Feb 222022
 
 February 22, 2022  Posted by at 9:51 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  166 Responses »


Salvador Dali Portrait of Gala with Two Lamb Chops Balanced on Her Shoulder 1933

 

“Joe Biden” Wins World War Three (Kunstler)
How the United States Has Provoked the Ukraine Crisis (Cathey)
Putin Recognizes Donbass Independence as Violence Soars (Lauria)
What Accounts for Putin’s Assertiveness on Ukraine? (Ray McGovern)
How Much The EU Has Destabilised Ukraine (Nuttall)
Donbas or Ottawa? The Dizzying Spiral of Government Violence! (Daniel McAdams)
The Neoliberal War On Dissent In The West (Greenwald)
In The Age Of COVID, We’re Reminded An Unjust Law Is No Law At All (McMaken)
Future UK Covid Waves Will Be Treated With Drugs Not Restrictions (Peston)
The Demise of Restaurants (Ugo Bardi)

 

 

 

 

Australia true Covid stats
https://twitter.com/i/status/1495853869242494983

 

 

 

 

Not okay

 

 

Rogan Maajid Nawaz decentralization

 

 

Canada Military
https://twitter.com/i/status/1495749143142322180

 

 

“His Democratic Party is looking everyday more and more like some hell-borne spawn of Satan bent on wrecking what’s left of the old USA.”

“Joe Biden” Wins World War Three (Kunstler)

Enter Monsieur Macron of France. After two years of antagonizing his countrymen with lockdowns and put-downs, he needs a boost for the national election forthcoming in April. So, he has heroically sued Mr. Putin of Russia for a Ukraine “ceasefire.” Note: the Russians haven’t fired. Anyway, that opened the way for a proposed “summit” meeting between “Joe Biden” and Mr. Putin — when the Russians feel like it. They’re playing it a little coy for the moment, letting the West twist slowly, slowly in the wind. If a summit does happen, what will the two summiteers talk about? Mr. Putin will reiterate that the US and NATO made a solemn promise (in writing) to not expand NATO along Russia’s borderland in 1990 when the Soviet Union fell apart, and y’all reneged on that… and now it stops with Ukraine… really… got it?

“Joe Biden” will not have a coherent response. Maybe he’ll want to talk ice cream flavors or dogs. He is, as the Russians say, not negotiation-worthy, though he can be trotted out for photo ops. But “Joe Biden” needs a big win so he can brag on something in his State of the Union address. His Democratic Party is looking everyday more and more like some hell-borne spawn of Satan bent on wrecking what’s left of the old USA. Everything they’ve done since 2016 has degraded the life of the nation — weaponizing the “Intel Community,” queering a national election, besetting the people with race-and-gender mindfuckery, and inflicting the deadly “vaccines” on the population to “fix” the Fauci-created Covid-19 crisis. Never has the country seen a president so obviously incompetent and unpopular. The people backstage running him like an animatronic automaton are in a panic.

By default, then, the summit meeting will be game-set-and-match, Mr. Putin, only both parties will pretend that it’s some kind of moral victory for “JB,” while Russia gets exactly the terms it seeks: Nord Stream-2 will be completed and Germany will get natgas; there will be no additional stupid sanctions and get rid of the old ones; and the US will close up its CIA shop in Kiev and quit all the pointless antagonism. There will be peace in that corner of the world. And then, on cue, the West’s financial system will implode.

Yes, that’s what is actually going on in the background. That roar you hear is bad credit whooshing out of the banks. It looks like we’re going to get both a ripping inflation and a collapse of equities and assets all at once — with a side-dish of disappearing livelihoods, vaporizing pensions, and sinking standards-of-living. One surmises that all the meshugas over Ukraine was designed as a distraction from the financial disorders now at hand. The news media has faithfully played the Ukraine story to the max while ignoring the growing disarray in North America.

The Toronto Star barely even reported today on the weekend dispersion of truckers in Ottawa — like it never happened… a kind of national hallucination. The big rigs are gone from the streets around Parliament Hill, but one suspects the action isn’t over. Mr. Trudeau’s stupid vaxx mandates are still in place and every passing day more is known about their inefficacy and ghastly after-effects. Nor has the national legislature of Canada voted, as required, in support of the Emergencies Act — meaning that the financial punishments inflicted on the truckers and their supporters was arguably illegal.

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“..a conflict, into which the US and NATO can pour support and implement various measures, economic and financial and, eventually, military against Russia, while blaming the Kremlin for starting it.”

How the United States Has Provoked the Ukraine Crisis (Cathey)

The very simple conclusion that may be drawn from what is occurring is this: our foreign policy elites–Neoconservatives and their zealous followers in both the GOP and the Democratic Party–see Russia as a major obstacle in the continuing process of imposing economic and political control over countries which have heretofore not acceded to their hegemony (i.e., Russia and Hungary). Using NATO as a strategic shell and Ukraine as its frontline player, the Neocon/globalist combine seeks to:

(1) prevent an economic disaster for the US of a functioning Nord Stream II pipeline, which would give Germany and potentially other European countries, a climb off ramp from economic domination by the US (journalist Mike Whitney has written conclusively on this topic in the Eurasia Review); and (2) eventually impose politically a pliant government in Moscow, which has become the chief stumbling block in preventing Neocon globalist hegemony and the realization of “the Great Reset.” Russia, like Hungary, has expelled CIA-infested and Soros-sponsored NGOs which in many locations around the world have incited “color revolutions” to install favorable client governments.

More concretely, the Biden administration and US foreign policy establishment (with congressional Republicans in tow) are accusing Russia of “false flag” operations, or more specifically, accusing the pro-Russian secessionists in Lugansk and Donetsk republics of violent attacks against Ukraine (on civilians, schools, all the usual claimed targets), while in fact it is elements of the Ukrainian military, with American encouragement and technical “advisors” embedded, who are responsible for the shelling and the attacks across the cease-fire line. This is one more example of disinformation strategy, projecting onto the Russians what we are actually guilty of.

Just listen to the braindead Biden essentially mouthing this propaganda line. If warfare breaks out it will be because the US State Department and our agents have impelled the Ukrainians to launch such “false flag” actions, literally forcing the Russians to react and thus producing a conflict, into which the US and NATO can pour support and implement various measures, economic and financial and, eventually, military against Russia, while blaming the Kremlin for starting it.

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“The president of France and the Federal Chancellor of Germany expressed their disappointment with this development. At the same time, they indicated their readiness to continue contacts.”

Putin Recognizes Donbass Independence as Violence Soars (Lauria)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has recognized the independence from Ukraine of two breakaway provinces in Donbass as violence in the region continues to escalate. In Monday evening televised remarks after signing decrees recognizing the independence of Lugansk and Donetsk, Putin denounced the government of Ukraine as “puppets” of the United States. He said: “As for those who captured and are holding on to power in Kiev, we demand that they immediately cease military action. If not, the complete responsibility for the possibility of a continuation of bloodshed will be fully and wholly on the conscience of the regime ruling the territory of Ukraine.” After Putin had spoken by phone earlier on Monday with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday, the Kremlin issued this statement:

“The president of Russia said that he intended to sign the relevant decree in the near future. The president of France and the Federal Chancellor of Germany expressed their disappointment with this development. At the same time, they indicated their readiness to continue contacts.” The Duma last week passed a resolution recommending that Putin recognize the provinces’ independence from Ukraine. Putin had resisted for eight years recognizing the independence of the self-declared republics of Lugansk and Donetsk in the Donbass, insisting instead that Kiev implement the 2014-15 Minsk agreements that would have given autonomy to the provinces, while they remained within Ukrainian territory. The decision by Putin effectively declares that the Minsk process is over.

It does not mean at this point, however, that the people of Lugansk and Donetsk are ready to hold a referendum to join Russia or that Moscow is interested in making them part of Russia, as happened in Crimea in 2014. The two provinces declared independence after the 2014 U.S.-backed coup in Kiev that overthrew democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled the violent capital to the Donbass, his base of support, exactly eight years ago today, on Feb. 21, 2014. On the next day Parliament, with only opposition leaders present, impeached him. After anti-Russian language laws were passed by the coup government, hand-picked before the coup by the United States, and after neo-Nazis burned dozens of people alive in a building in Odessa on May 3, 2014, both Lugansk and Donetsk declared independence nine days later on May 12.

The coup government launched a civil war against the separatists, whom they called “terrorists.” In essence the Donbass was defending their democratic rights to vote, as a majority of the region voted for Yanukovych, in an election certified by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In the eight years since, as many as 14,000 people have been killed in the fighting. The violence from that continuing conflict has soared since Thursday with thousands of ceasefire violations and explosions in and around Lugansk and Donetsk reported by OSCE monitors on the ground.


Putin speech Feb 21

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Xi.

