Apr 182024
 


John French Sloan A Woman’s Work 1912

 

Prosecutors, Judges, Media Interfering in the November Election (PCR)
Iran’s ‘New Equation’ Reaches Way Beyond West Asia (Pepe Escobar)
Iran’s Attack On Israel Signaled A Major Change In The Region (Ibragimov)
Could the Russians Seize Congress? (Patrick Lawrence)
White House Says It Opposes Standalone Israel Military Aid Bill (Antiwar)
Rep. Massie Joins MTG In Calling For Speaker Johnson’s Ouster (ZH)
Rand Paul Drops COVID Bombshell: “We Have 15,000 Samples In Wuhan” (ZH)
Tesla Asks Shareholders To Approve Musk’s $56 Billion Comp… Again (ZH)
NPR Editor Resigns After Suspension for Exposing Bias and Intolerance (Turley)
EU Leadership Must Go – Orban (RT)
FBI Wanted Telegram Backdoor to Spy on Users – Founder (Sp.)
Apple and Google More Dangerous Than Governments – Telegram Founder (RT)
NSA ’Just Days From Taking Over The Internet’ – Edward Snowden (Mitchelhill)
The Great Dispossession Part 2 (Paul Craig Roberts)
The Great Dispossession Part 3 (Paul Craig Roberts)
Driving America into a Brick Wall – Bill Holter (USAW)
IMF Lambasts US Over Ballooning Debt (RT)

 

 

Seems a bit extreme.

 

 

Macgregor

 

 

Barron

 

 

Watters jury
https://twitter.com/i/status/1780401543004426659

 

 

Tucker CIA

 

 

Talking about testosterone…

 

 

Boeing

 

 

Macgregor: “The United States has not commit to attacking Iran. This is unacceptable to Netanyahu, and he will work to alter Washington’s position.

Under the circumstances, Washington should expect Israel to employ whatever military power is at its disposal, including nuclear weapons, to destroy Iran’s strategic power.

Destroying Iran’s underground nuclear facilities has been a goal for a very long time. Both parties must realize Moscow will not tolerate a devastating attack on Iran.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

“They create felonies out of thin air by stretching the interpretation of law beyond its meaning..”

“.. that their country has been stolen from them and that the ruling elite are not going to permit Trump to give it back to them..”

Prosecutors, Judges, Media Interfering in the November Election (PCR)

From the beginning it has been completely clear that the criminal and civil indictments of Trump have the purposes of using up his energy, money, and time so that he cannot campaign and of discrediting him with the insouciant part of the population that is stupid enough to have faith in the “justice system.” The trials themselves and the words of the prosecutors and judges prove it. The black Democrat New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg, put into office by anti-Trump billionaire George Soros, who Elon Musk says hates humanity (which means gentiles), has concocted a criminal case against President Trump for “falsifying business documents” that legal scholars dispute. Apparently, Bragg cares not a whit about his reputation, only about preventing Trump from campaigning. Bragg contends that Trump should have reported his $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels as a campaign contribution to himself and not as legal fees. But, of course, it would have been one of Trump’s lawyers or CPA who filled in the form.

A person of Trump’s wealth leaves such decisions to professionals and does not himself navigate complicated and risky forms. Regardless, there is nothing illegal whatsoever in making extortion or bribery payments to a porn star so that she doesn’t make harmful accusations. It is a much cheaper solution than suing for slander. You should understand that there is nothing illegal about Trump’s payment to the porn star. The payment is perfectly legal. Trump is not charged with making an illegal payment. He is charged with reporting it differently than a black quota hire, clearly incompetent, George Soros DA alleges Trump should have reported it. The whore media has not made this clear to the public. Instead the presstitutes have planted the idea that it is the payment that is the criminal action.

In law the charges against Trump are misdemeanors, not crimes. Trump’s black enemy has in an unspecified way elevated the charges to a felony. Increasingly prosecutors do this. They create felonies out of thin air by stretching the interpretation of law beyond its meaning. Prosecutors know that by the time a wrongly convicted defendant reaches the point that he can appeal the wrongful conviction to a higher court he will have run out of money and energy and will make a plea to a lessor charge. In Trump’s case, the black DA knows that given the slowness of the system Trump will be in court for years appealing wrongful decisions. As corrupt prosecutors suffer no punishment for their crimes against defendants, there is no barrier to their legal abuse of law–particularly when they are in court with a biased judge and have a biased jury. This first of 4 criminal trials began yesterday. Estimates are that the show trial will keep Trump in court for four days a week for the next six or more weeks. Clearly this is election interference and nothing else.

The other criminal trials are in various stages of disrepair. Fani Willis, the black Democrat Atlanta DA who has brought RICO charges against Trump and his attorneys is in trouble herself for paying her lover $700,000 of taxpayers’ money and using the money for vacations. She apparently is another George Soros plant and is shielded by the Democrat machine. She has had to remove her lover from Trump’s case, but is unlikely to suffer any consequences other than embarrassment. A New York civil case orchestrated by a black Democrat attorney general and a Trump-hating Democrat judge confiscated Trump’s NY real estate empire. In order to delay the confiscation until his higher court appeal is decided, the two required Trump to post a $500 million payment that would have depleted his cash for his political campaign. The payment was seen as a form of extortion, and the corrupt AG and judge had to reduce it to $175 million.

Clearly, these are not normal trials or normal charges. The law schools, bar associations, Congress and the whore media don’t even raise questions about the show trials that clearly constitute election interference. As I have said many times, the system will not permit Trump’s return to office. Americans need to understand that their country has been stolen from them and that the ruling elite are not going to permit Trump to give it back to them.

Read more …

“Netanyahu is influenced by his [fundamentalist] political partners to go into an escalation so he can hold onto power and accelerate the coming of the Messiah.”

Iran’s ‘New Equation’ Reaches Way Beyond West Asia (Pepe Escobar)

A Holy of the Holies was shattered in the Holy Land as Iran staged a quite measured, heavily choreographed response to the Israeli terror attack against its consulate/ambassador residence in Damascus, a de facto evisceration of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic immunity.This game-changer will directly interfere on how the Anglo-American system manages its simultaneous conflagration with Russia, China and Iran – three top BRICS members. The key problem is escalations are already built in – and will be hard to remove. The Total Cancel War against Russia; the genocide in Gaza – with its explicit policy masterfully decoded by Prof. Michael Hudson; and the decoupling/shaping the terrain against China won’t simply vanish – as all communication bridges with the Global Majority keep being torched.Yet the Iranian message indeed establishes a “New Equation” – as Tehran christened it, and prefigures many other surprises to come from West Asia.

Iran wanted to – and did send – a clear message. New equation: if the biblical psychopathic entity keeps attacking Iranian interests, from henceforth it will be counter-attacked inside Israel. All that in a matter of “seconds” – as the Security Council in Tehran has already cleared all the procedures. Escalation though seems inevitable. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak: “Netanyahu is influenced by his [fundamentalist] political partners to go into an escalation so he can hold onto power and accelerate the coming of the Messiah.” Compare it to Iranian President Raisi: “The smallest act against Tehran’s interests will be met with a massive, extensive, and painful response against all its operations.” For Tehran, regulating the intensity of the clash in West Asia between Israel and the Axis of Resistance while simultaneously establishing strategic deterrence to replace “strategic patience” was a matter of launching a triple wave: a drone swarm opening the path for cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.

The performance of the much-vaunted Iron Dome, Arrow-3 and David’s Sling – aided by F-35 fighter jets and the US and the UK naval force – was not exactly stellar. There’s no video of the “outer-layer” Arrow-3 system shooting down anything in space. At least 9 ballistic missiles penetrated the dense Israeli defense network and hit the Nevatim and Ramon bases. Israel is absolutely mum on the fate of its Golan Heights intel installation – hit by cruise missiles. Amidst classic fog of war, it’s irrelevant whether Tehran launched hundreds or dozens of drones and missiles. Regardless of NATOstan media hype, what’s proven beyond the shadow of a doubt is that the supposedly “invincible” Israeli defense maze – ranging from US-made AD/ABM systems to Israeli knockoffs – is helpless in real war against a technologically advanced adversary.

What was accomplished by a single operation did raise quite a few professional eyebrows. Iran forced Israel to furiously deplete its stock of interceptors and spend at least $1.35 billion – while having its escalatory dominance and deterrence strategy completely shattered. The psychological blow was even fiercer. What if Iran had unleashed a series of strikes without a generous previous warning lasting several days? What if US, UK, France and – traitorous – Jordan were not ready for coordinated defense? (The – startling – fact they were all directly dispensing firepower on Tel Aviv’s behalf was not analyzed at all). What if Iran had hit serious industrial and infrastructural targets?

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“..if Iran joins Russia and China and, as part of this troika, becomes an actor in the great world politics, the Middle East will face some big changes..”

Iran’s Attack On Israel Signaled A Major Change In The Region (Ibragimov)

[..] the most intriguing question now is how the countries of the region, namely the Arab world, will react to Iran’s actions – after all, the attitude towards modern Tehran is quite mixed. Iran has been able to bolster its hand by using proxy organizations, which are now moving against Israel to defend the interests of Palestine. Judging by their neutral reactions – and quite unsurprisingly, in fact – none of the Arab leaders is interested in a strong Iran. They are interested in Iran existing as a moderate state allied with the West, with which they themselves cooperate. However, if Iran joins Russia and China and, as part of this troika, becomes an actor in the great world politics, the Middle East will face some big changes.

Despite the IRGC’s counterattacks, Iran continues to maintain its position that nobody needs a war, and it’s not interested in one by any means. As for its strikes so far, Iran considers them quite successful; they succeeded in making a point and delivering ‘a clear message’ to the entire West that Tehran is no longer confining itself to verbal statements and that, in general, things are going to get very real. Furthermore, any potential response from Israel will now justify similar operations by Iran, which may become harsher and harsher every time. Besides, the moral victory also belongs to Iran. Tehran had held the situation in suspense all along, and the world witnessed strikes on military bases in the north of Israel and saw them take damage. Iran’s strike, albeit a token one, has happened. The Islamic Republic is beginning to act like the flagship power in the region.

In this case, Israel hardly needs a direct war with the Islamic Republic, especially with the Hamas issue not settled yet, Gaza still not demilitarized, hostages yet to be rescued, and Western allies offering nothing in terms of support but nice statements and condemnations. In the meanwhile, there are rather serious reasons to believe that Israel may not be able to keep its temper and strike, just for self-consolation. Expecting a response strike from Iran, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said, several days prior to the counterattack, that if Iran strikes from its territory, then Israel will attack in response. That means the Israelis could go further and continue their attacks. Yes, Netanyahu has changed his tone somewhat and tries to show now that he doesn’t want a big war. He, however, may be under pressure from the security wing, members of which yearn for revenge and want to blow off steam on Iran, which they think created the situation Israel has been in since October 7, 2023. If Israel does strike back, attacking Iranian territories and killing people, the situation will spin out of control and there will be no stopping the Iranians.

The goal of Iran’s counterattack against Israel was not to unleash a big war. This action can be seen differently: as a PR effort, a propaganda schtick, or muscle-flexing. Some may say that Iran failed to retaliate fully, as its attack didn’t achieve anything equal to the two generals and 11 diplomats that Israel’s strike had killed. The message of the counterstrike, however, was not only to take revenge for Iran’s dead. Tehran deliberately didn’t strike targets in major Israeli cities. Its strikes on Israel were limited, mostly targeting the occupied Golani Heights, which legally belong to Syria, and military installations in Negev desert, in order to avoid escalation and prevent further provocations on Israel’s part. Besides, Iran has proved that it can penetrate Israel’s air defenses and that Israel is not that well protected.

Therefore, Iran’s goal was to change the rules of the game in the region and, by and large, it succeeded. Tehran’s counterattack put paid to any talk of Iran not putting its money where its mouth is and brought the conflict between the two countries to a whole new level. This half-measure cannot be seen as a defeat, but it’s not exactly a victory either. Besides, Israel is not going to sit idle. The Jewish state will start reviewing its actions and correcting mistakes; after all, matters of its own security are the utmost priority for Israel.

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“These people that read various conspiracy-theory outlets that are just not accurate, and they actually model Russian propaganda.”

Could the Russians Seize Congress? (Patrick Lawrence)

The Russians are coming — or coming back, better put. As the November elections draw near, let us brace for another barrage of preposterous propaganda to the effect Russians are poisoning our minds with “disinformation,” “false narratives,” and all the other misnomers deployed when facts contradict liberal authoritarian orthodoxies. We had a rich taste of this new round of lies and innuendo in late January, when Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who served as House speaker for far too long, asserted that the F.B.I. should investigate demonstrators demanding a ceasefire in Gaza for their ties, yes indeedy, to the Kremlin. Here is Pelosi on CNN’s State of the Union program Jan. 28: “For them to call for a cease-fire is Mr. Putin’s message. Make no mistake, this is directly connected to what he would like to see. Same thing with Ukraine…. I think some financing should be investigated. And I want to ask the F.B.I. to investigate that.”

O.K., we have the template: If you say something that coincides with the Russian position, you will be accused of hiding your “ties to Russia,” as the common phrase has it. Be careful not to mention some spring day that the sky is pleasantly blue: I am here to warn you—“make no mistake” — this is exactly what “Putin,” now stripped of a first name and a title, “would like to see.” There is invariably an ulterior point when those in power try on tomfoolery of this kind. In each case they have something they need to explain away. In 2016, it was Hillary Clinton’s defeat at the polls, so we suffered four years of Russiagate. Pelosi felt called upon to discredit those objecting to the Israeli–U.S. genocide in Gaza. Now we have a new ruse. Desperate to get Congress to authorize $60.1 billion in new aid to Ukraine, Capitol Hill warmongers charge that those objecting to this bad-money-after-bad allocation are… do I have to finish the sentence?

Two weeks ago Michael McCaul, a Republican representative who wants to see the long-blocked aid bill passed, asserted in an interview with Puck News that Russian propaganda has “infected a good chunk of my party’s base.” Here is the stupid-sounding congressman from Texas, as quoted in The Washington Post, elaborating on our now-familiar theme: “There are some more nighttime entertainment shows that seem to spin, like, I see the Russian propaganda in some of it — and it’s almost identical on our airwaves. These people that read various conspiracy-theory outlets that are just not accurate, and they actually model Russian propaganda.” I read in the Post that McCaul’s staff abruptly cut short the interview when Julia Ioffe, a professional Russophobe who has bounced around from one publication to another for years, asked him to name a few names.

So was this latest ball of baloney set in motion. A week after McCaul’s Puck News interview, Michael Turner, an Ohio Republican who, as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, swings a bigger stick, escalated matters when, reacting to McCaul’s statements, reported that this grave Russian penetration was evident in the upper reaches of the American government, as again reported in The Washington Post: “Oh, it is absolutely true. We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti–Ukraine and pro–Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor.” Masked communications uttered on the House floor: Hold the thought, as I will shortly return to it.

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House Speaker Mike Johnson is about to get ousted. It’s all RINOs all the way down.

White House Says It Opposes Standalone Israel Military Aid Bill (Antiwar)

The White House said on Monday that it opposes the idea of a bill that would give additional military aid to Israel without funding Ukraine and Taiwan. “We are opposed to a standalone bill that would just work on Israel, as we’ve seen proposed. We would oppose a standalone bill, yes,” said White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. Kirby’s comments came a day after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he would work on getting more military aid to Israel this week in the wake of Iran’s attack on Israeli territory, which came in retaliation for the bombing of Iran’s consulate in Damascus. Later on Monday, AP reported that Johnson told fellow GOP lawmakers that he plans to bring the package to the floor this week but will hold separate votes on funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.

Back in February, the Senate passed a $95 billion foreign military aid bill that included $60 billion for the proxy war in Ukraine, $14 billion to support the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians, and a few billion for Taiwan and other spending in the Asia Pacific region. While Johnson wants to hold separate votes, his plan is expected to send about the same amount of money to each country, and each measure will likely pass. He has been under increasing pressure from the White House and congressional hawks in both parties to bring the $95 billion bill to the floor for a vote. “Time is not on anyone’s side here in either case, so they need to move quickly on this,” Kirby said. “And the best way to get that aid into the hands of the IDF and into the hands of the Ukrainian soldiers is to pass that bipartisan bill that the Senate passed.”

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And Rand Paul.

Rep. Massie Joins MTG In Calling For Speaker Johnson’s Ouster (ZH)

Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie on Tuesday became the second representative to call for an end to Mike Johnson’s reign as Speaker of the House, joining Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene. He delivered that news directly to Johnson in a closed-door Republican conference meeting, telling the Louisianan “you’re not going to be the speaker much longer,” two representatives told Politico. Massie has criticized Johnson for backing aid packages for Ukraine and Israel, kick-the-can spending bills and the extension of warrantless NSA spying via the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — while failing to bolster border security. In March, Greene — incensed at Johnson for collaborating with Democrats to push through a $1.2 trillion spending package over the objection of conservatives seeking spending cuts — filed a motion to “vacate the chair,” which would initiate a vote by House members on whether to fire Johnson from the job of speaker.

It’s unclear when Greene, Massie or someone else will call for a vote on the motion. Greene has said that she wants to allow time “for us to go through the process, take our time and find a new speaker of the House that will stand with Republicans and our Republican majority instead of standing with the Democrats.” She’s also expressed wariness over risking the GOP’s razor-thin House majority — which has withered in recent weeks as multiple Republicans announced they’re leaving Congress before finishing their terms. Massie says it’s only a matter of time before the House votes on Greene’s motion to vacate. “The motion is going to get called, OK? Does anybody doubt that? The motion will get called,” Massie told reporters after Tuesday’s meeting. “And then he’s gonna lose more votes than Kevin McCarthy. And I have told him this in private, like weeks ago.” Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, was himself dethroned in October via a motion to vacate the chair.

While Massie and Greene are far from alone in their disappointment in Johnson, many of their disgruntled colleagues are wary of a scenario in which Johnson is ousted and the House spends days or weeks struggling to settle on a successor. “We saw what happened last fall when this all went down — there’s not an alternative…You are not going to get a majority of votes for any new person,” Louisiana Rep. Garret Graves told Politico. Massie has asked Johnson to first allow the party to select a successor, and then voluntarily step down. On Tuesday, Johnson was defiant. “I am not resigning and it is in my view an absurd notion that someone would bring a vacate motion when we are simply trying to do our job,” he told reporters. Massie’s announcement in the closed-door meeting ruffled feathers. Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan voiced his discomfort with the idea, saying, “We don’t need that, no way. We don’t want that. We shouldn’t go through that again. That’s a bad idea.”

On Monday night, Johnson compounded conservatives’ anger when he announced he would bring four separate measures to a vote: aid to Ukraine, aid to Israel, aid to Taiwan and another bill with miscellaneous measures including a TikTok ban. As the New York Times explains, the goal is to cobble together legislation that would match what Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is cooking up: If all four pieces passed the House, they would then be folded into a single bill for the Senate to take up, in an effort to ensure that senators could not cherry-pick pieces to approve or reject. “We’re steering toward everything Chuck Schumer wants,” said Massie. Decoupling the proposals also saps conservatives’ leverage to force more spending on border security. Greene called the plan “a scam” and added, “He’s definitely not going to be speaker next Congress if we’re lucky enough to have the majority.”

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“..officials from 15 federal agencies “knew in 2018 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was trying to create a coronavirus like COVID-19.”

Rand Paul Drops COVID Bombshell: “We Have 15,000 Samples In Wuhan” (ZH)

Last week Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) wrote in a Tuesday op-ed that officials from 15 federal agencies “knew in 2018 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was trying to create a coronavirus like COVID-19.” “These officials knew that the Chinese lab was proposing to create a COVID 19-like virus and not one of these officials revealed this scheme to the public. In fact, 15 agencies with knowledge of this project have continuously refused to release any information concerning this alarming and dangerous research. Government officials representing at least 15 federal agencies were briefed on a project proposed by Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” -Rand Paul. Paul was referring to the DEFUSE project, which was revealed after DRASTIC Research uncovered documents showing that DARPA had been presented with a proposal by EcoHealth Alliance to perform gain-of-function research on bat coronavirus. New documents released by Drastic Research show Peter Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance had applied for funds that would allow them to further modify coronavirus spike proteins and find potential furin cleavage sites.

Now, Paul points to an email between EcoHealth’s Daszak and “Fauci Flunky” David Morens from April 26, 2020 (noted days before by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic), when the lab-leak hypothesis was gaining traction against Fauci – who funded EcoHealth research in Wuhan, and Daszak’s orchestrated denials and the forced “natural origin” narrative. In it, Daszak laments the “real and present danger that we are being targeted by extremists” (for pointing out that they were manipulating bat covid down the street from where a bat covid pandemic broke out), and called Donald Trump “shockingly ignorant.” He also told David that he would restrict communications “to gmail from now on,” and planned to mount a response to an NIH request which appears to suggest moving out of Wuhan – to which Daszak says “Even that would be a loss – we have 15,000 samples in freezers in Wuhan and could do the full genomes of 700+ Co Vs we’ve identified if we don’t cut this thread.”

Which means Daszak, funded by Fauci, lied when he said “every single one of the SARSr-CoV sequences @EcoHealthNYC discovered in China is already published.” And Anthony Fauci concealed the ‘700 unknown coronaviruses’ in Wuhan. Meanwhile, an EcoHealth progress report referenced “two chimeric bat SARS-like CoVs constructed on a WIV-1 backbone.”

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“..Musk was just paid too damn much for creating a $1.2 trillion company by Nov 2021..”

Tesla Asks Shareholders To Approve Musk’s $56 Billion Comp… Again (ZH)

At his peak, Elon Musk was worth $340BN (Nov 2021) and stood alone as the world’s richest man/women/other. According to Bloomberg’s billionaires list, he is now worth mere $175BN… sliding to just the fourth-richest in the world as Tesla’s share price has declined and after a Delaware judge decided in January that Musk was just paid too damn much for creating a $1.2 trillion company by Nov 2021. But now, he may be about to climb that wealth ladder back to the top once more as Tesla has asked shareholders to vote again on the same $56 billion compensation package that was voided by a Delaware court early this year. Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm criticized the Delaware Chancery Court’s January decision, writing in the proxy that it amounted to second-guessing shareholders who had approved Musk’s performance-based award in 2018.

“Because the Delaware Court second-guessed your decision, Elon has not been paid for any of his work for Tesla for the past six years that has helped to generate significant growth and stockholder value,” Denholm wrote. The filing went on to say that negotiating a new pay package would take time and lead to incurring billions of dollars in additional compensation expense. Therefore, ratifying the 2018 package will be faster and “avoid a prolonged period of uncertainty regarding Tesla’s most important employee.” Additionally, the filing shows Tesla considered nine other states as alternatives to Delaware before narrowing its choice down to California, Nevada, New York or Texas.

Finally, Bloomberg reports that, according to the filing, dozens of institutional shareholders have contacted Tesla and expressed support for the 2018 compensation plan, including four of the top 10. The carmaker also said that thousands of retail investors have sent letters and emails to the board expressing the same sentiment. Of course, if this passes the shareholder vote, we assume the honorable Chief Judge Kathaleen St. J. McCormick – who described the company’s directors as “supine servants of an overweening master” – will have problems asserting that they hadn’t looked out for the best interests of investors… since it was the investors themselves, now fully informed, that democratically voted for Musk’s compensation plan. …or does democracy (and capitalism) die in Delaware?

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When the 1st Amendment becomes a hindrance…

NPR Editor Resigns After Suspension for Exposing Bias and Intolerance (Turley)

It appears that National Public Radio has solved the problem of the intolerance for opposing views, detailed in an article by award-winning editor Uri Berliner: he is now out of NPR. Berliner resigned after NPR suspended him and various other journalists and the CEO lashed out at his discussing their political bias. For those of us in higher education, it is a chillingly familiar pattern. Editors, journalists, and listeners at the public-supported outlet will now be able to return to the echo-chambered coverage without the distracting voice of a dissenter. After Berliner wrote his piece in the Free Press, NPR CEO Katherine Maher attacked Berliner and made clear that NPR had no intention to change its one-sided editorial staff or its coverage. Others at NPR also went public with their criticism of him and falsely portrayed his criticism as opposed to actual racial and other diversity of the staff.

In his article, NPR’s David Folkenflik acknowledges that the Berliner criticism “angered many of his colleagues.” Maher response was hardly surprising. After years of criticism over NPR’s political bias, the search for a new CEO was viewed as an opportunity to select someone without such partisan baggage. Instead, it selected Maher, who has been criticized for controversial postings on subjects ranging from looters to Trump. Those now-deleted postings included a 2018 declaration that “Donald Trump is a racist” and a variety of political commentary. Maher was unlikely to address the problem. She is the problem. Maher lashed out at Berliner, calling his criticism and call for greater diversity in the newsroom “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.” So now Berliner has resigned rather than work at a media outlet where he was shunned and denounced. In social media post on Wednesday, Berliner published his resignation letter to NPR leadership and stated “I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay.”

It is all-too-familiar to many of us in higher education where conservatives, libertarians, and republicans have been purged from most faculties. This is done through a mix of filling open slots with liberal academics while making life intolerable for those who remain. For years, a conservative North Carolina professor faced calls for termination over controversial tweets and was pushed to retire. Dr. Mike Adams, a professor of sociology and criminology, had long been a lightning rod of controversy. In 2014, we discussed his prevailing in a lawsuit that alleged discrimination due to his conservative views. He was then targeted again after an inflammatory tweet calling North Carolina a “slave state.” That led to his being pressured to resign with a settlement. He then committed suicide just days before his last day as a professor.


Elon Musk: “The software running in her head is the anti-Grok – hates truth & humor”

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“Orban said he intends “to come and take over Brussels,” reiterating his earlier warning to “occupy” the EU’s key institutions with his allies..”

EU Leadership Must Go – Orban (RT)

The EU needs new leadership as the bloc’s current top officials have proven entirely unsuccessful, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has claimed. Orban made the comments at the European Parliament on Tuesday as part of a public discussion with Former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and the leader of the French National Rally party, Fabrice Leggeri. “Now we have a leadership in the EU with some major projects selected by themselves like green transition, RRF (Recovery and Resilience Facility) policy, migration, war [in Ukraine] and sanctions policy, and they all failed,” Orban said. “The present leadership of the European Union must go away. And we need new leaders,” the Hungarian prime minister insisted. Orban said he intends “to come and take over Brussels,” reiterating his earlier warning to “occupy” the EU’s key institutions with his allies in order to bring change to the bloc.

According to the Hungarian leader, the rule of law and conditionality system created by the current EU leadership has “proved to be… an instrument of political blackmailing. If you do not behave as we expect, you do not get the money.” Hungary has not received “a single penny” from the RRF because European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has openly voiced dissatisfaction with Budapest’s reluctance to accept migrants and its opposition to the bloc’s gender policies, he said. The EU’s green transition “has failed because it has gone against [the] economic and industrial” interests of the bloc, Orban added. A switch towards climate neutrality should not be “politically motivated,” otherwise “it would destroy the competitiveness of the European economy. That is where we stand today,” he explained.

In contrast to many other EU members, the Hungarian leader has refused to provide arms to Ukraine and has consistently criticized the bloc’s sanctions against Russia over the conflict. According to Orban, the time has come for Brussels to define “what it should do with the issue of the war” in order to find a solution to the crisis and prevent similar ones in the future. Even goodwill gestures may “cause difficulties for the European economy,” such as the recent protests by farmers in Poland, France, Germany, and other nations partly caused by the preferences given by the EU to Ukrainian food suppliers, he explained. Orban also insisted that the issue of aid to Kiev should be “separated as much as possible from the issue of Ukraine’s accession to the EU,” formal negotiations for which were approved last year.

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Smart guy. Runs the company himself, with a crew of 30. 900 million daily users. No ads.

FBI Wanted Telegram Backdoor to Spy on Users – Founder (Sp.)

The former Fox News anchor and conservative media personality divulged that he had set up an official Telegram channel for his Tucker Carlson Network, encouraging the public to “keep an eye on the announcements there.” The channel has already attracted more than 150, 000 subscribers. Speaking with Tucker Carlson, Russian-born IT entrepreneur and co-founder of the Telegram social network Pavel Durov focused on a variety of topics, including his visit to the United States. The 39-year-old revealed that he was closely watched and monitored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during his time in the country. “We got too much attention from the FBI, [and] the security agencies, wherever we came to the US,” Durov said during the interview released on Wednesday.

According to the businessman, one of his top employees once told him that he had been approached by the US government. “There was an attempt to secretly hire my engineer behind my back by [US] cybersecurity officers,” Durov claimed. He argued that those officers were trying to persuade the engineer to use “certain open-source tools,” which he would then integrate into Telegram’s code that, in Durov’s opinion, “would serve as backdoors” for hacking the platform. The entrepreneur stressed that he believes what the employee said was true, adding, “There is no reason for my engineer to make up [such] stories.” When asked if infiltrating Telegram’s systems would allow the US government to spy on its users, Durov stated that he did not dismiss the possibility, acknowledging that any government could potentially carry out such an action. “A backdoor is a backdoor, regardless of who uses it,” he underscored.

The 39-year-old tech tycoon noted that he had “personally experienced similar pressure” in the US, where law enforcement officials approached him on many occasions. “Whenever I would go to the US, I would have two FBI agents greeting me at the airport, asking questions. One time, I was having breakfast at 9 am and the FBI showed up at the house that I was renting,” the businessman asserted. According to him, FBI agents knew what he and his team were doing, but the agents wanted the details. “My understanding is that they [also] wanted to establish a relationship to in a way control Telegram better. I understand that they were doing their job. [But] for us running a privacy-focused social media platform, that probably wasn’t the best environment to be in. We want to be focused on what we do, not on government relations of that sort,” Durov pointed out.

The interview comes just a day after Carlson published the first post on his newly-created Telegram page, the Tucker Carlson Network, where users will “get all the latest updates, behind-the-scenes insights, and exclusive content.”
There are already more than 150,000 subscribers for the channel, and their number is growing with every passing second.

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“..When it comes to the freedom of speech, those two platforms could, basically, censor whatever you can read, access on your smartphone..”

Apple and Google More Dangerous Than Governments – Telegram Founder (RT)

Apple and Google “could, basically, censor whatever you can read, access on your smartphone,” Pavel Durov, the co-founder of the popular messaging app Telegram has told Tucker Carlson in an interview; he lamented that the pressure coming from the tech giants is stronger than that exerted by governments. The entrepreneur has also said he received warnings from both the Democratic and Republican parties after the January 2021 riots in the US Capitol. The rare discussion took place at the Russian-born IT entrepreneur’s office in Dubai, and was released on Wednesday. Carlson asked Durov to give an example of a request to build backdoors into Telegram that crossed into censorship, and could be considered spying, or violating people’s privacy. The messaging app claims to have over 900 million active users.

“There was a funny story related to your home country,” the tech entrepreneur replied. “After the events of January 6, we received a letter from, I believe, a congressman from the Democratic side, and they requested that we share all the data that we have in relation to what they called ‘that uprising.” On January 6, 2021, a mob loyal to then-US President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol and forced lawmakers into hiding in an attempt to prevent Congress from formalizing Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election. Durov said his team checked the letter and it “seemed very serious,” essentially saying: “if you fail to comply with this request, you will be in violation with the US Constitution.” “Two weeks after that letter, we got another letter, a new letter, from the Republican side of the Congress, and there we read that, if we give out any data [to the Democrats], it would be in violation of the US Constitution.

So we got two letters that said: whatever we do, we would be violating the US Constitution.” However, the most pressure on Telegram, according to Durov, comes from tech giants Apple and Google, Durov stressed. “I would say that the largest pressure is not coming from governments. It is coming from Apple and Google. When it comes to the freedom of speech, those two platforms could, basically, censor whatever you can read, access on your smartphone,” he said. “They make very clear that if we fail to comply with their guidelines, as they call it, Telegram could be removed from the [app] stores.” Durov dismissed any suggestion of links between Telegram and the Russian government, suggesting that competitors could be stirring up such rumours to discredit the company.

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“..through an “innocuous change” to the definition of “electronic communications surveillance provider” in the FISA 702 bill, the U.S. government could go far beyond its current scope..”

