using Clever Jamming (Sp.)

New evidence suggests that Iran successfully compromised Israel’s vaunted air defense systems during recent attacks — forcing Tel Aviv to fire on its own positions. How? Iran overwhelmed Israeli defenses by breaching the data transmission and correction system early in flight, explains military expert and historian of the Air Defense Forces Yuri Knutov. “Based on the footage that was released, it seems that the Iranians were able to breach the data transmission and correction signal system at the early stage when the missiles were flying, using an inertial guidance system. As a result, the system misdirected the missiles, not toward their intended target, but toward Israel’s own surface-to-air missile batteries, leading to a strike on them.”

The attack included:
100+ Shahed drones (swarming tactics)
Decoy ballistic missiles (old models to waste interceptors)
Fattah hypersonic missiles (unstoppable by Israeli Arrow/PAC-3)
As a result, the Iron Dome’s interception rate dropped drastically to just 10-15%.

“The use of jamming against surface-to-air missiles and missile defense systems is actually a fairly old tactic. During the Vietnam War, the Americans used jamming to mislead missiles by range, angle, and many other active interference methods. Special transmitters were deployed to create the illusion of aircraft presence on the radar screens of Vietnamese missile guidance stations,” Knutov says. “During the Arab-Israeli conflicts of 1970 and 1973, similar jamming techniques were used by both Israeli and Egyptian pilots, as well as Soviet pilots who assisted the Egyptians,” he adds.

Iran’s hypersonic Fattah missiles and Haj Qassems guided ballistics hit critical Israeli targets, including the Defense Ministry HQ and a major airbase housing F-35 and F-16 fighters. Despite Israel’s marketing of its advanced defense systems, the Arrow and Patriot systems failed to stop them. Iran also deployed decoys so effectively that Israeli strikes repeatedly hit fake targets. The Iron Dome, which covers only 144 sq km and is good for single rockets, but seemingly couldn’t handle mass attacks or the hypersonic gap — Fattah missiles reach Israel in 7 minutes, while the Iron Dome needs 11 minutes to reload. Iran has learned from past Israeli strikes and improved tactics, establishing backup command centers and more efficient maneuvering to increase its chances of success.

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US bombers? Stay home.

US Aerial Tankers Headed To Middle East – Media (RT)

The US has reportedly deployed more than 30 aerial refueling tankers across the Atlantic toward the Middle East, Military Watch Magazine reported on Monday. The outlet has described the buildup as “unprecedented,” claiming it could suggest broader US involvement in the ongoing Israeli-Iranian war. West Jerusalem and Tehran have entered the fourth day of open hostilities. Last Thursday, Israeli forces launched airstrikes on Iranian nuclear and military targets, killing senior military officials and scientists and prompting retaliatory missile barrages on Israeli cities such as Tel Aviv and Haifa. The US has expressed support for the Israeli strikes, with President Donald Trump calling them “excellent.”

He has also warned that Washington could become directly involved in the conflict if American interests are threatened but has yet to announce any plans to involve US forces. However, according to flight tracking data, the US has already started deploying KC-135 and KC-46 aerial refueling tankers to the Middle East. Military Watch Magazine has suggested that the aircraft may be intended to support Israeli Air Force operations or refuel US fighters and bombers if Washington expands its role in the conflict. The report also claims that tankers from other Western countries have participated in Israeli aerial refueling efforts, while the US is believed to have provided intelligence, satellite targeting data, and missile defense support. On Sunday, Axios reported that Israeli officials had asked the US to directly take part in the military operation, specifically requesting assistance in striking Iran’s Fordow enrichment facility.

However, US officials cited by the outlet said the request was declined, with one stating that the Trump administration is not considering any such involvement. Nevertheless, Tehran has claimed that Washington’s support for West Jerusalem has made the US complicit in Israel’s aggression against Iran. Sources within the Iranian military have also reportedly indicated that Tehran’s response to Israeli strikes would “spread to all areas occupied by this [Israeli] regime and related US bases in the region in the coming days. In response, Trump has warned that any Iranian attack on US forces would trigger a military response, writing on his Truth Social platform that “if we are attacked in any way, shape, or form by Iran, the full strength and might of the US Armed Forces will come down on you at levels never seen before.” He also insisted that the US “had nothing to do with the attack on Iran” and called on Tehran to return to negotiations.

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“..Obama and a person named [..] Trudeau didn’t want to have Russia in.”

Russia Should Be In G8 – Trump (RT)

US President Donald Trump has called Russia’s removal from the group of major Western economies (G8) a mistake, arguing that the country’s presence could have helped prevent the escalation of the Ukraine conflict. Russia joined the group originally known as the G7 in 1997. It includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, the US, and also the EU as a “non-enumerated member.” Moscow’s membership was suspended in 2014 following Crimea’s reunification with Russia, upon which the G8 reverted to the G7. Crimea voted to leave Ukraine and become part of Russia via a referendum in the aftermath of a Western-backed Maidan coup in Kiev. Trump made the remarks on Monday at the opening of the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Canada, recalling that Russia had been part of the group before.

“The G7 used to be the G8,” he said at his first meeting of the summit with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. “[Former US President] Barack Obama and a person named [former Canadian Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau didn’t want to have Russia in.” “And I would say that that was a mistake, because I think you wouldn’t have a war right now if you had Russia in, and you wouldn’t have a war right now if Trump were president four years ago,” he argued. Trump repeatedly criticized Russia’s exclusion and floated the idea of bringing Moscow back during his first term, though the proposal was rejected by other members. In February, Trump once again said he would “love” to see Russia back in the group.

The Kremlin responded by saying the G7 has “lost its relevance” as it no longer reflects current global economic dynamics. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov pointed to the G20 as a more representative format, noting it includes fast-growing economies like China, India, and Brazil. “The G20 better reflects the economic locomotives of the world,” he said. Trump, who has been calling for a settlement to the Ukraine conflict, said at the G7 summit: “You spend so much time talking about Russia, and [Russian President Vladimir Putin is] no longer at the table,” which he said “makes life more complicated.”

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“..How did three countries that are not hostile toward the West get turned into enemies whose subjugation is worth the risk of nuclear war?”

The Crux of the Problem is NATO on Russia’s Borders (Paul Craig Roberts)

Have you noticed how many wars there are without being declared? Israel launches a military attack on Iran and Iran retaliates, but there is no declaration of war. Israel will attack again, and Iran will again respond by retaliating. But neither country is at war. Russia has been in conflict with Ukraine since February, 2023, but it is a Special Military Operation, not a war. Russia’s strategic triad was attacked, but it was merely a terrorist action, not an act of war. After a couple of years of being bombed, Gaza’s population is now being starved to death, but it is just a matter of clearing the area so a resort can be built. Libya and its leadership were destroyed; Iraq and its leadership were destroyed; Syria and its leadership were destroyed. But it wasn’t wars, just the imposition of democracy. Saudi Arabia invaded Yemen, but war was not declared. Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Hezbollah are merely anti-terrorist operations, not war.

War is everywhere but the reality cannot be acknowledged. The most serious event of all is not even acknowledged. Someone in the West gave a green light for an attack on Russia’s nuclear triad despite the fact that Russia’s war doctrine requires a “strategic response” to such an attack. Putin sidestepped the issue by declaring the attack to be a terrorist action, not an act of war. But whoever gave the green light for an attack that could have initiated nuclear war between Russia and the West has not been identified and held accountable for the risk to which he subjected life on earth. Indeed, there is zero interest in discovering how the West green lighted an attack that under Russian war doctrine should have initiated nuclear war. Putin pretends it didn’t happen, and Washington is uninterested in who and how the US could have found itself in nuclear war.

President Trump says he did not know of the planned attack on Russia’s strategic triad. This should scare Trump to death. But he seems uninterested in who it was that would have initiated nuclear war with Russia had Putin not flinched. How is it that the American people, the people of Europe, the Russians, Chinese and the rest of the world can be content that it is not in the hands of President Trump whether a strike on Russia that could result in nuclear war can be initiated? How is it that an outside third party has the initiative? Left unexamined, what will the next reckless provocation be? At what point will Putin be forced to recognize reality and be forced to respond? The entire media, governments, and security agencies of the world should be focused on identifying, and preventing, a third party from initiating nuclear conflict between the two major nuclear powers.

Instead, there is no interest in the question. False narratives are in place, and they are running their course. Despite his boasts, Trump has done nothing to achieve peace. Trump could easily forestall Israeli attacks on Iran by agreeing to an inspection to certify the extent of Iran’s enrichment of uranium. Instead, Trump read Iran an ultimatum–which Trump regards as a negotiation–to stop enriching uranium for any purpose or risk being bombed out of existence. In other words, for Trump negotiation means complying with Trump’s demands. Imposing hegemony is not negotiation.

Putin says the Ukraine negotiations must address the central issue. Does anyone in Washington understand that the central issue is NATO on Russia’s borders? There are US missile bases in Poland and Romania. The missiles can be loaded with conventional or nuclear warheads. This is an existential problem for Russia, as were Soviet missile bases in Cuba for the US. President Trump can diffuse the entire issue by removing the US missile bases on Russia’s borders and by rolling NATO back to the 1997 borders.

Trump could diffuse the situation in the Middle East by announcing publicly that the US will not support any more Israeli aggression, and Trump could cease picking a fight with China. Ask yourself, what is Russia doing to us? Nothing. What is Iran doing to US? Nothing, What is China doing to US? Nothing, How did three countries that are not hostile toward the West get turned into enemies whose subjugation is worth the risk of nuclear war? This is a massive failure of Western foreign policy. Where there is no vision the people are lost.

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“The “Anglo-Ukrainian terrorist tandem”..