What Accounts for Putin’s Assertiveness on Ukraine? (Ray McGovern)

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s well choreographed decision yesterday to recognize the independence of the pro-Russian Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk points to two key realities: (1) Putin despairs of persuading U.S. allies, Germany and France, to press Ukraine to honor its commitments under the Minsk accords that provide for regional autonomy as well as a ceasefire; and (2) Putin feels assured of very strong backing from China (as long as he is not stupid enough to invade Ukraine). What about this China factor? Why do Western pundits/savants pay so little heed to this game-changer? It should not require my half-century of studying/reporting on Russia-China relations to notice that China and Russia have never been so strategically close as now. Putin and Xi have done their part to demonstrate that. Why cannot most Western pundits and savants see it and recognize the implications?

There are, happily, notable exceptions – for example, Edward Wong’s Bond Between China and Russia Alarms US and Europe Amid Ukraine Crisis. Wong writes of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s speech on Feb. 21 in Munich: “It was the latest instance of what Western officials say is China taking a bold new swing at the United States and its allies by wading into European security issues to explicitly back Russia.” Wong includes quotes from a PR person, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, and a true expert on China, former prime minister of Australia Kevin Rudd. Kirby: “China’s support for Russia is deeply alarming, and, frankly, even more destabilizing to the security situation in Europe.” Rudd: “China’s explicitly pro-Russian position on European security is new and significant and quite a radical departure from the past.”

Kevin Rudd is right, of course; and it’s nice to know that the Pentagon, too, is aware. Crazed as the generals and admirals have long shown themselves to be, it is questionable whether even they would want to risk war on two fronts with major adversaries – for another star on their shoulder. I recall Amb. Chas Freeman telling me last December, “It is clear that the Sino-Russian entente is expanding under the pressure of US threats to both. Nothing will happen on either Taiwan or Ukraine without coordination between Beijing and Moscow.

That nothing will happen on either Ukraine or Taiwan without coordination between Beijing and Moscow seems to be key to understanding why Putin is feeling his oats. Yesterday, Chas further reminded me that “China agrees with Russia that the US global sphere of influence needs rollback. It does not agree that Ukraine should be invaded, occupied, or annexed. Ironically, China is this century’s citadel of Westphalianism.

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“..after more than a year of protracted negotiations, Yanukovych refused to sign the agreement in November 2013, which set off a chain of events that eventually led to his downfall.”

How Much The EU Has Destabilised Ukraine (Nuttall)

Eight years ago, a democratically elected president was removed from office by protesters waving European Union flags. Viktor Yanukovych had been elected as president of Ukraine in 2010 to serve a five-year term. His time in office was, however, brought to an abrupt end when he was removed for his refusal to sign an association agreement with the EU. The first decade of the 20th century was a golden period for the EU. The euro currency had been launched, the bloc was expanding, and Eurosceptic movements in its existing member states had barely got off the ground. The federalist ideologues in Brussels confidently believed that this was to be the EU’s century, and nothing could prevent it from accruing more powers and expanding further eastwards.

After the accession of central European countries and the Baltic states, Ukraine was the next logical step –highlighted by a vote in the European Parliament in 2005, which floated the possibility of Ukraine eventually joining the bloc. As a consequence, EU cash was poured into Ukraine as a precursor to eventual accession. The first step towards this eventuality was a deepening of economic ties, and to this end an association agreement was initiated in 2012. However, after more than a year of protracted negotiations, Yanukovych refused to sign the agreement in November 2013, which set off a chain of events that eventually led to his downfall.

[..] Now Yanukovych may have been a bad president, but that is not really the point. He was elected to serve a five-year term, and if the electors wanted rid of him, and it seems a sizeable number did, then they could have waited another year and voted him out of office. That is, after all, how democracy works. Nevertheless, with Yanukovych out of the way, the Ukrainian government signed the association agreement with the EU in March 2014. The EU proudly holds itself up as a defender of democracy – although anyone who understands how it really works knows what a contradiction this is – so you would assume that Brussels would have roundly denounced these ugly scenes in Kiev. But no, EU chiefs instead acted as enthusiastic cheerleaders.

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“Even insane San Francisco is in the process of eliminating its mandates, yet somehow Justin Trudeau’s Canada is willing to literally go to war with its own people..”

Donbas or Ottawa? The Dizzying Spiral of Government Violence! (Daniel McAdams)

Will the Russians attack? Well, they’ve been clear for years: a Kiev attack on three-quarters of a million Russian citizens in eastern Ukraine – who because of a Washington coup found themselves ruled by a government that came to power illegitimately – will be met with a Russian military response. In the breathless world of the braindead media hacks, the world began yesterday. But actually we are seeing a situation similar to 2008 in South Ossetia, where Russian passport holders (and Russian OSCE monitors) found themselves under attack by Georgia. The result was lightening fast, effective, and limited. Russia could have held and “regime-changed” Tbilisi. They did not. They made their point and left.

Even the US government-funded RFE had to admit that yes, in fact, it was Georgia that started the hostilities…and Russia that ended them. Will Russia come to the aid of Donbas? Yes. They are not trying to hide it. They’ve been saying it for years . The renowned historian and international relations theoretician Edward Luttwak – never accused of being a political partisan – put it best on Twitter: “The latest IC forecast: war is imminent and Russian forces will rely on exceptionally intense artillery bombardments, of Kiev too. That implies a reckless-gambler Putin, willing to make Ukrainians hate Russia & Russians forever. Neither is congruent with Putin’s record so far.”

This is the difference between astute analysts and the cardboard cut-outs who populate the media. People of intellectual substance like Luttwak are not in the business to grind an axe. They analyze past behavior and seek the truth. Sadly these days we are stuck with the former, with the latter being rarities. Meanwhile in Canada, a liberal Western democracy has declared war – literally – on its own peaceful citizens who have gathered to oppose the absurd continuation of Covid-related mandates. Even insane San Francisco is in the process of eliminating its mandates, yet somehow Justin Trudeau’s Canada is willing to literally go to war with its own people to keep them in place.

What is funny about Canada (and this is also true of the US and many “Western” liberal democracies), is that they are very happy to preach to the rest of the world that peaceful protests must be allowed while literally at the same time brutally cracking down on same protests in their own countries. As in the late Soviet era, the hypocrisy is impossible to ignore. The regime disintegrates under the weight of its own contradictions.

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“The term “dissent,” in Western democracies, connotes legitimacy, so that label must be denied them.”

The Neoliberal War On Dissent In The West (Greenwald)

This last decade of history is crucial to understand the dissent-eliminating framework that has been constructed and implemented in the West. This framework has culminated, thus far, with the stunning multi-pronged attacks on Canadian truckers by the Trudeau government. But it has been a long time in the making, and it is inevitable that it will find still-more extreme expressions. It is, after all, based in the central recognition that there is mass, widespread anger and even hatred toward the neoliberal ruling class throughout the West. Trump, Brexit and the rise of far-right parties in places where their empowerment was previously unthinkable — including Germany and France — is unmistakable proof of that. Rather than sacrifice some of the benefits of inequality that have generated much of that rage or placate or appease it with symbolic concessions, Western neoliberal elites have instead opted for force, a system that crushes all forms of dissent as soon as they emerge in anything resembling an effective, meaningful or potent form.

So many of the controversies over the last decade, often analyzed in isolation, have been devoted to this goal. The pervasive surveillance systems constructed by the West — revealed during the Snowden reporting but only partially reined in at best since then — are crucial tools, as surveillance powers always are, for monitoring and thus stifling dissent. We have now arrived at the point where the U.S. Government and its security state is officially and explicitly clear that it regards the greatest national security threat not as a foreign power such as China or Russia, and not as non-state actors such as Al Qaeda or ISIS, but rather “domestic extremists.” For years, this has been the unyielding message of the DHS, FBI, CIA, NSA and DOJ: our primary enemies are not foreign but are our fellow citizens who have embraced ideologies we regard as extremist.

This new escalation of repression depends upon a narrative framework. Those who harbor dissenting ideologies — and particularly those who do not embrace that dissent passively but instead take action to advocate, promote and spread it — are not merely dissenters. The term “dissent,” in Western democracies, connotes legitimacy, so that label must be denied them. They are instead domestic extremists, domestic terrorists, seditionists, traitors, insurrections. Applying terms of criminality renders justifiable any subsequent acts of repression: we are trained to accept that core liberties are forfeited upon the commission of crimes.

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“..when it comes to protests and other acts of which the regime approves, legality is never an issue.”

In The Age Of COVID, We’re Reminded An Unjust Law Is No Law At All (McMaken)

We could contrast the rhetoric surrounding the trucker protest with that of the Black Lives Matter protests. In the case of the BLM protests, illegal acts were downplayed and ignored, with one obvious riot labeled a “mostly peaceful” protest. when it comes to protests and other acts of which the regime approves, legality is never an issue. The regimes of the world, of course, like to use legality as a standard for judging human behavior because the regimes make the laws. Whether or not the laws actually have anything to do with human rights, private property, or just basic common sense is another matter entirely. Thus history is replete with pointless, immoral, and destructive laws. Slavery has been lawful throughout much of human history. Temporary slavery—known as military conscription—is still employed by many regimes.

