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Debt Rattle January 24 2025

Jan 242025
 
 January 24, 2025  Posted by at 10:56 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  34 Responses »


Salvador Dali Hallucination. Six Images of Lenin on a Grand Piano 1931

 

• I Would Meet With Putin Immediately – Trump (RT)
• Trump Knows Ukraine Conflict Means Nuclear WWIII, Gives Peace A Chance (SCF)
• Zelensky Says He Could Speak With Putin (RT)
• Zelensky Is ‘No Angel’ – Trump (RT)
• Trump Gives First Oval Office Interview (JTN)
• Trump To Pull 20,000 US Troops From Europe – Sources (RT)
• Trump Orders Plan for Release of JFK, RFK, MLK Assassination Records (ET)
• Nazispolozza: The Left’s Third Reich Mania Collapses into Comedy (Turley)
• US News Channel Fires Presenter After She Calls Musk A Nazi (RT)
• GOP To Push Trump Nominees Through Democratic Walls (JTN)
• SCOTUS Denies RFK Jr. Request To Block California’s Doctor Investigations (ZH)
• COVID Death Coverup: Trump-Hating Lawyers at DOJ Strike Again (PJM)
• Larry Fink Predicts $700,000 Bitcoin (RT)
• Judge Blocks Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order (ET)
• West Could Orchestrate More International Conflicts – Russian Spy Chief (RT)
• UK Faces ‘Debt Death Spiral’ – Ray Dalio (RT)

 

 

 

 

Trump WEF

J6

Chamath

The best

OMG

 

 

 

 

Putin says Zelensky is not a legitimate representative of Ukraine. No deals can be made with him. Has anyone told Trump?

• I Would Meet With Putin Immediately – Trump (RT)

US President Donald Trump has said he is ready to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin as quickly as possible to negotiate an end to the Ukraine conflict. Trump, who took office on Monday, has repeatedly pledged to quickly negotiate a settlement between Russia and Ukraine. “From what I hear, Putin would like to see me, and we’ll leave as soon as we can. I’d meet immediately,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday. “Every day we don’t meet, soldiers are being killed on the battlefield.” The Kremlin previously said it was open to such talks. Speaking to reporters earlier this week, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, denied that a Putin-Trump phone call was in the works. Trump has reportedly given his Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, 100 days to hammer out a settlement between Moscow and Kiev.

On Wednesday, the US president threatened to impose new sanctions on Russia if Putin refuses to accept an unspecified “deal” to end the conflict. “Such dialogue between the two presidents had occurred during Trump’s first term,” Peskov said, adding that the Kremlin “has not received [such] signals so far.” Russia has insisted that Ukraine must abandon its plan to join the US-led NATO alliance in favor of becoming a neutral country. Putin has also demanded that Kiev renounce its claims to Crimea and four other regions that have voted to leave Ukraine and become part of Russia. Speaking to Bloomberg on Wednesday, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky argued that communication with Kiev should be “a priority” for the Trump administration. He added that he was open to negotiations if Trump could provide tangible “security guarantees” to Ukraine.

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“..at least he is willing to give peace a chance with Russia over Ukraine. That alone makes Trump a welcome change from the vile warmongering of Biden and his would-be successor Kamala Harris.”

• Trump Knows Ukraine Conflict Means Nuclear WWIII, Gives Peace A Chance (SCF)

The chances of a peace deal in Ukraine are suddenly a lot higher under President Donald Trump only because he has a realistic sense of a nuclear Third World War happening between the United States and Russia if that conflict is not ended promptly. Peter Kuznick, an esteemed American professor of history, says that the Biden administration brought the world closer to a nuclear conflagration than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Biden did this by relentlessly arming Ukraine with weapons to strike deeper and deeper into Russia instead of trying to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Indeed, there was no diplomatic effort from Washington under Biden. It was ideologically and propaganda-driven for confrontation, as was the Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris.

Kuznick points out that Trump is no John F Kennedy in terms of the latter’s depth of historical and philosophical knowledge. But in comparison with Joe Biden, Trump has shown more humanity and common sense by not insulting Putin and in reaching out for a peaceful end to the slaughter in Ukraine. Biden called Putin a thug and said he would back Ukraine as long as it takes to defeat Russia. The last Democrat administration spent $175 billion of U.S. taxpayers’ money propping up a NeoNazi regime in Kiev that has lost over one million military casualties since the war erupted in February 2022. By contrast, newly inaugurated President Trump says that he wants to meet Russian leader Vladimir Putin as a priority to find a peaceful way out of the conflict and to avoid a catastrophic escalation between nuclear powers.

Putin has welcomed a meeting with the new president and said he appreciates the urgent concern to avoid a nuclear disaster. Kuznick is author of The Untold History of the United States, which was coauthored with acclaimed film director Oliver Stone. The book was turned into an award-winning television series aired on Showtime, Netflix and other channels. Kuznick deplores the way the U.S. and NATO partners undermined international security by expanding on Russia’s borders despite earlier promises to the Soviet leaders that would not happen. If peace is to be found in Ukraine, it must be based on a bigger picture of lasting global security that considers all nations’ concerns. That means the United States must treat Russia’s national security concerns over NATO’s expansion seriously and respectfully.

Can the Trump administration deliver? It is packed with hawkish figures like Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Donald Trump is better placed than the Biden adminstration to cut a deal with Russia for peace in Ukraine and thereby avoid nuclear disaster, says Kuznick. Trump’s cabinet is filled with billionaires and his mercurial, superficial understanding of the world can be deprecated. Maybe his peaceful aspirations are muddled and not feasible given that Trump is surrounded by hawkish figures. But at least he is willing to give peace a chance with Russia over Ukraine. That alone makes Trump a welcome change from the vile warmongering of Biden and his would-be successor Kamala Harris.

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“According to Putin, the move violated the Ukrainian constitution, leaving parliament as the sole legitimate authority in the country.”

• Zelensky Says He Could Speak With Putin (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has said he could engage in direct peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin if US President Donald Trump provides Kiev with enough security guarantees, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. Zelensky signed a decree banning himself from any negotiations with Putin in the fall of 2022 after the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, along with the Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, officially became part of Russia as a result of referendums. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga said earlier this month that the legislation remains in force. However, in an interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday in Davos, Zelensky appeared to have changed his stance on the issue. According to the agency, the Ukrainian leader now says he wants to secure a commitment from Trump to support and secure Ukraine before engaging with Putin.

“The only question is what security guarantees and honestly I want to have understanding before the talks. If he can guarantee this strong and irreversible security for Ukraine, we will move along this diplomatic path,” he said. Last year, Putin said he would only be able to negotiate with Zelensky if he were to hold an election and win it, to restore his legitimacy. Zelensky remains in power in Ukraine despite his term having officially expired in May last year. The Ukrainian leader canceled the presidential vote, citing martial law that he imposed due to the conflict with Russia. According to Putin, the move violated the Ukrainian constitution, leaving parliament as the sole legitimate authority in the country.

On Tuesday, US President Trump said he is ready to meet with Putin “anytime” to discuss a diplomatic settlement to the conflict between Moscow and Kiev. “We are talking to Zelensky. We are going to be talking with President Putin very soon and we will see how it all happens,” he said. Earlier this week, the Russian leader commended Trump’s intention to resume contacts between Moscow and Washington, which had been halted by the Biden administration. However, he stressed that dialogue can only happen on an “equal and mutually respectful basis.” Putin said Moscow noted the US president’s apparent willingness to restore communication and “do everything to prevent World War Three.”

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“Putin shouldn’t have done it,” Trump, who took office on Monday, told Hannity. “He shouldn’t have done it and it has to stop.”

• Zelensky Is ‘No Angel’ – Trump (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky bears some responsibility for the armed conflict with Russia, US President Donald Trump has said. He argued that Zelensky, who has been granted a glowing reception in many Western capitals, should have done whatever necessary to avoid hostilities. During an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that aired on Wednesday and Thursday, Trump reiterated the need to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict, set to enter its fourth year next month. “Zelensky – I got to say this – he wants to settle now. He’s had enough. He shouldn’t have allowed this to happen either,” Trump said. “You know, he’s no angel. He shouldn’t have allowed this war to happen,” he added. “First of all, he’s fighting a much bigger entity,” Trump stressed. He previously questioned the unconditional military and financial aid provided to Kiev by his predecessor, former President Joe Biden.

Trump also described Zelensky in the past as “the greatest salesman on Earth.” In the same interview, Trump criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin and threatened to impose more sanctions on Moscow “if they don’t make a settlement fast.” “Putin shouldn’t have done it,” Trump, who took office on Monday, told Hannity. “He shouldn’t have done it and it has to stop.” The president has repeatedly claimed that he would quickly negotiate a fair deal between Russia and Ukraine, but provided no specifics about possible terms. Both Moscow and Kiev have previously said that freezing the conflict along the current front line would be unacceptable. Putin has insisted that Kiev must abandon plans to join the US-led NATO military alliance, and renounce claims on Crimea and four other former Ukrainian regions that voted to join Russia in 2022.

Earlier this month, Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, said he hopes to resolve the conflict within 100 days. Trump has criticized Biden for neglecting diplomacy and said on several occasions that he was open to having a conversation with Putin. So far no date for negotiations has been announced. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied earlier this week that a phone call between the leaders was being arranged.

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“We can get our country back,” he said. “But if we didn’t win this race, I really believe our country would have been lost forever.”

• Trump Gives First Oval Office Interview (JTN)

President Donald Trump gave his first Oval Office interview on Wednesday addressing a wide range of problems facing the United States, but assuring the nation that they are “all solvable.” “They’re all solvable problems … with time, effort, money — unfortunately — but they’re all solvable,” President Trump said in the interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity. He also reiterated his belief that this election was the most consequential in history. “We can get our country back,” he said. “But if we didn’t win this race, I really believe our country would have been lost forever.” Since taking office on Monday, President Trump signed a mountain of executive orders addressing the core issues from his campaign, including immigration, reversing Biden green energy policy, and delaying a ban on the popular social media app TikTok.

In the interview, Trump specifically dismissed criticism of his policy towards the popular social media app TikTok, which he promised to save from legislation passed by Congress which required the app to separate from its Chinese owner or be banned from the United States. Shortly after his inauguration, Trump issued an executive order to extend the deadline for the app’s parent company ByteDance to divest of the platform or face a ban. Security and privacy concerns about the app have simmered in Washington for years, spurred by the China-based parent company ByteDance’s close relationship with the Chinese Communist Party. “But you can say that about everything made in China. Look, we have our telephones made in China, for the most part. We have so many things made in China. So why don’t they mention that?” Trump asked.