NSA ’Just Days From Taking Over The Internet’ – Edward Snowden (Mitchelhill)

The United States National Security Agency (NSA) is only days away from “taking over the internet” with a massive expansion of its surveillance powers, according to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. In an April 16 post to X, Snowden drew attention to a thread originally posted by Elizabeth Goitein — the co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice — that warned of a new bill that could see the U.S. government surveillance powers amplified to new levels. The bill in question reforms and extends a part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) known as Section 702. Currently, the NSA can force internet service providers such as Google and Verizon to hand over sensitive data concerning NSA targets. However, Goitein claims that through an “innocuous change” to the definition of “electronic communications surveillance provider” in the FISA 702 bill, the U.S. government could go far beyond its current scope and force nearly every company and individual that provides any internet-related service to assist with NSA surveillance.

“That sweeps in an enormous range of U.S. businesses that provide wifi to their customers and therefore have access to equipment on which communications transit. Barber shops, laundromats, fitness centers, hardware stores, dentist’s offices.” Additionally, the people forced to hand over data would be unable to discuss the information provided due to hefty gag order penalties and conditions outlined in the bill, added Goitein. The bill initially received heavy pushback from privacy-conscious Republicans but passed through the U.S. House of Representatives on April 13. Part of the pushback saw the bills’ proposed spying powers time-frame cut from five years to two years, as well as some minor amendments to the service providers included under the surveillance measures. However, according to Goitein, the amendment did very little to reduce the scope of surveillance granted to the NSA.

In her view, the amendment could even see service providers such as cleaners, plumbers and IT service providers that have access to laptops and routers inside people’s homes be forced to provide information and serve as “surrogate spies,” claimed Goitein. The bill has seen strong pushback from both sides of the political aisle, with several government representatives claiming the bill violates citizen’s constitutional rights. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden described the bill as “terrifying” and said he would do everything in his power to prevent it from being passed through the Senate. “This bill represents one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history.” Republican Congressperson Anna Paulina Luna, who voted against the bill in the House of Representatives, said Section 702 was an “irresponsible extension” of the NSA’s powers. Luna added that if government agencies wanted access to data, they must be forced to apply for a warrant. The bill is slated for a vote on April 19 in the U.S. Senate.

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“..we already do not own anything..”

The Great Dispossession Part 2 (Paul Craig Roberts)

In Part 1 ( https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2024/04/11/the-great-dispossession/ ), I reported that we already do not own anything. The immediate response from readers is: what can we do to avoid dispossession? Offhand, the answer might appear to be debt-free property and gold and silver in personal possession. However, if the goal is that we own nothing and are controlled under a digital currency regime, these assets will be taken as well. Webb says if the billionaires and large financial institutions can be made aware of the situation, they could make Congress aware of the regulatory changes and force Congress to use its law-making power to undo the regulatory changes. After all, if there is no private financial property, there is no one to contribute to Congressional elections. Billionaires’ campaign donations elect the politicians, and what the regulatory changes do to billionaires is to reduce them to the same poverty as a homeless person. What the changes mean for large financial institutions such as Merrill Lynch, Schwab, etc., is their existence ceases.

Webb’s hope is the combined influence can undo the regulatory changes. The question is whether awareness can be generated. The fate of Congress is also at stake. In the Great Reset there is no input from the people and no function for Congress. As in all of my writings, I am trying to bring awareness. Little doubt the messenger will be shot. The purpose of Part 2 is to outline the regulatory changes that have been made that have turned our property in financial assets into the property of “secured creditors.” Webb terms them legal changes, which they are, but as I read it from regulatory, not legislative, action. Webb says the changes are global, but he only describes how the US and EU effected the changes for themselves. I am unable to imagine that Russia, China, Iran and any parts of the world not captured in the Western financial system are parties to the dispossession, especially under the regime of sanctions. As I read it, the dispossession that awaits is limited to the Western world and its captive countries. By global, perhaps Webb means the global operations of Western world financial organizations.

First some definitions: an “account holder” is you, your IRA, your pension plan, your stock and bond investments held at an “account provider” or “intermediary” or “depository institution” such as Merrill Lynch, Schwab, Wells Fargo. An “entitlement holder” is the definition of you whose ownership claim to your financial assets has been subordinated to the claims of “secured creditors” of the institution where you have your accounts. Please do understand that the dispossession of which I write is your dispossession. As reported in Part 1, a country’s securities are pooled in a Central Security Depository (CSD). Each national CSD is linked to the International Security Depository (ICSD), which in the words of a 2013 report by the Bank for International Settlements Committee on the Global Financial System, makes available to “secured creditors” all available collateral (all of our stocks and bonds) and provides cross-border mobility of collateral from the “collateral giver” to the “collateral taker.” Yes, these terms are explicitly used, indicating recognition that theft is taking place.

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“..stocks and real estate have been driven to unprecedented levels by years of zero interest rates. When this bubble pops, we will be dispossessed.”

The Great Dispossession Part 3 (Paul Craig Roberts)

In Part 1, I explained that the next financial crisis will be bailed out not with central bank money creation but with our stocks, bonds and bank balances. In Part 2, I explained the multi-year quiet regulatory changes that dispossessed us of our property. In Part 3, I explain David Rogers Webb’s conclusion that a massive financial crisis is pending in which our financial assets are the collateral underwriting the derivative and financial bubble and will result in the loss of our assets but leave us with our debts as happened to those whose banks failed in the 1930s. Webb begins with the economic formula that the velocity of circulation of money times the money supply equals nominal Gross Domestic Product. V x MS = GDP. The velocity of circulation is a measure of how many times a dollar is spent during a given period of time, e.g., quarterly, annually. A high velocity means people quickly spend the money that comes into their hands. A low velocity means people tend to hold on to money.

Velocity impacts the Federal Reserve’s ability to manage economic growth with money supply changes. If the velocity of money is falling, an expansionist monetary policy will not result in rising GDP. In such a situation, the Federal Reserve is said to be “pushing on a string.” Instead of pushing up GDP, money supply increases push up the values of financial assets and real estate resulting in financial and real estate bubbles. Webb notes that falls in velocity are precursors of financial crises. A multi-year sharp fall in velocity preceded the stock market crash in 1929 and the Great Depression that gave birth to regulatory agencies. The 21st century is characterized by a long-term fall in velocity that has reached the lowest level on record, while stocks and real estate have been driven to unprecedented levels by years of zero interest rates. When this bubble pops, we will be dispossessed.

Will the bubble pop? Yes. The Fed suddenly and rapidly moved from zero to 5% interest rates, a reversal of the policy that drove up prices of stocks and bonds. The Fed raises rates by reducing money supply growth, thus removing the factor supporting high stock prices and collapsing the value of bonds. This results in a lowering of the value of stocks and bonds serving as collateral for loans, which, of course, means the loans and the financial institution behind them are in trouble. Bonds have already taken a hit. The stock market is holding because participants believe the Fed is about to reverse its interest rate policy and lower rates. Webb notes that the official data show that the velocity of money collapsed in the 21st century while the Fed introduced “quantitative easing.” He makes the correct point that when the velocity of money collapses, the Fed is pushing on a string. Instead of money creation fueling economic growth, it produces asset bubbles in real estate and financial instruments, which is what we have at the present time.

When after more than a decade of near zero interest rates, the Fed raises interest rates it collapses the values of financial portfolios and real estate and produces a financial crisis. As the authorities have set in place a system that bails out secured creditors with our bank deposits, stocks, and bonds, we will have no money and no financial assets to sell for money. People with mortgaged homes and businesses will lose them, as they did in the 1930s, when they lost their money due to bank failures. People with car payments will lose their transportation. The way the system works is you lose your money but not your debts. The secured creditors are the creditors of the troubled institutions. Ultimately, the secured creditors are the mega-banks defined as “privileged creditors.”

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“We are being steered directly into a brick wall because the globalists can’t take over the world with the US standing.”

Driving America into a Brick Wall – Bill Holter (USAW)

Back in February, when everyone was predicting a Fed rate cut, precious metals expert and financial writer Bill Holter said rates would be going up and not down. Since that call, the 10-Year Treasury is up more than 30 basis points. It closed today at 4.67%. Now, Holter is still calling for higher interest rates that will coincide with higher gold and silver prices. Why? It’s called inflation, and it’s not temporary. Holter explains, “Foreigners are backing away from buying Treasuries. That is the only thing that has kept the doors open, so to speak, is the fact we are able to borrow an unlimited amount of money because we are the world reserve currency. Foreigners backing away from our debt is going to lead the Federal Reserve to be the buyer of last, and then, only resort. So, you will have direct monetization between the Fed and the Treasury. What that will cause is a currency that declines in purchasing power. It will decline in a big way, and it will decline rapidly. So, what I am describing is inflation that turns into hyperinflation.”

But that is not the end of our problems. Holter points out, “I do think it is going to get worse, and that means interest rates will go higher, and that will put on much more pressure. We are at 4.65% on the 10-Year Treasury now. We went from 3.75% to 4.65% (in a short amount of time). We run through 5% on the 10-year Treasury, and everything blows up. . . . The bottom line here is we are at the end game of a fiat currency. Young people have never experienced high inflation. . . . Where we are this time around, Paul Volker (Fed Head in 1979) was able to raise rates to 16% or 17% and crush inflation. He was able to do that because there was not a ton of debt. The U.S. debt back in 1980 was 35% of GDP. Now, it is 125% plus debt to GDP. If you raise rates to 6% to 8%, you will blow up the entire system because much of this debt was put on during the 1% to 3% interest rate time. . . . The inflation is going to push rates higher no matter what the Fed says.”

Gold is hitting one new record high after another. It’s not greed, but fear, and Holter says, “Big money is buying gold because they are looking for protection.” The other wild card is war, and Holter says, “War is a way to keep the system propped up.” In closing, Holter contends, what you are seeing is not a series of mistakes by incompetent people. Holter says, “This is too stupid for it not to be the plan. . . .This is not a Republican or Democrat thing. We are being steered directly into a brick wall because the globalists can’t take over the world with the US standing. They have to take the US down, and if they take the US down, so will the western financial system fall. If that happens, the globalists can have their way.”

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Brick wall right ahead.

IMF Lambasts US Over Ballooning Debt (RT)

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has raised concerns about overspending by the US government, warning it has been reigniting inflation risks and undermining financial stability around the world. The US federal budget deficit jumped from $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2022 to $1.7 trillion last year, according to the latest World Economic Outlook, issued by the IMF on Tuesday. “The exceptional recent performance of the United States is certainly impressive and a major driver of global growth,” the IMF said. However, the report explained that this “reflects strong demand factors as well, including a fiscal stance that is out of line with long-term fiscal sustainability.” The ballooning US national debt, which exceeded $34 trillion in December, and the fiscal deficit threatened to exacerbate sky-high levels of inflation while posing a long-term risk to the global economy, according to the report.

“Something will have to give,” the IMF warned. The US exceeded its debt ceiling, which was legally set at $31.4 trillion, in January 2023. After months of warnings of an imminent and economically disastrous default from the US Treasury, President Joe Biden in June 2023 signed a bipartisan debt bill that suspended the cap until January 2025. This effectively allowed the government to keep borrowing without limits through next year. Debt spiked to $32 trillion less than two weeks after the bill was approved, and has been piling up ever since. The debt held by the public could surge by $19 trillion over the next decade to surpass the $54 trillion mark, owing to the mounting costs of an aging population and higher interest expenses, according to recent projections by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Since entering office, Biden has spent trillions on Covid relief as well as on infrastructure. The US has also spent billions on aid for Ukraine. The Biden administration, however, has been insisting that tax cuts signed into law by then-President Donald Trump were to blame for the ballooning national debt. Last month, Biden unveiled a $7.3-trillion budget plan for 2025 which would push US debt over 100% of GDP, as he laid out a fiscal agenda that boosts spending but plans to save $3 trillion through higher taxes over ten years. Republicans in the House of Representatives have described the proposed budget as a “roadmap to accelerate America’s decline,” accusing the Biden administration of “reckless spending” and of engaging in a “runaway spending spree” that disregards fiscal responsibility.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Dr Phil

 

 

Ladapo
https://twitter.com/i/status/1780338991906078826

 

 

Cloud seeding

 

 

Buster
https://twitter.com/i/status/1780260040672415826

 

 

Chickady’s Birdhouse
https://twitter.com/i/status/1780274925317574889

 

 

Bull dog

 

 

Wolf

 

 

Puppy

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Sep 212023
 
 September 21, 2023  Posted by at 9:07 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  58 Responses »


Willem de Kooning Gotham News 1955

 

The Question About Biden (Patrick Lawrence)
Jim Jordan: The Fix Is In (Kanekoa)
Feds Thwarted Probe Into ‘Criminal Violations’ In 2020 Biden Campaign (JTN)
Poland Announces It Will No Longer Arm Ukraine (ZH)
McCarthy Refuses To Guarantee $24 Billion For Zelensky (RT)
The ‘Kitchen Sink’ Is McCarthy’s Only Path To Avoid Shutdown (ZH)
Rand Paul To Hold Up Any Spending Stopgap That Includes Ukraine Funding (Hill)
Trump Silent On Peace Plan As Ukrainians Die – Zelensky (RT)
With Gonzalo Lira In Ukraine Prison, Billions More For Ukrainian ‘Freedom’ (BB)
Russian Announces Full Ceasefire Agreement For Nagorno-Karabakh (TASS)
Jacinda Ardern Calls on the United Nations to Crack Down on Free Speech
Putin Never Insults People: Peskov In Response To Biden (TASS)
DHS Is Grooming Americans to Report on Each Other (Whitehead)
The Bull Missed The Red Flag In The Russian Provincial Elections (Helmer)
MEP Delivers Damning Message to the Global Tyrants (VN)

 

 

 

 

She’s the best
https://twitter.com/i/status/1704320986135290064

 

 

 

 

Nap Larry Johnson

 

 

Nap Ritter

 

 

 

 

Watters

 

 

 

 

Dystopia

 

 

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

– H. L. Mencken

 

 

 

 

“Biden and his minders are not going to fight the impeachment process in committee rooms and courts because they cannot win on the evidentiary merits. They are going to fight this by mounting a propaganda op..”

The Question About Biden (Patrick Lawrence)

A friend and colleague wrote in an unusually sage commentary a couple of years ago that Ukraine would prove “NATO’s Waterloo.” He called the brewing conflict there “a debacle-in-waiting.” This was two months before the U.S. provoked the Russian intervention in February 2022. Now that is prescience. Ukraine, indeed, has revealed NATO somewhat in the way of the old pun: No action, talk only. As Scott Ritter argued in a recent speech, it now appears the alliance is incapable of waging war in Ukraine or anywhere else in Europe. But let’s set NATO’s surprising weakness aside for now and consider who, as the Ukrainian sinkhole widens and deepens, is tumbling fastest into it.

Here I offer a confession: I take pleasure, not at all perverse, in watching Joesph R. Biden, Jr. and those around him panic as the bill comes due for all those years of conniving with Ukrainian crooks and as the unforgivable folly of the war he started is now everywhere understood, even among those who continue in public to pretend otherwise. It is not yet possible to discern just how our burbling president will go down, but go down he will. Of this we can now be certain. The time of comeuppance is near. My question as of last week is this: Is the Biden regime’s whatever-it-takes, as- long-as-it-takes commitment to the war tied to his escalating vulnerability to charges of corruption dating to his years as Barack Obama’s vice-president, when he carried the Ukraine portfolio? Does Biden have a personal interest in prolonging this war, to put this question another way?

It took the House of Representatives nearly a year, but last Tuesday Kevin McCarthy, the U.S. House speaker, directed the chamber to open an impeachment inquiry into Biden’s evidently extravagant grifting and influence peddling in Ukraine and elsewhere. It is hard to believe the Democrats’ response to this development. The Democratic machine and its clerks in the press pretended for years there was nothing to allegations that Biden and his son Hunter were on the take from a Ukrainian oligarch, as well as various other business people in China, Russia and Central Asia. They have more recently pretended there is no credible evidence of misconduct, even as investigators sent piles of it to the House Oversight Committee.

And now they pretend the imminent inquiry is so hollow and silly it is not worth bothering about. John Fetterman, the Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, struck the new pose as soon as McCarthy announced the inquiry: “Oh, my God, really? Oh, my gosh, it’s devastating,” Fetterman mocked. “Oooh, don’t do it. Please don’t do it.” You are now on notice, readers: Biden and his minders are not going to fight the impeachment process in committee rooms and courts because they cannot win on the evidentiary merits. They are going to fight this by mounting a propaganda op that is daring even for the party that concocted and then sustained the Russiagate hoax for five years. Here is Peter Baker, The New York Times’s chief White House correspondent, last Thursday:

“Forget the weighty legal arguments over the meaning of high crimes and misdemeanors or the constitutional history of the removal process. Mr. Biden’s defense team has chosen to take on the Republican threat by convincing Americans that it is nothing more than rank partisanship driven by the radical wing of the opposition party.” The oafish Baker then elaborates the strategy: “The White House and its allies have gone on the offensive, dismissing the allegations against the president as baseless and debunked, attacking the investigators for distorting the evidence, issuing fund-raising appeals to financial supporters and pressuring the news media to frame the conflict on Mr. Biden’s terms.”

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X “thread”.

Jim Jordan: The Fix Is In (Kanekoa)

@Jim_Jordan: “The fix is in, even with a face-saving indictment last week of Hunter Biden, everyone knows the fix is in. For four and a half years, the Department of Justice has been investigating Mr. Biden. An investigation run by David Weiss that limited the number of witnesses agents could interview. An investigation that prohibited agents from referring to the President as the “Big Guy” in interviews. An investigation that curtailed attempts to interview Mr. Biden by giving his transition team a heads up. An investigation that notified Mr. Biden’s defense counsel about a pending search warrant. An investigation run by Mr. Weiss where they told Congress three different stories in 33 days.

They told this Committee on June 7, David Weiss said I have ultimate authority to determine when, where, and whether to bring charges. 23 days later, on June 30, he told this committee; actually, I can only bring charges in the District of Delaware. And then, to further confuse matters on July 10, he told Senator Graham, I have not sought Special Counsel status… An investigation run by Mr. Weiss that negotiated a plea deal that the Federal District Court declined to accept. A plea deal so ridiculous that the judge asked, “Is there any precedent for agreeing not to prosecute crimes that have nothing to do with the charges being diverted?” The DOJ lawyer responded, “I’m not aware of any, your Honor.”

A plea deal so ridiculous that the judge also asked, “Have you ever seen a diversion agreement where the agreement not to prosecute was so broad that it encompasses crimes in a different case?” The response from the DOJ lawyer? “No, Your Honor.” We have an investigation run by Mr. Weiss that not only had a sweetheart deal rejected, but according to The New York Times, there was an even sweeter earlier deal with Mr. Biden where he would not have to plead guilty to anything. Four and a half years and all that. And now we get a Special Counsel, and who does the Attorney General pick? David Weiss, the guy who let this all happen.” [“The one guy he knows will protect Joe Biden.”]

——-

The American administrative state is eliminating its primary opponent from a presidential race. At the same time, they run cover for the Biden family’s unregistered foreign lobbying, money laundering, and bribery operation that collected millions of dollars from Russian, Chinese, and Ukrainian oligarchs.

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“..you had this individual come in and cover Hunter Biden’s tax liability,” he added. “That’s kind of interesting. And then, was in fact that a contribution to Mr. Biden’s campaign when he ran for president?”

Feds Thwarted Probe Into ‘Criminal Violations’ In 2020 Biden Campaign (JTN)

The FBI and IRS probed allegations that Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign may have benefitted from “campaign finance criminal violations” by allowing a politically connected lawyer to help pay off Hunter Biden’s large tax debts but agents were blocked by federal prosecutors from further action, according to new information uncovered by congressional investigators. The previously unreported campaign finance inquiry was first alluded to in transcribed interviews by House investigators with two IRS agents and a retired FBI supervisor, and the allegations since have been augmented in recent weeks by new evidence uncovered by the House Ways and Means Committee, the House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight Committee.

That evidence includes a case summary memo written by IRS Supervisory Criminal Investigative Agent Gary Shapley to his bosses dated May 3, 2021 in which he alleged that Lesley Wolf, a top prosecutor in the Hunter Biden case inside Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss’ office, waived agents off the campaign finance case. Shapley provided the information to Congress under the protections of whistleblower laws, and lawmakers voted the information to be public “This investigation has been hampered and slowed by claims of potential election meddling,” Shapley wrote in the memo, according to his now-public transcribed interview with House Ways and Means where he read verbatim a passage from the memo. “Through interviews and review of evidence obtained, it appears there may be campaign finance criminal violations.

“AUSA Wolf stated on the last prosecution team meeting that she did not want any of the agents to look into the allegation,” Shapley’s memo stated, according to his interview. “She cited a need to focus on the 2014 tax year, that we could not yet prove an allegation beyond a reasonable doubt, and that she does not want to include their Public Integrity Unit because they would take authority away from her. We do not agree with her obstruction on this matter.” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told Just the News on Tuesday evening that the campaign finance inquiry is a newer matter under investigation by his committee but it fits a pattern of other investigative avenues ranging from search warrants to interviews that were inexplicably turned down by prosecutors in the Hunter Biden case.

“We’re just getting into this issue and the concerns,” Jordan [said]. “But it wouldn’t surprise me if they were told to stand down because remember this investigation over a five-year timeframe was slow-walked.” “This is something that I think is a concern, because, you know, you had this individual come in and cover Hunter Biden’s tax liability,” he added. “That’s kind of interesting. And then, was in fact that a contribution to Mr. Biden’s campaign when he ran for president?”

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US next?

Poland Announces It Will No Longer Arm Ukraine (ZH)

The dam is breaking on unified Western support for Ukraine, and the timing couldn’t be worse for Zelensky, given tomorrow he’s expected to meet with President Biden at the White House. On Wednesday evening there is monumental news out of Poland which could potentially change the entire course of the war. “Poland will no longer arm Ukraine to focus on its own defense,” Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced just hours after Warsaw summoned Ukraine’s ambassador related to a fresh war of words and spat over blocked grain, according to the AFP. Warsaw has throughout more than a year-and-a-half of the Ukraine-Russia war been Kiev’s staunchest and most outspoken supporter. Will this massive and hugely significant about-face mark the beginning of the end? Are peace negotiations and ceding of territory in the Donbas inevitable at this point?

Within the last 48 hours relations between Poland and Ukraine quickly spiraled to their lowest point since the Russian invasion, and it is directly related to Warsaw leading a handful of EU countries to extend a grain export ban on Ukraine, amid continuing anger and outrage from Polish farmers who are suffering due to their country being flooded with cheap Ukrainian wheat. Crucially, Poland will hold parliamentary elections on Oct.15. The prior atmosphere of enthusiastic pro-Kiev rhetoric has drastically changed, now with comparisons likening Ukraine to a “drowning man”. As The Associated Press explains:

“Polish leaders have compared Ukraine to a drowning person hurting his helper and threatened to expand a ban on food products from the war-torn country. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested that EU allies that are prohibiting imports of his nation’s grain are helping Russia. Now, Polish officials, who are trying to win parliamentary elections next month with help from farmers’ votes, are expressing dismay over some of Ukraine’s latest moves, including a World Trade Organization complaint over bans on Ukrainian grain from Poland and two other EU countries.” In surprisingly blunt and terse words given to reporters on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Tuesday: “Ukraine is behaving like a drowning person clinging to anything available.”

He then said, “A drowning person is extremely dangerous, capable of pulling you down to the depths & simply drown the rescuer.” Given Ukraine’s battlefield losses and as it’s currently bogged down in a failing counteroffensive, the words no doubt stung. But as The Hill notes further of the domestic political context in Poland: Public sentiment around the issue, however, has started to deteriorate, putting the ruling party in a difficult position ahead of a close October election. The far-right Confederation party is hoping to capitalize on the waning support in the country. Reuters reported that a recent poll showed support for Ukrainian refugees fell from 91 percent when the war started to just 69 percent recently. The same survey showed a quarter of Poles are against supporting refugees, compared to 4 percent in early 2022.

In response to the grain ban, Zelensky during his UN speech had condemned the “alarming” behavior of allies regarding the import ban, but without naming Poland specifically. Further, Kiev has announced plans to sue Warsaw in the World Trade Organization while also holding out the possibility of its own embargo on Polish foodstuffs, including onions, tomatoes, cabbage, and apples. Again, all of this amounts to a full-blown diplomatic crisis for Zelensky which couldn’t come at a worse time, as he’s in D.C.

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“..Any money we give to Ukraine, we’re borrowing from our future.” “It’s not a good time for [Zelensky] to be here, quite frankly..”

McCarthy Refuses To Guarantee $24 Billion For Zelensky (RT)

US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has refused to commit another $24 billion to Ukraine, telling reporters that he “has questions” for Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky first. With American military aid to Kiev dried up, disagreement on authorizing another funding package threatens to grind Washington to a halt. Zelensky is due to meet with lawmakers on Capitol Hill during a visit to Washington on Thursday. Ahead of the meeting, McCarthy was asked on Tuesday whether he would pledge $24 billion in military and economic aid to the Ukrainian president, as US President Joe Biden has requested. “Is Zelensky elected to Congress?”McCarthy responded. “Is he our president? I don’t think I have to commit anything and I think I have questions for him.”

“Where’s the accountability on the money we’ve already spent?” the Republican leader continued. “What is the plan for victory? I think that’s what the American public wants to know.” In the US Senate, the top Republican and Democrat leaders – Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer – want the $24 billion attached to a wider funding bill that must be passed before the end of the month to keep the government running. McCarthy wants any money for Ukraine to be discussed as a standalone bill, while a small group of hardline conservatives in the House want the broad funding bill replaced with individual bills for individual government agencies. This group, dubbed the ‘Freedom Caucus’, backed McCarthy’s speakership last year in exchange for the right to remove him from the position.

Most members of the ‘Freedom Caucus’ are politically aligned with former President Donald Trump, and oppose further US aid to Ukraine. “There’s no money in the House right now for Ukraine. It’s not there,” Rep. Byron Donalds told The Recount on Tuesday. “To be blunt, we’re running a $2 trillion deficit. Any money we give to Ukraine, we’re borrowing from our future.” “It’s not a good time for [Zelensky] to be here, quite frankly,” Donalds added. The US has allocated a total of $113 billion in aid to Ukraine since Russia launched its military operation last February, including more than $43 billion worth of arms, ammunition, and other military equipment.

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“..the bill will then head to the Senate, where they’ll undoubtedly strip out key Republican demands, and send a revised bill back to McCarthy that will likely contain billions of dollars for Ukraine..”

The ‘Kitchen Sink’ Is McCarthy’s Only Path To Avoid Shutdown (ZH)

With a shutdown looming in just over a week, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has backed himself into a corner. On Tuesday, House Republicans were forced to cancel a procedural vote for a 30-day stopgap funding measure (Continuing Resolution) to keep the government’s lights on beyond Sept. 30. Hours later, five GOP lawmakers crossed the aisle to vote with Democrats to bring down the rule for the Pentagon’s spending bill. As Punchbowl News puts it: “Tuesday was a bad day for McCarthy and House Republicans.” The problem for Kevin is that he needs votes from members of the Freedom Caucus, who are demanding that the CR be spliced up so that it doesn’t fund ‘the election interference of Jack Smith,’ according to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL).

Gaetz also wants McCarthy to sign a subpoena to better investigation Hunter Biden’s alleged “high crimes and misdemeanors,” – with the Florida rep going so far as to draft said subpoena for McCarthy to sign. McCarthy can also throw a Hail Mary and pander to Democrats for the votes he needs to pass the CR, however doing so would likely seal his fate over a looming threat by Gaetz and others to remove him from his post. The former Politico journalists at Punchbowl News – who have an uncanny read on inside baseball on the Hill, say that McCarthy’s only solution here is to cave to the Freedom Caucus (which might still screw him!) with a “kitchen sink” approach of acquiescing to all of their demands. McCarthy needs to take all of the conservatives’ demands and lump them together into one 30-day funding bill. Ignore how far-fetched or illogical these proposals are and accept what they represent — a means to an end. -Punchbowl News

Freedom Caucus member Ralph Norman (R-SC) told the outlet that he’d vote for the CR if McCarthy will commit to a $1.47 trillion discretionary spending cap, and a schedule for the 11 remaining FY2024 appropriations bills during the 30 days to which the CR applies. But the pain isn’t over for McCarthy – even if he bends the knee and Freedom Caucus members agree to pass it, the bill will then head to the Senate, where they’ll undoubtedly strip out key Republican demands, and send a revised bill back to McCarthy that will likely contain billions of dollars for Ukraine. McCarthy will then need to sell the CR back to House Republicans, who will either need to accept the reality of a divided government to avert a shutdown, or not. Oh, and the Freedom Caucus might still dick him…

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“..I will not consent to expedited passage of any spending measure that provides any more U.S. aid to Ukraine..”

Rand Paul To Hold Up Any Spending Stopgap That Includes Ukraine Funding (Hill)

Conservative Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) announced Wednesday he will hold up any funding bill to keep the government open past Sept. 30 if it includes funding for the war in Ukraine. Today I’m putting congressional leadership & @POTUS on notice that I will oppose any effort to hold the federal government hostage for Ukraine funding. I will not consent to expedited passage of any spending measure that provides any more U.S. aid to Ukraine,” Paul wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. That means if Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wants to add Ukraine money to a stopgap measure to fund federal departments and agencies, he would have to go through the time-consuming process of filing cloture and scheduling a vote to end debate on the bill, which would take a few days.

The country risks a shutdown if Congress doesn’t pass what’s known as a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government open past Sept. 30. The problem Schumer faces is that Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) hasn’t been able to muster up enough votes in the House to pass a CR and send it to the Senate. The impasse in the House is holding up action in the Senate, giving Paul leverage to threaten Ukraine funding. President Biden has requested $24 billion in security and humanitarian aid for Ukraine. Senators are scheduled to receive a classified briefing on Ukraine at 5 p.m. Wednesday ahead of a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky scheduled for 10 a.m. Thursday in the Old Senate Chamber. Schumer on Tuesday declined to say whether he would add Ukraine funding and disaster assistance to the continuing resolution but observed the package would need support from Democrats and Republicans.

“We’d like to work on a bipartisan basis on the CR with the Republicans. We’ve gotten indications that they want to do that. We’ve done it very successfully on the appropriations process and hopefully we can come together bipartisan here as well,” he said. Schumer criticized House Republicans on Tuesday for reaching a deal on a continuing resolution that didn’t include Ukraine or disaster relief money. The Democratic leader could attempt to pass the continuing resolution through the Senate first by using a legislative vehicle passed earlier this year in the House, but he hasn’t made a decision on that yet. “Our first job is to get the House to pass something. We’ll see if they can but we need a bipartisan bill in each body,” Schumer said.

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You’re sending them out to die, not Trump.

Trump Silent On Peace Plan As Ukrainians Die – Zelensky (RT)

If former US President Donald Trump actually believes that his claimed plan to resolve the Ukraine crisis in 24 hours is feasible, he should present it to the world rather than let hostilities continue at the cost of Ukrainian lives, President Vladimir Zelensky has said. Trump has repeatedly claimed that he would be able to swiftly resolve the conflict by striking a “fair deal.” He has said that his approach would involve pressuring both Russia and Ukraine into making concessions. Zelensky was asked about the idea by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer during an interview on Tuesday. “If he has this plan, why be afraid and wait?” he asked in Ukrainian, before switching to English. “If he has some smart idea, he could share it with us.”

“He can publicly share his idea now, not waste time, not to lose people, and say: ‘My formula is to stop the war and stop all this tragedy and stop Russian aggression’,” the Ukrainian president continued. Zelensky made clear that he would reject any Trump plan involving territorial concessions by Ukraine or one that would not end with Russian troops ousted from “our land.” “Otherwise, he is not presenting the global idea of peace. So [if] the idea is how to take the part of our territory and to give it to Putin, that is not the peace formula.” Zelensky suggested that Trump himself may not be the person who formulated his plan. He urged the US as a country to contemplate what it would “give to Putin from your territories” in exchange for Russia not using nuclear weapons.

Moscow considers the conflict in Ukraine to be part of a Western proxy war against Russia. In his public speeches, the Russian president has stated that his government would not hesitate to use all the weapons in its arsenal, in accordance with the nation’s military doctrine. Under the document, the nuclear option is reserved for contingencies where the existence of Russia is at stake. Putin has said he considers the risks posed by the Ukraine conflict are nowhere near that threshold. Zelensky arrived in the US on Monday to participate in the UN General Assembly and meet senior US officials. He seeks to convince them to maintain the flow of military aid to his country and provide more advanced weapons from the Pentagon’s stockpiles.

