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Debt Rattle May 8 2022

May 082022

May 8, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: AIDS, CIA, hepatitis, lithium, national rage, Putin, Russia, Third Patriotic War, Vitamin D, WEF 69 Responses »

Edgar Degas L’absinthe (In a café) 1875-76

• “The Bitter Truth Is: Putin Can Win The War” (Blick)

• Megalopolis x Russia: Total War (Escobar)

• CIA: No ‘Practical Evidence’ Russia Is Preparing To Use Nukes (AMNA/FT)

• The Third Patriotic War (Batiushka)

• Biden Was ‘Livid’ Over Leaks About American Intel Used by Ukrainians (Celente)

• Ukraine Is None Of America’s Business! (Zuesse)

• White House Yields To A National Rage Addiction (Turley)

• VP of Pfizer Arrested After #Pfizerdocuments Get Released (VT)

• Vaxxed Hospitalised for Non-Covid Reasons at 5 Times the Rate of Unvaxxed (DS)

• Preventable Deaths and Vitamin D3 (Malone)

• Attenuated Viruses In Vaccines Cause Rise In Deadly Hepatitis In Children (DE)

• Fully Vaccinated Are Developing Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (DE)

• Study: Masks Might Make Covid Worse (CS)

• This Is The List Of WEF Graduates (Malone Institute)

• Mexico Calls for Latin American Lithium Alliance (RKC)

Kheriaty

Dr. Aaron Kheriaty: FDA should apply same level of scrutiny to Pfizer & Moderna's mRNA vaccines pic.twitter.com/sOT84xlpwR

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2022) May 7, 2022

Why did it take you so long to invent this link?

Google translate from German.

The more bitter truth is the Ukraine can NOT win.

• “The Bitter Truth Is: Putin Can Win The War” (Blick)

Russia appears to be making little progress with its invasion of Ukraine. But appearances could be deceiving. Because according to Markus Reisner, Austria’s top military strategist, Ukraine’s situation is much worse than is believed in the West. Putin’s tanks aren’t making any headway, Russian soldiers are surrendering, and soon Russia can no longer afford the war. Again and again breakdowns in the Russian military are known. It almost seems as if Ukraine can win the war. But the impression could be hugely deceptive. Russia is probably much stronger than people think in this country. At least the Austrian colonel and top military strategist Markus Reisner is convinced of this: “We need an objective picture of the situation. It doesn’t help us if we talk ourselves into the fact that the Russian attackers are in a bad state,” he explains in “Welt”.

“Because that belies how the situation really is.” Reisner expects further escalations in the Donbass in the next two to three weeks. According to him, these fights will be particularly fierce “because the Russians are now trying to bring about a decision”. The Ukrainians could defend themselves with American drones, among other things. But according to the military strategist, that will hardly be enough. «Ukraine urgently needs new weapons. The arms deliveries from the West are now a race against time,” Reisner believes. Because the western deliveries of heavy weapons had started too late. And in addition, Russia would capture or destroy a “not inconsiderable part” of the arms deliveries. In the meantime, the Kremlin has even published manuals on how to operate the captured weapons and how to use them against Ukraine.

“And that has already happened,” said the military expert. “According to US information, the weapons that the West brings to Ukraine within a week are used up within a day, i.e. used immediately by the Ukrainians or captured or destroyed by the Russians.” According to Reisner, Russia now wants to form two pincers in the Donbass near Izyum and Donetsk in order to encircle the Ukrainian troops. “The problem is that the positions of the Ukrainians in this area are not as strong as on the old contact line, i.e. in the east of Kramatorsk,” the Austrian fears. In the past, Ukraine has also had success using special forces to ambush Russian soldiers. But this tactic no longer works.

Reisner: “It worked elsewhere for the first six weeks, but now the Russians are prepared and the Russian special forces (Spetsnaz) are chasing the Ukrainian special forces and unfortunately destroying them quite often.” According to Markus Reisner, don’t let the slow progress of the Russians fool you. The Russians are now advancing “slowly, broadly and with massive infantry support, with the tanks being secured to the right and left by further armored trains.” Although the attackers can only manage about 1.5 kilometers per hour, they can avoid being ambushed.

“..Russia’s superior engineers is why their hypersonic weapons are at least two or three generations ahead of the U.S…”

• Megalopolis x Russia: Total War (Escobar)

Russia, based on purchasing power parity (PPP), is the 6th economy in the world, right behind Germany and ahead of both the UK and France. Its “hard” economy is similar to the U.S. Steel production may be about the same, but intellectual capacity is vastly superior. Russia has roughly the same number of engineers as the U.S., but they are much better educated. The Mossad attributes Israel’s economic miracle in creating an equivalent of Silicon Valley to a base of a million Russian immigrants. This Israeli Silicon Valley happens to be a key asset of the American MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex), as indelibly named by Ray McGovern.

NATOstan media hysterically barking that Russia’s GDP is the size of Texas is nonsense. PPP is what really counts; that and Russia’s superior engineers is why their hypersonic weapons are at least two or three generations ahead of the U.S. Just ask the indispensable Andrei Martyanov. The Empire of Lies has no defensive missiles worthy of the name, and no equivalents to Mr. Zircon and Mr. Sarmat. The NATOstan sphere simply cannot win a war, any war against Russia for this reason alone. The deafening NATOstan “narrative” that Ukraine is defeating Russia does not even qualify as an innocuous joke (compare it with Russia’s “Reach Out and Touch Someone” strategy). The corrupt system of SBU fanatics intermingled with UkroNazi factions is kaput. The Pentagon knows it. The CIA cannot possibly admit it.

What the Empire of Lies has sort of won, so far, is a media “victory” for the UkroNazis, not a military victory. Gen Aleksandr Dvornikov, of Syria fame, has a clear mandate: to conquer the whole of Donbass, totally free up Crimea and prepare the advance towards Odessa and Transnistria while reducing a rump Ukraine to the status of failed state without any access to the sea. The Sea of Azov – linked to the Caspian by the Don-Volga canal – is already a Russian lake. And the Black Sea is next, the key connection between the Heartland and the Mediterranean. The Five Seas system – Black, Azov, Caspian, Baltic, White – enshrines Russia as a de facto continental naval power. Who needs warm waters?

Gonzalo Poland

The most credible voice in the West. Putin has no reason to “contemplate losing”..

• CIA: No ‘Practical Evidence’ Russia Is Preparing To Use Nukes (AMNA/FT)

CIA does not have any “practical evidence” that Russia is getting ready to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, its director, Bill Burns, said Saturday. Burns, a veteran diplomat, was speaking at the “Weekend Festival” organized by the Financial Times in Washington, DC. But, he added, “we can’t take lightly those possibilities” given Russia’s saber-rattling. Russia had announced shortly after its invasion of Ukraine began, on Feb. 24, that it had placed its nuclear deterrence forces under heightened alert and Russian President Vladimir Putin had threatened a “swift retaliation” on any third party intervening in the war. Burns said he believed Putin is determined to pursue the war and cannot contemplate losing. “[Putin] is in a frame of mind in which he doesn’t believe he can afford to lose; so the stakes are quite high in this phase,” he said.

“I think he’s convinced right now that doubling down … will enable him to make progress,” he added. The CIA Director also said that China is closely following developments in the Ukraine to find lessons in its own strategy to gain control of Taiwan. China has never made a secret of its belief that it considers Taiwan an integral part of its territory, adding that China was also “dismayed” by “the fact that what Putin has done is driving Europeans and Americans closer together.” “It strikes us … that (Chinese President) Xi Jinping is a little bit unsettled by the reputational damage that can come to China by the association with the brutishness of Russia’s aggression against Ukrainians [and] unsettled certainly by the economic uncertainty that’s been produced by the war,” Burns said.

“If Russia does not win, the Russian Federation will be humiliated and dismantled and become just another group of colonies for Western asset-strippers and slavers.”

• The Third Patriotic War (Batiushka)

Russia must win this War against NATO. However, the last thing Russia wants is a nuclear war, however much some fools in the West talk that up. And however tempting as targets the 1,000 or so US bases around the world may be, Russia certainly does not want the war to spread outside the current Ukrainian territory. If Russia does not win, the Russian Federation will be humiliated and dismantled and become just another group of colonies for Western asset-strippers and slavers. Then the British dream for its 1917 coup d’etat, turned into a nightmare because the stupid dream permitted Bolshevism to come to power, will become real.

After that, China will fall next and then the rest of the still free, if for the moment impoverished and exploited, world will fall just like dominos into neo-colonial Western hands. And that will be the end of the world under a US Global Dictatorship, euphemistically known as ‘the Unipolar World’. We are not ready for that. We prefer to fight. As President Putin has said, a world without Russia is not one we wish to live in. As we have said before, this is our ONLY chance to work towards a Union of Sovereign (NOT Soviet) Social (NOT Socialist) Republics and an Alliance of countries which favour Prosperity and Justice, not Poverty and Injustice.

I don’t think Biden is capable of being livid over anything anymore. Even if he’s known for a mean temper.

• Biden Was ‘Livid’ Over Leaks About American Intel Used by Ukrainians (Celente)

President Joe Biden was furious that senior U.S. officials went to the media about Washington sharing intel with Ukrainians that may have resulted in the sinking of Russia’s flagship and the killings of about a dozen Russian generals, according to a report. Thomas Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times, wrote Friday that his sources in D.C. implied that the leaks were not “part of any thought-out strategy,” and Biden was “livid” when he learned about them. Friedman said Biden got on the phone with the head of national intelligence and CIA to demand that these leaks end because it was inching the U.S. closer to conflict.

Friedman wrote: “Vladimir Putin surely has no illusions about how much the U.S. and NATO are arming Ukraine with material and intelligence, but when American officials start to brag in public about playing a role in killing Russian generals and sinking the Russian flagship, killing many sailors, we could be creating an opening for Putin to respond in ways that could dangerously widen this conflict — and drag the U.S. in deeper than it wants to be.” The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board last week called out Pope Francis for hinting that NATO shared some of the blame for the Ukraine war when he accused the Alliance of “barking at Russia’s gate.” Anyone with even an elementary understanding of what happened in Ukraine knows that the U.S. refused to negotiate in good faith with Russia over Moscow’s security concerns about Kyiv joining the Alliance.

So it was not unreasonable to hear the pope point that out. But the Journal took several issues with the pope, including his hope to meet with Putin. The paper wrote: The Pope said he has requested an audience with Mr. Putin but hasn’t heard back. Asked whether he’d visit Kyiv, he said he must go to Moscow first: “If Putin decided to leave the door open . . . ” This is a pattern. Recall that the Pope declined to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2020, at least partly because of America’s opposition to the Vatican’s egregious deal-making with the Chinese Communist Party. The paper seems to take personal offense that Francis believes it would be a more important trip to meet with Putin than the comedian, like all the political whores from the West.

America The Jesuit Review wrote that Francis explores this idea in his book “Evangelii Gaudium.” When looking at conflict, the pope explains, some people ignore it while others get sucked into it. But imagine a third way: Face the problem head-on and make it the start of a new process. As the pope reassures us, “Trust what God is doing through you.”

Biden salad
https://twitter.com/i/status/1522679779065057281

“The heads-of-state of U.S.-and-allied countries should therefore be removed and prosecuted by the International Criminal Court in order to halt WW III before it reaches the nuclear stage.”

• Ukraine Is None Of America’s Business! (Zuesse)

Russia never coup-grabbed Mexico, but in February 2014, America coup-grabbed Ukraine. That was an act of war against Russia (in order to steal Russia’s naval base in Crimea and in order for America to become able to place U.S. nukes in Ukraine only a five-minute missile-striking-distance away from obliterating Moscow), and Russia responded to America’s blatant aggression by allowing the residents in the region of Ukraine that the Soviet dictator had transferred from Russia to Ukraine in 1954, Crimea, to vote on whether they should remain in Ukraine or be returned to Russia. Over 90% of them voted to return to being Russians.

For this democratic response by Russia to America’s Ukrainian coup (and to America’s attempt to grab Russia’s naval base in Crimea to transform it into a U.S. naval base there), America and its vassal nations repeatedly sanctioned Russia — another step in America’s World War III aggression against Russia — and refused even to consider Russia’s demand that Ukraine must never be a member of America’s anti-Russian military alliance NATO or otherwise become a staging-area for a possible U.S.-and-allied invasion of Russia (a modern-day version of Adolf Hitler’s “Operation Barbarossa” blitz-attack to grab Russia). The heads-of-state of U.S.-and-allied countries should therefore be removed and prosecuted by the International Criminal Court in order to halt WW III before it reaches the nuclear stage.

If this would violate any laws, then it still must at least be attempted, in order to force the ‘news’-media in those countries to report on what is really at issue in the ‘war between Russia and Ukraine’, which is America’s empire and its world-endangering war against Russia (now using Ukraine as America’s proxy-soldiers and WW III introductory battleground). That is “aggressive war,” not any sort of defensive war by America and its vassal-nations. As such, it violates the U.N. Charter; and if the non-U.S.-allied nations won’t do everything they possibly can to defeat America at this stage in its global war of aggression against Russia, then the consequences of their collective failure in this matter will assuredly be the elimination of the entire world as we know it.

A post-WW-III world would be far worse for its survivors than it would be for its billions of non-survivors. The burden of guilt now is, consequently, not only upon the regimes that are seeking to expand yet further the American empire, but it is also upon the bystander nations, whose fates are also on the line in this matter. The fate of everyone is. And this is why everyone — and not ONLY the U.S. and its vassal-nations — must become actively involved here, to prevent the nuclear phase (which would be its final phase, and would be completed in considerably less than an hour). Imperialism must finally meet its match, to end it, for all time, before it ends all of us.

Yield? They actively use it.

• White House Yields To A National Rage Addiction (Turley)

Nearly 70 years ago, a little-known lawyer named Joseph Welch famously confronted Sen. Joseph McCarthy (D-Wis.) in defense of a young man hounded over alleged un-American views. Welch told McCarthy that “I think I have never really gauged … your recklessness” before asking: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” It was a defining moment in American politics as Welch called out a politician who had abandoned any semblance of principle in the pursuit of political advantage. This week, the same scene played out in the White House with one striking difference: This was no Joseph Welch to be found.

After someone in the Supreme Court leaked a draft opinion in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a virtual flash-mob formed around the court and its members demanding retributive justice. This included renewed calls for court “packing,” as well as the potential targeting of individual justices at their homes. Like the leaking of the opinion itself, the doxing of justices and their families is being treated as fair game in our age of rage. There is more than a license to this rage; there is an addiction to it. That was evident in March 2020 when Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) stood in front of the Supreme Court to threaten Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh by name: “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price! You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

Schumer’s reckless rhetoric was celebrated, not condemned, by many on the left, even after he attempted to walk it back by stating that “I should not have used the words I used … they did not come out the way I intended to.” What occurred at the White House this week is even more troubling. When asked for a response to the leaking of a justice’s draft opinion, White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to condemn the leaker and said the real issue was the opinion itself. Then she was asked about the potential targeting of justices and their families at their homes, and whether that might be considered extreme. It should have been another easy question; few Americans would approve of such doxing, particularly since some of the justices have young children at home. Yet Psaki declared that “I don’t have an official U.S. government position on where people protest,” adding that “peaceful protest is not extreme.”

Magnetic doors
https://twitter.com/i/status/1487517697961345025

Can’t see what he’s been charged with, if anything.

• VP of Pfizer Arrested After #Pfizerdocuments Get Released (VT)

Rady Johnson, the executive Vice President of Pfizer, has been arrested at his home and charged with multiple counts of fraud by federal agents. He was taken into custody and is awaiting a bail hearing. This comes as 1,000s of classified documents from Pfizer were released, showing the true risks of the experimental vaccine. As a result of Rady’s arrest, the hashtag #pfizerdocuments has started trending on Twitter. Multiple celebrities are now calling for other employees at Pfizer to be arrested.

Since joining Pfizer in 1994, Rady held multiple high level positions in the company. Rady previously lead the Regulatory Law practice group as well as the Corporate Regulatory and Healthcare Law Audit functions. Keean Bexte, an independent journalist formerly employed by Rebel News, pointed out how 1,223 people died within the first 28 days after taking the Pfizer jab. There are reports that the vaccine killed all the animals during the trial. A judge has granted a media blackout on request of Rady’s lawyers, and Google is suppressing search results. Rady faces life in prison if convicted.

Your immune system went out the window.

• Vaxxed Hospitalised for Non-Covid Reasons at 5 Times the Rate of Unvaxxed (DS)

Over the past 15 months we’ve had a barrage of statistics presented to us shouting about how great the vaccines are at preventing hospitalisation from (or with) Covid. However, these statistics have been light on detail on how they were calculated and we’ve not seen much sight at all of the raw data that the statistics were based upon. Until now. In April, a paper was published by the UKHSA (currently in pre-print, which means that it hasn’t yet undergone the usual peer-review process) on its statistical analysis of a selection of hospitalisation data by vaccination status. The intent of this paper was to support its statements that the vaccines prevent hospitalisation. However, the paper also includes the raw data upon which the UKHSA statistics were derived, and these data tell a very different story to that presented by the UKHSA. The data show:

• Far higher accident and emergency admission rates for reasons other than Covid in the vaccinated than in the unvaccinated.
• Much higher rates of hospitalisation due to non-Covid acute respiratory illness in the vaccinated.
• Even higher A&E admissions and hospitalisations in the double-vaccinated (not boosted).
• Even where the data suggest that the vaccines offer some protection (the risk of admission to intensive care resulting from Covid infection) the results look like they might be an artefact created by the assumptions used by the UKHSA.

Hope everyone’s taking their 5,000 IU daily, and not just for Covid.

• Preventable Deaths and Vitamin D3 (Malone)

We had an inexpensive life-saving solution both before and during the pandemic… The inconvenient truth is that even at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, a very simple, inexpensive and effective treatment was available that could have saved the majority of lives lost. All that the WHO and public health bureaucracy had to do was to recommend and support people taking sufficient Vitamin D3. This failure to act traces back to the unscientific bias and pro-vaccine obsession of Dr. Anthony Fauci. And once again the legacy media, while being paid by the US government and the pharmaceutical industry to promote vaccination, acted by censoring, defaming and suppressing the ability of physicians to inform people of scientific truth. The disease you suffered, the loss of life among your family and friends, could have been greatly reduced by simply getting enough Vitamin D3. This is another example of what happens when unelected bureaucrats are allowed to control free speech. Crimes against humanity.