Kiev and London Plotting ‘Bloody Provocations’ – Russian Spy Agency (RT)

Kiev and London have been plotting a series of “bloody provocations” to escalate the Ukraine conflict and disrupt dialogue between Moscow and Washington, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has warned. In a statement issued on Monday, the agency described growing coordination between Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) and its military intelligence (GUR) with British intelligence, which it said is due to Kiev’s “mounting battlefield setbacks and deepening moral exhaustion.” Such sabotage operations typically follow a set pattern, the SVR said, with Britain planning and coordinating, and Ukrainian operatives carrying out the attacks. The report suggested that the same approach was used in recent railway sabotage in Russia’s Bryansk and Kursk Regions, which Moscow denounced as Ukrainian “terrorist attacks.”

The incidents killed seven and injured over 120, including children. The agency also cited the June 1 Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian airbases as part of the same playbook. The “Anglo-Ukrainian terrorist tandem” is now preparing more attacks, the SVR claimed, aiming to escalate the conflict, derail Moscow-Washington dialogue, and convince the White House to maintain large-scale military support for Kiev. According to the agency, one such scenario involves a false flag Russian torpedo attack on a US Navy ship in the Baltic Sea. Ukraine has already supplied Soviet-made torpedoes to the UK, the SVR said. Some are meant to detonate at a “safe distance,” while one will be left unexploded “as evidence of Moscow’s malicious activity.” Ukrainian operatives, it added, are prepared to carry out the plan.

Another alleged scheme involves British, Ukrainian, and Northern European partners “accidentally” recovering Russian-made naval mines in the Baltic, supposedly placed to sabotage international maritime shipping routes. “Kiev has become the perfect executor of vile provocations and terrorist acts for perfidious Albion [England],” the SVR concluded. The agency’s chief, Sergey Naryshkin, has repeatedly warned of possible British provocations, saying the SVR is well aware of London’s covert hostile activities against Russia.

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“..Moscow hopes that “the pause they have taken will not last too long.”

US Postpones Talks With Russia – Moscow (RT)

The US has postponed bilateral consultations with Moscow aimed at easing tensions and restoring diplomatic missions, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova announced on Monday. Earlier this year, Russia and the US held two rounds of high-level talks, the first on February 18 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the second on February 27 in Istanbul, Türkiye. The discussions marked the first major direct talks since the deterioration of relations following the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine. The agenda included mutual restoration of embassy operations, easing visa issuance, addressing the Ukraine conflict, and exploring potential post-conflict economic cooperation. The next round of talks was to take place in Moscow. However, according to Zakharova, this meeting was canceled at the initiative of the American negotiators.

In a statement published on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Telegram channel, she stated, “As of today, the next meeting within the framework of bilateral consultations on eliminating ‘irritants’ to normalize the operation of diplomatic missions of both countries has been canceled at the initiative of the American negotiators.” She did not disclose the reason Washington’s gave for postponing the meetings, adding only that Moscow hopes that “the pause they have taken will not last too long.” Since taking office earlier this year, US President Donald Trump has made efforts to reestablish contact with Moscow, which had been largely severed under his predecessor, Joe Biden. Russian officials have welcomed the shift, also expressing readiness to normalize bilateral relations.

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“The bodies of over 6,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been handed over to Kiev as agreed, Vladimir Medinsky has announced..Kiev returned the bodies of 78 slain Russian soldiers, he added..”

Russia Has Fulfilled Istanbul Promises – Medinsky (RT)

Russia has returned the bodies of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers, Moscow’s chief negotiator for the Ukraine conflict, Vladimir Medinsky, has said. Moscow repatriated a total of 6,060 sets of military remains, the presidential aide said in an update posted on Telegram on Monday. Kiev returned the bodies of 78 slain Russian soldiers, he added. The exchange was agreed upon during the latest round of direct talks between Moscow and Kiev, hosted by Türkiye, in June. Medinsky’s Ukrainian counterpart, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, suggested at the time that Kiev would hand over an equal number of killed Russian troops.

In April, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky stated in the interview that Ukraine had lost up to 100,000 troops since the escalation of the conflict in 2022. Russian Defense Ministry estimates suggest that Kiev’s losses are an order of magnitude higher than that, as of the end of 2024, with more than half of the total casualties suffered that year. The handover of military remains to Ukraine was jeopardized after Kiev reportedly refused to accept the first batch, on June 7. Ukrainian officials blamed Russia for being too hasty, though the exchange started the following day and and continued over the past week.

Kiev presently relies on mandatory conscription of men aged at least 25 years to refill the ranks of its armed forces and is currently considering making men over 60 years old eligible for the army. The mobilization campaign has been undermined by mass draft avoidance and alleged corruption among military officials responsible for recruitment.

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Odd news.

Russian Diplomats Facing ‘Nerve-wracking’ Situation In Israel – Envoy (RT)

Russian nationals in Israel, including diplomatic staff, are facing significant danger due to the country’s ongoing hostilities with Iran, Ambassador Anatoly Viktorov said Monday. In an interview with the television news channel Russia 24, Viktorov outlined the mounting difficulties confronting the embassy since tensions escalated following Israel’s attacks on Iranian nuclear sites last week. “The situation is nerve-wracking, I must admit. The threat to the lives and well-being of both diplomats and Russian citizens in Israel is not ephemeral,” Viktorov said from Tel Aviv. He noted that shockwaves from nearby explosions had shattered windows in several embassy residences. “Thankfully, there were no direct hits, but the incidents were unfortunate,” he said.

Viktorov added that the US consular office in Tel Aviv had also recently sustained minor damage from flying debris. Embassy staff have also seen their workloads increase significantly during the crisis. Viktorov said he had only managed three hours of sleep the previous night. Still, he urged employees to take their annual leave. “This is a good moment to take families and rest back home,” he said. The embassy has encouraged Russian nationals to exit Israel via Egypt, citing safety concerns. According to Viktorov, dozens have already done so and “rightfully so.”

Israel has said its strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, scientists, and senior officials were “pre-emptive,” claiming Tehran posed an existential threat. Iran denies the allegations, maintaining its nuclear program is peaceful. It has responded with missile attacks, calling them legitimate acts of self-defense. Exchanges of fire between the two nations have occurred daily since the hostilities erupted last Friday.

Moscow has placed responsibility for the escalation on Israel, accusing it of seeking to derail the indirect US-Iran negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program. Russian officials have also warned that strikes on nuclear sites pose a potential global risk of radioactive contamination. The broader regional conflict traces back to October 2023, when a deadly incursion by the Palestinian militant group Hamas led to a sustained Israeli military operation in Gaza. West Jerusalem has also carried out air strikes in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

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G7 came ad went.

Zelenskyy and Sheinbaum Travel to G7 Canada to Influence and Intercept (CTH)

I’ll break out a different analytical discussion on other foreign interest matters in a separate post; however, as the G7 kicks off it is very interesting to notice who shows up on President Trump’s G7 schedule in Canada – that has absolutely no bearing on the G7 meeting in Canada. According to the schedule, President Trump has meetings with both Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. Neither Mexico or Ukraine are in the G7 (Italy, Germany, France, USA, Canada, Japan, U.K). Obviously Zelenskyy is traveling to Canada at the behest of the global intelligence network because they are afraid President Trump may no longer keep Zelenskyy at the center of the foreign policy universe. The distraction of Iran/Israel might take away the focus of President Trump – Zelenskyy cannot bear the thought of that.

For President Sheinbaum, the first Jewish leader in Mexican history, the issues are even more dramatic, consequential and serious. President Trump’s rapid deportation program is making it very difficult for Mexicans in the USA to send money back to Mexico. This is quickly becoming an urgent matter for Mexican officials who will be forced to intervene in support of the local Mexican economy if President Trump keeps impeding the accumulation of illegal wages in the USA. These two meetings are on top of all the other G7 priority meetings that are traditionally scheduled. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is intent on leveraging all the effort she put into gaining close proximity to President Trump’s inner circle for influence. Unfortunately, Meloni used Elon Musk as the entry point and, well, now her sense of desperation to retain relevance gets context.

French President Emmanuel Macron is currently battling British Prime Minister Kier Starmer in the quest to see who has more influence over President Trump. Starmer has a state visit and praise from King Charles to bolster his agenda, but Macron has a longer tenure of proximity to Trump. Zelenskyy showing up in Canada is intended to make Europe the focus of the assembly, with Macron and Starmer representing the ‘coalition of the -mostly- willing’. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, is unfortunately not getting as much attention despite hosting the G7. The reasoning is simple, Carney doesn’t represent anything of value to the USA agenda until President Trump decides to take apart the USMCA trade agreement. Until that process begins, the shouting of Canada about tariffs is akin to an annoying buzzing sound in the background; irrelevant white noise from the snow Mexicans.

Ursula von der Leyen will be in Canada because the insufferable European Union always consider themselves as part of the G7 despite not being a nation. The stupid parliamentarians of the EU always demand representation for their Brussels nonsense and often the NATO knuckleheads tag along. In many ways we can look at the appearance of Mexico and Ukraine through the prism that the G7 doesn’t have any other issues more important to them than (1) trade/tariffs, and (2) war against Russia. PM Carney willing to inject any ally of his that might assist the trade war and Ukraine war advocacy.

Read more …

World-renowned infectious-disease epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff — who was fired from Harvard Medical School last year after refusing the COVID vaccine — just got a new gig.

Martin Kulldorff Named To CDC Vaccine Panel (ZH)

Kulldorff has been named a member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices. Kulldorff, who had refused the COVID vaccine because of his infection-acquired immunity, lost his appointment at a Harvard-affiliated hospital in the early days of the COVID era, and in March of 2024 was officially terminated as a med school faculty member. Since the COVID lockdowns began five years ago this month, Kulldorff argued that tactics such as social distancing, masking children, vaccines after infections, and other extreme measures were not the best course of action to fight the virus. He co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for sensible tactics that would allow the globe to reach “herd immunity” and has been signed by nearly 1 million scientists worldwide.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in announcing the new members of the panel last week on X, wrote that his selections signify a “major step towards restoring public trust in vaccines.” Kennedy wrote he retired the 17 current members of the committee and is repopulating ACIP with eight new members “committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense.” “They have each committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations. The committee will review safety and efficacy data for the current schedule as well,” Kennedy stated. MassLive reported that in 2021, “Kulldorff posted on X that ‘thinking that everyone must be vaccinated is as scientifically flawed as thinking that nobody should.’”

