Dec 062022
 
 December 6, 2022  Posted by at 9:35 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  57 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Olga in a hat with feather 1920

 

Musk Blasts New York Times for Hate Speech Report on Twitter (ET)
Musk’s Brain Chip Company Under Federal Investigation – Media (RT)
Oliver Stone Explores Causes Of Ukraine Conflict (RT)
Calls for Ukraine Aid Oversight are ‘Russian Propaganda’ (Antiwar)
Bases Deep Inside Russia Rocked By Explosions; New Airstrikes Hit Ukraine (ZH)
The G7 Cap on Russian Oil Is a Subsidy to China (Lacalle)
Norway And Germany Ask NATO To Protect Underwater Gas Pipelines (Remix)
Russia and China Shift Further Away From Dollar (RT)
Some Lights Go Out, Some Lights Go On (Kunstler)
A Warning -Which We Will Ignore- (Denninger)
Michael Avenatti Sentenced To 14 Years In Prison For Embezzlement (CNN)
Facebook Threatens To Cancel News (RT)
India Gets World’s First Gold ATM (RT)
Pfizer CEO Refuses To Testify To EU Parliament COVID Panel – Again (Pol.eu)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fear sells

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”

Musk Blasts New York Times for Hate Speech Report on Twitter (ET)

Twitter owner Elon Musk blasted a New York Times report claiming problematic content and hate speech was on an “unprecedented” rise on the platform following his takeover, countering earlier claims by the billionaire. According to findings by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the Anti-Defamation League, and other groups, the NY Times reported that slurs against black Americans increased from 1,282 times a day to 3,876 times. Posts against gay men and Jews went from 2,506 times to 3,964, and 61 percent, respectively during the two weeks after Musk bought Twitter. Musk replied in a tweet that the report was “Utterly false.” The NY Times report has, till now, gotten over 44,000 likes, while the Musk response garnered 346,000 likes, and nearly 21,000 retweets.

“Elon Musk sent up the Bat Signal to every kind of racist, misogynist and homophobe that Twitter was open for business,” said Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, in the report. “They have reacted accordingly.” The outlet said that accounts related to the terrorist group ISIS were coming back on the platform, along with QAnon supporters who have received verification symbols.“This reporting is such garbage,” said Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow and director of the initiative on critical race theory at the Manhattan Institute. “The experience on Twitter is pretty much the same as it was before, plus a few ‘edgy’ accounts being reinstated. The left-wing journalists want to create a false narrative to justify more censorship. It’s transparent and pathetic.”

Musk has reiterated his view that hate speech will not be tolerated on the platform, and that there will be no “free-for-all hellscape” regarding speech. However, he has also upheld free speech on Twitter by uncensoring prominent conservative personalities like former president Donald Trump, investigative news organization Project Veritas, and satire site The Babylon Bee.This has irked many on the left who advocate for banning these accounts under the pretext of hate speech.“By ‘free speech’, I simply mean that which matches the law,” said Musk earlier in the year. “I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”

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Trying to get Musk. Two sides: one, animal tests are a sensitive issue. But two: enabling people to see, and hear, and walk, everyone’s in favor of that.

Musk’s Brain Chip Company Under Federal Investigation – Media (RT)

Elon Musk’s Neuralink Corp, a firm specializing in brain implants, is facing a federal probe due to alleged “animal-welfare violations” during product tests, Reuters reported on Monday, just days after the billionaire announced a new timeline for human clinical trials. The US Department of Agriculture’s Inspector General launched the probe sometime in “recent months” after federal prosecutors said Neuralink could be violating the Animal Welfare Act, the outlet reported, citing government documents and multiple sources familiar with the investigation. The Animal Welfare Act regulates the treatment of certain animals used in research and commercial product testing, prohibiting inhumane practices which cause unnecessary suffering or death.

According to more than 20 current and former Neuralink employees, as well as dozens of internal company documents, Musk has pushed researchers at his brain chip firm to “accelerate development,” in some cases resulting in “botched experiments.” “Such failed tests have had to be repeated, increasing the number of animals being tested and killed,” employees told Reuters, adding that the number of animal deaths is higher than it needs to be “for reasons related to Musk’s demands to speed research.” At least four experiments involving 86 pigs and two monkeys were “marred” due to “human error” in recent years, meaning the tests had to be conducted again, resulting in more animal deaths. The errors were caused by “a lack of preparation by a testing staff working in a pressure-cooker environment,” employees added.

While regulatory filings show that Neuralink has passed all prior federal inspections, sources told Reuters the company does not keep exact records for the number of animals it kills during testing. The full scope of the USDA probe is not yet clear, however, and it is unknown whether the inquiry is directly tied to the complaints raised by Neuralink employees. Reports of the ongoing investigation came just days after Musk declared that US regulators could soon approve human testing for the Neuralink brain implant, claiming human trials may begin in just six months. The exact timeline remains hazy, however, as Musk has hinted at upcoming human trials before.

The billionaire entrepreneur has voiced hopes the brain implant will allow paralyzed people to walk again and the blind to regain their sight, among other medical miracles. While the new technology has yet to be tested on people, Musk has demonstrated the brain chip on more than one occasion, including an April 2021 presentation in which a macaque monkey purportedly played a video game using its mind alone.

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“We’re telling Russians what to do, I mean it’s ridiculous, given what we’ve done.”

Oliver Stone Explores Causes Of Ukraine Conflict (RT)

The US turning Ukraine into an anti-Russian country since 2014 is the root cause of the current conflict, award-winning film director Oliver Stone said in an interview with the Serbian daily Politika, published Monday.“Who are we to point fingers at anyone?” Stone told his interviewer ahead of the Red Sea International Film Festival (RSIFF) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he chairs the jury. “We’re telling Russians what to do, I mean it’s ridiculous, given what we’ve done.” What is currently happening in Ukraine is “not simple at all,” Stone added, but it’s getting reduced in the West to “Russians invaded.” There is no mention of anything that has been happening in the Donbas since 2014, or how many people were displaced because the US was arming Ukraine.

“Since 2014, Ukraine was no longer neutral but anti-Russian, and that’s what disrupted the balance,” Stone told Politika, adding that “every war has causes and consequences” if one one is willing to pay attention. The ‘Snowden’ director has also produced two documentaries about the events in Kiev, ‘Ukraine on Fire’ in 2016 and ‘Revealing Ukraine’ in 2019. Both have faced bans, boycotts and attacks over the course of this year. The US is quick to condemn any country in the world when it supposedly violates the “rules-based international order,” but “America breaks all the rules whenever it wants and you know it,” Stone told his Serbian interviewer.He expressed regret for voting for Joe Biden, saying the “grandpa” turned out to be very dangerous, with a “dream” of regime change in Moscow so the US can control Russia again as it did in the 1990s.

Barack Obama’s choice of Biden as his running mate in 2008, in order to appease the establishment Democrats, was “a huge mistake,” Stone said. He also argued the only hope for the US would be the emergence of a third party, as both Democrats and Republicans are beholden to the military-industrial complex. Stone’s most recent documentary, ‘Nuclear,’ addresses the role of atomic energy in dealing with climate change. It will also be shown at the RSIFF. Asked if he was still a rebel, Stone replied he was getting old and having troubles with his eyesight and hearing, but he prefers to “live on my feet than die on my knees.”

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“Ukraine is spending the money really well; that’s why they’re winning..”

Calls for Ukraine Aid Oversight are ‘Russian Propaganda’ (Antiwar)

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the head of the House Armed Services Committee, said Saturday that the growing calls for more oversight of the billions of dollars the US is spending on Ukraine are “part of Russian propaganda.” While the majority of Republicans strongly favor continuing to arm Ukraine, even the more hawkish GOP members have said they favor increased oversight for the aid. Smith said that the concern from Republicans for more transparency “makes me a little crazy.” “Ukraine is spending the money really well; that’s why they’re winning,” Smith said at the Reagan National Defense Forum, according to Defense News. “Yes, we need oversight, but we don’t need that as an excuse to not fund what we’re doing.”


Last month, a small group of House Republicans opposed to arming Ukraine led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) introduced a bill that would require an audit of the funds that the US has spent on the war so far. Greene said that if she needed to, she would reintroduce the legislation after the next Congress is sworn in this January. The White House is looking for Congress to approve $37.7 billion in new Ukraine aid during the lame-duck period. If authorized, the new funds will bring total US spending on a proxy war on Russia’s border to about $105 billion.

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“The Saratov base lies some 600 kilometers east of Ukraine..” What missiles are they using for this?

Bases Deep Inside Russia Rocked By Explosions; New Airstrikes Hit Ukraine (ZH)

Monday saw another major escalation in the Ukraine war as Russian media reported that explosions rocked two air bases in Russia, suggesting Ukrainian forces could be seeking to launch missiles deep into Russian territory, though the exact cause or type of weapon behind the explosions are unknown. It could also possibly be another “sabotage attack” such that was previously seen in the Crimea. One of the Russian bases struck reportedly hosts nuclear-capable strategic bombers being utilized in airstrikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure. The Associated Press details in the aftermath of the blasts, “Russian state RIA Novosti news agency said three servicemen were killed and six others injured, and a plane was damaged, early Monday when a fuel truck exploded at an air base in Ryazan, in western Russia.”

The report underscored that “The base houses long-range flight tankers that serve to refuel bombers in the air.” The other base that was hit is being identified as in the Saratov region. The Saratov base lies some 600 kilometers east of Ukraine, so both the bases are relatively deep inside Russian territory. Moscow meanwhile has taken quick, decisive action – once again launching a barrage of major airstrikes on Ukrainian cities, targeting particularly energy infrastructure as part of the stated purpose of degrading Ukraine’s power supply going into winter. For days Ukrainian officials have been warning the population to brace for new major attacks.