“You know, the interesting thing with TikTok, is you’re dealing with a lot of young people, so they love–Is it that important for China to be spying on young people, on young kids watching crazy videos?” Trump also told Hannity that he truly believes he was saved by God from the would-be assassin’s bullet on the campaign trail last year, echoing his inaugural speech where he said he was “saved by God to make America great again.” “I turned…if I didn’t turn you know when the turn was like split second, perfect timing. So something happened, and I don’t think you can call it just luck,” Trump said, confirming that the incident increased his faith in God. Trump also said he is currently reviewing the John F. Kennedy assassination files and plans to release them.

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“We are in there for $200 billion more than the EU. I mean, what are we, stupid? I guess the answer is ‘yes.’ They must think so..”

• Trump To Pull 20,000 US Troops From Europe – Sources (RT)

US President Donald Trump is considering reducing his country’s military contingent in Europe by 20% as he reviews Washington’s commitment to the continent, Italian news agency ANSA has reported, citing EU diplomatic sources. If the pullout occurs, the number of US service personnel in Europe will decrease from around 100,000 to 80,000, the agency reported on Wednesday. In recent conversations with European leaders Trump has “consistently” expressed a desire to downsize the US military presence on the continent, the sources said. “Furthermore, for those [US troops] who remain, he would like financial contributions from European countries, because these soldiers are a deterrent, and the costs cannot be borne solely by American taxpayers,” one of ANSA’s sources claimed.

Earlier this month, Trump said NATO member states in the EU should be spending 5% of their GDP on defense, way beyond the current goal of 2%. “They can afford it,” he claimed. On Tuesday, the US president called on Brussels to “equalize” with Washington when it comes to the support it provides to Ukraine. “We are in there for $200 billion more than the EU. I mean, what are we, stupid? I guess the answer is ‘yes.’ They must think so,” he said. Trump also pledged to impose tariffs on the bloc due to its trade surplus with the US. “The EU is very bad for us,” he claimed. During a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron noted: “now that the new administration has taken office in the US, it is more important than ever for Europeans… to play their full part in consolidating a united, strong, and sovereign Europe.”

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This time, let’s see it all.

• Trump Orders Plan for Release of JFK, RFK, MLK Assassination Records (ET)

President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered plans to be drafted for the release of records related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy (JFK), Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The president signed an executive order on Jan. 23 directing the director of national intelligence and the attorney general to prepare a plan in 15 days for the “full and complete release” of the JFK assassination files. The deadline for the plans for the RFK and King files is 45 days “That’s a big one,” Trump said while signing the order in the Oval Office. “A lot of people have been waiting for this for years, for decades. And everything will be revealed.” Trump promised at his pre-inauguration rally in Washington on Jan. 19 that he would release the remaining records on the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and King in the coming days.

The FBI accused Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine who had defected to the Soviet Union for a period after embracing Marxism, of assassinating JFK in 1963. Nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald as authorities were moving him from the Dallas police headquarters to the county jail just two days after the assassination, stirring decades of speculation and conspiracy theories. JFK’s assassination coincided with a period of increasing mistrust in the federal government, and many Americans still believe that Oswald was part of a larger plot to kill the president. Gallup’s most recent poll on the subject, conducted in October 2023, found that 65 percent of U.S. adults reject the theory that a lone gunman killed JFK. Trump and former President Joe Biden previously released thousands of documents related to JFK’s killing. Roughly 99 percent of the assassination files had been released as of 2023, according to the National Archives.

However, Biden had agreed to delay the disclosure of additional records because of the necessity of protecting “against identifiable harms to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, and the conduct of foreign relations that are of such gravity that they outweigh the public interest in disclosure.” JFK’s nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.), whom Trump has nominated to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, launched a petition in 2023 on the 60th anniversary of the assassination demanding that the Biden administration release all remaining government records on his uncle’s murder. RFK Jr. was just 9 years old when his uncle was assassinated in 1963, and he was 14 when his father was assassinated during the 1968 Democratic presidential primaries.

“The 1992 Kennedy Records Assassination Act mandated the release of all records related to the JFK assassination by 2017. Trump refused to do it. Biden refused to do it. What is so embarrassing that they’re afraid to show the American public 60 years later?” RFK Jr. wrote in a statement on his website in 2023. “Trust in government is at an all-time low. Releasing the full, unredacted historical records will help to restore that trust.” Biden had moved to redact some of the last remaining JFK assassination files, but Trump’s order states that this action is “not consistent with the public interest and the release of these records is long overdue.” “Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth. It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay,” the order reads.

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“So Trump is a Nazi. Musk is a Nazi. Half the country are Nazis. The problem is that, if you say everyone is a Nazi, then no one is a Nazi..”

“AOC is a certified Nazi hunter, a license that seems only to be available to figures on the left.”

• Nazispolozza: The Left’s Third Reich Mania Collapses into Comedy (Turley)

One of the least successful efforts of the left and many in the media this election was to paint Republican voters as “Nazis” hellbent on destroying democracy. While once verboten as a political comparison, liberal politicians and pundits have developed something of a Nazi fetish, where every statement and gesture is declared a return of the Third Reich. It seems like each news event presents a Rorschach test where every inkblot looks like a Nazi. That mania reached absurd, even comedic, levels with the attack on Elon Musk over an awkward gesture during the inauguration celebration. An exuberant Musk told the crowd, “My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured.” As he gave those words, he placed his right hand on his chest and stretched his arm outward, his palm facing the floor. He then repeated the gesture before putting his hand on his chest again.

It was all done in a matter of seconds, but it was enough for the usual mob to erupt in faux outrage. Pundits insisted that Musk had chosen the moment to come out as a Nazi on national television. The Washington Post breathlessly reported this week how the “Nazi-style salute” had “invigorated fans on the far right.” The usual liberal professors were rolled out to offer a patina of authority to the ridiculous claim. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University, declared, “Historian of fascism here. It was a Nazi salute and a very belligerent one too.” Mike Stuchbery went on X (the company owned by the man he now suggests is a Nazi reenactor) to declare, “I studied the Nazis at university, taught the history of Nazi Germany on two continents and wrote for major newspapers about Nazi Germany. I am internet famous for fact-checking chuds [gross people] on the history, ideology and policy of Nazi Germany. That was a Nazi salute.”

Well, that settles it. As the outrage continued, any doubt or dissent was denounced as evidence that you are obviously a Nazi as well. That became a bit embarrassing when the leading Jewish organization, the Anti-Defamation League, stated the obvious: This was not a Nazi salute but rather an “awkward gesture.” The core principle of liberal mob tactics is that there can be no divergence, even by a group like the ADL. The way to deal with opposing ideas or writings is by making someone persona non grata. If you do not cancel others, you will be canceled. So the ADL was effectively declared soft on Nazis by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY): “Just to be clear, you are defending a Heil Hitler salute that was performed and repeated for emphasis and clarity. People can officially stop listening to you as any sort of reputable source of information now. You work for them. Thank you for making that crystal clear to all.”

We’ve reached a level of absurdity where Jewish advocates are treated like they are virtual Nazi sympathizers. This is not the first time the Democrats have labeled Trump and his supporters “Nazis.” It started years ago as Democrats repeated analogies of Trump to Hitler and his followers to brownshirted neo-Nazis. Defeating Trump has been compared to stopping Hitler in 1933, and media personalities like Rachel Maddow went on the air with a hysterical claim that “death squads” were authorized by the Supreme Court. When Trump held a massive rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden before the election, the media were apoplectic and immediately declared it … you guessed it … akin to a Nazi rally. From the Washington Post to the New York Times, the media formed an affinity group meeting to fret over “echoes of 1939.” In case anyone missed the message, Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz emphasized “a direct parallel” with the Nazis.

Over at the Nation, David Zirin treated Madison Square Garden (known for everything from cage fights to dog shows) as an almost Vatican-like space: “With his fascist New York City rally, Donald Trump has befouled what many believe to be a sacred space: Madison Square Garden.” So Trump is a Nazi. Musk is a Nazi. Half the country are Nazis. The problem is that, if you say everyone is a Nazi, then no one is a Nazi. It loses its meaning. That includes Ocasio-Cortez, who appears to have joined the ranks of the Reich after critics posted her making a Musk-like gesture during a speech. There was no torrent of media fretting about how the gesture reflected the extremism of AOC’s questioning need for a Supreme Court, seeking to bar Trump and dozens of Republicans from ballots, or supporting censorship. AOC is a certified Nazi hunter, a license that seems only to be available to figures on the left.

Of course, labeling political opponents as diabolically evil fanatics and seeking to bar candidates from ballots sounds a lot like … well … it sounds familiar. There is an alternative. We can put the rage rhetoric aside and have honest debates over differences on politics and laws. In other words, we can fight over policy … and leave the Nazis out of it.

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“..his critics, who should find better ways to attack their opponents than calling “everyone Hitler.”

• US News Channel Fires Presenter After She Calls Musk A Nazi (RT)

A Milwaukee-based CBS affiliate has dismissed one of its weather presenters after she reportedly called Elon Musk a Nazi on social media, over a gesture the tech billionaire made during an inauguration rally for US President Donald Trump. Musk has been forced to deny making a Nazi salute, dismissing the allegation as a “dirty trick” by his critics, who should find better ways to attack their opponents than calling “everyone Hitler.” WDJT-TV (Channel 58), where meteorologist Sam Kuffel had worked since 2019, has confirmed her departure but provided no official explanation in an internal memo to or public comments, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. While the station described the matter as a “personal issue,” Kuffel was reportedly dismissed one day after commenting on Musk’s gesture on her Instagram account.

The TV channel has removed Kuffel’s bio from its website and no longer mentions her in its weather section, but retains articles written by her. Her Instagram account has been set to private, but screenshots purportedly capturing her posts are available online. She has not commented publicly on the incident. Before her tenure at WDJT-TV, the journalist worked at WAOW-TV (Channel 9) in Wausau, after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with a degree in atmospheric science. The Anti-Defamation League, a US-based pro-Israeli group which monitors anti-Semitism and hate speech, has described Musk’s gesture as “awkward” but did not say it was a Nazi salute. Similarly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is the subject of an International Criminal Court warrant on charges related to genocide, has tweeted in support of the X owner, declaring him to be “a friend of Israel.”

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The Dems play a silly game of delaying all confirmations.

“We’re going to wear down the Democrats. Either you’re going to play ball with us, or you’re going to go without sleep..”

Ratcliffe was confirmed yesterday. We get one per day?

• GOP To Push Trump Nominees Through Democratic Walls (JTN)

Four days into President Donald Trump’s second administration, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is the sole Senate-confirmed member of the Cabinet, putting the 47th president well behind his recent predecessors in positioning his key advisors, a situation some Republicans have attributed to Democratic intransigence. The perceived obstruction efforts of the opposition party have Republican leadership gearing up for a tense battle to push Trump’s nominees over the finish line, be it “the easy way or the hard way.” While Rubio earned unanimous approval for the post on day one, Senate Democrats blocked the advancement of Trump’s CIA Director-designate, John Ratcliffe, and several key nominees have yet to even receive hearings.

