Nov 232021
 


Max Ernst Ubu Imperator 1923

 

Germany Promotes Moderna Shot As The ‘Rolls-Royce’ Of Covid Vaccines (RT)
German Politicians Refuse To Rule Out Mandatory COVID Vaccination (ZH)
Australian Army Moves COVID-Positive Cases, Contacts To Quarantine Camps (ZH)
Gottlieb: ‘Fully Vaccinated’ To Include Boosters (Hill)
Want 11% -> 25% Heart Attack Risk? For Most….. (Denninger)
Monday Was The Deadline For Federal Workers To Be Vaccinated (NPR)
System Strained As Military Personnel Seek Religious Waivers From Vaccine (WT)
A Big Flip? (Jim Kunstler)
Even Reuters Tripping Out On 55-Year Delay To Release Pfizer Vax Data (ZH)
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (Kirsch)
Pathologized Totalitarianism 101 (CJ Hopkins)
Ukraine Boasts Of Blocking Nord Stream 2 Pipeline (RT)
The Case for a Debt Jubilee (Richard Vague)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Germany is lost.

Germany Promotes Moderna Shot As The ‘Rolls-Royce’ Of Covid Vaccines (RT)

The German health minister claimed that experts see the Moderna shot as the “Rolls-Royce” of vaccines, while likening the Pfizer jab to a “Mercedes” as the country looks to roll out booster shots to tame a fourth wave. Speaking on Monday, Health Minister Jens Spahn told a news conference that the government will insist on the use of the Moderna vaccine as a Covid-19 booster, warning that millions of shots could expire in the first quarter of 2022 unless used. Spahn said that some 16 million Moderna doses could go to waste unless they’re used in the coming months. “This is an important aspect, but it is not the decisive one. What’s crucial is that our BioNTech stock is emptying so fast that coming next week we won’t be able to deliver more than two-three million doses a week,” he added.


The minister emphasized that the preference of most Germans for the Pfizer vaccine was misled, as he claimed that experts call the Moderna shot the “Rolls-Royce” of Covid-19 vaccines. Meanwhile, the Pfizer vaccine, developed in partnership with German firm BioNTech, was more comparable to “Mercedes.” Germany is racing to deliver booster shots in an effort to tame a dangerous fourth wave of Covid-19, which has already led to a lockdown in neighboring Austria. Allaying fears of vaccine shortages, Spahn claimed that Germany had a combined 50 million doses from Pfizer and Moderna available until the end of the year. Earlier in November, an advisory committee said that people under the age of 30 in Germany should only receive the Pfizer vaccine, as it caused fewer heart inflammations in younger people than Moderna’s. France, among other nations, had already applied similar guidance.

Read more …

All history forgotten.

German Politicians Refuse To Rule Out Mandatory COVID Vaccination (ZH)

In view of Germany’s dramatic Covid situation, and following last Friday’s news that neighboring Austria will impose a mandatory vaccination starting February, the debate about a general vaccination obligation is gaining momentum, with a growing number of political leaders saying they would not rule it out. On Thursday, the heads of the 16 federal states agreed that mandatory vaccinations for health workers should be carried out “on a facility-by-facility basis” and urged the federal government to implement this as soon as possible. But discussions for mandatory vaccines for the general population are also intensifying. According to TheLocal.de, during a press conference about the availability of mRNA vaccines on Monday morning, Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) repeatedly refused to rule out the possibility of introducing mandatory vaccination in Germany in the future.

“That is not a decision we can make today,” he told reporters. On Sunday evening, SPD health expert Karl Lauterbach had also raised the possibility of compulsory vaccinations in a talk show on the TV station Bild: “We must move towards vaccination obligation,” he argued. “Without compulsory vaccinations, we obviously won’t achieve the vaccination rate we need to get to.” On Monday morning the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) announced a seven-day incidence of 386.5, reaching a new high for the 15th day in a row. 30,643 new infections within 24 hours were also reported, although fewer case numbers are usually reported over the weekend. Bavaria’s Health Minister Klaus Holetschek also recently said that he would not rule out a general vaccination requirement.

“I was always actually an opponent of compulsory vaccination,” he told Deutschlandfunk radio. However, he now believes “that we need to talk about this issue relatively quickly.” “Personally, I am now actually in favour of this general vaccination obligation as a last resort,” he said. Bavaria is currently one of the worst-hit federal states in Germany: on Monday the Robert Koch Institut reported an incidence of 640 in the region. The president of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Lothar Wieler, expressed restraint in the debate about compulsory vaccination, but said that it could be seen as “as a last resort” on ZDF television on Sunday. But he repeated his calls for people to get vaccinated voluntarily. “We must ensure that we get as many people as possible to vaccinate, and boost those who have complete basic immunisation,” he said.

Read more …

A change is needed. This will not end well.

Australian Army Moves COVID-Positive Cases, Contacts To Quarantine Camps (ZH)

The Australian army has begun forcibly removing residents in the Northern Territories to the Howard Springs quarantine camp located in Darwin, after nine new Covid-19 cases were identified in the community of Binjari. The move comes after hard lockdowns were instituted in the communities of both Binjari and nearby Rockhole on Saturday night. “Residents of Binjari and Rockhole no longer have the five reasons to leave their homes,” said Northern Territory chief minister, Michael Gunner, referring to the country’s five allowable reasons to avoid lockdown (buying food and supplies, exercising for up to two hours, care or caregiving, work or education if it can’t be done from home, and to get vaccinated at the nearest possible location).

“They can only leave for medical treatment, in an emergency, or as required by law.” “It’s highly likely that more residents will be transferred to Howard Springs today, either as positive cases or close contacts,” he continued, adding “We have already identified 38 close contacts from Binjari but that number will go up. Those 38 are being transferred now.” “I contacted the Prime Minister last night. We are grateful for the support of about 20 ADF personnel, as well as army trucks to assist with the transfer of positive cases and close contacts – and to support the communities. We are doing an assessment today of what extra resources we might need from the Feds, and the Prime Minister is ready to help further – I thank him for that.” “We’re conscious of the fact that this can have some impacts on people’s mental health as well as their general well being,” Police Commissioner Jamie Chalkner told NT News.

Of note, the Northern Territories are home to a large percentage of indigenous Australians. As the Epoch Times’ Steve Milne notes: “According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, in 2018-19, almost one in five Indigenous Australians lived in overcrowded dwellings (18 percent), compared to 5 percent of non-Indigenous Australians. Although this percentage had decreased from 27 percent in 2004, it still meant an estimated 145,340 Indigenous Australians were living in overcrowded dwellings in 2018-19. In addition, the more remote an area, the higher the proportion of Indigenous Australians living in overcrowded dwellings (26 percent in remote areas and 51 percent in “very remote” areas), compared to 8 and 22 percent in non-remote areas.”

Read more …

Pfizer board. Careful never to mention number 4.

Gottlieb: ‘Fully Vaccinated’ To Include Boosters (Hill)

Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said on Sunday that he expects the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to consider Americans “fully vaccinated” when they receive a booster shot, adding that recommendations to change it would likely not happen this year. “Should the CDC say you need a booster to be considered fully vaccinated?” “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan asked Gottlieb on CBS. “I think at some point they’re going to, but not this year,” Gottlieb answered. “I think eventually this will be considered the three-dose vaccine, but I would be hard pressed to believe CDC is going to make that recommendation any time soon, in part because of this debate about whether or not younger people who are less risk should be receiving that third dose in states where governors are looking to do this, and I think some local communities will do it,” he added.