In the US, the imprisonment of peaceful American citizens of Japanese descent was perfectly lawful under the US regime during World War II. Today, employers can face ruinous sanctions for hiring a worker who lacks the proper immigration paperwork. Worldwide, people can be jailed in many jurisdictions for years for the “crime” of possessing an illegal plant. During covid, the reality of arbitrary law came very much to the fore when unelected health bureaucrats and lone elected executives began ruling by decree. They closed businesses, shut people up in their homes, and imposed vaccine and mask mandates. Those who refuse to comply—and businesses who refuse to enforce these edicts—are condemned as lawbreakers and subject to punishment.

All of these legal provisions, acts, and sanctions represent mockeries of basic natural rights rather than protections of them. The notion that laws can be perversions of true justice has long been obvious to many. In fact, the disconnect between morality and legality is a fundamental aspect of Western civilization. The basic notion is very old, but the idea’s endurance in the West was reinforced by the fact that Christianity began as an illegal religion and early Christians were often considered to be criminals deserving of the death penalty. It should be no surprise, then, that Saint Augustine declared an unjust law to be no law at all and compared kings to pirates: the decrees of pirates, of course, are not worthy of obedience or reverence. And if kings are like pirates, kingly decrees are of equal respectability. This same tradition fueled Saint Thomas Aquinas’s support for regicide (in certain cases). Needless to say, regicide has been always and everywhere declared illegal by the would-be targets.

Yet, unfortunately, declaring something to be “illegal” remains an effective slur. There is no shortage of people who proudly consider themselves to be blind supporters of “law and order” and who insist “lawbreakers” are axiomatically in the wrong. Their simple-minded refrain is “if you don’t like the law, change it” and many of these people naïvely believe that acts of legislators and regulators somehow reflect “the will of the people” or some sort of moral law. The opposite is often the reality. We could contrast the rhetoric surrounding the trucker protest with that of the Black Lives Matter protests. In the case of the BLM protests, illegal acts were downplayed and ignored, with one obvious riot labeled a “mostly peaceful” protest. when it comes to protests and other acts of which the regime approves, legality is never an issue.

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“..paxlovid and molnupiravir.” Count your blessings.

Future UK Covid Waves Will Be Treated With Drugs Not Restrictions (Peston)

The core of the strategy to deal with another frightening Covid-19 wave will be pharmaceutical and medical interventions rather than lockdowns and restrictions on our lives, the PM will announce this afternoon. But this means laying in stocks of antivirals like paxlovid and molnupiravir, to protect the vulnerable, and that will cost money. And a second source of cost is a testing and surveillance system to catch a new wave early enough to distribute the antivirals. Which is also far from cheap. Hence the dispute this morning between the Treasury and the Deptartment of Health and Social Care. The Treasury seems to have won and Sajid Javid will “reprioritise” from within his existing budget.

A government source confirmed: “A minimum level of response needs to be maintained so that we have the ability to rapidly scale up and deal with future waves through pharmaceutical interventions rather than restrictions – as we did with Omicron.” UPDATE: To keep us safe, and to keep the economy open, there has to be fairly extensive Covid testing, surveillance and genome sequencing regime. Without it, we wouldn’t know if a new and dangerous strain were here, till too late to contain it with antivirals and booster vaccines As I said earlier, this monitoring regime – plus the perceived imperative of maintaining adequate stocks of antivirals – is pricey.

Over the weekend the row between the Department of Health and the Treasury has not been about new money to pay for it, though it was before, but has been a dispute about whether this Covid insurance policy was necessary at all. The Health Secretary Sajid Javid wanted it. Sunak was sceptical. In the end, Javid won this argument and will pay for it by cutting other programmes.

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“the twin impact of depletion and pollution is pushing the Western economy back to what it was a couple of hundred years ago.”

The Demise of Restaurants (Ugo Bardi)

As I said, restaurants have always been a typical middle-class thing. They appeared together with the European middle class, and they are following its destiny. During the past few decades, the middle class has been gradually pushed back into the fold of the lower class. The restaurant business could not avoid being affected by the trend. The tradition of eating out is still alive in the West, but the resources for doing that are not there anymore for a middle class that’s struggling to survive, and failing at that. On their side, the rich don’t eat at restaurants, at least not at the same kind of restaurants that the deplorables can afford. For the very rich and politically exposed persons (PEPs), appearing at a restaurant without an armed escort would be dangerous (*). They have their private cooks and exclusive places. And they socialize with each other throwing expensive parties at their homes. A habit that we find in ancient history, even in Roman times and earlier.

You may have seen the picture of Bill Gates supposedly standing in line waiting for his turn for a burger. It is surprising that many Westerners seem to believe in this kind of cheap PR stunts. In the old Soviet Union, if Leonid Brezhnev had diffused a picture of himself standing in line to buy shoes, people would have laughed themselves to death. But it is known that Westerners are sensitive to propaganda. In any case, the current Western elites are acting just like the Soviet elites of old. They don’t care about what the commoners eat, although they are worried that starving them may lead them to revolt. So, they tend to allow a basic supply of food, but they consider restaurants (and the associated tourism) as a waste of resources. They much prefer to funnel the surplus produced by the economy into their own pockets rather than having it dissipated by the commoners.

They can use several methods to obtain this result: lockdown worked nicely, but could not be imposed forever. Other methods were later used to make the restaurant experience unpleasant for the customers. Different factors reinforced each other. One result of the financial strain is that the quality of the food and of the service is going down (I can testify that myself). Finally, the QR code is the perfect method to keep the deplorables out. It is a more sophisticated and tuneable tool than the old written menu. So, Western restaurants are in the crosshair and it is unlikely that they will survive, at least in the form we are used to seeing them. It is not so much because the PTB are evil — they are no more evil than most categories. It is mostly because the economic contraction coming from the twin impact of depletion and pollution is pushing the Western economy back to what it was a couple of hundred years ago.


a Sumerian QR code to assign rations of beer. Some things never change, some things always return.

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Crowther

 

 

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Feb 072022
 


René Magritte Meditation 1936

 

Ottawa Mayor Declares State of Emergency Due to Convoy Protest (ET)
Ottawa Police Threaten Arrests For Sharing Fuel With Freedom Convoy (RT)
Canada Contracts To Deliver 100 Million Vaccine Doses Annually For Years (CBC)
6 Big Differences Between Natural Vs. Vaccine-Induced Immunity (Verkerk)
Why Was There No Warp Speed for Therapeutics? (Suissa)
EU Wants To Keep Vaccine Passports In Place For Another Entire Year (SN)
Broad Support For Petition Puts A Lot Of Pressure On Corona Pass (Tr.)
The Revolution Has Come For Joe Rogan (Techno Fog)
Mark Zuckerberg Could Face Jail Time Under New UK Law (RT)
Trapped in IMF debt, Argentina Turns To Russia And China (Norton)
Biden Security Advisor Sullivan: Russian Invasion ‘Any Day Now’ (CNBC)

 

 

 

 

Bulford
https://twitter.com/i/status/1490418278157717518

 

 

 

 

 

 

“To anybody who is annoyed, we apologize. Please call Justin Trudeau, his office, and get these mandates lifted, and we’re out of here..”

Sending in the riot police when there is no riot…

Ottawa Mayor Declares State of Emergency Due to Convoy Protest (ET)

Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson has declared a state of emergency due to the trucker protest that continues in the city’s downtown core. In a brief statement, the city said the decision reflects the “serious danger and threat to the safety and security of residents posed by the ongoing demonstrations and highlights the need for support from other jurisdictions and levels of government. ” “It also provides greater flexibility within the municipal administration to enable the City of Ottawa to manage business continuity for essential services for its residents and enables a more flexible procurement process, which could help purchase equipment required by frontline workers and first responders,” the city said in its statement. Protest organizers say their demonstration is peaceful.

The protest started as a demonstration by truckers against the federal government’s requirement for cross-border truck drivers to be vaccinated, but has since evolved into a large movement joined by people from across Canada to oppose different COVID-19 mandates and restrictions. Vehicle convoys came to Ottawa on Jan. 29, and many have stayed in the city, with trucks and other vehicles parked by Parliament Hill. Many protesters say they will remain until the mandates are lifted. Sounds of honking horns can be heard throughout the day in the Parliament Hill area, which residents are complaining about.Protest organizer Benjamin Dichter says people who are unhappy about the honking should be contacting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and ask him to lift COVID-19 mandates.“To anybody who is annoyed, we apologize. Please call Justin Trudeau, his office, and get these mandates lifted, and we’re out of here,” Dichter said at a press conference in Ottawa on Feb. 6.

Trudeau has refused to meet with the protesters. Tom Quiggin, who is helping the organizers with “protective intelligence,” said many people across Canada have lost their jobs, homes, and businesses as a result of COVID-19 mandates and restrictions, and they have grievances too, which is why they are protesting in the nation’s capital. “Let’s remember most of Ottawa is government, huge number of civil servants here. They haven’t missed a paycheque. They’ve got pay raises, some of them have got back pay, most of them are working from home. Some of them who can’t work from home are just doing nothing and still getting paid,” Quiggin said at the press conference. “So yes, it’s unfortunate that they feel bad about the horns, yes, it’s unfortunate they feel bad about the disruption, but the rest of the country is hurting.”