The effectiveness of Vitamin D3 as an immune system-boosting prophylactic treatment for influenza and other respiratory RNA viruses was first discovered in 2006. Despite that fact that this treatment is amazingly effective for preventing death (by strengthening your immune system), it has never been investigated by the NIH, promoted by the CDC or by the US government for the treatment of influenza. One major issue has been that uncontrolled variables of dosing, timing of dosing and disease status have resulted in inconsistent clinical trial results (much as we have seen with the Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine COVID trials). However, when Vitamin D3 is given prophylactically at sufficient doses, there is clear and compelling evidence that Vitamin D blood levels of around 50 ng/ml will substantially reduce symptomatic infection, severe disease and mortality.

Longstanding worldwide public health policy is that Vitamin D should be taken at sufficient levels (typically supplemented in milk products) to prevent the bone disease called rickets. But this is just a minimal level to prevent a very obvious debilitating disease. The recommended Vitamin D levels in our milk are not sufficient for the more subtle immune system-boosting effects of this critical vitamin. Our bodies’ way of normally producing Vitamin D requires a lot of sunlight, but life in the modern world and northern latitudes make this difficult- particular in winter months which is often when the respiratory viruses cause the most disease and death. In a sense, disease and death from Influenza and other respiratory RNA viruses are a lifestyle disease. Just the way things are. Largely avoidable unnecessary death.

Trojan virus.

• Attenuated Viruses In Vaccines Cause Rise In Deadly Hepatitis In Children (DE)

The mystery hepatitis cases have recently been recorded in 14 states across America. Doctors in Ohio have reported 7 cases in children as young as 18 months, and North Dakota confirmed their first case on 5th May. As of the same date, six children have required a liver transplant and one has died. Could the actual reason for essentially banning the use of the Janssen vaccine instead have something to do with medicine regulators’ fears that the accentuated adenovirus it contains has gone rogue? Both the J&J and AstraZeneca Covid-19 injections are viral vector gene therapies. Both allegedly work by doing the following – First, the DNA instructions to create the SARS-CoV-2 antigen (spike protein; not the full SARS-CoV-2 virus) are inserted into a modified virus (adenovirus).

Then after the “vaccine” is injected into an individual, the viral vector delivers the spike protein DNA instructions to cells resulting in large amounts of the spike protein antigen. The resulting immune response to SARS-CoV-2 allegedly helps mimic what occurs during natural infection and results in a cellular immune response. The current theory, however, is that the adenovirus now circulating has been born from the AstraZeneca vaccine. Which would suggest the FDA have suspended the Janssen jab to prevent it from doing exactly the same thing. But that doesn’t mean the J&J jab isn’t the actual culprit.

The UK was the first country to roll-out the adenovirus based AstraZeneca Covid-19 injection en masse in January 2021, and it was also the first country to report an unusual increase in hepatitis cases of unknown cause among children. Just a coincidence? The theory behind the AstraZeneca virus going rogue is that the virus contained in the vaccine combines with the E1 gene from another circulating adenovirus, of which there are many. The result is a replicating ChAdOx1 virus.

Hard to explain, because people think AIDS=HIV.

• Fully Vaccinated Are Developing Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (DE)

Official data made available by the U.S. Government and Centers for Disease Control strongly suggests that fully vaccinated Americans are developing Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. But they are not alone, because further data made available by the UK Government and the Government of Canada suggests the vaccinated population in both of these respective countries are also developing the debilitating condition. It’s a common misconception that Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is only caused by the HIV virus. This simply isn’t true. Acquired (or secondary) immunodeficiency is one of the major causes of infections in adults. These immunodeficiency disorders affect your immune system partially or as a whole, making your body an easy target for several diseases and infections. When immunodeficiency disorders affect your immune system, your body can no longer fight bacteria and diseases. Several factors in the environment can cause secondary immunodeficiency disorders.

Some common ones are:
• Radiation or chemotherapy, which can lead to a secondary immunodeficiency disorder known as neutropenia
• Infections due to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can result in acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS)
• Leukaemia, a cancer that begins in the cells of the bone marrow that can lead to hypogammaglobulinemia—a type of secondary immunodeficiency
• Malnutrition, which affects up to 50% of populations in underdeveloped countries and leaves people vulnerable to respiratory infections and diarrhoea

But some of the less common causes include Drugs or medications. So it’s perfectly possible for a medication or drug to cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, and data published by the U.S Government and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) strongly suggests the Covid-19 injections should be added to the list. For months on end, official data coming out of both the UK and Canada has strongly insinuated that the vaccinated population are developing a nee form of AIDS. This is because the Covid-19 injections are proving to have a real-world negative effectiveness, implying that they are causing damage to the natural immune system.

Geert

Geert Vanden Bossche offers alternative view on COVID-19 vaccination. Before labeling his words as mis-, disinformation we should at least hear what he has to say even if we don't agree with him. pic.twitter.com/4Vm7MQ4Ktl

— Zola (@betterworld_22) May 7, 2022

Geert Vanden Bossche – worrisome if true pic.twitter.com/UD43B9DGUR

— Zola (@betterworld_22) May 7, 2022

Large study.

• Study: Masks Might Make Covid Worse (CS)

In the peer-reviewed study published in the journal Cureus, Dr. Beny Spira reviewed every European country with at least 1 million people between October 2020 – March 2021, when “the entire continent was undergoing an outburst of COVID-19.” Mask mandates and compliance across these countries varied significantly, from 5 per cent to 95 per cent. By comparing each respective country’s infection and death statistics, along with these mask-wearing percentages, Spira drew two conclusions: “While no cause-effect conclusions could be inferred from this observational analysis, the lack of negative correlations between mask usage and COVID-19 cases and deaths suggest that the widespread use of masks at a time when an effective intervention was most needed, i.e., during the strong 2020-2021 autumn-winter peak, was not able to reduce COVID-19 transmission.

Moreover, the moderate positive correlation between mask usage and deaths in Western Europe also suggests that the universal use of masks may have had harmful unintended consequences.” Of course, previous studies draw contrary conclusions, but Spira argues they falsely attributed mask mandates as having efficacy when in reality, they were implemented at the tail end of COVID waves.

Download xls. list from inside the article.

• This Is The List Of WEF Graduates (Malone Institute)

The WEF graduates and members are Foreign Agents. The full title of the US Foreign Principal Registration Act of 1938 (FARA) is “An Act to require the registration of certain persons employed by agencies to disseminate propaganda in the United States and for other purposes.” Citing Wikipedia, “The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) (2 U.S.C. § 611 et seq.) is a United States law requiring persons engaged in domestic political or advocacy work on behalf of foreign interests to register with the Department of Justice and disclose their relationship, activities, and related financial compensation. Its purpose is to allow the government and general public to be informed of the identities of individuals representing the interests of foreign governments or entities. The law is administered and enforced (or not…) by the FARA Unit of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section (CES) in the National Security Division (NSD).”

The Malone Institute (primarily Dr. Jill Glasspool-Malone and Anita Hasbury-Snogles), in collaboration with the Pharos foundation and Pharos Media Productions in Sweden, has invested months of time and hundreds of labor hours to mine existing and historic publicly available data sources to develop a detailed summary of graduates from two WEF training programs; the World Economic Forum’s Global Leaders of Tomorrow (a one-year program that ran from 1993 to 2003) and Young Global Leaders (a five-year program started 2004/2005 and still running). These people have been intentionally and internationally deployed as foreign agents representing the interests of the WEF members to “penetrate the global cabinets of countries” as well as a wide range of key business sectors including banking/finance, other business sectors (including health and biotechnology), academia and health, media, technology, logistics, arts and culture, sports, politics and government, think tanks, telecommunications, real estate, financial investment/holding companies, a variety of non-governmental organizations, energy, aerospace and military, food and agriculture.

You think they’ll let you keep it?

• Mexico Calls for Latin American Lithium Alliance (RKC)

The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, expressed his intentionto form an alliance with Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile, in order to promote mutual collaboration on lithium. “There has been communication with the president of Bolivia (Luis Arce), he, in turn, has a relationship, like us, with the president of Argentina (Alberto Fernández), who also has lithium, and with the president of Chile (Gabriel Boric), with the purpose of creating an association to help each other mutually,” said the Mexican president during his morning press conference today. In April, Mexico’s Congress approved a reform to the Mining Law of that country which launched the nationalization of lithium and the creation of a public body that is in charge of everything related to exploration, exploitation, and industrialization.

He pointed out that in the case of Chile and Argentina, private companies are in charge of exploiting the resource, but Mexico is still interested in collaborating in this work. “In the case of Bolivia and Mexico, lithium is nationalized, but there are shared interests [with Chile and Argentina] and we are going to work together, we are already doing it,” said López Obrador. In recent days, Bolivia celebrated the five-year anniversary of the state company, Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB). It was created by the government of Evo Morales with the aim of industrializing lithium and manufacturing value-added products within the country.

2022

Central bank assets

Central bank assets have ballooned since the Financial Crisis 14 years ago

Sound optional pic.twitter.com/Jyq8CdFHyw

— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) May 6, 2022

Gonzalo Saudi

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Debt Rattle April 11 2022

Apr 112022

April 11, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:31 am Finance Tagged with: Asia Pacific, Austria, debt default, DNA repair, Fauci, Finland, Le Pen, NATO, Russia, Shanghai, spike protein 54 Responses »

Edward Hopper Le Bistro or The Wine Shop 1909

• Austrian Chancellor To Meet Putin In Russia (G.)

• Russia Threatens Legal Action If Forced Into Sovereign Debt Default (R.)

• Finland Poised To Request NATO Membership As Early As May (Fox)

• NATO to Engage in Asia-Pacific to Counter China (ET)

• Biden Schedules Meeting With India Prime Minister (CTH)

• Bioweapons Expert Speaks Out About US Biolabs in Ukraine (BIN)

• Ukraine’s Crop Harvest Could Be Halved (ZH)

• Rising Food Costs Push Arab World’s Vulnerable to Breaking Point (BBG)

• Dems Ignore Food Crisis, Fixate On ‘Tesla Charging Stations’ – Cammack (JTN)

• The Spike Protein Pathogenic Algorithm (Chesnut)

• Fauci Admits Covid Won’t Be Eliminated, Advises People To Calculate Risk (JTN)

• China Brutalizes Citizens In Quest To Achieve ‘Covid Zero’ (Mosher)

• Macron To Face Off Against Marine Le Pen Again (JTN)

Dore Maté Zelensky NATO
https://twitter.com/i/status/1513210890908225541

..about 40% of Ukraine’s armed forces – 102,000 fighters – were Paramilitary, aka the far-right, Nazis, and foreign mercenaries..

Time for the Guardian’s main propagandist on everything from Assange to Putin. Here’s Luke Harding.

• Austrian Chancellor To Meet Putin In Russia (G.)

Austria’s chancellor is set to meet Vladimir Putin on Monday, the Russian president’s first face-to-face meeting with an EU leader since ordering the invasion of Ukraine, amid warnings of a fresh offensive and shelling in the east. Karl Nehammer said the meeting would take place in Moscow and that Austria had a “clear position on the Russian war of aggression”, calling for humanitarian corridors, a ceasefire and full investigation of war crimes. On the ground, Russian forces pounded targets in eastern Ukraine with missiles and artillery on Sunday, and Ramzan Kadyrov, the powerful head of Russia’s republic of Chechnya, said there would be an offensive not only on the besieged southern port of Mariupol but also on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.

“Luhansk and Donetsk – we will fully liberate in the first place … and then take Kyiv and all other cities,” Kadyrov said in a video posted on his Telegram channel. The US has warned that the appointment of a new general in command of Russia’s military campaign is likely to usher in a fresh round of “crimes and brutality” against civilians. Alexander Dvornikov, 60, came to prominence at the head of Russian troops in Syria in 2015-16, when there was particularly brutal bombardment of rebel-held areas, including civilian populations, in Aleppo. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser in Washington, said: “This particular general has a résumé that includes brutality against civilians in other theatres – in Syria – and we can expect more of the same” in Ukraine.

Nehammer met Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Saturday – the same day as the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, who promised to give Ukraine 120 armoured vehicles and anti-ship missile systems. Washington has also pledged to give Ukraine “the weapons it needs” to defend itself against a new Russian offensive. Russia has failed to take any major cities, but Ukraine says it has been gathering its forces in the east for a major assault and has urged people to flee. Russian forces fired rockets into Ukraine’s Luhansk and Dnipropetrovsk regions on Sunday, officials said. Missiles completely destroyed the airport in the city of Dnipro, said Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of the central Dnipropetrovsk region. Russia’s defence ministry said high-precision missiles had destroyed the headquarters of Ukraine’s Dnipro battalion in the town of Zvonetsky.

The one country that has very little foreign debt: “Russia faces its first sovereign external default in more than a century..”

• Russia Threatens Legal Action If Forced Into Sovereign Debt Default (R.)

Russia will take legal action if the West tries to force it to default on its sovereign debt, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told the pro-Kremlin Izvestia newspaper on Monday, sharpening Moscow’s tone in its financial wrestle with the West. “Of course we will sue, because we have taken all the necessary steps to ensure that investors receive their payments,” Siluanov told the newspaper in an interview. “We will present in court our bills confirming our efforts to pay both in foreign currency and in roubles. It will not be an easy process. We will have to very actively prove our case, despite all the difficulties.” Siluanov did not elaborate on Russia’s legal options.

Russia faces its first sovereign external default in more than a century after it made arrangements to make an international bond repayment in roubles earlier this week, even though the payment was due in U.S. dollars. Last week, Siluanov said Russia will do everything possible to make sure its creditors are paid. “Russia tried in good faith to pay off external creditors,” Siluanov said on Monday. “Nevertheless, the deliberate policy of Western countries is to artificially create a man-made default by all means.” Siluanov said Russia’s external liabilities amount to about 20% of the total public debt, which stood at about 21 trillion roubles ($261.7 billion). Of that, about 4.5-4.7 trillion roubles were external liabilities.

Russia has not defaulted on its external debt since the aftermath of its 1917 revolution, but its bonds have now emerged as a flashpoint in its economic tussle with Western countries. A default was unimaginable until recently, with Russia rated as investment grade in the run up to its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a “special military operation” and which on Sunday intensified in eastern Ukraine. “If an economic and financial war is waged against our country, we are forced to react, while still fulfilling all our obligations,” Siluanov said. “If we are not allowed to do it in foreign currency, we do it in roubles.”

Finland, Sweden, Austria?!

• Finland Poised To Request NATO Membership As Early As May (Fox)

The Finnish government is poised to formally apply for NATO membership “before midsummer” and potentially as early as May. Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin stated Friday that the country would vote “before midsummer” on sending an application to join NATO. Former Prime Minister Alexander Stubb says the vote will likely happen as early as May, according to Agence France-Presse. “We will have very careful discussions but not taking any more time than we have to,” Marin said during a press conference. “I think we will end the discussion before midsummer.” Stubb, however, was more specific in his prediction, telling the AFP on Saturday the government would likely vote on the issue before the end of May, just in time for NATO’s June summit in Madrid.

“The Finns think that if Putin can slaughter his sisters, brothers and cousins in Ukraine, as he is doing now, then there is nothing stopping him from doing it in Finland. We simply don’t want to be left alone again,” Stubb told AFP. While the Finnish public has traditionally been opposed to joining NATO, polls showed a seismic shift on the issue following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February. Finland shares an 830-mile border with Russia, and support for joining NATO jumped from 26% to 60% following the invasion. Finland has remained wary of its eastern neighbor since the Winter War of 1939, when Soviet forces attempted to invade at the start of World War II. Finish forces famously delivered a resounding defeat to the Soviets. Finland lost 26,000 soldiers compared at least 126,000 dead or missing for the USSR. NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg has stated that Finland would certainly be approved should it apply to join the alliance.

Some Russian lawmakers are already offering hostile language regarding a potential NATO-allied Finland. Russian lawmaker Vladimir Dzhabarov stated that joining the alliance would be a “strategic mistake” for Finland, adding that the country would “become a target.” “I think it [would be] a terrible tragedy for the entire Finnish people,” Dzhabarov said, adding that with such an action, “the Finns themselves will sign a card for the destruction of their country.”

“North Asia-Pacific Treaty Organisation”?

• NATO to Engage in Asia-Pacific to Counter China (ET)

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) has announced that it will begin engaging in the Asia-Pacific region both practically and politically in light of Beijing’s growing influence and coercion and its unwillingness to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Speaking following the meetings of NATO Ministers of Foreign Affairs on April 7, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the global implications of the Ukrainian conflict had propelled the organisation to step up its engagement with Asia-Pacific partners for the first time. “We have seen that China is unwilling to condemn Russia’s aggression. And Beijing has joined Moscow in questioning the right of nations to choose their own path,” Stoltenberg said. “This is a serious challenge to us all. And it makes it even more important that we stand together to protect our values.”

NATO and its Asia-Pacific partners—Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea—met in Brussels to discuss international support for Ukraine. Stoltenberg said the gathered foreign ministers agreed that NATO’s next Strategic Concept briefing, expected to be finalised for the Madrid Summit in June, must deliver a response on how they relate to Russia in the future and how, for the first time, they take into account that their security is affected by China’s growing influence and coercive policies. “NATO and our Asia-Pacific partners have now agreed to step up our practical and political cooperation in several areas, including cyber, new technology, and countering disinformation,” he said. “We will also work more closely together in other areas such as maritime security, climate change, and resilience. Because global challenges demand global solutions.”

‘Nice country of 1.5 billion hungry people you got there Modi. With all this talk of global famine going around, it’d be a shame if you couldn’t feed them.’

• Biden Schedules Meeting With India Prime Minister (CTH)

Against the backdrop of increased Russia-India trade {link}, and the BRICS discussions about new trade payment mechanisms to avoid being shackled to the dollar {link}, it would appear the people behind the White House operation to create/maintain conflict with Russia are scheduling a stern conversation with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. WHITE HOUSE – ” President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. will meet virtually with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India on Monday, April 11 to further deepen ties between our governments, economies, and our people. President Biden and Prime Minister Modi will discuss cooperation on a range of issues.” … “President Biden will continue our close consultations on the consequences of Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine and mitigating its destabilizing impact on global food supply and commodity markets.”