Gottlieb was also asked about CDC saying last week that all American adults could get a booster shot while specifically recommending that people over the age of 50 get their boosters. “I think the reluctant nature by which CDC has been stepping into this debate reflects a broader ambivalence or a broader debate happening in a public health community about whether the vaccines should be used as tools to protect people from bad outcomes from COVID, or whether they should be used as tools to try to end the pandemic and control transmission,” Gottlieb said. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky late last week signed off on a recommendation from a CDC advisory panel to broaden eligibility of the COVID-19 booster to all American adults.

Read more …

“..the only reason you got protection was due to a wildly elevated titer in the first place, and once it waned, which it inevitably would, you were going to get ****ed.”

Want 11% -> 25% Heart Attack Risk? For Most….. (Denninger)

its actually worse in percentage terms. Yeah, that’s bad, and we’ll get to that. But first, another study. Because, well, why tell you that you likely screwed yourself once when we can get a two-fer at once? So on the first up I have a nasty prediction to make, and you’re not going to like it — but it is, once again, nothing more than reading the data and making a reasonable projection forward based on what it shows. If you remember one of the nightmare scenarios was an “ADE” sort of response to the jabs, which many so-called “experts” poo-pooed. They had no evidence to poo-poo it, by the way, and in fact the evidence all ran the other way from history. We had never successfully vaccinated against a coronavirus producing durable immunity and this is why; the previous trials all aborted out due to VEI (vaccine-enhanced infection) which covers ADE, OAS and a whole other litany of stupidity caused by using non-sterilizing “vaccines.”

Then this paper published, which confirmed it was in play with specific focus on these jabs. “In this study we profiled vaccine-induced polyclonal antibodies as well as plasmablast-derived mAbs from individuals who received SARS-CoV-2 spike mRNA vaccine. Polyclonal antibody responses in vaccinees were robust and comparable to or exceeded those seen after natural infection. However, the ratio of binding to neutralizing antibodies after vaccination was greater than that after natural infection and, at the monoclonal level, we found that the majority of vaccine-induced antibodies did not have neutralizing activity.”

This was published in July of this year. It should have been the end of mass-vaccination attempts against Covid because it made clear that binding (infection-enhancing) antibodies were produced by the jabs in abundance and what’s worse the majority of the antibodies produced were worthless or harmful. In short the only reason you got protection was due to a wildly elevated titer in the first place, and once it waned, which it inevitably would, you were going to get ****ed. We also found a co-dominance of mAbs targeting the NTD and RBD of SARS-CoV-2 spike and an original antigenic-sin like backboost to spikes of seasonal human coronaviruses OC43 and HKU1 That’s even worse in that OC43 in particular is believed to have caused a Covid-19 like pandemic in the 1890s. Backboosting that virus, which circulates all the time in humans, is flat-out nuts because like Covid-19 the pandemic of the 1890s featured all manner of nasty death.

Since OC43 circulates in the population on a roughly four-year cycle anything that enhances that virus is begging to whack people in size — but not from Covid-19, rather from another virus that usually is nothing other than a nuisance! Well, now we’re seeing the consequences. UM (Ann Arbor) is reporting a wildly-virulent outbreak of “the worst flu ever” but the testing for Covid is coming back negative. They’re claiming its a strain of flu but that’s even worse because that strongly implies that the immune damage isn’t Covid-19 specific. [..] We had plenty of warning and should have stopped the jabs immediately in healthy people when that data became apparent because the very last thing you ever want to do is potentiate some other disease with your so-called “strategy.” What’s even worse is that this was the only reasonable and plausible explanation for why the drug companies set dosing where they did (the presence of binding antibodies) which means everyone in both the FDA and drug companies knew ******ned well before the first EUA issued that these jabs were likely to do this.

But it doesn’t end there. It is reported that the hospitalization rate for “breakthrough” infections is in the neighborhood of 9%. That is roughly double the rate the CDC “estimates” for all Covid-19 infections. In addition the recent outbreak in a CT nursing home with more than a 10% fatality rate has made clear that in terms of actually protecting people from severe outcomes who need it most the vaccines are essentially worthless. In other words when your protection wanes you are at higher risk of getting severely ill. That too is logical given the binding antibody titers. In addition there are now a myriad number of reports of people who got Covid again after being vaccinated yet non-vaccinated second infection reports remain nearly non-existent. So if you had the disease and then take the jab the evidence is that it ruined your existing protection, at least in part. How bad that will get is unknown — but we’re going to find out.

Read more …

Let the stories be told.

Monday Was The Deadline For Federal Workers To Be Vaccinated (NPR)

Monday marks the deadline for millions of federal employees to provide proof that they’ve been vaccinated against COVID-19. The mandate was imposed by President Biden in an executive order signed back in September. Federal workers will have all day today to turn in their proof of vaccination. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said experience with other similar mandates in the private sector indicates there could be a last minute rush to meet the requirements and submit paperwork. “We don’t see it as a cliff,” said Psaki in Friday’s briefing. For months the White House resisted vaccine mandates out of concern over backlash, but with the delta variant causing a surge in cases and the pace of vaccinations plateauing, Biden signed orders requiring all civilian federal workers and employees of federal contractors to provide proof of vaccination.


A similar requirement was instituted for members of the military and people working in nursing homes, hospitals and doctor’s offices. Although the CDC opened up booster shots to all adults on Friday, for now, the requirement is just for a single dose of the J&J vaccine or two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines. That could change if the CDC updates its definition of fully vaccinated to include boosters. As for the share of federal workers who have already gotten vaccinated, Psaki said the White House will be crunching the numbers throughout the day. But she insisted they aren’t expecting disruptions caused by people choosing not to be vaccinated. “No, we do not anticipate facing any governmental operational disruptions due to this requirement,” said Psaki. “And in fact the requirement will avoid disruptions in our view because vaccinations help avoid COVID.”

Read more …

“Nobody knows what’s going on. It’s been a complete and utter disaster every step of the way.”

System Strained As Military Personnel Seek Religious Waivers From Vaccine (WT)

The military’s system of implementing a COVID-19 vaccination order for all those in the ranks is facing unprecedented stress as a historic number of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines say their faith should allow them to skip getting the shot. The result so far has been a massive logistical headache for Pentagon leaders and an unenviable task for the chaplains who find themselves in the crosshairs. It’s a dilemma that shows no signs of easing as the services’ vaccine deadlines come and go. With the Defense Department mounting an aggressive push to get service members vaccinated and force out those who refuse, sources across military branches said the sheer volume of faith-related exemption applications is unlike anything seen before.

Exact figures for most of the military services won’t be released publicly for another several weeks, but the few numbers available so far paint a behind-the-scenes picture of a system not designed to handle such a huge influx of waiver requests in a relatively short period of time. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and senior service heads say the vaccine mandate is a readiness issue, needed to protect those who serve and prevent COVID-19 outbreaks from sidelining troops or cutting short deployments and naval missions. But as in the civilian world, vaccine skeptics are proving hard to win over, even in the face of a direct order.

“They don’t have the resources to handle this in a serious manner,” said Sean Timmons, a Houston attorney who said his firm, Tully Rinckey PLLC, represents more than 100 military personnel seeking COVID-19 exemptions, most of them on religious grounds. “It’s a giant mess,” Mr. Timmons told The Washington Times. “Nobody knows what’s going on. It’s been a complete and utter disaster every step of the way.” Pentagon officials vehemently disagree with that characterization and stress that each service member who seeks a religious waiver from the federally mandated coronavirus vaccine is given a fair hearing and ample opportunity to explain their objection.

Read more …

“And on Sunday he did nothing, with apparent success.”