Ottawa riot police

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In the middle of winter…

Ottawa Police Threaten Arrests For Sharing Fuel With Freedom Convoy (RT)

Anyone who attempts to provide “material support” to the Freedom Convoy truckers and other anti-Covid-mandate protesters could be subject to arrest, Ottawa police announced, as Mayor Jim Watson declared a state of emergency in the city. Police issued the warning on Twitter on Sunday afternoon. Asked whether “material support” included vital necessities like food and water, a police spokesperson told Fox News that the announcement “relates to hazardous materials that represent a public safety or fire hazard.” Officers on the ground in downtown Ottawa reportedly told the drivers that after midnight on Sunday, no gas and diesel cans or propane tanks would be allowed into the area.

Officially, the Ottawa Police Service would not comment on the alleged deadline, saying they do not speak about operations “for officer safety reasons,” according to the Ottawa Citizen. According to several videos shared on social media, police have already seized multiple batches of fuel from protesters, but there were no reports of arrests as of 9pm local time. Mayor Jim Watson declared a state of emergency in Ottawa on Sunday afternoon, citing “serious danger and threat to the safety and security of residents,” as the Freedom Convoy shows no signs of ending. “The situation at this point is completely out of control because the individuals with the protest are calling the shots,” Watson said, adding that the protesters have “far more people than we have police officers.”

Over the past week, authorities placed heavy barricades at key crossing points throughout downtown and closed multiple roads, effectively blocking new trucks with full tanks of fuel from coming into the so-called ‘red zone’, so the protesters started using gas cans. Now authorities are seeking to cut off this lifeline as well. The protesters have promised to hold the line until the government repeals its vaccination mandates and QR code “health passports.” Organizers have indicated that they plan to stay in Ottawa for the “long haul,” seeking donations from supporters to cover the costs of fuel, food and lodging. After fundraising platform GoFundMe froze some $7 million in donations following “discussions” with Canadian authorities, the movement regrouped on competitor GiveSendGo, raising another $3.8 million in less than three days.

Ottawa fuel

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Population Canada: 38 million.

Canada Contracts To Deliver 100 Million Vaccine Doses Annually For Years (CBC)

Federal COVID-19 vaccine contracts mean Canada should get enough doses to give two or three more mRNA shots to every Canadian, every year, until at least 2024. But even as the National Advisory Committee on Immunization is now suggesting some Canadians get in line for their fourth doses, the World Health Organization is warning that “repeated booster doses of the original vaccine composition” are not a sustainable plan to end the pandemic.The WHO’s vaccine technical committee said today vaccines need to become more effective at keeping up with emerging variants.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday there will be third and fourth booster doses available in this country if or when they’re needed.

Contracts signed last year provide for delivery of up to 65 million doses from Pfizer and 35 million from Moderna this year, followed by 60 million from Pfizer and 35 million from Moderna in each of the next two years. More than three in four Canadians already have their first two doses, and more than one in four already have a booster shot as Canadian health authorities try to cut off the Omicron variant. The variant is breaking through the original vaccines but is mostly not causing serious illness, even in those with just the first two doses. Dr. Srinivas Murthy, a British Columbia pediatrician and co-chair of the WHO’s clinical research committee on COVID-19, said the booster response is panicky politics not public health.

“It’s a continually boost and boost and boost and hope that the virus will eventually go away or will build up enough of a immunity wall so that the virus can’t creep over it and get into Canada,” he said. Murthy said with Omicron there is some data that suggests a third dose is doing better at preventing infection outright than the original two doses, but he said there is no evidence a fourth dose is helping at all.

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Good and long. Do read.

6 Big Differences Between Natural Vs. Vaccine-Induced Immunity (Verkerk)

Look again at figure 3 and note the vertical red lines we’ve inserted for all age groups 50 and older. The red line on the left of each of the lower 6 graphs intersects the horizontal axis on the date antibodies were found in 80% of the population. The red line on the right side intersects the horizontal axis on the date boosters were administered to 80% of that same age group. Note the many months that separate these two events. The take-home is that elevated antibodies were already widespread in the older age groups well before the booster campaign was even started — and even longer before coverage reached 80% of each of the age groups.


It’s also worth noting that antibody-mediated partial (non-sterilizing) immunity in heavily vaccinated populations is increasingly clouded by the fact that it is in essence “hybrid” immunity that, at least for a short period, includes naturally-acquired and jab-induced immunity. For any population group that isn’t vulnerable to severe COVID-19 disease and COVID-19 death – which represents almost everyone since omicron has become dominant – the risk of serious adverse events almost certainly outweighs any benefits. Deception no. 2 can therefore be summarized as follows: Boris Johnson deceived the public when he said boosters were the reason the UK was ready to lift restrictions. One wonders, rhetorically, who put those words in his mouth? I, cynically speaking, just can’t imagine.

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We know why.

Why Was There No Warp Speed for Therapeutics? (Suissa)

When Congress investigates our response to the pandemic, this ought to be the first question: Why was there no Operation Warp Speed for therapeutics, just as there was for vaccines? This question is crucial for the obvious reason that countless lives could have been saved, but also because a warp speed initiative for therapeutics might have minimized the relentless lockdowns and mandates that have devastated and divided our country, not to mention triggered a mental health crisis and forced millions of school children to isolate at home in front of computer screens. A lot may have changed in two years as we’ve learned more about the virus and its variants, but this truth hasn’t changed: We should have treated therapeutics a lot more seriously from the very beginning.

Why didn’t we? Congress must get to the bottom of this, but there are things we already know. For starters, we know the elephant in the room: drug companies make more money with vaccines. That’s just a fact. Whereas vaccines aim for 100 percent of a population and have repeat doses, therapeutics aim only for those who get sick. According to Nature magazine, global sales of COVID vaccines were expected to top $50 billion in 2021. It’s no surprise, then, that the warp speed initiative for vaccines was so speedy—the drug companies had a major financial incentive. We also know that the hyperfocus on vaccines had serious repercussions. Because vaccines prioritize mass protection over treatment, we were urged to protect ourselves at all cost.

This created a climate of fear, making us more willing to accept any public measure or mandate we believed would protect us. Eventually, it made us resentful of anyone who didn’t share our beliefs. Therapeutics nurture caution but not paranoia. You know that even if you get infected, there is a treatment. In recent months, as the health establishment has tried to catch up, more and more doctors have been using different sorts of therapeutics to help treat COVID, using the best data available. Unfortunately, without a massive, concerted and credible effort behind them, therapeutics are still seen as the stepchild to vaccines. This is tragic, because with millions of lives at stake around the world, therapeutics deserve to be at least equal partners. While vaccine efficacy can wane with time, as we’re seeing now with COVID vaccines, therapeutics are precision weapons that have no such limitation.

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My precious…

EU Wants To Keep Vaccine Passports In Place For Another Entire Year (SN)

The unelected bureaucrat governors of the EU in the European Commission have proposed keeping the bloc’s COVID vaccine passport system in place for another entire year, despite the fact that many member countries are ramping down restrictions. In a notice on its website, the Commission states “Today the European Commission is proposing to extend the EU Digital COVID Certificate by a year, until 30 June 2023.” It continues, “The COVID-19 virus continues to be prevalent in Europe and at this stage it is not possible to determine the impact of a possible increase in infections in the second half of 2022 or of the emergence of new variants.”

“Extending the Regulation will ensure that travellers can continue using their EU Digital COVID Certificate when travelling in the EU where Member States maintain certain public health measures,” the statements adds. It continues, “The Commission is adopting the proposal today to make sure the European Parliament and the Council can conclude the legislative procedure in time before the current Regulation expires.” The move comes even as several countries, including Denmark, Norway, Italy, Sweden, France, in addition to non-EU countries such as Switzerland and England move to scrap restrictions including the vaccine passes. The European Commission admits in its statement that it is up to the individual countries whether they carry on using the EU COVID vaccine passport scheme.

“The domestic use of EU Digital COVID Certificates remains a matter for Member States to decide, the statement notes, adding “The EU legislation on the EU Digital COVID Certificate neither prescribes nor prohibits the domestic use of EU Digital COVID Certificate (such as for access to events or restaurants).” It also notes that “At the same time, where a Member State establishes a system of COVID-19 certificate for domestic purposes, it should continue to ensure that the EU Digital COVID Certificate is also fully accepted for those purposes. Beyond that, the Commission also encourages Member States to align their domestic validity periods with the validity period set at EU level for the purpose of travel.”

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Google translation from Dutch.

Broad Support For Petition Puts A Lot Of Pressure On Corona Pass (Tr.)