Air raid alert sirens sounded Monday across the country. “The enemy is again attacking the territory of Ukraine with missiles!” Kyrylo Tymoshenko, an official with the Ukrainian president’s office, wrote on Telegram. According to more from the AP: “Media reports referred to explosions in several parts of the country, including the cities of Odesa, Cherkasy and Kryvyi Rih. In Odesa, the local water supply company said a missile strike cut power to pumping stations, leaving the entire city without water.” Civilians are sheltering in underground places like metro stations, especially in the populous Ukrainian capital… Ukraine has so far counted a handful of deaths from Monday’s fresh round of Russian strikes. It’s expected that power and water access in many parts will be impacted more severely given most estimates have already put the national energy grid at 40% disabled.

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Straight from Brussels to Beijing. EU suicide pact.

The G7 Cap on Russian Oil Is a Subsidy to China (Lacalle)

There are many mistakes in the G7 agreement to put a cap on Russian oil. The first one is that it does not hurt Russia at all. The agreed cap, at $60 a barrel, is higher than the current Urals price, above the five-year average of the quoted price and higher than Rosneft’s average netback price. According to Reuters, “the G7 price cap will allow non-EU countries to continue importing seaborne Russian crude oil, but it will prohibit shipping, insurance, and re-insurance companies from handling cargoes of Russian crude around the globe, unless it is sold for less than the price cap”. This means that China will be able to purchase more Russian oil at a large discount while the Russian state-owned oil giant will continue to make a very healthy 16% return on average capital employed (ROACE) and more than 8.8 billion roubles in revenues, which means an EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) that more than doubles its capex requirements.

This misguided cap is not only a subsidy to China and a price that still makes Rosneft enormously profitable and able to pay billions to the Russian state in taxes. It is a big mistake if we want to see lower oil prices. With this cap the G7 have created an unnecessary and artificial bottom to old prices. The G7 did not want to understand why oil prices have roundtripped in 2022: Competition and demand reaction. By putting a $60 a barrel cap, which is a bottom price, the G7 have almost made it impossible for prices to reach a true bottom if a demand crisis arrives. On the one hand, the G7 has taken 4.5 million barrels a day, the estimated Russian oil exports for 2023, out of the supply picture with a minimum -and maximum- price, but additionally has made OPEC keener on cutting supply and raising their exports’ average realized oil price higher.

China must be exceedingly happy. The Asian giant will secure a long-term supply at al attractive price from Russia and sell refined products globally at higher margins. Sinopec and Petrochina will find enough opportunities in the global market to secure better margins for their refined products while guaranteeing affordable supply in a challenging economic situation. When I read this news about “price caps” I wonder if bureaucrats have ever worked in a global competitive industry. They may have not, but they certainly employ thousands of “experts” that may have told them that this is a clever idea. It is rubbish. If the G7 really wanted to hurt Russia’s finances and exports the way to do it is to encourage higher investment in alternative and more competitive sources. However, what is happening is the opposite. G7 governments continue to impose barriers to investment in energy as well as place regulatory and wrongly called environmental burdens that make it even more difficult to guarantee diversification and security of supply.

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Protect from whom?

Norway And Germany Ask NATO To Protect Underwater Gas Pipelines (Remix)

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Haar Støre have called on NATO to protect underwater pipelines and communication cables by creating a special coordination structure, according to Deutsche Welle. “Pipelines, telephone and internet cables are vital communications for our states; their safety should be given top priority,” Scholz said following his meeting with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre on the eve of the Berlin Security Conference. He added that the recent attacks on the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines have shown how high the risks are in this area. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed the initiative. “We have increased security measures in the wake of the recent Nord Stream sabotage, and it is vital that we do even more to ensure that our maritime infrastructure is protected against future attacks,” Stoltenberg said.

Norway’s prime minister also said his country would direct some of its gas export revenues to help Ukraine and other countries affected by the global energy crisis. The rise in energy prices caused by the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine has brought additional profits to Norway. Scholz thanked Norway for the 10 percent increase in gas deliveries to Germany, as Berlin tries to make up for reduced deliveries from Russia. Scholz also said his country would continue to be a leader in defending Europe and European freedoms. “No aggressor should doubt that we have a firm intention to defend every one of our allies and every inch of alliance territory with all the forces at our disposal,” said the German chancellor.

Meanwhile, German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann confessed that Germany may have contributed to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine because it supported the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. “Knowing what we know today, the decision to proceed with Nord Stream 2 after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 was Germany’s contribution to the outbreak of war in Ukraine,” Buschmann said in a welcome address to a meeting of G7 justice ministers in Berlin. He added that it was Germany’s duty to “confront this truth directly” and “draw the right conclusions” from it.

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Domestic currencies are used in a lot of trade bewteen many countries, away from the USD. It gets to add up.

Russia and China Shift Further Away From Dollar (RT)

Russia and China are increasingly switching to their national currencies in trade, with nearly half of the two countries’ transactions carried out in rubles and yuan, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has revealed. The statement was made during a video conference with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Monday, with Mishustin expressing hope that the use of the national currencies instead of the US dollar and euro will grow further.“This transition… will be actively gaining momentum. This is the kind of settlement that should prevail. This is the logic of a sovereign economic and financial policy of a multipolar world,” he said. Mishustin noted that despite external pressures and unfavorable economic conditions, trade between the two countries has seen double-digit growth, and in the first ten months of the year, trade turnover was up by almost a third and is now close to $150 billion.


“This is already higher than last year’s figures. In the long term, as the leaders of the two countries agreed, we will reach $200 billion or more,” he stated. In recent years, Russia and China have been ramping up the use of domestic currencies in mutual settlements in an effort to move away from the US dollar and euro. Moscow has been steadily pursuing a policy of de-dollarization in foreign trade and has increased the use of the yuan. In addition to the Chinese currency featuring more frequently in trade settlements, some Russian companies have begun issuing yuan-denominated bonds, while a number of banks are offering deposits in the currency.

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“..despite their gaslight and smoke-screens, the global bankruptcy approaches its nauseating climax..”

Some Lights Go Out, Some Lights Go On (Kunstler)

Have Americans grokked that virtually all of the mis-and-dis-information bombarding them lo these many years actually comes from the government and the news media channels that serve it? What we’ve got now in this country is a Mind-Fuckery Industrial Complex waging a psy-ops war on the people of this land. Why is that? Essentially, to cover-up past crimes against the country by public officials. Twitter, pre-Musk, was a major accomplice and enabler of all that, and suddenly it’s not — to the horror of everyone in charge at our nation’s seat of government. The main crimes revolve around selling-out America’s future one way or another — “Joe Biden” and Company being only the most blatant perps in the big picture.

Before them was Hillary Clinton, with her purchase of the Democratic National Committee and previous lucrative ops during her turn as Secretary of State, like the Uranium One deal, the Skolkovo military tech transfer op, and then the Russia Collusion op to insure none of that would ever come to light. The whole Intel Community behemoth was neck deep in it, too, amping up the Russia prank into a four-year coup d’état. Remember, The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting that Hillary’s little hoax was for-real. It’s all just gotten more grotesque since Mr. Trump was ejected in the souped-up 2020 election, with sideshows such as the ongoing race-and-gender hustles, the climate con, and the Green New Deal bullshit.

Covid-19, surely released on-purpose, was, as Ed Dowd avers, a cover for global bankruptcy. Nothing else explains the astounding coordination of so many governments acting the same way against their own citizens: lockdowns, vaxx mandates, vaxx passports, and all. The icing on that poison cake, of course, is that everything the public health officialdom told you about Covid-19 was patently untrue, and dishonestly so, not via omission or plain incompetence. In fact, the virus was made in a Chinese lab with the help of Dr. Fauci and colleagues. Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine did work effectively against it. The “vaccines” were not tested properly and turned out to be harmful. And now the Covid-19 melodrama is ending in a discernable death-of-the-vaxxed and the reveal of all those aforesaid lies, while, anyway, despite their gaslight and smoke-screens, the global bankruptcy approaches its nauseating climax.

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No spare parts.

A Warning -Which We Will Ignore- (Denninger)

Read this carefully folks…. “Municipality and county officials “have formed a plan for the night and the next few nights that we may be out of power. It’s a very serious situation,” Fields said. “So we’ve come to an agreement to best protect our citizens and to protect the businesses of our county, we’re going to implement a curfew tonight.” The power outage in Moore County is being investigated as a “criminal occurrence” after crews found signs of potential vandalism at several locations, CNN previously reported.” Two substations taken out with (presumed) small-arms rifle fire (e.g. bog-standard hunting rifles) from what obviously were a very small group of people, perhaps one or two at each location pissed off about who-knows-what.

Question: Why couldn’t this be immediately fixed? Answer: They don’t have spares for the parts that were damaged. It’s a gun folks, not a large blast that destroyed the land around the area. Equipment was damaged. Ok, so replace it and turn the power back on. That only works if you have the replacements, which they obviously do not. There is nowhere in this nation where you can’t drive a truck full of equipment across a single county in a couple of hours. Doing so requires you have the replacements. Why do they not have the spares?

Because we sent our supply lines overseas, we made no provisions to have spares, and the regulators at the state and federal level sat on their hands and played with themselves instead of requiring that providers of critical services, such as electricity, had a sufficient stock of spares to cover both routine failures and those caused by weather or low-grade assaults perpetrated by small numbers of people. This is the gross incompetence we have throughout our society. It is the manifestation of “oh nothing bad will ever happen so we don’t have to be prepared for it” that has shown up in all manner of other places, such as the cars that are completed except for chips in their engine computers without which they will not run, and thus they’re sitting in a field unsold.

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“Will serve that after five years he’s serving on charges in New York, for a total of 19 years in prison.”

They made him their hero.

Michael Avenatti Sentenced To 14 Years In Prison For Embezzlement (CNN)

Disgraced attorney Michael Avenatti was sentenced Monday to 14 years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $11 million in restitution for embezzling millions of dollars from four of his clients and obstruction. Avenatti pleaded guilty earlier this year to four counts of wire fraud for each client he stole from and one count of endeavoring to obstruct the administration of the Internal Revenue Code. Prosecutors said he obstructed the IRS’ effort to collect $5 million in unpaid payroll taxes for Tully’s Coffee. The sentence handed down by federal district Judge James Selna will begin after Avenatti completes a five-year prison term he’s currently serving after being convicted in two separate trials in New York.

