Edouard Manet Portrait of Emile Zola 1868
Google translated from Dutch. This is so crazy.
• High Fine For Doctors Who Incorrectly Prescribe HCQ Or Ivermectin (MC)
Doctors who prescribe (hydroxy) chloroquine or ivermectin against covid-19 will now receive a fine of up to 150,000 euros imposed by the inspection. This may also include other medications that are prescribed outside the guidelines. The IGJ calls on pharmacists to report. The Health and Youth Care Inspectorate regularly receives reports that doctors prescribe medicines that are contrary to the treatment recommendations for covid-19, the IGJ reports on its website. When asked, the IGJ spokesperson cannot explain exactly how many doctors this is about and what their specialty is. “We have talked to a number of doctors about this, but because some of them continue to do so, we are now going to impose fines. We are not going to warn anymore, “said the spokesman.
The fines could run in the thousands of euros, she says. “There is no real minimum amount and the exact amount of a fine will depend on the circumstances. Did the doctor prescribe the medicine once or several times? How many patients has it been prescribed, things like that. The maximum amount for a fine is 150,000 euros. ” The Inspectorate sees prescription as a risk to the quality of care and points out that all doctors’ professions in the Netherlands advise against using (hydroxy) chloroquine or ivermectin for the prevention or treatment of corona. According to the IGJ, (hydroxy) chloroquine has been proven to be ineffective against covid-19 and at the same time can cause serious side effects. There is also no scientific basis for the use of ivermectin. The IGJ states that it is allowed to prescribe medicines off-label, but that there are strict rules for this.
Pharmacists can also be held responsible if they provide these medicines inappropriately. The IGJ calls on them to report if they are offered prescriptions and suspect that this is for the treatment of corona.
Getting vaccinated makes you a guinea pig. And so does sending vaccinated people around the world and into closed spaces.
• New York Launches COVID-19 Vaccination ID Program (JTN)
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo this week announced the rollout of his state’s vaccine passport program, a measure the Democratic politician says will help the state continue to reopen its long-shuttered economy. In a statement on Friday, Cuomo revealed the debut of “Excelsior Pass,” what the governor’s office said was a “free, voluntary platform … which utilizes proven, secure technology to confirm an individual’s recent negative PCR or antigen test result or proof of vaccination.” The program, developed in partnership with IBM, will allow users to either “print out their pass or store it on their smartphones,” permitting them to gain access to public venues and establishments such as “major stadiums and arenas, wedding receptions, or catered and other events above the social gathering limit.” “New York State is the first state in the U.S. to formally launch this potentially transformational technology,” the governor’s office said.
Wow. We got there. How creepy is that?
• Keep Your Covid-19 Vaccination Card Safe – You’re Going To Need It (F.)
Your most precious travel accessory this summer is going to be a small white piece of paper. Some destinations, cruise lines and major sports venues are already requiring travelers to provide proof that they have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19. Other businesses, like Krispy Kreme, are offering freebies and other perks to people who can prove they’ve been inoculated. If you are among the 48 million Americans who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, the only proof that you have received your Covid shots is typically your paper vaccination record card with the CDC logo in the upper corner. The vaccination card tells you what Covid-19 vaccine you received, the date you received it, and where you received it — but that information is not being stored in any centralized, easily searchable database.
If you lose your card, you should return to the place you received your vaccination and ask for a replacement. “If you do not receive a Covid-19 vaccination card at your appointment, contact the vaccination provider site where you got vaccinated or your state health department to find out how you can get a card,” says the CDC website. That’s easy enough if you were vaccinated at a pharmacy chain but more difficult if you had to travel cross-state or inter-state to be vaccinated at a drive-through or pop-up event. All Covid-19 vaccination providers are required to report data within 72 hours in their state’s immunization system, so there should be a back-up record of your vaccination status there. The CDC has a list of the Immunization Information System (IIS) in each state, which is where to start if you need a replacement card and either can’t remember where you were vaccinated or have difficulty contacting the facility.
Digital vaccine passports may become a reality in the future, but for now your paper vaccination record card is an extremely valuable possession. Here are five easy ways to protect it for safekeeping.
We don’t know anymore who’s counting what, or how.
• Mexico Covid Death Toll Leaps 60% To Reach 321,000 (G.)