Immediately abolish the corona ticket because the pass does not work and does not suit the Netherlands. In short, that is the message of a manifesto drawn up by the ‘Undistributed Open’ action group, led by CDA celebrity and former State Secretary Mona Keijzer. The call received support from hundreds of thousands of people over the weekend. The question that arises is: are politicians in The Hague sensitive to such a large movement and does this action herald the end of the QR code? Within 24 hours, the counter was already above 300,000 signatures, the limit that until recently existed to enforce an advisory referendum. By Sunday evening, 480,000 people had put their names to the petition.

The authors of the manifesto are against any form of a corona pass, now and in the future, because they believe that the damage caused by the pass – reduced freedom of movement for many Dutch people and polarization in society – is disproportionate to the marginal gain for public health. The corona ticket is currently mandatory in many places from the age of 13: in the catering industry, the cultural sector and in indoor sports (from 18 years). People get a QR code if they are vaccinated, cured or tested (3G). The manifesto is a logical consequence of a broadened opposition to the corona pass. The QR code has been a controversial subject since its introduction in September last year.

While demonstrations against the regular corona policy last year often did not attract more than a thousand demonstrators, there were 20,000 demonstrators in Amsterdam just before the introduction. Distinguishing between vaccinated and unvaccinated was going too far for many people and there was a lack of good evidence, they said. When the coalition wanted to expand the pass to ‘2G’ at the end of November, whereby unvaccinated people no longer have access, the discussion became sharp. Omikron gave the resistance an extra push: due to the contagiousness of this milder variant, the effect of the pass is very limited, a recent study by TU Delft showed.

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Taliban tactics.

The Revolution Has Come For Joe Rogan (Techno Fog)

The Taliban took back Afghanistan in the late summer of 2021, shortly after the Americans withdrew, tired and weary and broke after nearly 20 years of fighting. They seized control of the country in the broad and particular sense: setting up command in the presidential palace in Kabul and targeting the individuals who criticized the new government. By December 2021, regular Afghans and the members of the Afghan press who had expressed critical views of their new rulers had “been subjected to months of intimidation and fear.” The Biden Administration has adopted these same tactics, calling for their critics to be silenced by the Administration’s corporate and media allies.

After 20 years of trying to export Western values to Afghanistan, they ended up importing Taliban-style repression to the United States. And it only cost us trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. Now, the Regime and its comrades target Joe Rogan, an inquisitive comedian with a podcast. He is accused of spreading “misinformation” by those that illegally spy on their citizens and lies without remorse. In reality, this isn’t about misinformation. It’s that Rogan’s crimes are those of words and thought. They prosecute on behalf of the god they have created, searching to eradicate those guilty of the sin of blasphemy. The Taliban would be proud. We can be certain that the Regime is not concerned with the truth. Have you seen them struggle to explain the “evidence” that Russia was planning a false-flag in Ukraine to justify an invasion?

Or, consider how the COVID-19 misinformation originated from the U.S. government and its bureaucratic arms. In early 2020, Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins were both presented with arguments that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered. Instead of investigating this issue, they saw to it that this theory was killed off. Despite – or perhaps because of – these lies, Fauci and Collins remain dear sons of the Regime. Reminders that “All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.” (The Christians of the Left – such as David French – even go so far as to say that you have a “spiritual problem” if you don’t trust Fauci and Collins. Both the left and the right make their idols.) They killed the truth before. Who is to say they’re not trying to do that with Rogan?

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Apparently we all could, for sharing Covid disinformation.

Mark Zuckerberg Could Face Jail Time Under New UK Law (RT)

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other Big Tech executives risk ending up in jail if their social media platforms do not block content deemed harmful under upcoming online safety laws, UK Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries has warned. Speaking to Times Radio on Saturday, Dorries said Zuckerberg, who heads Meta, Facebook’s parent company, and other tech bosses could “absolutely” be put behind bars if they did not comply with the government’s draft Online Safety Bill. She expressed hope that the legislation would be a “notice to the online platforms to say here it is, we’re letting you know what it is now, so start doing what you need to do.”


Under the bill’s proposed ‘duty of care’ regime, communications regulator Ofcom’s powers could jail tech executives for up to two years for failing to remove illegal content, The Telegraph reported. The government had announced on Friday that several new criminal offenses had been added to the bill, including revenge porn, hate crime, fraud, the sale of illegal drugs or weapons, the promotion or facilitation of suicide, people-smuggling, and sexual exploitation. The government claimed that naming these offenses would enable Ofcom to take enforcement action against non-compliant firms more quickly. But Dorries said these platforms “don’t need to wait for the bill” since they “have the powers to [take action] now.”

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Once a country is part of Brick and Road, it’s much harder for the CIA to work its magic.

Trapped in IMF debt, Argentina Turns To Russia And China (Norton)

The United States constantly intervenes in the internal affairs of Latin America, organizing coups d’etat, destabilizing independent governments, trapping nations in debt, and imposing sanctions. Washington sees the region as its own property, with President Joe Biden referring to it this January as “America’s front yard.” Seeking alternatives to US hegemony, progressive governments in Latin America have increasingly looked across the ocean to form alliances with China and Russia. Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández did exactly that this February, taking historic trips to Beijing and Moscow to meet with his counterparts Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.


Fernández signed a series of strategic agreements, officially incorporating Argentina into Beijing’s international Belt and Road Initiative, while expanding economic partnerships with the Eurasian powers and telling Moscow that Argentina “should be the door to enter” Latin America. China offered $23.7 billion in funding for infrastructure projects and investments in Argentina’s economy. In the meetings, Fernández also asked for Argentina to join the BRICS framework, alongside Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Xi and Putin reportedly both agreed. “I am consistently working to rid Argentina of this dependence on the IMF and the US,” Fernández explained. “I want Argentina to open up new opportunities.” The Argentine president’s comments and meetings with Putin and Xi reportedly angered the US government.

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Fake news.

Biden Security Advisor Sullivan: Russian Invasion ‘Any Day Now’ (CNBC)

A Russian invasion of Ukraine could be imminent, White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan warned on Sunday. “We are in the window,” Sullivan said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” “Any day now, Russia could take military action against Ukraine or it could be a couple of weeks from now, or Russia could choose to take the diplomatic path instead.” Sullivan appeared on several morning news programs to discuss the ongoing situation in Eastern Europe. His appearances come after two U.S. officials said Russia has in place about 70% of the combat power it believes it would need for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The number of battalion tactical groups in the border region has risen to 83 from 60 as of Friday and 14 more are in transit, according to Reuters.

“We believe that the Russians have put in place the capabilities to mount a significant military operation into Ukraine and we have been working hard to prepare a response,” Sullivan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” The form of attack could take different forms, Sullivan told NBC. Possible attacks could include annexing Ukraine’s Donbass region, cyberattacks or a full-scale invasion. “Part of the reason we’ve been working so intensively over the last few months is not just to prepare for one contingency but to prepare for all contingencies and to work with our allies and partners on what a response would look like in each of those instances,” Sullivan said. The U.S. and its allies have been clear the nations would act aggressively if Russia launches an attack. The U.S., for example, has threatened severe sanctions if Russian President Vladimir Putin invades.

The timeline for diplomatic negotiations could be dwindling. “We believe that there is a very distinct possibility that Vladimir Putin will order an attack on Ukraine,” Sullivan said on ABC’s “This Week.”If a full-scale Russian invasion occurs, thousands of civilians and troops could die, according to Reuters. Ukraine could suffer 5,000 to 25,000 troop casualties, the outlet reported, citing a U.S. official. Russia’s troop casualties could be between 3,000 and 10,000, and civilian casualties could range from 25,000 to 50,000, according to U.S. estimates. It would also prompt millions of Ukrainians to be displaced.

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Turin
https://twitter.com/i/status/1490253682721574915

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

Feb 022022
 


Jan van Eyck Madonna and Child at the Fountain 1439 (height: 7.4“, 19cm)

 

Truckers Are Lighting “Brushfires of Freedom” In Millions of Minds (Rossini)
Ottawa City Councillor Wants To Seize Freedom Convoy GoFundMe Funds (RTN)
COVID Affects Your Memory (Gutentag)
Covid Vaccine Hesitancy Could Be Linked To Childhood Trauma (G.)
Lockdowns Had Little Or No Impact On Covid-19 Deaths (WT)
Big Tech Purges Anti-lockdown Scientists (JTN)
Scientists Speak Out On Being Silenced On Lab Leak Theory (Fox)
Watch The Diversion! (Denninger)
Top Doctor Calls for Reinstatement of People Fired Over Vaccine Mandates (TH)
Vaccine-Induced Myocarditis Injuring Record Number of Young People (CHD)
47 Million Americans Quit Their Jobs Last Year: ‘Uncharted Territory’ (CNBC)
It’s a Mitzvah, Not Anti-Semitism, To Attack Soros’ DA campaigns (Dov Fischer)
Soros Calls For Regime Change In China (RT)
New York Times Sues To Get Hunter Biden Information (Turley)
El Salvador Angrily Rejects IMF Call To Drop Bitcoin Use (AP)

 

 

A lot of farmers will not grow wheat at present fertilizer prices. In the US, many will switch to soy beans.