The message from the White House will likely be akin to: ‘Nice country of 1.5 billion hungry people you got there Modi. With all this talk of global famine going around, it’d be a shame if you couldn’t feed them.’ Oh, and by the way, did you happen to catch what just rolled out in Pakistan? Imagine that – what with common borders and such… For those unfamiliar, it appears the DoS/CIA were up to their old tricks again, because Pakistan was favorable to the position of China and Russia in the Ukraine conflict and would not take sides with NATO and western allied leaders. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was ousted through a majority parliamentary no-confidence vote early Sunday, that smells identical to the way Obama/Biden DoS/CIA ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

(VOA) – […] Khan is the first prime minister to be ousted by a no-confidence vote in Pakistan, but no democratically elected prime minister has served a full five-year term since the founding of the country in 1947. The repeatedly delayed no-confidence vote against Khan was held after the country’s Supreme Court ruled last week he had acted unconstitutionally when he previously blocked the no-confidence vote, and subsequently dissolved parliament. The embattled Pakistani leader had defended his blocking of the vote, alleging that the no-confidence motion was the result of the United States meddling in his country’s politics. Washington rejected the charges, saying there was “no truth” to them.

[..] (VIA ABC) – […] Khan has claimed the U.S. worked behind the scenes to bring him down, purportedly because of Washington’s displeasure over his independent foreign policy choices, which often favor China and Russia. He has occasionally defied America and stridently criticized America’s post 9/11 war on terror. Khan said America was deeply disturbed by his visit to Russia and his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 24, the start of the devastating war in Ukraine. The U.S. State Department has denied his allegations.

“The Pentagon does not do missionary work,” he says. “They kill people, and that’s why they are there.”

• Bioweapons Expert Speaks Out About US Biolabs in Ukraine (BIN)

According to bioweapons expert Francis Boyle, Russia’s accusation that Ukraine is conducting U.S.-funded bioweapons research appears to be accurate If true, everyone involved is subject to life in prison under the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989. According to Boyle, the U.S. government and Pentagon have had a “comprehensive policy” to “surround Russia with biological warfare laboratories” and “preposition biological weapons” there for use against them The problem with trying to make a distinction between “biodefense” and “biowarfare” is that, basically, there is none. No biodefense research is purely defensive, because to do biodefense work, you’re automatically engaged in the creation of biological weapons, and all dual use research can be used for military purposes. SARS-CoV-2 may be the result of such dual use research

Boyle believes we can hold the culprits behind the SARS-CoV-2 bioweapon accountable by asking local prosecutors to convene a grand jury to seek the indictment of those responsible for the pandemic for murder and conspiracy to commit murder In the video above, “InfoWars” host Owen Shroyer interviews Francis Boyle, Ph.D., a Harvard educated lawyer and bioweapons expert with a Ph.D. in political science, about the biolabs in Ukraine, which Russia claims are engaged in U.S.-funded bioweapons research. For decades, Boyle has advocated against the development and use of bioweapons. In fact, he was the one who called for biowarfare legislation at the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972. He then went on to draft the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act, which was passed unanimously by both houses of Congress and signed into law by then-president George Bush Sr. in May 1989.

While the U.S. has vehemently denied Russia’s accusations, Boyle says that based on what he’s discovered so far, the labs in Ukraine are all conducting biological warfare research — including ethnic-specific biological weapons — at the behest of the U.S. Pentagon, just as Russian authorities are claiming. “The Pentagon does not do missionary work,” he says. “They kill people, and that’s why they are there.” He also points out that everyone involved is subject to life in prison under the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, which explains the mad scramble to project these labs as something other than what they are.

DR FRANCIS BOYLE start at 5 min.

2023 will be worse.

• Ukraine’s Crop Harvest Could Be Halved (ZH)

Ukraine is one of the world’s top exporters of corn, sunflower oil, and wheat. Disruptions stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have stoked fears the war-torn country could experience a 50% decline in crop output this year, according to Bloomberg. Forecast data from ag expert UkrAgroConsult show Ukraine’s corn output could be as low as 19 million tons, about half of last year’s 41 million tons. UkrAgroConsult’s pessimistic outlook follows huge production uncertainties as farmers experience shortages of diesel and fertilizer and bombed-out infrastructure.

The outlooks of two other ag firms aren’t as gloomy. Black Sea research firm SovEcon expects Ukraine’s 2022 corn harvest to be 27.7 million tons, and Barva Invest’s outlook is 29.5 million tons. Both a far below 2021 totals. Maxigrain analyst Elena Neroba warned if farmers don’t have diesel, they “can’t plant huge hectares.” “Some farmers still don’t have access to seeds and fertilizers. Even if they already paid for them, the delivery supply chain doesn’t work as well as it should,” Neroba said. Regardless of how much the conflict impacts output, global food prices have never risen so fast and have never been so high in anticipation of food shortages worldwide. In March, global food prices jumped a stunning 12.64% MoM – almost double the previous record monthly surge…

The CIA won’t mind another Arab Spring at all.

• Rising Food Costs Push Arab World’s Vulnerable to Breaking Point (BBG)

Seated around the dining table, the family of four stares blankly at pictures of food sketched on the tablecloth. “Tonight,” the father says, “we’re coloring for dinner.” The scene in a cartoon in a Moroccan newspaper speaks to the predicament facing the kingdom’s 37 million people and their peers across North Africa as the Muslim world marks Ramadan. Normally characterized by abstention broken by plentiful sunset feasts, the holy month for many this year is a confrontation with painful economic reality. Global foods costs are up more than 50% from mid 2020 to a record and households worldwide are trying to cope with the strains on their budgets. In North Africa, the challenge is more acute because of a legacy of economic mismanagement, drought and social unrest that’s forcing governments to walk a political tightrope at a precarious time.

The Middle East and North Africa region’s net food and energy importers are especially vulnerable to shocks to commodity markets and supply chains resulting from Russia’s war on Ukraine, according to the International Monetary Fund. That’s in countries where the rising cost of living helped trigger the Arab Spring uprisings a little over a decade ago. “Just how much more do we have to take?” asked Ahmed Moustafa, a 35-year-old driver and father of three in Cairo. He already had to sell some appliances to keep food on the table and cover other expenses, he said. “We keep being asked to cut and cut and cut, but there’s not much left to cut from.”

Home to large, mainly urban populations and lacking oil wealth, governments in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia are struggling to maintain subsidies for food and fuel that have helped keep a lid on discontent. The World Food Programme has warned that people’s resilience is at “breaking point,” while the United Arab Emirates moved to help ally Egypt, the world’s largest buyer of wheat, to shore up its food security and ward off potential instability. Egypt is also seeking IMF help.

“.. they will have missed an entire season. There will be no harvest next year.”

• Dems Ignore Food Crisis, Fixate On ‘Tesla Charging Stations’ – Cammack (JTN)

Amid warnings of an upcoming food crisis, Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee are prioritizing the installation of “Tesla charging stations” in rural America, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) lamented this week. The United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) released a report Monday titled “Unprecedented Needs Threaten a Hunger Catastrophe.” “The world cannot afford another conflict as is happening today in Ukraine,” the report warned. “The war is a catastrophe, compounding what is already a year of destructive hunger.” “Ukraine and Russia account for a third of the global wheat supply, and over half of WFP’s supply of the grain,” the report explains. “The crisis in the breadbasket of Europe is driving up the price of wheat as well as maize, sunflower oil and crude oil — with dramatic fallouts for food security worldwide.”

If the Russian invasion continues beyond April, “an additional 47 million people” will experience acute hunger, up “from a prewar baseline of 276 million people,” WFP noted in another report, released on Wednesday. “Altogether, this means that up to 323 million people could become acutely food insecure in 2022,” the report added. On Friday, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said the invasion of Ukraine is causing a 17.1% increase in prices for grain, which includes wheat, oats, barley and corn. On the John Solomon Reports podcast on Wednesday, Cammack warned of the approaching food crisis as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, preventing the latter country from planting crops.

“Ukraine should be planting right now,” she said. “They are not planting. So while this would be a typical growing season and a planting season, tractors are being used for the war effort, fuel is being used for the war effort — that is going to be a major, major issue as we move into the fall and the winter, because they will have missed an entire season. There will be no harvest next year.” There will be a “700% increase in fertilizer costs,” Cammack predicted. “And when you compound that with fuel prices — it was $5.19 a gallon for diesel in my district just this past weekend. You factor in the regulatory environment that is squeezing our producers to death. This administration has thrown more red tape on them and the threat of new taxes and regulations on producers, and then you basically put a bow on it with a pretty scarce labor market, it’s looking pretty grim.”

“..spike protein inhibits DNA damage repair by hindering DNA repair protein recruitment..”

• The Spike Protein Pathogenic Algorithm (Chesnut)

THE SPIKE PROTEIN PATHOGENIC ALGORITHM – DUAL PATHS TO TERMINAL SYSTEMIC FIBROSIS: IMMEDIATE FOR THOSE WITH SIGNIFICANT COMORBIDITIES, INDUCED FOR THOSE WITHOUT. The Spike Protein is inducing terminal systemic fibrosis of all organs, including the blood, via two principal mechanisms. The first is a direct, immediate path via binding to RGD-binding integrins, which includes several TGF-β-activating integrins. This activates Myofibroblasts which induces Fibrosis. Indeed, in autopsies of COVID-19 patients with advanced disease, 38% collagen deposition was found in their lungs. This is a rapid and certainly fatal circumstance. But, this is not limited to the lungs. In a series of cardiac autopsies conducted in Washington state, the most common changes observed were fibrosis in 14 (100%) patients and myocyte hypertrophy in 13 (93%) patients.

Let that sink in. In 100%. In EVERY SINGLE CARDIAC AUTOPSY, FIBROSIS WAS OBSERVED. The other mechanism is via DNA Double Strand Breaks and Impaired DNA Repair Mechanisms. This induces fatal systemic fibrosis in those who do not succumb to the initial assault. In mice that have their DNA Repair Mechanisms genetically deleted (this kind of mouse was developed to study Alzheimer’s) they experience The same level of DNA Damage as normal type mice. However, they accumlate DNA lesions faster due to their impaired DNA repair response. What is the effect of this? THEIR AGING IS ACCELERATED 6-FOLD OVER NORMAL TYPE MICE. What happens to these mice? They develop conditions common in elderly humans such as osteoporosis, pulmonary fibrosis, chronic kidney disease, cardiovascular disease, muscle wasting, peripheral neuropathy, hepatic fibrosis, urinary incontinence, intervertebral disc degeneration, cognitive decline, and loss of hearing and vision.

Sounds like Long COVID, doesn’t it? How does this happen? SARS–CoV–2 full–length spike protein inhibits DNA damage repair by hindering DNA repair protein recruitment. Why should this happen in some faster than others? Let us look at Diabetics. Diabetes-induced, persistent DNA damage is associated with organ fibrosis. Non-diabetics are accumulating DNA damage lesions, which will result in terminal fibrosis, but Diabetics are accumulating them FASTER as they already experience HIGHER LEVELS OF DNA DAMAGE, WHICH IS ALSO NOT. BEING. REPAIRED.

Let us look at Obesity. Altered DNA repair; an early pathogenic pathway in Alzheimer’s disease and obesity. In an inverted mechanism to Diabetes, the Obese already have an impaired DNA Repair Response, so, their DNA Repair Response becomes DYSREGULATED INCREASINGLY FASTER than those without this common comorbidity. What is the ultimate point of the Spike Protein’s inhibition of DNA repair Loss of the DNA repair potential results in persistent DNA damage signaling, senescence, SASP, fibrosis, and organ failure.

You’re on your own. But not really.

• Fauci Admits Covid Won’t Be Eliminated, Advises People To Calculate Risk (JTN)

White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted on Sunday that COVID-19 will not be eliminated and that people will have to calculate their own level of risk that they are willing to take with the virus. “This is not going to be eradicated and it’s not going to be eliminated,” Fauci told Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “This Week.” “What’s going to happen is that we’re going to see that each individual is going to have to make their calculation of the amount of risk that they want to take in going to indoor dinners and in going to functions, even within the realm of a green zone map of the country where you see everything looks green but it’s starting to tick up,” he said.

As of Sunday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has placed most of the United States at green, or at a “low” level of community transmission, and the 7-day moving average for cases sits at less than 27,000. “We’re going to have to live with some degree of virus in the community,” Fauci said, adding, “The best way to mitigate that, Jon, is to get vaccinated.” Fauci urged Americans ages 50 and older as well as immunocompromised people to get the fourth COVID-19 vaccine. He also warned that Americans could be required to mask-up again if cases rise. “We may need to revert back to being more careful and having more utilizations of masks indoors. But right now we’re watching it very, very carefully. And there is concern that it’s going up,” he said. “But hopefully we’re not going to see increased severity.”

“Yet the homebound are the lucky ones.”

• China Brutalizes Citizens In Quest To Achieve ‘Covid Zero’ (Mosher)

For over two weeks the financial capital of China, Shanghai, has been locked down tight. Some 26 million people languish in their apartments, staring at their now-empty refrigerators, unable to set foot outside to forage for food for fear of arrest and incarceration. Foreigners are in the same predicament, as one complained on Twitter: “Day 16 of our COVID lockdown in Shanghai today and food is the key thing on people’s minds. We aren’t allowed to leave home so delivery is the only way I was up at 6 am yesterday trying to get any kind of delivery but nothing was available all day. So far, same results today..” Yet the homebound are the lucky ones.

The unlucky ones are those who test positive for COVID each day, like the 17,077 Shanghainese who did on Wednesday. Symptomatic or not — and nine out of 10 show no signs of illness — they are hauled off to hastily erected quarantine camps. The Shanghai lockdown, the largest since the first Wuhan lockdown two years ago, is China’s latest attempt to achieve COVID Zero. An army of health care workers, some 38,000 in all, have been sent to Shanghai, with instructions to completely stamp out the coronavirus within the city. They are frantically testing and retesting everyone. Unable to protest their lock-up any other way, people have taken to venting their anger by yelling out of their apartment windows. Most of their complaints have to do with food. “We have no food to eat,” they scream. “We haven’t eaten in a very long time. We are starving to death.”

One starving lockdowner found a quieter way to protest his growling stomach. He rolled his refrigerator onto his balcony and opened its doors. The inside is completely empty. Other protests have taken more tragic forms. As they did in Wuhan two years ago, people are once again jumping off the balconies of high-rise apartment buildings. One video circulating in China shows a couple falling to their deaths. The husband was said to be distraught because the lockdown had cost him his business. Those desperate enough to venture outside in their search for food are hunted down by “Big Whites” — members of the security forces who owe their nickname to the white hazmat suits they wear. Patrolling the streets day and night, the “Big Whites” arrest and jail anyone caught breaking quarantine, who often get beaten in the process.

He won’t lose.

• Macron To Face Off Against Marine Le Pen Again (JTN)

French President Emmanuel Macron will face off against hard-right leader Marine Le Pen later this month in a runoff election. With 97% of the votes in, the incumbent Macron won 27.35% of the vote while Le Pen came in second at 23.97%, according to the French Interior Ministry. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist candidate, received less than 2% of the vote. Macron, of The Republic On the Move Party, has served as president since 2017. “Make no mistake, nothing is decided,” he told supporters on Sunday evening, according to the BBC. Le Pen celebrated Sunday’s results on Twitter. “I call on all French people, of all sensitivities, to join this great national and popular gathering that I am carrying!” she wrote.

Le Pen has surged in popularity following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as the cost of living increased, the Financial Times reported. She has been accused of being far-right for her anti-Islam views. Le Pen has said that she would limit immigration and forbid the Muslim veil in public. “That’s not us,” Macron said. “Make no mistake. This contest is not finished, and the debate we’ll have in the next two weeks will be decisive for our country and for Europe … I want a France rooted in a strong Europe.” Le Pen has also been skeptical of the European Union and NATO. If she wins, the founder of the National Rally Party promised to restore France’s “prosperity and grandeur.” Left-wing Jean-Luc Melenchon, who came in third at less than 22%, urged his followers Sunday evening, “You must not give a single vote to Marine Le Pen,” according to the BBC. He did not, however, endorse the current president.

George Webb Azov-Metabiota

Many questions on bioagents and NATO will be answered in the next few days at Azovstal. pic.twitter.com/9xKrcZSLhH

— George Webb – Investigative Journalist (@RealGeorgeWebb1) April 10, 2022

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The West Is at War with Itself

Mar 172022

March 17, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 3:33 pm Finance Tagged with: collateral, embargo, gigafactory, NATO, Putin, resources, Russia, Ukraine, West, WWIII 22 Responses »

Botticelli The Calumny of Apelles 1495

Dr. D again: “Russia is going to crush the whole West. But that’s not Russia’s fault: the entire West is so rotten it’s barely been standing for decades now, and certainly since ’08.”

Dr. D: Coverage of the war in Ukraine is very spotty and polarized. The news has been shut off, universally censored in the West, and expelled within Russia and Ukraine. Nevertheless there has been much commentary on it, from The Atlantic, “Foreign Affairs”, CNN, BBC, as well as Wall Street and London traders, geopolitical historians and commentators, and others, but like birds, all following a similar flock with a similar turn. Robert Gore is one such article, and better than most, covering Alistair MacLeod’s “Inside and Outside Money”, the mentally-ill childishness of the West, and that regardless of events right now, the outcome is certainly more chaos. https://straightlinelogic.com/2022/03/16/bonfire-of-the-governments-by-robert-gore/

What’s interesting to me with even smart writers like Gore is that they can’t see the most fundamental background shift. To me, this takes some reading, but these authors have all done the reading and are better informed than myself. It’s not like they’re older or younger, and it’s not that they don’t know it. I’m sure in other articles they describe the fragility of Western Banking, debt-printing system. He does so to some extent within the article. Yet somehow Gore – and all the other articles I’ve read these last 4 weeks – miss the most basic item. They believe “Putin made a mistake” and this is not just knee-jerk propaganda, it’s “Our War”, “Ukraine is the 51st State” “Putin is bad M’kay” stuff. They really believe it. Either because of the West’s response, or because they see the West promising to Mujaheddin Ukraine with unlimited weapons and rubbing their fists in glee.