A Big Flip? (Jim Kunstler)

Proposing a hypothetical: What if “Joe Biden” has worsening symptoms of an adverse reaction to his late September Covid booster shot? Does that account for the sudden flurry of interest in how his handlers might manage the problem of Kamala Harris? And what, is the problem with Kamala Harris? That she is Vice-president and next-in-line for Commander-in-chief in the (adverse) event that “JB” has to step aside. And why is that a problem? Because she is widely loathed and distrusted among those who know her in Washington.

That’s what bubbled up last week as “Joe Biden” went into Walter Reed Hospital for a checkup, including an alleged colonoscopy. What if that was not the test he had? What if they ran him through a CT scan or an MRI to detect neurological damage or vascular irregularities in his brain? (In 1988, “JB” did have a couple of brain aneurysms and endured a four-and-a-half-hour microsurgical craniotomy.) Briefly during this exam, Veep Kamala Harris carried the nuclear football, gaining no yardage in the process, but curdling the spinal fluxes of many casual observers in our nation’s capital. Later, the president’s doctors issued a detailed report that portrayed an elderly gentleman “fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency….”

And so, for the next three days “Joe Biden” proceeded in his august duties. Late Friday, after the checkup ordeal, he successfully pardoned a Thanksgiving turkey (convicted of mis-gendering a capon). On Saturday, he successfully attended evening mass at a church in Wilmington. And on Sunday he did nothing, with apparent success. Today, he flies to Fort Bragg for a “Friendsgiving dinner” with soldiers. One must imagine that Kamala Harris could keep up with a schedule like that, though perhaps without successfully easing the woes and travails of the American people in this time of Covid, Climate Change, inflation, and white supremacist terrorism.

Of course, if it turned out that “Joe Biden” presented symptoms of an adverse reaction to his Covid booster shot, that might flip the government’s claim that the mRNA vaccines are harmless. It might actually blow away the entire rationale for pushing the American people around over all things Covid. It would drive a stake through the heart of the CDC and end the career of Dr. Anthony Fauci. It would end all the efforts to destroy small business and public school in the USA. It would also prompt severe reactions from the citizens in other advanced nations — especially among what is called the West — and put a stop to their lockdowns, health passports, and proposals for mandatory vaccinations.

So, you see, whatever might be going on with “Joe Biden” health-wise has got to be a national security matter. And so, considering that our government lies liberally about thousands of other matters of lesser importance, one can see that they would be motivated to not tell the truth about “JB’s” checkup.

Read more …

“..releasing the information could help reassure vaccine skeptics that the shot is indeed “safe and effective and, thus, increase confidence in the Pfizer vaccine.”

Even Reuters Tripping Out On 55-Year Delay To Release Pfizer Vax Data (ZH)

Last week attorney Aaron Siri of Injecting Freedom reported that the FDA is going to take 55 years, or until 2076, to disclose all of the data and information it relied on before approving Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine. Following its publication, we expected the usual constellation of conflicted neerdowell ‘fact checkers’ to shoot it down – or at least, spin what was going on. To our surprise, that wasn’t the case. In fact, Reuters – whose founder and former CEO sits on the board of Pfizer, looked into the matter and was apparently shocked. Here’s how they explain it:

“The 1967 FOIA law requires federal agencies to respond to information requests within 20 business days. However, the time it takes to actually get the documents “will vary depending on the complexity of the request and any backlog of requests already pending at the agency,” according to the government’s central FOIA website. Justice Department lawyers representing the FDA note in court papers that the plaintiffs are seeking a huge amount of vaccine-related material – about 329,000 pages. The plaintiffs, a group of more than 30 professors and scientists from universities including Yale, Harvard, UCLA and Brown, filed suit in September in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, seeking expedited access to the records. They say that releasing the information could help reassure vaccine skeptics that the shot is indeed “safe and effective and, thus, increase confidence in the Pfizer vaccine.”

But the FDA can’t simply turn the documents over wholesale. The records must be reviewed to redact “confidential business and trade secret information of Pfizer or BioNTech and personal privacy information of patients who participated in clinical trials,” wrote DOJ lawyers in a joint status report filed Monday. The article explains how the FDA proposed releasing 500 pages per month on a rolling basis – informing the court that they only have 10 employees in the branch that would handle the review, and are currently processing around 400 other FOIA requests. “By processing and making interim responses based on 500-page increments, FDA will be able to provide more pages to more requesters, thus avoiding a system where a few large requests monopolize finite processing resources and where fewer requesters’ requests are being fulfilled,” wrote DOJ attorneys, citing other cases in which the 500 monthly page production was upheld.

The plaintiffs, on the other hand, point out that the FDA has 18,000 employees and a budget of $6 billion – and “has itself said that there is nothing more important than the licensure of this vaccine and being transparent about this vaccine.” Since the first batch of documents were released, people have already noted some disturbing findings. What could the rest of the documents reveal?

https://twitter.com/kylenabecker/status/1462513900390424591

Read more …

Kirsch may be taking it a step too far. It’s not a game show.

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (Kirsch)

I’ve been reading a number of comments from people who think that my million dollar offers aren’t serious. The people who doubt me are all people who don’t know me very well. There is no evidence of anyone who has ever attempted to negotiate a definitive agreement on any of my offers. The furthest it ever got is one time someone had their attorney contact my attorney and then when we called back, they hung up on us. Clearly, they were hoping to expose me and quickly learned I don’t bluff. Here is a list of my million dollar offers. They are all done to expose corruption or to show people that nobody can dispute our calculations, even with a very large incentive.

Open million dollar offers
I will bet anyone $1M that the CDC lying to everyone about number of deaths. If you think the CDC is telling the truth, this is an easy way to double your money for a few hours of effort.

$1M research grant if you think Mathew Crawford made a math error that would change the result. I’m offering a $1M research grant to the first researcher to publish a paper that disproves Mathew Crawford’s analysis of the death data that shows that the vaccines have killed over 150,000 people in the US.

$5M bet with Gavin Newsom for a blank piece of paper. See the article. If he takes the bet, I’ll happily write a term sheet. Who would turn down $5M for a blank piece of paper? If he was vaccine injured, he’d turn it down. If he wasn’t, it’s a free $5M he can keep or donate to his favorite charity. He can argue he doesn’t need it, but how about charities? When was the last time you saw Gavin give $5M to charity? The point is that even if he’s uber rich, he’d still take the offer in a heartbeat if he had nothing to hide. The fact he’s not accepting my offer shows most (but not all) people that he’s a hypocrite by forcing people to take a vaccine he knows can damage people for the rest of their lives.

Expired million dollar offers
FDA/CDC committee debate (expired November 19, 2021)
I offered any voting member $1M to debate our team. You got the money just for showing up to be questioned. No debate here to win. Just show up at the debate table for 5 hours. Up to 5 people could show up so worst case each person walks away with at least $200K for 5 hours of work. Who would turn that down? Turns out everyone did after I sent to their emails. Which proves to me one thing: they don’t like answering questions at all.

Read more …

“I am not advocating or condoning violence. But it is going to happen. It is happening already. Totalitarianism (even this “pathologized” version of it) is imposed on society and maintained with violence.”

Pathologized Totalitarianism 101 (CJ Hopkins)

On November 19, 2021, the government of New Normal Austria decreed that, as of February, experimental mRNA injections will be mandatory for the entire population. This decree comes in the midst of Austria’s official persecution of “the Unvaccinated,” i.e., political dissidents and other persons of conscience who refuse to convert to the new official ideology and submit to a series of mRNA injections, purportedly to combat a virus that causes mild-to-moderate flu-like symptoms (or no symptoms of any kind at all) in about 95% of the infected and the overall infection fatality rate of which is approximately 0.1% to 0.5%. Austria is just the tip of the New Normal spear. Prominent New-Normal fascists in Germany, like Der Führer of Bavaria, Markus Söder, and Minister of Propaganda Karl Lauterbach, are already calling for an allgemeine Impfpflicht (i.e., “compulsory vaccination requirement”), which should not come as a surprise to anyone.