“Retail fertilizer is ripping in the Midwest as growers begin to put on purchases for spring product. Anhydrous has set a new record at $1492/ton, which is 200% more than this time last year. With harvest delivered corn in the low $5/bu range right now, it doesn’t pencil.”

 

 

Trucker
https://twitter.com/i/status/1488672963801104385

 

 

Urso

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..it’s impossible to centrally plan human life. Yet, there’s never a shortage of misguided individuals who are willing to give it a try.”

Truckers Are Lighting “Brushfires of Freedom” In Millions of Minds (Rossini)

Tyranny is nothing new. People who embrace it, and who lust after power, tend to follow a similar pattern. There are no brakes. They always push it too far. They always overplay their hand. They can’t seem to stop themselves once they have a grip on the population. Canada experienced a shocking amount of tyranny over the last several years. And yet, under the extreme pressure that the Canadian people were forced to endure, it appears that a diamond has been formed. Out came a force for liberty that has caught the attention of the entire world! We are born free, and meant to always stay free. Authoritarians, no matter how much data they chase after, can never know or anticipate everything.

Who could have predicted that a major spark would emerge in Canada? Yet, that is how the history of Liberty vs. power has always been. Who could have predicted that 13 colonies would secede from the biggest empire on earth back in 1776? In our world of perpetual uncertainty, it’s impossible to centrally plan human life. Yet, there’s never a shortage of misguided individuals who are willing to give it a try….and create mass human suffering in doing so. It’s hard enough to plan one’s own life, let alone venturing out and foolishly sticking your nose into someone else’s business. But this fact never seems to dawn on authoritarians, no matter how much logic, theory, and history backs it up.

The desire for freedom is innate. It can be suppressed, but not abolished. Life and Liberty are two sides of the same coin. Without Life, there is no Liberty. Without Liberty, there is no Life. When backed into an impossible corner, Life and Liberty always finds a crack to burst through. After 2 years of hardcore tyranny around the world, the ideas of freedom are bursting forth, first in Canada…

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Justin’s not the only Little Napoleon in town…

Ottawa City Councillor Wants To Seize Freedom Convoy GoFundMe Funds (RTN)

The public participation in online crowdfunding for public protests related to the Freedom Convoy taking place in Canada continues to be hit with roadblocks and is becoming a further threat to free expression and the right to protest. After first having GoFundMe temporarily block the release of some of the funds that Canadians have donated to help support the livelihoods of the truckers taking place in the demonstration, GoFundMe began to pay out the funds, with the first payment of $1M in Canadian dollars being released, the campaign organizer tweeted on Friday. However, the campaign has raised more than $7.3 million in Canadian dollars and those funds could now be at risk of being seized by the local government if some politicians get their way.

Mathieu Fleury, the Ottawa City Councillor of Rideau-Vanier Ward, has today announced his support for the government to launch a legal challenge to seize the remaining GoFundMe donations that had been collected online. “This morning, I have asked the city manager and city solicitor to immediately launch court proceedings targeting the millions of dollars in funds frozen by @GoFundMe so Ottawa taxpayers are not left holding the bag for these protests,” Fleury tweeted, before locking his account after facing backlash.

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“While COVID testing may be clinically valuable for people with symptoms, testing millions of asymptomatic people can lead to large-scale, unnecessary quarantines and disruptions (as Fauci has now admitted).”

COVID Affects Your Memory (Gutentag)

In December 2021, the CDC announced a change in quarantine guidelines from 10 days to five, with Fauci confessing that the purpose of the change was to “get people back to jobs” and Walensky stating that the guidelines were based on “what we thought people would be able to tolerate.” These statements came after months and years of restrictions based on the idea that no concern superseded the mitigation of COVID risks—that COVID policies were, by definition, above cost-benefit analysis. In 2020, Fauci and Francis Collins (then director of the National Institutes of Health) had orchestrated a media-assisted smear campaign to this effect against the scientists behind the Great Barrington Declaration, who argued for more focused protection of the elderly and immunocompromised instead of blanket lockdowns.

This effort to quash dissenting viewpoints lasted well past the point when vaccines became available for any adult who wanted them. Now, having attempted to damage the reputations of these scientists, Fauci believes that COVID mitigation policies must be balanced by other priorities. The CDC has also determined that Americans no longer have to test themselves at the end of the new quarantine period because they can stay positive for up to 12 weeks after infection. But this change in testing protocol only confirms that detection of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has never meant that someone is ill or contagious. A clinical case of a disease almost always involves symptoms, but for COVID, the definition of a “case” for the past two years has been a positive PCR test, symptoms or no symptoms.

In other words, while major news outlets presented rates of “cases” as synonymous with rates of illness, the number of positive PCR tests has never necessarily reflected the number of people sick with COVID (because the SARS-CoV-2 material detected by PCR may not be intact, abundant, or infectious). This was a problem in 2007 when the use of PCR tests to detect pertussis led scientists to believe they were observing an epidemic, only to discover that the tests had been generating false positives and patients most likely had other respiratory infections like the common cold. While COVID testing may be clinically valuable for people with symptoms, testing millions of asymptomatic people can lead to large-scale, unnecessary quarantines and disruptions (as Fauci has now admitted).

Nevertheless, state and city governments used “rising cases” to rationalize shutdowns, school closures, and mask mandates. Public health officials and the media portrayed these raw case numbers as a meaningful metric and presented testing as an infallible tool. In the past month, this approach has abruptly changed. When questioned about child hospitalization rates, Fauci recently cited broken bones and appendicitis as among the reasons for high hospitalization numbers, telling MSNBC, “It’s over-counting the number of children who are, quote ‘hospitalized with COVID,’ as opposed to because of COVID.” By the first week of January, data released by New York state showed that about half of all COVID patients in New York City hospitals were admitted for reasons other than COVID; in Los Angeles, the same was true for about two-thirds of COVID patients. The Los Angeles Times argued that the number of incidental hospitalizations during omicron means “this surge is different.” But how different is it, really?

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The craziest thing in quite some time. Those involved in its research and publishing should either get a big Stupidity Award, or be prosecuted.

Covid Vaccine Hesitancy Could Be Linked To Childhood Trauma (G.)

Refusal or reluctance to have a Covid-19 vaccine may be linked to traumatic events in childhood, such as parents separating, neglect, or physical, verbal and sexual abuse, new research suggests. Those who suffer in childhood are also least likely to trust official NHS coronavirus information, follow the rules of restrictions or wear masks during the pandemic, public health experts found. Two years after the virus first reached the UK and a year after vaccines to protect against it were made available for free on the NHS, millions of people have yet to be vaccinated. Almost one in 10 people in the UK – 9% – have still not had a single dose. Health experts and policymakers are urgently trying to figure out why.

Now the findings of a new study funded by Public Health Wales and published in the journal BMJ Open suggests that Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy may be linked to childhood trauma. Researchers surveyed 2,285 people aged 18 and over in Wales during lockdown restrictions between 2020 and 2021. They were asked about nine different adverse childhood experiences (Aces) as well as low trust in NHS Covid-19 information, whether they backed the removal of social distancing and mandatory face coverings, and breaking Covid rules and vaccine hesitancy. Aces include neglect, physical, psychological or sexual mistreatment, and growing up in a household affected by domestic violence, substance or alcohol abuse and other criminal justice problems.

Parents separating or divorcing, abandonment, or having a parent with a mental health condition are other examples of Aces. The nine Aces included in the study were: physical, verbal and sexual abuse, parental separation, exposure to domestic violence, living with a household member with mental illness, alcohol and/or drug misuse, or a family member in prison. Half of those in the study had not experienced any childhood trauma, one in five had suffered one type, about one in six reported two or three, and one in 10 reported four or more. The results showed that the more trauma people had experienced in childhood, the more likely they were to mistrust NHS Covid-19 information, to feel unfairly restricted by the government and to support the end of mandatory face masks.

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“..lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument..”

Lockdowns Had Little Or No Impact On Covid-19 Deaths (WT)

Lockdowns in the U.S. and Europe had little or no impact in reducing deaths from COVID-19, according to a new analysis by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. The lockdowns during the early phase of the pandemic in 2020 reduced COVID-19 mortality by about 0.2%, said the broad review of multiple scientific studies. “We find no evidence that lockdowns, school closures, border closures, and limiting gatherings have had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality,” the researchers wrote. But the research paper said lockdowns did have “devastating effects” on the economy and contributed to numerous social ills. “They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy,” the report said.


“Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument,” the paper concluded. Early on, many states and 186 countries imposed bans on work, socialization, in-person schooling, travel and other restrictions to limit the spread of the disease, citing recommendations by top health care experts. Researchers at the Imperial College London, for example, predicted that such steps could reduce death rates by up to 98%. That never happened, according to the new study by researchers Steve Hanke, Jonas Herby, and Lars Jonung at Johns Hopkins. “Overall, we conclude that lockdowns are not an effective way of reducing mortality rates during a pandemic, at least not during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic,” they wrote.