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What is Biden doing to free him?

With Gonzalo Lira In Ukraine Prison, Billions More For Ukrainian ‘Freedom’ (BB)

The Biden administration is asking Congress to approve another $24 billion for Ukraine for now through the end of this year, which would add to the $113 billion that Congress has committed to the country since its war with Russia began in February of last year. President Biden on Tuesday at the United Nations argued that investment in Ukraine was an investment in “the future of every country that seeks a world governed by basic rules.” However, the administration has been much less vocal about Ukraine potentially violating the rights of an American journalist who is currently detained in Ukraine for his reporting; and in a speech at the U.N. almost entirely devoted to Ukraine, the status of Gonzalo Lira was not mentioned once by Biden.

Lira, a dual citizen of the United States and Chile who was living in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv at the time of the Russian invasion, is reportedly facing between five to eight years in prison under Ukraine’s wartime propaganda laws. The American citizen journalist was initially arrested in May of this year on suspicion of producing pro-Russian propaganda on his YouTube channel, where he questioned the narratives around the war presented in the legacy media and from the Zelensky government, including suggesting that Moscow was provoked into invading by the Ukrainian government and the expansion east of the American-led NATO military alliance.

In July of this year, Lira posted messages on Twitter and YouTube claiming that he was going to try to cross the Ukrainian border into Hungary to claim asylum after being released from prison on bail. He has not posted on either platform since. In his final video message, Lira claimed that if he did not post after his attempt to cross the border, it would mean that he had been arrested again by the Ukrainian authorities. Lira said that in such an event, he would “die in prison” and begged the public to “raise a ruckus” about his arrest. The former red pill-style dating coach turned citizen journalist has maintained that he merely discussed publicly available information about the war. “The American State Department knows exactly who I am and the fate that awaits me,” he said before attempting to cross the border.

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Not going smoothly. Armenia=US here.

Russian Announces Full Ceasefire Agreement For Nagorno-Karabakh (TASS)

A full ceasefire agreement between Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh has been reached through the mediation of Russian peacekeepers, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement. “A ceasefire agreement between the Azerbaijani side and representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh has been reached through the mediation of the command for Russia’s peacekeeping mission,” the statement reads. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, “the agreement will be implemented in coordination with the command for the Russian peacekeeping contingent.” The ministry said earlier that Russian peacekeeping forces in Nagorno-Karabakh continued to perform their mission amid rising tensions, providing all possible assistance to civilians. According to the ministry, a total of 2,261 civilians, including 1,049 children, are currently staying at the peacekeepers’ base camp.

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New Zealand should take her to court.

Jacinda Ardern Calls on the United Nations to Crack Down on Free Speech

Jacinda Ardern may no longer be Prime Minister of New Zealand, but she was back at the United Nations continuing her call for international censorship. Ardern is now one of the leading anti-free speech figures in the world and continues to draw support from political and academic establishments. In her latest attack on free speech, Ardean declared free speech as a virtual weapon of war. She is demanding that the world join her in battling free speech as part of its own war against “misinformation” and “disinformation.” Her views, of course, were not only enthusiastically embraced by authoritarian countries, but the government and academic elite. In her speech, she notes that we cannot allow free speech to get in the way of fighting things like climate change.

She notes that they cannot win the war on climate change if people do not believe them about the underlying problem. The solution is to silence those with opposing views. It is that simple. While some of us have denounced her views as an attack on free expression, Harvard rushed to give her not one but two fellowships. While the free speech community denounced her for unrelenting attacks on this human right, Harvard praised her for “strong and empathetic political leadership” and specifically enlisted her to help “improve content standards and platform accountability for extremist content online.” I actually have no objection to the inclusion of Ardern as a Harvard fellow. She is a former world leader who is leading the movement against free speech. It is a view that students should consider in looking at these controversies.

However, Harvard has heralded her views with no acknowledgment of her extreme antagonism toward free speech principles. There is also little countervailing balance at the school with fellows supporting free speech as a human right. Rather, Harvard (which ranks dead last on the recent free speech survey) has become a virtual clearinghouse for anti-free speech academics and advocates. Free speech is now commonly treated on campuses as harmful. Rather than the right that defines us, it is treated as an existential threat. What is so chilling is to hear Ardean express her fealty to free speech as she calls on the nations of the world to severely curtail it to prevent people from undermining their policies and priorities. She remains the “empathetic” face of raw censorship and intolerance. She is now the virtual ambassador-at-large for global speech regulation and criminalization.

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True.

Putin Never Insults People: Peskov In Response To Biden (TASS)

Russian President Vladimir Putin never allows himself to stoop to insults, Kremlin Dmitry Peskov said when asked about the chances of a stern response to US President Joe Biden who had described Putin as a “dictator.” “You know that our president never stoops to this – to the level of personal insults against his colleagues. He certainly has his own opinion about this style of rhetoric. But the president, I repeat again, has never stooped to this and will not do so,” Peskov said. According to the spokesman, what is most important is that Putin is supported by the overwhelming majority of Russians, as has been confirmed more than once during presidential elections.

“In his entire career as a politician, President Biden has never once garnered the same level of support as President Putin. This is what he should probably strive for,” Peskov said. He said Biden faces “a very, very difficult election.” “We understand that the US is now actively clearing the electoral field of undesirable competition. But we have our own concerns, which we will be dealing with,” the spokesman said.

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“See Something, Say Something”

DHS Is Grooming Americans to Report on Each Other (Whitehead)

Are you among the 41% of Americans who regularly attend church or some other religious service? Do you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law? Do you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car? Are you among the 44% of Americans who live in a household with a gun? If so, are you concerned that the government may be plotting to confiscate your firearms? If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the government and flagged for heightened surveillance and preemptive intervention. Let that sink in a moment.

If you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you have just been promoted to the top of the government’s terrorism watch list. I assure you I’m not making this stuff up. So what is the government doing about these so-called American “extremists”? The government is grooming the American people to spy on each other as part of its Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, or CP3 program.

According to journalist Leo Hohmann, the government is handing out $20 million in grants to police, mental health networks, universities, churches and school districts to enlist their help in identifying Americans who might be political dissidents or potential “extremists.” As Hohmann explains, “Whether it’s COVID and vaccines, the war in Ukraine, immigration, the Second Amendment, LGBTQ ideology and child-gender confusion, the integrity of our elections, or the issue of protecting life in the womb, you are no longer allowed to hold dissenting opinions and voice them publicly in America. If you do, your own government will take note and consider you a potential ‘violent extremist’ and terrorist.” Cue the dawning of the Snitch State. This new era of snitch surveillance is the lovechild of the government’s post-9/11 “See Something, Say Something” programs combined with the self-righteousness of a politically correct, hyper-vigilant, technologically-wired age.

For more than two decades, the Department of Homeland Security has plastered its “See Something, Say Something” campaign on the walls of metro stations, on billboards, on coffee cup sleeves, at the Super Bowl, even on television monitors in the Statue of Liberty. Colleges, universities and even football teams and sporting arenas have lined up for grants to participate in the program. The government has even designated September 25 as National “If You See Something, Say Something” Awareness Day. If you see something suspicious, says the DHS, say something about it to the police, call it in to a government hotline, or report it using a convenient app on your smart phone. This DHS slogan is nothing more than the government’s way of indoctrinating “we the people” into the mindset that we’re an extension of the government and, as such, have a patriotic duty to be suspicious of, spy on, and turn in our fellow citizens. This is what is commonly referred to as community policing.

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“..of all the twenty leading countries in the world, only we have a flat tax scale..”

The Bull Missed The Red Flag In The Russian Provincial Elections (Helmer)

Like men, bulls grow less intelligent, more stubborn and miscalculating with age. This is also a problem for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) whose leader, Gennady Zyuganov, has recently turned 79 years of age. He is compos mentis compared to the similarly aged leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties in the White House and US Congress. But that’s not saying much – not enough to have persuaded Russian voters to support the KPRF candidates in the regional, gubernatorial, and mayoral elections which were held across the country between September 8 and 10. [..] Zyuganov insists the KPRF still leads the opposition in the country. “We need to realise that this war has been declared against the entire Russian world, our civilisation,” Zyuganov says in an interview published on the party website on Monday.

“So we have only one way out — to win a complete and unconditional victory. But to do this, it is necessary to correctly assess the current situation, understand our strengths and weaknesses — and resolutely go on the offensive. It is necessary to unite society as much as possible, to mobilise resources, to master all the most advanced and freshest. And to be able to do it in conditions of unprecedented sanctions.” “Putin has changed his strategy four times over the past twenty years. He came to power after the ‘dashing 1990s’, during which more than 80,000 enterprises were destroyed and sold off, citizens’ savings were blown to the wind, and the Soviet government was shot. In the 1990s, the country turned itself into Uncle Sam’s wagging tail and decided to turn into an oil and gas pipe, a quarry, and a sawmill. But Putin realised it was necessary to change the strategy… But the remnants of the Yeltsin era [remain] in power. They still occupy many offices in the Kremlin and the government…”

“Putin made a very interesting and informative speech at the Fareastern Forum. But I would like to pay special attention to the part of his speech that concerned tax legislation. The oligarchy breathed a sigh of relief — the president says we will not change the situation with taxes. But of all the twenty leading countries in the world, only we have a flat tax scale, in which the same percentage of income is collected from both the poor and the leading rich! This is absolutely unfair and directly contradicts the interests of the state. Thanks to this policy, the oligarchs do not pay normal taxes…They continue to plunder the country at an unprecedented pace. In 2022 alone, $261 billion was transferred from Russia abroad. The total capital of our 25 richest oligarchs has already exceeded $300 billion. This is more than the entire Russian budget! And all this happens in the conditions of the special military operation, when help, support, and compassion are needed! When maximum consolidation and cohesion is needed!”

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German MEP Christine Anderson.

MEP Delivers Damning Message to the Global Tyrants (VN)

“We just need to find a way to wake the people up. Because the point is simply this: it comes down to a choice. It’s either freedom, democracy, and the rule of law — or enslavement. “There is no such thing in between. There is no such thing as a little freedom, a little democracy, a little rule of law, just as there is no such thing as a little enslavement. So that’s the choice. It comes down to – it’s either the globalitarian misanthropists or the people. It comes down to – it’s either us or them. And that’s, I think, what this really is all about. “Now, when my colleagues and I were elected to this parliament, there was no question about it. We were on the side of the people because the people actually pay us to act in their best interests. That’s our job.

And once again, I will say to every single elected representative around the world, to every single member in every elected government around the world, if you do not unequivocally stand with the people and serve in their best interests, act in their best interests, you have no place in any parliament or in any government. You belong behind bars. You may even rot in hell for all I care at this point because that’s exactly what you deserve if you sell out the people.” Now, I would like to make a promise to the people, and I’m pretty sure I can speak or speak on behalf of my colleagues. We will continue to stand with you, the people. We will continue to fight for freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. We will not shut up, and we will not stop going after those despicable globalitarian misanthropists.

“But we would also like to have you make a promise to us. You may have heard it’s all coming back. The first country is already starting [to talk about] mask mandates in Israel. They’re already imposing it. I’ve heard of a few universities in the United States. They’re already bringing it all back. And I would really like for you, the people, to not go along. Simply say no! They want you to wear a mask; say no. They want you to put in another mRNA shot; say no. They want to impose a curfew on you; say no. That’s really all you have to do. “And it might not be or might sound a little hard, but it’s actually not that hard. Because once you have made it clear to them that you will no longer go along, once you’ve let them know, they cannot scare you anymore. Because as long as you are afraid of what they might do if you don’t comply, they have power over you.

Take the power away from them! Simply say no. Once you do that, they don’t have power over you anymore. You will feel so free. Simply say no. “And considering what we’ve heard today, and considering what we’ve seen in the last three years. Considering what we know they want to implement, heck, you might even be well within your right to tell them to screw themselves and go to hell! That’s where they belong. What will you get out of that? I can tell you. Once you’ve done that, once you’ve told them to just go to hell, they no longer have power over you. You will have an incredible feeling — kind of like a sensation of freedom will swap through your body. I promise you will feel so relieved. “And this is the state of mind that I would ask all of you to get to. Simply don’t let them grind you down anymore. You are worth it. You are deserving of just standing up for yourselves. And tell them all to go to hell. Thank you very much.”

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Cluster B

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elephant electric fence

 

 

Baby dog
https://twitter.com/i/status/1704369650379747821

 

 

Snacks

 

 

Sinead

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

May 132022
 


Margaret Gillies Charles Dickens 1844

 

Rand Paul Blocks Fast-Track Senate Vote for $40 Billion Ukraine Funding (CTH)
Finlandization of Ukraine, Ukraine-ization of Finland (Nuna Costa)
The Guardian View On Expanding Nato: Putin Has Only Himself To Blame (G.)
‘Finland Will Be A NATO Backwater’ (ZH)
Two Months of Operation Z (Malenica)
‘Russia Started the War’ and Other Fallacies (Whitney)
The Destiny of Civilization – Michael Hudson (Norton)
Diesel Fuel Shortage Sets Stage for Next Biden Created Crisis (CTH)
Meet the Head of Biden’s New “Disinformation Governing Board” (Golinkin)
Beijing Residents Swamp Supermarkets After Lockdown Rumours (CNA)
“Genetically Edited” Food – The Next Stage of the Great Reset? (OffG)

 

 

I kid you not: People today blame NATO’s expansion on Putin.

 

 

Immune system shutdown
https://twitter.com/i/status/1524509732878548992

 

 

Russia has named 12 EU countries involved.

 

 

COVID vaccines have “rigorous standards that are much higher” than any in U.S. history

 

 

 

 

Glenn Beck Ecohealth

 

 

“Printing $40 billion to send to a deeply corrupt nation in Eastern Europe”. Rand Paul wants oversight of how the money will be spent. He can’t have it. None of the people who voted in favor have actually read the bill. There was no time. This will go into next week, giving them that time. How many do you think will read it?

Rand Paul Blocks Fast-Track Senate Vote for $40 Billion Ukraine Funding (CTH)

Senator Rand Paul has blocked a fast-track senate vote on the additional $40 billion funding package created by Joe Biden and House Democrats. Both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell approved a fast-track vote; however, senator Rand Paul (KY) stood defiant against their effort. Despite the high-profile pressure from the two Senate leaders, Rand Paul refused to move and that means the Senate will have to take procedural steps to overcome his objection, which could take several days. “My oath of office is the US constitution not to any foreign nation and no matter how sympathetic the cause, my oath of office is to the national security of the United States of America,” Paul said in his remarks before objecting to moving to swift passage of the bill. “We cannot save Ukraine by dooming the US economy.”


The $40 billion supplemental spending bill for Ukraine is more than the total military budget of Russia. The combined Ukraine aid packages now exceed $60 billion, more than the entire budget for the U.S. Dept of Homeland Security including border protection. Rand Paul is on the right side of history with his position, and the overwhelming majority of Americans agree with him. However, the opinion of the people is irrelevant to the Senate. Even democrat Senator Chuck Schumer seemed to admit this point when he said Rand Paul’s position “was not the opinion of the overwhelming majority here,” meaning in the senate. Schumer would have used other terms if he thought the American people agreed with him. They don’t, and he knows it.

Rand Paul

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“..if this “express” entry of the Nordic country into the Alliance goes ahead, it will suppose an increment of more than double the length of the current border between NATO and Russia.”

Finlandization of Ukraine, Ukraine-ization of Finland (Nuna Costa)

The Finnish President and Prime Minister today announced their support for the country’s membership of NATO at the forthcoming summit in Madrid on 29-30 June. I have no illusions, this is bound to happen without the will of the Finns for which a popular referendum had been promised on the matter, or that it will even be submitted to Parliament, where it would be approved anyway. The main internal requirement for the admission of new countries is that they “add security” to the bloc. Since when does this move make Europe safer? But there are more conditions and clauses of the international legal framework that are being purposefully violated, and shameless disregard for signed agreements.

Let us not even mention the still pending demands that the Kremlin notified in writing to NATO in December, which NATO chose not even to respond to, and which obviously clash with the current situation. Russia had already made it known that the entry of Sweden and especially Finland into NATO is perceived as a threat. Perhaps it was reasonable to understand the Russian point of view. The President of Croatia has recently made it known that he will veto the planned extension as it is “a very dangerous adventure”, in the words of his MFA. Any country can and should oppose this clear provocation, but we know that if this happens, those who are interested in the militarisation of Europe will spin the issue one way or another, as there have never been legal or procedural limits of any kind to this complex.

So, if this “express” entry of the Nordic country into the Alliance goes ahead, it will suppose an increment of more than double the length of the current border between NATO and Russia. This should be viewed with great caution, since all members will be affected by whatever may happen from there. This has been said here before, but today the irresponsibility becomes clearer and the concomitant danger more imminent. After long years of discussion about the so-called possible and reasonable Finlandisation of Ukraine’ as a militarily neutral zone between Europe and the nuclear superpower Russia, we are now much closer to the Ukraine-ization of Finland. Do you know what that means?

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Willfully blind.

The Guardian View On Expanding Nato: Putin Has Only Himself To Blame (G.)

Nato expansion has doubtless contributed to Mr Putin’s paranoid mindset. He sees the organisation as little more than an expression of US power. But it is primarily Russian aggression that has driven expansion, not vice versa. The fear of provoking Moscow tied the hands of its neighbour Finland, and Sweden, for years. Now the all-out assault on Ukraine has led many to conclude that there is nothing to lose – while Russia’s failures there have suggested that it may be less fearsome than they thought. Sweden and Finland joining Nato would leave Kaliningrad, home of Moscow’s Baltic Sea fleet, encircled. Predictably, Russia has vowed retaliation for the Finnish announcement. It had already said it would deploy nuclear weapons in the Baltic, though the real threat is more likely to come in the form of disinformation, cyber-attacks, and other provocations.


Yet Moscow should not be the alliance’s only concern. It must also look closer to home. In the US, 57 Republicans voted against the $40bn aid package for Ukraine in the House of Representatives and it faces Republican objections in the Senate. As the Democrats flounder, the spectre of Donald Trump – or someone like him – as the 47th president looms larger. And despite the defeat of Marine Le Pen in last month’s French presidential election, ambivalence or antagonism towards Nato has not vanished from Europe. In Italy, where a general election is due next year, most voters oppose the government’s decisions to increase defence spending and send arms to Ukraine. The alliance exists to counter the threat on its eastern borders. It can only do so by remaining vigilant to internal vulnerabilities.

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Will Russia cut off oil and gas to Finland? It gets 100% of both that way.

‘Finland Will Be A NATO Backwater’ (ZH)

A Kremlin spokesman earlier in the day warned that Finland joining NATO would “definitely” be a threat that would trigger “retaliatory steps” – but stopped short of identifying specific possible courses of action. “NATO is moving toward us. That’s of course why all of this will warrant a special analysis and the development of necessary measures needed to balance the situation and guarantee our security,” the initial Kremlin response stated. Later in the day Thursday – a number of hours after Finland’s president Sauli Niinisto and Prime Minister Sanna Marin announced the country will apply for NATO membership “without delay” – Russian Ambassador to the EU Vladimir Chizhov elaborated on Moscow’s likely response in an interview with Sky News.

“Russia will be forced to take retaliatory steps, both of military and other nature, in order to curtail the threats that arise to its national security in this regard,” Chizhov stressed in the interview when asked about its neighbor Finland as well as Sweden applying to NATO. The two countries first sent strong signals regarding this complete U-turn in historic policy last month in response to Russia’s ongoing military aggression against Ukraine. The Russian ambassador said further in the UK television interview that he’s “deeply disappointed and saddened” by the development, while saying in a somewhat condescending tone that Finland has been “pushing above its weight, having become in the last few decades a major power in promoting European security architecture.”

Further he said the Scandinavian neighbor which shares an 810-mile border with Russia would inevitably become a “NATO backwater” if it does move forward in entering the military alliance. Sky News also quoted Chizov as explaining the following possible change in defense posture: The ambassador said such a move would “certainly necessitate rethinking of Russian defence posture” but wouldn’t “necessarily [involve] troops and tanks, but certain preparations definitely… like radars, perhaps”.

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A long detailed overview.

Two Months of Operation Z (Malenica)

From the author’s perspective, what is currently happening in Ukraine is a conflict between the Russian and Western concepts of war, that is, the concept of war as conceived by NATO. Among other things, this conflict is also a question of the prestige for the West, which has so far seen itself as the most militarily capable bloc on the planet. Having trained Ukrainian ground army[50] to NATO standards and equipped it with anti-tank and anti-aircraft portable systems, the West is now observing performance of these forces against Russian troops. This is, as well, one of reasons for the omnipresent Western propaganda campaign. Moreover, within this conflict, it is necessary to view Ukrainian media and propaganda sources as organic offshoots of Western intelligence agencies and public relations firms, of which at least 150 have participated in creating and spreading propaganda for Kiev since the beginning of hostilities.

Likewise, make no mistake, majority if not all intelligence at disposal of Kiev is of NATO origin. In an event that Ukrainian troops are defeated by Russian units, it will be clear that equipping and training army in accordance with NATO standards does not guarantee the highest level of combat capability. At the same time, the possible defeat of Ukraine will shake the reputation of NATO itself, especially the United States, whose last year’s debacle in Afghanistan is still fresh in memory. Russia’s eventual victory would be the second major case in modern times where forces equipped and trained by the West have been defeated by non-Western armies.

In this context, one should also observe the huge military aid that has been pouring into Kiev for two months now by countries of the West and European Union. As US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently pointed out, the United States wants “to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”[53] This only confirms what many analysts have already pointed out, that Kiev and Moscow are not at war in Ukraine, but Russia against the collective West led by Washington. The United States needs, both for domestic and foreign policy, Russian defeat in Ukraine.

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“..the indivisibility of security..”

“..signatories to these treaties are not free to develop their own military capability to the point where it poses a danger to their neighbors..”

‘Russia Started the War’ and Other Fallacies (Whitney)

On Monday, Putin delivered the annual “Victory Day” speech celebrating Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. The Russian president made none of the hyperbolic pronouncements the media had predicted but, instead, gave a brief recap of the events leading up to the war in Ukraine. There was none of the bravado you’d expect from a leader trying to gin up support for the ongoing war. Putin simply reminded the crowd that he had done everything he could to avoid the bloody conflict in which Russia is currently embroiled. Here’s part of what he said: “Last December we proposed signing a treaty on security guarantees. Russia urged the West to hold an honest dialogue in search for meaningful and compromising solutions, and to take account of each other’s interests. All in vain. NATO countries did not want to heed us, which means they had totally different plans. And we saw it.”

This is an accurate account of what took place in the months preceding the war. Putin tried to avoid a confrontation by repeatedly asking the US to address Russia’s reasonable security concerns. Unfortunately, the Biden administration brushed off Putin’s demands without even providing a response. The US and NATO insist that Ukraine has every right to choose whatever security arrangement it wants. But that’s clearly not the case. The United States and every nation in NATO have signed treaties (Istanbul in 1999, and Astana in 2010) that stipulate they cannot improve their own security at the expense of others. The principle underlying these agreements is called “the indivisibility of security”, which means that the security of one state can’t be separated from the security of the others.

In practical terms, that means that signatories to these treaties are not free to develop their own military capability to the point where it poses a danger to their neighbors. These terms are especially applicable to Ukraine which is seeking membership in a military alliance that is openly hostile to Russia. NATO membership has always been a “red line” for Putin who has stated repeatedly that he will not allow NATO bases, combat troops and missile sites to be located on Ukrainian soil where they’d be just a stone’s throw from Moscow. As one critic from Texas put it, “You wouldn’t let a rattlesnake make its home on your front porch, would you?” No, you wouldn’t, and neither would Putin.

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“..financial planning is short-termism; it’s short-term planning; it’s take your money and run. And that’s what is stripping and impoverishing the global economy today.”

The Destiny of Civilization – Michael Hudson (Norton)

[..] finance capitalism is what has essentially de-industrialized the United States and turned the Midwest into a Rust Belt. Well, the alternative, obviously, are the societies that have not followed this neoliberal finance capitalist plan. And the most successful economy, obviously, has been China, which is why it has been spending so much time there. And China has done exactly what 19th-century United States, Germany, England, and France did. It has kept basic utilities, basic needs, housing, and above all, finance and banking, in the public domain, as public utilities. Instead of having an independent financial sector operating on its own self-interest, the Bank of China creates the money.

And the Bank of China lends money by deciding, where do we need to have investment in real estate to provide housing for the population at as low a price as we can make it? How do we build up the industry? How do we provide an educational system with training? How do we provide health? And the fact is that the central planning in an efficient socialist style, not the Stalinist planning that everybody refers to of Russia, but a mixed economy as you have in China, which is truly a mixed economy, with guidance, like the French planification. Well, that is obviously the way in which you survive and you avoid the kind of overloading the economy with debt service, with high rents, with high payments to the health-care monopoly in the United States, by avoiding all of this payment to a rentier class that has what the classical economists call unearned income, predatory income.

And instead of unseating them, we’ve put them in charge, and made the banks and Wall Street, and the city of London, and the Paris Bourse, the central planners. So we do have central planning much more centralized than anything that was dreamed by the socialists. But the planning, the centralized planning is done by the financial sector. And financial planning is short-termism; it’s short-term planning; it’s take your money and run. And that’s what is stripping and impoverishing the global economy today.

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“..shortages of diesel fuel on the East Coast may happen in the coming week at some stores..”

Diesel Fuel Shortage Sets Stage for Next Biden Created Crisis (CTH)

It has often been said that if you chase the global climate change ideology to its natural conclusion, we end up in communal groups sitting around a tepid campfire eating some form of sustainable algae cakes and picking parasites off each other… Prior to Joe Biden that prediction might have seemed like hyperbole. Now, not so much. Indeed, the Green New Deal energy policy of Joe Biden creates massive downstream consequences. Unfortunately, the White House doesn’t seem to care. The high prices and scarcity of critical goods are a feature, not a flaw, as they chase their climate friendly Build Back Better agenda. Following the continuum of intended consequence, now we have diesel fuel shortages beginning to hit the U.S. economy; and with scarcity comes higher prices of an almost astronomical scale.

“The national average price of diesel is now $5.54 per gallon, which is an increase of 22 cents from last week, which was when the most recent record was set. Data shows there’s no state that’s currently seeing diesel prices below $5.12 per gallon.” Making matters even worse is a drop in available inventory of diesel fuel which is about to become a crisis for the east coast of the U.S. Some Truck Stop operators like Love’s and Pilot are already warning their big rig customers they may not have fuel for truckers. […] “Love’s is monitoring the fluid situation on the East Coast, we have experienced minimal outages during low traffic hours,” Oklahoma-based Love’s Travel Stops said in an emailed statement. “The company has no plans to restrict purchases of diesel.”

[…] Earlier on Wednesday, the U.S. government’s Energy Information Administration said total inventories of distillates, which is mainly diesel fuel but also heating oil, fell last week to a 17-year low of 104 million barrels, which is 23% below normal. On the East Coast, the situation is even worse. The EIA said distillate fuel oil inventories in the so-called PADD 1 district that covers the Northeastern states fell by 1.1 million barrels last week to just 21 million barrels, the lowest ever recorded in data going back to 1990. Love’s truck stops, with some 550 locations across 41 states, also seemed to confirm reports on social media Wednesday that said Love’s and other truck stops such as Pilot were informing their fleet operators that shortages of diesel fuel on the East Coast may happen in the coming week at some stores.

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Azov whitewasher.

Meet the Head of Biden’s New “Disinformation Governing Board” (Golinkin)

Late last month, the Joe Biden administration publicly confirmed that a “Disinformation Governing Board” working group had been created within the Department of Homeland Security. The news prompted a flood of concern about the impact of such an Orwellian organ on America. But there’s no need to engage in hypotheticals to understand the dangers. One has to only consider the past of Nina Jankowicz, the head of the new disinformation board. Jankowicz’s experience as a disinformation warrior includes her work with StopFake, a US government-funded “anti-disinformation” organization founded in March 2014 and lauded as a model of how to combat Kremlin lies. Four years later, StopFake began aggressively whitewashing two Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups with a long track record of violence, including war crimes.

Today, StopFake is an official Facebook fact-checking partner, which gives it the power to censor news, while Jankowicz is America’s disinformation czar. If the Biden administration is serious about combating threats such as white supremacy, perhaps it should first reflect on the old Roman question: Who will guard the guardians? StopFake was founded right after Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan uprising ousted the country’s president and swept a new, US-backed government into power. Formed by professors and students from the Kyiv Mohyla Journalism School, StopFake presented itself as a plucky, grassroots group wielding hard facts and semi-permanent smirks as it shredded Russian propaganda. It gained notoriety by producing slick videos hosted by dynamic disinformation warriors debunking the Moscow lies of the day.

Western reporters—and checkbooks—were paying attention. Shortly after its creation, StopFake began receiving funding from Western governments, including the National Endowment for Democracy—an organization mainly funded by the US Congress—and the British embassy in Ukraine. It was also supported by George Soros’s Open Society Foundation. (StopFake has run numerous episodes that cover Soros but fail to disclose this potential conflict of interest—a violation of basic tenets of journalism.) Among StopFake’s hosts was Jankowicz, a graduate of Bryn Mawr and the Georgetown School of Foreign Service who was already part of the burgeoning disinformation warrior industry while in Ukraine as a Fulbright Clinton Public Policy Fellow. On January 29, 2017, she hosted StopFake Episode 117, whose lead story dealt with a perennial obsession of Russian propaganda: Ukraine’s volunteer battalions.

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“I’ll be fine whether I’m required to stay home for three days or seven.”

Beijing Residents Swamp Supermarkets After Lockdown Rumours (CNA)

Beijing residents rushed to supermarkets on Thursday (May 12) as Chinese officials tried to curb mounting panic over a rumour the capital would be placed under stay-at-home orders. The city has been trying to stamp out a wave of cases in recent weeks, closing subway stations and telling many residents to work from home, with hundreds of communities sealed off to contain cases. On Thursday there were rumours online that authorities were about to impose a strict lockdown, prompting many to rush to food stores and stock up. Beijing residents fear they may face draconian measures similar to those that have trapped most of Shanghai’s 25 million people at home for weeks – after what was initially described as a days-long shutdown.


No lockdown was announced Thursday, but officials confirmed they will start three more rounds of mass testing for residents in 12 of the city’s main districts and “recommended” that people stay home and “reduce movement” during that time. AFP saw staff at one local supermarket in central Beijing rushing to restock as shelves of vegetables were emptied out. Sui Xin, 41, told AFP that he had gone to the store after he read on social media that the capital’s officials might keep residents at home. “Everyone is stocking up,” he said, buying eggs and instant noodles. “I’ll be fine whether I’m required to stay home for three days or seven.” “I’m just buying some chicken wings and instant noodles, there’s nothing left,” a shopper surnamed Huang said, queueing at another packed supermarket.

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From “genetically modified” to “genetically edited”..

First you make them hungry, then you push their “new food” on them.

“Genetically Edited” Food – The Next Stage of the Great Reset? (OffG)

But the part I found most interesting is the stated plan to “encourage agricultural and scientific innovation at home” via the proposed Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill. The proposed bill (which, for some reason is not available through the parliament website) follows on from DEFRA’s announced “loosened regulation” of genetic research back in January. To quote the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB), the legislation would “take certain precision breeding techniques out of the scope of restrictive GMO rules”. Essentially, this would see new “gene-edited” foods as distinct from old-fashioned “genetically modified” foods, and therefore not subject to the same rules and oversight.

The claimed distinction is that gene editing, as opposed to genetic modification, doesn’t introduce DNA from other species. Therefore, in effect, is merely speeding up what could potentially naturally happen over time. Now, you might think this is just semantics, and that such a law will just provide a loophole for ALL “genetically modified” foods to simply rebrand themselves as “genetically edited” foods, and thereby avoid regulation. But that is disgustingly cynical and shame on you for even thinking it. All in all, this is pretty on-message stuff, and not especially surprising. What’s noteworthy is – by pure happenstance, I’m sure – it appears to coincide with a renewed push on the GM food front in other countries all over the world.