“Democrats blocked John Ratcliffe’s confirmation vote because they don’t care about qualifications, integrity, or national security,” the Senate GOP account insisted. “But they do care about denying President Trump his cabinet, even if it hurts the country.” The upper chamber had expected to confirm Ratcliffe on Tuesday, though the Democrats managed to delay the final vote through a procedural measure. A former Director of National Intelligence and D.C. insider, Ratcliffe’s confirmation has not ranked among the more contentious of Trump’s nominees. Republicans, however, appear to have doubled down and are planning to work through the weekend to push through Trump’s nominees “the easy way or the hard way.”

Ratcliffe is far from the only Trump nominee to face scrutiny, however. FBI director-designate Kash Patel, DNI-designate Tulsi Gabbard, and Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. all have yet to appear before their relevant Senate committees at all. Republicans’ assertions that Democrats have held up Trump’s Cabinet appointments appear to hold some water relative to the confirmation pace of some recent Democratic administrations and even Trump’s first term. His confirmation pace, thus far, appears just shy of Biden’s. In his first term, Trump saw two key officials receive Senate confirmation on Jan. 20, 2017. James Mattis and John Kelly received confirmation as Secretary of Defense and Department of Homeland Security secretary, respectively. Elaine Chao followed suit as Transportation secretary on Jan. 31, 2017.

Now-former President Joe Biden, secured the confirmations of DNI Avril Haines and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin by this point in his presidency. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Secretary of State Antony Blinken were confirmed on Jan. 25 and 26, 2021, respectively. President Barack Obama, however, saw seven members of his Cabinet confirmed via voice vote on Jan. 20, 2009. Several more were confirmed by either voice vote or roll call by Jan. 23. To be sure, several contentious nominees, including Pete Hegseth have cleared key procedural hurdles on the way to a floor vote, even earning some Democratic support despite personal scandals and a bevy of negative headlines. Republicans appear bullish on confirming Trump’s top nominees, especially Hegseth, but are also increasingly open to less conventional measures to steamroll through Democratic procedural hurdles.

“We’re going to wear down the Democrats. Either you’re going to play ball with us, or you’re going to go without sleep,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., said on Fox News. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, for instance, has already vowed that the Senate will work through the weekend on confirming Cabinet nominees and has further declared that Republicans were willing to work “Nights. Weekends. Recesses.”

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The whole issue should have been solved by now. All of it. Including all vaccine damage.

• SCOTUS Denies RFK Jr. Request To Block California’s Doctor Investigations (ZH)

Justice Elena Kagan, who handles urgent appeals from California, rejected the emergency application in Kory v. Bonta late on Jan. 21. She did not explain why. The decision came 13 days after the case was docketed by the court on Jan. 8. Kagan did not ask California to respond to the application. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was listed as one of two attorneys representing the physicians in the case. President Donald Trump has nominated Kennedy, an activist on environment and health-related issues, to be secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The other co-counsel on the application is Richard Jaffe of Sacramento, California. The Medical Board of California considers the expression of the doctors’ dissenting views on the disease as potentially dangerous misinformation that needs to be suppressed.

The board argues that it has legal authority to discipline the doctors for speech it deems to be medical misconduct. The physicians counter that they didn’t surrender their free speech rights when they obtained medical licenses. The application was initiated by Dr. Pierre Kory and Dr. Brian Tyson, both medical doctors; Dr. Le Trinh Hoag, an osteopathic physician; Physicians for Informed Consent; and Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit organization founded by Kennedy. Kennedy has resigned from the nonprofit because of his pending HHS nomination, Jaffe told The Epoch Times. The application stated that California’s executive and legislative branches are “threatening California physicians with professional discipline for their viewpoint speech contrary to the mainstream COVID narrative.”

After the Federation of State Medical Boards in July 2021 asked its member medical boards in the United States to punish physicians for advancing perceived “COVID misinformation” and “disinformation” among patients and the public, Medical Board of California President Kristina Lawson announced in February 2022 that the board planned to sanction physicians for what it called “COVID misinformation.” The California Legislature passed AB 2098, which took effect in January 2023, making the dissemination of “misinformation” about the disease an offense for which doctors could be disciplined, the application stated. After a federal district judge halted the law in January 2023, the Legislature repealed the misinformation provision effective January 2024. The application said the board continued to probe physicians for violating its COVID-19 policy following the repeal.

The applicants were challenging “the practice and policy of threatening and targeting physicians with discipline for providing information and recommendations contrary to the mainstream COVID narrative,” according to the application. On April 23, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California rejected a request to preliminarily block the state’s enforcement program, holding that the applicants lacked legal standing. Standing refers to the right of someone to sue in court. The parties must show a strong enough connection to the claim to justify their participation in a lawsuit. The ruling was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Nov. 27, 2024. The California Business and Professions Code, under which the California Medical Board claims its disciplinary authority, “regulates conduct, not speech,” the appeals court stated. “It provides for enforcement of the standard of care, which is the standard for physicians’ treatment of patients,” the court added.

To demonstrate standing, the applicants had to demonstrate that there was “a credible threat that the [board] will prosecute them under the statute,” but they did not do so, the appeals court stated. The Ninth Circuit said the court record showed that the only disciplinary action taken against a doctor “involved a physician encouraging her patient to use veterinary ivermectin and resulted in the stipulated surrender of her license.” The applicants were asking the Supreme Court for an injunction stopping the state from “continuing their enforcement program targeting the information, opinions, and recommendations on COVID-19 which California licensed physicians may provide to patients.” A related challenge that Kennedy and Jaffe filed with the Supreme Court was rejected by the full court on Jan. 13.

Kory

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“Stop the press! The Inspector General concludes that senior DOJ officials engaged in a, wait for it, leak? How did the Republic survive?”

• COVID Death Coverup: Trump-Hating Lawyers at DOJ Strike Again (PJM)

The last time a tornado hit Washington, D.C., like this was August 1814. That’s when British troops were fleeing a frightening twister. The storm extinguished fires the British set and killed more redcoats than the American army did. In the last 72 hours, Donald Trump has whirled through the Washington bureaucracy with similar fury. Things that seemed impossible last week, Trump made possible, like revoking LBJ’s sixty-year-old Executive Order 11246 that mandated the use of race in government contracting. Yet there is a mountain of problems. Meet two DOJ lawyers who used their positions to target the first Trump administration: Deborah Zerwitz and Jennifer Ramella. Unlike Jack Smith, Zerwitz and Ramella are still employed at DOJ. Zerwitz and Ramella are two progressive DOJ lawyers who work for the Inspector General. They authored the recent hit job on the first Trump term.

More on who they are in a moment, lots more. Here’s the hit. Just before the inauguration, the pair authored a little-noticed hit piece on actions taken in the first Trump term. Specifically, they worked on a report by the DOJ Inspector General. The DOJ IG published a report about nursing home COVID deaths that occurred in New York and elsewhere. In 2020, state officials in New York and elsewhere were shoving COVID patients into assisted living facilities, where their virus promptly spread to existing residents and killed them by the thousands. The Trump Justice Department opened a civil rights investigation into the despicable behavior under laws prohibiting discrimination against institutionalized persons, particularly the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act of 1980 (42 U.S.C. 1997).

The law is often referred to in shorthand as “CRIPA.” People in nursing homes have a federal civil right to not have Governor Andrew Cuomo shove sick patients with a deadly disease into their otherwise healthy nursing homes. The Inspector General report makes the shocking conclusion about the Trump DOJ: “The OIG investigation found that three then Senior DOJ Officials violated DOJ’s Confidentiality and Media Contacts Policy by leaking to select reporters, days before an election, non-public DOJ investigative information regarding ongoing DOJ investigative matters, resulting in the publication of two news articles that included the non-public DOJ investigative information.” Stop the press! The Inspector General concludes that senior DOJ officials engaged in a, wait for it, leak? How did the Republic survive?

In other words, the Inspector General investigated political appointees for talking to reporters about the behavior of targets of investigations. The offending conduct was something that took place all during the Robert Mueller investigation, the Jack Smith investigation, and every single investigation of Donald Trump during the Biden administration. In other words, the new DOJ inspector general report is abject horse manure. It stinks so bad the attorneys involved in the Inspector General report aren’t fit to hold their positions anymore at the Department of Justice. Too many bureaucrats on the GS scale have used their petty powers to smear and malign Donald Trump and his presidency, as Zerwitz and Ramella did here. Their behavior is particularly despicable because it provides political cover to state officials who were acting in a way that cost lives, the very thing federal law is designed to prevent.

Their report obscures the fact that Governor Cuomo and other state officials shoved COVID-infected people into nursing homes during the height of the pandemic and caused thousands of unnecessary deaths. The facts are straightforward. In April 2020, the DOJ received complaints about the COVID-related deaths of large numbers of elderly military veterans who lived in a Massachusetts nursing home. Allegations included claims that local officials concealed the deaths and stacked the dead bodies in a trailer. The Trump Justice Department launched an investigation in 2020 and issued a press release about its investigation. DOJ subsequently learned that several state agencies in Massachusetts were also investigating, so DOJ paused its investigation to give the state a chance to investigate the case first.

Information then surfaced that COVID-related nursing home deaths occurred at astonishing rates in New York and elsewhere because Governor Cuomo and other state officials required nursing homes to accept COVID-positive individuals. Thousands died because of this decision. Families sought answers, rightfully so.

DOJ officials opened an investigation, and the available information suggested that death rates in four states – New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Michigan – were much higher than in other states. DOJ asked each of the four states to produce data about their nursing home COVID-related deaths under CRIPA enforcement powers. The Trump DOJ transparently issued press releases about these requests, too: “Protecting the rights of some of society’s most vulnerable members, including elderly nursing home residents, is one of our country’s most important obligations,” said then-Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Division Eric Dreiband. “We must ensure they are adequately cared for with dignity and respect and not unnecessarily put at risk.”

Read more …

“If you’re frightened of the debasement of your currency, or you’re frightened of the economic or political stability of your country, you can have an internationally based instrument called Bitcoin that will overcome those local fears..”

• Larry Fink Predicts $700,000 Bitcoin (RT)

Bitcoin could reach an astonishing $700,000 if institutional investors allocate between 2% and 5% of their portfolios to the cryptocurrency, Larry Fink, the head of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management firm, has predicted. The digital coin has seen a surge in its value in recent months. In 2024, its price jumped 121%, reaching the peak of $108,135 in December. On Monday, following the inauguration of US President Donald Trump, Bitcoin hit a record $109,225. Trump had previously announced plans to make the US the world’s “crypto capital” and to set up a national Bitcoin reserve. Fink told an audience at a panel in Davos on Wednesday that he is “a big believer” in the world’s largest cryptocurrency as an instrument, highlighting its potential as a financial hedge.