Selna also ordered Avenatti to pay over $10 million in restitution to four clients and to the IRS. “Michael Avenatti was a corrupt lawyer who claimed he was fighting for the little guy. In fact, he only cared about his own selfish interests,” US Attorney Martin Estrada said in a statement following the sentencing. “He stole millions of dollars from his clients – all to finance his extravagant lifestyle that included a private jet and race cars. As a result of his illegal acts, he has lost his right to practice law in California, and now he will serve a richly deserved prison sentence.” Dean Steward, an attorney for Avenatti, said in a statement to CNN that the sentence “was overly harsh and uncalled for,” adding that his client described it in court as being “off the charts.”

[..] In pleading guilty earlier this year, Avenatti admitted to stealing millions of dollars from clients, including $4 million from a client with major disabilities. According to the indictment, after Avenatti negotiated settlements for the clients that required payment to go to them, he would lie to the clients about the terms of the settlements, instead depositing the funds into attorney trust accounts he controlled. He would then embezzle and misappropriate those funds, according to the indictment, and to prevent discovery of his scheme, he would tell clients the settlement proceeds hadn’t yet been paid, among other tactics.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1599882362916990976

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The MSM beat you to it.

Facebook Threatens To Cancel News (RT)

Facebook’s parent company has threatened to quit carrying news on the world’s largest social media platform if US lawmakers pass a bill that could give media outlets more leverage in negotiating usage fees for their content. Members of Congress reportedly plan to add the media initiative – called the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) – to a must-pass annual defense authorization bill to help push it through. The legislation would make it easier for media outlets to negotiate collectively for a larger share of revenue from the ads posted on their content, a boost that could be especially significant for local newspapers and broadcasters.

“If Congress passes an ill-considered journalism bill as part of national security legislation, we will be forced to consider removing news from our platform altogether rather than submit to government-mandated negotiations that unfairly disregard any value we provide to news outlets through increased traffic and subscriptions,” Meta spokesman Andy Stone said on Monday in a Twitter post. Stone argued that publishers and broadcasters put their content on Facebook because it boosts their profits. “No company should be forced to pay for content users don’t want to see and that’s not a meaningful source of revenue. Put simply: the government creating a cartel-like entity which requires one private company to subsidize other private entities is a terrible precedent for all American businesses.”

The JCPA has bipartisan support in the House and Senate, as well as bipartisan opposition. The News Media Alliance, an industry trade group that has lobbied for the JCPA, called Meta’s threat “undemocratic and unbecoming.” The group added that similar “threats were attempted before the Australian government passed a similar law to compensate news outlets, played out unsuccessfully, and ultimately news publishers were paid.” The American Civil Liberties Union is among the groups that have opposed the bill, claiming that it would create an “ill-advised antitrust exemption for publishers and broadcasters.” Critics also have pointed out that the bill doesn’t require that funds generated through social media fees be used for paying journalists.

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Western countries wouldn’t know what to do with one.

India Gets World’s First Gold ATM (RT)

Goldsikka Pvt Ltd launched its first Gold ATM with Technology support from M/s OpenCube Technologies Pvt Ltd, a Hyderabad-based startup company on December 3. This is India’s first and the world’s first real-time Gold ATM. Report informs via The Economic Times that unlike usual ATMs that dispense money, the Goldsikka ATM dispenses Gold coins. In what is India’s first gold ATM, people can insert their debit or credit cards into the Goldsikka and buy gold coins. The ATM has a capacity of storing 5kgs of gold. There are 8 available options for the quantity of gold starting from 0.5 grams to 100 grams. The Vice President of Goldsikka Pratap said, “Each ATM has a capacity of holding upto 5kgs of gold which is worth around Rs.2-3 crores.


The ATM machine dispenses coins ranging from 0.5 grams to 100 grams. There are 8 available options, including 0.5 grams, 1 gram, 2 grams, 5 grams, 10 grams, 20 grams, 50 grams and 100 grams. People can come here and get the coins directly instead of going to jewellery shops. These coins are 24-carat gold and 999 certified. The customers will get their investment returns at a live price without any wastage. The important feature of the ATM is prices are updated live. We take the London bullion market as our market year. The prices there are updated and displayed on the screen and so are the taxes. Today, we had a footfall of around 20 people till the afternoon. We are hoping that more people would use this,” he said.

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Ursula’s best friend. What’s her take?

Pfizer CEO Refuses To Testify To EU Parliament COVID Panel – Again (Pol.eu)

Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla has once again declined to testify before the European Parliament’s special COVID committee. That’s strike two. “Since the October COVID hearing, we have no further information to share with the Committee, so respectfully decline the invitation to again revisit these issues,” states the letter from Bourla dated December 2 and seen by POLITICO. Bourla previously pulled out of an appointment to testify before the committee in October, at which he was expected to face tough questions on how secretive vaccine deals were struck. That decision followed an audit report into the EU’s vaccine procurement strategy that raised new questions about contact between the pharma CEO and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that preceded a multibillion-euro vaccine contract.

On October 14, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed it had an ongoing investigation into the EU’s COVID vaccine purchases, but has not yet specified who is being investigated or which of the EU’s vaccine contracts are under scrutiny. At the October 10 COVI hearing, the company’s president of international developed markets, Janine Small, faced repeated questions from the committee on Bourla’s absence, one of which was even taped to some MEPs’ laptops. She also took questions on vaccine contract negotiations and the jabs themselves, including one from Dutch MEP Robert Roos (ECR group) about whether the vaccine was tested for its ability to prevent transmission before entering the market. That question — and Small’s answer — landed Roos an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News talk show.But, in the end, it seems Small was just no substitute for Bourla. So, on October 28, the COVID committee extended a second invitation to the CEO.

“Our committee felt that during the previous hearing with representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, where Pfizer was represented by Mrs. Janine Small, important questions regarding the advanced purchase agreements between the European Union and Pfizer, which fall under the responsibility of the CEO and of which only he has the authority to respond to them, remained unanswered,” COVID committee chair Kathleen Van Brempt (S&D group) said in a statement today. “As chair of the COVI committee, I deeply regret Dr. Bourla’s refusal to discuss this matter with the Members of the European Parliament,” she said. “As a co-legislator of the European budget, the Parliament has the right to obtain full transparency on the modalities of these expenditures and the preliminary negotiations leading up to them.”

Tucker Malhotra

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“By the standing of the @TheJusticeDept, I am now as indictable as Julian Assange.. I’d be happy to take that one to the Supreme Court.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Humpback

 

 

Newborn twins

 

 

Shark

 

 

 

 

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Mar 032022
 


Pablo Picasso Mandolin and guitar 1924

 

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

 

 

 

 

Zelensky:
6,000 Russian soldiers killed

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

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

 

 

 

 


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

 

 

In case you weren’t scared enough.

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

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

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

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

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

Ukraine And The New Al Qaeda (Whitney Webb)

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

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

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

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

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

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Google translated from French.

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

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

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

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

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

There Will Be Many Ghosts In Kiev (AC)

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

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

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

No fly zone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Universal Boosting of Putin (Craig Murray)

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

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

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

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I must admit I don’t get this.

US Army Pushing Mandatory Gender Pronoun Training (Rebel)

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Lopatonok is the director, Stone the executive producer.

Ukraine on Fire (Lopatonok/Oliver Stone)

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

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

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

Igor Lopatonok, Director

Ukraine on fire full video

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Gonzalo Lira

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

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

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Jul 212021
 


René Magritte Mysteries of the horizon (a.k.a. The Masterpiece) 1955

 

Debate Erupts Between Trusted Medical Doctor And Dr. Fauci (Bbee)
Fauci Loses It With Sen. Rand Paul Over Wuhan Lab Funding Accusations (RT)
Pfizer Granted Priority Review for FDA Vaccine Approval (Claus)
Over Half Of Australia’s Population Now Under Stay-at-Home Orders (RT)
NSW Health Official Tells Australians To Refrain From Talking To People (RT)
More Than 200 Facebook Groups Actively Circulating Vaccine Misinformation (F.)
World Champion Boxer To Retire Due To Introduction Of Covid Passports (Mir.)
Statins for Cancer and COVID; Beyond Ivermectin
Biden Regime Jails a ‘Domestic Terrorist’ (Julie Kelly)
The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in Canada (WS)
Lawmakers Sound Alarm Over China Purchases Of US Farmland (ZH)
Oliver Stone’s New JFK Assassination Doc Is Being Ignored By The MSM (RT)

 

 

 

 

Unvaxxed

 

 

Might as well give it a Babylon Bee overdo. Fauci hides behind semantics.

Debate Erupts Between Trusted Medical Doctor And Dr. Fauci (Bbee)

During an explosive Senate hearing this week, Senator and trusted medical doctor Rand Paul argued with Anthony Fauci—a dangerous conspiracy theorist who thinks vaccines don’t work and that the government is not funding the creation of medical abominations in secret labs. “You are a LIAR!” said Rand Paul, pointing gravely at Dr. Fauci. “You are a LYING LIAR who LIES!” Fauci, who was initially taken aback by the accusation, immediately recovered and said: “NO! It is YOU who is the LIAR, you LIAR!” Fauci then bobbed his head back and forth in a very sassy way and snapped his fingers in a zig-zag pattern.


“OOOOooo! Rand Paul got OWNED!” said CNN. “OOOOooo! Fauci got DESTROYED!” said Fox News. The C-SPAN segment immediately went viral, leading to more requests for the two men to face off in another confrontation. C-SPAN then announced they would be organizing a pay-per-view rematch, in which the trusted medical doctor and Dr. Fauci would call each other liars in an octagon-shaped cage. Unfortunately, Fauci backed out at the last minute after C-SPAN instituted a strict “no bioweapons” policy for the face-off.