“COVID vaccines are important for older high-risk people and their care-takers,” he wrote. “Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children.” According to the New York Times, after Kennedy’s announcement, some infectious disease and vaccine experts accused the health secretary of going back on his pledge not to pick so-called anti-vaxxers. “When Mr. Kennedy fired the entire committee, known as the A.C.I.P., he cited financial conflicts of interest and said a clean sweep was necessary to restore public trust in vaccination,” the Times reported. As for Harvard’s role in the controversy, writing in City Journal last year, Kulldorff argued that Harvard turned its back on him, open debate, and medical freedom.

“The beauty of our immune system is that those who recover from an infection are protected if and when they are re-exposed. This has been known since the Athenian Plague of 430 BC—but it is no longer known at Harvard,” he wrote. “Three prominent Harvard faculty coauthored the now infamous ‘consensus’ memorandum in The Lancet, questioning the existence of Covid-acquired immunity. By continuing to mandate the vaccine for students with a prior Covid infection, Harvard is de facto denying 2,500 years of science.”Kennedy, in announcing Kulldorff, noted he is a biostatistician and “a leading expert in vaccine safety and infectious disease surveillance.”“… Dr. Kulldorff developed widely used tools such as SaTScan and TreeScan for detecting disease outbreaks and vaccine adverse events. His expertise includes statistical methods for public health surveillance, immunization safety, and infectious disease epidemiology. He has also been an influential voice in public health policy, advocating for evidence-based approaches to pandemic response.”

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The Clinton-Soros machine.

King-Less? (James Howard Kunstler)

Saturday morning, we toodled over to the next town, Salem, New York, (pop. 2,612, per capita income $19,499) fifty miles northeast of Albany, to catch one of the hundreds of “No Kings” demos across the nation sponsored by Shanghai-based software billionaire Neville Roy Singham, Walmart heiress Christy Walton, Paypal partner (and Linked-in founder) Reid Hoffman, and father-and son team, George and Alex Soros. Speaking of A;ex Soros, Saturday also happened to be his wedding day, to Huma Abedin, former Hillary Clinton sidekick and BFF (and ex-wife of disgraced congressman and convicted sex offender Anthony Weiner.) The nuptials happened at the Soros’s Hamptons estate. Cable news covered the fabulous cavalcade of black Escalade limousines conveying the super-elite of Progressive-Wokery to the glorious event. The New York Times, with its habitual lack of self-awareness, styled the event thusly:

“Liberal royalty?” Say, what. . . ? There is such a thing? In the party of No Kings? What’s the deal, then? Just princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses, earls, viscounts, baronets, lairds, marquis, knights and dames, and so on. Yet, no king? Well, if you asked the fortunate wedding guests, they might aver to Hillary Clinton as a sort-of Queen of the party, or maybe just Queen Bee. As for former president Bill, he appears to be undergoing slow-motion mummification, so he currently occupies an ambiguous zone between this world and the next, with no mojo left for kingly duties. Anyway, it rained that day down on the South Fork. Meanwhile, back upstate, cloudy and cool but no rain, some two-hundred wrathful plebeian souls gathered at the one-stoplight-intersection in little Salem, these days mainly a farm community, the old railroad engine repair shop defunct, and many good non-farm jobs with it, the usual story in this corner of the country. The hopped-up crowd was well-supplied with signs and placards, many avouching Down with Oligarchs! — which, oddly, seemed a sort of backhanded reference to billionaires of the very type underwriting the day’s festivities, not to mention the super-rich “liberal royalty” gang gathered for the Soros-Abedin royal wedding.

But that was only one of the many incongruities haunting the mass protest against the abhorred president, Mr. Trump. For instance, one poor fellow on the southeast corner of South Main and East Broadway inveighed mournfully against the suppression of free speech, apparently unaware of the epic efforts 2021 to 2025 by “Joe Biden’s” underlings to censor the Internet and de-platform the regime’s critics (including yours truly, whose website was mysteriously destroyed in October 2024).

The moiling mob was overwhelmingly geriatric, perhaps reflecting the backwater demographics of a region with few job opportunities for young folk. A spirit of revival bubbled among them as they reenacted old rituals of the hippie halcyon, the grand old days of the Vietnam War protests, when thousands gathered to levitate the Pentagon. Only now, their sentiments and beliefs exhibit a striking and peculiar inversion of the ancient 1960s credos that drove the beloved Movement.

I know because I was there, on campus, between 1966 and 1971. Back then, the Left opposed the wicked “establishment” and all its nefarious operations, from the war in Vietnam to the FBI’s underhanded suppression of political dissent. These days, strange to relate, the Left stands in staunch defense of the Deep State, big government (and its prodigious corruption), and the politicization of the FBI and CIA.

Their placards lament the withering of “our democracy,” yet they were just fine with “Joe Biden” selecting a 2024 presidential candidate for them — with no customary vote by party delegates, or anything approaching an open democratic process. They shout for the “rule-of-law,” except when it concerns special persons such as the former president’s crackhead, bag-man son. They’re all for the colossal grift around the war in Ukraine. And don’t forget they supported vaccine mandates, the closing and ruination of small businesses (while Walmart and Taco Bell were allowed to thrive), and all the other hypocritical, fraudulent, lethal actions of Covid-19 policy.

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“..a Muslim woman was estimated to have 2.9 children during her lifetime, compared to 2.2 for non-Muslim women..”

“Islam is set to grow to become the world’s largest religion in years ahead, unless trend lines shift..”

Islam Growing Three Times As Fast As Christianity – Study (RT)

Islam grew approximately three times as fast as Christianity between 2010 and 2020, spurred by higher birth rates and lower rates of deconversion, according to new data from the Pew Research Center. The global population of Muslims rose by nearly 21% over the ten-year span, while the number of Christians only grew by around 6%, according to data from the study, which was released last week. The number of Muslims grew twice as fast as the rest of the world’s population, which expanded by 10% during the same decade. Islam also gained more individual followers than all non-Muslim religions combined during the decade, the research indicated. The study cited higher birth rates and a younger average age among adherents of Islam as key reasons for the growth.

On average, a Muslim woman was estimated to have 2.9 children during her lifetime, compared to 2.2 for non-Muslim women, the research suggested, citing 2015-2020 data. New converts and those leaving the faith had little impact on the growth, as both averaged about 1% during the 2010s, according to the study. Despite growing more slowly, Christianity had remained the world’s largest religion, with 2.3 billion followers in 2020, while Islam held second place with 2 billion, the research indicated. While the number of Christians grew within the ten-year period, the religion’s overall share of the global population shrank by nearly 2%, according to the data. Christian population growth has tapered due to high rates of people leaving to become religiously unaffiliated, according to the study. Despite relatively high fertility rates among adherents, the faith witnessed a net loss of 11.6 adults for every 100 adults who were raised as Christian.

“Islam is set to grow to become the world’s largest religion in years ahead, unless trend lines shift,” said Conrad Hackett, the lead researcher at the Pew Research Center and the main author of the study, according to The Washington Post. He added that it was “striking” to see such a dramatic shift in just a decade, pointing out that the Muslim and Christian populations had grown closer in size as Islam expanded more rapidly than any other major faith. The research covered thousands of censuses and surveys in 201 countries and focused on seven groups: Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, other religions, and individuals who do not identify with any particular religion.

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“..state media platform RIA Novosti editorialized on June 14 that the Israeli operations are a rehearsal for what the US and its allies are planning to do to Russia, and that this is well understood in Moscow.”

Happy Birthday Donald, Happy US Army and Flag Day (Helmer)

There are no flies on President Vladimir Putin. That’s an expression which originated in the fly-blown goldrush mines of Australia in 1840 and then moved with the flies to the goldrush mines of California a few years later. Literally, it means a man who is too quick for a fly to settle on him. Metaphorically, it means a man who is much too clever to be fooled by a fraudster or deceived by an enemy. Putin is much too quick not to recognize that President Donald Trump is both a fraudster and an enemy. Putin doesn’t have to be told by the General Staff that Trump’s war plans are an existential threat to Russia’s security on the western front (Ukraine, Romania, Poland); northern front (Norway, Sweden, Finland), eastern front (Japan, South Korea); and southern front (Iran).

Last Thursday night, as the US and Israel began their war against Russia’s strategic ally Iran, starting with decapitation strikes against the Islamic Republic’s leadership, the Russian General Staff didn’t have to send Putin their “we told you so” message. But the Kremlin’s communication system broke down, nonetheless. Officially, the war didn’t begin for the Russians until they detected US and Israeli fuelling, arming, and deception preparations on Thursday ahead of the first Israeli weapons launches after midnight into Friday. Earlier in the day, Putin had been telling his arms chiefs “we know the enemy’s modus operandi. However, I do not think we are falling behind in any way.” The combination of drone and missile attack tactics of the enemy requires, he said, “the new state armament programme [to] ensure creation of a universal air defence system capable of operating under any conditions and effectively hitting air assault weapons regardless of their type.”

What about defence against ultra close range, ultra low-altitude drone attacks of the kind which the US, the UK and Ukraine had successfully executed, evading detection and interception, on June 1 against Russia’s nuclear bomber bases across the country? Putin’s scripted phrase “air assault weapons” left that unmentioned in the Kremlin communiqué, but not in the closed-door session after Putin announced: “Let’s get to work”.* What then was the similar coordination by the US and Israel of long-range air assault operations with ground-level attacks targeted fatally on five, possibly eight Iranian generals and five Iranian nuclear scientists. The US and Israeli media reports have termed these decapitation strikes acts of war, not acts of terrorism. The Russian media reports have followed suit.