“If you’re frightened of the debasement of your currency, or you’re frightened of the economic or political stability of your country, you can have an internationally based instrument called Bitcoin that will overcome those local fears,” Fink said. The investor cited a momentum towards institutional adoption of the cryptocurrency. “I was with a sovereign-wealth fund during this week, and there was a conversation, should we have a 2% allocation? Should we have a 5% allocation? If everybody adopted that conversation, it would be $500,000, $600,000, $700,000 for bitcoin,” argued Fink. The investor noted that he wasn’t promoting the token. Last year, BlackRock launched Bitcoin Trust and Ethereum Trust, exchange-traded funds investing directly into the two crypto tokens. Fink used to be skeptical of digital assets. In 2018, he told Bloomberg that BlackRock’s clients had zero interest in crypto.

Created in 2009, Bitcoin allows people to send and receive money over the internet without relying on traditional banks or governments. The decentralized nature of the token has also facilitated its misuse by organized crime gangs and for other illicit purposes such as money laundering and terrorist financing. The price is primarily affected by supply, market demand, availability, competing cryptocurrencies, and investor sentiment. Despite wide use for buying goods and services, there are no uniform international laws that regulate Bitcoin. The token was adopted as official currency in El Salvador in 2021. Governments around the world have been wary of the cryptocurrencies’ growing influence, warning about the dangers of investing into a volatile asset. According to an opinion piece by financial analyst Susie Violet Ward published by Forbes on Monday, Bitcoin’s institutionalization would compromise its original ethos as “freedom money,” with regulatory and economic control eroding the token’s decentralization.

Read more …

See also Ryan McMaken’s excellent overview in yesterday’s Debt Rattle. The key line:

“..all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof..”

Those are two separate things!

• Judge Blocks Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order (ET)

A U.S. judge on Jan. 23 blocked President Donald Trump’s order limiting birthright citizenship. U.S. District Judge John Coughenour after a hearing in Seattle issued a temporary restraining order that prohibits the Trump administration for 14 days from enforcing Trump’s order, which the president signed hours after taking office on Monday. “This is blatantly unconstitutional order,” Coughenour told a lawyer with the U.S. Justice Department during the hearing. The ruling was made in a case brought by the attorneys general of Arizona, Illinois, Oregon, and Washington state. It was one of several lawsuits lodged against the executive order. Trump’s order was set to take effect on Feb. 19. It says that the federal government does not automatically recognize birthright citizenship for children who are born to illegal immigrants in the United States.

Historically, babies born on U.S. soil receive U.S. citizenship. That’s based on court rulings interpreting the U.S. Constitution, which says in part that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” Congress also passed a law containing similar language. Trump’s order says that the Constitution’s citizenship clause “has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States” and “has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’” It clarifies that the federal government does not automatically grant citizenship to babies whose mothers are in the United States and whose fathers are neither U.S. citizens nor lawful permanent residents.

In their motion for a temporary restraining order, state officials said that Trump went beyond his powers with the order, describing it as “flatly contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment’s text and history, century-old Supreme Court precedent, longstanding Executive Branch interpretation, and the Immigration and Nationality Act.” Without court intervention, the order would leave more than 150,000 babies born this year without citizenship because their parents are illegally in the country, according to the attorneys general. Government officials said in response that the court should not issue a restraining order because the states have not suffered any injuries and because the plaintiffs are not likely to succeed.

“Ample historical evidence shows that the children of non-resident aliens are subject to foreign powers—and, thus, are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and are not constitutionally entitled to birthright citizenship,” government lawyers said.That included a Supreme Court justice writing in legal commentaries that birthright citizenship should not apply to babies whose parents were in the country “for temporary purposes.” Coughenour sided with the states, telling the courtroom before Department of Justice attorney Brett Shumate had even finished talking that he had signed the restraining order sought by the states.The two-week order is in place while Coughenour weighs issuing a preliminary injunction, which would likely remain in place as the case proceeds in the courts. Schumate during Thursday’s hearing argued the executive order was constitutional and that any order blocking it would be “wildly inappropriate.”

Read more …

“The United States is losing its dominant global position, which may prompt Western elites to fuel new armed conflicts between nations..”

• West Could Orchestrate More International Conflicts – Russian Spy Chief (RT)

The United States is losing its dominant global position, which may prompt Western elites to fuel new armed conflicts between nations, according to Sergey Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). In an interview with RIA Novosti previewed on Friday, Naryshkin said the US is “gradually degrading and losing control.” He cautioned that some influential figures may attempt to spark international conflicts to serve their interests. The global situation in 2025 will remain unstable, the SVR chief predicted, highlighting the need for prudence among regional and global players. Naryshkin stressed that much depends on the rationality and restraint exercised by these actors.

The Russian official added that while the shift to a new, fairer multipolar world order is “complex and fraught with risks,” the emergence of new centers of power has significant potential for economic development and the ability to ensure global security and stability. Naryshkin expects the US and EU to be major participants in the future global architecture, with a level of influence on par with that of other great powers, including China, India and Russia. A new pan-Eurasian security arrangement will make the world as a whole more stable, he added. Moscow and Beijing have accused the West of refusing to accept that the economic rise of non-Western nations gives them a greater role in international affairs. Instead, Washington is seeking to replace international law with a “rules-based order” that gives the US undeserved benefits and suppresses competition, officials from Russia and China have argued.

Read more …

“Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves have described their fiscal rules as “ironclad” and “non-negotiable.”

• UK Faces ‘Debt Death Spiral’ – Ray Dalio (RT)

The UK faces significant fiscal risks due to its rising borrowing costs and increasing debt levels, the boss of the world’s largest hedge fund, Ray Dalio, has warned. Britain’s annual interest payments have surpassed £100 billion (roughly $125 billion), Dalio, the founder of investment management firm Bridgewater Associates, said in an interview with the Financial Times. The recent sell-off in fixed-interest loan securities issued by the UK government, known as gilts, coupled with the weakening of the British pound, indicate that the market is struggling to absorb the government’s higher borrowing requirements, he explained. “When you get to the point that you have to borrow money to service the debt and interest rates are rising, so that debt-service payments rise, so you need to borrow more money to pay them, you’re in what the markets call a death spiral,” the investor told the FT in Tuesday’s report.

The UK’s ten-year borrowing costs rose from 3.75% in mid-September to a 16-year high earlier this month at 4.93%, the outlet noted. ”As those risks increase, everybody looks at that need to borrow more money at higher interest, which creates [a] self-reinforcing debt deterioration cycle,” Dalio also pointed out. The UK government in October adopted a budget for the financial year 2025/2026, pledging more funding for essential services and social support, and increased debt-servicing costs. Although the government announced tax increases, analysts have pointed out that these may not fully cover the additional spending, particularly amid slower economic growth.

The British pound has been declining since September, having lost about 8.2% of its value against the US dollar. The drop has been attributed to rising borrowing costs, market apprehension about the country’s debt levels, and reduced investor confidence. The trends have prompted another warning, this one from Berlin-based credit rating agency Scope Ratings. Recent moves in UK debt markets and the falling pound suggest that cracks may be appearing in Britain’s reserve currency status, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing Denis Shen, a top analyst at the agency. The UK’s vulnerability to emerging market-style sell-offs could jeopardize its AA credit rating, Shen warns. In response to the challenges, the UK government said it remained “absolutely committed” to strict fiscal discipline. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves have described their fiscal rules as “ironclad” and “non-negotiable.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Cold day

 

 

Denial

 

 

Cuttlefish

 

 

Phonics
https://twitter.com/i/status/1882264331016163414

 

 

Titanic

 

 

Airplane

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle December 23 2021

Dec 232021
 
 December 23, 2021  Posted by at 9:36 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  97 Responses »


Claude Monet Camille on the Beach at Trouville 1870

 

• Omicron: Risk Of Hospitalization -80%, Risk Of Severe Illness -70% (Bl.)
• Risk Of Hospital Stay 40% Lower With Omicron Than Delta – UK Data (G.)
• US Army Creates Single Vaccine Against All COVID & SARS Variants (Defense One)
• mRNA-LNP Platform’s Lipid Nanoparticle Is Highly Inflammatory (NIH)
• Bill Gates, Fauci Quietly Built A Multi-billion Dollar Vaccine Empire (Mercola)
• How to Read RFK, Jr.’s Book in 5 Minutes (Kirsch)
• Dutch GPs Prescribe Ivermectin As A Corona Cure Despite Ban (RTL)
• Biden: 200 Million Americans Vaccinated, US Population 350 Million (CTH)
• Director of University Ethics Program Fired Over Vaccine Mandate (ET)
• 24 States Sue Biden Admin Over COVID-19 Mandates for Children (ET)
• Alex Berenson Sues Twitter For Acting ‘On Behalf’ Of US Govt (RT)
• Supreme Court To Hold Hearing Over Biden’s Vaccine Mandate On Businesses (JTN)
• Supreme Court Could Decide Fate of Monsanto/Bayer RoundUp Cancer Suits (ET)
• Russia Planning Nuclear Attack, Ukraine Claims (RT)
• Durham Zeroes In On Clinton Campaign, Could Call Some Aides To Testify (JTN)
• Capitol Building To Be Expanded To Hold All Pfizer Lobbyists (BBee)

 

 

“South Korea continues to see record high case numbers, despite 99% mask compliance and 85% of their entire population being vaccinated, which is odd because I’ve been told by CNN experts that masks prevent infections and that an 85% vaccination rate would get us past COVID”

 

 

 

Maxime Bernier

 

 

Each of these states are over 85% vaxxed.

 

 

 

“..the situation may be different for other countries in comparison to South Africa, where under 50% of the population is vaccinated but many have experienced prior infection.”

No, that is the situation in most countries. Reported vaxx numbers are mostly exaggerated. To shame the unvaxxed.

And all the Omicron related new measures and mandates are now unadulterated totalitarianism. There’s no excuse for them.

• Omicron: Risk Of Hospitalization -80%, Risk Of Severe Illness -70% (Bl.)

People who contract the Omicron variant during this current wave of COVID-19 infections are much less likely to be hospitalized than they are if they contract other strains of the virus, according to a new study from South Africa. The study, released Wednesday by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, comes as countries around the globe grapple with how to handle the new strain, which appears to be more resistant to current COVID-19 vaccines. In the study, researchers compared Omicron infections with Delta and other variant infections from October to November and discovered that Omicron infections resulted in a considerable 80% decreased chance of hospitalization. “When compared to non-[Omicron] infections, we found that [Omicron] infections had an 80% lower odds of being admitted to the hospital,” South African researchers concluded.