That certainly is the plan, and a good one. It worked in Afghanistan 40 years ago, even as it never worked at all in Syria last year. These NeoCons behind Nuland and Kagan are now all so old they probably didn’t notice and are proceeding anyway. However, none of their plans in Ukraine will happen for very simple reasons. In addition, Putin knows that was their plan for 10-20 years, as well as to take Ukraine and use it to attack and crush Russia going back to the CARTER administration, i.e. Brzezinski. I mean, really? For the love of Christmas, here? That is to say, Putin and the Russian thinkers happily take the West’s open, public, transparent, unchanging plan and figure out what items must be in place to successfully and safely respond to it. And although they are winning in Ukraine (what else? They have an army 3x their size) that’s not the Russian true field of battle. Nor the tactics the West expected. I don’t know why this is so hard to understand.

Normally, I’d say Russia thinks differently. They are half Eastern, half Western they say, and when interacting with Europe LOOK like a Europeans, but then respond softly and go around. This makes them appear weak to us even as they talk tough. Maybe that’s why we constantly think they’re bluffing, the way we would, when really Russia could hardly be more straightforward if they tried. Indeed Lavrov’s top complaint in Turkey last week, but going back years now is that he’s telling them directly how things are and what will happen and like goldfish the West, the media, forget a second later and cannot hear, reporting a different, unrelated thing they fabricated, writing what “he thinks” and “what he meant to do” using their Putin-telepathy.

It’s like this: Russia is going to crush the whole West. But that’s not Russia’s fault: the entire West is so rotten it’s barely been standing for decades now, and certainly since ’08. If not; well, Russia dies. They know this. But Russia will not die because they have been patient and careful and picked a time where the West is badly over leveraged and incredibly past their time. So yes, the West spent billions, possibly trillions at this point to subvert Ukraine and Russia had to respond to them, the West’s armed invasion and takeover of Ukraine, and that’s fine. It’s a ship you can see coming a mile away.

“Russia responds” means the West’s propaganda will kick in and they will want to start WWIII on them, a total war which Russia probably cannot survive the combined forces of all NATO countries worldwide. So that’s a consideration, and unlike the West, who wants war anyway? Like Britain, Russia essentially has one city, Moscow, and a war will erase it, so there is no reason to take that path.

Russia is not fighting a “war” they are not “fighting” in Ukraine, it’s merely a minor police action, and that’s the first of things the West doesn’t understand. They think all Russian attention is on Kiev. They wanted all Russian attention and invasion locked in Kiev, and the West was depending on all the camera shots of destruction and dead civilians. I don’t think Russia even wants Kiev, or they would make at least some attempt to approach it. 500 civilians killed I’m hearing? THAT’S NOT A WAR. It’s hardly a police action. Maybe they don’t understand war material in the 21st century, but Russia could have leveled Kiev an the other cities in under 30 minutes including all their 5 million people if they wanted. Russia’s attention is on the real war.

As the WHOLE WEST, that is, the Anglos running NATO, are fully engaged in attacking Russia and economically conquering it, as Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi say daily “Our War”, to safely stop the war Russia can only attack and disable the WHOLE WEST and NATO in return. Nothing else will do. It’s possible to detente at some point, freeze the conflict, but if the West does not fall, Russia is in danger and will be overrun. So they have to attack the West, a combined UK, Germany, Europe, and America. It appears they do not intend to do this using sabotage, attacks on rails and substations, EMPs. That would merely anger the U.S. for instance and galvanize a deeply reluctant population to support the war no one wants. It’s off the table. Instead, they are merely going around the whole West, in Eastern style.

What is the West? As Gore says, it’s a CONSUMER. Of everything. They print debt and consume things, net producing nothing. So Russia is passively embargoing them. That’s it. And with some help from China, that’s the whole plan. And it’s worse than that, Russia isn’t even trying to embargo the West. There is no need; the West is using the war to embargo themselves. This is the highest moral good, as Russia can remain completely clean of the matter, being the good guys, offering and having tried everything they could. When wheat, fertilizer, oil, metals, electric, are all shut off across Europe, citizens will ask their governments what happened. Those governments will point to Russia, but it will be no use: it will be plain to see that Russia was selling these life-giving goods to Europeans, and is still trying to sell them to Europe now. It was the European LEADERS, the bankers, billionaires, who refused to BUY them. This will not wash with a cold, hungry public.

The West is also LEVERAGED. In fact that is the key takeaway from the West, their power, and their Central Banks. They can win wars because they can produce more “gold”, that is, more “money” to throw at an ongoing conflict. But leverage goes both ways. On the way up, 10:1 gets you ten wins for a single ante, a golden goose. On the way down however, the removal of a single ante, one underlying asset, leads to a 10-fold loss. And the West is leveraged not 10:1 but 300:1 and more as Jeffrey Christian points out in a single market such as gold. But this is true as mortgages become MBS as in ‘08, in bond derivatives, in stock market margin levels, in credit cards, car loans, and everywhere else, right down to borrowing, that is, “leveraging,” to buy a cheeseburger and fries in Muncie, Indiana.

What is leverage? To borrow more than the value of your collateral. What is collateral? Real Stuff. But the West doesn’t make Real Stuff. The Real Stuff comes from others, and to an outsized level, from Russia. To a great extent, Russia is the collateral for the West. The prosperity of Germany, France, BP, Tesla’s Gigafactories, rest on Russian oil, gas, and aluminum. No gas or aluminum, no Gigafactory. No Gigafactory, no $1 Trillion dollar market cap. No $1T market cap, no 36,000 Dow. Poof. And that’s true of Volkswagen, Bosch, Bayer, Jaguar, and the banks that rest on them: DeutscheBank, Credit Suisse, HSBC, Lloyd’s. And the loss of those markets, companies, banks, would not leave New York standing. Morgan can hardly prosper if London, Hamburg and the commodity exchanges fail and stop trading as the LME did this week. They cannot make margins on the Russian banks and Russian trade they are no longer facilitating. They too will fall into a spiral of counter-leverage.

What is leverage? Let’s say the leverage at 300:1 makes NY and London appear 300x stronger than they actually are. So the end of that leverage makes them 300x weaker than they appear at present. And as we’ve said the bank leverage is what makes them able to field armies and pay for wars. So the end of leverage makes them UNable to field armies and pay for wars. Especially when they themselves refuse to receive all the raw commodity supplies that let them do so. In this structure they are planning to maintain a conflict with no coal, oil, gas, steel, aluminum, titanium, uranium, palladium, neon, and so on.

So what is Russia doing? Like all colonies, they are the raw material producer to the Imperium; the Empire, and the Empire’s Army. If, like America, they wish to rebel against that Empire, they will shut off the raw materials to the Empire, who then cannot run an effective army. This is why they behave as they do. They must go to Ukraine as Biden said in 1994, and as Biden insured with arms, arranged with his policy, and permitted in his words, saying as they did in Kuwait, a small incursion would not be met with force. And should the world remain as it does today, indeed the West would keep the conflict running indefinitely, bleed all of Russia, and kill all the Slavs, of which there are already too few.

But the world will NOT remain as it does today. In withdrawing, Russia has erased the collateral for the entire West and their banking system. As that echoes through the Western financial system there will be great disorder and disruptive bank and corporate failures. Likewise, they will not have commodities to re-build their own structure as they once did in 1930, or not for a long time. The West has positioned themselves to refuse to buy from Russia, come what may. For their part, and being a small country, Russia could not have withstood this lack of commerce, or at the least would have grown a lot weaker, too weak to resist more Western forays into their territory and sphere of influence. That is what took so long. But now, they will not have such a loss of commerce, as they merely sell all the same goods to China, weakening the West even more.

You see, if Europe doesn’t want, won’t accept raw goods, they get weaker of course. And also the opposite, where if China DOES get them, and at an enormous discount to today’s disruptive prices, obviously China will grow far stronger. How can Europe compete with $3,000 aluminum – or having no aluminum – when aluminum in China is $2,000? They already couldn’t compete before. How can Germany fill their factories with employees eating $20 wheat when China is well-fed and eating wheat at $9?

It’s the West that is going to bleed with the Mujaheddin, not Russia.

Going back to Ukraine, if the West wins, all is lost, nothing matters. However, if the West weakens due to worldwide shortages, hardships, banking failures, corporate bankruptcies, currency collapses, then they cannot arm Ukraine as they believe. They won’t have the time, money, or attention to do so. American soldiers will have to return home on a city bus, and not from palatial airfields. In any case, the 100,000 men America has there will be of little use with no food, no supplies, and no supply chain to back them. And if this is so, Ukraine will become Russian, or at least solidly within the Russian sphere of influence again, because will Ukrainians wish to eat, grow crops, have aluminum? Yes, and Russia will look prosperous compared to London at that time, with access to all Chinese goods while the West will not.

So why would you destroy Ukraine? Or even their people? It’s your own country, and your own people.

This is what the West doesn’t understand, as we are required to have a blitzkrieg, a Schwarzkopf rush to the great capital, a surrounding army destroying radio, electric, roads, water. Why would Russia ever do that? To win, they will have to “own” Ukraine or be merged with them in some way and would simply have to rebuild it. Same with the people. You need Ukrainians to be for Russia, not against it. So killing civilians – or even the valuable army – is strictly counter-productive. If it were possible, they would be best to harm nothing and kill no one, “The Art of War” writ large, but of course in war that is not possible. However, 500 civilian deaths in 4 weeks of modern war is as close as possible to killing no one, and demonstrates their goals and values.

This is the cause for the West to say Russia is “bogged down”, they’re losing. They’re not losing, they’re winning. They are saving the lives of fellow Russians, brother Slavs, while nevertheless gaining control of the country. And this without hardship, as the power is on in Kiev and elsewhere, and people are driving, shopping, and going to work. No unnecessary Ukrainians have been inconvenienced. The trains are running on time to Poland and elsewhere. Why would taking a fully intact country be considered a “loss”?

This is the situation we find ourselves in, and the Russians have been very clear about it. About their needs, their goals, their approach.

The West is being boycotted. They have embargoed themselves. They are a stark minority on planet earth, taking too much and making too little. The embargo they have placed on themselves will collapse their banking and financial system even as their manufacturers cannot function when lacking raw materials. They cannot rebuild for many years and will go hungry. They cannot prosecute a war in this state, and in any case the people are not in favor of it and will not let them. But there is good news! The West can behave honestly, buy from Russia again, and end their unnecessary war and their own hardship at any time. Both the realization, and the reversal may take some years however, and we’ve only just begun.

This is what Russia is doing, and why they aren’t worried about Ukraine.

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Debt Rattle February 26 2022

Feb 262022

February 26, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:50 am Finance Tagged with: Biden, big banks, Kyiv, poke, Russia, SWIFT, Ukraine, vaccine side effects, Zelensky 72 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Guitar 1925

• Ukraine’s Deadly Gamble (Lee Smith)

• Biden Admin Tells Zelenskyy to Stop Negotiating Meeting With Russia (CTH)

• From the Black Sea to the East Med, Do Not Poke The Russian Bear (Escobar)

• The Party of Chaos Blows Its Cover (Kunstler)

• Why Putin Went to War (Lauria)

• EU ‘Moving Forward’ On Russia SWIFT Shut-Out, ‘Not Nuclear Option’ (ZH)

• Here’s Why the Russian Sanctions Are a Dud (Martens)

• ‘This War Will Last’ – Macron (AFP)

• Sean Penn Making Documentary In Ukraine (RT)

• Granny Gets Her Gun – From A Bunch Of Shameless Neo-Nazis (Peter Hitchens)

• Institute On Claims Vaccine Side Effects Massively Underreported (Eugyp)

The primrose path

Analysis & prediction on Ukraine from 6 years ago:

“The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path & the end result is Ukraine is going to get wrecked.”

-John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the U. of Chicago, pic.twitter.com/kPQNH58o7G

— Prodigal Son (@ThePr0diga1S0n) January 24, 2022

@PandaTribune: Under Trump, Putin wasn’t Putin troops in Ukraine. Putin was Biden his time until 2020. He knew that the Dem strategy of Putin Biden in a basement (instead of Putin America first) would get Biden Putin the WH. Maybe in ’24 we can Putin a new POTUS, but it might be too late Biden!

Stephen Cohen

The late historian Stephen Cohen in 2010: “There has been a tremendous expansion of America's sphere of influence since the mid-1990s…with all the while, every American administration saying to Russia…‘You cannot have a sphere of influence because that’s the old thinking.’” pic.twitter.com/99vw2SlW0N

— Human Rights Watch Watcher (@queeralamode) February 22, 2022

MPN

.@dancohen3000 explains how to avoid joining the pro-NATO chorus and why Americans should protest their own government's essential role in the years-long Ukraine/Russia crisis. pic.twitter.com/EODxqphK02

— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) February 25, 2022

Lukashenko

#Belarus Lukashenko in his address to the nation.#Coronavirus is a controlled process now. They ordered you to stay home, gave you gadgets, replaced reality with metaverse and push pills on you. U think the IT and pharma mafia will relinquish trillions in their profits? #COVID pic.twitter.com/9EV7k8fw2y

— Nemo – Russian Amerikan (@Nemo70488915) January 28, 2022

“.. exposing the national security establishment’s role in two separate, destructive coups: the first, in 2014, targeting the government of Ukraine, and the second, starting two years later, the government of the United States.”

• Ukraine’s Deadly Gamble (Lee Smith)

Russian President Vladimir Putin chose this war, Joe Biden said in his Thursday afternoon speech to America regarding the conflict in Ukraine. That is true, but U.S. elites also had something to do with Putin’s ugly and destructive choice—a role that Democrats and Republicans are eager to paper over with noble-sounding rhetoric about the bravery of Ukraine’s badly outgunned military. Yes, the Ukrainian soldiers standing up to Putin are very brave, but it was Americans that put them in harm’s way by using their country as a weapon, first against Russia and then against each other, with little consideration for the Ukrainian people who are now paying the price for America’s folly.

It is not an expression of support for Putin’s grotesque actions to try to understand why it seemed worthwhile for him to risk hundreds of billions of dollars, the lives of thousands of servicemen, and the possible stability of his own regime in order to invade his neighbor. After all, Putin’s reputation until this moment has always been as a shrewd ex-KGB man who eschewed high-risk gambles in favor of sure things backed by the United States, like entering Syria and then escalating forces there. So why has he adopted exactly the opposite strategy here, and chosen the road of open high-risk confrontation with the American superpower? Yes, Putin wants to prevent NATO from expanding to Russia’s border. But the larger answer is that he finds the U.S. government’s relationship with Ukraine genuinely threatening.

That’s because for nearly two decades, the U.S. national security establishment under both Democratic and Republican administrations has used Ukraine as an instrument to destabilize Russia, and specifically to target Putin. While the timing of Putin’s attack on Ukraine is no doubt connected to a variety of factors, including the Russian dictator’s read on U.S. domestic politics and the preferences of his own superpower sponsor in Beijing, the sense that Ukraine poses a meaningful threat to Russia is not a product of Putin’s paranoia—or of a sudden desire to restore the power and prestige of the Soviet Union, however much Putin might wish for that to happen. Rather, it is a geopolitical threat that has grown steadily more pressing and been employed with greater recklessness by Americans and Ukrainians alike over the past decade.

That Ukraine has allowed itself to be used as a pawn against a powerful neighbor is in part the fault of Kyiv’s reckless and corrupt political class. But Ukraine is not a superpower that owes allies and client-states judicious leadership—that’s the role of the United States. And in that role, the United States has failed Ukraine. More broadly, the use of Ukraine as a goad against enemies domestic and foreign has recklessly damaged the failing yet necessary European security architecture that America spent 75 years building and maintaining. Why can’t the American security establishment shoulder responsibility for its role in the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine? Because to discuss American responsibility openly would mean exposing the national security establishment’s role in two separate, destructive coups: the first, in 2014, targeting the government of Ukraine, and the second, starting two years later, the government of the United States.

“The U.S. wants President Zelenskyy to leave Ukraine, so the State Department can take full control over the narrative. Zelenskyy is refusing to leave.”

• Biden Admin Tells Zelenskyy to Stop Negotiating Meeting With Russia (CTH)

Unfortunately for Zelenskyy, an end to the fighting would be against the interests of the Biden administration. Highlighting the point, the U.S. State Department does not want Zelenskyy and Putin to meet. The Biden administration conveys a very telling message, from their perspective, saying only the United States is permitted to negotiate with Russia on behalf of Ukraine. Zelenskyy needs to stay out of it. “WASHINGTON: Russia’s offer for talks with Ukraine is an attempt to conduct diplomacy “at the barrel of a gun”, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Friday (Feb 25), saying Russia must stop its bombing in Ukraine if it is serious about diplomacy. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said earlier on Friday that Russia was ready to send a delegation to the Belarusian capital Minsk for talks.

Russia had attempted to engage in “a pretense of diplomacy” even as it prepared to invade Ukraine this week, Price told reporters at a news briefing. “Now we see Moscow suggesting that diplomacy take place at the barrel of a gun, or as Moscow’s rockets, mortars, artillery target the Ukrainian people,” he said. “This is not real diplomacy. Those are not the conditions for real diplomacy.”

[…] Responding to reports that the US government had ordered officials to stop most contacts with Russia, Price said the invasion of Ukraine had “fundamentally changed” Moscow’s relationship with Washington and other nations. But US officials would continue to engage with their Russian counterparts on important national security issues, including the talks to return to a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, he said. The arrogance and controlling attitude by the U.S. State Dept tells us all we really need to know. The Biden administration has created this crisis between Russia and Ukraine for a convenient purpose, and the White House is not about to let Zelenskyy screw it up and create peace. The U.S. wants President Zelenskyy to leave Ukraine, so the State Department can take full control over the narrative. Zelenskyy is refusing to leave.

“History loves playing tricks: what was a “gift” to Ukraine in 1922 may become a parting gift a hundred years later.”