In December 2021, Switzerland added an amendment to its moratorium on GMO crops, permitting the use of certain “gene editing” techniques. Last month, Egypt announced their new strain of GM wheat. Just two days ago, Ethiopia’s National Agricultural Biotechnology Research Center announced they had researched, and the country will now be growing, genetically modified cotton and maize. Despite Russia’s sweeping ban on the cultivation and/or importing of genetically modified crops, they have nonetheless created a 111 billion Ruble project to create up to 30 varieties of genetically edited plants and farm animals. Britain’s deregulation of GM food is always described as a “post-Brexit” move – with the EU chided around the world for its “precautionary principle” on GM crops – and yet as long ago as last April, the EU was calling for a “rethink” on GM crops.

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Madonna

 

 

 

 

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Mar 162022
 
 March 16, 2022  Posted by at 9:42 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  35 Responses »


Henri Rousseau The sleeping gypsy 1897

 

Ukraine Will Not Join NATO, Says Zelenskiy (G.)
Zelenskiy Says Russia’s Position In Negotiations Becoming ‘More Realistic’ (G.)
West Made A ‘Terrible Mistake’ Letting Putin Annex Crimea: Boris Johnson (F.)
Thirsty Macron Jealous of International Media Fawning Over Zelenskyy (CTH)
World Economy Braces For Supply Chain Chaos As COVID Closes China (ZH)
Saudi Arabia May Accept Yuan Instead Of Dollars For Chinese Oil Sales (JTN)
Safe and Effective? (Malone)
Senate Votes To Repeal CDC’s Mask Mandate For Airline Passengers (JTN)
Several States Mulling Lawsuit To End Biden Mask Mandate On Airlines (JTN)
Dr. Flavio Cadegiani On How Pfizer Corrupts Science (Kirsch)
These 6 Republicans Voted Against Ousting Fauci (DW)
From 15 Days to Two Years (Kelly)
A Closer Look at the Gatekeepers of Medical Research (NBW)

 

 

 

 

Alexa

 

 

The two most powerful people in US politics are well past their best before date. How is that not scary? These shaky fingers are on red hot buttons.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1503798141669285895

 

 

One demand down, two to go. No. 2 is recognition that Crimea is Russian territory. Since Crimeans have voted on this, why contest it? Third is the status of the Donbass. That’s tricky, Putin won’t want to leave any questions over this. And allegedly, Ukraine was planning large scale bloodshed there in early March. Zelensky will have to sell out the Azov batallion. But that could cost him his life.

Ukraine Will Not Join NATO, Says Zelenskiy (G.)

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has acknowledged that Ukraine will not become a Nato member, in a significant concession on a day when Kyiv was pounded by Russian shells and missiles and the invading force tightened its grip on the capital. At least five people were killed in the latest artillery barrage on Kyiv, prompting its city hall to impose a 35-hour curfew from Tuesday night amid further signs that the focus of the Russian campaign has shifted to the destruction of residential areas and civilian infrastructure. Zelenskiy made his remarks about Nato while addressing leaders from the new Joint Expeditionary Force, a UK-led initiative bringing together 10 north Atlantic countries to create a capability for responding rapidly to crises.

“It is clear that Ukraine is not a member of Nato; we understand this,” the Ukrainian president said. “For years we heard about the apparently open door, but have already also heard that we will not enter there, and these are truths and must be acknowledged.” One of Vladimir Putin’s demands before unleashing his offensive on Ukraine was that its membership of Nato should be ruled out indefinitely. However, the size of the invasion force Putin amassed and his own justifications for the attack, have been widely seen as evidence he would have settled for nothing less than regime change and Russia’s unchallenged dominance of its smaller neighbour.

The White House announced on Tuesday that Joe Biden would travel to Europe next week to attend an extraordinary Nato summit on 24 March “to discuss ongoing deterrence and defence efforts” in the face of the Russian invasion, and also join a scheduled European Council summit. There were reports Biden would also visit eastern Europe on the same trip.

 

 

Children Donbass
https://twitter.com/i/status/1503696563230724097

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Zelesky preparing the world for the concessions he’s about to make. Carefully chosen wording.

Zelenskiy Says Russia’s Position In Negotiations Becoming ‘More Realistic’ (G.)

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said he sees possible room for compromise in talks with Russia ahead of a fresh round of discussions, despite Moscow’s stepped up bombardment Kyiv and as fears for the port city of Mariupol deepened. “The meetings continue, and, I am informed, the positions during the negotiations already sound more realistic. But time is still needed for the decisions to be in the interests of Ukraine,” Zelenskiy said in a video address early on Wednesday. “Efforts are still needed, patience is needed,” he said. “Any war ends with an agreement.” Top Ukrainian negotiator, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, said there were “fundamental contradictions” between the two sides but added that “there is certainly room for compromise.”


Another aide to Zelenskiy, Ihor Zhovkva, said the negotiations had become “more constructive” and that Russia had softened its stand by no longer airing its demands that Ukraine surrender. Talks were set to resume via video link on Wednesday. As the war approached its third week and heavy shelling of Ukraine’s cities continued, US president Joe Biden signed off on $13.6bn in aid. Zelenskiy thanked president Joe Biden and “all the friends of Ukraine” for the new support. An update from the Ukraine ministry of defence on Wednesday said the “worst situation remains in the area of Mariupol, where the opponent tries to block the city in the western and eastern outskirts of the city.” It came as the Associated Press reported Russian troops had seized a hospital in Mariupol and took about 500 people hostage during another assault on the southern port city late Tuesday, regional leader Pavlo Kyrylenko said.

 

 

Refugees Donbass
https://twitter.com/i/status/1503765994547855367

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Boris trying to be relevant.

West Made A ‘Terrible Mistake’ Letting Putin Annex Crimea: Boris Johnson (F.)

The West made a “terrible mistake” by letting Russian President Vladimir Putin “get away” with invading Ukraine and annexing Crimea in 2014, wrote the U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the Telegraph newspaper Monday. He added the West “intensified” economic ties with Russia afterwards and took “more Russian gas than ever before,” leaving it dependent on the “goodwill of Putin” and more exposed to fluctuations in global gas and oil price. Johnson said the West must break its “addiction” to Russian hydrocarbons, which has “emboldened” Putin to invade Ukraine and subject the world to “continuous blackmail.” Johnson acknowledged that it will be “painful” for the world to give up Russia’s vast fossil fuel reserves but said it is the “only way to force Putin to cease his aggression.”


The U.K. has pledged to phase out Russian oil imports by 2023 and the U.S. has banned Russian oil and gas. The European Union, which imports a significant amount of fuel from Russia, has vowed to end its use of Russian hydrocarbons as soon as possible. Green, renewable energy sources “are the quickest and cheapest route to greater energy independence,” Johnson said. “They are invulnerable to Putin’s manipulations.”

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Macron acting a comedian. And it’s actually funny.

Thirsty Macron Jealous of International Media Fawning Over Zelenskyy (CTH)

As the international media fawn over their latest social media star, the “Churchill in a T-shirt”, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the former darling of EU media, French President Emmanuel Macron is apparently feeling slighted. Western PR teams have been working diligently to maintain the “better story,” as they advance the beatification of pop star Zelenskyy. The producers and directors for Volodymyr’s scruff and edgy leadership have kept his fans updated on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, as Ride of The Valkyries echos as a background theme while team-Z dodge cruise missiles on their way to the local Starbucks. However, all of this unilaterally focused adoration does not sit well with King Macron of Paris.

In an effort to combat the rugged warlike appeal of St. Zelenskyy of Kyiv, the thirsty French president called for immediate poses of him in a series of similarly scruffy press shots. Thanks to social media adoration, Zelenskyy, the modern EU trendsetter, is making beatnik great again. There are already rumors of a run on vintage jeans, sneakers and T-shirts within Brussels, as several NATO leaders dispatch their aides looking for the hot, new and modern authentic war look. A daily series of live-streamed war summits are likely in the works as NATO leadership start catching up to the pop-optics by organizing burning barrels of diesel fuel in the background of their zoom calls. With resources allocated, thirsty Macron is going to climb back on top.

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Ukraine will soon be a small problem. Because this will not.

World Economy Braces For Supply Chain Chaos As COVID Closes China (ZH)

The global economy is in disarray as the war in Ukraine unleashed a commodity shock with increasing risks of stagflation. Adding to the turmoil is an outbreak of COVID-19 in China that may unleash another supply chain crisis. News from China over the last day shows a new outbreak of the highly contagious omicron variant has infected more than 5,000 people, the most since the early days of the pandemic in early 2020. China’s zero-tolerance approach has shuttered factories and placed some 51 million people into some form of lockdown. Lockdowns have forced factories to idle production and risk snarling production from Apple iPhones to Amazon Echo & Alexa devices to Toyota SUVs to smart television to all sorts of other electronic devices. Disruptions to exports may induce shortages and drive up inflation, just as the Federal Reserve embarks on hiking interest rates to control inflation at four-decade highs.

A Bank of America Corp. survey of fund managers published on Tuesday showed confidence in global growth this year is the lowest since July 2008, and stagflation expectations have jumped to a whopping 62% of respondents. “You take all these little paper cuts and you start to add them up and you could be looking at a potential significant slowing of the global economy,” said Jay Bryson, chief economist at Wells Fargo & Co. China’s zero-tolerance policy has reminded us that supply chains are still subjected to massive disruptions. The lockdowns couldn’t come at a worse time, as spring tends to be one of the busiest shipping seasons of the year.

Shenzhen’s 17.5 million residents were placed under lockdown on Sunday. The city resides in Guangdong, a coastal province of southeast China known for its manufacturing hub and ports, which account for about 11% of China’s economy. The province accounted for 23% of China’s shipments in 2021. Bloomberg Economics warns that a prolonged lockdown in Shenzhen could unleash supply chain disruptions worldwide. “The forceful action to contain the worst COVID-19 outbreak since early March will deal a direct hit to the production and consumption sides of a province that accounts for 11% of GDP. Previous steps to contain virus flareups left manufacturing unscathed for the most part. This lockdown will hit output in key industries such as tech and machinery that feed into global supply chains,” Chang Shu, chief economist for Asia, said.

“Given that China is a major global manufacturing hub and one of the most important links in global supply chains, the country’s Covid policy can have notable spillovers to its trading partners’ activity and the global economy,” said Tuuli McCully, head of Asia-Pacific economics at Scotiabank. According to Stephanie Loomis, vice president of International Procurement, the global impact of lockdowns could roil supply chains once more. “If they don’t let any of these guys go to factories and produce goods, then nothing will move,” Loomis said. “It’ll just stop.”

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Biden really pissed off MBS.

Saudi Arabia May Accept Yuan Instead Of Dollars For Chinese Oil Sales (JTN)

Saudi Arabia and China are in discussions to price some oil sales in yuan instead of U.S. dollars in a slap to the Biden administration that would decrease the dominance of the American currency in the international petroleum market, sources told The Wall Street Journal. While Beijing and Riyadh have been in discussions on and off for several years about yuan-priced oil contracts, talks have accelerated recently due to U.S. security policies under President Joe Biden, people familiar with the issue told the newspaper. The Saudis are angry with the United States for not assisting in their intervention in Yemen’s civil war, started by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in 2014. The Kingdom is also upset over the Biden administration’s efforts to enter a nuclear deal with Iran.


Saudi officials also have expressed disapproval over Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. “I don’t know which word to use, whether incompetence, carelessness, bad management — it was all a combination of those things,” Saudi Prince Turki Al-Faisal told CNBC last year. Saudi Arabia exports 6.2 million barrels of crude oil a day and has traded in dollars exclusively since 1974 when President Richard Nixon struck a deal with the kingdom by guaranteeing security. China buys more than a quarter of all Saudi oil exports, according to the WSJ. If the sales are priced in yuan, it would be a major boost to China’s currency as 80% of all global oil sales are done in dollars. Beijing introduced yuan-priced oil contracts in 2018, but has been unable to successfully beat the dollar in the global oil market.

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“warm base manufacturing”

Safe and Effective? (Malone)

There is another important element in the national vaccine program, which is the requirement to keep the vaccine production facilities up and running. These facilities are producing a biological product; they must be kept in production or the process for re-licensure is onerous, if not impossible. In the case of seasonal flu, one of the justifications for the yearly vaccine is to keep the manufacturing plants running and ready for business in case of a truly severe strain of flu or some other, unknown pathogen become a threat. If those facilities are moth-balled, they can’t be brought back on line quickly. Bet you did not know that. One major reason for pushing annual influenza vaccines is to maintain influenza vaccine manufacturing capacity.

The industry term used is “warm base manufacturing”. Of course, this results in a very nice annual “cash cow” for the vaccine industry, one which gets annually milked for a tidy guaranteed profit. The term “rent seeking behavior” applies. The same is true of the various “biodefense” vaccines and products which are maintained in the “strategic national stockpile”. In the context of Smallpox, these include ACAM2000. These products have half lives, which is to say that even though they are (hopefully) not used, they still have to be replaced every few years. Again, nice predictable profit. The corporation “Emergent Biololutions” has become particularly adept at exploiting this “market opportunity”, and has managed to monopolize many of the biodefense-related vaccines and products which the US Government purchases for the Strategic National Stockpile, including ACAM2000.

So, there is more than one reason to vaccinate the entire population on a regular basis, and the government basically props up the entire vaccine industry with what are functionally major annual subsidies. Once a policy decision is made to acquire a vaccine product or establish a “standard of care” involving a vaccine, it is never re-evaluated. Any politician or government administrator that even considers rethinking whether a vaccine policy makes good sense is confronted by the specter of being blamed for any outbreak or cases of that disease that may arise – regardless of how (in)effective or risky that vaccine product may be.

[..] To bring this topic home: Is avoiding COVID-19/Omicron worth taking the known and unknown risks of serious adverse events? In some age categories, it might be. In most age categories, it is not worth much risk. For young people, it is not worth any risk, and for children, the risks of the Covid vaccine far outweigh the risks of Covid. The US Government had relentlessly promoted that “The vaccines are safe and effective,” the same words used for the modern smallpox vaccine. In both cases, safety is a matter of opinion and semantics – not science. Clearly, safety is relative, such as the precautions one might take when skydiving or riding a motorcycle (e.g., having a second parachute, wearing a helmet) – in order to reach the point that an activity is acceptably safe, all the while knowing it’s safer to just skip the activity.

If I proposed a person drink some potion, and said “This potion is safe, unless you are from a family with a history of heart problems,” few people would want the drink. If I added “Oh yeah, and the Mayo Clinic says the risk of side effects from this potion are too high to justify you drinking it, I’d have even fewer takers. Mandates, which are rigid by definition, seem a bad match for assessments of personal safety, which are, by our nature, flexible and variable. Since the word safe and the idea of safety means different things to different people, such decisions are best left to those who would be most affected by, in this case, vaccination.

The smallpox vaccine shows us what the CDC means when they say something is “safe,” and it isn’t what most people using the word would mean. With risk must come choice. This is the bedrock foundation of modern bioethics and medicine. After all that we have been through over the last two years, and the admission the the CDC has been withholding data from all of us for political reasons and to avoid “vaccine hesitancy” (which is another way of saying if you knew what the data really show you would not accept the product), who are you going to trust? Your own lying eyes and brain, or what the CDC, HHS, legacy media and the “factchecking” industry tell you?

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“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., may not even allow the House to vote on the measure.”

Senate Votes To Repeal CDC’s Mask Mandate For Airline Passengers (JTN)

The Senate voted Tuesday to repeal the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 mandate requiring masks on public transportation, including airplanes. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., introduced the resolution that received bipartisan support with a 57 to 40 vote. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, was the only Republican to vote against the measure. Eight Democratic senators voted in support of the resolution: Michael Bennet, Jacky Rosen, Catherine Cortez-Masto, Maggie Hassan, Mark Kelly, Joe Manchin, Kristen Sinema and Jon Tester. The resolution, which was first introduced in February, expresses disapproval of the CDC’s mask mandate.

The resolution still faces significant challenges to become law. It did not receive enough votes to override the veto that President Joe Biden has threatened to do. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., may not even allow the House to vote on the measure. “Today, the Senate said enough is enough, and sent a message to unelected government bureaucrats to stop the anti-science, nanny state requirement of travel mask mandates,” Sen. Paul wrote in a press release after the vote. “Since March 2020, unelected bureaucrats have incessantly declared that we should ‘follow the science.’ But the same bureaucrats continue to defy science by imposing an ineffective and restrictive mask mandate for individuals travelling on public transit and airplanes,” the senator, who is also a doctor, wrote.

Sen. Paul has fought against what he sees as an abuse of power from White House medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci. “As the entire world is learning to live with COVID, the federal government still uses fear mongering to stubbornly perpetuate its mandates, rather than giving clear-eyed, rational advice on how to best protect yourself from illness,” Paul said. “That is why, I forced this vote, and I applaud the Senate for rejecting this nonsense.”

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“There are a lot of boxes you have to check before you jump on a lawsuit..”

Several States Mulling Lawsuit To End Biden Mask Mandate On Airlines (JTN)

Several states are considering a lawsuit to end one of the Biden administration’s last COVID-19 mandates requiring airline passengers to wear masks, Indiana Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita told Just the News. “We are having discussions about that right now,” Rokita told the Just the News TV show on Real America’s Voice on Tuesday night, saying Florida is taking the lead on the idea. The Transportation Security Administration last Thursday extended its mask mandate on public transportation through April 18 after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced relaxed mask guidance at the end of last month.


“I know that several states may be filing very, very soon, maybe being led by the state of Florida,” Rokita told Just the News Editor-in-Chief John Solomon and co-host Amanda Head. Indiana is currently “examining” if they can join the lawsuit, Rokita said. “It’s just not as easy as when I was in Congress, just to jump on a lawsuit like we’re jumping on a bill,” the former congressman said. States must show that they have legal standing and actual injury before joining a lawsuit, the Rokita explained. “There are a lot of boxes you have to check before you jump on a lawsuit,” he added. A group of 16 Republican lawmakers on Monday filed a lawsuit against the CDC for what they said was an “illegal mask mandate for individuals traveling on commercial airlines,” Newsweek reported.

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Flavio Cadegiani is a doctor in Brasilia, capital of Brazil.

“Dr. Cadegiani reveals an astonishing statistic on the number of vaccine injured: 85%.”

Dr. Flavio Cadegiani On How Pfizer Corrupts Science (Kirsch)

Dr. Cadegiani just published a new research paper (“Pfizergate 2.0 – Active actions against competitive anti- COVID drugs? The case of the anti-androgens.”) that shows that there is no rational explanation for the corruption of clinical trial results other than deliberate sabotage by Pfizer to ensure that there are no viable competitors to Pfizer’s products. I interviewed him just minutes before he published the paper. In the video, he talks about Proxalutimide, an anti-androgen drug he tested that is effective against variants prior to Omicron. But his main issue is in the trials of enzalutamide (another anti-androgen) and how it was conducted. At the very end, Dr. Cadegiani reveals an astonishing statistic on the number of vaccine injured: 85%.

 

 

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Rand Paul keeps pushing.

These 6 Republicans Voted Against Ousting Fauci (DW)

Six Republican senators voted against an amendment Tuesday that would eliminate the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) position, which is held by Dr. Anthony Fauci. Senators voted on Kentucky Republican Rand Paul’s amendment to replace the NIAID with three separate national research institutes on Tuesday morning in Washington, D.C. Republican Senators Richard Burr of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, and Jerry Moran of Kansas each voted against the amendment. “We’ve learned a lot over the past two years, but one lesson in particular is that no one person should be deemed ‘dictator-in-chief,’” said Paul when he introduced the amendment Monday, adding, “No one person should have unilateral authority to make decisions for millions of Americans.”


“This will create accountability and oversight into a taxpayer funded position that has largely abused its power, and has been responsible for many failures and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the senator continued. Paul and Fauci have repeatedly sparred in Senate hearings over Fauci’s insistence on restricting the American public throughout the coronavirus pandemic, and the Kentucky Republican has called many times for Fauci to be ousted from his position. When Fauci suggested on “CBS This Morning” that Republicans — and former President Donald Trump — have a “misplaced perception about people’s individual right to make a decision that supersedes the societal safety,” Paul said that his comments showed a “casual disregard for what this country was founded upon.”

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“They want people stripped of wealth, isolated, and terrified.”

From 15 Days to Two Years (Kelly)

On Saturday morning, my daughter in college texted me: “I got sent home two years ago today. Feels like a dream.” After I responded, she sent an uncharacteristically brief reply: “Sad.” To say the least. In March 2020, once-free citizens around the world surrendered their liberty and livelihoods in a futile attempt to “stop” a virus. The most technologically advanced civilization in the history of mankind quickly adopted medieval fixes that bordered on quackery, sold by snake oil salesmen in the credentialied class and news media, codified through executive fiat by elected leaders of both parties. “Just 15 days,” we were told on March 16, 2020, “to slow the spread.” Do your part to promote the “common good”—the historical rallying cry of every wannabe despot—or be branded a heartless heretic.

And it worked, far better than the original architects probably anticipated. On the same day my daughter left her college dormitory in upstate New York, not to return to a normal campus life for two years, I posted this on Twitter: This is what the Left wants. They want people stripped of wealth, isolated, and terrified. They want sources of joy—church, sporting events, vacations, large social gatherings—eliminated. This is how they get control. And it’s far scarier than any virus. To say that was a very unpopular view at the time would be an understatement. But having covered the climate change movement for years, I recognized a familiar approach to the spread of COVID-19 hysteria: use flawed data to whip up a public frenzy and shut down all debate in fealty to “science!”

Any disagreement over the data, no matter how unreliable or untested the data happened to be—and in the early months, the only available data came from China—made you a “science denier,” or worse. This time around, sadly, the hysteria wasn’t pushed solely by lefty environmental activists but also by President Donald Trump, Republican governors, and “conservative” influencers throughout the media. Once that buy-in was made, all hope was lost. Trump’s catastrophic decision to acquiesce to the demands of Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx—the former a charlatan, the latter a dunce—and shut down the country two years ago this week was by far the worst moment in his presidency and rivals the worst moment in any presidency. As usual, however, Trump’s first instinct (the one he suppressed to appease those demanding we honor The Science™) was the right one.

The cure should not be worse than the disease, he fretted. He knew it, but he listened to the quacks anyway. The cure, of course, got worse. Emboldened by their success in forcing Trump to authorize the first 15-day shutdown, the then-adored Fauci and Birx took it a step further. With two dubious projection models in hand, the pair went to the White House at the end of March 2020 and convinced Trump to extend the lockdowns another month. The decision sealed his electoral fate; the booming economy he helped build entered a death spiral.

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“..viruses are worth A LOT of money (and will continue to appreciate exponentially for obvious reasons).”

A Closer Look at the Gatekeepers of Medical Research (NBW)

First, it is necessary to understand where the majority of funds go for health research. For this, we’ll rely on an article published in Health Research Policy and Systems titled The 10 largest public and philanthropic funders of health research in the world: what they fund and how they distribute their funds. According to the researchers, in 2013, the National Institute of Health (NIH) granted $4.8 billion dollars towards infectious disease research (including $113 million towards respiratory infections and $2.8 billion to HIV/AIDS research). They also gave grants to research involving cardiovascular disease ($1.9 billion), lung cancer ($208 million) and mental health ($2.1 billion). The European Commission, Medical Research Council (MRC) and Wellcome Trust also direct the majority of their grants towards research involving infectious diseases.

A paper published in The Lancet, titled UK investments in global infectious disease research 1997–2010: a case study found that between 1997-2010, virology was the highest funded category of infectious disease research and the largest funders of such research in the UK were the Wellcome Trust (£688 million) and the MRC (£673 million). The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation also direct the majority of their “philanthropical” efforts towards combating infectious diseases, with less than 3% of their budget being directed towards non-communicable disease. So what does all this mean? Well, it means that viruses are worth A LOT of money (and will continue to appreciate exponentially for obvious reasons).

Perhaps this explains why the claim that Sars-Cov-2 doesn’t exist is treated with such ardent censorship and disdain compared to the germ-friendly “lab-leak” theory which has now wormed its way into the mainstream narrative, supported even by those on the more alternative side. Whether true or untrue, what many people fail to consider is the extent to which this theory favours the pharmaceutical industry. In fact, not only does it favour Big Pharma, it favours the WEF hoaxsters by strengthening the “deadly virus” narrative, it favours vaccine manufacturers, it favours virologists, it favours the Western powers, it favours the bankers, it favours Hollywood, it favours the CDC, and it favours the WHO!

The “lab-leak” hypothesis favours just about every organization or group associated with the Covid scamdemic. And let’s not forget that theories of mutant viruses escaping from laboratories certainly favour any researcher who could benefit from the massive amounts of money sloshing around in the kitties of the world’s medical gatekeepers. But who are these gatekeepers who control, direct and manipulate medical research for control and profit? That is the main subject of this article.

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Most of the time they do.

 

 

US biolabs and pathogens
https://twitter.com/i/status/1503682999887581191

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2015

 

 

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

 

 

 

Jan 142022
 


Caravaggio Adoration of the Shepherds 1609

 

Clinical Outcomes Among Patients Infected With Omicron (medRxiv)
Omicron 91% Less Likely To Be Fatal Compared To Delta: CDC Study (NYP)
Supreme Court Blocks Biden’s OSHA Vaxx Mandate (ZH)
Not Surprising, And Deserved By All (Denninger)
Rand Paul Labels Fauci ‘Juvenile Political Creature’ For Playing The Victim (SN)
Dr. Oz Calls Fauci A ‘Petty Tyrant,’ Challenges Him To Debate (Hill)
Florida Family Fighting for Ivermectin: Appeals Court Expedites Case (ET)
Do Antigen Tests Work If You Are Asymptomatic? (Kirsch)
Why DID The Science Establishment Try So Hard To Silence Lab Leak Theory? (DM)
Dems’ Voting Bill Is ‘Crass Power Grab’ By ‘Clown Car’ Running DC (JTN)
“Mother Of All” Supply Chain Shocks Looms As China Locks Down Ports (ZH)
What The West Gets Wrong About Putin (Malmgren)
US Envoy In Europe Says ‘Drumbeat Of War Is Sounding Loud’ (Hill)

 

 

The most vaccinated state in the Union:

 

NHS nurse

 

 

Lord Frost
https://twitter.com/i/status/1481574856827232258

 

 

First time (?!) I see a science report claim deaths from Omicron. Well, sort of:

“Rates of ICU admission and mortality after an outpatient positive test were 0.26 (0.10-0.73) and 0.09 (0.01-0.75) fold as high among cases with Omicron variant infection ..”

We now have 1 case reported in UK, 1 case US (debunked), 1 case Israel (no evidence), and yesterday 1 case in Greece, “with” Omicron.

As case numbers have gone up 5 fold everywhere. If Omicron is at all capable of killing people, we should have seen a lot more reports like these. We do not.

Clinical Outcomes Among Patients Infected With Omicron (medRxiv)

Background: The Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant of SARS-CoV-2 has rapidly achieved global dissemination, accounting for most infections in the United States by December 2021. Risk of severe outcomes associated with Omicron infections, as compared to earlier SARS-CoV-2 variants, remains unclear.

Methods: We analyzed clinical and epidemiologic data from cases testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection within the Kaiser Permanente Southern California healthcare system from November 30, 2021 to January 1, 2022, using S gene target failure (SGTF) as assessed by the ThermoFisher TaqPath ComboKit assay as a proxy for Omicron infection. We fit Cox proportional hazards models to compare time to any hospital admission and hospital admissions associated with new-onset respiratory symptoms, intensive care unit (ICU) admission, mechanical ventilation, and mortality among cases with Omicron and Delta (non-SGTF) variant infections. We fit parametric competing risk models to compare lengths of hospital stay among admitted cases with Omicron and Delta variant infections.

Results: Our analyses included 52,297 cases with SGTF (Omicron) and 16,982 cases with non-SGTF (Delta [B.1.617.2]) infections, respectively. Hospital admissions occurred among 235 (0.5%) and 222 (1.3%) of cases with Omicron and Delta variant infections, respectively. Among cases first tested in outpatient settings, the adjusted hazard ratios for any subsequent hospital admission and symptomatic hospital admission associated with Omicron variant infection were 0.48 (0.36-0.64) and 0.47 (0.35-0.62), respectively. Rates of ICU admission and mortality after an outpatient positive test were 0.26 (0.10-0.73) and 0.09 (0.01-0.75) fold as high among cases with Omicron variant infection as compared to cases with Delta variant infection. Zero cases with Omicron variant infection received mechanical ventilation, as compared to 11 cases with Delta variant infections throughout the period of follow-up (two-sided p<0.001). Median duration of hospital stay was 3.4 (2.8-4.1) days shorter for hospitalized cases with Omicron variant infections as compared to hospitalized patients with Delta variant infections, reflecting a 69.6% (64.0-74.5%) reduction in hospital length of stay.

Conclusions: During a period with mixed Delta and Omicron variant circulation, SARS-CoV-2 infections with presumed Omicron variant infection were associated with substantially reduced risk of severe clinical endpoints and shorter durations of hospital stay.

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There we go again: “..just one of the 52,297 people infected with Omicron died..”.

Really? Where is the case description? Where are the details? It would be so unique that surely it would make headlines.

Walensky gives it away:

“We MAY see deaths from Omicron but I suspect that the deaths that we’re seeing now are still from Delta. ”

Omicron 91% Less Likely To Be Fatal Compared To Delta: CDC Study (NYP)

Omicron poses a “substantially reduced risk” of serious illness compared to Delta — and is more than 90 percent less likely to kill those infected, according to a federally funded study. The study, released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Wednesday, said it proved “compelling evidence of an intrinsically less severe infection” from the variant that currently accounts for 90 percent of cases in the US. The evaluation of more than 70,000 infected Californians saw those with Omicron less than half as likely to need hospitalization as those with Delta — and about 75 percent less likely to need intensive care. Those hospitalized also needed to stay approximately 70 percent less time, with a median treatment time of 1.5 days compared to five days for those with the previous dominant variant.


Even though the study looked at three times as many people with Omicron, none of them needed to go on a ventilator in the hospital — compared to 11 in the far smaller group with Delta. Most encouragingly, just one of the 52,297 people infected with Omicron died — a reduction of 91 percent compared to 14 deaths in the 16,982 studied with Delta. It did not say how old those who died were, or if they were vaccinated. CDC director Rochelle Walensky told reporters that it likely means the recent increase in deaths is a lagging effect of the Delta variant, not the one rapidly replacing it. “We may see deaths from Omicron but I suspect that the deaths that we’re seeing now are still from Delta,” Walensky revealed.

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Threatening people’s lives and livelihoods over taking medicines, experimental or not, has always been a no-go. SCOTUS should not be needed for that. And they still leave the mandate for healthcare workers in place.

Supreme Court Blocks Biden’s OSHA Vaxx Mandate (ZH)

Despite the misinformation spewed forth by Justice Sotomayor, The US Supreme Court has blocked the Biden administration’s vaccine-or-test rule for US businesses, but allows vaccine mandate for most health care workers. The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) argue against the Department of Labor, in the Court’s first hearing, that: “OSHA’s sweeping regulatory dictate,” will “irreparably injure the very businesses that Americans have counted on to widely distribute COVID-19 vaccines and protective equipment to save lives—and to keep them fed, clothed, and sustained during this now two-year-long pandemic.” The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rule would have required 80 million workers to get shots or periodic tests. The OSHA ruling vote was 6-3 with Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan in dissent.

“Permitting OSHA to regulate the hazards of daily life – simply because most Americans have jobs and face those same risks while on the clock – would significantly expand OSHA’s regulatory authority without clear congressional authorization.” Chief Justice John Roberts, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, said during arguments that he thinks it’s hard to argue that the 1970 law governing OSHA “gives free reign to the agencies to enact such broad regulation.” The court allowed a separate rule to take effect requiring shots for workers in nursing homes, hospitals and other facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid payments from the federal government (which will be interesting given that California just allowed COVID positive healthcare workers to go back to work).

The vaccine mandate for healthcare workers vote was 5-4 with Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett in dissent, which means Roberts and Kavanaugh joined liberal justices in allowing the HHS mandate on healthcare workers to stand. So with over 1 million COVID cases per day, record high inflation, Sinema blew out the filibuster, record low approval rating, and now his vaxx mandate in tatters, this seems to sum things up rather well… “This must be Biden’s worst day in office.”

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Karl is overdoing the I told you so. At some point, it gets ugly.