Though the researchers did note that for patients admitted to the hospital in that period, those infected with Omicron had an equal chance of developing a severe illness compared to those with other variants. But when compared to Delta infections starting in April — when that strain dominated much of the world — Omicron infections were associated with a 70% lower odds of severe disease, even though the new strain appears to produce a higher viral load in infected patients. “Compellingly, together our data really suggest a positive story of a reduced severity of Omicron compared to other variants,” said Professor Cheryl Cohen, one of the study’s authors. It should be noted that the study is newly released and has yet to be peer-reviewed.

Cohen added that research was reinforced by medical data from the country that has shown significantly lower hospitalization and death figures in this latest wave of COVID-19 infections, during which Omicron has become the obviously dominant strain. But Cohen was careful to note that the situation may be different for other countries in comparison to South Africa, where under 50% of the population is vaccinated but many have experienced prior infection. “What is unclear is whether the picture will be similar in countries where there are high levels of vaccination but very low levels of previous infection,” she said during a media briefing, according to Reuters. Nevertheless, the new data, if proven accurate, is positive news and could perhaps foreshadow a turning point in the pandemic, as some scientists have predicted.

Last month, as mass hysteria broke out regarding the Omicron variant, Israeli immunologist Zvika Granot argued that the new variant may be “the light at the end of the tunnel,” since it appeared to be “highly infectious but maybe not as aggressive.” “When you look at the future and try to envision how this will end one day, it’s most likely not going to be because we got a fantastic vaccine,” Granot said. “It just doesn’t work this way and we have a lot of experience with viruses like the flu.” “The way that it will end, at least in my view, is when we encounter this new variant that is highly infectious but is not very aggressive, meaning that a lot of people will get infected but none of them will develop serious symptoms. And in a sense that will be the way the population will really gain herd immunity, and then the coronavirus will just fade away,” he argued.

Forbes South Africa

Read more …

Notorious wanker Neil Ferguson gets rolled out once more to instill fear. Just cut the South Africa numbers in half. And then claim the SAGE numbers of 3,000 daily hospitalisations in England at the peak of the wave, are still valid. Merry Christmas.

• Risk Of Hospital Stay 40% Lower With Omicron Than Delta – UK Data (G.)

The Omicron variant of coronavirus appears to be milder, with a 20%-25% reduced chance of a hospital visit and at least a 40% lower risk of being admitted overnight, the first UK data of its kind has showed. But as daily Covid cases topped 100,000 for the first time on Wednesday, experts warned that high transmissibility means the NHS is still at risk of being overwhelmed. In what was described by scientists as a “qualified good news story”, two studies on Wednesday pointed to a lower risk of hospitalisation with Omicron. An Imperial College outbreak modelling team led by Prof Neil Ferguson analysed hospitalisations and vaccine records among all PCR-confirmed Covid cases in England between 1 and 14 December. The dataset included 56,000 cases of Omicron and 269,000 cases of Delta.

Their report found that the risk of any attendance at hospital was 20% to 25% lower with Omicron versus Delta, and 40%-45% lower when the visit resulted in admission for at least one night. For the small percentage of people who had neither been previously infected with Covid nor vaccinated, the risk of hospitalisation was about 11% lower for Omicron versus Delta. Ferguson said that while it was “good news”, the assessment did not substantially change Sage modelling pointing to 3,000 daily hospitalisations in England at the peak of the wave next month without restrictions beyond the plan B measures currently in place.


While the analysis shows evidence of “a moderate reduction” in the risk of hospitalisation associated with Omicron compared with Delta, Ferguson said, “this appears to be offset by the reduced efficacy of vaccines against infection with the Omicron variant”. “Given the high transmissibility of the Omicron virus, there remains the potential for health services to face increasing demand if Omicron cases continue to grow at the rate that has been seen in recent weeks,” he added.

Read more …

What are the odds that Pfizer already has their greasy fingers in here somewhere?

“Walter Reed is working with a yet-to-be-named industry partner for that wider rollout.”

• US Army Creates Single Vaccine Against All COVID & SARS Variants (Defense One)

Within weeks, scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research expect to announce that they have developed a vaccine that is effective against COVID-19 and all its variants, even Omicron, as well as previous SARS-origin viruses that have killed millions of people worldwide. The achievement is the result of almost two years of work on the virus. The Army lab received its first DNA sequencing of the COVID-19 virus in early 2020. Very early on, Walter Reed’s infectious diseases branch decided to focus on making a vaccine that would work against not just the existing strain but all of its potential variants as well. Walter Reed’s Spike Ferritin Nanoparticle COVID-19 vaccine, or SpFN, completed animal trials earlier this year with positive results.

Phase 1 of human trials, which tested the vaccine against Omicron and the other variants, wrapped up this month, again with positive results that are undergoing final review, Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad, director of Walter Reed’s infectious diseases branch, said in an exclusive interview with Defense One. The new vaccine will still need to undergo phase 2 and phase 3 trials. Unlike existing vaccines, Walter Reed’s SpFN uses a soccer ball-shaped protein with 24 faces for its vaccine, which allows scientists to attach the spikes of multiple coronavirus strains on different faces of the protein. “It’s very exciting to get to this point for our entire team and I think for the entire Army as well,” Modjarrad said. The vaccine’s human trials took longer than expected, he said, because the lab needed to test the vaccine on subjects who had neither been vaccinated nor previously infected with COVID.


Increasing vaccination rates and the rapid spread of the Delta and Omicron variants made that difficult. [..] The next step is seeing how the new pan-coronavirus vaccine interacts with people who were previously vaccinated or previously sick. Walter Reed is working with a yet-to-be-named industry partner for that wider rollout. “We need to evaluate it in the real-world setting and try to understand how does the vaccine perform in much larger numbers of individuals who have already been vaccinated with something else initially…or already been sick,” Modjarrad said. He said nearly all of Walter Reed’s 2,500 staff have had some role in the vaccine’s nearly-two-year development.

Read more …

LNP. Avoid them.

• mRNA-LNP Platform’s Lipid Nanoparticle Is Highly Inflammatory (NIH)

Vaccines based on mRNA-containing lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) are a promising new platform used by two leading vaccines against COVID-19. Clinical trials and ongoing vaccinations present with varying degrees of protection levels and side effects. However, the drivers of the reported side effects remain poorly defined. Here we present evidence that Acuitas’ LNPs used in preclinical nucleoside-modified mRNA vaccine studies are highly inflammatory in mice. Intradermal and intramuscular injection of these LNPs led to rapid and robust inflammatory responses, characterized by massive neutrophil infiltration, activation of diverse inflammatory pathways, and production of various inflammatory cytokines and chemokines.


The same dose of LNP delivered intranasally led to similar inflammatory responses in the lung and resulted in a high mortality rate, with mechanism unresolved. Thus, the mRNA-LNP platforms’ potency in supporting the induction of adaptive immune responses and the observed side effects may stem from the LNPs’ highly inflammatory nature.

Read more …

“This is where Fauci’s power lies: in his capacity to fund, arm, pay, maintain and effectively deploy a large and sprawling standing army. The NIH alone controls an annual $37 billion budget..”

• Bill Gates, Fauci Quietly Built A Multi-billion Dollar Vaccine Empire (Mercola)

How does a private citizen, not an elected official, gain so much control over a global health agency like WHO? When it was founded, WHO could decide how to distribute its contributions. Now, 70% of its budget is tied to specific projects, countries or regions, which are dictated by the funders. As such, Gates’ priorities are the backbone of WHO, and it wasn’t a coincidence when he said of WHO, “Our priorities, are your priorities.” As of 2018, the cumulative contributions from the Gates Foundation and GAVI made “Gates the unofficial top sponsor of the WHO, even before the Trump administration’s 2020 move to cut all his support to the organization,” according to Kennedy. “Plus, Gates also routes funding to WHO through SAGE [Strategic Advisory Group of Experts] and UNICEF and Rotary International bringing his total contributions to over $1 billion.”

These tax-deductible donations give Gates both leverage and control over international health policy, “which he largely directs to serve the profit interest of his pharma partners.” Further, “Gate’s vaccine obsession has diverted WHO’s program contributions from poverty alleviation, nutrition and clean water to make vaccine uptake its preeminent public health metric. And Gates is not afraid to throw his weight around,” according to Kennedy. “… The sheer magnitude of his foundation’s financial contributions has made Bill Gates an unofficial — albeit unelected — leader of the WHO.” Gates’ power has grown further due to his decadeslong partnership with Fauci. Alone, both Gates and Fauci wield immense power in their fields. Together, they’re a formidable, if unfortunately nefarious, force.

As the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) — part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) — “Fauci has a $6.1 billion budget that he distributes to colleges and universities to do drug research for various diseases,” Kennedy says. “He has another $1.7 billion that comes from the military to do bioweapons research.” This is where Fauci’s power lies: in his capacity to fund, arm, pay, maintain and effectively deploy a large and sprawling standing army. The NIH alone controls an annual $37 billion budget distributed in over 50,000 grants supporting over 300,000 positions globally in medical research.

The thousands of doctors, hospital administrators, health officials and research virologists whose positions, careers and salaries depend on AIDS dollars flowing from Dr. Fauci, Gates and the Wellcome Trust (Great Britain’s version of the Gates Foundation) are the officers and soldiers in a mercenary army that functions to defend all vaccines and Dr. Fauci’s HIV/AIDS doxologies. Along with Gates, Fauci had the power to influence funding of U.S. foreign aid to Africa for AIDS, prioritizing that for vaccines and drugs instead of nutrition, sanitation and economic development. Yet, Fauci and his team, funded by Gates, have never created a vaccine for AIDS, despite squandering billions of dollars, and causing uncounted human carnage. In 2020, many of the Gates/Fauci HIV vaccine trials in Africa suddenly became COVID-19 vaccine trials.

Read more …

“Fauci is the leader of the largest cabal of organized crime thugs to have ever walked the face of Earth..”

• How to Read RFK, Jr.’s Book in 5 Minutes (Kirsch)

Here are five methods to get the gist of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s best-selling book, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” quickly:

1. The first third shows that Fauci is the leader of the largest cabal of organized crime thugs to have ever walked the face of Earth. The middle third goes into more detail about the history of the establishment of Fauci’s criminal cabal. The final third ties together loose ends with more details and factual history. The overriding theme is that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization are all run and controlled by criminal thugs in concert with their criminal counterparts running Big Pharma.

3. Consider this excerpt: “Under Dr. Fauci’s leadership, the allergic, autoimmune, and chronic illnesses which Congress specifically charged NIAID to investigate and prevent, have mushroomed to afflict 54 percent of children, up from 12.8 percent when he took over NIAID in 1984. “Dr. Fauci has offered no explanation as to why allergic diseases like asthma, eczema, food allergies, allergic rhinitis, and anaphylaxis suddenly exploded beginning in 1989, five years after he came to power. “On its website, NIAID boasts that autoimmune disease is one of the agency’s top priorities. Some 80 autoimmune diseases, including juvenile diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, Graves’ disease, and Crohn’s disease, which were practically unknown prior to 1984, suddenly became epidemic under his watch.