The state media platform RIA Novosti editorialized on June 14 that the Israeli operations are a rehearsal for what the US and its allies are planning to do to Russia, and that this is well understood in Moscow. “Many respected analysts of different calibres believe that the purpose of the attack on Iran is to eliminate the country’s nuclear program (necessarily) and regime change (extremely desirable). In fact, the main goal of the operation is to work out a mass preventive disarming strike against the enemy with serious military capabilities – that enemy is called not Iran, but Russia.”

This strategic plan, writes Boris Rozhin, a leading military blogger reflecting the views of senior Russian military officers, is President Donald Trump’s first of all, and aimed at Russia next. “Current events in the Middle East region demonstrate a dramatic change in the geopolitical situation. The Western powers, throwing away their purported enmity, have united in a general offensive against an independent Iran, a key ally of Russia…The previous ‘disagreements’ have turned out to be only a spectacle for the public. Iran’s defeat will be a strategic catastrophe for Russia, surpassing even the loss of Syria. Iran plays a key role in maintaining a balance of power in the Middle East and is Russia’s most important ally in confronting Western domination…The war against Iran, initiated by the Western world, could have disastrous consequences for the entire world order. This is not a local conflict, but an attempt to finally break the last pockets of resistance to the unipolar world…For Russia, this means the need to make drastic decisions to protect its strategic interests and allies.” — June 14, 21:19.

“In summing up this story,” Rozhin wrote yesterday, — June 14, 14:31, “we can conclude – if there is anyone who has not yet understood – that the ‘Trump peace attempts’ are worthless and will lead to nothing – neither in the Middle East nor in Ukraine. Therefore, agreements with Trump are not worth it. It is necessary to strengthen the army and the military-industrial complex and achieve the goals of the SVO [Special Military Operation] by military means. In order not to say again, ‘we wanted peace, and the Americans deceived us again’, as the Iranians do now.”

In the policy discussion currently under way, a Moscow source reports the intelligence assessment that Iran’s military capabilities are not as effective as they have been publicly portrayed or as the generals have threatened; that the clerical leadership under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei knows this; and that he and his clerical allies believe their best chance of survival in power is to limit the counterattack on Israel, ask for a ceasefire, bargain with their threat to close the Hormuz Strait, and abandon their negotiating positions on nuclear enrichment and missile development.

“If the nuclear bomb was a bluff, and we believe it was,” the source says, “then they should have learned the lessons of Saddam [Hussein]. They should have expected Netanyahu and Trump to call their bluff. Now that’s happened, Iran’s internal weakness is also stark. I believe SVR [foreign intelligence], GRU [military intelligence] and MiD [foreign ministry] have concluded the conflict is the Iranians to lose – and this is what is happening. What can Putin do if the clerics have no nerve to fight?”

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At least it was not quiet.

10 YEARS AGO: Donald Trump Announces Presidential Candidacy (DS)

Ten years ago today, now-President Donald Trump came down the Trump Tower escalator in Manhattan to announce his run to be president of the United States. “We need a leader that can bring back our jobs, can bring back our manufacturing, can bring back our military, can take care of our vets. …. We need somebody that literally will take this country and make it great again,” said the Queens-born real estate mogul and reality television star. The 69-year-old made a number of promises, reshaping American politics to this day. “I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall, mark my words,” Trump told the Manhattan crowd. Trump’s claims were met with general ridicule from most media coverage.

“Donald J. Trump, the garrulous real estate developer whose name has adorned apartment buildings, hotels, Trump-brand neckties and Trump-brand steaks, announced on Tuesday his entry into the 2016 presidential race, brandishing his wealth and fame as chief qualifications in an improbable quest for the Republican nomination,” wrote the New York Times in its mocking coverage of the candidate who would defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton little over a year later. Ten years later, Trump is pushing for the speedy passage of the “big, beautiful” budget reconciliation bill, which would secure funding to complete construction of the Southern border wall. In his Trump Tower speech, the billionaire also vowed to bring stability to the Middle East.

“Islamic terrorism is eating up large portions of the Middle East. They’ve become rich. I’m in competition with them. They [ISIS] just built a hotel, can you believe this? … Nobody will be tougher on ISIS than Donald Trump,” he said, also promising to “stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.” In June 2025, Israel and Iran are currently at war after Israel struck the Islamic regime in an attempt to prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

The future-president also spoke at length on a topic that is still top-of-mind today—China. ““I like China. I love China,” he said. “[But] it’s like take the New England Patriots and Tom Brady and have them play your high school football team. That’s the difference between China’s leaders and our leaders. … We have all the cards, but we don’t know how to use them.” In June 2025, Trump’s White House has said they have reached a consensus on a trade agreement with China. Now at the age of 79, Trump is half of a year into his second term as president after winning every swing, as well as the popular vote. The journey he began in 2015 is far from over.

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Anthony

 

 

Moose

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Oct 052021
 
 October 5, 2021  Posted by at 8:15 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  84 Responses »


M. C. Escher Circle limit III 1959

 

They All Lied. Throw Them All Out NOW (Denninger)
Covid-19: The Hyperferritinemic Syndrome (Chesnut)
Slowly, Then All at Once (Kunstler)
The Age of Exterminations – III (Ugo Bardi)
Italian Court Sides With Nurse Wrongly Suspended For Refusing Covid-19 Jab (LSN)
New Zealand Abandons Controversial ‘Zero COVID’ Policy (SN)
India To Pay $674 Compensation For Every Covid-19 Death (BBC)
Harvard Epidemiologist Censored by LinkedIn for Defending Healthcare Jobs (BI)
New PCR Test Intelligence Suggests Covid-19 Virulent Earlier Than Thought (RM)
Antibodies Last Over A Year After Covid-19 Infection (JTN)
Europe’s Energy Crisis Presents A Real Danger (Lacalle)

 

 


From https://wereldintransitie.files.wordpress.com/2021/10/covid-19-in-perspectief.pdf

 

 

Veritas Pfizer

 

 

Qantas
https://twitter.com/i/status/1444644291758919686

 

 

“The ghouls involved in this up and down the line, from hospital administrators to doctors to nurses to politicians all must hang for this.”

They All Lied. Throw Them All Out NOW (Denninger)

The Government has been analyzing CMS data. Not a shock; they have every person over 65’s medical records, in real time, as everyone over 65, statistically speaking, is on Medicare and the government pays for it. They therefore have the records. The US Government has been analyzing this data through Project Salus. They know that:
• 71% of the Covid-19 cases occurred in these fully-vaccinated people and roughly 80% of the population >65 is vaccinated. In other words they know the vaccines do not stop you from getting Covid.
• Both of the mRNA vaccines lose effectiveness between 4-6 months post-injection; the failure rate doubles between 5-6 months as opposed to 3-4 months.
• Age is NOT why the vaccines lose effectiveness. It is simply that they stop working.
• While Moderna vaccines work slightly better than the Pfizer ones, the key word here is slightly. Both degrade materially and the difference in the 5-6 month timeframe is not statistically significant. Yes, it appears to be slightly better but not statistically so. In other words the damn things do not work to provide durable protection — period.
• The nuclear lie: As of August 7th 60% of hospitalizations were among fully-vaccinated individuals. You have heard repeatedly that this is now a “disease of the unvaccinated.” That is a damned, knowing lie.
• In the 5-6 month timeframe the hospitalization protection also is wildly ineffective; the rate per 100,000 approximately doubles between the 3-4 month and 5-6 month time periods.
• Prior infection is highly protective but post six months vaccination has become much less-so. Note that “prior infection” now goes back 18 months to the first wave. Do we still need to have a conversation about “natural immunity”? No: THE US GOVERNMENT KNOWS DAMNED WELL AND HAS PROVED THAT INFECTION PROTECTS BETTER THAN THEIR FRAUDULENT JABS.

This is now all in the data folks, and the US Government knows it. You have been lied to repeatedly folks — these are not errors, and what Fauci did yesterday on TV was not an error either. These are not “noble” anything; they are lies. The jabs are a failure in that no matter the promise you care to hang your hat on they become more and more worthless over time and that time period is short enough to void the effectiveness which the FDA claims must exist in order to approve such a thing as a “vaccine.” The Government has been analyzing this data and knows damned well the jabs stop working and in fact this is not a disease of the unvaccinated; the claims that the hospitals are “full of unvaccinated people” are damned lies intended to coerce you into a dangerous and, over time worthless act.

At the same time they know that prior infection and recovery is effective and remains effective yet they continue to claim that there is “no data” to prove this. They’re full of crap; they not only have the data they’ve analyzed it and know that’s yet another lie; there is no reason to take a jab that wears off if you have been previously infected. Period. And finally a new analysis shows this is not US-centric; infection rates are not correlated with vaccination percentages, which is hard, statistical proof that the jabs are worthless to stop you from getting and giving Covid-19 to others. The ghouls involved in this up and down the line, from hospital administrators to doctors to nurses to politicians all must hang for this.

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Check your iron.

Covid-19: The Hyperferritinemic Syndrome (Chesnut)

Ferritin is double edged. It is both an inflammation promoter and an immunosuppressant. But, it needs a trigger for BOTH of its abilities to be engaged. That trigger is none other than the Spike Protein’s cytotoxic attack on virtually EVERYTHING due to its affinity for ACE2! It is said that the Devil’s greatest trick is getting mankind to believe he doesn’t exist. It is the WHO’s and the CDC’s greatest trick that they convinced mankind that SARS-CoV-2 is a natural virus. It is a bioweapon. In particular, the Spike Protein. Only something invented could so artfully, perfectly bridge the gap and induce BOTH a hyperinflammatory state and immunosuppression. The result? ARDS in the short term. AUTOIMMUNITY in the long run.