Mexico’s government has acknowledged that the country’s true death toll from the coronavirus pandemic now stands above 321,000, almost 60% more than the official test-confirmed number of 201,429. Mexico does little testing, and because hospitals were overwhelmed, many Mexicans died at home without getting a test. The only way to get a clear picture is to review “excess deaths” and review death certificates. On Saturday, the government quietly published such a report, which found there were 294,287 deaths linked to Covid-19 from the start of the pandemic through 14 February. Since 15 February there have been an additional 26,772 test-confirmed deaths. The higher toll would exceed that of Brazil, which has the world’s second-highest number of deaths after the US.
The Johns Hopkins coronavirus tracker puts Brazil’s toll at about 307,000 and the United States’ at 548,000, but Mexico’s population of 126 million is far smaller than either of those countries. The new report also confirms just how deadly Mexico’s second wave in January was. At the end of December, excess death estimates suggested a total of about 220,000 deaths related to Covid-19 in Mexico. That number jumped by around 75,000 in just a month and a half. Also suggestive were the overall number of “excess deaths” since the pandemic began, around 417,000. Excess deaths are determined by comparing the deaths in a given year to those that would be expected based on data from previous years.
Deceived by storylines.
• Race and False Hate Crime Narratives (Q.)
The reaction to the mass shootings in Boulder, Colorado, and Atlanta, Georgia, over the last week has revealed how invested the Democratic establishment is in one all-powerful narrative. Both shootings produced an immediate response from the media, Democratic politicians, and activists—that the slaughters were the result of white supremacy and that white Americans are the biggest threat facing the US. That interpretation was reached, in the case of the Boulder shooting, on the slimmest of evidence, and in the case of the Atlanta shooting, in the face of contradictory facts.
After the Boulder supermarket attacks, social media lit up with gloating pronouncements that the shooter was a violent white male and part of what Vice President Kamala Harris’s niece declared (in a since-deleted tweet) to be the “greatest terrorist threat to our country.” (Video of the handcuffed shooter being led away by the police appeared to show a white male.) Now that the shooter’s identity has been revealed as Syrian-American and his tirades against the “Islamophobia industry” unearthed, that line of thought has been quietly retired and replaced with the stand-by Democratic response to mass shootings—demands for gun control.
But the false narrative about the Atlanta spa shootings still has legs. It represents a double lie—first, that the massacre was the product of Trump-inspired xenophobic hatred, and second, that whites are the biggest perpetrators of violence against Asians. The most striking aspect of these untruths is the fact that they were fabricated in plain sight and in open defiance of reality. Given the enduring hold of the Atlanta story on mainstream discourse, it is worth examining in some detail.
“We’re so busy enthralled in race, enthralled in fighting one another.”
• Joe Biden’s ‘Horrible’ Regime Is ‘Way More Racialised’ Than Before (Sky)
President Joe Biden’s administration is keeping the “racial narrative” going because it is the “biggest smoke screen” to all its policies, according to US political commentator Benji Irby. Mr Irby told Sky News the country under Joe Biden at the moment is “absolutely horrible”. “The country is way more racialized than usual; everything’s about race,” he said. “Everybody’s concerned about all types of slights and microaggressions and the left are really taking over everything. “We’re in really bad straits here, it’s not very good”.
Mr Irby said the left and the Biden administration are fuelling racial tensions and using it as a “smokescreen”. “No one’s ask asking about Hunter Biden and this new gun scandal, no one’s asking about Joe Biden being bought and sold by China. “No one’s talking about the fact that China now has a larger navy than the US, and that China is making moves towards Taiwan, and is taking over our country as far as busines is concerned. “We’re so busy enthralled in race, enthralled in fighting one another.”
Much scarier than the filibuster is the fact that Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972.
• What Biden’s Talking Filibuster Could Look Like (IC)
When President Joe Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972, the filibuster was rarely deployed, and when it was, it could be beaten back by a vote of two-thirds of the Senate. That almost never happened, and instead the threat of a filibuster would sink legislation, not because the majority couldn’t overcome it but because they didn’t want to waste a few weeks on it and had other pressing business to get to. In 1975, the rule was reformed to lower the threshold from 67 down to 60, though it was still rarely used. The Senate that Biden grew up in — remember, he was 29 when he was elected — largely passed bills by a simple majority vote, including controversial bills. When the debate was over, even senators who opposed the underlying bill would vote yes on what’s known as “cloture,” which means closure of the debate.
That began to change, first with Harry Reid, D-Nev., as Senate minority leader, determined to fight President George W. Bush, and then went into overdrive under Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. McConnell effectively raised the threshold any legislation needed to 60 votes in order to undermine President Barack Obama. For somebody like Biden, that phenomenon — that legislation needs 60 votes to pass — is a relatively new innovation, not the beating heart of the Senate as some people claim. And nobody knows that better, perhaps, than Biden himself. He alluded to his old-school cred in an interview with George Stephanopoulos published Tuesday evening by ABC. “I don’t think that you have to eliminate the filibuster, you have to do it what it used to be when I first got to the Senate back in the old days,” Biden said. “You had to stand up and command the floor, you had to keep talking.”