Full exchange between Sen. Rand Paul and Dr. Fauci.

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“You take an animal virus and you increase its transmissibility to humans, you’re saying that’s not gain-of-function?” Paul asked. “That is correct..”

Fauci Loses It With Sen. Rand Paul Over Wuhan Lab Funding Accusations (RT)

White House coronavirus adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci has told Kentucky Senator Rand Paul “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” after Paul accused him of lying about his alleged role in controversial virus research in China. Questioning Fauci during a Senate Health Committee hearing on Tuesday about the government’s coronavirus response, Sen. Paul (R) implied that Fauci lied to Congress in May when he said that the National Institute of Health (NIH) did not fund so-called ‘gain-of-function’ research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, believed by many to be the source of the coronavirus pandemic. “I have never lied before the Congress, and I do not retract that statement,” Fauci replied. Paul presented a 2015 academic paper that asserts such research did take place at the Wuhan lab, and was partly funded by the NIH.


One US scientist has reviewed the paper and concluded that the research within “seemed to meet the definition of gain-of-function,” — but that it did not lead to the creation of the novel coronavirus. The term ‘gain-of-function’ refers to modifying and increasing the transmissibility of animal viruses to better study their effect on humans. “This paper that you’re referring to was judged … up and down the chain as not being gain-of-function,” Fauci responded, before Paul interjected. “You take an animal virus and you increase its transmissibility to humans, you’re saying that’s not gain-of-function?” Paul asked. “That is correct, and Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly, and I want to say that officially,” Fauci snapped back.

Despite the paper’s own definition of gain-of-function research seemingly being the same as Paul’s, the White House scientist still insisted that the research outlined in the 2015 paper “is not” the same thing. The paper itself does not prove that the Covid-19 coronavirus was created in the Wuhan lab, but it does imply that similar research on bat-borne coronaviruses was carried out there, with the NIH’s financial support. Such research used to be done in the US, but was paused by the Obama administration in 2014 and subsequently outsourced to China. Between 2015 and 2019, the Wuhan lab received, albeit indirectly, more than $800,000 in grants from the NIH. $600,000 in grant payments were given to the institute via EcoHealth Alliance, a private research firm, and $216,000 via the University of California, Irvine.

Fauci GoF
https://twitter.com/i/status/1401891543322185728

Letter to Do: criminal referral

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As the vaccines are very clearly failing, now is of course the time to speed up the process, because that is what people are not yet allowed to know.

Pfizer Granted Priority Review for FDA Vaccine Approval (Claus)

Last Friday, the US Food and Drug Administration granted pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech priority review designation for their coronavirus vaccine for those who are age 16 and older. This step marks the last hurdle that must be cleared in order for the vaccine — the very first to come onto the world scene, being approved for emergency use back in December of 2020 — to be distributed and marketed like any other inoculation. Until now, the products, like the other two coronavirus vaccines used in the US, have had emergency use authorization (EUA) only — a legal sticking point that has led to some questioning their efficacy and safety and adding to the vaccine hesitancy that continues to plague some areas of the country and the world.

Anti-vaccine proponents argue that they refuse to accept a product that has not been fully cleared by the FDA, and many corporate entities along with the federal government, will not require coronavirus inoculations while they are still under EUA-only status. This status allows for vaccine doses to be shipped to hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and other organizations to be administered to the general public — but not distributed and marketed. Although the vaccine came out in a little more than 300 days since the genome of the virus was determined — an amazing feat of modern medical technology — the perceived delay in the granting of full authorization has led many to speculate that this feeds into an anti-vaccination narrative which may be partly responsible for the spike in infections in the last month worldwide.

As the Delta variant, first detected in India, continues to sweep across the world, the lack of formal approval of the vaccines has sparked concern that a window of opportunity may have been lost, as people for the most part are allowed to gather together without restrictions across the US while sizable pockets of vaccine resistance remain. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Friday that the number of new coronavirus cases were up by nearly 70% in just one week, while hospitalizations are up by nearly 36%, after weeks of steeply declining numbers all over the US. The Delta variant appears to be approximately 225% more transmissible than the original strains of the coronavirus. NPR reports that one recent study from China found that those who are infected with Delta have on average about 1,000 times more copies of the virus in their respiratory tracts than those who were infected with the original strain.

Not only that but they also become infectious earlier in the course of their illness, leading to much more transmission since many do not realize they have become infected. The emergency use authorization vaccines that are currently on the market, however, are strikingly effective against the Delta variant. [..] At this point, experts say the picture looks fairly rosy. “The level of antibodies seem to be holding up pretty well, so we have to watch and see what happens over the course of the coming months,” stated National Institutes of Health’s Francis Collins, in an interview with NPR. The New York-based pharma giant must now go through a rigorous review process that experts believe will be completed in January of 2022. Even with expedited handling of the approval process, speeded up from its usual 10 months, the lightning-fast spread of the Delta variant, which is so many more times as transmissible as the original coronavirus, is rushing past that timeline.

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Australia is done. Pull the plug and let it pour down the drain. The only things people there think are “wrong” in their isolation campaign are in not building quarantine accomodation, and in not ordering vaccines fast enough. Blind as bats.

Over Half Of Australia’s Population Now Under Stay-at-Home Orders (RT)

South Australia has entered a snap lockdown of seven days, joining neighboring Victoria and New South Wales as the third state to implement stay-at-home orders, with half of the country’s population now under restrictions. South Australia entered a week-long lockdown to quell a spike in coronavirus cases at 6pm local time on Tuesday. Premier Steven Marshall defended the decision to impose harsh measures, stating that “we hate to put these restrictions in place, but we have just one chance to get this right” to avoid an extended lockdown period and cases spiraling out of control. Under the new rules, all South Australian citizens are required to stay at home unless they are essential workers or need to purchase necessary produce or attend medical appointments.


They are allowed outside to exercise for a maximum of 90 minutes and within a 2.5km (1.5 mile) radius of their home. All educational institutions will be shut and transition to online learning. The decision to impose a strict snap lockdown comes after five coronavirus cases were reported, with the fifth being an isolated incident from the other four cases. All of the cases have been confirmed to be the Delta variant, which is 60% more transmissible than other variants, according to Public Health England. As of Tuesday, some 13 million Australians, over half of the country’s population, are under a stay-at-home mandate. Neighboring Victoria extended its lockdown until July 27. It was intended to last only five days, however, new Covid-19 cases are still being recorded there.

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How crazy can one get and still be taken serious? “She was named New South Wales ‘Woman of the Year’ for 2021..”

NSW Health Official Tells Australians To Refrain From Talking To People (RT)

With Sydney still in lockdown amid a handful of new Covid-19 cases, the top health official for New South Wales has called for a new level of social-distancing inhumanity: not having conversations with other people. After reporting a whopping 78 new Covid-19 cases and one death in the state, Chief Health Officer Dr. Kerry Chant told reporters on Tuesday that Australians shouldn’t engage in conversations, even if both parties were wearing masks, and regardless of vaccination status. “Whilst it’s human nature to engage in conversation with others, to be friendly, unfortunately, this is not the time to do that,” Chant said. So, even if you run into your next-door neighbor in the shopping center … don’t start up a conversation. Now is the time for minimizing your interactions with others.

Masks don’t afford “total protection,” Chant added, so residents must avoid talking to each other and “be absolutely sure that, as we go about our daily lives, we do not come into contact with anyone else that would pose a risk.” Since the pandemic began, Australia has repeatedly staved off the spread of Covid-19 with some of the world’s most draconian lockdown measures, in pursuit of driving new cases down to zero even at the expense of civil liberties. Lockdowns have been reimposed recently, as infections flared up again. In Melbourne, for instance, just about everything other than grocery stores and hospitals was shuttered for nearly four months, and the city entered its fifth lockdown last week. Alice Springs ordered a new lockdown in June after just one new infection was reported.

Much like the White House’s chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, in the US, Chant has been championed by mainstream media outlets as a pandemic-fighting hero. The Guardian referred to the doctor as “unflappable” and a “secret weapon.” She was named New South Wales ‘Woman of the Year’ for 2021. Social media critics weren’t charmed by her advice against having conversations, however. “Unbelievable,” TV presenter and author Tonia Buxton said. “Don’t behave like a human, forget humanity, just do as you are told.”

DON’T ACT LIKE A HUMAN. DON’T TALK TO YOUR FRIENDS

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Start reading, hoping to find what this misinformation is. Nothing until the last paragraph -apparently you’re supposed to know(?!) but I don’t, where someone says “I truly believe that they are out to kill people with this shot..” Now I still don’t know what misinformation they talk about. Pretty sure that’s on purpose.

More Than 200 Facebook Groups Actively Circulating Vaccine Misinformation (F.)

After President Biden came down hard on Facebook last week over coronavirus vaccine misinformation, the company responded with almost equal force, insisting in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t responsible for how that type of content has spread on the web. But new research released Tuesday suggests Facebook does indeed remain a place where such misinformation is circulating: Media Matters for America, a liberal tech watchdog organization, says it has found 284 active private and public Facebook Groups currently distributing vaccine misinformation, more than double the amount the researchers found in April. Over a half million users belong to these groups. Media Matters identified six groups with more than 15,000 members, and most of those half-dozen groups are private, underscoring an on-going problem for the social network.

These groups are invite only, making them harder to track and a more fertile ground for misinformation to spread than public ones, which invite more immediate scrutiny. The discussion around Facebook’s role in handling vaccine misinformation was heightened on Friday when President Biden made stark comments about his views on the company’s culpability. “They’re killing people,” he said. The White House has since tried to soften its stance on the matter, and Facebook raced to point to efforts to combat vaccine misinformation. In a blog post released a day after President Biden’s comments, Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of intregrity, said the platform had removed more than 18 million pieces of Covid-19 information since the pandemic started and limited the spread of 167 million pieces its fact checkers judged as inaccurate.