“Autism, which many scientists now consider an autoimmune disease, exploded from between 2/10,000 and 4/10,000 Americans when Tony Fauci joined NIAID, to one in thirty-four today. “Neurological diseases like ADD/ADHD, speech and sleep disorders, narcolepsy, facial tics, and Tourette’s syndrome have become commonplace in American children. “The human, health, and economic costs of chronic disease dwarf the costs of all infectious diseases in the United States. By this decade’s end, obesity, diabetes, and pre-diabetes are on track to debilitate 85 percent of America’s citizens. “For this reason, all the drug companies and members of Congress (except Rand Paul) LOVE Fauci.”

5. My review: The book shows that Fauci is a really bad guy who has done a lot of bad stuff and he should be immediately fired. It also shows a completely corrupt system that is allowing dangerous drugs to be approved. We need to all stand up and oppose what is going on. The system is badly broken and corrupt and needs to be fixed ASAP. I haven’t read the entire book, but I have read sections and everything I have read so far aligns with the facts I know. It’s a devastating book, filled with details that few people knew about until now.

Read more …

Google translate.

“The drug also has side effects that can be serious at high doses. For example, a decrease in consciousness…”

Wonder how many other drugs on the WHO essential medicine list are this dangerous…

• Dutch GPs Prescribe Ivermectin As A Corona Cure Despite Ban (RTL)

A group of Dutch general practitioners is prescribing the controversial drug ivermectin to people who are ill due to corona via a website. This practice goes against medical guidelines, so doctors are not allowed to do it. The Health and Youth Care Inspectorate (IGJ) is aware of this and has already issued a fine, but the website is still active Ivermectin is being circulated on various websites as a cure against corona, but is controversial because there is no sufficient scientific evidence for it. That is why most general practitioners do not prescribe it. If you still want it, you can still arrange it via the website ‘Self-care Covid-19’. On that website it is claimed that, among other things, zinc and vitamins C and D make resistant to corona. Will the virus still get you? Then you can get a telephone consultation with a GP for 30 euros.

Our research team tried this out and got a doctor from the collective on the phone. She did not ask about fever or breathing problems in that conversation, but did offer ivermectin after two minutes. Without our actively asking, as can be seen in this video: In their own words, Self-Care Covid-19 holds twenty to fifty such telephone consultations every day. Since the start in October 2020, there are approximately 2800. 10 to 20 percent of patients would only be advised to take supplements, 80 percent are prescribed a combination of ivermectin, antibiotic doxycycline and aspirin. In some cases, rheumatism medicine hydroxychloroquine is added on top of that.


Ivermectin is a drug that helps against scabies and other parasites, not viruses. “It is not a proven effective treatment for Covid, even if it is circulating on the internet,” says internist-infectiologist Mark de Boer of the Leiden University Medical Center. “There are sufficient indications that this is not effective. The drug also has side effects that can be serious at high doses. For example, a decrease in consciousness.” The doctors behind Self-care Covid-19 speak of ‘mild side effects’. Not all pharmacies cooperate in the distribution of ivermectin, but Self-Care Covid-19 has a solution for that too: they know a number that do sell the medicine.

Read more …

40 million or 150 million? Not quite the same thing.

• Biden: 200 Million Americans Vaccinated, US Population 350 Million (CTH)

During an ABC interview today, Joe Biden told ABC News’ David Muir that as of right now, there are “200 million people fully vaccinated.” Counting illegal aliens, there are roughly 350 million Americans right now [Census Data]. If 200 million Americans are vaccinated (60%), that means there are approximately 150 million Americans NOT vaccinated (40%). During his speech yesterday, Joe Biden said: “Thanks to the progress on vaccinations this fall, we’ve gone from nearly 90 million adults in July who had not even started their vaccination process to fewer than 40 million today.” There’s a big difference between 150 million unvaccinated and “fewer than 40 million” unvaccinated. Can you reconcile the difference?

As we noted last week, with the CDC adjusting the numbers downward […] this would align with several tangential datapoints which have always seemed to be in conflict with the preferred government narrative. Additionally, there’s also an obvious motive on behalf of the government to overinflate vaccination in order to generate peer pressure and the self-fulfilling prophecy needed to garner vaccine acceptance. As now noted by Bloomberg: […] “CDC data show 240 million people with at least one shot, or about 72.5% of the population. But the agency says only 203 million are fully vaccinated, or 61.3%, an 11-percentage-point difference that is far larger than in other developed countries. State and local officials say it’s improbable that 37 million Americans got one shot without completing their inoculations. Instead, they say, the government has regularly and incorrectly counted booster shots and second doses as first doses.”


Perhaps this disparity reconciles why many people look quizzically at the high vaccine data while not finding any correlation to their own community, friends or family. Indeed, there has always been a disconnect between the number of people the government reports as having been vaccinated, when contrast against the open admissions of those who have not wanted to participate in this wide-scale vaccination program. Biden’s statement today aligns with the adjusted statements from the CDC of 200 million Americans being fully vaccinated. However, Biden’s statement today does not reconcile against his statement yesterday of “fewer than 40 million Americans” remain to be vaccinated. If the 200 million vaccinated number is accurate, then 150 million Americans are not vaccinated.

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Ethics are not supposed to be discussed in the new Science?!

• Director of University Ethics Program Fired Over Vaccine Mandate (ET)

Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, the longtime professor of psychiatry at the University of California–Irvine School of Medicine who sued the university over its COVID-19 vaccine mandate because it made no exceptions for natural immunity, has been fired by the institution for refusing the vaccine. In a blog post titled “Farewell, University of California,” Dr. Kheriaty said he received notice of what he called his “arbitrary and capricious” firing on Dec. 16. It was effective the same day. The termination ends his UCI medical teaching career and his longtime role as director of the Medical Ethics Program at UCI Health. Kheriaty said he worked unpaid nights helping the UCI president’s office draft triage guidelines for scarce resources and vaccines during the pandemic.

When N-95 masks were so scarce that hospitals kept them under lock and key, Kheriaty said he found a supply at a local construction company and provided them to doctors and nurses. “Everyone at the university seemed to be a fan of my work, until suddenly they were not,” Kheriaty wrote. “Once I challenged one of their policies, I immediately became a ‘threat to the health and safety of the community.’ No amount of empirical evidence about natural immunity or vaccine safety and efficacy mattered at all. “The University’s leadership was not interested in scientific debate or ethical deliberation. When I was placed on unpaid suspension, I was not permitted to use my paid time off—that is to say, I was ordered to stay off campus because I was not vaccinated, but I also could not take vacation at home because… I was not vaccinated.”

[..] Kheriaty sued the University of California Board of Regents in federal court on Aug. 18, alleging the university’s vaccine mandate violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In July 2020, Kheriaty contracted COVID-19, so he now has natural immunity, which he argues is likely superior to protection from a vaccine. His lawsuit is working its way through U.S. District Court. The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California refused Kheriaty’s motion for a preliminary injunction against the vaccine mandate. In his lawsuit, he highlighted the failure of vaccine mandates to account for the likely superior immunity possessed by COVID-19 survivors. His faculty colleagues at the University of California filed a 187-page declaration supporting the efficacy of natural immunity.

As a COVID-19 survivor, Kheriaty said, his immunity to the disease is between 95 and 99 percent effective. There is not one case on record of someone who recovered from COVID-19 and then was reinfected and transmitted the virus to someone else, he said in October. This sterilizing immunity is an advantage the human immune system has over any COVID-19 vaccine, he argued, noting the declining efficacy of the mRNA vaccines over time.

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Talk about ethics.

• 24 States Sue Biden Admin Over COVID-19 Mandates for Children (ET)

Attorneys general (AG) from 24 states have filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration challenging COVID-19 vaccine mandates for early education staff and mask mandates for young children. Led by Louisiana AG Jeff Landry, the lawsuit argues that the mandates involving Head Start, the country’s largest early education program, are unlawful and exceed President Joe Biden’s statutory authority. Biden’s mandate, issued last month, applies to all preschool programs funded by the federal Head Start program and affects hundreds of thousands of staff, volunteers, and preschool students across the country. It mandates vaccinations for staff, volunteers, and others in contact with students by the end of January and requires masks for all adults and children aged two and above.


The mandate offers no alternative to vaccinations, and for those granted exemptions, funds are not provided for regular testing. It applies to staff regardless of whether they work in person or remotely. The Department of Health and Human Services provides funding to low-income families of preschool-age children under the federal Head Start program. The lawsuit argues that the president’s mandate is projected to lead to tens of thousands of Head Start agency staff losing their jobs and will cause programs to close or reduce capacity. “Like all of his other unlawful attempts to impose medical decisions on Americans, Biden’s overreaching orders to mask two-year-olds and force vaccinate teachers in our underserved communities will cost jobs and impede child development,” Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said in a statement on Tuesday. “If enacted, Biden’s authoritarianism will cut funding, programs, and childcare that working families, single mothers, and elderly raising grandchildren rely on desperately.”

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“It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine…”

• Alex Berenson Sues Twitter For Acting ‘On Behalf’ Of US Govt (RT)

Former New York Times reporter and outspoken critic of the US response to the Covid pandemic Alex Berenson is suing Twitter for suspending his account, claiming the platform “acted on behalf of the federal government. In the lawsuit, filed this week in the Northern District of California, Berenson accused Twitter of breach of contract and of violating his First Amendment rights. The alleged breach of contract stems from the fact that Berenson claims a Twitter executive had repeatedly assured him that he would be free to express his views on the platform without fear of retaliation. “Despite the controversy around his statements, a senior Twitter executive repeatedly assured Mr. Berenson that the company backed his right to free expression and that he would continue to enjoy access to the platform,” Berenson’s lawyers said in the suit.

The independent reporter and best-selling author was reportedly suspended from Twitter in August over a tweet questioning whether Covid vaccines could actually prevent infection and transmission of the virus, referring to them as “therapeutic” drugs. A Twitter spokesperson at the time said Berenson was permanently suspended for “repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules.” In the tweet, Berenson wrote: “It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine. Think of it – at best – as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS.”


Berenson argues the platform acted on behalf of the Biden administration in censoring his posts, as the president himself had criticized “misinformation” about Covid spreading on social media only days before the author’s suspension. He is also claiming in his lawsuit that a California law applying to “common carriers” applies to Twitter. The legislation, dating back to 1872, regulates companies that “offer to the public to carry persons, property, or messages.” Berenson’s lawyers argue the legislation is relevant to the suit as the “courts have repeatedly applied the 1872 law to telephone companies and other technologies that did not exist at the time it was enacted,” adding that Twitter does not have the publishing freedom typically afforded due to the common carrier law.