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“the whole history of the pandemic and the response are being rewritten in real time by Big Tech to cover up what happened..”

Big Tech Purges Anti-lockdown Scientists (JTN)

The campaign to get Joe Rogan booted from Spotify may have failed for now, but Big Tech appears to be ramping up its COVID-19 “misinformation” crackdown on medical and other figures. Two permanent social media bans bookended Rogan’s interview with mRNA vaccine pioneer-turned-critic Robert Malone, which birthed the trending phrase “mass formation psychosis.” Twitter cited Malone for COVID misinformation shortly before the interview, while LinkedIn “flushed my 30,000 connections and de-platformed me” days after, Malone wrote in his newsletter. “No explanations, no warnings were given.” The last complete archive of his page was Jan. 3.

Malone said he had rarely posted anything “controversial” on the Microsoft-owned professional social network due to his brief suspension last summer, which a LinkedIn “senior executive” blamed on the platform’s purported difficulty in “detangling complicated, subtle scientific claims.” YouTube reportedly removed uploads of the Rogan episode as well, and Malone and others claimed Google was manipulating search results for “mass formation psychosis” to hide the episode, contrasting the search engine’s results with competitor DuckDuckGo. The censorship has not chastened Malone, who has since claimed he “almost died” following his second Moderna vaccine dose, likely due to a “bad batch.”

LinkedIn shut down former Harvard Medical School epidemiologist and lockdown critic Martin Kulldorff’s account last week, allegedly reinstating it without explanation several hours after his affiliated Brownstone Institute noted the removal. It was also Kulldorff’s second brush with LinkedIn, which censored two of his posts for purported misinformation last summer. Twitter suspended his account for a month last spring for disputing the protective powers of commonly worn masks — a position that is now mainstream. The actions suggest “the whole history of the pandemic and the response are being rewritten in real time by Big Tech to cover up what happened, who wrote what and when, and how the thing fleshed itself out in real time,” wrote Brownstone Institute founder Jeffrey Tucker.

Malone Big Tech
https://twitter.com/i/status/1488548271505170433

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I bet most people still don’t believe the lab leak theory. Propaganda is sticky.

Scientists Speak Out On Being Silenced On Lab Leak Theory (Fox)

Some scientists have begun speaking out about efforts to silence researchers who raised concerns about the possibility that COVID-19 could have originated in a Chinese lab. “It shot from every direction from people who we now know were actually thinking exactly the same thing but have chosen to say the opposite, which is extraordinary,” Australian Dr. Nikolai Petrovsky, a Flinders University Medicine professor, told Fox News of the backlash he received for voicing concerns that the pandemic may have originated in a lab. Petrovsky was not alone, according to reporting from Fox News’ Benjamin Hall, who spoke with scientists from Israel, the U.S., Australia, Germany, the U.K., Australia and Germany. The scientists told Fox News that they received backlash and resistance to getting their work published, even from those who quietly believed in the possibility of the “lab-leak theory.”


“It’s taken two years for that to finally come out and be exposed,” Petrovsky said. The scientists say that there was a top-down effort aimed at protecting the scientific community from negative public attention, with fears spreading among scientists that a public realization that the pandemic may have spread due to gain-of-function research in a lab could hamper future experiments. Many in the scientific community who attempted to speak out about COVID-19’s origins were labeled conspiracy theorists in the media and by fellow scientists early on in the pandemic, even though the possibility of human error has now gained renewed attention from experts. The scientists expressed fear to Fox News that the silencing of such voices has led to little change, with gain-of-function research continuing both in the U.S. and abroad despite growing calls for international regulation.

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DARPA.

Watch The Diversion! (Denninger)

Let’s cut the crap eh? It’s established that DARPA was handed a proposal from Ecohealth, Duke, UNC and Palo Alto Labs that intended for work to be done at the WIV and then intentionally released into bat caves in China related to coronaviruses. It’s also established that DARPA told them to pound sand, because, as I’ve pointed out, it not only violated gain-of-function but also raised grave concerns about being dual use (that is, bioweapon use) and that Ecohealth was apparently claiming the right to do same on a foreign land where they neither owned the cave or the people around there that might get screwed. As it turns out people did get screwed and it appears to have initiated right there. There is evidence NIH funded this after DARPA told them to go to Hell. The evidence points to that how Covid-19 occurred.

Proved? Not yet. But if not… it’s a hell of a coincidence, isn’t it — both on what was being done and the timing. But note well that Trump, and Fox, are all over the Wuhan Institute only. Oddly silent is that institutions right here in the United States appear to have been part of it. They most-certainly were in the original proposal which has surfaced, I remind you. Exactly nobody has called for a full and open investigation into that, and there is evidence that they were involved after DARPA rejected the work too in the form of transfer agreements in late 2019, just before everything went to Hell. Where be the subpoenas out of Congress, may I ask? Where be anything other than the focus on China? Yeah, China was involved and covered it up. That’s clear.

But what’s also clear is that China has also not released the information including exactly what was transferred back, to whom and when. So yeah, let’s bag on China because they deserve it. But at the same time where’s the big fat wrecking ball and even criminal charges for those in the so-called “public health” and “research” community right here in the United States that got involved in this crap and, it appears, may well be equally responsible for what happened? Oh, you want to know why not? Here you go: The scientists expressed fear to Fox News that the silencing of such voices has led to little change, with gain-of-function research continuing both in the U.S. and abroad despite growing calls for international regulation. There you are. They’re still doing it.

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Very obvious. But who’s first?

Top Doctor Calls for Reinstatement of People Fired Over Vaccine Mandates (TH)

After instruction from President Joe Biden and federal government regulators, a number of corporations fired workers who refused the Wuhan coronavirus vaccine. They did so before the Supreme Court ruled Biden’s vaccine mandate for large companies was unconstitutional. Now, with worker shortages and long delayed scientific evidence from the Centers for Disease Control that the vaccine does not prevent the transmission of the virus, a number of companies are hiring back previously fired workers. Dr. Marty Makary, a top doctor for John’s Hopkins University, has been calling on companies to rehire fired employees for weeks. Now, he’s calling for workers to not only give people their jobs back but to issue an apology.


“Public-health officials ruined many lives by insisting that workers with natural immunity to Covid-19 be fired if they weren’t fully vaccinated. But after two years of accruing data, the superiority of natural immunity over vaccinated immunity is clear. By firing staff with natural immunity, employers got rid of those least likely to infect others. It’s time to reinstate those employees with an apology,” Dr. Makary writes in the Wall Street Journal. “None of this should surprise us. For years, studies have shown that infection with the other coronaviruses that cause severe illness, SARS and MERS, confers lasting immunity. In a study published in May 2020, Covid-recovered monkeys that were rechallenged with the virus didn’t get sick. Public-health officials have a lot of explaining to do.”

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Medical debt.

Vaccine-Induced Myocarditis Injuring Record Number of Young People (CHD)

In one-fourth (or more) of consumer bankruptcies, medical debt is the predominant causal factor, often triggered by “sudden adverse events.” As of 2022, vaccine adverse event reporting of heart disease following COVID vaccines had increased 15,600% in young people under the age of 30, compared to the previous 31 years of heart injuries reported following receipt of FDA-approved vaccines. Autism, linked to vaccines as well as other toxic exposures, furnishes a cautionary tale, potentially saddling families with lifetime care costs of $1.4 to $2.4 million. In 2010, a government study estimated 1 in every 38 vaccine doses (2.6%) produced an adverse reaction. However, the sluggish and adversarial vaccine injury compensation process and a sky-high burden of proof leave two-thirds of claims dismissed or in limbo.

Emergency Use Authorization COVID shots are even less likely to garner vaccine injury compensation. Attorneys caution, “If you have suffered a serious injury from a Covid-19 vaccine, you are basically on your own.” With over a million COVID-vaccine-related adverse events reported since December 2020, households are racking up extraordinary debt and turning to crowdfunding for help. Heart conditions, among the 20 most expensive conditions treated in American hospitals, pack a financial wallop. According to CDC, 96% of those under age 30 who experience heart injuries following COVID vaccination are hospitalized. Children tend to have a more sudden and severe myocarditis presentation than adults, with an estimated 7% to 15% mortality rate. Children hospitalized with myocarditis are more likely to die than children admitted with other diagnoses.

Studies of children and adolescents who developed myocarditis following COVID vaccination show a “potentially poor prognosis despite the heart seeming to have returned to normal.” According to Mayo Clinic, “the greatest burden of myocarditis may not be apparent for 6-12 years after diagnosis when children die or need to undergo cardiac transplantation.” Cardiac injuries triggered by dangerous COVID injections appear to be good for business. A July 2021 BusinessWire report forecast a booming market for cardiac assist devices, noting “increasing incidence of heart failure is driving growth.” Families, however, are left holding the bag not just emotionally, but financially, blindsided by financial impacts they surely never anticipated.

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Great Migration.