• From the Black Sea to the East Med, Do Not Poke The Russian Bear (Escobar)

This is what happens when a bunch of ragged hyenas, jackals and tiny rodents poke The Bear: a new geopolitical order is born in breathtaking speed. From a dramatic meeting of the Russian Security Council to a history lesson delivered by President Putin and the subsequent birth of the Baby Twins – the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk – all the way to their appeal to President Putin to intervene militarily to expel the NATO-backed Ukrainian bombing-and-shelling forces from Donbass, it was a seamless process. The (nuclear) straw that (nearly) broke the Bear’s back – and forced its paws to pounce – was Zelensky the Comedian, back from the Russophobia-drenched Munich Security Conference where he was hailed like a Messiah, saying that the 1994 Budapest memorandum should be revised and Ukraine should be nuclear-rearmed.

That would be the equivalent of a nuclear Mexico south of the Hegemon. Putin immediately turned Responsibility to Protect (R2P) upside down: an American concept invented to launch wars in MENA (remember Libya?) was retrofitted to stop a slow-motion genocide in Donbass. First came the recognition of the Baby Twins – Putin’s most important foreign policy decision since going to Syria in 2015. That was the preamble for the next game-changer: a “special military operation (…) aimed at demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine”, as Putin defined it. Up to the last minute, the Kremlin was trying to rely on diplomacy, explaining to Kiev the necessary imperatives to prevent heavy metal thunder: recognition of Crimea as Russian; abandon any plans to join NATO; negotiate directly with the Baby Twins – an anathema for the Americans since 2015; finally, demilitarize and declare Ukraine as neutral.

Kiev’s handlers, predictably, would never accept the package – as they didn’t accept the Master Package that really matters: the Russian demand for “indivisible security”. The sequence, then, became inevitable. In a flash, all Ukrainian forces between the so-called line of contact and the original borders of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts were boxed in as the occupying force of territories of two Russian allies that Moscow had just sworn to protect. So it was Get Out – Or Else. “Or else” came as rolling thunder: the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense were not bluffing. Timed to the end of Putin’s speech announcing the operation, the Russians decapitated with precision missiles everything that mattered in terms of the Ukrainian military in just one hour: Air Force, Navy, airfields, bridges, command and control centers, the whole Turkish Bayraktar drone fleet.

And it was not only Russian raw power. It was the artillery of one of the Baby Twins, the DPR, that hit the HQ of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Donbass, which actually housed the entire Ukrainian military command. This means that the Ukrainian General Staff instantly lost control of all its troops. [..] We could soon witness the birth of an independent Novorossiya – east of the Dnieper, south along Sea of Azov/Black Sea, the way it was when attached to Ukraine by Lenin in 1922. But now totally aligned with Russia, and providing a land bridge to Transnistria. Ukraine, of course, would lose any access to the Black Sea. History loves playing tricks: what was a “gift” to Ukraine in 1922 may become a parting gift a hundred years later.

“..what goes on there is none of our business, and never was, until we started meddling in it in 2014.”

• The Party of Chaos Blows Its Cover (Kunstler)

[..] here is what I think is happening and will happen in Ukraine. The Russian aim is to neutralize Ukraine’s military capability — the means for harassing the eastern provinces known as the Donbas. That has been accomplished. Ukraine no longer has an air force, a navy, or a whole lot of weapons and munitions. It is surely in Russia’s interest to complete this operation in as few days as possible to minimize harm to civilian lives and property. The Ukrainians appear to understand that, too. The politicians and NGO organizations groomed by American sponsorship in Ukraine will be deactivated, relieved of their responsibilities, and put out of business. If Mr. Putin is prudent, he will not murder or persecute them. A regime friendly to Russia will eventually be installed.

Keep in mind, Ukraine had been a province of Russia one way or another for more than two hundred years — except for the calamitous past thirty years — and Ukraine doesn’t really represent much more than an administrative and fiscal challenge. Russia’s ultimate interest in this matter is to stabilize its border. We in the USA perhaps can’t appreciate that because our current government shows no interest in stabilizing our own border. (We will in the future, when the Party of Chaos is swept out of power.) I’ll refrain from speculating much on the broader geopolitical repercussions of Russia’s Ukraine operation, since it’s not over and there is still a chance for much to go awry. The general proposition that it represents a milestone in America’s loss of global power and credibility is probably correct.

We have spent the last thirty years since the fall of the USSR invading and harassing one country after another, not always with altogether bad intentions, but always with disastrous results. It looks like we will have to take a break from that activity. We have too much to look after and clean up with our own act. The Ukraine blow-up is more a humiliation for “Joe Biden” and his faction than for the US per se, for the truth is that we have scant interest in that corner of the world and what goes on there is none of our business, and never was, until we started meddling in it in 2014.

In the awakening underway here and now, Americans will see how so many of the ills and derangements of recent years are products of our own Deep State aligned with a perfidious party of the Left and other global actors. We have harmed ourselves terribly and can’t seem to stop — and we must stop it, beginning with calling off the Covid-19 “vaccine” crusade. That will come any day, I predict, and then the people who brought all of this grief on are going to have to answer for it.

“We will not make this mistake the second time. We have no right to do so.”

• Why Putin Went to War (Lauria)

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a TV address Thursday morning that the goal of Russia’s military operation was not to take control of Ukraine, but to “demilitarize” and “de-Nazify” the country. Moments after he spoke, explosions were heard in several Ukrainian cities. The Russian Defense Ministry said these were “precision” attacks against Ukrainian military installations and that civilians were not being targeted. It said Ukraine’s air force on the ground and its air defenses had been destroyed. [..]

In his 3,350-word speech, Putin laid out in full detail the reasons he decided to take military action and what he hopes it will achieve. The speech is a devastating critique of U.S. policy toward Russia over the past 30 years, which no doubt will fall on deaf ears in Washington. Western media is so far ignoring the speech or superficially dismissing it. But it has to be carefully studied if anyone is interested in understanding why Russia launched this military operation. Just calling Putin “Hitler,” as Nancy Pelosi did Wednesday night, won’t do. Hitler in fact features in Putin’s address. For instance, addressing the Ukrainian military, Putin said: “Your fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers did not fight the Nazi occupiers and did not defend our common Motherland to allow today’s neo-Nazis to seize power in Ukraine. You swore the oath of allegiance to the Ukrainian people and not to the junta, the people’s adversary which is plundering Ukraine and humiliating the Ukrainian people.”

He linked the Nazis’ invasion of Russia to NATO’s threat today, saying this time there would be no appeasement: “Of course, this situation begs a question: what next, what are we to expect? If history is any guide, we know that in 1940 and early 1941 the Soviet Union went to great lengths to prevent war or at least delay its outbreak. To this end, the USSR sought not to provoke the potential aggressor until the very end by refraining or postponing the most urgent and obvious preparations it had to make to defend itself from an imminent attack. When it finally acted, it was too late. As a result, the country was not prepared to counter the invasion by Nazi Germany, which attacked our Motherland on June 22, 1941, without declaring war.

“The country stopped the enemy and went on to defeat it, but this came at a tremendous cost. The attempt to appease the aggressor ahead of the Great Patriotic War proved to be a mistake which came at a high cost for our people. In the first months after the hostilities broke out, we lost vast territories of strategic importance, as well as millions of lives. We will not make this mistake the second time. We have no right to do so.”

Hot air.

• EU ‘Moving Forward’ On Russia SWIFT Shut-Out, ‘Not Nuclear Option’ (ZH)

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, is the financial-messaging infrastructure that links the world’s banks. The Belgium-based system is run by its member banks and handles millions of daily payment instructions across more than 200 countries and territories and 11,000 financial institutions. Iran and North Korea are cut off from it. So, given all that, Goldman Sachs’ Allison Nathan asked the question on everyone’s lips: “The removal of Russia from SWIFT – the global electronic payment-messaging system – has been referred to as the “nuclear option” for sanctions. Do you agree with that characterization?”

Eddie Fishman – the former Russia and Europe Lead in the US State Department’s Office of Economic Sanctions Policy and Implementation – responded in a fascinating way: “No – it’s not even close to being the nuclear option… SWIFT is just a messaging service. If the US and Europe decided to cut Russians banks off from SWIFT without imposing full-blocking sanctions on them, they could still transact with US and European financial institutions – they just couldn’t use SWIFT to do so.” Fishman went on to point out a potentially even bigger blowback consequence for the West’s actions: “…and in a perverse way, that may actually increase the demand for SWIFT alternatives, such as Russia’s own System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS).”

Russia could also be tempted to move to China’s financial messaging system, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer told reporters on Thursday. “Suspending Swift “would hurt Russia less than the European Union,” he said. Interestingly, given Germany’s prior comments against SWIFT termination, Bloomberg reports that Germany’s finance minister shocked more than a few marketwatchers this afternoon by saying that ‘we are open to cutting Russia off SWIFT’ with a German government advisor telling RND that “banning Russia from SWIFT is manageable.”

Big banks.

• Here’s Why the Russian Sanctions Are a Dud (Martens)

While Ukrainian children sleep with their pets in the subways, living in terror of the bombs raining down on them from their Russian invaders, wealthy Russian oligarchs are being comforted by “relationship managers” at banks owned by the very nations that say they are going to hold Russia accountable for its invasion of Ukraine. Noticeably missing from President Biden’s press conference yesterday on expanded sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine was any mention of how the U.S. and its allies were going to deal with the big foreign global banks that conduct banking business for thousands of Russian corporations and millions of Russian individuals. Biden only mentioned sanctions on Russian banks.

That sent a loud message to the MOEX Index at the Moscow Stock Exchange, which as of 2:49 p.m. today in Moscow (6:49 a.m. in New York) had rallied into positive territory from a loss of as much as 45 percent yesterday, when the precise nature of the expanded sanctions were as yet unknown. One of the global foreign banks with large operations in Russia is the French global bank Societe Generale’s Rosbank. According to its website, it has 5 million individual clients in Russia and 9,000 large corporate clients. It posted a reassuring notice to its customers on its website this morning, stating that it “continues to operate in a routine manner.” It noted the following:

“Rosbank retail and corporate clients have full access to financial assets and financial banking services. We are confident in our ability to provide continuous and quality customer service and adapt where necessary, while complying with all applicable regulations.” Another large foreign bank with large operations in Russia is Austria’s Raiffeisenbank, which has been operating in Russia since 1996. It notes on its Russian website that it is “one of 13 systemically important banks in Russia,” that it ranks number 10 by assets and number 8 by the number of retail customers. Its reginal network in Russia includes five branches and 116 outlets. Italy’s UniCredit also has large operations in Russia. A bank spokesperson told Reuters yesterday that it “had very high provisions against possible loan losses and was ‘very liquid and self-funded.’ ” Reuters reports that UniCredit’s Russian bank is the 12th largest bank in the country with 7.8 billion Euros in customer loans at the end of last year.

Why would he say that? Is it what he wants? Oh wait, elections in April.

• ‘This War Will Last’ – Macron (AFP)

The world must brace for a long war between Russia and Ukraine after Moscow launched an invasion of its pro-Western neighbour, French President Emmanuel Macron warned on Saturday. “I can tell you one thing this morning it is that this war will last,” Macron’s told France’s annual agriculture fair. “This crisis will last, this war will last and all the crises that come with it will have lasting consequences,” Macron added, warning: “We must be prepared”. Macron cut short his visit to the agriculture fair, usually one of the main fixtures on the French political calendar, in order to return to dealing with the crisis triggered by the Russian invasion.

“War has returned to Europe, this was chosen unilaterally by President (Vladimir) Putin, with a tragic humanitarian situation, a (Ukrainian) people who are resisting and a Europe that is there and resisting by the side of the Ukrainian people,” said Macron. Macron has again called an emergency defence council of top ministers and military security officials to discuss the situation in Ukraine which will take place at 1600 GMT, the Elysee said. With the war and sanctions against Russia risking damage for specific sectors in France, notably the wine industry, Macron vowed a “plan of resilience” to help them cope. The French leader was a key figure in efforts to avert conflict, repeatedly speaking to Putin and seeking in vain to broker a summit between the Russian leader and US President Joe Biden. The war has also broken out as the clock ticks down to France’s presidential elections in April.

What on earth is he doing there? California not in bad enough shape?

• Sean Penn Making Documentary In Ukraine (RT)

Penn arrived in Kiev on Thursday to “tell the world the truth about Russia’s invasion” of its neighbor, with the Office of the President of Ukraine announcing the actor’s arrival. Penn was seen at a press briefing in the presidential office in Kiev on Thursday, and was also briefly featured in an Instagram story posted by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian government has expressed gratitude to Penn, writing in a statement: “The director specially came to Kyiv to record all the events that are currently happening in Ukraine and to tell the world the truth about Russia’s invasion of our country. Sean Penn is among those who support Ukraine in Ukraine today. Our country is grateful to him for such a show of courage and honesty.”

The statement went on to contrast Penn’s “bravery” against the inactivity of some of Ukraine’s Western partners in the face of the military operation launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Penn had previously visited Ukraine back in November 2021 to work on another documentary about the Donbass and “Russian aggression.” Back then, he visited the eastern regions of the country and spoke to servicemen. Photos of Penn’s trip were released at the time by the Ukrainian Joint Forces Operation Press Service, where he could be seen dressed in combat gear while filming with his crew.

From last Sunday.

• Granny Gets Her Gun – From A Bunch Of Shameless Neo-Nazis (Peter Hitchens)

If the BBC found a group of neo-Nazis among some student Tories, or among Trump supporters in the USA, they would surely tell us about it, hot and strong. Quite right too. In fact, the Corporation’s horror and disgust at such people is one of the few things I absolutely share with them. So why did they last week repeatedly broadcast an entire news item, featuring a group of undoubted, shameless neo-Nazis, actually wearing SS insignia on their clothes – and not even notice? The film starred a sweet old great-grandma, Valentina Konstaninovska, in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. She was getting lessons from soldiers in how to fight off the Russians with an AK-47 burp gun. Pictures of the doughty 78-year-old also featured in several newspapers last Monday.

But it was only in the film that you could see the shoulder-flashes worn by the soldiers. These display a sinister, jagged symbol called the ‘Wolfsangel’. This is an explicitly Nazi emblem, originally used by Hitler’s ‘Das Reich’ Waffen SS division. This unit is still famous for murdering 200 people in Serbia, for a massacre of 920 Jews in Minsk, now in Belarus, for hanging 99 people in retaliation for French Resistance operations in Tulle. But above all it is notorious for the mass murder in the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane, in which the SS men machine-gunned or burned to death 642 civilians, including women and children. The Wolfsangel can be seen in archive pictures of the Das Reich division’s tanks.

The patches worn by their Ukrainian fans also carry the word ‘Azov’ and so proclaim that they are members of the ‘Azov Battalion’. Who? An FBI investigator said in 2018 that the Azov Battalion was a ‘paramilitary unit… known for its association with neo-Nazi ideology and the use of Nazi symbolism’. Its defenders now bleat that it has been absorbed into the Ukrainian National Guard. This was the pathetic excuse offered by the BBC when I asked them how they had come to fail to report the truth. Bilge. If these men are permitted to wear this repulsive, shameful badge it is easy to work out who is the boss in this relationship. If they were even slightly under the control of civilised people, they would certainly not be allowed to do so, even if their shaven heads were still full of poison and filth.

No proper army would have them at all, even in the direst need. Is it really possible that, in the BBC’s vast and costly apparatus of reporters, editors, producers, fact-checkers and bureaucrats, not one person spotted the problem? If so, we are dealing with Olympic-level incompetence. But it is my suspicion that something else is going on. The generation that kept the BBC relatively impartial is fast dying off. Those who remain have accepted a large number of contentious opinions as facts. One of these opinions is the ridiculous cartoon idea that Russia is like Mordor in Lord Of The Rings, an utterly evil country ruled by a Dark Monster. And that Ukraine, its current enemy, is by contrast a shining Utopia, pluckily defending itself against the orc-like hordes of Moscow. This explains why the BBC were so keen to use this film, in which a Brave Granny Gets Her Gun.

Not much Covid today.

• Institute On Claims Vaccine Side Effects Massively Underreported (Eugyp)

The Paul-Ehrlich-Institut, Germany’s vaccine regulator, has responded to Andreas Schöfbeck’s letter (translated here), suggesting on the basis of BKK billing data that officially acknowledged rates of adverse vaccine reactions substantially understate the risk of vaccination. It is not a good response. [..] The argument throughout is that only a subset of vaccine reactions are subject to mandatory reporting requirements, and thus Schöfbeck’s higher numbers, derived from billing data, are unremarkable. This is a very strange and yet also typical bureaucratic response. We want to know whether the vaccines are safe or not, but the PEI functionaries only care about making it clear they haven’t done anything wrong.

Beyond that, I very much doubt we are talking about all that many “local and transient general reactions” here. By definition, these are reactions for which BKK insured sought medical treatment from their doctors. Many of these diagnoses would have been obtained by people who were too unwell to work, and needed to receive physician-certified sick leave.

“The Paul Ehrlich Institute has also begun planning a non-interventional study to comprehensively investigate the long-term safety of the only COVID-19 vaccines available in the EU and thus also in Germany. In the study, which is also supported and funded by the BMG, diagnostic data from the billing data available to the health insurance funds are to be evaluated and linked at the Paul Ehrlich Institute with the vaccination data of the Digital Vaccination Rate Monitoring (DIM data). The study is to be launched in the near future.”

Oh, excellent, so the PEI has begun to plan a study that will look into the issues Schöfbeck has raised. They can force vaccines upon millions of people who don’t want them, and maybe at some point in the future they will begin to think about planning a study on what adverse effects these vaccines might inflict. Public health regulators with something to hide just love studies. You can design them however you want, include whatever data you want, omit whatever you want, so it ends up saying just what you want it to and no more. What they don’t like, is openly available raw data that anyone can study and interpret.