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“Help wanted signs are plastered everywhere and no help is on the way.”

Slowly, Then All at Once (Kunstler)

Meanwhile, the country is too busy committing suicide by Covid-19. The stupid vaccine mandates guarantee the loss of hospital services and the failure of medical care generally as nurses, technicians, doctors, and even the cleaning crew peel away from their jobs. Ditto, public education… and just about everything else, really, where employment is conditioned on getting vaxed. A lot of ordinary people have weighed the costs and benefits and have decided to opt out. No thank you on blood clots and a premature death. Help wanted signs are plastered everywhere and no help is on the way. For many businesses, no parts or raw materials are on the way either. The truckers don’t want the vax. With the vaccine program failing, Pfizer and the gang are looking to ride to the rescue with a new magic Covid cure pill that does exactly what Ivermectin has been doing, though constantly maligned in the mainstream news. Get a load of this statement issued by the Associated Press on Friday.

“Falsely touted as a treatment for Covid-19?” That’s about as maliciously dishonest as you can get, since it will contribute to killing people whose lives would otherwise be saved by the Ivermectin protocol — which has been shown to be safe and effective in the clinical setting around the world. By the way, Ivermectin is an off-patent drug costing only about two dollars a pill. Since the Covid-19 early treatment protocol runs five days, that’s about $10 for that medication. It must gall the pharma companies to see that enormous profit-potential slip through their hands. Their go-to drug the past two years has been Remdesivir, which is neither safe nor effective and costs $3,100 for a course of treatment (NPR-News). How much do you suppose Pfizer will charge for its new ivermectin replacement? So, while America strangles its economy to death, seemingly on-purpose, do you suppose the capital markets will not notice? You bet they will, and that means big trouble for Wall Street, probably soon. This is their season of the witch, you know, and just last week they twitched up-and-down five hundred points a day. Looking a little shaky.


Is it a coincidence, by the way, that four officers of the Federal Reserve have been outed for trading stocks and bonds in a pattern that looks an awful lot like front-running the Fed’s own “guidance?” Robert S. Kaplan, head of the Dallas Fed, and Eric Rosengren, head of the Boston Fed announced their “early retirements” last week over stock-trading ethics issues. Fed Vice-chair Richard Clarida’s financial disclosure statement indicated that he dumped millions of dollars in a Pimco bond fund and jammed them into a Pimco stock fund the day before Fed Chair Jerome Powell announced emergency interventions to battle the Covid-19 epidemic in early 2020. Mr. Clarida was involved in deliberations leading to the change in fed policy. And Richmond Fed president Thomas Barkin is under scrutiny for voting to bail out the corporate bond market while sitting on a portfolio of corporate bonds. In his past role as CFO of McKinsey & Co, a global consulting firm, Barkin advised Purdue Pharma L.P. on maximizing sales of its painkiller OxyContin, the infamous scourge of the US opioid epidemic.

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“In 2020 the average life expectancy in the US has declined by nearly 2% for a total of 600,000 extra deaths, most of them old people. So, we are talking of some 20 billion dollars saved just in terms of pensions. But it is much more than that considering the saving in health care costs.”

The Age of Exterminations – III (Ugo Bardi)

Let’s make a few calculations. In the US, there are nowadays about 46 million retirees living on social security. The US spends about 7% of its GDP on pensions, that is, about 1.5 trillion dollars per year (about $30.000/person/year). That’s more than the about 1 trillion dollars that the US government spends for the military budget, bloated as it is. Assuming that you could remove just 10% of the retirees, it would mean saving some 150 billion dollars per year. But, in practice, much more than that if you take into account the health care costs. For instance, summing nursing care facilities and home care for the elderly, we are talking of something close to 300 billion dollars per year, and that does not include hospitalization costs. The potential savings are truly huge: hundreds of billions of dollars.

Of course, exterminating the elderly cannot be done using the same demonization techniques used in the past against the witches and the Jews. Old people are fathers and grandfathers and their offspring won’t normally like to see them burned at the stake or gassed in extermination chambers. But extermination takes many forms, and it is rarely explicitly proclaimed. After all, it never happened in history that you could find a sign with the words “extermination camp” at the gate of an extermination camp. During WWII. for instance, the Germans were told that the Jews were just being relocated, not that they were being exterminated. In other cases, the people being exterminated were glorified as heroes. So, what form could the extermination of old people take? It would be done using well-known propaganda techniques, the main one being to state the exact opposite of what is being done. In other words, when the idea is to kill some people, propaganda will convince everybody that it is done to do them a favor (do you remember the “humanitarian bombs” dropped on Serbia?)

In practice, the weak spot of the middle-class retirees is that they need medical assistance and that they cannot normally pay the skyrocketing costs on their personal saving. So, they could be gently removed from the state budget by degrading the public health care system while saying that it is being modified in order to protect them. A clever way of doing it would be to focus so much on curing a specific single disease that the result would be a decline of the care for the illnesses that mostly affect aged people: cardiovascular diseases and tumors. A parallel measure to intensify the effect would be to degrade the quality of the food available, making it become less nutritious and contaminated with all sorts of pollutants.This method would not affect the elites, who can pay for good health care and and good food, but it will hit directly those who live on pensions.

Now, let’s take a look at the current situation. In 2020 the average life expectancy in the US has declined by nearly 2% for a total of 600,000 extra deaths, most of them old people. So, we are talking of some 20 billion dollars saved just in terms of pensions. But it is much more than that considering the saving in health care costs. These numbers are not large in comparison to the US budget, but not peanuts, either. And what we are seeing is just the start of a trend.

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“..suspended without pay in February..”

Italian Court Sides With Nurse Wrongly Suspended For Refusing Covid-19 Jab (LSN)

A civil court has sided with a nurse who was suspended without pay after she refused the COVID-19 vaccine. The ruling was given by the Tribunal of Milan on September 16, following the appeal of the Italian nurse, who was not named. She had been suspended without pay in February because she refused to receive the jab in defiance of a vaccine mandate imposed by her employer. The tribunal called the suspension “illegitimate” and ordered the employer to pay the nurse her full wages with interest and arrears. The decision overturns previous court rulings for similar cases. It is the first time in Italy that a court of law has ruled in favor of an employee in a case of a suspension or a dismissal for failure to vaccinate.

The decision comes from one of Italy’s most authoritative courts and is considered particularly significant because it overturns precedents and enshrines in law the illegitimacy of dismissing or suspending employees without pay for failing to vaccinate. “This was one of the first cases of suspension of a healthcare worker,” stated Mauro Sandri, the nurse’s lawyer, in an interview on YouTube. Sandri compared the case to that of 5 nurses in a similar situation; they lost their appeal in May. “Everyone [in Italy] will remember the ruling in Belluno, when 5 nurses who were suspended by their employer launched an appeal and lost it,” he said. “The mainstream [media] amplified the outcome of that ruling by going so far as to say that it was pointless to appeal to suspensions imposed by employers.”

Sandri then recalled that the ruling in that case was “unfortunately emulated by other tribunals, including Modena and Verona” and that “a jurisprudence had been created, giving employers license to suspend their employees.” All of Sandri’s previous attempts to appeal such decisions had been unsuccessful. However, he sees that this new decision had overturned the trend. “This decision was overwhelmingly positive, as it established the illegitimate nature of the suspension,” he said. The nurse in question had been suspended since February and had not received any salary since that time. The court therefore ordered the employer to pay her salary for the full period in which she had not been compensated, with added interest, as Sandri pointed out. “The appeal aimed at obtaining her reinstatement in the workplace (…) So we requested that, as well as a full payment of her wages, with arrears.”

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But the people who implemented it get to stay? How does that work?

New Zealand Abandons Controversial ‘Zero COVID’ Policy (SN)

New Zealand has announced it is dropping its controversial ‘zero COVID’ policy after numerous critics pointed out that such an approach to eliminating the virus was impossible. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made the announcement earlier today during a press conference in which she acknowledged, “The return to zero has been extremely difficult.” “What we have called a long tail has been more like a tentacle that has been difficult to shake,” she added, noting that the delta variant of the virus forced a change in policy. Critics had repeatedly asked how the country expected to maintain a ‘zero COVID’ policy given the emergence of new variants of the virus and decreasing efficacy of the initial round of vaccinations.


However, with 48% of the population fully vaccinated, no return to normal is expected anytime soon given that Ardern has said 90% will need to be fully vaxxed before the lockdowns will end. Kiwis have faced continuous lockdown measures almost as brutal as their Aussie neighbors since the beginning of the pandemic. As we highlighted in August, Ardern mimicked Australia’s top public health official by telling citizens, “Don’t talk to your neighbors,” after the country went into full lockdown as a result of just a single COVID case being detected. Authorities also previously announced that they would put all coronavirus infectees and their close family members in “quarantine facilities” even if they refuse.

Where will it stop?

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The differences within India are stunning.

India To Pay $674 Compensation For Every Covid-19 Death (BBC)

India’s top court has approved the government’s decision to pay 50,000 rupees ($674; £498) as compensation for every death due to Covid-19. The Supreme Court’s order followed a petition by lawyers seeking compensation under India’s disaster management laws. India has officially recorded more than 447,000 Covid-19 deaths so far. However, experts believe that up to 10 times more people could have died in the pandemic. They have arrived at different estimates after examining excess deaths – a measure of how many more people are dying than would be expected compared to the previous few years. On Monday Justice MR Shah said the “next of kith and kin of the deceased person” shall be paid this compensation within a month of applying. This would be “over and above the amounts paid by the centre and state under various benevolent schemes”, he said.