47 Million Americans Quit Their Jobs Last Year: ‘Uncharted Territory’ (CNBC)

Another historically high 4.3 million workers quit their jobs in December, according to the Labor Department’s latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover report, closing out a record-shattering year when roughly 47.4 million people voluntarily left their jobs for better work during the pandemic and Great Resignation. For comparison, 42.1 million people quit in 2019, at the time considered the tightest labor market on record. “All of this is uncharted territory,” says Rucha Vankudre, a senior economist at Emsi Burning Glass, a labor market analytics firm. The U.S. saw record-breaking months of turnover throughout 2021, with early signs of trouble kicking off in April as vaccination efforts improved, consumer activity rebounded and businesses scrambled to re-staff to meet demand.

Workers, especially in low-wage service roles, quit their jobs for higher pay and better work conditions. Employers responded to record turnover by “trying to get employees in the door” with signing bonuses, higher salaries, the option to work remotely and expanding their geographic hiring boundaries for teleworkers, Vankudre tells CNBC Make It. They’ve increased retention efforts by offering more employee training and development opportunities. “Employers are doing what they can at this point,” Vankudre says. She expects pay increases to continue unabated as a means of attracting new hires, retaining workers and pulling people back into the workforce. “What else can they do? We’ll have to see. They’ve done the things we’ve expected them to do at increasing rates, but what’s next?”

Even still, rising wages may not be enough to keep pace with the rate of inflation. Though wages rose 4.7% from a year prior, according to the Labor Department, consumer prices reached a 40-year high in December, when the consumer price index (which measures the cost of goods and services) showed a 7% jump year-over-year.

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Rabbi Dov Fischer is western regional vice president of Coalition for Jewish Values.

It’s a Mitzvah, Not Anti-Semitism, To Attack Soros’ DA campaigns (Dov Fischer)

Ever since Jonathan Greenblatt, a woke former Obama White House official, took over the Anti-Defamation League, it reflexively screams “Anti-Semitism!” when critics fault Soros’ political work — and the left loyally follows suit. It therefore falls upon established rabbis with authentic Jewish lifetime bona fides, like yours truly, to assert unequivocally that it’s a mitzvah (a righteous act) — not “anti-Semitism” — to castigate George Soros for his radical attempts to undermine public safety and the American republic. I’ll be clear: Political pundits, ranging from columnists to cartoonists to on-air talent, should not hesitate to condemn Soros as perhaps the most despicable person in public affairs.

Disbursing tens of millions of dollars, Soros has funded local campaigns across America to elect progressive district attorneys who agitate for the lethal cocktail of defunding police and decriminalization. These prosecutors tend not to prosecute property crimes or severe misdemeanors. Instead, they purposefully undercharge felonies as misdemeanors, then plead them down to disorderly-conduct violations. The result? A new term, “smash and grab,” has entered the crime lexicon. Soros just poured a whopping $125 million into a super PAC called Democracy PAC, noting the donation is a “long-term investment.” Prior to this, between 2015 and 2019, he and his affiliated PACs spent more than $17 million on local DA races. That number is believed to have topped $20 million from just 2020 to 2021.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner received $1.7 million from a Soros PAC for the 2017 campaign that put him into office, an unheard-of sum for such a race. Last year, 559 people were murdered in his city, the most in history. Cook County, Ill., State’s Attorney Kim Foxx received $2 million from a Soros PAC. In 2021, 797 people were murdered in Chicago, 25 more than in 2020. Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby was one of the first individuals Soros supported by when in 2014 he decided to fund progressive prosecutors’ election efforts. Despite progressive Mayor Brandon Scott’s attempt at “violence reduction” strategies, Baltimore’s homicide rate rose for a second year in a row, climbing to 337 in 2021.

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The damage one old man can do…

Soros Calls For Regime Change In China (RT)

Liberal billionaire George Soros called for the replacement of Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday, comparing the upcoming 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics to the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany. In a speech delivered at the conservative Hoover Institution, Soros called China the “world’s most powerful authoritarian state” and “the greatest threat that open societies face today.” Soros claimed that China, “like Germany in 1936,” will “attempt to use the spectacle” of the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games “to score a propaganda victory for its system of strict controls.” He also called Xi “a true believer in communism,” unlike former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who introduced free market reforms, and warned that “Mao Zedong and Vladimir Lenin are his idols.”


Soros concluded his speech with a call for regime change in China – echoing the current line of many American conservatives, who also oppose Xi’s leadership. It is to be hoped that Xi Jinping may be replaced by someone less repressive at home and more peaceful abroad “This would remove the greatest threat that open societies face today and they should do everything within their power to encourage China to move in the desired direction,” the billionaire declared. Soros is the founder and chairman of the Open Society Foundation, which backs liberal and left-wing causes in the US and around the globe, including Black Lives Matter, Planned Parenthood and immigration reforms. He has also taken an interest in US district attorney races, pouring millions into these contests, with some of these Soros-backed candidates now overseeing prosecution in America’s major cities.

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But only on “Romanian dealings”?

New York Times Sues To Get Hunter Biden Information (Turley)

We have repeatedly discussed the virtual new blackout on the influence peddling by the Biden family, particularly Hunter Biden. Despite overwhelming evidence of millions given by foreign companies and officials, the media has preferred to cover literal scoops over a story of breathtaking levels of self-dealing and corruption by the Bidens. Now, however, the New York Times has sued to force the Biden Administration to turn over information on Hunter Biden’s Romanian dealings. The lawsuit comes after another report that, in 2019, the FBI subpoenaed JP Morgan for records on Hunter Biden’s Chinese dealings.

In a new lawsuit on Monday, the Times sued the State Department to obtain emails from Romanian embassy officials sent between 2015 and 2019 mentioning a number of international business figures, including the president’s son and his former business associate Tony Bobulinski. While the request was sent in December 2021, the Biden Administration told the Times that the soonest that it could possibly turn over the information is April 15, 2023. That is after the mid-term elections. This story could be a bit awkward for the White House staff. When the New York Times Ken Vogel wrote about Hunter Biden’s dealings as a potential “significant liability,” Biden officials viciously attacked him while others suggested that he was a pawn of Russian or Trump disinformation. Of course, the allegations proved to be true and the infamous laptop is now considered authentic.

One of the most outspoken aides denying the entire story was Kate Bedingfield, who is now the director of White House Communications. She denounced the story as an “egregious act of journalistic malpractice.” Andrew Bates, who is now deputy director, tweeted “SCOOP from Philadelphia: KEN VOGEL (@kenvogel ) is a COWARD.” They will now handle questions on this story as White House officials. That includes why President Biden repeatedly said that no one had accused Hunter or his family of “doing anything wrong” when he was presumably aware of the FBI subpoena and the seizure of the laptop. Given these investigations, there is also the question of why a special counsel has not been appointed given President Biden’s past comments that have been contradicted by witnesses (as well as references to his own financial accounts in these emails).

The media and FBI investigations now cover transactions ranging from China, Ukraine, Russia, Romania, and other countries. Millions flowed to the Biden family while Joe Biden was Vice President and later as he prepared for a presidential run. Biden is still running out for ice cream and the media is dutifully covering it. The question however remains whether this will remain just desserts . . . or whether Hunter and others will receive their just deserts for influencing peddling.

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How hard will the IMF and World Bank come after El Salvador?

El Salvador Angrily Rejects IMF Call To Drop Bitcoin Use (AP)

The government of El Salvador on Monday rejected a recommendation by the International Monetary Fund to drop Bitcoin as legal tender in the Central American country. Treasury Minister Alejandro Zelaya angrily said that “no international organization is going to make us do anything, anything at all.” Zelaya told a local television station that Bitcoin is an issue of “sovereignty.” “Countries are sovereign nations and they take sovereign decisions about public policy,” he said. The IMF recommended last week that El Salvador dissolve the $150 million trust fund it created when it made the cryptocurrency legal tender and return any of those unused funds to its treasury.

The agency cited concerns about the volatility of Bitcoin prices, and the possibility of criminals using the cryptocurrency. After nearly doubling in value late last year, Bitcoin has plunged in value. Zelaya said El Salvador has complied with all financial transaction and money laundering rules. The trust fund was intended to allow the automatic conversion of Bitcoin to U.S. dollars — El Salvador’s other currency — to encourage people wary of adopting the highly volatile digital currency. The IMF also recommended eliminating the offer of $30 as an incentive for people to start using the digital wallet “Chivo” and increasing regulation of the digital wallet to protect consumers. It suggested there could be benefits to the use of Chivo, but only using dollars, not Bitcoin.

“In the near-term the actual costs of implementing Chivo and operationalizing the Bitcoin law exceed potential benefits,” the report said. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele had been dismissive of the IMF’s recommendation’s concerning Bitcoin. Government officials told the IMF that the launch of “Chivo” had significantly increased financial inclusion, drawing millions of people who previously lacked bank accounts into the financial system. They also spoke of the parallel tourism promotion targeting Bitcoin enthusiasts.

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Western Australia

 

 

 

 

Healthy child

 

 

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