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“..affects 84 million Americans..”

• Supreme Court To Hold Hearing Over Biden’s Vaccine Mandate On Businesses (JTN)

The Supreme Court announced Wednesday it will hold a special hearing Jan. 7, 2022, on the legality of Biden administration vaccine mandates on healthcare workers and private companies with more than 100 people. The court’s decision to quickly take up the cases follows a series of different rulings in lower courts. The mandates will remain in place pending January’s oral arguments. The cases were rushed to the Supreme Court due to the time-sensitive nature of the Biden administration’s mandates. More than 17 million healthcare workers are required by the federal government to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4, 2022. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, meanwhile, announced over the weekend it was postponing until Jan. 10 the deadline for compliance with the vaccine mandate on private businesses with more than 100 employees, which affects 84 million Americans.


The cases against a vaccine mandate for healthcare workers — State of Louisiana et al v. Xavier Becerra, Sec. of HHS, et al and Joseph Biden, President of U.S., et al v. Missouri, et al — were brought to Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh. The healthcare workers’ cases were consolidated and will receive one hour total for arguments. Two cases against Biden’s business mandate were brought to Justice Kavanagh, who combined the cases and allotted one hour for arguments. Petitioners in all cases requested for the mandate to be stopped. Rather than stopping the mandate, the justices are delaying a decision until after hearing the cases in January.

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Busy days for SCOTUS.

• Supreme Court Could Decide Fate of Monsanto/Bayer RoundUp Cancer Suits (ET)

On Dec. 13, the Supreme Court asked the Solicitor General to offer the United States’ views on “Monsanto vs. Hardeman”—the latest move in what could be a landmark case for multibillion-dollar litigation linking the herbicide RoundUp to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, if the Supreme Court agrees to review the case. After a call for the views of the solicitor general, that Justice Department official will often respond with a brief commenting on whether the Supreme Court should agree to review the case. The Epoch Times has reached out to the Solicitor General for comment. Monsanto, which was acquired by the German chemical company Bayer in 2018, filed its petition after a Ninth Circuit panel ruled in favor of California resident Edwin Hardeman, who claimed his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma resulted from exposure to RoundUp.


Ninth Circuit Judge Ryan D. Nelson, a Trump appointee, found that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) did not preempt California’s law, under which RoundUp and other products containing glyphosate must feature warnings about that ingredient’s reported cancer risk. While the state of California maintains that glyphosate is carcinogenic, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which enforces FIFRA, maintains glyphosate is not likely to cause cancer in humans. Monsanto’s petition to the Supreme Court challenges the Ninth Circuit’s ruling on preemption. It also argues that the Ninth Circuit admitted low-quality expert opinions on glyphosate and cancer, deviating from the practices of other appellate courts and violating Federal Rule of Evidence 702.

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This idiocy fits the NATO narrative.

• Russia Planning Nuclear Attack, Ukraine Claims (RT)

One of Ukraine’s top politicians has alleged that signals coming from Russia indicate that Moscow could be plotting a full-blown nuclear attack against its Eastern European neighbor in a new sensational intervention. Speaking at a conference on Wednesday, the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, Ruslan Stefanchuk, remarked that “as of 1991, Ukraine had the third largest nuclear capability in the world,” referring to its inherited arsenal of warheads from the collapse of the Soviet Union. He noted that Kiev “voluntarily gave this up to become a non-nuclear state” just a few years later. However, the politician alleged that Russia, which “was the guarantor of such disarmament, hints that if we continue our democratic development, it may even launch a nuclear strike against us.”


The remarks from Stefanchuk come in the foreground of concerns from Western leaders and Kiev’s intelligence service that Moscow is planning to launch a full-blown offensive against Ukraine. However, the Kremlin has repeatedly denied allegations that Russia is massing its troops along the shared demarcation line in preparation for an invasion. Instead, Moscow has accused members of the US-led military bloc of shuttling a concerning amount of weapons toward Russia’s borders and said that Western states are encouraging Kiev’s officials to engage in provocations that could spiral into an all-out conflict. Last month, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that in Ukraine, “more and more forces and equipment are being accumulated on the line of contact in the Donbass, supported by an increasing number of Western instructors.” He warned that if these states cannot hold back Kiev, and are instead actually spurring it on, Moscow will “take all necessary steps to ensure our security.”

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Someone better change lawyers.

• Durham Zeroes In On Clinton Campaign, Could Call Some Aides To Testify (JTN)

Hillary Clinton’s team long fought to keep its ties to Christopher Steele’s dossier from public view, but Special Counsel John Durham is now making clear he has a strong interest in her campaign’s behavior during the Russia collusion probe. He is even suggesting some of her aides could be summoned as trial witnesses. Durham’s earth-shaking revelation came inside a routine court filing this month in the case of Igor Y. Danchenko, a Russian analyst who was a primary source in 2016 for Steele’s now-infamous dossier. Danchenko has been charged with repeatedly lying to the FBI during the Russia collusion probe and has pleaded innocent.

Durham’s motion asked the presiding judge to determine whether Danchenko’s lawyers —Danny Onorato and Stuart Sears of the Schertler Onorato Mead & Sears law firm — pose a conflict of interest because the firm also represents the Hillary for America campaign as well as several former campaign officials in “matters before the special counsel.” “The Clinton Campaign financed the opposition research reports, colloquially known as the ‘Dossier,’ that are central to the Indictment against the defendant,” the Durham team stated in the motion. “Accordingly, for the reasons set forth below, the government respectfully requests that the Court inquire into the potential conflict issues set forth herein.”

[..] Prosecutors said they want to know what the Clinton campaign knew about the accuracy of the Steele dossier’s now-discredited allegations of Trump-Russia collusion and whether any campaign “representatives directed, solicited, or controlled” Danchenko’s activities assisting Steele. “The interests of the Clinton Campaign and the defendant could potentially diverge in connection with any plea discussions, pre-trial proceedings, hearings, trial, and sentencing proceedings,” the prosecutors told the court, often referring to the Steele dossier as “Company Reports.” “For example, the Clinton Campaign and the defendant each might have an incentive to shift blame and/or responsibility to the other party for any allegedly false information that was contained within the Company Reports and/or provided to the FBI,” the Durham filing stated.

“Moreover, it is possible that one of these parties might also seek to advance claims that they were harmed or defrauded by the other’s actions, statements, or representations.” For the first time, Durham also raised the possibility aides to Hillary Clinton could testify at Danchenko’s trial. “In the event that one or more former representatives of the Clinton Campaign (who are represented by defense counsel’s firm) are called to testify at any trial or other court proceeding, the defendant and any such witness would be represented by the same law firm, resulting in a potential conflict,” Durham’s team argued.

And for one of the first times, Durham’s team declares to a court what it believes was the political motive for the Clinton campaign to pay its law firm, Perkins Coie, to hire the Fusion GPS investigative firm to hire the retired MI6 agent Steele to write the anti-Trump Russia reports known as the dossier. “The Clinton Campaign, through Law Firm-1 and U.S. Investigative Firm-1, commissioned and financed the Company Reports in an attempt to gather and disseminate derogatory information about Donald Trump,” the filing stated.

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They all seem to fit in already.

• Capitol Building To Be Expanded To Hold All Pfizer Lobbyists (BBee)

Senate leaders revealed today that Biden’s “Build Back Better” infrastructure plan will include $86 Billion for a brand-new Capitol Building construction project. The Capitol will be expanded to hold 100 Senators, 435 Representatives, and 1,423 Pfizer lobbyists. “Better. Build blur, uh, der der trunalimunumaprzure,” said Biden in a forceful speech defending the plan. “Derp rug abba loogey.” A hand then appeared from behind a curtain and injected Biden with some sort of medication, causing Biden to come to his senses.


“These Pfizer people, they’re good folks, folks! They know what they’re doing! We’re just gonna let them run the country for a while, I think. More time for me to watch Murder She Wrote on the television box!” Officials confirmed that to save time, the Biden administration plans to merge all regulatory agencies with Pfizer. They also confirmed that troops will arrive at your house tonight to administer your booster shot. Cool!

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Viral blizzard

 

 

Blackrock owns enough controlling interest in all.

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

Debt Rattle June 30 2020

Jun 302020
 
 June 30, 2020  Posted by at 10:37 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  36 Responses »


Pablo Picasso The dream 1951

 

• China’s Military Becomes First To Use Experimental Coronavirus Vaccine (SCMP)
• California, Texas See Record COVID-19 surges, Arizona Clamps Down (R.)
• Norwegian Air Cancels 97 Boeing MAX And Dreamliners, Claims Compensation (R.)
• Europe’s Recovery Fund: An Instrument of Class War (Varoufakis)
• We Digitized the Mob, and There’s No Place to Hide (Miele)

 

 

As we approach the end of the first half of 2020, I’m seriously rethinking how to cover COVID19 going forward. The past five months have been intense in that regard, and at a certain point you need to wonder how useful such time-consuming work still is. For a long time I had the hope and belief that “we” would be able to halt the spread of the coronavirus, if only because that was -and is- the only sensible way to deal with a new pathogen about which very little is known, other than that it is potentially deadly.

But despite a huge number of actions, including lockdowns in many countries and societies, the infection numbers only keep rising. And at this point is is entirely unclear how countries like the US and Brazil will ever be able to get rid of the virus.

The consequences will be grave, albeit different in different places. We will see overwhelmed healthcare systems in some countries and states, while others will remain relatively unscathed, at least for a while. Ironically, in a world used to so much travelling it’s even useful to wonder what good it does to do a lockdown well. How long can New Zealand keep its borders closed?

As for healthcare, there was a report that it will take four years for the UK’s NHS to recover from COVID19, and that based on what they have experienced so far, while there is still plenty room for second or third waves, and/or any unforeseeable extra pressure.

Tourism as we’ve known it will never recover, at least not on a timescale that is meaningful to us. That whole industry needs a great reset. That is of course also true for airlines, plane manufacturers et al. As it is for the entire hospitality industry. People will be cautious when going out, the fear of infection rules supreme, as demonstrated again by this report from NBER, Fear, Lockdown, and Diversion, which shows it wasn’t the lockdowns that did the most damage.

This paper examines the drivers of the collapse using cellular phone records data on customer visits to more than 2.25 million individual businesses across 110 different industries. Comparing consumer behavior within the same commuting zones but across boundaries with different policy regimes suggests that legal shutdown orders account for only a modest share of the decline of economic activity (and that having county-level policy data is significantly more accurate than state-level data).


While overall consumer traffic fell by 60 percentage points, legal restrictions explain only 7 of that. Individual choices were far more important and seem tied to fears of infection. Traffic started dropping before the legal orders were in place; was highly tied to the number of COVID deaths in the county; and showed a clear shift by consumers away from larger/busier stores toward smaller/less busy ones in the same industry.