The court added that the compensation should be paid within 30 days after a family submits an application. In June, petitioners sought the court’s intervention in paying compensation to the families of Covid-19 victims. They said since Covid-19 was “specially” notified as a disaster under India’s National Disaster Management Act, compensation should be paid to the victims. The 2005 law was enacted for efficient management of disasters, including preparation of mitigation strategies, capacity-building and compensation for lost lives, injuries and damaged properties. The law says monetary assistance of 400,000 rupees should be paid to family of people who have lost their lives in a disaster.

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Kulldorff.

Harvard Epidemiologist Censored by LinkedIn for Defending Healthcare Jobs (BI)

Now LinkedIn – owned by Microsoft – appears to have joined the censorship brigade, targeting probably many venues but the Brownstone Institute in particular. The timing is particularly awkward because of the potentially millions of people who could be fired from their positions in the coming weeks and months for non-compliance with Covid mandates. Brownstone has defended the rights of workers to choose against vaccination and in favor of natural immunity or exposure through normal living. The takedowns of our posts began last week when the venue took down a piece arguing against the politicization of disease. The post was put up and disappeared. This happened to everyone who attempted to post the piece. It was a magic disappearing act, clearly targeting the URL and content.

We thought we found a workaround by posting the link for mobile viewing but LinkedIn’s algorithms figured that one out quickly and took it down too. As with all such cases, the first impulse is to believe that there was something about that piece that the censors found objectionable, perhaps in tone or content. And that piece did have an edge about it. Surely it was just once. It won’t happen again, or so we hoped. Now we find a pattern. The famed Harvard epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff – one of three brave scientists who drafted the Great Barrington Declartion one year ago today – wrote a piece in defense of the nurses at a Harvard hospital who are refusing the vaccination. These nurses and others in the hospital had worked mightily and tirelessly for 21 months with daily exposure to SARS-CoV-2 and had thereby acquired natural immunity which all research has shown to be as good or better than the vaccine.

They do not need it. It is unscientific to the point of absurdity for these immunity mandates not to consider natural immunity, about which humanity has known for 2.5 millennia. “Hospitals are firing nurses and other staff with superior natural immunity while retaining those with weaker vaccine-induced immunity,” wrote Kulldorff. “By doing so, they are betraying their patients, increasing their risk for hospital-acquired infections…. If university hospitals cannot get the medical evidence right on the basic science of immunity, how can we trust them with any other aspects of our health?” LinkedIn at first accepted the article on its platform. It unfurled the post with image and excerpt. It achieved a very high reach with many likes and shares. This makes sense because so many people on this platform are either losing their own jobs or losing colleagues in every profession. Kulldorff was bravely coming to their defense.

Within the first hour of posting, the unfurled posts started disappearing. Kulldorff’s own posting on his LinkedIn page disappeared. So did the Brownstone post. Along with it, all shares were made to disappear too. This article – by one of the world’s leading scientists at one of the world’s most prestigious universities that defended workers and their jobs – was being torn down by a platform designed to assist people in their career advancement.

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“..the timeline for when the virus was actually spreading in the wild would dramatically shift: from December 2019 to as early as May 2019..”

New PCR Test Intelligence Suggests Covid-19 Virulent Earlier Than Thought (RM)

The coronavirus may have been spreading through Wuhan, China much earlier than previously thought, according to an analysis of Chinese procurement records by Internet 2.0, a company that specializes in digital forensics and intelligence analysis. According to a report released Monday, entitled “Procuring for a Pandemic: An Assessment of Hubei Province PCR Procurement Contracts,” there was a dramatic increase in the number of Polymerase Chain Reaction, or PCR, contracts inked by Hubei Province and institutions in and around Wuhan in the second half of 2019. [..] PCR tests are the gold standard for COVID-19 virus testing and if there was spike in the use of those tests in the Spring of 2019, as the report suggests, that could mean the timeline for when the virus was actually spreading in the wild would dramatically shift: from December 2019 to as early as May 2019.

Among other things, there was a dramatic increase in the total amount of money spent on these tests in and around Wuhan, in Hubei province, the report said. In 2015, institutions there spent about 19.1 million yuan ($2.9 million) on PCR tests. Two years later, in 2017, they spent about 29.1 million yuan and in 2018, institutions around Wuhan spent 36.7 million on these tests. But when analysts looked at the spending in 2019, the government contract value for PCR tests was higher than the previous two years combined: 67.4 million yuan. (The tests got more expensive, which also suggests they got pricer as demand went up, the report says.) A team of experts from the World Health Organization investigating the origins of the pandemic visited The Wuhan Institute of Virology back in June to see if it could link its research on coronaviruses with the pandemic.

WHO’s findings have been inconclusive, though the Internet 2.0 report notes that the institute was one of the biggest purchasers of PCR tests and equipment in the second half of 2019. The company’s analysis is based on data collected through bidcenter.com.cn, which tracks Chinese government contracts. According to the researchers, there were 52 contracts found in 2015, and about the same number in 2016. In 2019, though, institutions like the Wuhan University of Science and Technology, the Wuhan CDC, and Hubei CDC had secured 135 contracts for PCR tests. Nearly double the number of the previous two years combined.

The monthly breakdown of purchases offers clues, too. There was a significant increase in spending on PCR tests and equipment over the summer of 2019, starting in May, which was remarkably different from the spending patterns in previous years. “The full inventory of this catastrophe is still being compiled,” Robert Potter, one of the authors of the report, said in a written statement. “What is clear is that investigating the coverup of the virus still has some distance to go before it is fully understood. The data presented here gives us a strong indication that the outbreak started prior to December 2019, meaning the information gap and window for the emergence of the virus is larger than when we started this project.”

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Are we measuring the right thing? This appears to suggest that those who had severe Covid are better protected. I doubt it.

Antibodies Last Over A Year After Covid-19 Infection (JTN)

Most people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, will carry antibodies for at least a year, according to a recent peer-reviewed study. The European Journal of Immunology accepted a study on Sept. 24 from scientists at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, who studied 1,292 subjects eight months after infection for the presence of antibodies. Their findings included 96% of subjects still carrying neutralizing antibodies and 66% with the nucleoprotein IgG antibody. After randomly selecting 367 subjects from the original cohort who were not yet vaccinated a year following infection, the scientists found that 89% of subjects still had neutralizing antibodies, and 36% with the IgG antibody.

Subjects who had experienced a severe SARS-CoV-2 infection had higher antibody levels, anywhere from two to seven times as many antibodies as those with mild infections at least 13 months after contracting the disease. While the antibodies provide lasting protection against the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, their neutralization efficiency against the Alpha, Beta, and Delta variants decreased over time. The neutralizing antibodies “were only slightly reduced” in the Alpha variant and “considerably declined” in the Beta variant. However, “over 80% of the subjects who had recovered from severe” SARS-CoV-2 infection still had neutralizing antibodies against the Delta variant a year after being infected.

Nature Medicine published a study in May that found “that neutralization level is highly predictive of immune protection” against SARS-CoV-2. A preliminary study, which is not yet peer-reviewed, found that antibodies decreased 10-fold just seven months after subjects received the second dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.

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The decisions are made by people who don’t understand what energy is.

Europe’s Energy Crisis Presents A Real Danger (Lacalle)

This week the wholesale price of electricity has exceeded the psychological barrier of 200 euros per megawatt hour in most countries of the European Union. Although the daily price currently only affects 15% of the energy sold, since the rest is locked for almost twelve months since last winter at much lower prices, it is a sign of future risk. Thousands of contracts are going to have to be revised with huge price increases in the next three months when the locked contracts expire. The price of liquefied natural gas (LNG) has soared to $34/mmbtu delivered in December and January. In comparable energy terms it would be about $197 per barrel of oil equivalent, according to Morgan Stanley. Meanwhile, the price of natural gas (NBP) has risen more than 200% in 2021.

The price of CO2 emission rights has increased more than 1,000% since 2017, and more than 200% in 2021. This concept, which is a hidden tax for which the governments of the European Union are going to collect more than 21 billion euros in 2021, adds to the inflationary spike.These extraordinary tax revenues should be used to mitigate the price increases in consumer bills and avoid an energy crisis in Europe that will sink the recovery. Two key factors explain the rise in energy prices and in both there is a responsibility of governments: The forced closure of the economy is a key factor to understand the damage generated in the supply chains, and the prohibition of investment in gas resources and abandoning nuclear in Germany has led to a more volatile and expensive energy mix in peak demand periods.

This, coupled with a political decision to impose a volatile and intermittent energy mix has left Europe much more dependent and exposed to gas price fluctuations. Renewable energies work 20% of the time and when they do not work, the only guarantee of supply is to use natural gas, which tends to happen as Asia demand rises and when its price has skyrocketed. Of course, demand is a very important factor, but we cannot forget that, in natural gas, as in coal, there is no supply problem. There is, in fact, excess capacity. Under normal circumstances, the price of natural gas and CO2 would have moderated once the base effect dissipated -in June-, but we forget the disastrous impact of monetary and government interventionism. The rise in CO2 emission rights is directly the fault of the tax voracity of European governments, which have massively limited the supply of these rights so that the price rises.

Additionally, the increase of many goods and services is directly due to the massive money supply growth in 2020, well above the demand for money, generating inflation by political decree. I do not understand how the fiscal voracity of some governments blinds them to two important risks: an energy crisis that leaves businesses and families suffocated by a price increase caused by political decisions, and a massive reaction of the population against environmental policies when they see prices skyrocket due to planning errors (more volatile and intermittent energy mix and dependent on gas) and legislation (charging citizens with the full cost of environmental policies and making those who pollute pay, and those who do not, pay even more ).

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15 years of WikiLeaks
Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks (Within months of this talk, #Assange was under house arrest. He has been arbitrarily detained since 7 December 2010.)