Not Surprising, And Deserved By All (Denninger)

The OSHA ruling got blown up by the Supremes, 6-3 as I expected. This leaves all the private-sector employers who issued mandates in front of it fully exposed for any and all bad side effects. I expect the lawsuits to start imminently and they will bankrupt plenty of people. Good. I hope every single virtue-signaling CEO and HR Karen gets in the ass. They deserve it. “OSHA has never before imposed such a mandate. Nor has Congress. Indeed, although Congress has enacted significant legislation addressing the *****–19 pandemic, it has declined to enact any measure similar to what OSHA has promulgated here.” Exactly and as I noted the Senate explicitly declined to approve such a measure in the last couple of months and in fact explicitly disapproved it.

Yes, it went nowhere in the House as expected but you need both houses of Congress to concur when it comes to an authority. I said this would get official notice by The Supremes and it did. “In fact, the most noteworthy action concerning the ******* mandate by either House of Congress has been a majority vote of the Senate disapproving the regulation on December 8, 2021. S. J. Res. 29, 117th Cong., 1st Sess. (2021).” With the Senate explicitly disavowing same and nothing in the Congressional Record nor acts over the last two years this was clearly doomed and died a well-deserved death. Now onto CMS. Here I predicted the most-likely outcome was a split decision upholding the mandate in nursing homes and other non-consensual situations.

What we got was a 5-4 upholding it on technical grounds and, having read the opinion, you won’t like why it happened. Let’s be blunt: You ****ed yourself, America, and you deserve this outcome. You put the Federal Government in charge of what it pays for when it comes to medical care. You let them, not you or your doctor, make those decisions. You have in fact cheered this on and allowed it. You even allowed it when Trump promised to stop it during the campaign, along with all of its corruption, and then on election night all three planks dealing with the medical monopolies, which were a mere start, disappeared and yet fully half the nation continued to suck his dick.

[..] Actions — and deliberate inactions — have consequences. I don’t like the outcome but it wasn’t illogical considering what was argued and what we, the people have permitted and set in motion over the last three decades. The solicitors on the State side failed to argue that (1) these are experimental injections and (2) as of now they don’t even ****ing work and even Pfizer’s CEO admits it.

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“Does he not realise I have people arrested once every month or two who have threatened to attack me, plus I have been attacked, and he’s going to come and blame his attacks on me?”

Rand Paul Labels Fauci ‘Juvenile Political Creature’ For Playing The Victim (SN)

Following the explosive latest exchange between Rand Paul and Anthony Fauci Tuesday, Fauci ran to CNN and MSNBC to complain more about how the Senator is attacking him for his own political gain, prompting Paul to label the NIAID head “juvenile”. On Chris Hayes’ show Fauci, stated “What you saw at the hearing today was pure ad hominem. And I called him [Paul] out because that’s exactly what he’s doing: he’s raising money.” Note that during the hearing Fauci did not present any evidence to counter Paul’s claims that the NIAID Director has continually lied under oath and has actively attempted to shut down scientists and doctors who disagree with him. Fauci attempted to shift the narrative to personal attacks against him.

Appearing on Fox News, Paul shot back, claiming that Fauci is now going even beyond saying he ‘is science’ and cannot be questioned, by suggesting that questioning him is encouraging violence. “It was a cheap shot by a politician, not a scientist,” Paul said, further noting “he’s blaming me for a death threat, but when [Republican members of Congress] were shot at by a Bernie Sanders supporter [in 2017], not one Republican stood up and said, oh, this is Bernie Sanders’s fault”. “We were not juvenile enough to do that,” Paul continued, adding “But he [Fauci] came to the hearing today and accused me of somehow inciting some lunatic person.” Paul further urged, “Does he not realise I have people arrested once every month or two who have threatened to attack me, plus I have been attacked, and he’s going to come and blame his attacks on me?”

“I think he has lied to the American public. I think that he funded the lab in Wuhan that in all likelihood this virus came from. I think he as ignored natural immunity. I think he has told people to wear a cloth mask when they don’t work,” Paul emphasised. In a further appearance, Paul said of Fauci “He didn’t answer the question why is he smearing these three doctors? I’m proud of the fact people go to RandPaul.com raising money to fire Fauci because he is a menace.” “Everything he said has been incorrect. And I think he is part of the problem, Paul continued, adding “Even from the very beginning the fact that this virus came from a lab in Wuhan he has denied it and worked to cover it up and denigrated anybody who raises this question as a conspiracy theorist.”

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I wouldn’t trust Oz at the far end of a ten foot pole, and this makes me think his campaign team is looking for -cheap- publicity, whether over the back of Fauci, or that of Rand Paul.

Dr. Oz Calls Fauci A ‘Petty Tyrant,’ Challenges Him To Debate (Hill)

GOP Pennsylvania Senate candidate Mehmet Oz, more commonly known as “Dr. Oz” from his TV program “The Dr. Oz Show,” called infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci a “petty tyrant” and challenged him to a debate on COVID-19. “It’s past time Fauci faces the fact that he got COVID wrong. So, doctor to doctor – let’s debate. This Doctor is in, are you?” Oz said in a tweet Thursday while posting a campaign ad attacking Fauci. “Let’s get the facts straight here. You and me. Let’s have a debate, doctor to doctor, and give the American people the truth about COVID-19. I’m game. Anytime. Anywhere. Dr. Fauci, are you in?” Oz said in the campaign video.


Fauci has been under attack by Republicans throughout the pandemic, as many in the party disagree with how the country’s leading infectious diseases expert has guided the U.S. through the coronavirus. Oz said on Newsmax on Thursday that he wants to debate Fauci on vaccine mandates, natural immunity from COVID-19 infections and delays with drugs such as monoclonal antibodies. “He is a petty tyrant. He got COVID wrong. He continues to get it wrong,” Oz told the outlet, noting that “doctors like me” think Fauci has not managed the pandemic correctly.

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Mayo Clinic would rather have people die than give in. That redefines “shameless”.

Florida Family Fighting for Ivermectin: Appeals Court Expedites Case (ET)

Florida’s First District Court of Appeal has expedited the process to decide a lawsuit filed by the family of a COVID-19 patient on a ventilator at a Jacksonville hospital. Attorneys for Mayo Clinic Florida have until 10 a.m. Jan. 13 to respond to the appeal filed by the family of 70-year-old Daniel Pisano. Then the family’s attorneys will have until Jan. 14 to file additional arguments. At that time, a three-panel judge could be appointed to decide the case. Mayo Clinic has said Pisano, who has been on a ventilator 22 days, has a slim chance of survival. But an outside doctor, who is not affiliated with Mayo Clinic, testified in an emergency hearing Dec. 30 that there’s still a good chance to save him—although there’s no time to delay, the physician said.

In a desperate attempt to save their loved one, the Pisano family has begged Mayo Clinic to try a protocol widely used by independent physicians around the country and developed by the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance. Mayo Clinic officials have refused and attorneys have fought the family’s wishes vigorously in court. Claudia Pisano, Daniel Pisano’s wife of 51 years, and their son, Chris, have power of attorney and legally have the right to ask for the treatment of their choice, their attorneys have argued. But Daniel Pisano is declining fast and running out of time, they say. The family’s trusted doctor, Dr. Eduardo Balbona of Jacksonville, testified that in order to save him the hospital must quickly allow treatment—with ivermectin and other drugs and supplements—he’s used to help dozens of critically ill COVID-19 patients recover.

Being on the ventilator is doing harm to Pisano and other patients fighting COVID-19, Balbona testified. After considering the testimony in the three-hour hearing, Judge Marianne Aho, of Florida’s Fourth Judicial Circuit, denied the family’s plea to force Mayo Clinic doctors to step aside and let Balbona treat their dying loved one. Aho wrote, “An individual’s right to privacy is one of self-determination, the right to accept or refuse. It is not a right to demand a particular treatment. It is not a right to substitute one’s judgment as to which treatments must be made available by others. There is no right, constitutional or otherwise, of a patient to substitute one’s judgment for a medical professional.” The family disagrees saying the Florida Patient’s Bill of Rights gives them the right to choose between treatment options and they’ve offered to release Mayo Clinic from all liability in following through with that care. They filed an appeal Jan. 9.

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Stop testing healthy people.

Do Antigen Tests Work If You Are Asymptomatic? (Kirsch)

Here’s what you need to know about antigen rapid tests: 1/ In general, each test brand will test for a specific antigen. They may or may not tell you which antigen they detect. 2/ Each brand has a different sensitivity. For low sensitivity tests, it will be fruitless to test if you are not symptomatic because it will almost certainly be negative. It would be nice if they correlated the results with PCR cycle thresholds, but those are non-standard as well. Unfortunately, as far as I know, there are no standards to inform you on 1 and 2 above. There is no “reference standard” that they compare to.


This of course means that you can be wasting serious money taking tests when you are asymptomatic because the certain brands will never be positive if you are asymptomatic. I want to thank Dr. Byram Bridle for pointing this out to me. They really should tell you, “Hey, if you aren’t symptomatic, don’t bother to take our test.” The manufacturers are never going to tell you that (since they aren’t required to), but I thought you should know.

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How about a Special Counsel?

Why DID The Science Establishment Try So Hard To Silence Lab Leak Theory? (DM)

There are now two core questions over the birth of this pandemic: did Covid emerge through some kind of scientific mishap or through natural transmission from animals? And why did the science establishment work so hard to silence dissident voices? Indeed, it seems incredible that not only does Farrar remain in a job in which he directs so much crucial medical research, but even saw his annual salary rise by £28,000 to £512,000 last year, according to latest accounts. For Sir Jeremy is a pivotal figure in the sequence of secretive events that followed the emergence of a new disease in Wuhan in late 2019. Many of the growing concerns revolve around a secretive teleconference Farrar led on February 1 2020, as fears over the emerging pandemic exploded.

And the more we learn through leaks, freedom of information requests, interviews and tenacious investigations, the more it smacks of an establishment conspiracy to stifle debate over high-risk science – ironically by accusing those who challenge the consensus of being conspiracy theorists. The call involved the two most influential scientists in America – controversial presidential adviser Dr Anthony Fauci and Dr Francis Collins, then head of the US major funding body financially supporting high-risk research into bat coronaviruses conducted in Wuhan – plus 11 experts including Sir Patrick Vallance, our government’s chief scientific adviser. We know from Farrar’s book and previous email disclosures that several key participants, including Farrar, were concerned the deadly new virus was linked to research in Wuhan, home to several labs carrying out research into bat coronaviruses.

One Australian-based virologist said he was ‘80 per cent sure this thing had come out of a lab’ while another key participant was ‘60 to 70 per cent’ convinced. After their hour-long discussion, Farrar remained uncertain, saying ‘this will remain grey unless there is access to the Wuhan lab’. Yet, following that call and the airing of those views, the scientists’ public stance changed with bizarre speed for such a vexatious scientific conundrum – especially given the lack of data from Wuhan or any assistance from Beijing. They began publishing punchy statements dismissing lab leaks in the most prestigious science journals, some of which have extensive commercial ties to China. And they were backed by patsy politicians and supine journalists, whose hostility was inflamed by then President Donald Trump’s allegations about the ‘China virus’.

The result was this vital debate was set back at least a year. Farrar and two other Wellcome Trust experts signed a key statement in the Lancet medical journal praising Chinese efforts to tackle the disease while saying they ‘strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid does not have a natural origin’. It later emerged the article was covertly organised within days of the call by Peter Daszak, a British scientist whose New York organisation funnelled US funds to research partners at Wuhan Institute of Virology, China’s top biosafety lab. Farrar also quietly assisted five scientists, four of whom were on that call, to write a commentary in Nature Medicine that firmly stated the authors ‘do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible’. This hugely-influential statement has been accessed 5.62 million times and cited by more than 2,000 academic papers.

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Come for the headline, stay for the content.

Dems’ Voting Bill Is ‘Crass Power Grab’ By ‘Clown Car’ Running DC (JTN)

Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, a proponent of election integrity reform, said Wednesday that the bills currently making their way through Congress that are designed to federalize elections are part of “the same clown car that has driven this constitutional republic to a disastrous edge.” He made the comments following President Joe Biden’s and Vice President Kamala Harris’ speeches on Tuesday in Georgia regarding Democrats’ voting legislation. Blackwell, former mayor of Cincinnati, told the John Solomon Reports podcast Wednesday that the Democrats’ election bills are “a crass power grab by the … clown car that is now running Washington, D.C.”

After listing the Biden administration’s unpopular policies and political failures, such as “soaring inflation” and the supply chain crisis, Blackwell explained how the Democrats want to unconstitutionally federalize elections. “[E]lections take place at the local level, in a decentralized way, because, one, that is where you have transparency, that’s where you have familiarity, that’s where you have buy-in,” he said. “And if you start to take it away from states and localities, you run the risk of the same clown car that has driven this constitutional republic to a disastrous edge taking control of our elections. It won’t stand.”

Blackwell criticized Democrats for their inconsistency on showing ID to vote versus providing proof of vaccination as Washington, D.C.’s vaccine mandate — which includes showing a vaccine card and photo ID at venues such as restaurants and gyms — goes into effect Saturday. Regarding voter ID, he said, “To equate these common-sense reforms that states are putting in place to ensure the integrity of the election system as being a throwback to Jim Crow is an insult to all Americans, especially those in the African-American community.”

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Zero covid will mean zero supplies.

“Mother Of All” Supply Chain Shocks Looms As China Locks Down Ports (ZH)

Over the past month, as Wall Street turned increasingly optimistic on US growth alongside the Fed, with consensus (shaped by the Fed’s leaks and jawboning) now virtually certain of a March rate hike, we have been repeatedly warning that after a huge policy error in 2021 when the Fed erroneously said that inflation is “transitory” (it wasn’t), the central bank is on pace to make another just as big policy mistake in 2022 by hiking as many as 4 times and also running off its massive balance sheet… right into a global growth slowdown.


And, as we have also discussed in recent weeks, one place where this growth slowdown is emerging – besides the upcoming deterioration in US consumption where spending is now being funded to record rates by credit cards before it encounters a troubling air pocket – is China and its “covid-zero” policy in general, and its covid-locked down ports in particular. But what until recently was a minority view confined to our modest website, has since expanded and as Bloomberg writes overnight, the effects of restrictions in China as the country maintains its Covid-zero policy “are starting to hit supply chains in the region.” As a result of the slow movement of goods through some of the country’s busiest and most important ports means shippers are now diverting to Shanghai, causing the types of knock-on delays at the world’s biggest container port that led to massive congestion bottlnecks last summer that eventually translated into a record number of container ships waiting off the coast of California, a glut that hasn’t been cleared to this day.

With sailing schedules already facing delays of about a week, freight forwarders warn of the impact on already back-logged gateways in Europe and the US and is also why HSBC economists are warning that the world economy could be headed for the “mother of all” supply chain shocks if the highly infectious omicron variant which is already swamping much of the global economy spreads across Asia, especially China, at which point disruption to manufacturing will be inevitable. “Temporary, one would hope, but hugely disruptive all the same” in the next few months, they wrote in a research note this week first noted by Bloomberg. For those who have forgotten last year’s global shockwave when China locked down its ports for several days, a quick reminder: it led to an unprecedented hiccup in global logistics and shipping which hasn’t been resolved to this day. That’s because China is the world’s biggest trading nation and its ability to keep its factories humming through the pandemic has been crucial for global supply chains.

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Disappointing. Advisor to 3 different presidents, Malmgren, tells me nothing I don’t already know about Putin. And he doesn’t appear to say what it is the west gets wrong.

What The West Gets Wrong About Putin (Malmgren)

In 1999, Vladimir Putin suddenly sprang from bureaucratic obscurity to the office of Prime Minister. When, a few months later, Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned and Putin was voted in as President, governments around the world were taken by surprise yet again. How could this unknown figure have amassed national voter support with so little media attention? I had first met Putin seven years before and was not surprised by his rapid domination of the new Russia. We were introduced by Yevgeny Primakov, widely known as “Russia’s Kissinger”, who I had met in Moscow multiple times during the Cold War years when I advised Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford. Primakov was a no-nonsense thinker and writer. He was also a special emissary for the Kremlin in conducting secret discussions with national leaders around the world.

When Yeltsin tasked his advisor Anatoly Sobchak with identifying and recruiting Russia’s best and brightest, Putin, then a local politician in his hometown of St Petersburg, was top of his list — so Primakov took Putin under his wing to tutor him in global power and security issues. Eventually, Primakov introduced Kissinger to Putin, and they became close. That both Primakov and Kissinger took time to coach Putin on geopolitics and geosecurity was a clear demonstration that they saw in him the characteristics of a powerful leader. It also showed Putin’s capacity for listening to lengthy lessons on geopolitics — as I was soon to learn.

In 1992, I received a call from a meeting organiser at the CSIS think tank inviting me to join a US-Russia St Petersburg Commission to be chaired by Kissinger and Sobchak. The purpose would be to help the new Russian leadership in opening channels of business and banking with the West. Most of the Western members would be CEOs of major US and European companies, as well as key officials of the new Russian government. I would attend as an expert. I was told that a “Mr Primakov” had personally asked if I could make time to participate. I could hardly refuse such a request, and I was intensely curious about the emerging Russian leadership, especially about Putin.

Arriving at the first meeting, I saw several people gathered around Kissinger and a man I was told was Putin. An official identified himself to me and said he had been asked by Primakov to introduce me to Putin. He interrupted the conversation with Kissinger to announce my arrival; Putin warmly responded that he was looking forward to chatting with me about how I see the world from inside Washington. We spoke on several occasions between meetings, and he arranged to sit next to me at a dinner, accompanied by his interpreter. At that dinner, he asked me: “What is the single most important obstacle between your Western businessmen and my fellow Russians in starting up business connections?”

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The neocons are with Biden now.

US Envoy In Europe Says ‘Drumbeat Of War Is Sounding Loud’ (Hill)

Washington’s envoy in Europe on Thursday issued a stark warning of war in Eastern Europe amid Russia’s military buildup on Ukraine’s border but said the U.S. and the majority of its allies support ongoing dialogue to tamp down tensions. “We’re facing a crisis in European security. The drumbeat of war is sounding loud, and the rhetoric has gotten rather shrill,” said Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Carpenter spoke with reporters following a meeting of the OSCE focused on advancing diplomacy between the U.S., Europe and Russia, the conclusion of an extraordinary session of three diplomatic meetings on the continent this week and in response to Russian military provocations.


“There’s close to 100,000 troops on the Russian side of its border with Ukraine. Their presence and the live fire measures being carried out are raising many questions about Moscow’s intention,” Carpenter said. The OSCE meeting, which took place in Vienna on Thursday, was the first inaugural permanent council meeting of 2022 but was overtaken by discussions surrounding Russia’s military buildup on Ukraine’s border. Both nations are members of the security group. It was the first time Russian and Ukrainian officials met in person to discuss what Moscow calls its security concerns and followed bilateral talks between the U.S. and Russia in Geneva on Monday and between Russia and NATO on Wednesday in Brussels.

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Aftter an 8-hour shift wearing a properly fittted N95 mask:

 

 

 

The only half mask that works, according to Steve Kirsch.

 

 

 

Carson

 

 

 

 

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

 

Jan 122022
 
 January 12, 2022  Posted by at 9:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  88 Responses »


Caravaggio Burial of St. Lucy 1608

 

Rand Paul Driving Violent Threats Against Me, Fauci Says (R.)
Fauci Confronts Rand Paul Over Murder Plot (RT)
A 30-year Lie On Misplaced Vaccines (Girardot)
Omicron May Be Headed For A Rapid Drop In US and Britain (AP)
Medical Experts Shred Latest CDC COVID-19 Study (JTN)
Spain First EU Country To Suggest Downgrading Covid To ‘Like The Flu’ (Sun)
Repeated Covid Boosters Not Viable Strategy Against New Variants – WHO (G.)
It Turns Out That, If You Doubted Covid’s Deadliness, You Were Correct (AT)
Quebec Plans To Hit Unvaccinated With A ‘Significant’ Tax (NP)
Scots May Have To Wear Facemasks In Public For Years To Come – Sturgeon (DM)
Covid Loses 50% Of Ability To Infect After 10 Seconds In Office Air (NYP)
Biden Backs Calls To Abolish Key Senate Procedure (RT)
Biden, Harris Bash Republicans As ‘Totalitarian’, Wanting ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ (JTN)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Djokovic

 

 

Fauci started out saying that who disagrees with him is against science. This is a lot more dangerous. Now anybody who disagrees with him is trying to kill him.

Rand Paul Driving Violent Threats Against Me, Fauci Says (R.)

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease official, on Tuesday accused Republican Senator Rand Paul of spreading misinformation that has sparked threats of violence against him and his family while distracting the public from the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. At a Senate health committee hearing, Fauci had his latest heated back-and-forth with Paul, a lawmaker from Kentucky and supporter of former President Donald Trump. Fauci said Paul was focused on misinformed attacks rather than oversight aimed at addressing the health care crisis that has so far killed more than 800,000 people in the United States. Paul’s website accuses Fauci of “ignoring good advice, and lying about everything from masks to the contagiousness of the virus” and on Tuesday the senator accused Fauci of smearing other scientists who disagreed with him.


Fauci said Paul was distorting the truth. “There you go again, you just do the same thing every hearing,” Fauci told the senator, accusing him of making personal attacks that had no relation to reality. ‘ “He’s doing this for political reasons,” Fauci continued, pointing to fundraising appeals on Paul’s website next to a call to have Fauci fired. “It distracts from what we’re all trying to do here today, (which) is get our arms around the epidemic and the pandemic that we’re dealing with, not something imaginary,” Fauci said. Fauci has faced sharp criticism from some conservatives and death threats from people who object to measures such as vaccination and masking that he has advocated to halt the pandemic. Fauci said misinformation had fueled such threats. “What happens when he (Paul) gets out and accuses me of things that are completely untrue is that all of a sudden, that kindles the crazies out there and I have … threats upon my life, harassment of my family and my children,” Fauci said.

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“A planner who believes he is The Science leads to an arrogance that justifies in his mind using government resources to smear and destroy the reputations of other scientists that disagree with him..”

Fauci Confronts Rand Paul Over Murder Plot (RT)

Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of being responsible for over 800,000 US deaths from the coronavirus. The Biden administration’s covid czar said Paul’s criticism put his life in danger. The latest clash between Paul and Fauci came on Tuesday at the Senate Health Committee hearing on the US response to Covid-19 variants. At one point, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser held up a printout of a page on the Kentucky senator’s website, with a “Fire Dr. Fauci” banner, to claim that such rhetoric inspired a California man arrested last month for allegedly plotting to murder him. The man, arrested in Iowa on December 21, had an AR-15 rifle and multiple magazines, and told police he was driving to Washington, DC to kill Fauci, the doctor told senators.

“You are making a catastrophic epidemic for your political gain,” Fauci told Paul. Paul pointed to Fauci, as the lead architect of the US government’s pandemic response, and asked how he could call any of it – the lockdowns, mask and vaccine mandates, boosters – a success when over 800,000 people have died. The libertarian-leaning Republican also called out Fauci for being a central planner whose arrogance led to compounding mistakes. “The idea that a government official like yourself would claim unilaterally to represent science and that any criticism of you would be considered a criticism of science itself is quite dangerous,” Paul said. “A planner who believes he is The Science leads to an arrogance that justifies in his mind using government resources to smear and destroy the reputations of other scientists that disagree with him,” the senator added.

“This is not only antithetical to the scientific method, it is the epitome of cheap politics and it is reprehensible.” This was a reference to last month’s revelations that Fauci had worked with National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins in 2020 to discredit critics of lockdowns who signed the Great Barrington Declaration. Emails released by Congress showed Collins asking Fauci for a “quick and devastating published take down of its premises” and later praising him for an “excellent” job.

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“How can an injection in the deltoid stimulate an immunity in the mucus?”

A 30-year Lie On Misplaced Vaccines (Girardot)

In the accelerated development of anti-COVID vaccines, the focus was essentially on developing the right “code” to transfer to the immune system, mainly on the relatively narrow Spike protein, as you all know by now. They also focused on the best delivery vehicle – the lipid nanoparticle – and optimal manufacturing processes. However, vaccine effectiveness depends on many other factors. A systems approach was needed, not a pinpoint solution approach. It’s not enough to find and to present the right antigens – with the right quality – to the immune system, even packed into the latest and greatest technology…

Unfortunately, after a year of vaccination and 9.5 billion doses, vaccine failure is visible to everybody to acknowledge: unforeseen transmission, explosion of cases… If you believe “Our World In Data”, we’ve had 240 million infections in 2021 – when we vaccinated like never before. We only had 70 million in 2020 when we had no vaccines… Based on case numbers, the vaccine is not even putting a dent in the epidemic. Either by media-induced panic, by sheer incompetence, or possibly by customary corruption, vaccine stakeholders have presented a completely false narrative on anti-COVID vaccine effectiveness.

For nearly a year now, I have been exposing two critical inconsistencies in terms of the location of the vaccine-induced immunity that make it nearly impossible for these vaccines to be effective: How can an injection in the deltoid stimulate an immunity in the mucus? Respiratory virus like SARS-COV-2 typically propagate in the mucus: mouth, nose, digestive tract and lungs. For propagation to be stopped in the mucus, notably in the lungs, a preemptive immune arsenal needs to be stimulated there. This is exactly what occurs once recovered from a natural infection: a sterilising immunity is provided by potent resident memory T and B-cells – along with neutralising IgA antibodies – that are positioned in large numbers as a sentinel force to kill in-the-egg any starting infection.

I have addressed this at length in my June article comparing natural immunity and vaccine-induced immunity as well as in my August article on pre-existing immunity. I am not alone in thinking along these lines; many renowned scientists share a similar perspective that intramuscular vaccines cannot work for mucosal viruses. [..] .. it is very unlikely that any intramuscular vaccines can ever work to stop COVID; the vaccines are injected in the wrong location: the muscle, too far away from the virus entry point to stimulate any response there. This is not related to mRNA or DNA technologies, attenuated virus vaccines are also de facto ineffective. This is simply a question of location of where the vaccine is delivered… And the fact that millions have been vaccinated against the flu in the arm every year for decades, most likely uselessly shouldn’t change this reality …

Given the emphasis of vaccine manufacturers and public health authorities on antibodies, you’re all probably thinking: – “Hey Marc ?! What about neutralising antibodies?” The question is: What can antibodies do to stop a propagation that is cell-to-cell? To start, vaccine-induced antibodies are also misplaced … circulating in the blood away from the mucus. And, even if a few antibodies were to migrate to the mucus, they would very much be useless against a virus that propagates cell-to-cell. Fundamentally, cell-to-cell propagation means the virus expansion happens out-of-reach of antibodies (at least before Omicron). Antibodies can’t bind with viruses that are inside cells, only T-cells can chase down virions inside cells by instructing infected cells to self-destruct…

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..“simply because everybody who could be infected will be infected..”

Omicron May Be Headed For A Rapid Drop In US and Britain (AP)

Scientists are seeing signals that COVID-192 s alarming omicron wave may have peaked in Britain and is about to do the same in the U.S., at which point cases may start dropping off dramatically. The reason: The variant has proved so wildly contagious that it may already be running out of people to infect, just a month and a half after it was first detected in South Africa. “It’s going to come down as fast as it went up,” said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. At the same time, experts warn that much is still uncertain about how the next phase of the pandemic might unfold. The plateauing or ebbing in the two countries is not happening everywhere at the same time or at the same pace.

And weeks or months of misery still lie ahead for patients and overwhelmed hospitals even if the drop-off comes to pass. “There are still a lot of people who will get infected as we descend the slope on the backside,” said Lauren Ancel Meyers, director of the University of Texas COVID-19 Modeling Consortium, which predicts that reported cases will peak within the week. The University of Washington’s own highly influential model projects that the number of daily reported cases in the U.S. will crest at 1.2 million by Jan. 19 and will then fall sharply “simply because everybody who could be infected will be infected,” according to Mokdad.

In fact, he said, by the university’s complex calculations, the true number of new daily infections in the U.S. — an estimate that includes people who were never tested — has already peaked, hitting 6 million on Jan. 6. In Britain, meanwhile, new COVID-19 cases dropped to about 140,000 a day in the last week, after skyrocketing to more than 200,000 a day earlier this month, according to government data. Kevin McConway, a retired professor of applied statistics at Britain’s Open University, said that while cases are still rising in places such as southwest England and the West Midlands, the outbreak may have peaked in London. The figures have raised hopes that the two countries are about to undergo something similar to what happened in South Africa, where in the span of about a month the wave crested at record highs and then fell significantly.

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More about the “Covid leads to diabetes” nonsense.

Medical Experts Shred Latest CDC COVID-19 Study (JTN)

Even as CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has started sounding more like COVID-19 policy skeptics, the agency continues promoting research that fits its agenda but quickly provokes professional challenge. For the second time in less than a month, medical experts pounced on the methodology of a study published in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which is not peer-reviewed. The CDC’s COVID and diabetes researchers found that children and teens who recovered from infections are “up to” 2.5 times likelier to develop diabetes, which was uncritically reported across mainstream media Friday. The increased risk to this age group shows the importance of COVID prevention, “including vaccination for all eligible persons,” researchers wrote. “Prevent COVID-19 by using tools like masks and #vaccines for those eligible,” the agency tweeted.

Medical professors at the University of Pittsburgh, University of California San Francisco and Harvard’s medical and public health schools quickly provided informal — and highly critical — peer review. The study has “really really major limitations,” according to Walid Gellad, director of Pitt’s Center for Pharmaceutical Policy & Prescribing, citing its own disclosures. The researchers used a “single ICD-10-CM code, did not include laboratory data at the time of diagnosis, and could not reliably distinguish between type 1 and type 2 diabetes,” the study says. It’s also missing information on “covariates” including obesity that “could have affected the association” between infection and diabetes. “The CDC is back with a new piece of propagan— I mean, a new publication,” UCSF’s Vinay Prasad wrote in a lengthy analysis, calling the study “embarrassing.”

The analysis “hinges on the idea that age-sex matched kids without covid should be comparable to the kids who got covid in terms of risk of diabetes,” but the infection may be more likely to affect “kids of lower socioeconomic status, of certain races, and kids who were already overweight or suffering from medical problems,” he wrote. “Does the CDC attempt to correct for any of these confounders? Not at all,” Prasad said. Also not considered: “the true denominator” of infections as determined by seroprevalance and the increased blood tests for kids who get treated for COVID. He was baffled why the CDC claimed the study showed the need for child vaccinations, “a topic of wide global debate, with differing recommendations by nation (US vs UK).”

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How do you get 27 different countries to agree on this though?

Spain First EU Country To Suggest Downgrading Covid To ‘Like The Flu’ (Sun)

SPAIN could be the first European country to downgrade Covid-19 to a” flu-like” status – just two years after clocking 1,000 deaths a day from the virus. Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez pushed his EU counterparts to debate the possibility of treating Covid like the flu. The European leader told a local radio channel the situation in Spain “is not what we faced a year ago” and that it was time “to evaluate the evolution of COVID to an endemic illness”. The move would see lockdowns and daily infection counts scrapped in favour of a system that would track Covid cases like the regular flu. It comes as a string of positive studies show Omicron is milder than other strains, with data revealing the risk of hospitalisation is 50 to 70 per cent lower than with Delta. Covid booster jabs protect against Omicron and offer the best chance to get through the pandemic, health officials have repeatedly said.


The Sun’s Jabs Army campaign is helping get the vital extra vaccines in Brits’ arms to ward off the need for any new restrictions and protect the NHS. The measure is set to meet stiff resistance from Germany and France where vaccinations rates remain low and where French President Emmanuel Macron has promised to make engaging in public life as tough as possible for the unvaccinated. Sánchez cited Spain’s “exemplary” vaccine uptake which has seen more than 90 per cent of the population over 11 years old become fully vaccinated and 85 per cent of over 60s get a booster as a case for the radical change. Spain has also seen their fatality rate drop to 1 per cent, down from 13 per cent at the height of the first wave of Covid-19 when it experienced 1,000 deaths a day. In the UK, 83 per cent of the population aged 12 and over are fully vaccinated while 63 per cent have had their booster jab, according to the latest government figures.

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Houston, we have a problem.

Repeated Covid Boosters Not Viable Strategy Against New Variants – WHO (G.)