But I have to admit, over the past few days, when I was silent, I’ve become ever more worried by the American political and societal situation than by coronavirus. The images of people with guns standing outside of their homes, the stories of police and mob violence, shootings in “police-free” zones, it all starts to smell like a civil war.

While I wasn’t writing, I was reading all the more from both sides of aisle, and whatever they may still have had in common appears to disappear rapidly. The hunt for Trump continues unabated with yet another anonymous and unsourced tale about RussiaRussia, while the right is organizing to counter what they see as lawlessness across the nation.

Frank Miele, in a article below, quotes Bobby Kennedy, speaking after MLK was shot:

“The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one — no matter where he lives or what he does — can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on. Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? … No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. … [A]n uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.”

That sounds like a voice of reason that is sorely needed by the country right now. But does anyone see any of those? Ideally, Trump and Biden would get together on live TV to ask their supporters to please calm down. But I don’t see that happening in the present climate either. It’s become too polarized, fed by media and their business models.

I’m just trying to make sense of it all. Trying to find a way out of the mess, a way forward. But right now I’m mostly just thinking that Independence Day could turn into an incredibly messy affair. Or any other day between now and the election.

 

 

 

 

US has fifth day in a row with over 40,000 new cases

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Key line: “The candidate is yet to start phase three trials, which would confirm whether it could protect recipients from infection.”

• China’s Military Becomes First To Use Experimental Coronavirus Vaccine (SCMP)

China has approved military use of an experimental coronavirus vaccine developed by the People’s Liberation Army and a Chinese pharmaceutical company, in a first for the armed forces of any country. The vaccine, identified as Ad5-nCoV, was jointly developed by a team at the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, led by Major General Chen Wei, and Tianjin-based company CanSino Biologics. It is the first time that a vaccine candidate for Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has been authorised for use for the military of any nation. CanSino said on Monday that the candidate had been through two phases of clinical trials, which indicated it was safe and there was “relatively high” immune response to the antigen.

The candidate is yet to start phase three trials, which would confirm whether it could protect recipients from infection. The military has approved its use for a year but it has not been authorised for civilian purposes. Adding Ad5-nCoV to the People’s Liberation Army’s catalogue of special drugs means that it can be deployed in major outbreaks. It is based on an Ebola vaccine that was developed by Chen but did not go into mass production. Scientists are racing to find an answer to the coronavirus that has already infected more than 10 million people and killed over 500,000. New cases continue to surge in the United States and India, with the US confirming more than 40,000 new cases for the third straight day on Monday.

According to the World Health Organisation, clinical trials are under way for 17 vaccine candidates, seven of which have been developed in China. One candidate developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca is in phase three studies. Phase one and two studies typically test if a candidate is safe and whether it can generate an immune response from the recipients, but vaccines must complete all three sets of trials to be licensed. CanSino said it completed phase two trials on June 11, but the company has not yet released data from the study. [..] Many Chinese candidates are planning phase three trials in other countries as the spread of the coronavirus in China is too limited to test the efficacy of the vaccine. CanSino reached an agreement with Canadian government to conduct phase three trials there but details of the studies have not been revealed.

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We’ll see anti-police protests and anti-lockdown protests all at the same time.

• California, Texas See Record COVID-19 surges, Arizona Clamps Down (R.)

California and Texas both marked record spikes in new COVID-19 infections on Monday, a Reuters tally showed, as Los Angeles reported an “alarming” one-day surge in America’s second-largest city that put it over 100,000 cases. Los Angeles has become a new epicenter in the pandemic as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations surge there despite California Governor Gavin Newsom’s strict orders requiring bars to close and residents to wear masks in nearly all public spaces. “The alarming increases in cases, positivity rates and hospitalizations signals that we, as a community, need to take immediate action to slow the spread of COVID-19,” Barbara Ferrer, director of public health for Los Angeles County, said in a statement announcing the sharp rise.


“Otherwise, we are quickly moving toward overwhelming our healthcare system and seeing even more devastating illness and death,” Ferrer said. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced a “hard pause” on when movie theaters, theme parks and other entertainment venues can reopen. Los Angeles County is the biggest movie theater market in the United States. Los Angeles County said its beaches will be closed for the Independence Day weekend and fireworks displays will be banned.

 

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is there a better example of the future of tourism?

• Norwegian Air Cancels 97 Boeing MAX And Dreamliners, Claims Compensation (R.)

Norwegian Air has cancelled orders for 97 Boeing aircraft and will claim compensation from the U.S. plane maker for the grounding of the 737 MAX and for 787 engine troubles that hit its bottom line, the Oslo-based carrier said on Monday. The airline cancelled 92 of the 737 MAX jets, five 787 Dreamliners and so-called GoldCare service agreements related to both aircraft, just as Boeing on Monday began a crucial set of flight tests of the 737 MAX in an effort to gain regulatory approval for it to return to the skies.


“Norwegian has in addition filed a legal claim seeking the return of pre-delivery payments related to the aircraft and compensation for the company’s losses related to the grounding of the 737 MAX and engine issues on the 787,” the airline said. Norwegian did not specify the amount it would seek to claim from Boeing, which it had been in talks with about compensation, and was not immediately available for comment. Boeing said it was working with Norwegian on a path forward in a challenging time as it was with other operators but it would not comment on commercial discussions.

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Nothing has changed in Europe.

• Europe’s Recovery Fund: An Instrument of Class War (Varoufakis)

Europe was never the battlefield on which the frugal North clashed with the profligate South. Instead, every European country has been the battlefield where a vicious class war is fought by a transnational oligarchy-without-frontiers training its armour against the weaker residents of every country, every region, every community. COVID-19, and the European Union’s response to it, only magnifies the human costs of this unremitting class war. All talk of a North-South clash is founded on a gigantic lie, that is based on many small truths, conveniently hiding from Europeans’ gaze the class war that diminishes their life prospects.

The crisis of financialisation in 2008 intensified Europe’s class war massively, holding a majority of Northern and Southern Europeans behind and leaving Europe, including its capitalist class, much weakened in relation to the rest of the world — the United States and China in particular. Twelve years on, COVID-19 gives this crisis a new, violent spin. The weak are weakened much, much more while Europe as a whole falls further and further behind the United States and China. While the EU’s leadership and bureaucracy have been quite active in the past three months, producing one impressive-sounding policy announcement after the next, the sum of their actions boost the class war that enfeebled Europe over the past decade and weakened a majority of Europeans everywhere.

[..] Rumours that Covid-19 caused the EU to lift its game are grossly exaggerated. Good people who took heart from the news that, however reluctantly, the EU has embraced common debt in a bid to further the cause of pan-european solidarity, will soon be deeply disappointed. Behind the heroic pronouncements and the triumphant propaganda lurks a sordid truth: The class war against Europe’s weaker people is escalating. And so is Europe’s descent into global irrelevance.

It all began with the quiet death of the Eurobond. Eurobonds, as advocated by DiEM25, would perform a simple task: They would automatically convert any new Italian, Spanish or Greek public debt (due to the impact of the pandemic on public revenues and expenses) into European debt (in the same way that US Treasury Bills absorb the costs of a recession in Missouri and Wisconsin). But, once the Eurobond was killed off by the Eurogroup in early April, it is now a given that the gigantic increase in national budget deficits will be followed by equally sizeable austerity in every country — a euphemism for the intensification of the class war that depletes the already atrophied incomes of the majority in each of our countries.

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Excellent piece, what ever side you’re on.

• We Digitized the Mob, and There’s No Place to Hide (Miele)

The most shocking aspect of the wave of rioting and destruction that has been unleashed on many of our American cities in the wake of George Floyd’s death is not that there is an underlying discontent with the rate of progress in racial equality. That is understandable. What is not is the way that mayors, governors and members of Congress have not just tolerated, but endorsed, mob violence as an acceptable weapon of social change. Growing up in the turbulent 1960s, I was given a very specific warning by my mother: If you ever get caught up in a mob, get out of it as soon as possible because a mob has no brain. It just has emotion — and whether that emotion is anger, hatred or even joyful exuberance, it cannot be controlled.

We saw that in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd while in police custody. People with a brain were outraged by what they saw. They wanted to protest, to speak out, and to demand justice. But when they came together in the streets, they discovered how quickly protest can transform into riot, and how demands for justice can be used to justify injustice. The basic premise of justice, after all, is recompense, making sure that wrongdoers pay a price for their crime. Yet there was no recompense in burning the businesses of innocent bystanders. There was no justice in stealing TVs and PlayStations. This was just brainless mob violence. It was shameful and it should have been easily condemned by the politicians, news media and celebrities who were not part of the mob.

That’s what would have happened in the 1960s. When Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, leading to riots across America in 1968, Bobby Kennedy appealed for peace amidst “this mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.” The parallel is exact. A black man is unjustly murdered. The nation is outraged. Riots ensue. The only part that is missing today is a respected grown-up like Kennedy who would condemn the violence and recognize that “[i]t is not the concern of any one race.” As Kennedy said,

“The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one — no matter where he lives or what he does — can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on. Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? … No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. … [A]n uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.”

What a refreshing expression of common sense, and what a contrast it offers to the bleating appeasers from the Democratic Party today who have bent a knee in obeisance to the mob, to the rioters, to the monument defacers, to the statue topplers. But it’s not just the Democrats who have bowed to the “voice of madness.” Most Republicans are right there with them. So too are corporate entities such as Intel and Amazon, and sporting organizations such as the NFL and NASCAR. For their part, news outlets such as CNN and MSNBC are promoting the riots and the cleansing of American history that is being pushed by Black Lives Matter. The question is why?

It is easy to understand why someone surrounded by the mob surrenders to its power, but those corporate boardrooms are far from the fray and well-protected from the torches and Molotov cocktails. So why have they turned their backs on law and order and embraced the mob? What has changed since the 1960s that makes it so much harder for leaders in government, business and culture to condemn violence and lawlessness? The answer will not surprise you, but it should scare you. Somewhere along the way, we digitized the mob. The few dozen people surrounding a statue are not the problem. The few hundred people confronting police are not the problem. The few thousand people looting stores and throwing rocks are not the problem. The mob on the street is not the problem. The mob on the street is the symptom.

The millions of people acting without moral restraint, without reason and without fear of consequences on the Internet are the problem. Indeed, the digital mob is the unintended consequence of the Internet itself. Connecting the world via technology was supposed to encourage communication, understanding and a breaking down of barriers. Instead it has resulted in a world divided into silos, special interests, identity groups. We tend to seek out those we have the most in common with and to block, ban or troll those who are unlike us. We feel safety in numbers, and from that safety is often bred outright contempt for those who think differently.

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I’ll close today with a series of clips of an interview yesterday with Michael Fynn’s attorney Sidney Powell, who’s going to be an important voice in the run-up to November 3, whether you agree with her or not. Stay safe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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