“You’re for bringing back the talking filibuster?” Stephanopoulos asked. “I am. That’s what it was supposed to be,” Biden said. “It’s getting to the point where, you know, democracy is having a hard time functioning.” Notice that Biden is using the credibility he owns as a Senate traditionalist — he was elected six years before I was even born, and I’m getting old — to make the case that reform is necessary to defend democracy and return the Senate to the working condition it was in when he got there. It’s no secret that Biden was far from progressives’ first choice to win the Democratic nomination, but he may possess a unique ability to disarm centrist and conservative Democrats who otherwise might oppose the same project or program if it was proposed by Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; or, really, anybody but Biden.
“Nord Stream 2 is really bad for you. A trade/investment deal with China is really bad for you. Now sit. Good girl.”
• US-NATO vs Russia-China in a Hybrid War To The Finish (Escobar)
Let’s start with comic relief: the “leader of the free world” has pledged to prevent China from becoming the “leading” nation on the planet. And to fulfill such an exceptional mission, his “expectation” is to run again for president in 2024. Not as a hologram. And fielding the same running mate. Now that the “free world” has breathed a sigh of relief, let’s return to serious matters – as in the contours of the Shocked and Awed 21st Century Geopolitics. What happened in the past few days between Anchorage and Guilin continues to reverberate. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed that Brussels “destroyed” the relationship between Russia and the EU, he focused on how the Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership is getting stronger and stronger.
Not so casual synchronicity revealed that as Lavrov was being properly hosted by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Guilin – scenic lunch in the Li river included -, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken was visiting NATO’s James-Bondish HQ outside Brussels. Lavrov made it quite clear that the core of Russia-China revolves around establishing an economic and financial axis to counterpunch the Bretton Woods arrangement. That implies doing everything to protect Moscow and Beijing from “threats of sanctions by other states”; progressive de-dollarization; and advances in crypto-currency. This “triple threat” is what is unleashing the Hegemon’s unbounded fury.
On a broader spectrum, the Russia-China strategy also implies that the progressive interaction between the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) will keep apace across Central Asia, Southeast Asia, parts of South Asia, and Southwest Asia – necessary steps towards an ultimately unified Eurasian market under a sort of strategic Sino-Russo management. In Alaska, the Blinken-Sullivan team learned, at their expense, that you don’t mess with a Yoda such as Yang Jiechi with impunity. Now they’re about to learn what it means to mess with Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Russian Security Council. Patrushev, as much a Yoda as Yang Jiechi, and a master of understatement, delivered a not so cryptic message: if the US created “though days” for Russia, as they “are planning that, they can implement that”, Washington “would be responsible for the steps that they would take”.
Meanwhile, in Brussels, Blinken was enacting a Perfect Couple routine with spectacularly inefficient head of the European Commission (EC) Ursula von der Leyen. The script went something like this. “Nord Stream 2 is really bad for you. A trade/investment deal with China is really bad for you. Now sit. Good girl.” Then came NATO, which put on quite a show, complete with an all-Foreign Minister tough guy pose in front of the HQ. That was part of a summit – which predictably did not “celebrate” the 10th anniversary of NATO’s destruction of Libya or the major ass-kicking NATO “endured” in Afghanistan. In June 2020, NATO’s cardboard secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg – actually his US military handlers – laid out what is now known as the NATO 2030 strategy, which boils down to a Global Robocop politico-military mandate. The Global South has (not) been warned.
“In the past, everyone was really concerned about what the editor of The New York Times put above the fold. Now, we should be concerned about what Facebook’s algorithm decides to rank higher..”
• The Facebook Filter Bubble (AEA)
In his 2020 victory address, President Biden called for an end to what he termed this “era of grim demonization.” He forcefully urged Congress and fellow Americans to overcome their political differences. “The refusal of Democrats and Republicans to cooperate with one another is not due to some mysterious force beyond our control,” Biden said. “It’s a decision. It’s a choice we make.” And yet, that choice isn’t just up to US citizens or individuals on Capitol Hill. It’s also a decision for today’s largest social media company, according to a paper in the American Economic Review. Author Ro’ee Levy found rigorous evidence from a field experiment that Facebook’s algorithm results in people being exposed to more news matching their own opinions, and it may be increasing polarization.