Joe Rogan maims Bill Gates
https://twitter.com/i/status/1497300890226610182

Jon Stewart MMT

This week on the podcast, @StephanieKelton and @rohangrey break down Jon’s conversation with former Fed chairman Thomas Hoenig. Economists, eat your heart out. https://t.co/Yhk4DqsRpz pic.twitter.com/7B5LrSWXog

— The Problem With Jon Stewart (@TheProblem) February 25, 2022

Highest Ground

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— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) February 25, 2022

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Debt Rattle February 25 2022

Feb 252022

February 25, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:50 am Finance Tagged with: biolabs, CDC, Russia, SWIFT, Ukraine 109 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Face female study 1925

• Why I Blame The Arrogant, Foolish West (Peter Hitchens)

• Russia Wanted Peace With Ukraine (Batko Milacic)

• Moscow Claims This Is Culmination Of 8 Year Ukrainian War (RT)

• Ukraine: What Will Be Done And What Should Be Done? (Palley)

• US Biolabs in Ukraine (WarClandestine)

• Another Biden/Blinken Blunder (Percy Allan)

• How Ukraine Fits Into The Global Jigsaw (MacLeod)

• Biden Reveals Update On Russia and SWIFT (RT)

• COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations Jump Among Vaccinated: CDC Data (ET)

• US Vaccination Rates Collapse As Omicron Subsides (ZH)

• ‘Scientific Fraud’: Drs. Robert Malone, Ryan Cole React To CDC Hiding Data (WND)

Dowd Highwire
https://twitter.com/i/status/1497025785307279362

What The Media Isn’t Telling You About Ukraine

‘We are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.’

• Why I Blame The Arrogant, Foolish West (Peter Hitchens)

We have been utter fools. We have treated Russia with amazing stupidity. Now we pay the price for that. We had the chance to make her an ally, friend and partner. Instead we turned her into an enemy by insulting a great and proud country with greed, unearned superiority, cynicism, contempt and mistrust. I have to endure, often several times a day, listening to people who are normally perfectly sensible and reasonable, raging wildly against Russia and Russians. Once, I was just like them. I had the normal anti-Russian prejudice of so many Western people. But, by great fortune, I am not like them now. I lived in Russia, I knew Russians as friends. I learned to distinguish between what was Russian and what was Communist. And I saw something most people will never see – a pivotal event in history, when we could have changed the world for the better.

[..] Interestingly the leading protesters against this Nato expansion were not Russian nationalists but highly intelligent and experienced independent figures. One was the Russian liberal politician Yegor Gaidar, a man Western leaders claim to have admired. He prophesied with total accuracy that the policy would strengthen hardliners and nationalists in the Kremlin. Then came the brilliant American diplomat George F. Kennan, a man nobody could accuse of being soft on Communism. But, unlike so many others, he could tell the new transformed Russia apart from the old USSR. Kennan had been architect of the USA’s policy of containment of the USSR. He came out of retirement to deplore Bill Clinton’s support for pushing Nato east. I quote his prediction at length because he was so right.

‘I think it is the beginning of a new Cold War,’ said Mr Kennan. ‘I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. ‘I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. ‘This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. ‘We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. ‘[Nato expansion] was simply a light-hearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs. ‘What bothers me is how superficial and ill-informed the whole Senate debate was.’ He added: ‘I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe.

‘Don’t people understand? Our differences in the Cold War were with the Soviet Communist regime.’ Exactly. After 1991 Russia had, for the first time since the Bolshevik putsch of 1917, got the chance to build a new and free society. As Mr Kennan put it, Nato expansion was an insult to Russian democrats. ‘We are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.’ He asked why East-West relations should ‘become centred on the question of who would be allied with whom – and by implication against whom – in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict’. These questions demanded an answer, and never got one.

Via the Saker.

• Russia Wanted Peace With Ukraine (Batko Milacic)

Ukraine has been firmly in the U.S. geopolitical orbit since violent neo-Nazi protests in Kyiv’s Maidan Square resulted in the 2014 overthrow of the allegedly pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Yet, Russia did not attempt to help the then-Ukrainian leader stay in power. As a result, anti-Russian forces came to power in Kyiv, leading the people of the Donbass region to vote in favor of leaving Ukraine. In 2014, Russia also recognized the results of the Ukrainian presidential election, organized by the post-Maidan authorities. Mr. Lavrov even called newly elected President Petro Poroshenko the “best chance” for Ukraine. Eight years later, Russia has completely changed its rhetoric on Ukraine. “I don’t think anyone can claim that the Ukrainian regime, since the 2014 coup d’état, represents all the people living on the territory of the Ukrainian state,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on February 22.

The reason for this change in Russian attitude is the acts that the Ukrainian government is committing against Russians and all other citizens who speak Russian in Ukraine. Ukraine waged a kind of “jihad“ against the Russian language and culture. From January 16, 2020, Ukraine translated all its services into Ukrainian by force of law. So: all shops, cafes and restaurants, banks and pharmacies had to comply with this shameful law. All employees have become obliged to communicate with customers – guests and clients – exclusively in Ukrainian. The Russian language has become completely banned. The mass media also came under attack from Ukrainization. Now, 75 percent of programs on national television are broadcasted in the Ukrainian language, and by 2024, the obligation will be – 90 percent.

All these actions of the Ukrainian government, which have clear elements of fascism, forced pro –Russian forces in Ukraine to react. That is why there were riots in Ukraine with the desire to separate large parts of the territory from Ukraine. It is clear to all analysts dealing with Ukraine that today’s Ukraine is United States instrument against Russia. The fact that Kiev received at least $200 million in U.S. “lethal aid” as well as other Western-made weapons over the past two months, means that Kiev rejects a peaceful solution. And Russian President Vladimir Putin has been offering this peaceful solution for years.

Such an operation undoubtedly means war. But war is inevitable, one way or another. Russia has deployed troops to the newly recognized Donbass republics. If Ukrainian forces do not end hostilities, the Russian Army is will to engage in a direct confrontation against Ukrainian army, in order to protect the innocent citizens of DNR and LNR. Sooner or later, the Donbass conflict will escalate. Shelling has increased along the entire front line, which seems to be part of preparations for a military offensive.

Seems obvious.

• Moscow Claims This Is Culmination Of 8 Year Ukrainian War (RT)

The West spent eight years ignoring the “sea of blood” in Donbass while arming Ukraine, and now claims Moscow is the aggressor when it stepped in to end the conflict, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told RT on Thursday. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a military operation in Ukraine in the early hours of Thursday, claiming it was necessary to “demilitarize and de-nazify” the neighbor. Kiev accused Russia of aggression, while the US, EU and NATO have called it an “unprovoked” invasion. Moscow insists this is not the case. In announcing the operation, Putin said the “main objective is to stop the escalation of the war that’s been going on for eight years, and to stop the war,” Zakharova told RT in an exclusive interview.

“Russia did not commit aggression of any kind,” Zakharova insisted. “This did not start yesterday. There’s a sea of blood that’s appeared over the past 8 years,” she added, referring to the conflict in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, which Russia on Monday recognized as independent states. The main aim is to stop the escalation of the war that’s been going on for eight years, to stop this war Donetsk and Lugansk broke away from Ukraine in 2014, after the West-backed coup ousted the democratically elected government in Kiev. Zakharova noted that the two self-proclaimed republics held a referendum eight years ago, saying they did not want to remain in Ukraine, but both Moscow and the West rejected this and tried to put the “broken” country back together.

When asked about President Volodymyr Zelensky’s statement that Ukraine wanted peace, Zakharova wondered why Ukraine was arming itself and refusing to negotiate with the Donbass. “If Ukraine wanted peace, why did they get all these weapons” from all over the world, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman told RT, adding, “It was clear that these were offensive weapons. Who were they fighting? Their own people in southeast Ukraine, and spoke often about seizing Crimea.” The peninsula voted to rejoin Russia in March 2014, but Ukraine and its Western backers have refused to recognize this, calling it an “annexation.” Zakharova also noted that the top Ukrainian officials have openly and publicly brought up the idea of obtaining nuclear weapons in recent weeks, pointing out this was a fact and not something claimed by Russian intelligence.

Divisions in Ukraine go beyond Donetsk and Lugansk, Zakharova added, accusing armed groups with Nazi-era symbols – such as the notorious Azov Battalion – of having influence over much of the country. For years, she said, Western media so concerned over human rights in places like South Sudan and Myanmar kept silent on all this, ignoring that more than 13,000 people have died in the Donbass – many of them civilians. While Russia provided them with humanitarian aid, Kiev besieged them by cutting off trade, finance, and even utilities. Zakharova noted that the water canal towards Crimea is now once again operational after Ukraine “criminally” shut it off years ago.

“The Western media is now focusing attention on Russia’s invasion. Built into that focus is a tacit remaking of history. US Neocons want history to begin with the invasion.”

• Ukraine: What Will Be Done And What Should Be Done? (Palley)

The starting point is recognizing that there is no going back in time. New facts have been created. They were created by NATO’s eastward expansion, by the 2014 US sponsored coup in Ukraine, by Russia’s reoccupation of Crimea, and now by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Next, there is need for a fundamental change of mind set that requires acknowledging Russia is not the Soviet Union. It is a weak economy with a declining population, and it has neither the capacity nor the desire to rule former Warsaw pact countries. With those two building blocks in place, the way forward can be mapped out. Ukraine must agree to permanently being a neutral state, as were Finland and Austria in the Cold War.

The US must stop arming Poland which is an intolerant nationalist polity that is likely to be a future source of major trouble. And the US must stop upgrading the military capabilities of the Baltic states which is an aggressive provocation. The European Union must build trade and commerce with Russia. That is an economic marriage made in heaven. Russia has resources and needs technology and capital goods. Europe has technology and capital goods and needs resources. Even better, by diminishing the threat against President Putin, such partnership will promote internal political improvement in Russia. Authoritarian regimes clamp down when threatened. They are more tolerant when unthreatened.

Now for the difficult part. The Ukraine should be reconstituted as a federal state, and it may even need to be partitioned given the new facts that have been created. With US encouragement, Ukraine played with fire and it has gotten burned. Lastly, there is need to build a Western European defense force and to diminish US military presence and influence in Western Europe. The US military was an essential presence in the Cold War when Western Europe lacked the capacity to deter the combined power of the Warsaw Pact. Those conditions are long gone. The Warsaw Pact no longer exists, and Russia is a shadow of the Soviet Union. Western Europe now dwarfs Russia in both economic and demographic terms, and it can (and should) look after itself.

[..] The Western media is now focusing attention on Russia’s invasion. Built into that focus is a tacit remaking of history. US Neocons want history to begin with the invasion. All else that went before is to be swept into Orwell’s “memory hole”. That means forgetting the injuries and threats the US has heaped on Russia for thirty years; forgetting how the US helped loot Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall, forgetting the promise made not to expand NATO eastward, forgetting the threat posed by putting missile defense and launch capabilities close to Russia’s borders, and forgetting the fateful 2014 US sponsored coup in Ukraine.

The Twitter account has apparently been suspended, but this thread remains.

• US Biolabs in Ukraine (WarClandestine)

HOLY SHIT! I think I may be onto something about #Ukraine. Zelensky said the Russians are firing at “military installations”. How broad is that term? I am seeing speculation that could include US installed biolabs. At first I was like no way. Then I started digging. First I checked if the US even have biolabs in Ukraine. Turns out… we do. And in classic US fashion, it’s marketed as “defense”. “Biological Threat Reduction Program in Ukraine”. Studying the “most dangerous viruses in the world” at Russia’s border. Okay so we are studying the world’s most deadly pathogens at Russia’s border. It’s just for defense. Not that big of a deal right? WRONG. I didn’t know this until today, but Russia has been accusing US of creating “bio-weapons” at their border. WHAT!

And they have good reason to believe that, as the US NIH funded gain of function in Wuhan, then C19 “got out” and it ruined the world. Russia AND CHINA asked the UN for the US/allies to be “checked and limited” in bio capabilities 4 months ago! WHAT! DO YOU ALL KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?! China and Russia indirectly (and correctly) blamed the US for the C19 outbreak, and are fearful that the US/allies have more viruses (bioweapons) to let out. THIS IS MASSIVE. Yet I’m disturbed that I had didn’t known about this 4 months ago. So how does that pertain to Ukraine? Well where in Ukraine are the “explosions” taking place.

Here’s a reported explosion in Lutsk. This is 75 miles inland in far western Ukraine. The opposite border of Russia… What does this have to do with Crimea/Donetsk in the east? Reportedly Kiev has seen missile strikes as well. At their airports and military installations. Kiev is also on the western side of Ukraine. Also a city the US GOV have confirmed the US have built biolabs in. Putin also continues to call it a “special military operation”. Says he wants to demilitarize and “denazify” the country but not occupy it. What does he mean by that? What is he really targeting? Yes, I know he targeted airports and military capabilities; but if Putin really believes, as his admin has stated publicly multiple times, that the US are creating bio weapons at Russia’s borders, then this entire situation could be WAY bigger.

[..] Here’s an overlap of reported missile strike locations and the biolab locations. Since the top map was made, more missiles hit Lviv as well. It certainly appears Putin is targeting the cities and locations with #USBiolabs present. He is 100% going after the alleged bioweapons.

“The US and NATO refused to commit to defending Ukraine yet let the issue of NATO membership fester for 14 years.”

• Another Biden/Blinken Blunder (Percy Allan)

As I expected, Russia has invaded Ukraine because both Ukraine and the West refused to preclude its membership of NATO. This has been a festering security issue for Russia since Ukraine applied for NATO membership in 2008 and George Bush Jnr supported its request. Since Ukraine is a bulwark between Russia and NATO Europe, its refusal to commit to being a neutral country like Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Austria, and Cyprus (each of whom belong to the EU, but not NATO) looks now to have consigned it to being a client state of Russia like Belarus. The US and NATO refused to commit to defending Ukraine yet let the issue of NATO membership fester for 14 years. Also, Ukraine never gave the two eastern provinces (parts of which broke away) the self-governing autonomy they were promised in the Minsk Agreements.

Biden and Blinken (an appropriate surname) will now notch up their second humiliating defeat following the US rout in Afghanistan. Ukraine could have become a Finland, but now is likely to end up being subjugated, or at least that half of it east of the Dnieper River. All very sad and avoidable if Russia’s fundamental grievance over NATO expanding to its border had been addressed. Putin’s aspiration for Ukraine re-joining Mother Russia is for domestic consumption, not its prime concern which was always security related. Thomas Friedman in a New York Times article titled “US not blameless in Putin’s war” quotes George Kennan, the architect of America’s successful containment of the Soviet Union, telling him that NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe (while refusing Russian membership) was a mistake because it provoked a post-communist Russia to feel besieged.

Also, it amounted to overreach as NATO does not have the resources nor the intention to protect these states. When Cuba wanted to join the Warsaw Pact 60 years ago, America attempted an invasion (Bay of Pigs) and then threatened Russia with WWIII if it did not withdraw its missiles and armed forces. Now Russia is doing the same over Ukraine joining NATO, but Biden unlike Khrushchev did not heed the warning. The Democrats will pay a big electoral price on insisting Ukraine’s right to join NATO when they never had the intention of enforcing it. Sanctions are a bad joke, Russia has huge foreign exchange reserves, a big budget surplus and can get anything it needs from or through China. The only thing that might move Putin is the seizure of properties that Russian oligarchs own in London.

Mackinder’s World Island.

• How Ukraine Fits Into The Global Jigsaw (MacLeod)

Ukraine is part of a far bigger geopolitical picture. Russia and China want US hegemonic influence in the Eurasian continent marginalised. Following defeats for US foreign policy in Syria and Afghanistan and following Brexit, Putin is driving a wedge between America and the non-Anglo-Saxon EU. Due to global monetary expansion, rising energy prices are benefiting Russia, which can afford to squeeze Germany and other EU states dependent on Russian natural gas. The squeeze will only stop when America backs off. Being keenly aware that its dominant role in NATO is under threat, America has been trying to escalate the Ukraine crisis to suck Russia into an untenable occupation. Putin won’t fall for it. The danger for us all is not a boots-on-the-ground war — that’s likely to only involve the pre-emptive attacks on military installations Putin initiated last night — but a financial war for which Russia is fully prepared.

Both sides probably do not know how fragile the Eurozone banking system is, with both the ECB and its national central bank shareholders already having liabilities greater than their assets. In other words, rising interest rates have broken the euro system and an economic and financial catastrophe on its eastern flank will probably trigger its collapse. The developing tension over Ukraine is part of a bigger picture — a struggle between America and the two Eurasian hegemons, Russia and China. The prize is ultimate control over Mackinder’s World Island. Halford Mackinder is acknowledged as the founder of geopolitics: the study of factors such as geography, geology, economics, demography, politics, and foreign policy and their interaction.

His original paper was entitled “The Geographical Pivot of History”, presented at the Royal Geographical Society in 1905 in which he first formulated his Heartland Theory, which extended geopolitical analysis to encompass the entire globe. In this and a subsequent paper (Democratic Ideals and Reality: A study in the Politics of Reconstruction, 1919) he built on his Heartland Theory, and from which his famous quote has been passed down to us: “Who rules East Europe commands the World Island [Eurasia]; Who rules the World Island rules the World”. Stalin was said to have been interested in this theory, and while it is not generally admitted, the leaders and administrations of Russia, China and America are almost certainly aware of Mackinder’s theory and its implications.

Moscow will not be cut off. How would Germany pay for its gas?

• Biden Reveals Update On Russia and SWIFT (RT)

Speaking to the press after announcing new economic sanctions against Russia on Thursday, US President Joe Biden said that cutting Moscow off from the SWIFT payment system was not an action being taken at this time, adding that the latest measures were potentially of “more consequence.” “The sanctions that we have imposed on all their banks are of equal consequence or maybe more consequence than SWIFT, number one,” Biden said in response to a question about the proposal. “Number two, it is always an option but right now that is not the position the rest of Europe wishes to take,” he added.

Numerous calls have been made for Russia to be disconnected from the system – a key mechanism in facilitating financial transactions between banks around the world – particularly in the wake of Moscow’s attack on Ukraine on Thursday. Earlier in the day, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced new wide-ranging sanctions against over 100 Russian individuals and entities, and said London was working with its NATO allies to cut Russia off from SWIFT.

A long term trend by now.

• COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations Jump Among Vaccinated: CDC Data (ET)

COVID-19 case and hospitalization rates increased among people who got a COVID-19 vaccine following the emergence of the Omicron virus variant, according to newly published data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). According to the data, which is submitted to the CDC by health departments across the country, the COVID-19 case rate in fully vaccinated people rose by more than 1,000 percent between Dec. 11, 2021, and Jan. 8, 2022. Fully vaccinated refers to people who received two doses of the Moderna or Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines, or the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The CDC doesn’t count a person as fully vaccinated until 14 days have elapsed from his or her final shot.