World Health Organization experts have warned that repeating booster doses of the original Covid vaccines is not a viable strategy against emerging variants and called for new jabs that better protect against transmission. “A vaccination strategy based on repeated booster doses of the original vaccine composition is unlikely to be appropriate or sustainable,” the WHO Technical Advisory Group on Covid-19 Vaccine Composition (TAG-Co-VAC) said in a statement published on Tuesday. The group of experts, who are working to assess the performance of Covid-19 vaccines, called for the development of new vaccines that not only protect people who contract Covid against falling seriously ill but also better prevent people from catching the virus in the first place, in order to deal with emerging Covid variants such as Omicron.

“Covid-19 vaccines that have high impact on prevention of infection and transmission, in addition to the prevention of severe disease and death, are needed and should be developed,” the advisory group said. This, it said, would help lower “community transmission and the need for stringent and broad-reaching public health and social measures”. It also suggested that vaccine developers should strive to create jabs that “elicit immune responses that are broad, strong, and long-lasting in order to reduce the need for successive booster doses”. As the virus evolves and until new vaccines are available, “the composition of current Covid-19 vaccines may need to be updated”, the group said.

According to the WHO, 331 candidate vaccines are being worked on around the world. The UN health agency has so far given its stamp of approval to versions of eight different vaccines. A growing body of evidence indicates that the Omicron Covid variant is not only far more transmissible than previous variants, but also better at dodging some vaccine protections. Earlier this week, Pfizer Inc chief executive Albert Bourla said a redesigned Covid-19 vaccine that specifically targets the Omicron variant is likely to be needed and his company could have one ready to launch by March.

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“We know now that two-thirds of deaths for Americans with COVID are people with six or more comorbidities.”

It Turns Out That, If You Doubted Covid’s Deadliness, You Were Correct (AT)

Walensky has acknowledged that, when it comes to vaccinated people who still died from COVID, almost 80% of them had one foot in the grave and one foot on a banana peel: “The overwhelming number of deaths, over 75%, occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities. So, really, these are people who were unwell to begin with. And yes, really encouraging news in the context of Omicron; this means not only just to get your primary series but to get your booster series. And yes, we’re really encouraged by these results.” The study, from the CDC, says: “Among 1,228,664 persons who completed primary vaccination during December 2020–October 2021, severe COVID-19–associated outcomes (0.015%) or death (0.0033%) were rare. Risk factors for severe outcomes included age ≥65 years, immunosuppressed, and six other underlying conditions. All persons with severe outcomes had at least one risk factor; 78% of persons who died had at least four.”

Another interesting thing that emerged during the same appearance is that, as with any other virus, people are most contagious when they’re not yet symptomatic. This renders much of the ten-day lockdown period irrelevant, as even Walensky conceded: “Isolation, we talk about isolation in the context of people who’ve had a positive test, who know that they are infected. And we now have dozens of studies referenced on the CDC website that have demonstrated that you are most infectious in the one to two days before your symptoms and the two to three days after your symptoms. So by five days after your symptoms, the vast majority of your contagiousness is really behind you.”

Dr. Scott Atlas appeared on Tucker Carlson to discuss Walensky’s revelations and was unimpressed. When it comes to morbidity, he said, it’s long been known, only it was kept from the American public. Atlas also reminded Tucker and his audience that there’s a huge difference between being hospitalized for COVID and being hospitalized with COVID. As even Fauci conceded, the latter was mostly true for children. Atlas then said something truly surprising that will further devastate those on the left: “We know now that two-thirds of deaths for Americans with COVID are people with six or more comorbidities.” In other words, unless your health is fragile to begin with, you’re going to be fine

Tucker Atlas

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This is all about control, not health. Otherwise this tax would be levied on smokers and fat people too.

Quebec Plans To Hit Unvaccinated With A ‘Significant’ Tax (NP)

The Quebec government wants to impose a “significant” financial penalty on the “small minority” of Quebecers who refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Premier François Legault made the announcement — which would be a first in Canada — during a press conference on Tuesday. He said he was working on the tax with Finance Minister Eric Girard while also reviewing the measure’s legality. “Unfortunately, there is still a small minority, about 10 per cent of the population, that refuses to get vaccinated,” Legault said. “I sense the frustration from Quebecers towards that minority that … is clogging our hospitals.” “That is why I am announcing that we are currently working on a health contribution that will be charged to all Quebec adults who refuse to get vaccinated,” he continued, adding that people with medical exemptions would be excluded from the new tax.


Legault did not announce any details nor a date for the new tax, nor did he specify the amount except to say that it would be “significant.” The premier said that unvaccinated Quebecers currently occupy 50 per cent of intensive care unit beds in the province, despite being one tenth of the population. “It is shocking,” he said. “People who refuse to get vaccinated impose a burden on (health care) personnel and an important financial burden on the majority of Quebecers.” “All adults in Quebec who don’t accept to go get at least a first dose in the next few weeks will have a bill to pay because there are consequences on our health system and its not up to all Quebecers to pay for that,” he added. The measure, which is sure to be controversial both in the province and in Canada, was immediately criticized by opposition party Québec Solidaire as “radical” for “completely” forgetting vulnerable people such as the homeless or those suffering from severe mental health issues.

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WTF guidance.

Scots May Have To Wear Facemasks In Public For Years To Come – Sturgeon (DM)

People in Scotland may have to wear masks in public places for years to come, Nicola Sturgeon has warned. The First Minister insisted that tough curbs dramatically imposed on hospitality venues and large gatherings from Boxing Day had stemmed the spread of Covid, despite official figures showing that Scotland’s virus rate is higher than England’s. And furious business leaders said Miss Sturgeon’s ‘gamble’ with restrictions must end after they failed to make ‘any meaningful difference’ to infections in Scotland. Speaking ahead of today’s announcement about extending restrictions beyond next week, Miss Sturgeon said face coverings ‘might be required in the longer-term to enable us to live with it [Covid] with far fewer protective measures’.

In England, Covid restrictions could start to be lifted this month after Michael Gove said Britain was moving towards a situation where it could ‘live with’ the virus. Downing Street is examining options to lift Plan B measures in stages if cases remain too high to remove them all in one go. Extending Covid passes, due to expire on January 26, would require another bruising clash with Tory backbenchers, which No10 wants to avoid.

But some ministers are pushing for the WFH guidance to be removed first, arguing that it causes the most damage to the economy. Miss Sturgeon told STV’s Scotland Tonight: ‘Sometimes when you hear people talk about learning to live with Covid, what seems to be suggested is that one morning we’ll wake up and not have to worry about it any more, and not have to do anything to try to contain and control it. ‘That’s not what I mean when I say “learning to live with it”. Instead, we will have to ask ourselves what adaptations to pre-pandemic life — face coverings, for example — might be required in the longer-term to enable us to live with it with far fewer protective measures.’

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Is this a good thing, or not?

Covid Loses 50% Of Ability To Infect After 10 Seconds In Office Air (NYP)

The coronavirus loses about 50 percent of its ability to infect about 10 seconds after it becomes airborne in a typical office environment, according to a new study about how the deadly bug survives in exhaled air. “People have been focused on poorly ventilated spaces and thinking about airborne transmission over meters or across a room,” said Prof. Jonathan Reid, director of the University of Bristol’s Aerosol Research Centre, the Guardian reported. “I’m not saying that doesn’t happen, but I think still, the greatest risk of exposure is when you’re close to someone,” said Reid, the lead author of the study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed. “When you move further away, not only is the aerosol diluted down, there’s also less infectious virus because the virus has lost infectivity (as a result of time),” he added.


The UK university researchers’ findings highlight the impact of short-range transmission — and stress the importance of physical distancing and masking up as the best way to avoid infection. While still worthwhile, ventilation was deemed to be less effective, the news outlet reported. The study determined that viral particles quickly lose moisture and dry out after they are expelled from the lungs. The particles’ pH also rises rapidly when the carbon dioxide in their environment drops, the news outlet reported. The relative humidity of the surrounding air affects how fast the particles dry out. When under 50 percent, such as the relatively dry air in an office, the virus had become half as infectious within 10 seconds. But at 90 percent humidity, 52 percent of particles remained infectious after five minutes, dropping to about 10 percent after 20 minutes.

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“..Though Biden had spent 36 years in the Senate and repeatedly defended the filibuster when Democrats were in the minority..”

Biden Backs Calls To Abolish Key Senate Procedure (RT)

US President Joe Biden has called for the Senate to change the rule requiring 60 votes to move a bill forward, saying it was the only way to pass the two Democrat initiatives federalizing elections and ensure “majority rule.” Speaking in Atlanta, Georgia on Tuesday, Biden declared “this is the moment to decide to defend our elections, to defend our democracy.” He said he’d been having “quiet conversations” about the change with members of Congress over the past two months. “I’m tired of being quiet,” Biden said, raising his voice. “Today, I’m making it clear. To protect our democracy, I support changing the Senate rules whichever way they need to be changed, to prevent a minority of senators from blocking actions on voting rights.” “The majority should rule in the US Senate,” he added.

While Democrats have a nine-vote majority in the House of Representatives, the Senate is split 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris acting as the tie-breaker. While this 51-vote majority has been used to approve Biden’s nominations, the long-standing filibuster rule requiring at least 60 votes to pass bills stands in the way of the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Both have been proposed by Democrats as a way of imposing a federal standard on US elections in response to what they called “voter suppression” bills passed by Republican state legislatures after the controversial 2020 vote. Repeating that accusation on Tuesday, Biden argued that “history has never been kind to those who sided with voter suppression over voter rights,” and compared anyone opposed to the bills to racists and segregationists.

Though Biden had spent 36 years in the Senate and repeatedly defended the filibuster when Democrats were in the minority, on Tuesday, he argued that “the threat to our democracy is so grave that we must find a way to pass these voting rights bills.” Last week, on the anniversary of the January 6 Capitol riot, Biden called the 2020 election “the greatest demonstration of democracy in the history of this country.” Officially, Biden won the highest number of votes in US history.

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On track to lose the midterms.

“..Jan. 6, which he described as a moment “so stark” it “stopped time”..”

Biden, Harris Bash Republicans As ‘Totalitarian’, Wanting ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ (JTN)

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris at a rally Tuesday in Georgia bashed Republicans several times throughout voting rights speeches. Former President Donald Trump and the GOP were accused by Biden and Harris of making it more difficult for people to vote, trying to create a totalitarian state and being on the side of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Both officials mentioned the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. “Across our nation anti-voter laws could make it more difficult for as many as 55 million Americans to vote. That is one out of six people in our country,” Harris said during her push to institute national election reform through the Democrat-led Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Republicans have stood against these laws, which they say will eviscerate state voter ID laws and create more election fraud.

“The proponents of these laws are not only putting in place obstacles to the ballot box, they are also working to interfere with our election to get the outcomes they want and to discredit those that they don’t,” Harris jabbed at the GOP over Jan. 6 and possibly over the discredited Trump-Russia scandal. “If we stand idly by, our entire nation will pay the price for generations to come,” Harris grimly said. She also voiced her support for abolishing the filibuster, which she said was not constitutionally protected. “Senate Republicans have exploited arcane rules to block these bills. And let us be clear: the Constitution of the United States gives the Congress the power to pass legislation and nowhere, nowhere does the constitution give a minority the right to unilaterally block legislation.”

Biden began his speech by reflecting on Jan. 6, which he described as a moment “so stark” it “stopped time” and divides “all that came before and everything that followed.” He also said Jan. 6 was a “dreadful day when a dagger was literally held at the throat of American democracy.” While several Jan. 6 rioters have been charged with carrying knifes, such as Douglas Jensen who allegedly carried a knife with a 3-inch blade in his pocket at the time, there is no evidence to support anyone “literally” brought a dagger into the Capitol, much less held it against someone’s throat.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

GOAT

 

 

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Nov 292021
 
 November 29, 2021  Posted by at 9:32 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  58 Responses »


David Hockney Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) 1972

 

Fauci Escalates Feud With GOP Senators, Declaring ‘I Represent Science’ (JTN)
Cruz Responds To Fauci’s Attack On Him, Doubles Down On Call For Criminal Probe (DW)
WHO: Omicron Poses ‘Very High’ Global Risk (R.)
Fauci Reveals Plan To Prepare Americans For Omicron (RT)
Biden and Fauci’s Omicron Travel Ban ‘Worse Than Useless,’ Critics Say (NYP)
BioNTech Testing New Covid Variant To See If It Responds To Vaccine (JTN)
Goldman Slams Omicron Panic: “This Mutation Is Unlikely To Be More Malicious” (ZH)
Swiss Get To Choose Whether To Keep Vaccine Passports In Place (RT)
Appeals Court Blocks California Vaccine Mandate For Prison Workers (Hill)
Rapid and Effective Vitamin D Supplementation in COVID-19 Patients (PubMed)
White Smoke From Wuhan Lab Chimney Signals New Variant Has Been Named (BBee)

 

 

 

 

Fauci Cruz

 

 

Alarm! Close down South Africa!

 

 

Declaring ‘I Represent Science’ disqualifies any scientist. Check what Einstein had to say.

Fauci Escalates Feud With GOP Senators, Declaring ‘I Represent Science’ (JTN)

Dr. Anthony Fauci escalated his feud with Republicans on Sunday, declaring on national television that senators who are challenging his COVID policy decision are “anti-science.” ”They’re really criticizing science because I represent science. That’s dangerous,” Fauci told CBS Face the Nation. The top doctor’s comment drew immediate criticism, including from longtime critic Sen. Rand Paul, who called it “hubris.” “It’s astounding and alarming that a public health bureaucrat would even think to claim such a thing, especially one who has worked so hard to ignore the science of natural immunity,” Paul wrote. Wikipedia founder Larry Sanger added his own slam. “Fauci is a bureaucrat, not a scientist,” he tweeted.

Fauci and his boss, NIH Director Francis Collins, spent most of their time on television Sunday talking about the new coronavirus variant called Omicron. Fauci said the U.S. must do “anything and everything” to curb cases of the variant, although it’s “too early to say” whether a lockdown was needed. Collins said it will take weeks before scientists understand how effective current vaccines are at protecting against it. “We do know that this is a variant that has a lot of mutations—like 50 of them, and more than 30 of those in the spike protein, which is the part off the virus that attaches to your human cells if you get infected,” Collins told Fox News. Fauci added he believed Americans had to get ready to live with COVID.

“I don’t think we’re going to eradicate it,” he said. “We’ve only eradicated one infection of mankind, and that’s smallpox. I don’t think we’re even going to eliminate it.” But it was Fauci’s war of words with GOP senators that generated the most buzz.. “Anybody who’s looking at this carefully, realizes that there’s a distinct anti-science flavor to this, so if they get up and criticize science, nobody’s going to know what they’re talking about,” Fauci said. “But if they get up and really aim their bullets at Tony Fauci, well people can recognize that there’s a person there, so it’s easy to criticize, but they’re really criticizing science because I represent science.”

Read more …

Fauci bringing up Jan 6 tells you his political leaning. And that is now the science.

Cruz Responds To Fauci’s Attack On Him, Doubles Down On Call For Criminal Probe (DW)

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) responded to an attack from Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Chief Medical Advisor to the president, on Sunday by doubling down on his call for the Department of Justice to investigate Fauci for alleged false statements that he made while testifying to Congress. “Anybody who spins lies and threatens and all that theater that goes on with some of the investigations and the congressional committees and the Rand Pauls and all that other nonsense, that’s noise, Margaret, that’s noise,” Fauci said during an interview with CBS News’ Margaret Brennan. Later, when asked about Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) saying that Fauci should be prosecuted by the Department of Justice, Fauci responded: “Yeah. I have to laugh at that. I should be prosecuted? What happened on Jan. 6, senator?”

Fauci claimed that Republicans were trying to scapegoat him to protect former President Donald Trump and that Republicans who are attacking him are “lying.” Cruz responded to Fauci’s remarks in a series of tweets late on Sunday afternoon, calling Fauci “an unelected technocrat who has distorted science and facts in order to exercise authoritarian control over millions of Americans.” “He lives in a liberal world where his smug ‘I REPRESENT science’ attitude is praised,” Cruz said.

Cruz then laid out four “facts” related to his call for the DOJ to investigate Fauci:
1/ On May 11, Fauci testified before a Senate Committee that “the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
2/ On October 20, NIH wrote they funded an experiment at the Wuhan lab testing if “spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model.” That is gain of function research.
3/ Fauci’s statement and the NIH’s October 20 letter cannot both be true. The statements are directly contradictory.
4/ 18 USC 1001 makes it [a] felony, punishable by up to 5 years in prison, to lie to Congress.

“No amount of ad hominem insults parroting Democrat talking points will get Fauci out of this contradiction,” Cruz concluded. “Fauci either needs to address the substance—in detail, with specific factual corroboration—or DOJ should consider prosecuting him for making false statements to Congress.”

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They’re just guessing. They have no idea. Very mild, no cough, no loss of smell. But but…

WHO: Omicron Poses ‘Very High’ Global Risk (R.)

The Omicron variant is likely to spread internationally, posing a “very high” global risk where Covid-19 surges could have “severe consequences” in some areas, the WHO said on Monday. The UN agency, in technical advice to its 194 member states, urged them to accelerate vaccination of high-priority groups and to “ensure mitigation plans are in place” to maintain essential health services. “Omicron has an unprecedented number of spike mutations, some of which are concerning for their potential impact on the trajectory of the pandemic,” the WHO said. “The overall global risk related to the new variant of concern Omicron is assessed as very high.” Further research is needed to better understand Omicron’s potential to escape protection against immunity induced by vaccines and previous infections, it said, adding that more data was expected in coming weeks. “Covid-19 cases and infections are expected in vaccinated persons, albeit in a small and predictable proportion”, it added.

Read more …

“The preparation that we have ongoing … just needs to be revved up,” he continued, “by getting more people vaccinated and getting the fully vaccinated boosted.”

They have no clue if the vaccines will do anything vs Omicron.

Fauci Reveals Plan To Prepare Americans For Omicron (RT)

White House coronavirus adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci has described the Omicron variant of Covid-19 as a “clarion call” to get people vaccinated. This is amid fears that the new variant may prove resistant to existing jabs. In the weeks since it was first discovered in Botswana, the Omicron variant of Covid-19 has rapidly become the dominant strain of the virus in South Africa, and cases have been discovered in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Although the US has shut down travel from a number of affected African countries, Fauci told ABC News on Sunday that “inevitably it will be here, and the question is, will we be prepared for it?” “The preparation that we have ongoing … just needs to be revved up,” he continued, “by getting more people vaccinated and getting the fully vaccinated boosted.”

Fauci also touted the wearing of face masks as key to preparing for Omicron. In a separate appearance on NBC News, he described the rise of the Omicron variant as a “clarion call” to get more people vaccinated. Little is known about Omicron, save for its high number of spike protein mutations, which Fauci said gave the variant “an advantage in transmissibility.” Preliminary information suggests the variant may evade the protection offered by the current crop of vaccines. The first recorded Omicron cases in Botswana occurred in fully vaccinated people, and the European Centre for Disease Control stated on Friday that the new variant might be associated with “a significant reduction in vaccine effectiveness and increased risk for reinfections.”

Fauci also touched on these worries on NBC News, telling host Chuck Todd that Omicron “might evade immune protection … possibly even against some of the vaccine-induced antibodies.” South African governmental adviser Professor Barry Schoub has described the Omicron symptoms as “mild” for “the great majority of the patients” infected with the new Covid-19 strain. “Their symptoms were so different and so mild from those I had treated before,” South African Medical Association chair Dr. Angelique Coetzee told The Telegraph on Saturday. In his push to get more Americans vaccinated, Fauci has previously described the Alpha, Beta, and Delta variants as “clarion calls” to boost vaccination. Some 59% of the US population is now fully vaccinated, and 21% of these people have received booster doses.

Read more …

“Why do people still take this man seriously?”

Biden and Fauci’s Omicron Travel Ban ‘Worse Than Useless,’ Critics Say (NYP)

Critics took aim Saturday at White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and President Biden for their “worse than useless” response to the highly contagious Omicron variant of COVID-19. “No worries, travel ban begins next week because you know, variants don’t spread on holiday weekends,” Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky scoffed on Twitter. “Who really believes this variant isn’t already here?” The Fauci-approved weekend-long delay in launching the ban on travel from Omicron-infected African countries angered City Councilman Joe Borelli (R-SI). “Why do people still take this man seriously?” Borelli, the chamber’s new minority leader, asked. “Either this is a life or death emergency, or it doesn’t need to happen. It seems like this is a lockdown for the sake of lockdowns.”


Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) decried “the stunning hypocrisy of Democrats” regarding COVID travel bans during the last 20 months. “When President Trump took bold and decisive action in February 2020 to impose travel restrictions into the United States from coronavirus hot spots, Joe Biden attacked him, calling this decision a disgrace and xenophobic,” said Stefanik — who has called for Fauci to be fired over the gain-of-function funding controversy. And Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) condemned the Biden administration’s too-little, too-late travel measure as “worse than useless.” “Joe Biden and Tony Fauci push crushing restrictions on Americans—like masking two-year-olds—that are pointless,” Cotton tweeted Saturday. “But when it comes to targeted travel bans to protect American citizens, it’s nothing but incompetence and half measures from this White House.”

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Testing the variant? Not the vaccine?

BioNTech Testing New Covid Variant To See If It Responds To Vaccine (JTN)

Medical company BioNTech said this week that it is testing its vaccine against the latest COVID-19 variant to determine whether or not the shot is effective against the latest mutation of the pandemic virus. World leaders and medical officials expressed alarm this week at a new “variant of concern” arising in Africa, one that is allegedly, like the Delta variant before it, highly transmissible. Officials from numerous countries including the U.S. put in place travel bans against countries reportedly experiencing spread of the variant. BioNTech said that it was exploring whether or not it would have to alter its vaccine in any way to account for the new strain.


“We expect more data from the laboratory tests in two weeks at the latest,” the company told told Reuters. “These data will provide more information about whether B.1.1.529 could be an escape variant that may require an adjustment of our vaccine if the variant spreads globally.” The company told media this week that earlier this year it had already planned for the potential need of a rapid alteration of the vaccine in case of the emergence of new variants.

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Not the worst source for risk assessment.

Goldman Slams Omicron Panic: “This Mutation Is Unlikely To Be More Malicious” (ZH)

One look at the ridiculous plunge across asset markets on Friday, which sent oil into one of its biggest tailspins in history (which as Goldman calculated would only make sense if the Omicron lockdowns are twice as bad as anything observed so far), and one would think that the Omicron variant – which as Edward Snowden so aptly put it “sounds like the name of an 80s movie’s evil Robot King” (of course, the WHO had no choice but to skip the Xi variant, located right before Omicron in the Greek alphabet for obvious propaganda reasons) – is several times more aggressive and far more deadly than the Delta or any other Covid variant to date. Neither is the case, and in fact, as even Tom Peacock, one of the original Imperial College narrative-setters admitted, “it may turn out to be an odd cluster that is not very transmissable.”

Alas, that would not help politicians who kill a lot of birds with just one brand new and “horrifying” variant, including getting a carte blanche for trillions in new vote-buying stimmies, enforcing even more ruthless and authoritarian government restrictions a dream come true for all liberal fans of big government, and most importantly forcing another round of mail-in ballot elections one year from today.

And yet, perhaps the pandemic apocalypse is not just around the corner. On one hand, Angelique Coetzee, the chairwoman of the South African Medical Association said today that “the new Omicron variant of the Coronavirus results in MILD disease, WITHOUT prominent symptoms.” On the other, none other than the most important bank on Wall Street – Goldman “Vampire Squid” Sachs – which sets the narrative that all other banks dutifully follow, has decided that it’s not worth starting a panic crash over this mutation and in a note published late on Friday writes that “this mutation is unlikely to be more malicious and that the existing vaccines will most likely continue to be effective in preventing hospitalizations and deaths” and as a result, while Goldman “would monitor the situation in Gauteng closely over the next month, we do not think that the new variant is sufficient reason to make major portfolio changes.”

[..] Conclusion: while we do not have sufficient information to forecast a global B.1.1.529 wave, a high rate of transmission almost inevitably leads to a variant dominance. Nevertheless, we can have reasonable degree of confidence that this mutation is unlikely to be more malicious and that the existing vaccines will most likely continue to be effective in preventing hospitalizations and deaths. As such, while we would monitor the situation in Gauteng closely over the next month, we do not think that the new variant is sufficient reason to make major portfolio changes.

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“The deal was sweetened for voters by the promise of financial assistance.”

Swiss Get To Choose Whether To Keep Vaccine Passports In Place (RT)

Despite months of protests, Swiss citizens have overwhelmingly voted to keep the country’s system of Covid vaccination certificates in place. The deal was sweetened for voters by the promise of financial assistance. Some 62% of voters chose on Sunday to maintain the country’s coronavirus measures. These measures include a controversial system of Covid vaccination certificates, required since September to enter bars, restaurants, theaters and other public spaces. Majorities in 24 of Switzerland’s 26 cantons backed the law, with only the tiny cantons of Schwyz and Appenzell Innerrhoden rejecting the measures. All of Switzerland’s political parties with the exception of the right-wing Swiss People’s Party supported the law, which was brought to a vote after anti-lockdown groups gathered nearly 200,000 signatures to challenge it earlier this year.

Under Switzerland’s system of direct democracy, any initiative can be brought to a vote with 100,000 signatures. Voters in June backed the introduction of the measures by 60%, but recent months have seen protests break out in Swiss cities over the introduction of vaccine certificates. Police in October used rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannon to disperse crowds of people who broke through barriers outside the parliament building in Bern. “The democratic process has been respected but the law is still unconstitutional,” Michelle Cailler of the ‘Friends of the Constitution’ group said after the vote on Sunday. Cailler’s group was one of several who campaigned against the law.

Céline Amaudruz of the Swiss People’s Party, which is currently topping opinion polls in Switzerland, called on the government to take “coherent and measured” action, rather than treating the result as a “blank cheque” to impose whatever coronavirus-related policies it wishes. The law voted on provides for more than just vaccine passports. It also expands financial support for citizens and businesses affected by the pandemic, a provision that may have won over some reluctant voters.

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A little confusing.

Appeals Court Blocks California Vaccine Mandate For Prison Workers (Hill)

A federal appeals court on Friday issued a temporary stay of a coronavirus vaccine mandate for prison workers. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the stay, postponing the Jan. 12 deadline to get thousands of prison workers vaccinated until at least March, The Associated Press reported. The move by the appeals court came after a request for a stay of a September ruling by a lower court pending an appeal. The appeals court also moved up opening briefs to Dec. 13, according to AP. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation statistics show that at least 240 prisoners have died from COVID-19 and more than half the state prison population has been infected, according to the AP.


The move from the appeals court blocked an earlier decision from U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar that required prison employees to get the vaccine. Tigar’s decision would also require prisoners to get either the vaccine or a medical or religious exemption in order to do work outside the prison or get in-prison visits from family. Both Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association opposed the prison worker mandate, the AP noted. Don Specter, director of the nonprofit Prison Law Office, said the court’s decision “puts both the prison staff and the incarcerated population at greater risk of infection,” according to AP.

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Simple. And this is in people who have already been infected.

Rapid and Effective Vitamin D Supplementation in COVID-19 Patients (PubMed)

Background : We aimed to establish an acute treatment protocol to increase serum vitamin D, evaluate the effectiveness of vitamin D3 supplementation, and reveal the potential mechanisms in COVID-19.

Methods : We retrospectively analyzed the data of 867 COVID-19 cases. Then, a prospective study was conducted, including 23 healthy individuals and 210 cases. A total of 163 cases had vitamin D supplementation, and 95 were followed for 14 days. Clinical outcomes, routine blood biomarkers, serum levels of vitamin D metabolism, and action mechanism-related parameters were evaluated.

Results : Our treatment protocol increased the serum 25OHD levels significantly to above 30 ng/mL within two weeks. COVID-19 cases (no comorbidities, no vitamin D treatment, 25OHD <30 ng/mL) had 1.9-fold increased risk of having hospitalization longer than 8 days compared with the cases with comorbidities and vitamin D treatment. Having vitamin D treatment decreased the mortality rate by 2.14 times. The correlation analysis of specific serum biomarkers with 25OHD indicated that the vitamin D action in COVID-19 might involve regulation of INOS1, IL1B, IFNg, cathelicidin-LL37, and ICAM1.

Conclusions : Vitamin D treatment shortened hospital stay and decreased mortality in COVID-19 cases, even in the existence of comorbidities. Vitamin D supplementation is effective on various target parameters; therefore, it is essential for COVID-19 treatment.

Read more …

The idea is better than the execution.

White Smoke From Wuhan Lab Chimney Signals New Variant Has Been Named (BBee)

Thousands gathered outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology with faces of anxious anticipation over the weekend, as rumors had been circulating that a new COVID-19 variant would soon be named. The hopeful pilgrims’ hours of waiting were not in vain. Cheers erupted as white smoke began pouring out of the chimney early Sunday morning, signaling the creation and naming of a new COVID-19 variant. “It was a lively debate,” said one source from inside the Wuhan lab. “Yuhang suggested we just keep following the Greek alphabet and name it Xi. We haven’t heard from him in a few days, come to think of it.”


“Nu” was also floated as a possibility, but scientists wanted to avoid the stigma of being associated with nu-metal, generally acknowledged as the worst musical genre on the planet. One guy kept wanting to call it “The One-Der Variant” but this was confusing as everyone kept pronouncing it as Oh-NEE-der instead of Wonder. Finally, there was a last-ditch effort to name it the Trump variant, but this was finally defeated in favor of the safer “Omicron variant” according to sources within the lab. After the celebration died down, the pilgrims shuffled away, their faces full of cheer. But they’ll be back in a few weeks for the next one.

Read more …

 

 

 

“Let your light shine so brightly that others can see their way out of the dark.”
~ Native American

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

France

 

 

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Nov 052021
 
 November 5, 2021  Posted by at 9:01 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  89 Responses »


Ernst Haas Greece 1952

 

OSHA Vaccine Mandate Released, 84 Million Workers Face Jan. 4 Deadline (ET)
OSHA Signals to Employers to Hide Vaccine Side Effects Reporting (BN)
Rand Paul Decries Firing of Frontline Workers Over Vaccine Mandates (ET)
A Credibility Blow To Pfizer’s Covid-19 Vaccine (Demasi)
Report of Problems With Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Trial Being Investigated (ET)
Are You ****ed? Maybe. But.. How Bad? (Denninger)
Are Vaccines Driving Excess Deaths in Scotland ? (DS)
Here’s The Real Reason Comirnaty Is Not Available (Kirsch)
How Covid Can Render You Indecisive For The Rest Of Your Life (RT)
Arrest Of Steele Dossier Source A “Seismic Development” (ZH)

 

 

Peter Doshi, BMJ
https://twitter.com/i/status/1455976583009873928

 

 

 

 

CO2
https://twitter.com/i/status/1456172131067125760

 

 

The continued and escalating litigation can start only after the “mandate” is officially part of the Federal Register. It will be torn to shreds before Jan 4. Merry Christmas.

“Texas Attorney General @TXAG: Biden just announced his plan to wield OSHA to mandate vaccines on private businesses. And I’m announcing my plan to sue him once this illegal, unconstitutional regulation hits the Federal Register.

OSHA Vaccine Mandate Released, 84 Million Workers Face Jan. 4 Deadline (ET)

The Biden administration has released the new rule from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requiring 84 million private sector workers to get vaccinated for COVID-19. The administration has also announced its rule from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Assistance (CMS) requiring 17 million healthcare workers participating in federal health programs to be vaccinated. The White House is also pushing back the deadline for workers in those sectors, as well as federal contractors, to get fully vaccinated to Jan. 4, 2022, according to a senior administration official. “We wanted to do this because we’re really aligning it to make it easier—to make it as easy as possible for businesses to implement these requirements and for workers to comply,” said the official, when asked about pushing back the deadline.

The Biden administration had received multiple letters from industries requesting the deadline for vaccination be moved back until after the holiday season. The OSHA rule requires employers with 100 or more employees to put vaccine requirements in place for all staff, or face fines of up to $14,000 per violation. The agency is allowed to put into place an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) when it determines workers are at “grave risk.” Under the rule, workers who are not vaccinated are required to submit a weekly negative COVID test at no expense to their employer. Unvaccinated workers are also required to wear masks when on the job. Health care workers do not have the testing option. The ETS requires employers to determine and keep record of the vaccination status of each employee and report all COVID deaths and hospitalizations to OSHA.