The Germans are not going sit idly by and let the Austrians publicly out-fascist them, are they? They have a reputation to uphold, after all! Italy will probably be next to join in, unless Lithuania or Australia beats them to the punch.But, seriously, this is just the beginning of the Winter Siege I wrote about recently. The plan seems to be to New-Normalize Europe first — generally speaking, Europeans are more docile, respectful of all authority, and not very well armed — and then use it as leverage to force the new pathologized totalitarianism on the USA, and the UK, and the rest of the world. I do not believe this plan will succeed. In spite of the longest and most intensive propaganda campaign in the history of propaganda, there remain enough of us who steadfastly refuse to accept the “New Normal” as our new reality.

And a lot of us are angry, extremely angry … militantly, explosively angry. We are not “vaccine hesitant” or “anti-vax” or “Covid-denying conspiracy theorists.” We are millions of regular working-class people, people with principles, who value freedom, who are not prepared to go gently into the globalized, pathologized-totalitarian night. We no longer give the slightest shit whether our former friends and family members who have gone New Normal understand what this is. We do. We understand exactly what this is. It is a nascent form of totalitarianism, and we intend to kill it — or at least critically wound it — before it matures into a full-grown behemoth. Now, I want to be absolutely clear. I am not advocating or condoning violence. But it is going to happen. It is happening already. Totalitarianism (even this “pathologized” version of it) is imposed on society and maintained with violence.

Fighting totalitarianism inevitably entails violence. It is not my preferred tactic in the current circumstances, but it is unavoidable now that we have reached this stage, and it is important that those of fighting this fight recognize that violence is a natural response to the violence (and the implicit threat of violence) that is being deployed against us by the New Normal authorities, and the masses they have whipped up into a fanatical frenzy. It is also important (essential, I would argue) to make the violence of the New Normal visible, i.e., to frame this fight in political terms, and not in the pseudo-medical terms propagated by the official Covid narrative). This isn’t an academic argument over the existence, severity, or the response to a virus. This is a fight to determine the future of our societies.

Read more …

Curious detail:

“Ukraine and Poland have actively opposed the Nord Stream 2 project. The two countries were added to the certification process by the German regulator last week..”

Ukraine Boasts Of Blocking Nord Stream 2 Pipeline (RT)

The new delay in approving the Russian-backed Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany is down to Kiev’s lobbying efforts, Ukraine’s foreign minister claimed after Berlin’s regulator suspended the certification process. Speaking to the news channel Ukraine 24 on Monday, Dmitry Kuleba praised Ukraine’s attempts to delay the project’s approval. “Nord Stream 2 should have been operating and earning money a long time ago, but the fact that it still does not work and we are fighting against it is the result of our common endeavors,” he said. “Together with our partners, we have significantly slowed down the implementation of this project.” Kuleba also accused Russia of trying to find grey areas in EU legislation and create preferential conditions for the pipeline. He added that Ukraine, as well as Brussels and members of the 27-strong bloc, are united in their demands that Nord Stream 2 must meet “not only the letter, but the spirit” of the EU’s Third Energy Package.


The directive outlines the unbundling of the energy supply, the importance of independent regulators, as well as open and fair retail markets. The minister’s comments come after Berlin paused the certification process of the underwater pipeline last week. It will be halted until the company behind the initiative reorganizes itself in accordance with German law. Ukraine and Poland have actively opposed the Nord Stream 2 project. The two countries were added to the certification process by the German regulator last week. However, they do not have the power to block its implementation, and can only provide their opinions on the venture. Kiev has also warned it stands to lose billions of dollars if there is a decrease in the volume of Russian gas being exported through the Soviet-built pipeline network that spans the country.

Read more …

Calling Jay Powell. Vague has a new book out, I think.

The Case for a Debt Jubilee (Richard Vague)

“In many of the most prominent ancient civilizations, including ancient Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, Akkadia, Egypt, Sparta, Corinth, and China, excessive household debt was a huge and recurring problem. This may come as a surprise to a reader today, because ancient societies are often misleadingly described as barter-based. In fact, debt was a necessary and pervasive part of these earliest economies, and our ancient ancestors quickly developed a sophisticated understanding of debt and lending, with laws and institutions to govern that lending. Debt did then many of the same things that it does now: it facilitated payment for labor, allowed for the acquisition of supplies, and bridged the time between planting and harvest — the reaping and then the sowing of profit.

“Some families in these agricultural societies would find themselves with little option but to amass debts in order to live, but in time the burden of this debt could cause them to lose their land, their means of sustenance, and even their liberty, in the tragic form of debt bond servitude. … Interest rates were high and lenders quickly learned the power of compounding. Bouts of disease, drought, war, or other disasters often exacerbated citizens’ debt burdens. These ancient economies would sometimes reach the brink of collapse under the staggering weight of private indebtedness.

“For this reason among others, kings devised the practice of debt forgiveness or amnesty as a solution. A king might proclaim a debt amnesty for a number of reasons, as we will see, including to ensure that citizens were available to serve in his army and help build the great public works of that society. At first, historians were surprised to learn of this phenomenon, but archeologically documented instances of debt amnesty are numerous and growing, and refer to actual, and fundamental, debt practices in these cultures. In fact, some historians view this practice as conservative, counterintuitive as that may sound, since it was a mechanism that both preserved the practice of lending and kept those loans from overwhelming these economies.

“A key Old Testament passage, Deuteronomy 15:2-3, describes clearly the time when these debt amnesties were proclaimed: ‘Every creditor shall cancel any loan they have made to a fellow Israelite. They shall not require payment from anyone among their own people, because the Lord’s time for cancelling debts has been proclaimed. You may require payment from a foreigner, but you must cancel any debt your fellow Israelite owes you.’

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

Oct 132021
 
 October 13, 2021  Posted by at 9:05 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  33 Responses »


M. C. Escher Bond of union 1956

 

The Coming Real Pandemic of the Vaccinated (S&F)
Airline Pilot Warns Biden’s Mandate Will Create ‘Massive Disruptions’ (WJ)
911 System In Jeopardy As First Responders Reject Jab (ZH)
The Great New Normal Purge (CJ Hopkins)
Senators Seek Federal Grand Jury For Covid-19 Statistical Manipulation (JTN)
Are the COVID Shots Working? (Mercola)
Australia Building Quarantine Camps For “Ongoing Operations” (SN)
Covid, Lockdown And The Retreat Of Scientific Debate (Kulldorff)
OSHA Submits Vaccine Rule To White House (CNN)
Brooklyn Nets Ban Kyrie Irving From Playing Until He Gets Covid-19 Vaccine (ZH)
Texas Businesses Stuck Between Federal And State Vaccine Rules (Y!)
NY Post Editorial Board Bashes Biden’s ‘Cabinet of Horrors’ (NM)
Wisconsin’s Election Probe Zeroes In On Democrat Machine Tactics (JTN)
Former DNI Ratcliffe Says He’s Given Durham 1,000 Intel Documents (JTN)
John Durham and the Amazing Disappearing DNC Hack (Parry)

 

 

Kory Merck

 

 

 

 

Sir Christopher Chope MP

 

 

Try some melatonin. Works vs Covid.

 

 

Israel

 

 

What we’ve been afraid of for quite some time now.