More broadly, Facebook has introduced new tools for users who control Groups, though those features are only as effective as those group leaders want them to be. Groups represent an enormous avenue of growth for Facebook—and an unending source of problems for it. Over the last few years, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has clearly emphasized Groups’ place within the app, and the company launched a redesign in 2019 to encourage their use. Even public Groups tend to encourage more intimate and more engaged conversations than on Facebook’s core Newsfeed, exactly what the company has sought to foster. But Groups have proven to be problematic hotbeds, used to do things such as spread Qanon content and white supremacy posts.

The largest group identified by Media Matters is one called “Canadian Deaths and Adverse Reaction,” which numbers almost 95,000 users. The researchers unearthed a number of posts containing conspiracy theories, including one falsely stating that the vaccines are part of a secret ongoing experimental trial. One user in another large group, Covid19 Vaccine Victims & Families, which has 46,4000 members, wrote this: “I truly believe that they are out to kill people with this shot…I think it causes people who have health issues to have [sic] make it worse and those with no health issues I think this jab is also giving people illnesses they never had. People need to wake up and say no to the jab.”

Tucker VAERS

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He won’t be alone.

World Champion Boxer To Retire Due To Introduction Of Covid Passports (Mir.)

World champion boxer Sunny Edwards has vowed to retire if Covid-19 vaccine passports are introduced in September. Boris Johnson announced yesterday that Covid-19 passports will be required for nightclubs and venues with large crowds, which could signal a passport being required at sporting events such as boxing later on in the year. And newly crowned British world champion Edwards has claimed he could hang up his gloves in protest. “Looks like I’m retiring from the game in September.” Edwards posted on Twitter in response to the announcement. The announcement could signal an increase in the uptake of vaccinations across the UK, in particular amongst sports stars who could be required to take the vaccine in order to compete in the future unless they are given immunity from the policy that will be introduced.

Several boxing stars have been caught up with vaccine debates during the pandemic, including undisputed super-lightweight champion Josh Taylor who recently defeated Jose Ramirez in Las Vegas to claim the belts and remain undefeated. He has also posted on Twitter against the idea of vaccine passports, slamming the rules as a ‘dictatorship’ which could signal his stance to any future rules that are introduced into boxing. “Do as [sic] your told or be excluded from society! #Dictatorship ” Taylor posted on his Twitter page today after the announcement. He also responded to a fan who questioned his stance on the passport and whether his choice to do so was an example of freedom.

“The fact you’re being told to take something in order to live life, simply isn’t freedom! It’s oppression.” Taylor said. The pandemic has had a damaging effect on boxing in recent weeks with Tyson Fury’s outbreak in camp causing the third face-off in the ring against Deontay Wilder to be rescheduled for October 9. Despite reports of the ‘Gypsy King’ testing positive himself for the virus, he was pictured greeting fans in Las Vegas amid rumours that he may soon be returning to the UK after the trilogy fight broke down. The lineal heavyweight champion also refused his second vaccine ahead of the fight, after he relayed fears to his team of suffering with ill-effects ahead of his attempt to defeat Wilder for the second time in two years.

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Interesting, but statins?

Statins for Cancer and COVID; Beyond Ivermectin

When my friend contracted Glioblastoma, I reacted by researching what else could be done for him – scientifically. I went through PubMed, and I read the latest studies. I read accounts of medical professionals who survived their terminal cancers. And I found patterns. One concept that arose was the use of repurposed drugs IN ADDITION to the standard of care. Another was that Cancer Stem Cells, CSCs, were very real and could reseed cancer. These roots of cancer were stimulated to spread and regrow with cutting into the tumor [Surgery], poisoning it [Chemotherapy], and radiating it [Radiation Therapy]. I realized, to my horror, our own best treatment was making cancers resistant and causing them to return, often fatally. So why was this information hidden? Everyone should know this.

When I found that Dr. Ben Williams, a Harvard-educated professor, had cured his Glioblastoma using a cocktail of repurposed drugs, I knew my friend had a chance to do the same. And it was up to me to get him this information. I found that a combination of four common drugs, Atorvastatin, Mebendazole, Metformin, and Doxycycline, could almost double the expected GBM survival time when added to the standard of care based upon a study by Dr. Agrawal published in a peer-reviewed medical journal. In addition, these four drugs had been used safely, for decades, to treat other diseases. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6610246/ As I dug deeper, I realized that instead of using this cocktail as a last-ditch effort to save a person from cancer after it has already developed, WHAT IF ONE USED IT TO PREVENT CANCER from ever developing?

I searched Amazon. I found no physicians had written about this to the general public except for Dr. Raymond Chang in 2014. He wrote a book, “Beyond the Magic Bullet.” Dr. Ben Williams, a PhD, had written about his personal experience in beating his GBM with repurposed drugs in “Surviving Terminal Cancer.” These books, unfortunately, had very thin readerships. Finally, a magnificent documentary was made that interviews both of these men, “Surviving Terminal Cancer.” However, very few people have watched this. Most who do, have Glioblastoma, a disease which afflicts about 10,000 Americans each year – people like Beau Biden, people like John McCain, and now my friend Evan.

Only 25 % survive longer than one year. Less than 5% make it past five years. And Ben Williams has now survived 26 years. His friend Professor Richard Gerber has now survived 13 years and uses repurposed drugs. Richard followed Ben Williams’ strategy.

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“And therein lies the real crime: Paul Hodgkins, a working-class American who took a bus on the 900-mile journey to the nation’s capital to support his president and protest a clearly rigged election, defiled the ruling class’ palace with a Trump flag.”

Biden Regime Jails a ‘Domestic Terrorist’ (Julie Kelly)

“Paul Hodgkins is not my enemy.” Fighting back tears, Patrick Leduc, an attorney representing a man charged in connection with the January 6 protest at the Capitol, made that statement in a dramatic court hearing Monday morning. Leduc, by the way, is no snowflake. On Tuesday, the 33-year-old U.S. Army reservist will be deployed to the Middle East for his third tour. Leduc cited his military oath—to protect the country from “against all enemies, foreign and domestic”—to refute the government’s accusation that Paul Hodgkins, 38, is a domestic terrorist. “Words have meaning,” Leduc told U.S. District Court Judge Randoph Moss. “I have been shot at by real terrorists. If we’re going to label this as domestic terrorism, where do we draw that line?”

Sadly, after listening to Monday’s proceedings, I must conclude there is no line. Americans on the political Right are considered an enemy no less lethal than al-Qaeda and minus the civil libertarians to defend them. It’s clear the Biden regime, in cooperation with federal judges, will stop at nothing to destroy the lives of people who protested the 2020 presidential election. This includes people like Paul Hodgkins, who was sentenced to eight months in prison for denouncing what his government was about to do on January 6—certify a rigged, corrupt presidential election—and for supporting Donald Trump. Hodgkins, who lives in a working-class neighborhood in Tampa, took a bus alone from his home in central Florida to Washington, D.C. to attend Donald Trump’s January 6 speech.

After the speech, he walked to Capitol Hill. He later said he had no intention of going inside the building but got caught up in the moment. Like many pro-Trump protesters, Hodgkins did not bring a weapon. He did not assault a police officer or damage any property. He was inside the building for roughly 22 minutes, entered the Senate chamber, hoisted a “Trump 2020” flag, took some selfies, and left. Nonetheless, law enforcement arrested Hodgkins in Tampa on February 16 and charged him with four misdemeanors and one felony count of obstruction of an official proceeding. Joe Biden’s Justice Department has added the obstruction charge to roughly 200 misdemeanor cases so federal prosecutors can get jail time for Capitol defendants.

[..] Paul Hodgkins, who had nothing much to start with, will now lose everything. He will live the rest of his life as a convicted felon. A broken man railroaded by a broken country. But it was clear on social media that the bloodlust of the Left still is unsatiated. Destroying him isn’t enough; they want heads to roll. “We are a country ruled by cancel culture now,” Leduc told me. “There is no compassion or grace.”

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You better look good than feel good.

The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in Canada (WS)

At least the Bank of Canada is officially acknowledging the craziness of the Canadian housing market, which has been deemed to be the second biggest housing bubble in the world, behind New Zealand, whose central bank also officially acknowledged its housing bubble, and stopped QE cold turkey, unlike the Fed, which has refused to officially acknowledge anything. Starting last October, the Bank of Canada began the process of ending its asset purchases. Since then, it stopped buying mortgage-backed securities, unwound its holdings of repos and Treasury bills, and cut the amount of its weekly purchases of Government of Canada bonds for the third time, from C$5 billion per week last year to C$2 billion per week now. The assets on its balance sheet dropped from C$575 billion in March to C$487 billion as of last week. And in its pronouncements, the housing bubble looms large.

[..] The Teranet-National Bank House Price Index tracks prices of single-family houses through “sales pairs,” similar to the Case-Shiller Home Price Index in the US, comparing the price of a house that sold in the current month to the price of the same house when it sold previously. Since it tracks how many more Canadian dollars it takes to buy the same house over time, it is a measure of house price inflation. In the Greater Toronto Area, the house price spike “decelerated”: In June, the index jumped by 2.7% from May, but that crazy increase (annualized 32%!) was the slowest increase since March. Year-over-year, the index jumped by 15.9%. Note the decline in house prices in 2017, and the wavering that followed, until the BoC opened its vault:

All charts here are on the same scale as the chart for Vancouver, with more white space appearing at the top as we go down the list, indicating the slower price increases over the past 20 years, compared to Vancouver. In Hamilton, Ontario, house prices spiked by 3.8% in June from May, and by a mind-boggling 28.0% year-over-year, thank you Bank of Canada hallelujah. But now the BoC, with an eye on this exponential increase in house price inflation, is pulling back its radical monetary policies. Here too, the housing market had started to decline and waver in 2017, and it was the BoC’s pandemic policies that triggered this spike:

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1/3 for China, 1/3 for Bill Gates, 1/3 for Monsanto.