 

 

 

Ron Johnson

 

 

 

 

 

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May 162021
 


John French Sloan Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair 1912

 

COVID Deaths Plummet As Excess Mortality Falls To Pre-Pandemic Levels (McMaken)
Harvard Epidemiologist Locked Out Of Twitter For Criticizing Masks (JTN)
CDC Chief Moves From ‘Impending Doom’ To No Masks In 45 Days (Fox)
Multiple Governors Drop Mask Mandates As CDC Rewrites Guidance (JTN)
CDC Tells Schools To Keep Students In Masks For Another Year (JTN)
Disquiet In UK Schools As Easing Of Mask Restrictions Nears (G.)
Sweden Records 30,000 Suspected Side Effects From Covid Vaccines (RT)
More Than 60,000 Ex-Corona Patients At The Physio (AD)
Toronto Cancels Entire Summer Of Events (ZH)
A Glorified Drug Cartel: How Big Pharma Made Americans Addicted To Opioids (RT)
Liz Cheney Lied About Her Role in Spreading “Russian Bounty” Story (Greenwald)
Circling the Wagons (Jim Kunstler)

 

 

 

 

Joe Biden Clarence Thomas
https://twitter.com/i/status/1393543000211562496

 

 

“..excess mortality began to plummet in early January and is now back to levels below the 2015-2019 average..”

COVID Deaths Plummet As Excess Mortality Falls To Pre-Pandemic Levels (McMaken)

In any given year during the past decade in the United States, more than 2.5 million Americans have died – from all causes. The number has grown in recent years, climbing from 2.59 million in 2013 to 2.85 million in 2019. This has been due partially to the US’s aging population, and also due to rising obesity levels and drug overdoses. In fact, since 2010, growth rates in total deaths has exceeded population growth in every year. In 2020, preliminary numbers suggest a jump of more than 17 percent in all-cause total deaths, rising from 2.85 million in 2019 to 3.35 million in 2020. The increase was not all due to covid. At least one-quarter to one-third appear to be from other causes.

In some cases, more than half of “excess deaths” were attributed to “underlying causes” other than covid. But whether due to untreated medical conditions (thanks to covid lockdowns), or drug overdoses, or homicides, total death increased in 2020. In other words, total excess mortality is a partial proxy for covid deaths. Whatever proportion of total deaths covid cases may comprise, it stands to reason that if total deaths decline, then covid deaths are declining also. Moreover, looking at total deaths helps cut through any controversies over whether or not deaths are properly attributed to covid. What has been the trend with these “excess deaths” in recent months? Well, according to data through mid-March reported by Our World in Data and by the Human Mortality Database, excess mortality began to plummet in early January and is now back to levels below the 2015-2019 average:

Excess mortality peaked the week of January 3 and then it began to collapse, dropping back to summer 2020 levels by mid February. By March 14, excess mortality was at 1 percent above the 2015-2019 average. All this occurred even as very few Americans were vaccinated. When excess deaths began to drop, less than one percent of Americans had been fully vaccinated. At the end of January, less than two percent of Americans had been fully vaccinated. By the end of March, when excess mortality returned to 2019 levels, 15 percent of the population had been fully vaccinated. As of May 11, only one-third of Americans had been fully vaccinated, although “experts” insist 60 to 70 percent of the population must be vaccinated before we can expect to see a drop-off in deaths like that which occurred earlier this year. Yet, as of the week of March 22—excess mortality was below both the 2015-2019 average and below the total for the last year before the official beginning of the covid pandemic (2019).

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Twitter knows better than Harvard.

Harvard Epidemiologist Locked Out Of Twitter For Criticizing Masks (JTN)

A high-profile Harvard epidemiologist this week was locked out of his Twitter account after publicly challenging the mainstream pandemic orthodoxy on face masks. Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a biostatician and epidemiologist, on Friday wrote that “some older high-risk people” had been “naively fooled to think that masks would protect them,” leading some of them to “not socially distance properly” and consequently die from COVID-19. “Tragic,” he wrote further. “Public health officials/scientists must always be honest with the public.” Kulldorff was subsequently locked out of his account. Pictures circulated on Twitter of an apparent message from the company informing him the tweet had “violat[ed] the policy on spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19.”

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It’s mask day today, and confusion reigns.

CDC Chief Moves From ‘Impending Doom’ To No Masks In 45 Days (Fox)

In just about a month and a half, the leader of The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has dramatically changed her tone on COVID-19 and mask mandates. Today, the CDC announced it has revised its mask guidance again, now enabling those who are fully vaccinated to forgo wearing masks both indoors and outdoors. “Anyone who is fully vaccinated can participate in indoor and outdoor activities — large or small — without wearing a mask or physically distancing,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky. “Based on the continuing downward trajectory of cases, the scientific data on the performance of our vaccines and our understanding of how the virus spreads, that moment has come for those who are fully vaccinated,” she continued.

Just 45 days ago, on March 29, Walensky warned the nation of dire days ahead. “I’m going to lose the script, and I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom,” she said during a White House Covid-19 Response Team briefing. “But right now I’m scared. I know what it’s like, as a physician, to stand in that patient room gowned, gloved, masked, shielded, and to be the last person to touch someone else’s loved ones, because their loved ones couldn’t be there.” Walensky continued in the March livestream. The fearful sentiment from a top player in the response team sent a clear signal that though the rising vaccination rates were a positive indicator, there was not enough confidence to ditch the mask or change protocol.

In the weeks following Walensky’s March 29 comment, there was a surge in people running to get their vaccines. A month after her doom comments, and with a bump in new vaccination numbers, Walensky announced a mask revision on April 27 to allow people who are fully vaccinated to do most things outdoors, with some precautions. “We continue to recommend masking in crowded outdoor settings and venues such as packed stadiums and concerts where there is decreased ability to maintain physical distance, and where many unvaccinated people may also be present.”

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Shouldn’t they all do the same thing when reading the same guidance?

Multiple Governors Drop Mask Mandates As CDC Rewrites Guidance (JTN)

Several state governors this week scrambled to drop the mask mandates they had unilaterally imposed last year following reissued CDC guidance stating that vaccinated individuals largely do not have to wear them. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam on Friday announced the rollback of his mask mandate, stating that current case numbers compelled him to “move up the timeline for lifting mitigation measures in Virginia.” “Virginians have been working hard, and we are seeing the results in our strong vaccine numbers and dramatically lowered case counts,” Northam claimed.


Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Friday also announced the impending removal of his own mask mandate. “Our long, hard-fought battle against the worst global pandemic in more than a century is finally nearing an end,” Hogan declared in the announcement, also announcing the end to the capacity limits he had imposed on the state. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper also declared on Friday he would remove his mask mandate “for most settings” in the state. “We can take this step today because the science shows our focus on getting people vaccinated is working,” Cooper said.

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Only masks for those least at risk. Makes sense.

CDC Tells Schools To Keep Students In Masks For Another Year (JTN)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told schools nationwide on Saturday they should plan to keep students in masks for the 2021-22 school year because of the limited vaccinations of children. “CDC recommends schools continue to use the current COVID-19 prevention strategies for the 2020-2021 school year,” the agency said in new guidance for students issued just days after it cleared vaccinated adults to ditch their masks in most instances.


“All schools should implement and layer prevention strategies and should prioritize universal and correct use of masks and physical distancing,” it added. The agency also recommended regular testing in schools to “identify individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination for teachers and staff.” While vaccines are widely available for adults, they have not been distributed for most children. The Biden administration only in the last few days authorized Pfizer and BioNTech vaccines be administered for children as young as 12.

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Those poor kids. “Evie Hickman, 13, from Dorking, liked wearing a mask to avoid “talking to people“.

Disquiet In UK Schools As Easing Of Mask Restrictions Nears (G.)

Teachers, pupils and parents have greeted the easing of coronavirus safety measures in schools from Monday with a mixture of relief and, in the light of concern over the Indian variant, dismay and confusion. The government has announced that students will no longer need to wear face coverings in schools. But some areas in the north of England are being advised to continue measures, following rising numbers of cases of the new variant, known as B.1.617.2. For many pupils, wearing a face mask is one of many sacrifices they have made in the fight against the pandemic, and they are pleased the rules have changed. Jessie Wright, 12, from High Wycombe, said she would be “relieved” not to have to wear one in the classroom. “

The masks would get in the way of our learning. They are nice to wear when the weather is cold, but they’re uncomfortable when it’s hot.” Some teachers, she said, would let you “pull down your mask sometimes” at the end of the school day to allow yourself to “get your breath back”. “But other teachers would give you detention if you don’t wear your mask. It’s their decision,” she added. Evie Hickman, 13, from Dorking, liked wearing a mask to avoid “talking to people”. “I’m not going to wear a mask from Monday, but they were useful,” she said. “I’m quite anxious to not cough on others. I do wonder if people will get bullied if they continue to wear masks after next week, though.”

The Department for Education said on Saturday that “the latest data shows infection rates continuing to decrease” and that not having to wear masks would “improve interaction between teachers and students”. However, Bury and Bolton councils have written to parents, advising schoolchildren to “retain the use of face coverings as per the current arrangements, until further notice”, while Bedford borough council has called for all residents aged 16 and over to be vaccinated due to a rise of the variant first discovered in India.

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That would be about a million in the US?!

Sweden Records 30,000 Suspected Side Effects From Covid Vaccines (RT)

An official tally of suspected side effects resulting from Covid vaccination in Sweden has surpassed 30,000, with the majority of cases occurring in people inoculated with AstraZeneca’s shot. According to the Swedish Medical Products Agency, as of last week, the Scandinavian nation had received 31,844 reports of adverse reactions linked to the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines. Sweden is currently offering three variants of the drug. There are currently 2,103 reports of side effects from the Moderna shot, while the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been associated with 9,117 health issues. But the number of suspected adverse reactions from the two shots seems relatively small when compared to the 19,961 reports linked to AstraZeneca’s Vaxzevria.