The rule takes effect immediately upon publication, scheduled for Oct. 5, in the federal register. White House officials say the new ETS is well within OSHA’s authority under the law and consistent with OSHA’s requirements to protect workers from health and safety hazards, including infectious diseases. Officials claim there is well-established legal precedent for OSHA’s authority to evaluate existing scientific evidence and apply data to develop safety and health standards. The ETS says it preempts state and local laws that ban or limit an employer from requiring vaccination, face covering, or testing. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order Oct. 11 banning Texas businesses from requiring vaccines for employees, or customers.

And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis filed suit Oct. 28 against the Biden Administration’s order requiring employees of federal contractors to be vaccinated. Several Republican governors and attorneys general have vowed to fight the new OSHA rule in court.

Read more …

JUST IN – “OSHA will consider expanding the vaccine mandate to smaller businesses with fewer than 100 employees during a 30-day comment period, according to the U.S. Labor Department.”

OSHA Signals to Employers to Hide Vaccine Side Effects Reporting (BN)

While President Biden’s federal vaccine mandate was announced in September, the OSHA regulation actually compelling qualifying federal contractors and business with over 100 employees to force workers to be vaccinated for Covid-19 has not been formally issued. But OSHA is making it clear that it does not want to know about vaccine side effects, because it has suspended employer reporting requirements. “DOL and OSHA, as well as other federal agencies, are working diligently to encourage COVID-19 vaccinations,” the health agency says on its official website. “OSHA does not wish to have any appearance of discouraging workers from receiving COVID-19 vaccination, and also does not wish to disincentivize employers’ vaccination efforts. As a result, OSHA will not enforce 29 CFR 1904’s recording requirements to require any employers to record worker side effects from COVID-19 vaccination at least through May 2022. We will reevaluate the agency’s position at that time to determine the best course of action moving forward.”

However, employees who have claimed injury from vaccines can still file a report with their employer under OSHA’s whistleblower regulations. “Section 11(c) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (29 USC 660(c)) prohibits employers from retaliating against workers for exercising a variety of rights guaranteed under the law, such as filing a safety or health complaint with OSHA, raising a health and safety concern with their employers, participating in an OSHA inspection, or reporting a work-related injury or illness,” OSHA notes. “Additionally, OSHA’s Whistleblower Protection Program enforces the provisions of more than 20 industry-specific federal laws protecting employees from retaliation for raising or reporting concerns about hazards or violations of various airline, commercial motor carrier, consumer product, environmental, financial reform, food safety, health insurance reform, motor vehicle safety, nuclear, pipeline, public transportation agency, railroad, maritime, securities, tax, antitrust, and anti-money laundering laws. Also see the anti-retaliation provisions in the Emergency Temporary Standard for Healthcare.”

“If you believe you have suffered such retaliation, submit a whistleblower complaint to OSHA as soon as possible in order to ensure that you file the complaint within the legal time limits, some of which may be as short as 30 days from the date you learned of or experienced retaliation,” OSHA adds. “An employee can file a complaint with OSHA by visiting or calling his or her local OSHA office; sending a written complaint via fax, mail, or email to the closest OSHA office; or filing a complaint online. No particular form is required and complaints may be submitted in any language.” “OSHA’s recordkeeping regulation, 29 CFR 1904.35, also prohibits employers from retaliating against employees for reporting work-related injuries or illnesses,” it adds.

“The purpose of this provision is to improve the completeness and accuracy of injury and illness data by allowing OSHA to issue citations to employers who retaliate against their employees for reporting an injury or illness and thereby discourage or deter accurate reporting of work-related injuries or illnesses.” While OSHA is seeking to bury vaccine side effects reporting in relation to the still-unissued federal mandate, the Biden administration has quietly authorized damages to be settled with coerced vaccine takers if they suffer serious side effects. The clause was buried deep in documents in a Division of Federal Employees’ Compensation bulletin issued earlier in October.

“On September 9, 2021, President Biden issued an executive order mandating COVID-19 vaccination for most Federal employees,” the document states. “The order directed each agency to implement a program to require COVID-19 vaccination for all of its employees, with exceptions only as required by law.” “The Federal Employees’ Compensation Act (FECA) covers injuries that occur in the performance of duty,” the bulletin goes on. “The FECA does not generally authorize provision of preventive measures such as vaccines and inoculations, and in general, preventive treatment is a responsibility of the employing agency under the provisions of 5 U.S.C. 7901. However, care can be authorized by OWCP for complications of preventive measures which are provided or sponsored by the agency, such as adverse reaction to prophylactic immunization.”

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“It’s a great disservice to fire people—nurses, doctors, firemen, policemen—who put their life at risk when there was no vaccine at all..”

Rand Paul Decries Firing of Frontline Workers Over Vaccine Mandates (ET)

Firefighters, nurses, and other so-called frontline workers are being fired or facing termination across the country for not complying with COVID-19 vaccine mandates. That’s wrong, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says. “It’s a great disservice to fire people—nurses, doctors, firemen, policemen—who put their life at risk when there was no vaccine at all,” he told NTD’s “The Beau Show.” Officials in New York City and other locales that have imposed vaccine requirements say they will help decrease community spread of the virus that causes COVID-19, though the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines against infection has dropped sharply in recent months. “In terms of COVID, we are one of the safest places in America, because we have one of the highest levels of vaccination,” Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, told reporters on Wednesday.

Paul disagrees, particularly because many mandates lack opt-outs for those who have had COVID-19 and recovered. That means they have some level of protection against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, many studies have shown. “Many of them got COVID while taking care of people. The doctors and nurses caught COVID from their patients. Most of them survived, fortunately. They now have immunity and all the science—102 studies—show that you have immunity if you’ve had the disease naturally,” he told NTD. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledges natural immunity, or protection bestowed by having COVID-19, but asserts even those with it should get a vaccine for an extra boost.

“We do know that after nearly all infectious diseases, you have some protection from getting that infection again, but we don’t really know how long that lasts or how robust it is,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the agency’s head, told reporters on Wednesday. Critics argue those points are largely the same for vaccines and note that many of the studies suggest the level of protection is similar to or even superior to vaccination. “What kind of discriminatory policies do we have in place that are excluding someone like me from the workplace when I’m 99.8 percent protected against reinfection, whereas someone who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, by the company’s own data that they submitted to the FDA, is 67 percent protective against COVID infection?” Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, who was suspended by the University of California, Irvine for not getting a vaccine, told The Epoch Times last month.

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The BMJ report is rattling some windows.

A Credibility Blow To Pfizer’s Covid-19 Vaccine (Demasi)

When the first doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine arrived on Australian shores, Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt proudly announced that we could all be confident the vaccines had undergone “rigorous, independent testing” to ensure they were “ safe, effective, and manufactured to a high standard.” As of 24 October 2021, approximately 21 million doses of Comirnaty (Pfizer) have been administered to Australians aged >16 years, with the understanding that drug regulators and public health officials have done their due diligence on the data. Pfizer has promised that “every clinical trial is planned, conducted and reviewed according to the highest scientific, ethical and clinical standards.” This week, however, a whistle-blower has lifted the lid on breaches in research integrity and safety involving one of Pfizer’s most pivotal mRNA vaccine trials.

An investigation by the BMJ has reported that a company called Ventavia, tasked with running a trial site for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine study, “falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events”. The whistle-blower has revealed that she was fired after complaining about the company’s poor research practices, evidenced by dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails. The trial in question was Pfizer’s phase 3 study, involving around 44,000 participants in three groups aged 12-15yrs, 16-55yrs and >55yrs. The complaints included the mislabelling of laboratory specimens, vaccines not being stored at proper temperatures and a lack of timely follow-up of patients with adverse events, all of which were verified by two former colleagues.

Where was the regulatory oversight? The FDA was notified of a complaint filed by the whistle-blower but failed to action any audit of the company. One of the former employees characterised the data that had been generated for Pfizer’s mRNA trial as “a crazy mess”. Paul Thacker, the investigative journalist who broke the story for the BMJ, is incredulous that these types of violations are allowed to occur. “There were credible allegations of problems at this research site, the FDA did nothing and Pfizer hired the company [Ventavia] again,” said Thacker. “Why is the FDA not inspecting clinical research sites when they are getting credible allegations about corruption? Where is the FDA office of criminal investigations? Where is the FBI healthcare fraud unit? They’re nowhere to be seen.”

“Instead, we just get told it’s science, science, science. If you say it enough times, it must be true,” he joked. In what should have been international news, this latest whistle-blower case has barely registered in the mainstream media. “We have a lot of science-cheerleading reporters,” Thacker said, “Pfizer has such a huge PR machine, they have basically captured the media, they’ve hypnotised the media”. Pfizer has a history of deceptive practices, including illegal marketing, covering up drug harms and more recently, the company was accused of “bullying” governments in COVID-19 vaccine negotiations. Pfizer announced that it expects to earn US$36 billion in revenue from its vaccine this year, the same week the Centres for Disease Control Prevention signed off on emergency use authorisation of the vaccine for 5- to 11-year-olds.

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“Jackson said she alerted the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to the problems she witnessed and was fired within hours of doing so.”

Report of Problems With Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Trial Being Investigated (ET)

The alleged problems with a major clinical trial examining Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine trial are being probed, a contract company involved in the research has confirmed. Ventavia Research Group operated several of the trial sites in the fall of 2020. Brook Jackson worked for the company during this time. She told the British Medical Journal (BMJ) that the trial was riddled with issues, including the falsification of data. Jackson said she alerted the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to the problems she witnessed and was fired within hours of doing so. Ventavia confirmed to The Epoch Times that it employed Jackson for two weeks last year. Lauren Foreman, director of business development and communications, said in an email that Ventavia is investigating the allegations from Jackson.

“Ventavia takes research compliance, data integrity, and participant safety very seriously and stands behind its important work supporting the development of lifesaving vaccines and is conducting its investigation accordingly,” she said. The FDA appeared to confirm it was aware of the matter. “Although the agency cannot comment further at this time in this ongoing matter, FDA has full confidence in the data that were used to support the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine authorization and the Comirnaty approval,” a spokeswoman told The Epoch Times in an email. Ventavia worked on the trial that led to emergency use authorization (EUA) for Pfizer’s jab. The FDA later approved the shot, though many or all of the doses being administered in the United States continue to be the EUA-version.

Jackson, who worked with clinical trials for over 15 years, told the BMJ she repeatedly raised concerns with her superiors about what she was witnessing, including patient safety concerns. She began to feel her reports were being ignored and began taking photographs using her phone. One photograph apparently showed that needles were discarded in a plastic bag instead of a box, while another was said to have showed packaging materials that revealed trial participants’ identification numbers, signaling they may have been unblinded. Jackson listed 12 concerns she had in a Sept. 25 message to the FDA, including participants not being monitored after receiving an injection and vaccines not being stored at proper temperatures. She also alleged that Ventavia staff members were targeted by higher-ups for reporting problems. Jackson said the FDA sent her an email acknowledging receipt of the list and she received a call from an FDA inspector, but has heard nothing from the agency since then.

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“So to “evade” the risk of Covid-19’s serious outcomes you deliberately damage the immune response for at least some period of time against all manner of other things, some of which are at least as dangerous as Covid-19 is.”

Are You ****ed? Maybe. But.. How Bad? (Denninger)

“Here, we report, besides generation of neutralizing antibodies, consistent alterations in hemoglobin A1c, serum sodium and potassium levels, coagulation profiles, and renal functions in healthy volunteers after vaccination with an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Similar changes had also been reported in COVID-19 patients, suggesting that vaccination mimicked an infection.” That is very bad. In fact its catastrophically bad. Vaccination is supposed to trick your immune system into thinking your body is being attacked without producing the bad outcomes that the actual disease can produce. You get the protection, but not the potential bad outcomes from infection itself. That is the entire point of vaccination; to evade the possible bad outcomes from infection.

Since a traditional vaccine (which this is; inactivated whole virus) cannot replicate it should never produce the bad impacts from disease itself. That is, the only “dose” your body gets from an inactivated vaccine is what is in the syringe; no more, no less. Unfortunately what this study shows is that a material number of these bad effects from infection come from vaccination as well. That’s unexpected and hideous, especially some of the markers that showed up — including most-specifically A1c. It is of particular note that A1c did not return to baseline over 90 days post jab. In fact, it remained elevated with some formerly-healthy people now being in the “pre-diabetic” category. This cannot be understated in terms of what it means: Diabetes is arguably the most-serious morbid condition you can contract. To take a person with a healthy A1c level and turn them into a pre-diabetic by telling them to take the jab is criminally insane.

If you are healthy and thus not at any special risk from Covid-19 you’d be out of your damned mind to accept that risk with certainty by taking the shot and if you are coerced into it the proper response is to be placed right between the coercing party’s eyes. Diabetes is that serious folks. Additional durable deterioration was found in both potassium (electrolyte balance) and creatinine, which is a kidney damage marker. I remind you that unlike your liver which can regenerate you only have two kidneys and if they fail you’re ****ed. What’s particularly ugly is that if you get hammered with a so-called “breakthrough” infection later on these deteriorations, which appear to be durable, may well screw you down the road. Both are serious co-morbid factors that radically increase the risk of getting screwed if you get Covid-19.

Now to be fair this study is on a whole, inactivated vaccine. It therefore may — or may not — generalize to the mRNA jabs. We do not know. But don’t you think we should know? Indeed since the jabs used in the US (and Europe) all “program” the body to produce the spike protein, and we know the spike is pathogenic, it is entirely reasonable to believe that these impacts not only exist with mRNA and viral vector jabs they may in fact be materially worse than those from whole, inactivated virus. More to the point shouldn’t we have run this sort of testing and thus known, by published studies, before we jabbed 200 million Americans and threatened the rest? If this sort of durable damage does happen how often does it happen and how-severe is it?= Folks, the change in immune markers along with creatine and A1c is flat-out nasty. Let me quote from the study itself:

“This is a comprehensive investigation of the pathophysiological changes, including detailed immunological alterations in people after COVID-19 vaccination. Results indicated that vaccination, in addition to stimulating the generation of neutralizing antibodies, also influenced various health indicators including those related to diabetes, renal dysfunction, cholesterol metabolism, coagulation problems, electrolyte imbalance, in a way as if the volunteers experienced an infection.” And while some of those returned to baseline over the subsequent 90 days renal dysfunction and diabetes markers DID NOT. “Together, these data suggested that after vaccination, at least by day 28, other than generation of neutralizing antibodies, people’s immune systems, including those of lymphocytes and monocytes, were perhaps in a more vulnerable state. “So to “evade” the risk of Covid-19’s serious outcomes you deliberately damage the immune response for at least some period of time against all manner of other things, some of which are at least as dangerous as Covid-19 is.

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What differs between the two years? The glaringly obvious answer is the rollout of COVID-19 vaccination.

Are Vaccines Driving Excess Deaths in Scotland ? (DS)

Your first explanation is that the summer excess deaths recorded as non-Covid are actually due to Covid, but have not been certified as such. I see that you yourself are not convinced by this explanation given the level of testing that has taken place. However, let us suppose this to be true. In that case the Scottish Government’s public health measures that have been put in place in summer 2021 to prevent Covid have been far worse than those put in place in summer 2020 – indeed they have been disastrous.

Your second explanation is that the non-clinical responses to COVID-19 put in place by the Scottish Government (mask-wearing, social isolation etc.) have had unintended deleterious consequences on public health and have dramatically increased the rates of death in the Scottish population. This is an admission of abject failure of the Scottish Government’s public health response to Covid. Public health policy is all about balancing the benefits and risks of interventions to achieve the lowest possible impact during a health emergency. It is pertinent to remember that no benefit-risk assessment of non-clinical interventions on the physical and mental health of the Scottish population was conducted before these interventions were enforced.

Your third explanation is that there has been a problem with access to health and social care services, and patients have not received the care they required from the NHS. Access to these services over the past 20 months has been under the control of the Scottish Government, so if this explanation is correct, then the Scottish Government is culpable for increasing the death rate in Scotland. Numerous policies have been deliberately pursued to dramatically reduce GP face-to-face consultation, to cancel appointments and operations in hospitals etc., so the evidence to support this, as at least a partial explanation, is overwhelming.

Your fourth explanation is that individuals who are in poor health have not referred themselves to health and social care services as they would at other times. To some extent this would be confounded with Scottish Government policies of restricting health care provision discussed above. However there has also been a concerted and relentless media campaign by the Scottish Government to increase fear in the public, particularly fear of hospitals where they may catch Covid. This has meant that they have not gone for treatment when it was necessary. Whatever the proximal cause of failure to seek medical attention, the ultimate cause and responsibility lies in Scottish Government policy.

Your final explanation for the dramatic rise in excess deaths in summer 2021 is that there is some other cause that has not yet been identified. As noted earlier the phenomenon of excess deaths in the presence of a Covid epidemic was not seen in summer 2020, but is seen in summer 2021. What differs between the two years? The glaringly obvious answer is the rollout of COVID-19 vaccination. There was no COVID-19 vaccination programme in 2020, but there was rollout of Covid vaccinations in a sequential way to increasingly younger age groups in 2021, a pattern that we see in the manifestation of excess deaths. All of the COVID-19 vaccines are novel and experimental with no long-term safety data. They are now associated with a wide range of serious side-effects (blood clotting, myocarditis, Guillain-Barre syndrome) whose likely frequency in the wider population was not assessed in the small-scale phase one and two trials that included only a subset of healthy volunteers. The Yellow Card adverse events reporting system, that capture only a fraction of events, has already recorded over 1,700 deaths in the U.K. population associated with the COVID-19 vaccines. There is therefore a prima facie case for COVID-19 vaccination being a contributing factor to the dramatic rise in summer excess deaths in Scotland in 2021.

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“..they used a more effective vaccine to show efficacy (in the trials they completed), then they get the FDA to approve the drug but with a change in formulation, then the product with the new buffer will go out to the public with the lower efficacy, but better safety.”

Here’s The Real Reason Comirnaty Is Not Available (Kirsch)

The reason Comirnaty isn’t available is because those shots would expose the company to liability since the fully-licensed product doesn’t have the liability waiver of the EUA product. But once the Pfizer vaccine is fully approved in kids, then Pfizer gets liability waiver on all age groups due to a “feature” in federal law for child vaccines (NCVIA). At that time, they are done. They can market the COVID vaccine products under full approval for all age groups and face no liability when it kills or disables you. This is why they are focused on the kids. This is why there is a reformulation at a 1/3 dose and they changed the buffer and the storage conditions (low temperatures not required). All of these will weaken the protection, but result in a safer vaccine (since it is ineffective).

But for the clinical trials on the 5-11 year olds, they did not use the formulation they approved in the meeting. This is known as bait and switch. So they used a more effective vaccine to show efficacy (in the trials they completed), then they get the FDA to approve the drug but with a change in formulation, then the product with the new buffer will go out to the public with the lower efficacy, but better safety. This is because they don’t want to jeopardize any adverse events happening until they are fully approved. So they basically use formula 1 for safety, get approval for formula 2 (safer, less effective), then roll out formula 2 under EUA.

They also arrange with the FDA and CDC to make sure no early treatment drugs get approved or recommended. This is why there is no movement on fluvoxamine, ivermectin, etc. since that would blow the EUA. Fluvoxamine is the best drug ever for COVID with a mortality reduction of 12X when taken early. It’s the best drug to date for COVID, but the CDC and NIH are deliberately burying it until the vaccines are fully approved. Then they’ll say, “ok, we have all the data.” So at the end, Pfizer gets a fully approved vaccine with full liability protection. At that time, then the NIH can recognize other treatments. This is how it is wired to go. Let’s be honest about it. This is why nobody wants to debate our team about what is going on.

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Don’t know what to wear? Blame it on Covid!

How Covid Can Render You Indecisive For The Rest Of Your Life (RT)

A new study has found that one unlikely result of the pandemic for many has been Panic Disorder – an increased inability to make inconsequential decisions due to the constant need for risk assessment in everyday life. If you’ve found yourself struggling with making minor decisions recently, you’re not the only one. A new study conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of the American Psychological Association found that nearly one-third of US adults (32%) are having difficulty making basic daily decisions, such as what to wear or eat. The survey also showed that, while 70% of respondents were confident that everything would work out fine once the coronavirus pandemic ended, and 77% felt like they were doing well overall, more than one-third (35%) said it has been more stressful to make major life decisions, around half (49%) said the pandemic has made planning for the future seem impossible, and 61% said the last 18 months have made them rethink how they live their lives.

Those results are not surprising in and of themselves. We’ve all read the headlines about the general anxiety and feelings of dread that people have experienced throughout the pandemic, as well as the stories about people completely re-evaluating their lives thanks to all of the free time for self-reflection. Deciding whether or not to quit your job and move to Missouri is always stressful, even when there isn’t a global pandemic going on. But the statistics about anxiety over minor daily decisions struck me as new and interesting, not least because I’ve been experiencing this myself. sI’ve always been a relatively antsy overthinker, but I have never been reduced to beads of sweat over whether or not to do a yoga class, as has recently been the case. I can spend an entire afternoon debating whether or not to go to a party. My boyfriend has taken to simply ordering for me at restaurants, like I’m a baby. I know, on a rational level, that none of these decisions are A Big Deal, but they feel like The Biggest Deal Ever in the moment, and knowing that they’re not simply makes me annoyed at myself on top of everything else.

This type of anxiety – in which you can have a panic attack over something relatively small – is known as a Panic Disorder. You might even recognize that debating whether to go to the gym or straight to work is not worth the agony it’s causing you, but you still feel like you’re in an airplane that’s about to crash into the ocean. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, an estimated 4.7% of US adults experience panic disorders. Based on this new survey, it seems like quite a few more of us are suffering from them now. The survey blames this new surge of anxiety almost entirely on the pandemic. “For many, the pandemic has imposed the need for constant risk assessment, with routines upended and once trivial tasks recast in light of the pandemic. Many people ask, ‘What is the community transmission in my area today and how will this affect my choices? What is the vaccination rate? Is there a mask mandate here?’ When the factors influencing a person’s decisions are constantly changing, no decision is routine.”

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Recap: Steele promised to get the goods on Trump from Russia. But Steele hadn’t been to Russia in at least a decade. He needed an inside source. That became Danchenko, but he too was in the US (Brookings Institution). Danchenko asked some buddies to deliver the hot info, and they got him stories and -later- admitted they had made it all up under the influence of copious amounts of booze. He also apppears to have been fed fat tales by Dem associates. By then the Steele Dossier had become a important political tool in DC.

Arrest Of Steele Dossier Source A “Seismic Development” (ZH)

Shining further light on today’s arrest of Igor Danchenko – the primary source for the debunked Steele dossier – is constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley, who calls it a “seismic development.” The office of Special Counsel John Durham has confirmed that Igor Danchenko, a key source for British ex-spy Christopher Steele, has been arrested. This is the third arrest by Durham who is moving toward the prosecution stage of his investigation into the origins of the Russian collusion scandal. Durham is variously described as either painfully methodical or positively glacial as a prosecutor. But he is widely credited with being a dogged and absolutely apolitical prosecutor. Danchenko’s arrest is a seismic development and confirmed Durham is far from done with his investigation.

Washington was recently rocked by the indictment of Michael Sussman, former counsel for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, for his alleged role in spreading a false Russia conspiracy theory. Now Danchenko is being charged with lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Danchenko is widely referenced as the sub-source for former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele for his controversial dossier. That dossier, funded by the Clinton campaign, served as the basis for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Trump campaign aide Carter Page. Danchenko told the FBI that the dossier was “unsubstantiated” and said that Steele asked him to look for any “compromising” information on Trump.

Mr. Danchenko worked for the Brookings Institution, a liberal Washington think-tank that often produced reports critical of Trump. Danchenko is not someone who immediately comes across as an apex defendant — the highest target in an investigation. He was a key source used by others to advance false or unsubstantiated claims against Trump. He is the type of defendant that prosecutors pressure to flip against those who retained him or used him in this effort. In other words, he strikes me as someone who can be used as a building block to apex defendants. Potential apex targets above him in investigation range from Steele himself to Clinton general counsel Marc Elias to Clinton campaign officials. There is no indication if Durham has possible evidence of criminal acts by those figures but there is every indication that he is not done by a long shot with this investigation.

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Betrayal – Mario Sánchez Nevado

 

 

Grewal

 

 

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

 

Nov 012021
 


René Magritte Golconda 1953

 

Jen Psaki Tests Positive For COVID-19: ‘Grateful I Am Vaccinated’ (HP)
Top Doctors Rise Up: “We’re Going to Show People How to End This Pandemic”
SARS–CoV–2 Spike Impairs DNA Damage Repair (MDPI)
Consistent Pathophysiological Alterations Post-Covid-19 Vaccination (Nature)
It’s Time For John Su To Go (Steve Kirsch)
(New Normal) Winter is Coming (CJ Hopkins)
Ben Carson Rips Covid Vaccines For Kids: This Is Really A Giant Experiment (TH)
Dutch Customs Impound 55,000 Doses Of Ivermectin Sent To Private Buyers (DN)
Companies Warn Biden Admin They May Need to Drop Fed Contractor Status (CTH)

 

 

Haider
https://twitter.com/DrSyedHaider/status/1454591464906895360

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rand Paul Fauci

 

 

If some double vaxxed double masked but still infected woman who lives down the street tells you she would have been much worse off without the vaccines that didn’t work, that’s one thing. When the official WH spokeswoman says it, that’s another. It’s now government opinion. Did she make it up, so it fits the narrative? Is it a neutral doctor’s opinion? Nobody’s asking anymore. But doesn’t it mean all their policies failed? Or is it acceptable to just say it would have been much worse, thereby suggesting the policies work after all? Slippery slope.

Jen Psaki Tests Positive For COVID-19: ‘Grateful I Am Vaccinated’ (HP)

White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced Sunday that she had tested positive for COVID-19. She said she had tested positive Sunday after testing negative each day since Wednesday, when she had decided not to travel with President Joe Biden on a foreign trip due to members of her household testing positive for COVID-19. Psaki was originally expected to accompany Biden for a week-long trip to Italy and Scotland. Biden departed Thursday for Rome and was joined instead by principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. Psaki released a statement saying she was “grateful” to be vaccinated against the virus.


She said she had been quarantining since Wednesday and had not had close contact with Biden or senior White House staff since then. She said she had last seen the president on Tuesday, when they sat outside more than six-feet apart, and wore masks. “Thanks to the vaccine, I have experienced only mild symptoms which has enabled me to continue working from home,” wrote Psaki, who is fully vaccinated. She said she planned to return to work when she had completed a 10-day quarantine and received a negative COVID test, an extra precaution required by the White House.

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Godspeed guys. But remember, this is not about being right. It’s about getting press coverage.

Top Doctors Rise Up: “We’re Going to Show People How to End This Pandemic”

Clearly, the media disdains Florida’s new Surgeon General, Joseph Ladapo. He has been called “completely unfit,” a “crackpot doctor” who is “on a rampage,” and a “self-absorbed crank.” No wonder. He disagrees with how covid policy is practiced in America. Ladapo sees too much emphasis on vaccines. He says parents should decide if healthy covid-exposed children attend school. He declined, perhaps unwisely, to mask up when meeting a legislator who has cancer, asking instead to go outside. The scorn heaped upon the Harvard-trained Ladapo—even in a rather red state—is a small sample of the enormous powers allied against those who challenge government-dictated, media-policed covid dogma. Not to worry. That’s where a former Army doctor and solo practitioner in northern Florida comes in.

Having seen hydroxycholoroquine and ivermectin work in perhaps 1,000 covid patients, Dr. John Littell wants to share, build, and grow a movement. One doctor/scientist/citizen at a time. Starting with a rally outside of City Hall and moving to webinars for doctors at the local police department, this has been his life mission since the beginning of the pandemic. Now, Littell, sixty-three, has pulled together a summit of the best and brightest in the alt-covid movement right in his backyard. On Saturday, November 6, the Florida Summit on Covid will assemble in Ocala to critique, debate, and strategize U.S. covid policy. Ocala may not be Yalta, which after all brought two willing, warring sides together. But it may be the most important meeting yet in the United States on another way to think about covid-19.

It builds on smaller meetings in Puerto Rico and Rome, from which a physicians’ declaration emerged. The public is invited to the summit at the World Equestrian Center, and so far 550 have signed on, including 100 medical professionals, who will get continuing education credits. On Saturday, November 6, the Florida Summit on Covid will assemble in the World Equestrian Center in Ocala to critique, debate, and strategize U.S. covid policy. The public is invited. The lineup includes A-list Covid agitators: Early treatment pioneers Peter McCullough and Pierre Kory, both of whom have testified before Congress; Robert Malone, architect of mRNA vaccine technology and vaccine critic, and leading frontline voices like George Fareed, Brian Tyson, Ryan Cole, Heather Gessling, Paul Alexander, Molly James, and Richard Urso.

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Now this is scary.

SARS–CoV–2 Spike Impairs DNA Damage Repair (MDPI)

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS–CoV–2) has led to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID–19) pandemic, severely affecting public health and the global economy. Adaptive immunity plays a crucial role in fighting against SARS–CoV–2 infection and directly influences the clinical outcomes of patients. Clinical studies have indicated that patients with severe COVID–19 exhibit delayed and weak adaptive immune responses; however, the mechanism by which SARS–CoV–2 impedes adaptive immunity remains unclear.


Here, by using an in vitro cell line, we report that the SARS–CoV–2 spike protein significantly inhibits DNA damage repair, which is required for effective V(D)J recombination in adaptive immunity. Mechanistically, we found that the spike protein localizes in the nucleus and inhibits DNA damage repair by impeding key DNA repair protein BRCA1 and 53BP1 recruitment to the damage site. Our findings reveal a potential molecular mechanism by which the spike protein might impede adaptive immunity and underscore the potential side effects of full-length spike-based vaccines.

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These are both long-lasting effects.

Consistent Pathophysiological Alterations Post-Covid-19 Vaccination (Nature)

Large-scale COVID-19 vaccinations are currently underway in many countries in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we report, besides generation of neutralizing antibodies, consistent alterations in hemoglobin A1c, serum sodium and potassium levels, coagulation profiles, and renal functions in healthy volunteers after vaccination with an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Similar changes had also been reported in COVID-19 patients, suggesting that vaccination mimicked an infection.


Single-cell mRNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) before and 28 days after the first inoculation also revealed consistent alterations in gene expression of many different immune cell types. Reduction of CD8+ T cells and increase in classic monocyte contents were exemplary. Moreover, scRNA-seq revealed increased NF-kB signaling and reduced type I interferon responses, which were confirmed by biological assays and also had been reported to occur after SARS-CoV-2 infection with aggravating symptoms. Altogether, our study recommends additional caution when vaccinating people with pre-existing clinical conditions, including diabetes, electrolyte imbalances, renal dysfunction, and coagulation disorders.

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Keep going Steve.

It’s Time For John Su To Go (Steve Kirsch)

Dr. John Su is the government’s top expert on reporting safety signals to the CDC and FDA. His incompetence/corruption in failing to compute a simple number required for a proper risk-benefit analysis, has led to the needless loss of life of over 150,000 Americans. Dr. Su should be immediately fired by the CDC. There is no excuse for anyone in such a critical position at the CDC to make a mistake of this magnitude without being held accountable. Su claimed in a CDC meeting that VAERS, the official database used to track adverse events, is nearly fully reported (close to 1). He’s wrong. Dead wrong. The reality is that it is extremely underreported (close to 41). This was clearly done intentionally. If it were just due to incompetence or negligence, Dr. Su would have corrected the error when it was first brought to his attention. He did not.

Even more troubling is that we could not find any evidence that Dr. Su has ever computed the underreporting factor (URF) for the COVID vaccines. This is extremely troubling because the correct URF is required to compute an accurate cost-benefit analysis. Had the committees had the correct URF, these vaccines would have been stopped immediately. Once you have the correct URF, it is clear that the vaccines kill more people than they save for all age ranges. They are nonsensical, even if they were 100% effective. This is why Su’s error was critical: at a URF of 1, the vaccines are viable; at a URF of 41 they are nonsensical.