The Coming Real Pandemic of the Vaccinated (S&F)

Drs. Trozzi and Alexander explain ADE and other dangers of the ‘vaccines’, and warn of the coming wave of deaths among those who have received these experimental gene therapies. Dr. Mark Trozzi is an ER doctor with 25 years experience. He took a leave of absence early this year to fight Covid tyranny full time. His website is drtrozzi.com. Dr. Paul Alexander is a world-class clinical epidemiologist who was trained at McMaster University, Canada’s top university for epidemiological research. Dr. Alexander was fired from his position at the university for speaking the truth about the harms being caused by the Covid ‘vaccines’.


“78% of the deaths in the U.K. are among the ‘double-vaccinated.” Dr. Mark Trozzi. “If we vaccinate our children the deaths we’ve seen in adults so far we will now see in children.” Dr. Paul Alexander. Watch and share this very important interview. The next fear-mongering tactic coming down the pipe is a ‘wave of pediatric cases’, but in actual fact children are in no danger from Covid whatsoever. Sadly, many are likely to die as a result of the bioweapons being falsely represented as ‘vaccines’.

Read more …

Just in: Boeing will require its 125,000 workers in the United States to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Dec. 8.

Airline Pilot Warns Biden’s Mandate Will Create ‘Massive Disruptions’ (WJ)

An airline pilot and activist for individual liberty told Fox News on Monday that situations such as mass flight cancelations will become more common if the Biden administration refuses to backdown from its hardline stance against coercing Americans to get vaccinated against COVID. Speaking on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Joshua Yoder, a commercial airline pilot and the co-founder of a group called U.S. Freedom Flyers, cautioned that events such as this past weekend’s Southwest Arlines flight cancellations could soon be unavoidable. The reason: Yoder said the people who do skilled jobs, such as flying planes and driving trucks, will stand against President Joe Biden and their own employers. “My motive for resisting [the COVID vaccine] is primarily religious for myself,” Yoder told Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

“Among my friends I saw a need. Many of us don’t want to take this. People were being coerced. I believe in freedom, and I’m here to support the freedom of my fellow employees and all people across this country.” “I’m not going to take a mandate. I’m not going to be forced to do something that I don’t believe in,” he added. “If you have flights reduced by 30 percent because 30 percent of pilots are fired because they won’t take the vaccine, this is going to affect how your goods get here from overseas, how they are distributed to the store,” he said when asked to describe the effect on the national transportation infrastructure. “The same thing is happening with the truckers; it’s happening in the shipping industry. Those Amazon boxes that typically show up in two days, you might be looking at three weeks,” he continued, making note of a reported shortage of truckers and dock workers as ports — such as the one at Long Beach in Los Angeles Country — experience a backlog of ships waiting to be unloaded.

[..] Yoder, when speaking of staffing shortages and logistics, asserted that more shortages of employees, such as the one which that hit Southwest, could come. He blamed Biden for the issues and challenged any notion that the federal government is in control of what American citizens and workers choose with regard to vaccines. “It’s squarely his [Biden’s] fault,” he said. “First of all, we have all the control, and the control comes from a simple word, and that’s ‘no,’” he said. “We just don’t need to comply. As far as I’m concerned, I will never promote a sick-out or a work action that is illegal. With U.S. Freedom Flyers, the organization I’m with, we will never promote such a thing. With that being said, we also cannot control the actions of individuals.”

“And I think that you will see massive disruptions in supply chain and in your travel if we just stand up and say no,” he said. “If these companies fire us and they fire 30% of the workforce, aircraft are going to stop moving, and it’s going to affect you. It’s going to affect your air travel, and it’s going to affect the economy.”

Read more …

What will the world look like by Christmas? Will anything function at all?

911 System In Jeopardy As First Responders Reject Jab (ZH)

The American Ambulance Association (AAA) warned House and Senate leaders the “nation’s EMS system is facing a crippling workforce shortage, a long-term problem that has been building for more than a decade. It threatens to undermine our emergency 9-1-1 infrastructure and deserves urgent attention by Congress.” “The magnitude has really blown up over the last few months,” AAA President Shawn Baird told NBC News. “When you take a system that was already fragile and stretched it because you didn’t have enough people entering the field, then you throw a public health emergency and all of the additional burdens that it put on our workforce, as well as the labor shortages across the entire economy, and it really has put us in a crisis mode,” Baird said.


What’s making the EMS labor shortage worse is President Biden’s vaccine mandates. First responders are quitting across the county because they don’t want to get the jab and have realized they can transfer to other higher-paying jobs. Waldoboro, Maine, town manager Julie Keizer told News Center Maine that “the vaccine mandate has contributed to the loss of first responders.” “I think part of the problem is everybody thought they (workers) would conform because nobody wants to lose their jobs,” Keizer added. “But when you look at the rate of pay for emergency workers, they can make more delivering packages than patients.”

Read more …

“The purge must be conducted openly, brutally, so that the masses understand that the rules of society have changed forever, that their former rights and freedoms are gone, that from now on any deviation from official ideology will be ruthlessly punished.”

The Great New Normal Purge (CJ Hopkins)

So, the Great New Normal Purge has begun … right on cue, right by the numbers. As we “paranoid conspiracy theorists” have been warning would happen for the past 18 months, people who refuse to convert to the new official ideology are now being segregated, stripped of their jobs, banned from attending schools, denied medical treatment, and otherwise persecuted. Relentless official propaganda demonizing “the Unvaccinated” is being pumped out by the corporate and state media, government leaders, health officials, and shrieking fanatics on social media. “The Unvaccinated” are the new official “Untermenschen,” an underclass of subhuman “others” the New Normal masses are being conditioned to hate. But it isn’t just a purge of “the Unvaccinated.” Anyone deviating from the official ideology is being systematically demonized and persecuted.

In Germany, Australia, and other New Normal countries, protesting the New Normal is officially outlawed. The New Normal Gestapo is going around to people’s homes to interrogate them about their anti-New Normal Facebook posts. Corporations are openly censoring content that contradicts the official narrative. New Normal goon squads roam the streets, checking people’s “vaccination” papers. And it’s not just governments and corporations carrying out the New Normal Purge. Friends are purging friends. Wives are purging husbands. Fathers are purging children. Children are purging parents. New Normals are purging old normal thoughts. Global “health authorities” are revising definitions to make them conform to New Normal “science.” And so on … a new official “reality” is being manufactured, right before our eyes. Anything and anyone that doesn’t conform to it is being purged, unpersoned, memory-holed, erased.

None of which should come as a surprise. Every nascent totalitarian system, at some stage of its takeover of society, launches a purge of political opponents, ideological dissidents, and other “anti-social deviants.” Such purges can be brief or open-ended, and they can take any number of outward forms, depending on the type of totalitarian system, but you cannot have totalitarianism without them. The essence of totalitarianism — regardless of which costumes and ideology it wears — is a desire to completely control society, every aspect of society, every individual behavior and thought. Every totalitarian system, whether an entire nation, a tiny cult, or any other form of social body, evolves toward this unachievable goal … the total ideological transformation and control of every single element of society (or whatever type of social body it comprises). This fanatical pursuit of total control, absolute ideological uniformity, and the elimination of all dissent, is what makes totalitarianism totalitarianism.

Read more …

“The CDC’s National Vital Statistics System told mortality data compilers to emphasize COVID-19 as the “cause” of death in a March 2020 alert, departing from a 2003 federal manual on recording infectious disease as a “contributing factor to death” in the presence of preexisting conditions, the letter said.”