The case rate among those who also received a booster dose skyrocketed as well, rising some 2,400 percent between the same dates. While cases also rose among the unvaccinated, the jump in infections among the vaccinated closed the gap between the populations. As a result, people who haven’t received a vaccine were just 3.2 times more likely to test positive for COVID-19 in January. COVID-19-associated hospitalizations also increased among the vaccinated, from 1.4 per 100,000 for the fully vaccinated for the week ending Dec. 18, 2021, to 35.2 per 100,000 in the week ending Jan. 8, according to data from a surveillance system managed by the CDC.

What is supposed to be the reason to get jabbed by now?

• US Vaccination Rates Collapse As Omicron Subsides (ZH)

As cases of the already-more-mild Omicron strain of Covid-19 subside, vaccination rates in the United States are collapsing, according to AP, which reports that the vaccination drive in the US is ‘grinding to a halt,’ and ‘demand has all but collapsed’ – particularly in rural areas. At present, the average number of Americans getting their first dose is down to around 90,000 per day – the lowest point since the first few days of the vaccination campaign in December 2020 – while the outlook for any sort of substantial increase has largely evaporated. AP of course acts like this is a national tragedy led by toothless rednecks in ‘deeply conservative’ parts of the country, suggesting a ‘losing battle to get people vaccinated’ in rural Alabama – but of course the reality goes unmentioned… that the vaccine largely evades Omicron – which is far less deadly than previous strains, and is only marginally effective in keeping medically at-risk people from dying.

Even the Washington Post noted on Wednesday: “Coronavirus vaccine protection was much weaker against omicron, data shows.” “While coronavirus shots still provided protection during the omicron wave, the shield of coverage they offered was weaker than during other surges, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The change resulted in much higher rates of infection, hospitalization and death for fully vaccinated adults and even for people who had received boosters.” -WaPo Meanwhile, government vaccination incentive programs that gave away cash, beer, sports tickets and other prizes have also disappeared – while governnment and employer vaccine mandates have suffered blows in court. “People are just over it. They’re tired of it,” said Judy Smith, administrator for a 12-county public health district in northwestern Alabama.

“We physicians and scientists have one responsibility, and one responsibility only, and that is the health and wellness of humanity..”

• ‘Scientific Fraud’: Drs. Robert Malone, Ryan Cole React To CDC Hiding Data (WND)

Urging CDC scientists to speak out, Dr. Robert Malone and Dr. Ryan Cole reacted Monday to the news reported by the New York Times that agency officials admit they have withheld COVID data broken down by age, race and vaccination status because the American people might misinterpret it. “This meets the criteria of scientific fraud,” said Malone, the key inventor of the mRNA technology platform used in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. “Withholding data is scientific fraud.” Cole, a Mayo Clinic-trained pathologist who runs a major diagnostic lab in Idaho, said that as “an ethical physician who took oaths to the human race, this is incredibly disturbing.” “These are the people that are entrusted to tell us the truth,” he said of the CDC officials.

The two outspoken medical scientists were featured at four sold-out events Sunday and Monday near Seattle hosted by a non-profit called One Washington that is helping equip parents, lawmakers and activists to counter moves by the state Board of Health to add the COVID-19 vaccine to the required shots for public school children. The Times reported the CDC “has been routinely collecting information since the Covid vaccines were first rolled out last year,” but the agency “has been reluctant to make those figures public, the official said, because they might be misinterpreted as the vaccines being ineffective.” The report said that “[t]wo full years into the pandemic, the agency leading the country’s response to the public health emergency has published only a tiny fraction of the data it has collected,” citing “several people familiar” with the withheld data.

“Much of the withheld information could help state and local health officials better target their efforts to bring the virus under control,” the Times said. Malone noted the Times quoted Samuel Scarpino, managing director of pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute, saying the CDC “is a political organization as much as it is a public health organization.” He said the steps that it takes to get the data released “are often well outside of the control of many of the scientists that work at the C.D.C.” Malone said that what Scarpino essentially is saying is “that the governmental leadership of the CDC has stifled CDC scientists, in preventing them from disclosing key information to the public about the risks of the vaccine.”

“That is stunning,” he said. Malone said it’s “way past time” for CDC scientists and physicians to “come clean” and speak out. Cole agreed that they have “an ethical responsibility to humanity” to tell the American people what is going on. Last month, he testified with Malone and other physicians and scientists at a panel convened by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., called “COVID-19: A Second Opinion.” Cole testified that he has observed in his lab over the past year a startling uptick in incidences of clotting, auto-immune diseases and cancers. “We physicians and scientists have one responsibility, and one responsibility only, and that is the health and wellness of humanity, no matter the inconvenient cost of telling that truth,” he said.

Kory/Alexander

WATCH + SHARE: "This is about America. It's about going back to principles, not profits + not politics…this is about peace and unity" @PierreKory + Paul Alexander, Ph.D. kick off 'The People's Convoy' w/ https://t.co/1b2eta8YpW

Get the full story ➡️ https://t.co/vw1LGbcO6d pic.twitter.com/A0HCBEvDi1

— Children's Health Defense (@ChildrensHD) February 25, 2022

Pfizer 2007

They know they can’t escape what’s coming, but they can still work around the system. It’s sickening. Even CNN used to talk about this 15 years ago… pic.twitter.com/i7ARWVn4vK

— ashley (@thirdbornashley) February 24, 2022

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Debt Rattle February 24 2022

Feb 242022

February 24, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:39 am Finance Tagged with: China, Elon Musk, Moderna, Putin, Russia, Saudi, spike protein, Trudeau, Ukraine, vaccine side effects 88 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Glass, bread and cheesee 1923

• Russia Conducts ‘Precision Strikes’ on Ukrainian Military Targets (Sputnik)

• Russia Has ‘No Plans’ To Take Over Whole Of Ukraine – Putin (RT)

• Disarming Ukraine (MoA)

• Saudi-Russia Collusion Is Driving Up Gas Prices (IC)

• Trudeau Discontinues Emergencies Act (RT)

• Canada Instructs Banks to Unfreeze Freedom-Convoy Accounts (WSJ)

• Significant Underreporting of Vaccine Side Effects: German Health Insurer (ET)

• Genetic Code of Covids Spike Protein Linked to Moderna Patent (DM)

• China’s Property Bubble Collapse Gets Worse (Lacalle)

• Biden Officials Fear Elon Musk Would Embarrass President At WH (NYP)

David Mamet

Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin announces a military operation in Ukraine https://t.co/YGkiBS8DgG pic.twitter.com/OwKPpNgwy1

— TIME (@TIME) February 24, 2022

Sputnik. Propaganda from the other side.

• Russia Conducts ‘Precision Strikes’ on Ukrainian Military Targets (Sputnik)

Earlier this week, Russia officially recognised the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and urged Kiev to stop attacks on Donbass. As shellings by Ukrainian forces escalated in the region, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation aimed at the demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine. “Ukrainian military infrastructure, air defence facilities, military airfields, and air forces are being neutralised by high-precision weapons”, the Russian Ministry of Defence said in a statement. The MoD stressed there are no threats to the civilian population. The tensions have been escalating over the past few days, with Ukrainian forces shelling the territory of Donbass, forcing thousands to evacuate to Russia.

Following an appeal from the leaders of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic, Moscow recognised both as independent nations and called on Ukraine to stop the eight-year-long war in the region. Russia also stressed that it will protect the people of Donbass against any threats, as president Putin noted the actions of the Ukrainian regime in the region are genocide. In response to the ongoing attacks, President Putin authorised the military to conduct a special operation to protect Donbass, aiming at the demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine and saying that people who committed war crimes during the eight-year-long bloodshed should stand trial.

Me, I wonder what Hunter Biden is doing right now..

• Russia Has ‘No Plans’ To Take Over Whole Of Ukraine – Putin (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that Russia had “no plans to occupy the Ukrainian territories” after announcing that a special operation was launched to defend the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics from “Ukrainian aggression.” The operation’s ultimate goal is “to protect the people who have been subjected for 8 years to genocide by the Kiev regime,” Putin said in an adress on Thursday morning, adding that Moscow would “embark on a demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, and handing over to justice those who committed numerous atrocities against civilians.”

The Russian president noted, however, that Moscow harbors no far-reaching plans to take over the whole territory of Ukraine. “We do not have plans to occupy Ukrainian territories. We are not going to impose anything on anyone by force,” he said. Ukraine has been accusing Russia of illegally occupying Crimea, which was reabsorbed by Russia following a referendum in March 2014, following the US-backed coup that overthrew the elected government in Kiev. Kiev has also repeatedly accused Russia of having a military presence in Donbass, although Moscow consistently denied this claim.

“During the last two centuries Russia had to defend itself, with horrific casualties, against two huge invasions from the west.”

• Disarming Ukraine (MoA)

The military of Russia has launched an operation to disarm, and possibly regime change, the Ukraine. I do understand why Russia is doing this – it is either attack now or defend itself later with way more casualties and the danger of total defeat. I had hoped though that it would find other methods to protect Russia from further NATO aggression. In 2014 the U.S. instigated regime change in Kiev and has since controlled the Ukrainian government. It has build up the Ukraine as a base to strangle Russia economically and militarily. During the last two centuries Russia had to defend itself, with horrific casualties, against two huge invasions from the west. It is understandable that it does not want to repeat that experience.

It is difficult to discern what the planned end state of this operation is. Where is this going to stop? Looking at this map I believe that the most advantageous end state for Russia would be the creation of a new independent country, call it Novorussiya, on the land east of the Dnieper and south along the coast that holds a majority ethnic Russian population and that, in 1922, had been attached to the Ukraine by Lenin. That state would be politically, culturally and militarily aligned with Russia. This would eliminate Ukrainian access to the Black Sea and create a land bridge towards the Moldavian breakaway Transnistria which is under Russian protection. The rest of the Ukraine would be a land confined, mostly agricultural state, disarmed and too poor to be build up to a new threat to Russia anytime soon. Politically it would be dominated by fascists from Galicia which would then become a major problem for the European Union.

Thanks to Stalin’s additions to the Ukraine three countries, Poland, Hungary and Romania, have claims to certain areas in the Ukraine’s western regions. If they want to snatch those up again it is now probably the best time to do so. Despite being part of NATO, which likely would not support such moves, those three will have domestic policy difficulties to withstand the urge. I hope for a sharp but short fight which destroys the Ukraine’s military capabilities but causes as little casualties and other damages as possible. It is sad that NATO countries, including mine, did not have the courage to make the necessary concessions to prevent this from happening.

Odd detail.

• Saudi-Russia Collusion Is Driving Up Gas Prices (IC)

As Russia ordered troops into Ukraine on Monday, gas prices soared to their highest levels in over seven years. While the media focuses on the conflict in Ukraine, a major cause of the gas price spike has gone overlooked: Moscow’s partnership with Saudi Arabia has grown dramatically in recent years, granting the two largest oil producers in the world the unprecedented ability to collude in oil export decisions. The desert kingdom’s relationship with the U.S. has chilled in the meantime, as demonstrated earlier this month, when President Joe Biden pleaded with the Saudis to increase oil production — a move that would not only have helped to alleviate rising inflation and gas prices, but also reduced Russia’s extravagant profits amid its aggression against Ukraine. The Saudi king declined.

The Saudi and Russian relationship has blossomed under Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose first formal meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin took place in the summer of 2015. MBS pursued the meeting after then-President Barack Obama declined to meet with him, The Intercept has learned from two sources with knowledge of the matter who were granted anonymity to describe sensitive discussions. Now, as Biden refuses to meet with MBS due to his culpability in the grisly murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the crown prince may again see a friend in Moscow, which is profiting handsomely off MBS’s refusal to increase oil production. Hints of MBS’s resentment over Biden’s refusal to meet with him occasionally spill out into the public, as they did last year, when the crown prince canceled a meeting with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on a day’s notice.

He opted instead to meet with Leonid Slutsky: a top Russian lawmaker who was sanctioned by the U.S. for his role in Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea. (MBS canceled Austin’s visit because he was “holding out for a call from the president before responding to the administration’s entreaties,” according to senior officials cited by Council on Foreign Relations fellow Martin Indyk in Foreign Affairs magazine.) “Putin and MBS have much in common, including murdering their critics at home and abroad, intervening in their neighbors by force and trying to get oil prices as high as possible,” Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former CIA analyst with expertise in the Middle East, said in an email to The Intercept. “Putin will do MBS a great service if he invades Ukraine and sends oil prices through the roof.”

You’d think Russia tried to invade.

• Trudeau Discontinues Emergencies Act (RT)

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has brought an end to the Emergency Act in the country after 10 days after it was used to widen the scope of government and police authority in order to remove and detain ‘Freedom Convoy’ protesters who had shut down a major US-Canada border crossing as well as much of Ottawa over the last weeks. Addressing the nation on Wednesday evening, Trudeau said that the situation is “no longer an emergency.” The Canadian leader referred to the expanded authority given to law enforcement, which included targeting protesters’ funding, as “time-limited extra tools” that had helped the police to lift blockades plaguing downtown Ottawa. Trudeau said he is “confident” now that “existing laws and bylaws” are “sufficient to keep people safe.”

He, however, appeared to signal that the federal government was ready to step in if the situation goes awry. “We will continue to be there to support local and provincial authorities if and when needed”, the PM said. Nearly 200 people have been arrested as police cracked down on the Freedom Convoy protests, with over 100 facing various charges. Organizers like Tamara Lich were also arrested last week. Lich was denied bail with the judge stating this week that her continued detention is “necessary for the protection and safety of the public.” The prime minister’s decision, which takes effect Wednesday evening, came only two days after Canadian lawmakers greenlighted the extension the emergency powers. At the time, Trudeau that the situation was “fragile” and still an “emergency.”

Just 2 days ago they were saying it would be a long fight. Did Justin talk to a lawyer?

• Canada Instructs Banks to Unfreeze Freedom-Convoy Accounts (WSJ)

Canada told banks to unlock financial accounts belonging to individuals involved in a weekslong Covid-19 protest in Ottawa that police shut down this past weekend, according to a finance ministry official. “They started [Monday] to unfreeze accounts,” Isabelle Jacques, a senior official in Canada’s finance department, told lawmakers Tuesday. The step marks a reversal for the Liberal government, which has argued the sweeping power to freeze bank accounts and other assets was crucial during what was declared an emergency period. The power became available over a week ago, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked rarely used emergency measures in an effort to end a roughly three-week protest calling for all Covid-19 vaccine mandates and related social restrictions to be rescinded. The Ottawa protest, involving thousands of individuals and hundreds of trucks, inspired blockades at crucial U.S.-Canada border crossings.

[..] On Monday, Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland defended the freezings, which some financial-law experts warned could affect people unaffiliated with the protest. “These measures were put in place to disrupt illegal activity in Canada,” she said. “We were very clear that we would be following the money, that we would be using financial tools to disrupt illegal blockades and occupations. The focus absolutely has been on leaders and on the vehicles that were such an important part of the illegal blockades and occupations.” “The way to get your account unfrozen is to stop being part of the blockade and occupation,” she added.

Tick, tick, tick…

• Significant Underreporting of Vaccine Side Effects: German Health Insurer (ET)

A large German health insurance provider said that it analyzed data from more than 10 million individuals regarding COVID-19 vaccine complications and suggested there were more than health authorities have reported. The insurer, BKK ProVita, concluded that the rate of vaccine side-effects is several times larger than earlier reports from the Paul-Ehrlich Institute, a German federal agency, according to a letter from the company. BKK board member Andreas Schöfbeck told Die Welt publication that the data is an “alarm signal,” adding: “The numbers determined are significant and urgently need to be checked for plausibility.” The Epoch Times has contacted the Paul-Ehrlich Institute for comment.

The letter, written by Schöfbeck, said BKK analyzed doctors’ billing data from 10.9 million insured people, finding that of that figure, some 217,000 received treatment due to vaccine side-effects. Overall, in Germany, which has a population of about 83 million, the Paul-Ehrlich Institute reported 244,576 suspected cases of COVID-19 vaccination side effects in 2021, the firm noted. “The data available to our company gives us reason to believe that there is a very considerable under-recording of suspected cases of vaccination side-effects after they received the [COVID-19] vaccine,” he wrote in his letter.

“If these figures are applied to the year as a whole and to” the entire population of Germany, Schöfbeck estimated, then “probably 2.5-3 million people in Germany been under medical treatment because of vaccination side effects after [COVID-19] vaccination.” Schöfbeck then concluded that based on their data, “there is a significant underreporting of vaccination side-effects” in Germany. Another letter that was sent out by BKK suggested that vaccination side effects reported across Germany are at least 10 times more common than what was reported by the Paul-Ehrlich Institute, reported the Nordkurier newspaper on Wednesday.

Researchers say one in 3 trillion chance Covid developed the code naturally …

But lots of questions.

• Genetic Code of Covids Spike Protein Linked to Moderna Patent (DM)

Fresh suspicion that Covid may have been tinkered with in a lab emerged today after scientists found genetic material owned by Moderna in the virus’s spike protein. They identified a tiny snippet of code that is identical to part of a gene patented by the vaccine maker three years before the pandemic. It was discovered in SARS-CoV-2’s unique furin cleavage site, the part that makes it so good at infecting people and separates it from other coronaviruses. The structure has been one of the focal points of debate about the virus’s origin, with some scientists claiming it could not have been acquired naturally. The international team of researchers suggest the virus may have mutated to have a furin cleavage site during experiments on human cells in a lab. They claim there is a one-in-three-trillion chance Moderna’s sequence randomly appeared through natural evolution.

But there is some debate about whether the match is as rare as the study claims, with other experts describing it as a ‘quirky’ coincidence rather than a ‘smoking gun’. “Moderna filed the patent in February 2016 as part of its cancer research division, records show. The patented sequence is part of a gene called MSH3 that is known to affect how damaged cells repair themselves in the body. It was approved on March 7 the following year ” In the latest study, published in Frontiers in Virology, researchers compared Covid’s makeup to millions of sequenced proteins on an online database. The virus is made up of 30,000 letters of genetic code that carry the information it needs to spread, known as nucleotides. It is the only coronavirus of its type to carry 12 unique letters that allow its spike protein to be activated by a common enzyme called furin, allowing it to spread between human cells with ease. Analysis of the original Covid genome found the virus shares a sequence of 19 specific letters with a genetic section owned by Moderna, which has a total of 3,300 nucleotides.