The most common side effects for all three drugs were fever and headache. Other reported adverse reactions included nausea, joint pain, and dizziness. Notably, the AstraZeneca shot only accounts for about 26% of the roughly 2.7 million vaccines that have been administered so far in Sweden, but makes up around 63% of the side effects reports. Of the nearly 32,000 reports, 663 cases have been registered where it’s unclear which vaccine was administered. Two-thirds of the reports have been submitted by the general public. The agency cautioned that individual reports do not necessarily demonstrate a correlation between the medical episode and the vaccine.

Ebba Hallberg, an official with the Medical Products Agency, told Swedish media that it was unusual to receive so many reports of side effects, but noted that the figure was likely high because of public focus on the new vaccines. Healthcare providers are likely only reporting more “serious” side effects, the official theorized. Hallberg also said that it was possible that AstraZeneca was overrepresented in the data because the shot was given to many young people and healthcare workers, who are more tech-savvy and would therefore be more likely to report an issue. According to one Swedish outlet, the agency has received more reports of suspected side effects over the past several months than it typically does over four years.

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Google translate from Dutch.

More Than 60,000 Ex-Corona Patients At The Physio (AD)

Sixty to seventy-five thousand Dutch people with long-term corona complaints are being treated by a physiotherapist. Their number has more than doubled since the turn of the year. This is evident from a calculation based on data from the National Physiotherapy Database, in which some of the Dutch physiotherapists keep track of which treatments they perform. At the end of last year, an estimated 28,000 ex-Covid patients received help from a physical therapist. The treatment duration is an average of eighty days. According to the professional association, this means that a treatment period of several hundred days is no exception. The complaints for which people are treated, according to the KNGF, range from breathing problems, fatigue and loss of muscle mass to psychological problems, or a combination thereof.

Some of them are no longer able to work or participate in social activities. This site recently reported that many ex-Covid patients experience many problems with their brain in addition to physical discomfort. Physiotherapists therefore often work together with, for example, occupational therapists and psychologists. Some people who are being treated with corona have been in hospital, but according to physiotherapist Anne-Loes van der Valk it is 80 percent of people who went through their infection at home. “They are of all ages. I also see students aged 17, 18 who have to temporarily stop their studies. ” Van Woerkom says he expects that the number of ex-Covid patients needing physiotherapy will increase even further. Many people who became infected during the third wave have yet to turn to for help.

Due to the large increase in the number of patients, the pressure on physiotherapy practices is also high. Patients often require longer and more frequent treatment than regular patients, the KNGF warns. The professional association calls on the cabinet to extend the temporary rehabilitation care scheme with which these treatments are reimbursed. Van Woerkom: “The figures show that a lot of physiotherapy is still needed. An arrangement that would expire in three months would leave a huge number of patients out in the cold. ”

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So you go somewhere else

Toronto Cancels Entire Summer Of Events (ZH)

Despite widespread vaccination availability and even the U.S. CDC saying that vaccinated people no longer need to wear masks, Toronto has decided to cancel an entire summer’s worth of social functions. The city has cancelled “all major in-person events for a second straight summer,” CBC reported on Friday. As the city continues to fight off large numbers of Covid cases during the pandemic’s third wave (whatever that even means at this point), it has made cancellations all the way through Labour Day. Previously, provincial officials had been hoping for normalcy beginning in July or August. That doesn’t look like it’s going to be the case. The city has cancelled events like the Canadian National Exhibition, Taste of the Danforth, the Caribbean Carnival and Salsa in Toronto.

The city is making the decision in May because organizers asked for “as much advanced notification as possible”. So now they have it: Toronto will officially have nothing going on during the summer. Mayor John Tory said that he thought the city would be in better shape by late summer, but he wasn’t sure it would be safe to be “shoulder to shoulder” with large groups of people. Darrell Brown, Executive Director of the Canadian National Exhibition called the news “devastating for the community and staff” who will now face layoffs. “At this point in time we’re living on borrowed money in the short-term and will be completely out of funds by December,” he said. The event has lost more than $70 million in revenue over the course of the pandemic and it generates $128 million for the Ontario economy each year.

Last year was the first time the event was closed since World War II. Despite asking the government for relief, it has only gotten $20,000 from Ontario’s small business relief fund. Tory said: “I am working with the Canadian National Exhibition to help the fair through this difficult year and prepare for a bigger and better in-person event in 2022.” Toronto, meanwhile, has delivered 1.6 million doses of Covid vaccines. The city’s population stands at about 3 million. Despite this, the city’s stay at home order will remain in place until “at least” June.

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Pluck them clean.

A Glorified Drug Cartel: How Big Pharma Made Americans Addicted To Opioids (RT)

A new HBO documentary called ‘The Crime of the Century’ lays bare how firms like Purdue used bribery, dodgy marketing, and shady political deals to make fortunes by getting millions hooked on super-strong painkillers. What would it look like if an illegal international drug cartel were allowed to advertise? Perhaps it might take the form of slick music videos and glossy magazine ads promising an ‘end to pain’. Certainly, they would minimise the negative effects of their drugs on your life, your future, and your loved ones. If questioned about what they were doing, we can imagine them blaming those who use their drugs, not themselves for providing them. It sounds mad – madder still that anyone would believe them – but this is exactly what has been allowed to happen with large pharmaceutical companies and their marketing of highly addictive opioid drugs.

At least, this is the argument put forward in a new two-part HBO documentary series released this week entitled, ‘The Crime of the Century’. Across its nearly four-hour run-time, director Alex Gibney lays bare the bribery, underhanded marketing tactics, and shady political dealings that enabled the devastating overproduction and over-distribution of synthetic opiates. In devastating detail, the documentary portrays American pharmaceutical companies and the doctors who recklessly doled out prescriptions as elements of a glorified drug cartel – dealers in lab coats, suits and ties. Systematically overselling the benefits of synthetic opioids and downplaying the risk of addiction, the documentary traces how drug companies are driven to pursue ever stronger and more exotic medications as patents on old treatments run out and profits dry up.

In many ways, it traverses territory that is already well known, but is no less useful for highlighting in shocking detail just how much these companies have become a major risk to public health. This is particularly true in their penchant for ‘discovering’ and treating ever more chronic conditions. While the efficacy of opioids for treatment of acute pain and end-of-life care has been well known, there is little incentive to develop and provide drugs solely for such patients, who tend to be few and far between and whose needs are often short-term. No, the real money is in long-term use in greater numbers. And this is where the dangers of pushing these drugs on patients with any kind of pain became increasingly clear.

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Family recipe.

Liz Cheney Lied About Her Role in Spreading “Russian Bounty” Story (Greenwald)

In an interview on Tuesday with Fox News’ Bret Baier, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) denied that she spread the discredited CIA “Russian bounty” story. That CIA tale, claiming Russia was paying Taliban fighters to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan, was cooked up by the CIA and then published by The New York Times on June 27 of last year, right as former President Trump announced his plans to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. The Times story, citing anonymous intelligence officials, was then continually invoked by pro-war Republicans and Democrats — led by Cheney — to justify their blocking of that troop withdrawal. The story was discredited when the U.S. intelligence community admitted last month that it had only “low to moderate confidence” that any of this even happened.

When Baier asked Cheney about her role in spreading this debunked CIA story, Cheney blatantly lied to him, claiming “if you go back and look at what I said — every single thing I said: I said if those stories are true, we need to know why the President and Vice President were not briefed on them.” After Baier pressed her on the fact that she vested this story with credibility, Cheney insisted a second time that she never endorsed the claim but merely spoke conditionally, always using the “if these reports are true” formulation.

Liz Cheney, as she so often does, blatantly lied. That she merely spoke of the Russian bounty story in the conditional — “every single thing I said: I said if those stories are true” — is completely and demonstrably false. Indeed, other than Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), there are few if any members of Congress who did more to spread this Russian bounty story as proven truth, all in order to block troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. In so doing, she borrowed from a pro-war playbook pioneered by her dad, to whom she owes her career: the former Vice President would leak CIA claims to The New York Times to justify war, then go on Meet the Press with Tim Russert, as he did on September 8, 2002, and cite those New York Times reports as though they were independent confirmation of his views coming from that paper rather than from him.

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Still not over.

Circling the Wagons (Jim Kunstler)

Perhaps Arizona can adopt California’s new minority-friendly math curriculum before the election audit ordered by the Arizona State Senate is completed in a month or two. Under that new system of math, or maff, two plus two doesn’t equal four, it equals more, five plus five equals a lot more, and 1,672,143 minus X equals don’t-bother-me-with-your-racist-numbers. It’ll take some kind of math or maff to unravel the mystery of Arizona’s 2020 election results, and the people who run Maricopa County — that is, Phoenix and its suburban asteroid belt, or about 60 percent of the AZ population — don’t want that mystery solved. So, they are not responding to a court-ordered subpoena to produce the evidence, namely, the vote tabulation files from their Dominion Systems voting machines, the county’s server routers, or the chain-of-custody records of the precinct batches of paper ballots.

The county’s servers indicate that the folder containing the database of election results was deleted sometime after the election, so the county has no record of the vote. Hmmmm…. By a previous subpoena, the state Senate took possession of 2.1 million ballots and nearly 400 Dominion election machines and turned them over to the company, Cyber Ninjas, hired to do the audit. Problem was, the county didn’t hand over the passwords to the Dominion machines. Officials claim they never had the passwords, which suggests that the County Board of Elections never had control over their own elections, for which they are legally responsible. A curious situation, because the county says it conducted a previous examination of its voting machines weeks after the election. How’d they do that without the Dominion passwords?

Maybe the data was not stored on the Dominion machines but booted onto external hard drives, which would be against the rules. Or maybe the Dominion machines were connected to the Internet and information was booted into the Dominion machines from somewhere else on Planet Earth. That would be very very against the rules. If that was so, the log files on the machines would show time-stamps and where the outside information originated. Would that be enough for the State Senate to de-certify the Arizona election results? Or prompt audits in other states where the outcome is still contested: Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin?

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