Lawmakers Sound Alarm Over China Purchases Of US Farmland (ZH)

A group of bipartisan lawmakers are sounding the alarm over foreign purchases of prime US agricultural real estate, in an effort to lessen China’s influence on the US economy. Recent legislation advanced by House lawmakers warns that China’s presence in the American food supply poses a national security risk, while key Senators have expressed interest in keeping American farms in American hands, according to Politico. The debate over farm ownership comes amid broader efforts by Congress and the Biden administration to curb the nation’s economic reliance on China, especially in key industries like food, semiconductors and minerals deemed crucial to the supply chain. The call for tighter limits on who owns America’s farms has come from a wide range of political leaders, from former Vice President Mike Pence to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), after gaining momentum seeded in farm states.

“America cannot allow China to control our food supply,” said Pence during a Wednesday speech at the Heritage Foundation in which he urged President Biden and Congress to “end all farm subsidies for land owned by foreign nationals.” By the beginning of 2020, Chinese owners controlled approximately 192,000 agricultural acres in the US, worth around $1.9 billion – including land used for farming, ranching and forestry, according to the Department of Agriculture. It’s a small but growing percentage of the nearly 900 million acres of total US farmland – with the USDA reporting in 2018 that China’s agricultural investments have grown more than tenfold since 2009.

“The Communist Party has actively supported investments in foreign agriculture as part of its “One Belt One Road” economic development plans, aiming to control a greater piece of China’s food supply chain. “The current trend in the U.S. is leading us toward the creation of a Chinese-owned agricultural land monopoly,” Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) warned during a recent House Appropriations hearing.= The committee unexpectedly adopted Newhouse’s amendment to the Agriculture-FDA spending bill (H.R. 4356 (117)) that would block any new agricultural purchases by companies that are wholly or partly controlled by the Chinese government and bar Chinese-owned farms from tapping federal support programs. -Politico

Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) warned that the new law would “perpetuate already rising anti-Asian hate,” however she and committee leaders have indicated a willingness to find a solution as the legislation works its way through Congress, according to the report. It’s expected to reach the House floor before the end of this month as part of a broader appropriations package, however the Senate has yet to draft their own version of the spending bill.

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Nobody cares who shot JFK anymore. We now have the Insurrection. Much bigger threat.

Oliver Stone’s New JFK Assassination Doc Is Being Ignored By The MSM (RT)

When ‘JFK: Revisited’ premiered on Monday, July 12, the mainstream media didn’t praise it or pan it. They pretended it didn’t exist. The New York Times’ vast coverage of Cannes consisted of 11 articles, most focusing on the more salacious content, such as ‘Benedetta’, a steamy story about lesbian nuns, ‘Annette’, a musical where Adam Driver sings while performing oral sex on Marion Cotillard, and ‘Titane’, where a woman has sex with a car and lactates oil. But not once has ‘JFK Revisited’ been mentioned in the supposed ‘paper of record’. The same is true of the Washington Post, Boston Globe, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, the Guardian, the Atlantic, the New Yorker and every mainstream outlet I searched, as none of them acknowledge ‘JFK Revisited’exists at all.

The only media mentions I found were in trade papers likeVariety and the Hollywood Reporter, and in the British press, in the Times and Daily Telegraph. Their reaction to the film was split, with Variety and The Times giving negative reviews and THR and the Daily Telegraph praising it. Considering that Cuba, intelligence agency nefariousness, and conspiracy theories are making headlines, and that the small critical assessment of the documentary is split, it’s curious that the media is maintaining the status quo by endorsing sexual depravity at Cannes instead of pursuing truth by debating ‘JFK Revisited’. I’m kidding, of course. It’s no surprise that the American myth-making media who bequeath to us the official narrative from which ‘respectable’ people will never deviate, are tossing ‘JFK Revisited’ down the memory hole and lavishing praise on horny nuns and coital Cadillacs.

You see, the establishment loves to distract the masses and hate conspiracies – except for the ones they love. JFK assassination conspiracies are rejected outright as unserious, despite a plethora of damning evidence, because they indict the establishment itself. Half of the talking heads on cable news are former (wink-wink) intelligence community members, and the vast majority of journalists are lapdogs for the intel agencies, so they’re not going to bite the hand that feeds them in service to the truth about the JFK assassination. This same anti-conspiratorial press spent four years breathlessly belching up every half-assed Russia conspiracy story they could conjure – including Russiagate, claims of Russia using microwave weapons or hacking into power grids and voting machines – and shouted them from the rooftops 24/7 until they become presumed true despite a complete lack of evidence.

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“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.”
-George Orwell, 1984

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Jun 232017
 
 June 23, 2017  Posted by at 9:55 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  3 Responses »


Fred Lyon Embarcadero lunch San Francisco 1948

 

Americans Are Dying With An Average Of $61,500 In Debt (ZH)
34 Biggest Banks in US Clear First Hurdle In Fed’s Annual Stress Tests (R.)
Credit-Card Debt Slaves Move to Top of Fed’s Bank Worries (WS)
Citizens Will Soon Turn Their Rage Towards Central Bankers (Albert Edwards)
UK Homelessness Surges 34% Under Tories Since 2010 (Ind.)
UK High Court Judges Tory Policy Causes ‘Real Misery For No Purpose’ (Ind.) /span>
Buy-to-Let Uk Property Sales Fall By Almost 50% In A Year (G.)
Canada’s Private Sector Debt Growing Faster Than Any Advanced Economy (PA)
Warren Buffett Becomes Lender Of Last Resort For Canada’s Home Capital (BBG)
EU Political Class Rides Roughshod over Citizens’ Concerns & Frustrations (DQ)
Dear Oliver: About Those Putin Interviews (RM)
Arab States Send Qatar 13 Demands To End Crisis (R.)
In Yemen’s Secret Prisons, UAE Tortures and US Interrogates

 

 

Double or nothing?!

Americans Are Dying With An Average Of $61,500 In Debt (ZH)

According to a recent study, the average total household debt in America is just over $132,500, broken down as per the chart below… and thanks to the Fed’s recent and ongoing rate increases, the repayment of said debt will become increasingly more difficult. So difficult, in fact, that most Americans will be saddled with a sizable chunk of it at the time of their death. Actually, most already are. According to December 2016 data from credit bureau Experian provided to credit.com, 73% of American consumers had outstanding debt when they were reported as dead. Those consumers carried an average total balance of $61,554, including mortgage debt. Without home loans, the average balance was $12,875. As credit.com reports, the data is based on Experian’s FileOne database, which includes 220 million consumers.

To determine the average debt people have when they die, Experian looked at consumers who, as of October 2016, were not deceased, but then showed as deceased as of December 2016. Among the 73% of consumers who had debt when they died, about 68% had credit card balances. The next most common kind of debt was mortgage debt (37%), followed by auto loans (25%), personal loans (12%) and student loans (6%). The breakdown of unpaid balances was as follows: credit cards, $4,531; auto loans, $17,111; personal loans, $14,793; and student loans, $25,391. And, as a reminder, debt doesn’t just disappear when someone dies.

What happens to that debt when you die, aside from it continuing to accrue interest until someone remembers to inform the creditors? “Debt belongs to the deceased person or that person’s estate,” said Darra L. Rayndon, an estate planning attorney with Clark Hill in Scottsdale, Arizona. If someone has enough assets to cover their debts, the creditors get paid, and beneficiaries receive whatever remains. But if there aren’t enough assets to satisfy debts, creditors lose out (they may get some, but not all, of what they’re owed). Family members do not then become responsible for the debt, as some people worry they might. That’s the general idea, but things are not always that straightforward. The type of debt you have, where you live and the value of your estate significantly affects the complexity of the situation. For example, federal student loan debt is eligible for cancellation upon a borrower’s death, but private student loan companies tend not to offer the same benefit. They can go after the borrower’s estate for payment.

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Let’s do a stress test that assumes the Fed is no longer around, see what happens.

34 Biggest Banks in US Clear First Hurdle In Fed’s Annual Stress Tests (R.)

The 34 largest U.S. banks have all cleared the first stage of an annual stress test, showing they would be able to maintain enough capital in an extreme recession to meet regulatory requirements, the Federal Reserve said on Thursday. Although the banks, including household names like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, would suffer $383 billion in loan losses in the Fed’s most severe scenario, their level of high-quality capital would be substantially higher than the threshold that regulators demand, and an improvement over last year’s level. “This year’s results show that, even during a severe recession, our large banks would remain well capitalized,” said Fed Governor Jerome Powell, who leads banking regulation for the central bank. “This would allow them to lend throughout the economic cycle, and support households and businesses when times are tough.”

The Fed introduced the stress tests in the wake of the financial crisis to ensure the health of the banking industry, whose ability to lend is considered crucial to the health of the economy. Since the first test was conducted in 2009, big banks have seen losses abate, loan portfolios improve and profits grow. The banks that now undergo the exam have also strengthened their balance sheets by adding more than $750 billion in top-notch capital, the Fed said. Banks and their investors have been hoping the improvements would prompt the Fed to allow them to use more capital for stock buybacks and dividends, especially as the Trump administration is seeking to relax financial regulations. Wall Street analysts and trade groups quickly cheered the results on Thursday, saying regulators should feel comfortable easing tough rules put in place since the financial crisis. “We see today’s…stress test results as a positive for Trump administration efforts to deregulate the banks,” said Jaret Seiberg, a policy analyst with Cowen & Co.

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The biggest debts are still in mortgages. Falling home prices will hurt most.

Credit-Card Debt Slaves Move to Top of Fed’s Bank Worries (WS)

The comforting news in the results from the Federal Reserve’s annual stress test is that the largest 34 bank holding companies would all survive a recession. Based on this glorious accomplishment, the clamoring has already started for regulators to allow these banks to pay bigger dividends and to blow more money on share buybacks, and for these regulators to slash regulation on these banks and make their life easier and riskier in general. We don’t want these banks to survive a recession in too good a condition apparently. And it would likely be better for Wall Street anyway if banks could lever up with risks so that a few of them would get bailed out during the next recession. Let’s remember, for the Fed’s no-holds-barred bailout-year 2009, Wall Street executives and employees were doused with record bonuses.