Polarization in the United States has been on the rise for some time. As of 2014, Republicans and Democrats were more divided than at any point in the previous two decades. Other studies have argued that this growing division drives dysfunction in Congress and undermines trust in important institutions. Meanwhile, Facebook has emerged as a dominant source of news. As recently as 2008, fewer than one in eight Americans consumed news on any social media site at all. By 2019, 52 percent of Americans were receiving at least some of their news on Facebook, which was more than the share getting news on all other social media platforms combined. “In the past, everyone was really concerned about what the editor of The New York Times put above the fold. Now, we should be concerned about what Facebook’s algorithm decides to rank higher,” Levy told the AEA in an interview.
Syria has already started rationing gasoline.
• Experts Fear Ever Given May Be Stuck In Suez For Weeks (G.)
Dredge and pull, dredge and pull. Dislodging a vessel that has become lodged in sand is simple, in theory. If the vessel is as long as New York’s Empire State building is tall, then the process gets more complicated. Dredgers, tugboats and excavators, guided by world-leading consultants in salvaging ships, have been working for days to free the 220,000 tons, 400 metre-long Ever Given that became stuck in the Suez canal last Tuesday. It has created a jam of more than 200 vessels in one of the world’s key trade lanes. The ripple effect on shipping may be felt for weeks – and longer if the Japanese-owned “megaship” cannot be dislodged any time soon. On Saturday the chairman of the Suez Canal Authority (SCA), Osama Rabie, said that work to dislodge the ship was continuing and had so far allowed its stern and rudder to move and its propeller to restart.
But the changing tide had jammed the equipment once again. “The type of soil we’re dealing with is very difficult to manage, as are the tides which affect the vessel due to its size and its cargo load,” he said. Asked when the ship could be afloat again, Rabie suggested it was possible “today or tomorrow, depending on the ship’s responsiveness to the tides”. A key hurdle has been the sheer size and weight of the enormous vessel, part of a class of container ships that has ballooned in size over the past two decades, partly due to the proliferation of “just in time” logistical models that keep companies lean, efficient and reliant on fast deliveries from factories and warehouses overseas.
The experts brought in to free the vessel, the Dutch company SMIT Salvage and Japanese specialists Nippon Salvage, have been working to dislodge tens of thousands of cubic metres of earth around the stricken vessel, as tugboats help to pull it free. “These are the experts, but it took them three days to get into country, now they have to find these large tugboats and get them to the canal, they’re not positioned there,” said Captain John Konrad, a maritime expert and the founder of maritime news-site gCaptain. The refloating process, he explained, will likely involve a manoeuvre called a “backwards twist,” using large tugboats to rotate the ship counterclockwise and dislodge it from the bank after dredging sand from around the bow.
“In any economy where money hoarding and accumulation is not curtailed, and where most of the money in circulation is issued by private banks as debt, with or without interest, there will be a system-wide scarcity of money..”
• Monetary Adaptation To Planetary Emergency (UoC)
The existence of a Monetary Growth Imperative (MGI) and its implications for economic stability, democracy and environmental sustainability have been put forward by environmental economists for around two decades but recently criticised as invalid. Given the urgency of the climate and ecological crisis alongside spiralling public and private debt, the MGI deserves closer attention. Methods: For this review paper we analysed studies on the MGI, using a selective, iterative approach to the literature review. Results: Our critical review of the research on the MGI revealed several full academic treatments of the argument and even a taxonomy of them, most of which have not been refuted. We articulate one of them in a new way, as well as two more which have not received academic treatment, before considering why it might be thought politically expedient that any MGI should be refuted, or at least seen to be refuted.
Conclusion: In any economy where money hoarding and accumulation is not curtailed, and where most of the money in circulation is issued by private banks as debt, with or without interest, there will be a system-wide scarcity of money available to people and organisations to service their debts – unless, that is, there is continual economic growth. To avoid the deleterious implications of a shortfall of money in an economy, policies are used to maintain economic growth, which is therefore a form of imperative on society. This MGI may be accentuated, at a system-wide level, by the practice of full-reserve re-lending of money.
Interest is not the main driver of the imperative, but because it increases the transfer of money to those who are wealthy and more likely to hold that money in a stagnant form that is not available for debt servicing by others, interest charges may indeed exacerbate the MGI. We conclude that the debt-money system creates a competition for money between debtors and savers which is resolved through creation of more debt-money, which in turn drives growth and the resulting ecological and climate emergency.
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It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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