Senators Seek Federal Grand Jury For Covid-19 Statistical Manipulation (JTN)

The CDC adopted a “double-standard exclusively for COVID-19 data collection” that inflated cases and deaths starting early in the pandemic, violating multiple federal laws and distorting mitigation policies, Oregon lawmakers told the feds’ top lawyer in the state. Advised by “a large team of world-renowned doctors, epidemiologists, virologists, and attorneys,” state Senators Kim Thatcher and Dennis Linthicum petitioned U.S. Attorney Scott Asphaug to approve a grand jury investigation into how the pandemic is being measured. “Public health policy must be based upon accurate and independently verifiable data to optimize outcomes and strengthen the public’s trust in the people leading them through this crisis,” the Republican lawmakers, whose state has imposed some of the harshest and longest COVID restrictions, wrote in a letter with several attached exhibits.

One is a synopsis of allegations, findings, relevant law and implicated agencies intended to “assist grand jury members in orienting themselves to the scope of alleged crimes committed.” Their letter is dated Aug. 16, but the materials were not released for a month to “protect those involved,” Stand for Health Freedom (SHF), the holistic medicine and legal nonprofit behind the petition effort, said in last month’s announcement. “I’m not sure there has ever been an allegation of government wrongdoing on this scale,” so the group wanted to assess “accuracy and safety” before going public, relationship manager Bailey Kuykendoll told Just the News. Asphaug’s office said Thursday it referred the petition to the Justice Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs. That office didn’t respond on whether or how it had answered the Oregon lawmakers’ request.

[..] The lawmakers’ petition also accuses the FDA of withholding “safe and effective evidence-based treatments” just as the Tuskegee study withheld penicillin from black men with syphilis. They name vitamin D and ivermectin, which have “extensive clinical histories of safety following the administration of billions of doses.” Doctors who prescribe these for COVID may face loss of license, fines and imprisonment, Thatcher and Linthicum said. [..] Thatcher said she was troubled that even as the infection’s high survivability rate became clear, arbitrary restrictions that worsened child abuse, suicide and mental health remained in place. “I began to really question whether the cure was worse than the disease,” said Thatcher, who is better known in Oregon for her legislative effort to compensate people wrongfully convicted.

Read more …

Well, they’re doing something alright.

Are the COVID Shots Working? (Mercola)

In a Twitter thread, Ben M. double-checked and recalculated the vaccine efficacy, taking into account all CLI admissions, not just those where the patient had been vaccinated at least 14 days prior. When adding those previously excluded patients back in, Ben M. came up with a vaccine effectiveness rate of 13%. He also discovered that if you look at how many people actually had a CLI (covid like illness) clinical diagnosis code among the 41,552 included patients, the rate of diagnosis between the unvaccinated, the partially vaccinated and the fully vaccinated was nearly identical: 73% for the unvaccinated, 71% for the partially vaccinated and 72% for the fully vaccinated.

Here’s where it gets interesting. When you look at the rate of CLI, and add in the rate of positive PCR tests, all of a sudden, differences between the groups become clear. Only 2% of the fully vaccinated had a positive PCR test, compared to 6% of the partially vaccinated and 18% of the unvaccinated. Ben M. speculates that vaccinated patients may be tested less routinely (12.5% less frequently to be exact), or unvaccinated patients are tested more routinely (11% more frequently than the vaccinated). But there may be another explanation. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention actually has two different sets of testing criteria, depending on the patient’s vaccination status.

Fully vaccinated individuals suspected of having contracted COVID-19 are to be tested using a CT of 28 or less, whereas unvaccinated patients are to be tested using a CT of 40. Anything over 35 CTs has been shown to produce 97% false positives, so this biased testing guidance virtually guarantees that vaccinated patients are more likely to test negative, while unvaccinated patients are more likely to get a false positive.

v$xxine effectiveness

Read more …

“Why anyone who had left Australia would come back again is unclear..”

Australia Building Quarantine Camps For “Ongoing Operations” (SN)

Despite some states tentatively beginning to lift lockdown restrictions, Australian authorities are building quarantine camps that won’t be completed until next year in order to prepare for “ongoing operations” and to house those “who have not had access to vaccination.” According to ABC Australia, one such 1,000-bed quarantine facility at Wellcamp Airport outside Toowoomba will be fully completed by the end of March 2022. “At this stage, the cabins will be used by domestic travellers returning from COVID hotspots,” states the report. However, it also makes clear that the camp will be used for “ongoing operations” and will be a source of employment for the local area.

The camps is split into different zones and accommodates singles, doubles, and family rooms while being patrolled by police and security guards 24/7. Citing new strains of COVID and people “who have not had access to vaccination,” Queensland Deputy Premier Steven Miles told the media outlet, “We anticipate there to be a continuing need for quarantine facilities.” The government is leasing the land on which the camp is being built from the Wagner Corporation for 12 months with an option for a further 12 months after that. Another 1,000-bed quarantine facility is also being built on a 30-hectare Army barracks site in the industrial area of Pinkenba, near Brisbane Airport.

“Why anyone who had left Australia would come back again is unclear,” writes Dave Blount. “It is possibly the most repressive country in the world regarding Covid tyranny.” As we previously highlighted, state authorities in America are also constructing new “quarantine facilities” for Americans who are “unable to quarantine at home.” As we reported last year, Authorities in Quebec City, Canada announced they will isolate “uncooperative” citizens in a coronavirus facility, the location of which remains a secret. New Zealand also announced plans to place COVID infectees and their family members in “quarantine facilities.” Back in January, German authorities also announced they would hold COVID dissidents who repeatedly fail to properly follow the rules in what was described as a ‘detention camp’ located in Dresden.

Read more …

“The language, here, is non-scientific: herd immunity is not a creed. It’s how pandemics end.”

Covid, Lockdown And The Retreat Of Scientific Debate (Kulldorff)

The BMJ article is full of errors that ought to have never found their way into any publication. Here are some examples:

1/ My colleagues and I are described as ‘critics of public health measures to curb Covid-19’. On the contrary, throughout the pandemic we have strongly advocated better public health measures to curb Covid-19 – specifically protection of high-risk older people, with many ‘clearly defined’ proposals. The failure to implement such measures, in our view, has led to many unnecessary Covid deaths.

2/We are described as ‘proponents of herd immunity’ which is akin to accusing someone of being in favour of gravity. Both are scientifically established phenomena. Every Covid strategy leads to herd immunity. The key is to minimise morbidity and mortality. The language, here, is non-scientific: herd immunity is not a creed. It’s how pandemics end.

3/ It says we have ‘expressed opposition to mass vaccination’. Dr. Gupta and I have spent decades on vaccine research and we are all strong advocates for Covid and other vaccines. They are among the greatest inventions in history. To falsely credit the anti-vaccine movement with support from professors at Harvard, Oxford and Stanford is damaging for vaccine confidence. This is unworthy of a medical journal.

4/ The GBD is referred to as a ‘sophisticated science denialism’. Note here how something that challenges an orthodoxy is described as anti-science – a label that presumably could have been applied to any scientific innovator who ever questioned a failed orthodoxy. Collateral public health damage from Covid restrictions are real and enormous on cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, backsliding childhood vaccinations, starvation and mental health, just to name a few. It is not the GBD, but those who downplay lockdown harms who should be equated with those who question the harms of tobacco or climate change.

5/ The GBD was not ‘sponsored by the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) – and I’m pleased to see that the BMJ has at least retracted this claim. We were there for media interviews, with no sponsorship. How did such a blunder end up in print in the first place? The AIER staff did not even know about the Declaration until the day before it was signed, and the AIER president and board did not know about it until after publication. If we had written the Declaration at say, Starbucks, would the BMJ have claimed that it was sponsored by the coffee shop?