The Fed’s bailouts were good for them. And it has been good for them ever since. The less comforting news in the stress test is that credit card debt – generally the most expensive and risky debt for consumers – has now moved to the top of the Fed’s worry list in the “severely adverse scenario” of the stress test. The projected losses for the 34 largest banks – not counting the losses at the 4,997 smaller banks – are expected to hit $100 billion, up nearly 9% from the stress test a year ago. The projected losses rose for several reasons, including that credit card balances have grown by 5.6% from a year ago to over $1 trillion. The delinquency rate has risen to 2.4%. The Fed is also blaming looser lending standards. Sharing the top spot on the Fed’s worry list in the “severely adverse scenario” are Commercial & Industrial loans, whose balances are over twice as large, at $2.1 trillion, but whose projected losses are also pegged at $100 billion. In total, the “severely adverse scenario” sees $493 billion in losses for these 34 banks:

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“..investors, drunk with the liquor of loose money..”

Citizens Will Soon Turn Their Rage Towards Central Bankers (Albert Edwards)

Albert Edwards pwrites “Theft redux: the citizens will soon turn their rage towards Central Bankers.” The core of his argument is familiar: “While politics in the West reels from a decade of economic crisis and stagnation, asset prices continue to surge on the back of continued rapid growth in G3 QE. In an age of “radical uncertainty” how long will it be before angry citizens tire of blaming an impotent political system for their ills and turn on the main culprits for their poverty – unelected and virtually unaccountable central bankers? I expect central bank independence will be (and should be) the next casualty of the current political turmoil.” That’s just the beginning from Edwards, who appears to be getting increasingly angrier and more frustrated with a market that makes increasingly less sense: his fiery sermon continue with the following preview of the “inevitable catastrophe that lies ahead.”

“Evidence of the impact of monetary madness on assets prices is all around if we care to look. I read that a parking spot in Hong Kong was just sold for record HK$5.18 million ($664,200). What about the 3.5x oversubscribed 100 year Argentine government bond? Sure, everything has a market clearing price, even one of the most regular defaulters in history. But what concerned me most about the story was it was demand from investors (“reverse enquires”) that prompted the issue. Is it just me or can I hear echoes of the mechanics of the CDO crisis? But no one cares when the party is still raging and investors, drunk with the liquor of loose money, are blind to the inevitable catastrophe that lies ahead. There is a lot of anger out on the streets, as demonstrated most visibly in recent elections.

Even in France where investors feel comforted that a “moderate” has gained (absolute?) power, it is salutary to remember that the two establishment parties have just been decimated by a man who had never before stood for public office! This is perhaps even more radical than Trump’s anti-establishment victory under the Republican umbrella. The global political situation is incredibly fluid and unpredictable. While a furious electorate has turned its pent up anger on the establishment political parties, the target for their rage is misguided. I am not completely alone in thinking it is the unelected and virtually unaccountable central bankers who are primarily responsible for the poverty of working people and who will be ultimately held to account in the next crisis.

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In other news: ” Government-funded new social housing has fallen 97% since 2010″.

UK Homelessness Surges 34% Under Tories Since 2010 (Ind.)

The number of families being declared homeless has rocketed by more a third since the Conservatives took power in 2010, analysis of new official statistics by The Independent has revealed. Between April 2016 and March 2017, 59,100 families were declared homeless by local authorities in England – a rise of 34% on the same period in 2010-11. The statistics paint a bleak picture of the UK housing crisis and the impact a lack of decent, affordable homes is having on thousands of families. There has been a 60% increase in the number of families being housed in insecure temporary accommodation. In particular, bed and breakfast-type hotels are increasingly being used to house families for long periods of time as local councils struggle to find them proper homes to live in.

There are now 77,240 families in England currently living in temporary accommodation – up from 48,240 just six years ago. Of these, almost fourth-fifths (78%) are families with children, meaning there are currently 120,500 children living in insecure, temporary homes. Of those being housed temporarily, 6,590 households are living in B&Bs, including 3,010 families with children. Almost half have been living in this type of accommodation, which often sees families crammed into one room and forced to share limited bathroom and cooking facilities with strangers, for more than six weeks. This is illegal under the Homelessness (Suitability of Accommodation) Order 2003, which banned local authorities from housing families with children in B&Bs for more than a six-week period.

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The Tories are done. Someone should tell them.

UK High Court Judges Tory Policy Causes ‘Real Misery For No Purpose’ (Ind.)

Today, the High Court ruled that the benefits cap, one of the Tories’ flagship welfare policies, is unlawful, because it amounts to illegal discrimination against single parents with small children. It’s likely that the Government will be forced to alter or completely scrap their benefits cap, a policy that limits the total amount a household can receive in benefits to £23,000 in London and £20,000 elsewhere in the UK. High Court judge Justice Collins described the benefit cap as causing “real damage” to single parent families and said “real misery is being caused to no good purpose”. This is the fundamental truth at the heart of Tory welfare policy – misery without progress or reason.

Welfare reform as part of the coalition government’s austerity measures has driven thousands more people into poverty and in many tragic cases, some deaths occurred after individuals were declared fit to work. Austerity was not inevitable. It was an ideologically-motivated programme designed to force the poorest and most vulnerable in our society to shoulder the burden of a financial crisis that they had less than nothing to do with creating. Four claimants brought this case to court. Two of them had been made homeless as a result of domestic violence, and were trying to work as many hours as possible while taking care of children under the age of two. Imagine fleeing an abusive partner, seeking support from a domestic violence service that’s had its funding brutally slashed by the Tory government, trying to work and look after a small child, then having your benefits cut, again by the Tory government.

The claimants are not alone. The benefits cap has inflicted a massive amount of suffering, with 200,000 children from the very lowest income families affected, as their parents’ income has fallen drastically. In real terms, this means that these children’s lives have become even more difficult, and they weren’t easy to begin with. This means a colder house, less food to eat, more shame at school due to unwashed clothes, uniforms that are too small, worn-through shoes. It means stressed, unhappy and increasingly desperate parents, and in family, children can’t fail to pick up on this mood of misery. [..] In this wealthy, highly developed country, poverty is the single biggest threat to the wellbeing of children and families. Poverty affects a quarter of all children in Britain, a massive, disgraceful, inexcusable proportion. one in five parents are struggling to feed their children, and 50% of all parents living in food poverty have gone without meals in order to give their children more to eat.

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There goes the bubble. Look out below.

Buy-to-Let Uk Property Sales Fall By Almost 50% In A Year (G.)

The number of properties bought by landlords has almost halved in a year after a tax and regulatory clampdown, prompting a leading banking body to downgrade its forecasts for buy-to-let lending in 2017 and 2018. The Council of Mortgage Lenders said buy to let had had a weak start to 2017, with lending falling faster than expected as landlords withdrew from the market in response to major tax changes and tighter lending rules. The data follows a series of recent surveys and indices suggesting the housing market is running out of steam. However, the crackdown on buy to let may have helped young people trying to get a foot on the property ladder. CML said house purchase activity was being driven predominantly by first-time buyers, with their numbers up 8% in the 12 months to April.

Buy-to-let homebuying activity was “nearly half what it was a year ago” and had averaged around 6,000 purchases a month over the last 12 months, said the body, which represents banks and building societies. The number of landlord purchases involving a mortgage was 5,300 in April this year. This compared with 10,300 in February 2016 and 11,800 in July 2015. As a result, the CML has cut its forecast for buy-to-let lending from £38bn being lent in both 2017 and 2018 to £35bn in 2017 and £33bn in 2018. The organisation warned against hitting landlords with any further changes to taxation and lending rules, saying the figures “re-emphasise the case for avoiding further changes to the tax and regulatory framework until the effect of these already in train have been properly assessed”.

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Download report here: Addicted to Debt – Tracking Canada’s rapid accumulation of private sector debt .

Canada’s Private Sector Debt Growing Faster Than Any Advanced Economy (PA)

For the first time ever, Canada’s private sector is racking up debt faster than any other of the world’s 22 advanced economies, putting the country at risk of serious economic consequences, according to new research by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. A new report authored by CCPA Senior Economist David Macdonald reveals that Canada added $1 trillion in private sector debt over the past five years ($2016), with the corporate sector responsible for the majority of it. Economies can become dependent on debt in order to fuel economic and asset price growth. With both rapid private debt accumulation and a high private debt-to-GDP ratio, even a small change in debt growth rates, brought on by changes in interest rates for instance, could have a devastating impact on the larger economy.

“Private sector debt growth is one of the best predictors of economic crisis, and Canada is now the only advanced economy squarely in the debt ‘danger zone’ of having high private sector debt that continues to rise rapidly,” Macdonald says. The report identifies several areas of concern:
• Canada has never before led the advanced economies in private debt growth;
• The last time Canada was close to leading the world in private debt growth was the early 1990s, just as housing prices plummeted and then stagnated for a decade;
• The country’s private debt-to-GDP ratio has risen by a fifth since 2011, from 182% to 218%. The US ratio currently stands at 152%;
• The $315 billion increase in household debt since 2011 ($2016) is almost entirely attributable to the rise in mortgage debt related to rapid home prices increases;
• Corporate debt is less well studied, and rose $671 billion since 2011 ($2016), accounting for two thirds of private debt accumulation over that time;
• Corporate debt was largely spent on mergers and acquisitions as well as real estate purchases, neither of which make the country more productive.

“Canada’s economy has become addicted to binging on ever more private sector debt, and weaning us off it should be our primary public policy concern,” adds Macdonald, who recommends further study of corporate debt and consideration of a housing speculators’ tax to further reign in mortgage debt increases.

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Well, it can’t be because Buffett see a bright future in Canada’s housing market. So draw your own conclusion.