A URF of 41 reveals that the true myocarditis rate for 16 year old boys is close to 1 in 325. That is not rare; it’s a train wreck. The 5 year survival rate of those kids is completely unknown. Any cardiologist who says that you have “nothing to worry about if your kid gets myocarditis from the vaccine” is lying to you. We haven’t got a clue. Myocarditis is the least of your worries. There are hundreds of serious safety signals from these vaccines like death, heart attack, cardiac arrest, DVT, pulmonary embolism, intracranial hemorrhage, stroke, tinnitus, elevated cancers, latent viruses that re-emerge, blindness, aphasia, blood clots, numbness, muscle spasms, diabetes, guillain-barre syndrome, Bell’s palsy, and many more, but the CDC and FDA cannot spot any of them even those elevated 1,000X over baseline. They are inept, corrupt or both. Case in point: it was Israel who found the myocarditis signal, not the CDC.

The CDC, FDA, John Su, and Tom Shimabukuro were offered multiple opportunities to respond to this article. They all declined. We couldn’t find anyone who was willing to defend John Su’s actions. To this day, the CDC and FDA refuse to supply anyone with the document showing the URF calculation. It has to remain a secret or everyone will realize that they fucked up royally. Congress is ignoring all the deaths, and encouraging people to get vaccinated. All attempts to get anyone in Congress to pay attention to the death toll in VAERS have been ignored.

The mainstream medical community, like Congress, is ignoring all the deaths, and actively encouraging people to get vaccinated. The medical community is doing the exact opposite of what the science says. There are thousands of doctors who realize what is going on, but they are afraid to speak out.

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“..and other infidels and heretics are being hunted by fanatical, hate-drunk mobs, dragged before the New Normal Inquisition, and made examples of all over the world..”

(New Normal) Winter is Coming (CJ Hopkins)

Winter is coming … and you know what that means. That’s right, it’s nearly time once again for the global-capitalist ruling classes to whip the New Normal masses into a state of mindless mass hysteria over an imaginary apocalyptic virus. the same imaginary apocalyptic virus that they have whipped the New Normal masses into a state of mass hysteria over throughout the Winter for the last two years. They’ve got their work cut out for them this time. Seriously, how much more mass hysterical could the New Normals possibly get at this point? The vast majority of the Western world has been transformed into a pseudo-medical dystopia in which you have to show your “health-purity papers” to enter a café and get a cup of coffee.

People who refuse to get experimentally “vaccinated” against a virus that causes mild-to-moderate symptoms (or, often, no symptoms whatsoever) in about 95% of the infected, and the overall infection fatality rate of which is approximately 0.1% to 0.5%, are being systematically segregated, stripped of their jobs, denied medical treatment, demonized as “a danger to society,” censored, fined, and otherwise persecuted. [..] Yes, the Great New Normal Purge is on. “The Unvaccinated” and other infidels and heretics are being hunted by fanatical, hate-drunk mobs, dragged before the New Normal Inquisition, and made examples of all over the world. Here in New Normal Germany, popular footballer Joshua Kimmich is being publicly drawn and quartered for refusing to submit to being “vaccinated” and profess his faith in the New Normal World Order.

In the USA, “the Unvaccinated” stand accused of murdering Colin Powell, an 84-year-old, cancer-ridden war criminal. Australia is planning to imprison people and fine them $90,000 for the “crime” of not wearing a medical-looking mask, or attempted worship at a synagogue, or whatever. In Florida (of all places), fanatical school staff tied a medical-looking mask to the face of a non-verbal Downs-syndrome girl with nylon cord, day after day, for over six weeks, until her father discovered what they were doing. I could go on, but I don’t think I have to. The Internet is brimming with examples of mass-hysterical and sadistic behavior. And that’s not to mention the mass hysteria rampant among the New Normals themselves … for example, the parents who are lining up to get their children needlessly “vaccinated” and then rushed into the emergency room with “totally manageable myocarditis.”

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Much vilified, wrong department under Trump, but also former director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

Ben Carson Rips Covid Vaccines For Kids: This Is Really A Giant Experiment (TH)

Dr. Ben Carson, Housing and Urban Development Secretary under President Donald Trump, criticized Covid-19 vaccinations for children ages 5 to 11 as “a giant experiment” during a Sunday appearance on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” Asked by anchor Maria Bartiromo whether he agreed with the recent Centers for Disease Control (CDC) decision to allow children to receive Pfizer’s Covid vaccine, Carson definitively replied, “absolutely not.” Carson, former director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, went on to explain his reasoning: The fact of the matter is, the mortality rate for children from COVID-19 is 0.025, which is very similar to the rate for seasonal flu. And we haven’t been for years and years going through all these things for seasonal flu.


Plus, we don’t know what the long-term impact of these vaccines is. So this is really sort of a giant experiment. Do we want to put our children at risk, when we know that the risk of the disease to them is relatively small, but we don’t know what the future risks are? Why would we do a thing like that? It makes no sense whatsoever. Dr. Eric Rubin, a voting member of a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee, admitted last week that the vaccine’s ultimate safety profile won’t be known fully until it begins being administered to children. “We’re never gonna learn about how safe the vaccine is until we start giving it,” said Rubin. “That’s just the way it goes.”

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How does a drug on the WHO list of essential medicine all of a sudden become illegal? Really, what’s the mechanism?

Dutch Customs Impound 55,000 Doses Of Ivermectin Sent To Private Buyers (DN)

Over the past three months, Dutch customs officials have seized 665 packages containing the drug Ivermectin, which is wrongly said to help combat coronavirus. The shipments were impounded as part of an international campaign by the World Customs Organisation to stop illegal medicines relating to the Covid-19 pandemic, the tax office said in a statement. The drugs intercepted by customs came mainly from India, Hong Kong and Singapore. In total, the packages contained 55,000 doses of the drug, either as pills or liquids and were all addressed to private individuals. Ivermectin is a medication used to treat parasite infestations in both humans and animals.


Despite claims that it can be successfully used to treat coronavirus, a major investigation into the scientific reports used to justify using the drug has found serious errors and even deliberate manipulation. The World Health Organisation only recommends use of the drug in connection with coronavirus as part of a clinical trial. Forum voor Democratie leader Thierry Baudet is among the anti-vaxxers in the Netherlands who promotes the use of Ivermectin.

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Joe’s away, can’t blame him…

Companies Warn Biden Admin They May Need to Drop Fed Contractor Status (CTH)

As we have continued to point out, a federal vaccine mandate might sound like a good idea on a think tank, academic or white-paper policy level of consideration; but on a practical level, wiping out a large percentage of your most productive workforce over a vaccine mandate is unworkable, and might even end the operation of the entire business. That is the message today within an article written by Politico about several large federal contractor companies warning the White House they may need to drop their federal contracts because they simply will not be able to continue business operations if they lose their unvaccinated workforce on December 8th. Thus the power of the blue-collar workforce is being recognized:

“WASHINGTON DC – Objections among certain vendors over President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate for federal contractors are reaching an inflection point. As the deadline for workforce vaccination approaches, some trucking companies are mulling whether to end their work with the federal government altogether, according to two industry insiders. In an interview, the American Trucking Associations’ executive vice president for advocacy Bill Sullivan told POLITICO that some companies may simply decide that the cost of the mandate is not worth the government’s checks. Sullivan said he has raised concerns to the White House, Office of Management and Budget and other executive branch officials. He noted that if companies drop their contracts, it may be harder to get certain foods to troops, transport fuel for military vehicles, or even deploy the National Guard.

[…] interviews with more than a dozen industry advocates across the aerospace, distribution, defense and trucking sectors — some of whom have also been in discussions with administration officials — reveal they either have little confidence they will be able to meet the Dec. 8 deadline for their workers to receive their first vaccine shot or expressed concerns about difficulties the mandate would pose on their labor force. The White House has repeatedly insisted — both in private meetings and publicly — that the federal contractors can avoid potential service disruptions during the holiday season.”

The reaction from the Biden administration is laughable. As you would expect from a wonk-minded bureaucratic outlook, their solution is to put the employees into intensive reeducation camps saying the companies “must begin counseling them on the vaccine’s benefits and the ramifications for noncompliance.” It is important to note the recent NBC poll on this issue amid the outlook of the vaccine mandates. A majority of the country do not support the vaccine mandates, and worse still, the number of unvaccinated workers is essentially unwavering in the past six weeks. Remember, the number of Americans who willingly quit their jobs increased to 4.3 million in August. People are not f**king around now.

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De Niro

 

 

 

 

Children we lost
https://twitter.com/i/status/1454853746937184257

 

 

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Sep 082021
 
 September 8, 2021  Posted by at 8:47 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  84 Responses »


Henry Bacon General View of the Acropolis at Sunset 1927(?)

 

Rand Paul, Top Republicans Demand Fauci’s Firing (RT)
Where Are The Handcuffs? (Denninger)
Moving Target (Berenson)
Mu Variant Raging Through US As Experts Fear ‘Greater Transmissibility’ (Sky)
Fauci: ‘No Doubt’ Trump Will Face Surprise Infectious Disease Outbreak
On Child Vaccines, The Experts Are Suddenly Reluctant To Follow ‘The Science’ (Cook)
UK Vaccine Advisers ‘Acted Like Medical Regulators’ Over Jabs For Children (G.)
Ohio Judge Reverses Court Order Forcing Hospital To Give Patient Ivermectin (G.)
Business Owner Tests Positive For 2nd Time Despite Being Double Jabbed (SN)
NIH Orders $1.67m Study On How Covid-19 Vaccine Impacts Menstrual Cycle (NYP)
The Masked Professor Vs The Unmasked Student (NYT)
67% Of Unvaccinated Americans Would Rather Quit Their Job Than Be Vaxxed (RT)
OTC Medicines & Nutraceuticals to Prevent/Reduce COVID Post-Vax Side Effects

 

 

Zuby

 

 

 

 

Montagnier

 

 

 

 

Fauci will re-define gain of function again.

Rand Paul, Top Republicans Demand Fauci’s Firing (RT)

Top White House Covid adviser Anthony Fauci is facing calls to resign after newly released documents suggested his agency funded dangerous “gain-of-function” research in China, despite previous denials. Demands for the health adviser’s firing come after the Intercept obtained more than 900 pages of material related to coronavirus research funded by Fauci’s agency – the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) – including previously unpublished grant requests from a US-based organization that passed federal funds to the controversial Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China.

Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), who has repeatedly sparred with Fauci throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, touted the document dump in a Tuesday tweet, saying the materials “make it abundantly clear that [Fauci] needs to be held accountable,” noting he had already asked the Justice Department to review the adviser for “lying” in previous congressional testimony. The documents published by the Intercept show that the US-based organization, the EcoHealth Alliance, was granted some $3.1 million in funding approved by Fauci’s NIAID – later increased to exceed $3.7 million in total, according to other government records. Of that grant, $599,000 was funneled to the WIV, specifically to fund work to “identify and alter bat coronaviruses likely to infect humans,” according to the Intercept.

The firm’s grant application acknowledged potential dangers posed by the project, noting that “fieldwork involves the highest risk of exposure to SARS or other CoVs [coronaviruses] while working in caves with high bat density overhead and the potential for fecal dust to be inhaled.” The EcoHealth Alliance’s joint research with the WIV has raised other questions about potentially unsafe work at the Wuhan lab, and whether ‘gain-of-function’ research – which aims to increase the virulence and infectiousness of pathogens to better study them – was carried out there. The research was considered so risky that the government imposed a halt on federal funding in 2014, though that has since been lifted.

Fauci has repeatedly denied that his agency funded, directly or indirectly, any gain-of-function work at the WIV, including in high-profile confrontations with lawmakers such as Senator Paul. However, according to Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University who spoke to the Intercept after reviewing the documents, the research funded by EcoHealth included work to engineer novel viruses and test “their ability to infect mice that were engineered to display human type receptors on their cell.” In a lengthy Twitter thread posted following the Intercept story, Ebright went on to argue that the WIV work indeed constituted “gain-of-function research as defined in federal policies,” and that Fauci and other top health officials have lied to the public about it.

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“Why weren’t both those *******s driven out of the NIH years ago for what was an obvious intentionally-installed conflict of interest..”

Where Are The Handcuffs? (Denninger)

Gee, you think the obvious I pointed out a long time ago — that the double-amine coding in Sars-Cov2 was both a marker commonly used in virology research and had a zero probability of being naturally-occurring in bats because it is not a coding preferred for that amino acid in bats, and thus would not result in an infective virus in said bats, marked the virus as almost-certainly manipulated in a lab?

NEWLY RELEASED documents provide details of U.S.-funded research on several types of coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. The Intercept has obtained more than nine hundred pages of documents detailing the work of the EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based health organization that used federal money to fund bat coronavirus research at the Chinese laboratory. The trove of documents includes two previously unpublished grant proposals that were funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as well as project updates relating to the EcoHealth Alliance’s research, which has been scrutinized amid increased interest in the origins of the pandemic.

It appears, does it not, that Fauci lied. Both he and his wife, Christine Grady, who chairs bioethics at the NIH and who “conveniently” has been ignored by the media and everyone else, and who, it must be presumed, any grant proposals would have to go through and be approved by, ought to be in irons right now. And by the way, exactly how does it happen that in a federal agency a person’s wife winds up in a position to review and formally approve her husband’s work? Exactly how did that situation arise and why has it been allowed to continue to exist for a very, very long time? Why weren’t both those *******s driven out of the NIH years ago for what was an obvious intentionally-installed conflict of interest and, since this organization was dealing with things like bat viruses, a potential cause of a global pandemic if and when said conflict wound up approving something that should have been denied and immediately exposed to the public as a intentionally-dangerous act that was blocked?

Why is nobody looking into this? Why hasn’t it been investigated? Did it happen? We don’t know. It is a reasonably hypothesis, is it not? Gee, don’t think those are important questions that deserve answers, especially when it turns out that Fauci has repeatedly maintained, both in public and in sworn testimony before Congress that absolutely no “gain of function” research was in fact funded by the NIH under his direction and approval — and that of his wife?

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“The end of Covid is nigh, thanks to the miracle of vaccines. Just ask Dr. Anthony Fauci. Then ask him again. And again. And..”

Moving Target (Berenson)

Hedge fund managers sometimes joke the stock market has predicted nine of the last five recessions. And then there’s Anthony Fauci. Here he is on Nov. 12, 2020 – just after Pfizer released the first data showing its vaccines were 90-plus percent effective (don’t ask at what):

Can you be more specific, doc? He sure could. A month later:

If America’s Doctor (TM) says it, you can believe it! Maybe. Three months later – in March 2021, about when we were supposed to be hitting herd immunity – we were a mere four to six months away! Woke math is the best.

And here we are, in late summer, heading for early fall. Pandemic’s gotta be over, right? Let’s partaaaay! Hot Vaxxed Fall! Yeah, about that…

It’s almost as if the vaccines aren’t helping at all. Almost. But that can’t be right.

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“..even when you have variants that do diminish somewhat the efficacy of vaccines, the vaccines still are quite effective against variants of that type,” Dr Fauci said at a news briefing.”

Mu Variant Raging Through US As Experts Fear ‘Greater Transmissibility’ (Sky)

The Mu variant of COVID-19 – officially labelled a “variant of interest” by the World Health Organisation – is suspected to have key mutations linked to “greater transmissibility” and a potential to “evade antibodies”, according to health officials. The strain, also known as B.1.621 was first discovered in Colombia at the beginning of the year and has since been detected in 42 countries and 49 states in the United States. In the US, it’s most prevalent in California, with at least 384 cases, and 167 cases alone in Los Angeles. “The Mu variant is found to have key mutations linked to greater transmissibility and the potential to evade antibodies,” the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said in a statement. “More studies are needed to determine whether Mu variant is more contagious, more deadly or more resistant to vaccine and treatments than other COVID-19 strains.”


Dr Anthony Fauci, the US government’s leading infectious disease expert says he’s “keeping a very close eye” on the variant. He acknowledged the WHO’s message that the variant may be more resistant than previous strains to vaccines, but continued to encourage people to roll up their sleeves for the jab. “Not to downplay it, we take it very seriously, but remember, even when you have variants that do diminish somewhat the efficacy of vaccines, the vaccines still are quite effective against variants of that type,” Dr Fauci said at a news briefing. Although the Delta variant accounts for more than 99 per cent of cases in the US, Mu has mutations that “indicate that it might evade the protection from certain antibodies”. “The identification of variants like Mu, and the spreading of variants across the globe, highlights the need for LA County residents to continue to take measures to protect themselves and others,” LA county’s Director of Public Health Dr Barbara Ferrer said.

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Jan 11 2017

Fauci: ‘No Doubt’ Trump Will Face Surprise Infectious Disease Outbreak (Arch.)

Anthony S. Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said there is “no doubt” Donald J. Trump will be confronted with a surprise infectious disease outbreak during his presidency. Fauci has led the NIAID for more than 3 decades, advising the past five United States presidents on global health threats from the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s through to the current Zika virus outbreak. During a forum on pandemic preparedness at Georgetown University, Fauci said the Trump administration will not only be challenged by ongoing global health threats such as influenza and HIV, but also a surprise disease outbreak.


“The history of the last 32 years that I have been the director of the NIAID will tell the next administration that there is no doubt they will be faced with the challenges their predecessors were faced with,” he said. While observers have speculated since his election about how Trump will respond to such challenges, Fauci and other health experts said Tuesday that preventing disease pandemics often starts overseas and that a proper response means collaboration between not only the U.S. and other countries, but also the public and private health sectors. “We will definitely get surprised in the next few years,” he said.

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”Into the void between our scientific knowledge and our fear of mortality has rushed politics.”

On Child Vaccines, The Experts Are Suddenly Reluctant To Follow ‘The Science’ (Cook)

Into the void between our scientific knowledge and our fear of mortality has rushed politics. It is a refusal to admit that “the science” is necessarily compromised by political and commercial considerations that has led to an increasingly polarised – and unreasonable – confrontation between what have become two sides of the Covid divide. Doubt and curiosity have been squeezed out by the bogus certainties of each faction. All of this has been underscored by the latest decision of the Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunisation, the British government’s official advisory body on vaccinations. Unexpectedly, it has defied political pressure and demurred, for the time being at least, on extending the vaccination programme to children aged between 12 and 15.

The British government appears to be furious. Ministers who have been constantly demanding that we “follow the science” are reportedly ready to ignore the advice – or more likely, bully the JCVI into hastily changing its mind over the coming days. Over the weekend, the vaccines minister, Nadhim Zahawi, even suggested, in a potentially radical overhaul of traditional ideas of medical consent, that doctors – and presumably schools – might soon be allowed to persuade children as young as 12 to get vaccinated against their parents’ wishes. And liberal media outlets like the Guardian, which have been so careful until now to avoid giving a platform to “dissident” scientists, are suddenly subjecting the great and the good of the vaccination establishment to harsh criticism from doctors who want children vaccinated as quickly as possible.

Watching this confected “row” unfold, one thing is clear: “the science” is getting another political pummelling.

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Oh sweet lord, Neil Ferguson is still alive.

UK Vaccine Advisers ‘Acted Like Medical Regulators’ Over Jabs For Children (G.)

The UK’s vaccine advisory group behaved like a medical regulator in rejecting calls for all children aged 12-15 to be offered Covid jabs despite that not being its role, Prof Neil Ferguson has said. Last week the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said the margin of benefit for older children, on health grounds alone, was too small for the committee to support jabs for the entire age group. But it recommended that ministers seek further advice, taking into account factors such as the impact on disruption to education, with sources suggesting vaccines for older children could be recommended this week. Ferguson, a leading epidemiologist from Imperial College London whose initial modelling was pivotal in Britain’s coronavirus response, said he would not be surprised if the UK’s chief medical officers decide to press ahead with vaccinating healthy children aged 12 to 15.


Speaking at an online event hosted by the Institute for Government, Ferguson said he understood that the JCVI had been relatively conservative in its advice, because of the small risk of a condition call myocarditis that appears to be linked to certain Covid jabs. “I think the committee had some particular concerns about long-term follow-up data in terms of myocarditis associated with vaccination, and so took quite a conservative position, almost akin to a kind of medical regulator – which isn’t quite its role,” he said. He added that the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) had already approved use of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines for children over the age of 12. Ferguson also said he suspected Covid infection might pose a greater risk than the vaccine when it came to myocarditis, although he noted a lack of good data for estimating the risk of the condition from Covid.

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The dewormer wars continue.

Ohio Judge Reverses Court Order Forcing Hospital To Give Patient Ivermectin (G.)

An Ohio judge has reversed a court order that forced a local hospital to treat a Covid-19 patient with the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin. On Monday, Judge Michael Oster of Butler county issued an order that sided with West Chester Hospital, citing a lack of “convincing evidence” that the drug – used in small doses in humans against external parasites such as headlice, and in larger doses for animals including cows and horses – could significantly improve the patient’s condition. The patient, Jeffrey Smith, was admitted to intensive care on 15 July. He has been on a ventilator since 1 August. At a hearing on Thursday, Julie Smith, his wife, testified that neither she nor her husband were vaccinated against Covid-19. “We didn’t feel confident [the vaccine] had been out long enough,” she said.

As Smith’s condition deteriorated, his wife reached out to Fred Wagshul, a physician and founder member of the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, a nonprofit that promotes ivermectin as a preventative treatment. According to Oster’s order, Wagshul, who does not have medical privileges at West Chester Hospital, prescribed 21 days of the medication without having seen Jeffrey Smith. The hospital refused to administer the medication, citing lack of FDA approval, despite Julie Smith’s request. Smith filed a lawsuit in an attempt to force the hospital to give ivermectin to her husband. On 23 August, Butler county Judge Gregory Howard compelled West Chester Hospital to give Smith 30mg of ivermectin daily for three weeks.

Oster’s order nullified the order issued by Howard. “Judges are not doctors or nurses,” he wrote. “We have gavels, not needles, vaccines, or other medicines.” He added: “This court is not determining if ivermectin will ever be effective and useful as a treatment for Covid-19. “However, based upon the evidence, it has not shown to be effective at this juncture … After considering all of the evidence presented in this case, there can be no doubt that the medical and scientific communities do not support the use of ivermectin as a treatment for Covid-19.”

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“Double jabbed & thankful for that because I feel terrible..”

Business Owner Tests Positive For 2nd Time Despite Being Double Jabbed (SN)

A business owner in the UK has been forced to close her shop after testing positive for COVID-19 for the second time despite being double jabbed. Ursula Sutcliffe says she has lost her sense of smell, has a pain in the back of her head and is now bedridden due to the infection, despite having received her second dose of the vaccine. “Ursula, who had her second vaccination in May this year, first tested positive for Covid in September last year, which led to her plant shop being shut for 10 days. This is set to be the same situation 12 months on,” reports the Telegraph & Argus. “It’s a nightmare. I feel absolutely shattered,” said Sutcliffe. “On Sunday morning I woke up and I felt like I had been hit by a train. The back of my skull felt like I had been hit in the head.


The shop owner previously had to close her store the first time she got COVID and then again after someone who visited was pinged by the onerous ‘Track and Trace’ system. Unbelievably, Sutcliffe responded to the complete failure of the vaccine by expressing gratitude for the fact that she was able to take it. “This is my second time having covid. The 1st was September last year. Double jabbed & thankful for that because I feel terrible,” she tweeted. She also scolded herself for not wearing a face mask during the summer, despite studies showing they are virtually useless at stopping the spread of the virus. “I stopped wearing my mask as much in the shop. I could kick myself now,” said Sutcliffe.

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First you say it’s safe, then you studyif it’s … safe.

“Nobody expected it to affect the menstrual system, because the information wasn’t being collected in the early vaccine studies,” said NICHD director Diana Bianchi..”

“We were worried this was contributing to vaccine hesitancy in reproductive-age women,” said Bianchi.”

NIH Orders $1.67m Study On How Covid-19 Vaccine Impacts Menstrual Cycle (NYP)

The National Institutes of Health has announced a $1.67 million study to investigate reports that suggest the COVID-19 vaccine may come with an unexpected impact on reproductive health. It’s been a little over six months since the three COVID-19 vaccines in the US — Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson — became widely available to all adults. But even in the early days of vaccine rollout, some women were noticing irregular periods following their shots, as reported first by the Lily in April. Shana Clauson, 45, spoke to the Washington Post’s women’s news site at the time, and again this week, about her experience after getting the jab — revealing that her period arrived earlier and heavier than what she considers normal. She was one of many who gathered on social media to share what they were seeing.

“Is this not being discussed, or is it even being looked at or researched because it’s a ‘woman’s issue?’ ” Clauson speculated to the Lily last spring. It would appear that the NIH heard Clauson and others’ reports, as they announced on Aug. 30 that they intended to embark on just such research — aiming to incorporate up to half a million participants, including teens and transgender and nonbinary people. [..] The approximately yearlong study will follow initially unvaccinated participants to observe changes that occur following each dose. More specifically, some groups will exclude participants on birth control or gender-affirming hormones, which may have their own impact on periods.

“Our goal is to provide menstruating people with information, mainly as to what to expect, because I think that was the biggest issue: Nobody expected it to affect the menstrual system, because the information wasn’t being collected in the early vaccine studies,” said NICHD director Diana Bianchi in a statement to the Lily — reportedly crediting their early coverage for helping to make the NIH aware. The NIH suggests that changes to the menstrual cycle could arise out of several of life’s circumstances during a pandemic — the stress of lifestyle changes or possibly contending with illness. Moreover, the immune and reproductive systems are intrinsically linked, and the notion that the immune-boosting vaccine may disrupt the typical menstrual cycle is plausible, as demonstrated by previous studies concerning vaccine uptake.

[..] As changes to the menstrual cycle are “really not a life and death issue,” explained Bianchi, the Food and Drug Administration — fast-tracking their work — prioritized only the most critical risks associated with the COVID-19 vaccine. The NIH, too, pulled together the initiative at breakneck speed. Funding for such a study would typically take years to see approval. “We were worried this was contributing to vaccine hesitancy in reproductive-age women,” said Bianchi.

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“It isn’t a visual hellscape, like hospitals; it’s more of an emotional hellscape,” Boedy said.”

The Masked Professor Vs The Unmasked Student (NYT)

Matthew Boedy, an associate professor of rhetoric and composition, sent out a raw emotional appeal to his students at the University of North Georgia just before classes began: The Covid-19 delta variant was rampaging through the state, filling up hospital beds. He would teach class in the equivalent of full body armor – vaccinated and masked. So he was stunned in late August when more than two-thirds of the first-year students in his writing class did not take the hint and showed up unmasked. It was impossible to tell who was vaccinated and who was not. “It isn’t a visual hellscape, like hospitals; it’s more of an emotional hellscape,” Boedy said.

North Georgia is not requiring its students to be vaccinated or masked this fall. And as in-person classes return at almost every university in the country, after almost 1 1/2 years of emergency pivoting to online learning, many professors are finding teaching a nerve-racking experience. The American College Health Association recommends vaccination requirements for all on-campus higher education students for the fall semester. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends face coverings, regardless of vaccine status, for indoor public spaces in areas where the rate of infection is high. But this is not how it has worked out on more than a few campuses.

More than 1,000 colleges and universities have adopted vaccination requirements for at least some students and staff, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. In an indication of how political vaccination has become, the schools tend to be clustered in states that voted for President Joe Biden in the last election. But at some campuses, particularly in Republican-led states with high rates of contagion – like the state systems in Georgia, Texas and Florida – vaccination is optional and mask wearing, while recommended, cannot be enforced. Professors are told they can tell students that they are “strongly encouraged” or “expected” to put on masks, but cannot force students to do so. And teachers cannot ask students who have Covid-like symptoms to leave the classroom. Certainly, some professors are happy to go maskless.

At least nine states – Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Florida, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Tennessee – have banned or restricted school mask mandates. It is unclear, education officials say, whether all of these prohibitions apply to universities, but public universities depend on state funding. A smattering of faculty members have resigned in protest over optional mask policies. Most, like Boedy, are soldiering on. But the level of fear is so high that even at universities that do require vaccination and masks, like Cornell University and the University of Michigan, professors have signed petitions asking for the choice to return to online teaching. “Morale is at an all-time low,” warns a petition at the University of Iowa.

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“Such a hefty majority doesn’t look good for American corporations..”

67% Of Unvaccinated Americans Would Rather Quit Their Job Than Be Vaxxed (RT)

Almost 70% of unvaccinated Americans would rather quit their job than submit to mandatory vaccination, a new poll found, as another survey suggests more than 50% of companies plan such requirements by the end of the year. Some 35% of the 1,066 unvaccinated individuals polled by the Washington Post and ABC News last week said they would request a religious or medical exemption if their employer adopted a vaccine mandate, while 42% said they would quit. Asked what they would do if no exemptions were available, the majority opted to join that 42% and said they would call it quits if ordered to vaccinate, amounting to around 67% of unvaccinated workers who would rather quit than comply.

Such a hefty majority doesn’t look good for American corporations, more than half of which (52%) said they planned to have at least one vaccination requirement in place by the last quarter of 2021, according to a Willis Towers Watson survey last week. That survey addressed 961 companies, employing a total of almost 10 million people. However, while unvaccinated Americans aren’t particularly keen on chasing down the needle, some 52% of Americans in general approve of businesses requiring their employees to be vaccinated, with 44% opposing the idea, the poll found. The arguments over mandatory vaccination have only grown louder in recent weeks as governments try to sweep the controversial issue under the proverbial rug.

Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union claimed, to the shock of many, that mandatory vaccination actually bolsters civil liberties and that the right to bodily autonomy is not “absolute.” The US is hardly the only country to warn its citizens that the jab will soon be a prerequisite for everyday and recreational activities. The UK’s vaccines minister announced this week that a ‘vaccine passport’ would be required to enter certain venues from the end of the month.

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Alice in Wonderland. Ivermectin to protect you from a vaccine.

OTC Medicines & Nutraceuticals to Prevent/Reduce COVID Post-Vax Side Effects

These recommendations are based on the clinical experience of COVID-expert doctors surveyed. The recommendations are designed to address two concerns:

1. Prevention or reduction of side effects and adverse events that may in some cases be severe. The schedule for each nutraceutical or medicine is designed to cover the time when various of the side effects have been reported.

2. Breakthrough COVID infection is being reported during the approximately two weeks before immunity from the vaccine starts. The recommended antivirals and vitamin D help protect against these shortly-after-vaccine COVID infections. Vitamin D also helps protect against vaccine side effects. All the therapeutics listed are available over the counter without prescription. However, for those with access to them, adding ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine enhances the anti-COVID protection. Ivermectin for protection against COVID infection is recommended at a dosage of 0.2 mg/kilogram of body weight (typically around 12 – 18 mg/dose). An often cited protocol is to take one dose, then after 48 hours take a second dose. Then take once per week. Hydroxychloroquine for protection against COVID infection is often recommended at 200 mg once a day for 5 days, then 200 – 400mg one time a week.

• Aspirin (anti-thrombotic) 325 mg/day for 4 weeks beginning the day before vaccination.
• Ibuprofen (anti-inflammatory) Two 200 mg caplets 3 times/day the day before, day of and day after vaccination. Continue as needed if symptomatic (fever, muscle aches, headache, etc.)
• Loratadine (Claritin or generic equivalent; H1 blocker, anti-inflammatory) 10 mg/day the day before, day of and day after vaccination. • Famotidine (Pepcid or generic equivalent; H2 blocker, anti-inflammatory) 20 mg twice per day the day before, day of and day after vaccination.
• Vitamin D3 (potent anti-inflammatory effects at sufficient dosage; anti-viral immune enhancement) One dose of 50,000 IU five to seven days before vaccination (serum levels peak on average at 7 days), Then daily 15,000 IU until 5 days after vaccination, Then continue with maintenance dosage of 5,000 – 10,000 IU/day. For extra protection against breakthrough COVID infection during the approximately two-week window before immunity starts:
• Zinc (anti-viral) 50 mg/day started as far ahead of vaccination as possible and continued three weeks or indefinitely. • Quercetin (zinc ionophore, to enhance zinc anti-viral effect; anti-inflammatory; anti-thrombotic) 250 mg twice per day for three weeks starting the day before vaccination.
• Vitamin C (anti-viral; anti-inflammatory) 3,000 mg/day started as far ahead of vaccination as possible and continued three weeks or indefinitely.

DISCLAIMER: This information is for educational purposes only. It is not intended to serve as a substitute for diagnosis, treatment, or advice from a qualified, licensed medical professional. Any treatment you undertake should be discussed with your physician or other licensed medical professional.

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