6/ The BMJ article mentions ‘AIER contributor Scott Atlas’, but Dr. Atlas has never been affiliated with nor written for AIER. Neither have we – unless the BMJ also views us as affiliated with hundreds of universities and organisations that we have visited during our careers or that have reprinted some of our articles. Dr. Atlas was not even aware that AIER had reprinted one of his articles until the BMJ linked to it. Several AIER employees have gracefully supported the GBD, just like countless other people around the world, but we have never received any money from the AIER. This basic error again exposes how normal checks did not appear to have been applied by the BMJ.

7/The BMJ article ends by saying that my colleagues and I are peddling a ‘well-funded sophisticated science denialist campaign based on ideological and corporate interests’. Nobody has paid us money for our work on the GBD, or for advocating focused protection. None of us would have undertaken this project for professional gain: it is far easier to stay silent than put your head above the parapet. As a vaccine developer, Dr. Gupta has connections with a pharmaceutical start-up, but Dr. Bhattacharya and I are among the few drug/vaccine scientists who purposely avoid pharmaceutical company funding to be free from conflicts of interests.

Read more …

Weekly testing is still valid. Businesses that go beyond that do that on their own accord.

OSHA Submits Vaccine Rule To White House (CNN)

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which falls under the Labor Department, has submitted the text of a new vaccine rule for large employers to the Office of Management and Budget, bringing the emergency standard announced by President Joe Biden last month one step closer to taking effect. “The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has been working expeditiously to develop an emergency temporary standard that covers employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workers are fully vaccinated or undergo weekly testing to protect employees from the spread of coronavirus in the workplace,” a Labor Department spokesman said Tuesday.

“On Tuesday, October 12, as part of the regulatory review process, the agency submitted the initial text of the emergency temporary standard to the Office of Management and Budget.” Once OMB concludes its review of the regulation, the emergency temporary standard will be published in the Federal Register, when it will go into effect. Last month, Biden announced the Labor Department would draft an emergency rule compelling private companies with 100 or more employees to require vaccinations or weekly testing. “While America is in much better shape than it was seven months ago when I took office, I need to tell you a second fact: We’re in a tough stretch and it could last for awhile,” the President said in a White House speech at the time.

The new emergency temporary standard will require large employers to give their workers paid time off to get vaccinated. If businesses don’t comply, the government will “take enforcement actions,” which could include “substantial fines” of up to nearly $14,000 per violation, according to officials. Officials have said the standard was a “minimum” and that some companies may choose to go further, including by mandating the vaccine instead of offering a testing alternative. “Each employer will decide exactly what they want to do, but what we’re saying through the Department of Labor rule making process is a minimum of testing once a week or full vaccination,” a senior administration official previously told CNN.

Read more …

Make that: Weekly testing is still valid, but not for Kyrie.

Brooklyn Nets Ban Kyrie Irving From Playing Until He Gets Covid-19 Vaccine (ZH)

The Brooklyn Nets have banned 29-year-old Kyrie Irving from both games and practice until he gets the Covid-19 vaccine, just one week before the team kicks off their regular season against the Bucks. The star point and shooting guard will even be barred from playing during away games – the vast majority which will be held in locations where there is no local vaccine mandate. The Nets said they won’t allow Irving to be deemed “part-time” in terms of his availability for games. The move comes after Irving missed Monday’s preseason loss to the 76ers (115-104) over his refusal to get the jab. “Given the evolving nature of the situation and after thorough deliberation, we have decided Kyrie Irving will not play or practice with the team until he is eligible to be a full participant,” said the team in a statement.


“Kyrie has made a personal choice, and we respect his individual right to choose. Currently, the choice restricts his ability to be a full-time member of the team, and we will not permit any member of our team to participate with part-time availability.” The mostly word-salad statement continues: “It is imperative that we continue to build chemistry as a team and remain true to our long-established values of togetherness and sacrifice. Our championship goals for the season have not changed, and to achieve these goals each member of our organization must pull in the same direction. We are excited for the start of the season and look forward to a successful campaign that will make the borough of Brooklyn proud.” Irving earns more than $400,000 per game – and forfeited some $817,000 in salary in January after missing two games to take part in a league-ordered quarantine after attending a birthday party in a club. He earned around $35 million last season, and was slated to earn $36.6 million this year – the last year of his contract.

Read more …

“A Federal Judge in TX has temporarily put on hold United Airlines’ policy that places employees on unpaid leave for claiming a religious exemption to the COVID-19 vaccine.”

Texas Businesses Stuck Between Federal And State Vaccine Rules (Y!)

American Airlines and Southwest Airlines said Tuesday they will continue requiring employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19, deferring to federal regulations as Texas and the White House square off over vaccine mandates. The clash comes as the Republican governor of Texas, Gregg Abbott, signed an order Monday banning all vaccine mandates in his state, including those coming from private companies. But that state rule is in direct contradiction with a regulation announced by President Joe Biden last month, which would require all companies with more than 100 employees to ensure their workers are vaccinated against the coronavirus.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Tuesday the new Texas law does not change the federal government’s vaccine mandate plans, which could cover some 100 million US workers. “We know that federal law overrides state law,” Psaki said. But the Biden administration has yet to detail the practical applications of the federal order. “There isn’t a big historic precedent for this and we want to get it right,” Psaki said, assuring that plans for the federal order could be expected within “weeks.” As federal contractors, major airlines must require their employees to be vaccinated by December 8, which could prove complicated for those based in Texas. American Airlines said it will defer to federal law over the state law.

“We are reviewing the executive order issued by Gov. Abbott, but we believe the federal vaccine mandate supersedes any conflicting state laws, and this does not change anything for American,” a spokesperson for the carrier said in a statement to AFP. Fellow Texas-based airline Southwest also said Tuesday it would continue requiring vaccines for employees, despite Abbott’s order. “According to the president’s executive order, federal action supersedes any state mandate or law, and we would be expected to comply with the president’s order to remain compliant as a federal contractor,” Southwest said in a statement.

And the Greater Houston Partnership, a Texas business group that includes Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, Shell and JP Morgan Chase, said in a statement Tuesday: “The governor’s executive order does not support Texas businesses’ ability and duty to create a safe workplace.” Abbott said Monday he supported vaccination, but would not allow mandates for it in his state. “I issued an Executive Order prohibiting vaccine mandates by ANY entity in Texas,” the governor wrote on Twitter.

Read more …

“Halloween came early this year, courtesy of the Biden administration..”

NY Post Editorial Board Bashes Biden’s ‘Cabinet of Horrors’ (NM)

The New York Post Editorial Board has come out to blast the “scandals from top to bottom in Joe Biden’s Cabinet of horrors” in a scathing review of the early struggles of the administration. “Halloween came early this year, courtesy of the Biden administration,” the editorial began. “While the president is primarily to blame for the choices in Afghanistan, the border and holding an infrastructure bill hostage to the Squad, his team is facing their own crises, many self-created. Here, some of the lowlights of many of the members of Joe Biden’s Cabinet of Horrors.” From calling Vice President Kamala Harris the VP in the shadows — “Harris has gone into hiding, barely making public appearances as her favorables have tanked”— to White House chief of staff Ron Klain being the “shadow president,” few were spared in Biden’s Cabinet from the Post’s critique of the administration’s first 10 months. Among the Post’s scathing rebukes:

Secretary of State Antony Blinken: “He has no answers for the debacle in Afghanistan.” Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen: “Yellen promised that she would ‘be a voice for fiscal sanity.’ So much for that!” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin: How can he trust Gen. Mark Milley after the joint chiefs of staff went behind former President Donald Trump’s back? And “How can he not tell Biden he must be removed from his post?” Attorney General Merrick Garland: His call for the FBI and U.S. attorneys to investigate and prosecute school board protests is “a spectacular overreach of federal power”; yet, the Post adds, “But in a fight between angry moms and a weaponized Department of Justice, our money is on the moms.”

Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland: She moved the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado, “but not enough bureaucrats wanted to live there (300 retired or quit), so Haaland is now moving it back to the swamp.” Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack: Take a Democrat’s word for it: Collin C. Peterson, D-Minn., former House Agriculture Committee chairman. “I would argue this transfer tax, which could be as high as 43.4%, is the worst idea that has been proposed in terms of its impact on agriculture in my lifetime.”Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo: “Argued, counterintuitively, that companies needed to be taxed more in order to compete globally.”Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh: “When 194,000 jobs were added in September, far below the 500,000 forecast, Walsh said, ‘I don’t think it’s as bad as what everyone’s reporting.’ It’s his own department that reported it!”

Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra: “Politico noted that the guy who should be in charge of the nation’s COVID response doesn’t even attend meetings. ‘They brief him,’ a person close to the pandemic response team told the outlet. ‘But he’s not a decider on response activities.’ Why? Because of his ‘lack of experience as a public health policymaker and communicator.'”Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Marcia Fudge: “As Democrats rush to spend even more money, only 11% of the $46 billion in emergency rental assistance has been distributed.”Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg: “With supply issues impacting the economy and cargo ships waiting offshore, Buttigieg’s answer is a task force.”

Read more …

Drip drip drip.

Wisconsin’s Election Probe Zeroes In On Democrat Machine Tactics (JTN)

Move over Arizona and hold on Pennsylvania, the next election integrity investigation to take center stage is occurring in Wisconsin, where a former state Supreme Court justice empowered by the Legislature to compel testimony and document production is gathering steam. Interviews with more than a dozen witnesses, officials and lawyers who have interacted with retired Justice Mike Gableman and his staff suggest a strong focus on the role election bureaucracies played in changing the rules — without legislative consent — for how ballots were sent out, filled out, collected and counted.

Gableman’s early investigative work as special counsel appointed by Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is shining a spotlight among other things on the Wisconsin Election Commission, a statewide body created by GOP lawmakers after an earlier political rigging scandal in the state known as the John Doe investigations. The commission provides guidance and rules to the 1,852 election clerks in the state on how to conduct voting. The commission in 2020 altered numerous state voting rules and procedures during the pandemic, often without seeking legislative permission. The changes range from allowing nursing home staff to help fill out resident ballots to giving permission to election clerks to fill out missing witness information required for absentee ballots.

Those two changes alone affected thousands of ballots in a state in which Joe Biden was declared the winner with a narrow margin of just 20,600 votes. Perhaps even more consequential, the commission gave its blessing to an idea first conceived by election clerks in the blue counties of Dane and Milwaukee that voters could claim the normally rare status of “indefinitely confined” if they were too scared to go out during the COVID outbreak. The change allowed nearly 250,000 people to vote by absentee without complying with required voter ID rules. That advice, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled after the election, was unlawful. Only people who determine they have bona fide disabilities and infirmities are allowed to vote as “indefinitely confined,” and regulators had no right to declare the pandemic as such a condition, the justices ruled in the only major court decision after Nov. 3 to declare a large bloc of votes as potentially illegally cast.

Read more …

How close is Durham to looking at Hunter Biden?

Former DNI Ratcliffe Says He’s Given Durham 1,000 Intel Documents (JTN)

Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe says he’s given John Durham, investigating the Justice Department actions in its Russia collusion probe, a trove of documents that he thinks support charges beyond those recently filed against cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussman. “Sussmann’s is the first of what I would hope would be a number,” of additional people charged, he told Fox News on Sunday. Ratcliffe made the argument on what he said was “1,000 intelligence community documents” that he thinks support additional charges that he would “expect” Durham to bring, in addition to the declassified documents he’s provided.

Durham, a former Connecticut attorney general, was appointed by the Trump administration to look into the origins of the federal investigation into whether the 2016 Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russia to influence the outcome of the election. A grand jury recently indicted against Sussmann, former federal prosecutor, of lying to the FBI. Ratcliffe, who oversaw the country’s 17 intelligence agencies in the latter part of the Trump administration, announced in October that he handed over the roughly 1,000 pages of materials to the Justice Department to assist with Durham’s investigation, according to the Washington Examiner. Ratcliffe has also declassified two heavily redacted Russia-related documents, including handwritten notes from former CIA Director John Brennan showing he briefed then-President Barack Obama in 2016 on an unverified Russian intelligence report.

The report claimed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton planned in July 2016 on tying then-candidate Donald Trump to Russia’s hack of the Democratic National Committee to distract from her improper use of a private email server, the Examiner also reports. Sussmann, a former attorney at Perkins Coie, is accused of falsely telling an FBI lawyer he was not representing any clients when acting on behalf of a technology executive and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign during a September 2016 meeting on possible links between Trump and Russia.

Read more …

The FBI not doing its own investigation remains very weird.

John Durham and the Amazing Disappearing DNC Hack (Parry)

[..] at the same time as the alleged DNC hack, there were similar reports regarding the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s (“DCCC”) server as well as DNC Chairman John Podesta’s personal email devices. In testimony before the Senate, FBI Director James Comey stated the following: Question (by Senator Burr): Did the FBI request access to those devices [the servers and Podesta’s devices] to perform forensics on? A: Yes, we did. Q: And would that access have provided intelligence or information helpful to your investigation in possibly finding … including to the Intelligence Community Assessment? A: Our forensics folks would always prefer to get access to the original device or server that’s involved. So, it’s the best evidence.

Q: Were you given access to do the forensics on those servers? A: We were not. We were … a highly respected private company eventually got access and shared with us what they saw there. Q: But is that typically the way the FBI would prefer to do the forensics or would your forensic unit rather see the servers and do the forensics themselves? A: We always prefer to have access hands on ourselves, if that’s possible. Q: Do you know why you were denied access to those servers? A: I don’t know for sure. Um, I don’t know for sure. Q: Was there one request or multiple requests? A: Multiple requests at different levels and ultimately what was agreed to is that the private company would share with us what they saw.

So, instead of using a search warrant or some other legal process to perform a direct, hands on forensic examination of the DNC server, the FBI agreed to base its investigation on the findings of a private cybersecurity company. And, as discussed in the previous article, that company, CrowdStrike, was to do the investigation pursuant to its contract with Michael Sussmann of Perkins Coie, the law firm that represented Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Think about that. When presented with allegations of a devastating foreign cyber attack on one of the two major political parties, the FBI meekly agreed to allow CrowdStrike and Perkins Coie to do the forensic examination and, for all intents and purposes, run the investigation.

Not even the lowliest local police department would agree to such an absurd arrangement. What if this was a murder case? Would the Smallville PD allow a private investigator and lawyer hired by the murder victim’s family to process the crime scene, do the autopsy, and tell the police and district attorney what they supposedly found? Wouldn’t such findings be subject to attack in court as coming from sources that may have had an interest in shaping and tailoring the investigative results to suit the needs and desires of their client? Wouldn’t there be legal problems with the evidence’s provenance, chain of custody, and the reliability and comprehensiveness of the investigative work that supposedly produced it? Would the police and district attorney ever allow themselves to get roped into such a bizarre, ridiculous, nightmarish, and self-defeating arrangement?

Of course not. No rational person or organization intent on conducting a serious investigation would. But that, in effect, is precisely what the FBI — the self-proclaimed greatest investigative agency in the world — did when faced with this purportedly monumental foreign attack on the Democrat Party apparatus.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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