Warren Buffett Becomes Lender Of Last Resort For Canada’s Home Capital (BBG)

Warren Buffett has become the lender of last resort for Home Capital. The billionaire investor agreed to buy shares at a deep discount and provide a fresh credit line for the Canadian mortgage company, tapping a formula he used to prop up lenders from Goldman Sachs to Bank of America. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. will buy a 38% stake for about C$400 million ($300 million) and provide a C$2 billion credit line with an interest rate of 9% to backstop the embattled Toronto-based lender, Home Capital said late Wednesday in a statement. The interest on the one-year loan would net Berkshire at least C$180 million if it’s fully tapped.

“While the terms of the new credit line with Berkshire Hathaway remain harsh, we believe the purpose of this loan is to motivate Home Capital’s management to bolster their own funding sources,” said Hugo Chan at Kingsferry Capital in Shanghai, which owns shares in Home Capital. “This again shows Mr. Buffett’s masterful capital allocation skills,” said Chan, citing his investment motto: “be greedy when others are fearful.” The financial backing from Buffett sent the stock higher Thursday, though it comes at a cost, in keeping with his past bailouts of financial firms. Buffett has buoyed some of the biggest U.S. corporations in times of trouble, including a combined $8 billion injection to prop up Goldman Sachs and General Electric when credit markets froze during the 2008 financial crisis.

In the Home Capital deal, Buffett’s firm agreed to pay an average price of C$10 a share, a 33% discount to Wednesday’s closing price of C$14.94. Berkshire would become the largest shareholder in Home Capital, which has a market value of about C$1 billion. Home Capital surged 27% to C$19 in Toronto on Thursday. That gives Buffett a 90% return on paper for the equity investment, assuming the deal goes through.

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They always have, it’s an MO.

EU Political Class Rides Roughshod over Citizens’ Concerns & Frustrations (DQ)

Merkel has expressed a willingness to go along with two central French demands — the appointment of a Eurozone finance minister and the creation of a common budget — as long as certain conditions are met. “We can of course think about a Eurozone budget as long as it’s clear that this is really strengthening structures and achieving sensible results,” she said. [..] Back on the table is a proposal to upgrade the grossly unaccountable Luxembourg-based European Stability Mechanism (ESM) into a full-fledged European Monetary Fund. As we’ve noted before, creating a European Monetary Fund (EMF) would be an important statement of intent. If Europe’s core countries are truly set on taking the EU project to a whole new level, such as by pursuing the creation of an EU army, an EU border force (with full powers), fiscal union, and ultimately political union, some form of burden sharing will ultimately be necessary.

The establishment of a fully operational EMF could be an important move in that direction. The EMF would essentially act as a fiscal backdrop to the banking system, something the Eurozone has desperately needed ever since its creation. As Bruegel proposes, it would serve as a fiscal counterpart of the ECB to guarantee the financial stability of the euro area in the event of a sovereign or banking crisis, or a threat thereof — of which there are plenty these days, in particular emanating from Italy’s broken banking system. Naturally, the creation of an EMF would deal a further blow to the fading remnants of national sovereignty in Europe. But that’s a price that many (but certainly not all) of Europe’s elite is more than happy to pay; some would say that destroying national sovereignty was the ultimate goal of the EU all along.

In a survey of more than 10,000 EU citizens and 1,800 EU elites carried out by Chatham House, of the elites, 37% believe the EU should get more powers, 28% want to keep the status quo and 31% would prefer to return more powers to individual member countries. This enthusiasm for a more centralized, more powerful EU is not shared with equal enthusiasm by European citizens: 48% want powers returned to the individual member countries. Citizens, overall, do not feel they have benefited from European integration in the same way Europe’s elite does. Whereas 71% of elites report feeling they have gained something from the EU, the figure among the public is only 34%. Even more worrisome for national leaders, a clear majority of the public — 54% — feel that their country was a better place to live 20 years ago, before the euro existed.

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I’ve seen a few parts. Liked them quite a bit.

Dear Oliver: About Those Putin Interviews (RM)

Dear Mr. Stone: I have just finished watching all four episodes of The Putin Interviews. May I give you my critique? Overall, I felt that the series is Very Good but felt just short of Great. I will explain below what I feel could have made it Great. First, I want to tell you what I really loved about it. 1. You have an easy style. I felt as if Mr. Putin was at ease with you, and you with him. You have a warm command of the English language and can transmit your ideas into language in a very personable way — an art that is missing among so many American media people these days. I felt that you drew out a candid side of Putin, well, that is, as far as a man of his intellectual prowess and disciplined self-control will allow. 2. Best moment of the show: Sitting next to Vlad and watching Dr. Strangelove! Oh my goodness, most people would not even dream of adding such a thing to their bucket list.

3. I loved the walking tour of the President’s offices and the general background of the Kremlin architecture and decor. I pay attention to the daily, tweeted photos from the Kremlin’s official account. I have seen those desks and tables a million times in the photos. But now I have them all within a mental frame, thanks to your film. Question: I was burning to know why Vlad had a pair of scissors and multi-colored construction paper in the middle of his desk, did you happen to ask him, off-camera?

Where It Fell Short Mr. Stone, I hated that so much time was wasted talking about the contrived “Russia hacked the election” meme. Hillary might not know why she lost the election, but the rest of the nation does. When my father would get on a roll with his bad jokes, Mom would tell us kids: “Don’t encourage him.” Well, you too need to stop encouraging the MSM to keep breathing life into a dead meme.

You also wasted time re-hashing Crimea. “Read My Lips,” Vlad said, “the Crimeans ASKED, BEGGED, AND VOTED to rejoin Russia.” Good grief, when McCain’s and Nuland’s beloved neo-Nazi Svoboda party took illegal control of Ukraine, their first move was to try and make it illegal to speak Russian. Geez, half the people in Ukraine ARE Russian! Mr. Putin has exercised considerable restraint towards Ukraine.

Mr. Stone, I have been following the development of BRICS, the “Silk Road Project,” and the EEU (European Economic Union) for a half-decade now. I can’t have a conversation with my neighbors and friends about all of that here in America because not one of them has heard anything about it! You had a great opportunity to ask Mr. Putin to school us on the Sino-Russian version of a multi-polar world without war, but you totally blew it. I don’t think you ever asked Vlad about China, did you?

 

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Saudi Arabia accuses Qatar of supporting terrorism. Rich.

Arab States Send Qatar 13 Demands To End Crisis (R.)

Four Arab states boycotting Qatar over alleged support for terrorism have sent Doha a list of 13 demands including closing Al Jazeera television and reducing ties to their regional adversary Iran, an official of one of the four countries said. The demands aimed at ending the worst Gulf Arab crisis in years appear designed to quash a two decade-old foreign policy in which Qatar has punched well above its weight, striding the stage as a peace broker, often in conflicts in Muslim lands. Doha’s independent-minded approach, including a dovish line on Iran and support for Islamist groups, in particular the Muslim Brotherhood, has incensed some of its neighbors who see political Islamism as a threat to their dynastic rule.

The list, compiled by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Bahrain, which cut economic, diplomatic and travel ties to Doha on June 5, also demands the closing of a Turkish military base in Qatar, the official told Reuters. Qatar must also announce it is severing ties with terrorist, ideological and sectarian organizations including the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Jabhat Fateh al Sham, formerly al Qaeda’s branch in Syria, he said, and surrender all designated terrorists on its territory, The four Arab countries accuse Qatar of funding terrorism, fomenting regional instability and cozying up to revolutionary theocracy Iran. Qatar has denied the accusations.

[..] on Monday, Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said Qatar would not negotiate with the four states unless they lifted their measures against Doha. The countries give Doha 10 days to comply, failing which the list becomes “void”, the official said without elaborating, suggesting the offer to end the dispute in return for the 13 steps would no longer be on the table.

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Bunch of sicko’s.

Edward Snowden on Twitter: “Biggest @AP scoop in a long time: US government behind UAE torture in Yemen, with some reportedly grilled alive.

In Yemen’s Secret Prisons, UAE Tortures and US Interrogates

Hundreds of men swept up in the hunt for al-Qaida militants have disappeared into a secret network of prisons in southern Yemen where abuse is routine and torture extreme — including the “grill,” in which the victim is tied to a spit like a roast and spun in a circle of fire, an Associated Press investigation has found. Senior American defense officials acknowledged Wednesday that U.S. forces have been involved in interrogations of detainees in Yemen but denied any participation in or knowledge of human rights abuses. Interrogating detainees who have been abused could violate international law, which prohibits complicity in torture. The AP documented at least 18 clandestine lockups across southern Yemen run by the United Arab Emirates or by Yemeni forces created and trained by the Gulf nation, drawing on accounts from former detainees, families of prisoners, civil rights lawyers and Yemeni military officials.

All are either hidden or off limits to Yemen’s government, which has been getting Emirati help in its civil war with rebels over the last two years. The secret prisons are inside military bases, ports, an airport, private villas and even a nightclub. Some detainees have been flown to an Emirati base across the Red Sea in Eritrea, according to Yemen Interior Minister Hussein Arab and others. Several U.S. defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the topic, told AP that American forces do participate in interrogations of detainees at locations in Yemen, provide questions for others to ask, and receive transcripts of interrogations from Emirati allies. They said U.S. senior military leaders were aware of allegations of torture at the prisons in Yemen, looked into them, but were satisfied that there had not been any abuse when U.S. forces were present.

“We always adhere to the highest standards of personal and professional conduct,” said chief Defense Department spokeswoman Dana White when presented with AP’s findings. “We would not turn a blind eye, because we are obligated to report any violations of human rights.” In a statement to the AP, the UAE’s government denied the allegations. “There are no secret detention centers and no torture of prisoners is done during interrogations.” Inside war-torn Yemen, however, lawyers and families say nearly 2,000 men have disappeared into the clandestine prisons, a number so high that it has triggered near-weekly protests among families seeking information about missing sons, brothers and fathers.

None of the dozens of people interviewed by AP contended that American interrogators were involved in the actual abuses. Nevertheless, obtaining intelligence that may have been extracted by torture inflicted by another party would violate the International Convention Against Torture and could qualify as war crimes, said Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University who served as special counsel to the Defense Department until last year

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