“..the implosion of the real estate sector may cause a large hole in the national banks’ assets that may need the largest bailout in modern times..”

• China’s Property Bubble Collapse Gets Worse (Lacalle)

The real estate sector is enormous in China. Its direct and indirect weight, according to JP Morgan, is 25 percent of GDP, more than double the size of previous real estate bubbles in Japan or Spain. It’s impossible for the Chinese regime to contain the implosion of a sector that has massive ramifications that affect all the services sector and numerous side industries. The Chinese regime tries to disguise the risk by injecting liquidity into Chinese banks and cutting rates but, even if the vast majority of the property developers’ debt is in the hands of domestic savers, the collapse in investor confidence is difficult to contain. At best, the Chinese economy will see an inevitable slowdown.

In the worst-case scenario, the implosion of the real estate sector may cause a large hole in the national banks’ assets that may need the largest bailout in modern times. The outcome may lie somewhere in between. Many sectors in China may continue to thrive regardless of the property slump, but none of them, even all combined, can offset the impact of such a dominant part of the Chinese economy. If other global economies were unable to offset the burst of a property bubble even when the size of their real estate sectors in the total economy was extraordinarily lower than in the case of China, it’s virtually impossible to believe that the Asian giant will be able to achieve its growth target when the property bubble burst coincides with an unprecedented government intervention in other sectors.

Chinese property developers need to repay or refinance up to $100 billion in debt in 2022, according to Bloomberg. It isn’t difficult to predict that at least half will default, surpassing 2021’s record figure. Additionally, global and domestic demand for the largest Chinese sectors is weakening due to expectations of more government crackdowns in 2022. The combination of increasing government interventionism with the rising concern about the financial situation of debt issuers may be unsurmountable for the Chinese economy. Repeating failed Keynesian demand-side policies is not the answer. China needs to open its economy and abandon a debt-fuelled model.

“It got to the point, hilariously, where no one in the administration was even allowed to say the word ‘Tesla’!”

• Biden Officials Fear Elon Musk Would Embarrass President At WH (NYP)

The White House is reportedly worried Elon Musk would be a bad guest if invited to meet with President Biden — a target of frequent mockery by the Tesla founder. Some of Biden’s top advisers have purportedly warned against inviting Musk to the White House over fears he would say something to embarrass the administration. The billionaire has repeatedly slammed the White House for failing to mention Tesla while discussing its plans for major nationwide investments in electric vehicles. Biden and his close advisers are said to be irritated with Musk’s public criticism and have no immediate plans to invite him to the White House for future events, CNBC reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.

When CNBC asked about the White House’s apparent concerns, Musk responded with a pair of “roll on the floor laughing” emojis and suggested his attendance at a future meeting shouldn’t be a cause of concern. “They have nothing to worry about,” Musk said. “I would do the right thing.” White House press secretary Jen Psaki and others have suggested that Tesla has been snubbed from business events because the company’s factories aren’t unionized. In January, Biden met with the CEOs of Ford and General Motors while promoting his Build Back Better Bill and claimed that “companies like GM and Ford are building more electric vehicles here at home than ever before.” That snub appeared to infuriate Musk, who referred to Biden last month as a “damp [sock] puppet in human form” and claimed the president was “treating the American public like fools.”

“It got to the point, hilariously, where no one in the administration was even allowed to say the word ‘Tesla’! The public outrage and media pressure about that statement forced him to admit that Tesla does in fact lead the EV industry,” Musk told CNBC. Biden went several months without discussing Tesla’s leading position in the electric vehicle market — only recently mentioning Musk’s company for the first time. On Feb. 8, the president referred to Tesla as “our nation’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer.” Musk argued that Biden “pointedly ignored Tesla at every turn” while touting other companies. Despite the tensions, Musk also downplayed the severity of his rift with Biden and other White House officials, asserting that the “notion of a feud is not quite right.” “I have nothing against Biden otherwise, apart from general concern about more deficit spending, which would apply to any president, and actively supported the Obama-Biden election,” Musk told the outlet.

WEF
https://twitter.com/i/status/1496562083680428049

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Debt Rattle February 16 2022

Feb 162022

February 16, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:22 am Finance Tagged with: catastrophe, coup plot, Djokovic, Durham, propaganda, Russia, Trudeau, Ukraine, Zero Hedge 163 Responses »

Leonardo da Vinci Ginevra de’ Benci 1474-78

• The Global Covid Vaccination Campaign Is Courting Catastrophe (Kohlmayer)

• New Research Points To Possible Reason For Long Covid (JPost)

• Ukraine Crisis: A Nightmare Caused by US Interventionism (Ron Paul)

• US Has New Ukraine Coup Plot Theory (RT)

• ‘West Has Been Destroyed Without A Shot Fired’ – Russia (RT)

• US Accuses Zero Hedge Of Spreading Russian Propaganda (AP)

• Protesters to End Border Blockades as Trudeau’s Threats Hit Home (BBG)

• Democrats, the More Effective Evil (Chris Hedges)

• Novak Djokovic’s Propensity For Self-sabotage Has Become A Defining Trait (G.)

• Special Counsel John Durham Has Triggered a Media Meltdown (Turley)

• ’60 Minutes,’ CNN, MSNBC, Downplayed, Criticized Durham Probe (Fox)

I was ‘barred’ from publishing anything on Fauci: Former Forbes contributor

I was ‘barred’ from publishing anything on Fauci: Former Forbes contributor pic.twitter.com/ItBgfP8p9G

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2022) February 15, 2022

Dowd: Summation of Major Insurance company corporate group policy Loss Ratios (Death Claims) Q4 rate vs 2019 rate:

Unum $UNM +36%
Lincoln $LNC +57%
Pru $PRU +41%
$RGA +21%
Hartford $HIG +32%
MetLife $MET +24%

Why are some insurance companies banking on more deaths?
Hear from former Blackrock Portfolio Manager @DowdEdward and see the whole report on @OnLocals, @rumblevideo or my website! pic.twitter.com/Xho3ttLW2f

— Kristi Leigh (@KristiLeighTV) February 16, 2022

“..Under the normal schedule, the Covid vaccines Phase III trials would be completed in April of 2024. If this phase went without a hitch, April of 2024 would be the earliest that anyone could justifiably start saying that the Covid vaccines are “safe and effective.”

• The Global Covid Vaccination Campaign Is Courting Catastrophe (Kohlmayer)

After receiving full approval, vaccines continue to be carefully monitored for adverse events in case some vaccinal flaw may have escaped detection during the multi-year trial phase. There have been a number of vaccines that were pulled from the market after they received full approval due to unexpected safety issues. Some of these include vaccines for Rotavirus, Lyme Disease, and Whole-Cell Pertussis among others. Therefore, for a vaccine to be justifiably declared “completely safe,” it must undergo at least five years of intensive testing in clinical trials and then several years of monitoring as it is administered in populations at large. The Covid vaccines, however, were publicly declared to be “completely safe” less than 8 months after the start of human clinical trials.

On the normal vaccine trial timeline, month 8 is in Phase 2 of the three-stage clinical trial regime. The claim that the Covid vaccines were “completely safe,” was, therefore, completely unjustifiable and unsubstantiated. Those who made this claim engaged in a deliberate and unconscionable act of public deception. And yet this claim was used as the basis for a worldwide campaign in which more than half of Earth’s inhabitants have been injected with experimental pharmaceuticals that did not undergo proper testing. The phrase “safe and effective” became the de-facto slogan of the planet-wide vaccination enterprise. Believing that the vaccines were “completely safe,” billions of people willingly – and even enthusiastically – lined up to receive their Covid injections.

Needless to say, not everyone was ready to accept the propaganda. Disregarding all reasonable objections, however, many governments decided that universal vaccination was their goal and decided that the unwilling needed to be coerced. This they sought to do through direct vaccines mandates and covid passports or digital certificates. The latter two were designed in such a way as to compel the hesitant to submit to the shots on pain of being excluded from the normal course of societal life. Government and public health officials justified this drastic approach by repeatedly stating that the vaccines were “completely safe” and effective, and because of this it was okay to force the shots even on those who did not want to take them.

The claim “safe and effective” was thus used as a means of allurement and coercion for the planet-wide Covid vaccination crusade. We need to pause here and contemplate the enormity of what the vaccinators have “accomplished.” Less than 22 months after the beginning of the clinical trials, they have managed to inject the plurality of mankind with their inadequately tested products. If things were being done properly, right now the vaccine developers would have been gearing for Phase III of clinical trials. This stage normally takes place between months 24 and 48 after the initiation of the trial process. This is how Johns Hopkins University describes what this stage is about: “Phase III clinical trials are critical to understanding whether vaccines are safe and effective.”

[..] Under the normal schedule, the Covid vaccines Phase III trials would be completed in April of 2024. If this phase went without a hitch, April of 2024 would be the earliest that anyone could justifiably start saying that the Covid vaccines are “safe and effective.”

“It runs from the brain throughout the entirety of the face and chest, reaching the abdomen.”

• New Research Points To Possible Reason For Long Covid (JPost)

Many symptoms of post-COVID syndrome could be caused by lasting damage sustained to one of the most important nerves in the human body during initial infection with coronavirus, new research has suggested. What is the vagus nerve? The vagus nerve is the 10th cranial nerve and is the longest and most complex of all of them. It runs from the brain throughout the entirety of the face and chest, reaching the abdomen. The vagus nerve serves as the main connection between the brain and the gastrointestinal tract, sending back information about the state of the inner organs.

As well as being crucial to the gastrointestinal system, as it controls the transfer of food from the mouth to the stomach and moves food through the intestines, the vagus nerve is also responsible for multiple other processes, such as controlling the heart rate, sweat production and the gag reflex, as well as certain muscle movements in the mouth, including those necessary for speech. New research set to be presented at this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) investigates the connection between post-COVID syndrome, also known as long COVID, and the vagus nerve. The pilot study was authored by Dr. Gemma Lladós and Dr. Lourdes Mateu of the Germans Trias i Pujol University Hospital in Badalona, Spain. Its findings will be presented at the congress in Lisbon from April 23-26.

The study suggests that SARS-CoV-2-mediated vagus nerve dysfunction (VND) could be responsible for many of the symptoms of long COVID, including persistent voice problems, difficulty swallowing, dizziness, abnormally high heart rate (tachycardia), low blood pressure and digestive issues.

“..Or it’s coming next Tuesday, or Wednesday, or surely before the end of the Olympics.”

• Ukraine Crisis: A Nightmare Caused by US Interventionism (Ron Paul)

Over the weekend we heard that the US is evacuating its embassy in Kiev for fear of a Russian invasion. We also heard that Russia is evacuating its embassy in Kiev for fear of a US-backed provocation in eastern Ukraine that may lead to a Russian military response. We are in “uncharted territory” the media tells us. Yes, that is true. But it is uncharted because no one had ever imagined in the past that the US government would be so foolish to risk a thermonuclear war over the borders of a country – Ukraine – that have changed so many times over the past century. An urgent Biden-Putin phone call on Saturday did not lead to any breakthrough – as if anyone thought it would. Instead, it provided cover for Biden Administration hawks to claim they tried every diplomatic approach, but war seems to be the only option.

But this whole thing is a farce. As I see it, here is the Ukraine crisis in a nutshell: Biden to Putin: “Don’t invade Ukraine.” Putin to Biden: “We have no intention of invading Ukraine.” Biden to the US media: “Putin is about to invade Ukraine!” Then Biden’s top officials proceed to embarrass themselves by warning that the invasion was imminent. Or it’s coming next Tuesday, or Wednesday, or surely before the end of the Olympics. Does anyone think they have any credibility left with their constant hysterical warnings? Meanwhile “US intelligence” continues to leak incendiary information – likely self-serving – to a US media that has lost any interest in skepticism toward any “scoop” handed down by US government officials.

What the US media will not report is that this entire crisis – and the threat of a serious war – has all been brought about by US interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine, specifically the US-backed coup that overthrew an elected government in 2014. Every bit of unrest in Ukraine proceeded from that single foolish and immoral act by the Obama Administration.

“..the former presidential candidate called the suggestion “funny,” noting that his current job description is “director of a sanatorium.”

• US Has New Ukraine Coup Plot Theory (RT)

American intelligence believes that former MP Oleg Tsaryov could be made leader of a Ukrainian puppet regime after a successful Russian invasion causes the Kiev government to fall, Britain’s Financial Times reported on Tuesday. Citing an anonymous source in a Western intelligence agency, the outlet suggested that Tsaryov, who served in Ukraine’s parliament until 2014, would be made head of the country. Moscow “might position Oleg Tsaryov, and others, in leadership roles as part of this effort,” the source said, as quoted by FT. According to the newspaper, his name appeared in US intelligence materials that were shared with Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand, all members of Five Eyes intelligence alliance.

Tsaryov, who served in Parliament for twelve years, is best known for standing as a pro-Russia candidate in the 2014 presidential election until he withdrew after attacks from Ukrainian nationalists. He then defected to Donetsk, where he became the first speaker of the parliament of Novorossiya, a breakaway state in east Ukraine that lasted less than a year. He later moved to Crimea, where he now resides and runs a medical retreat. Speaking to the FT, the former presidential candidate called the suggestion “funny,” noting that his current job description is “director of a sanatorium.”

“15 February 2022 will go down in history as the day Western war propaganda failed..”

• ‘West Has Been Destroyed Without A Shot Fired’ – Russia (RT)

With Russia announcing that its troops are pulling back following the completion of exercises near the border with Ukraine, Moscow has insisted that predictions it could be just moments away from ordering a full-blown invasion have been proven false. In a fiery statement on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova poured scorn on weeks of reports and claims from US and European officials that Moscow’s armed forces could be just hours away from launching a strike against its neighbor. “15 February 2022 will go down in history as the day Western war propaganda failed,” she wrote. According to her, the West has been “shamed and destroyed without firing a single shot.”

At the same time, Moscow’s Ministry of Defense announced that a number of Russian troops had finished their training exercises in Belarus, close to the Ukrainian border, and will begin the process of withdrawing. Zakharova’s comments come after American business outlet Bloomberg reported on Saturday, citing unnamed officials, that an offensive against Ukraine could take place as early as Tuesday. The agency reported that a possible attack might include a provocation in the Donbass region or against Kiev. The White House’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, told CNN over the weekend that “sources” and “gathered intelligence” suggested “major military action” could “begin any day now.” He said that this included the coming week before the end of the Olympic games.

Ha ha ha ha ha!

• US Accuses Zero Hedge Of Spreading Russian Propaganda (AP)

U.S. intelligence officials on Tuesday accused a conservative financial news website with a significant American readership of amplifying Kremlin propaganda and alleged five media outlets targeting Ukrainians have taken direction from Russian spies. The officials said Zero Hedge, which has 1.2 million Twitter followers, published articles created by Moscow-controlled media that were then shared by outlets and people unaware of their nexus to Russian intelligence. The officials did not say whether they thought Zero Hedge knew of any links to spy agencies and did not allege direct links between the website and Russia. Zero Hedge denied the claims and said it tries to “publish a wide spectrum of views that cover both sides of a given story.”

In a response posted online Tuesday morning, the website said it has “has never worked, collaborated or cooperated with Russia, nor are there any links to spy agencies.” The officials briefed The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence sources. It was the latest effort by President Joe Biden’s administration to release U.S. intelligence findings about Russian activity involving Ukraine as part of a concerted push to expose and influence the moves of Russian President Vladimir Putin. U.S. officials previously accused Putin of planning a “false-flag” operation to create a pretext for a new invasion of Ukraine and detailed what they believe are final-stage Russian preparations for an assault. It’s unclear whether U.S. efforts are changing Putin’s behavior.

And without releasing more proof of its findings, Washington has been criticized and reminded of past intelligence failures such as the debunked allegations that pre-war Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Zero Hedge has been sharply critical of Biden and posted stories about allegations of wrongdoing by his son Hunter. While perhaps best known for its coverage of markets and finance, the website also covers politics with a conservative bent. In its response online, the website accused the AP of publishing a “bizarre hit piece” and said government officials were trying to distract from “our views of the current dismal US economic situation.” “The bottom line is that such hit piece accusations that we somehow work with or for the Kremlin are nothing new: we have repeatedly faced similar allegations over the years, and we can absolutely confirm that all of them are ‘errors,’” the website said.

According to Bloomberg, the truckers are utterly defeated.

“A lot of grown men were crying,” Klassen said. “We didn’t think he was going to enact that. We could lose everything.”

• Protesters to End Border Blockades as Trudeau’s Threats Hit Home (BBG)

Protesters against vaccine mandates at two border crossings in Western Canada plan to leave after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government invoked emergency powers that could freeze their bank accounts and suspend their insurance. A border crossing between Coutts, Alberta and Sweet Grass, Montana that had been closed Monday has partially reopened to traffic, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cpl. Gina Slaney said Tuesday by phone. Demonstrators have been at the border post since late January in a protest against vaccine mandates and Covid-19 restrictions. “People are going home,” Slaney said, noting traffic is moving slowly as there are still vehicles on the road. “Vehicles can get through north and southbound lanes right now and it seems that vehicles are crossing the border.”

Demonstrators at a border crossing between Manitoba and North Dakota are also preparing to leave in unison Wednesday with a police escort, said Jake Klassen, a truck driver who joined the protest out of frustration he can not visit his daughter receiving palliative care unless he is fully vaccinated. People are worried the government will seize their property and protesters plan to leave in a “slow roll” tomorrow and reopen traffic, Klassen said by phone. “A lot of grown men were crying,” Klassen said. “We didn’t think he was going to enact that. We could lose everything.” The Manitoba border to the U.S. at Emerson was still closed as of 12:14 p.m. New York time, according to the website of Canada’s border agency. “We accomplished something, I believe, but we didn’t accomplish what we went there to accomplish,” Klassen said.

Ezra Levant

Trudeau goes to war with truckers, invokes "Emergencies Act" for first time in Canada's history pic.twitter.com/WrI1b4J34A

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2022) February 15, 2022

“The war industry [..] is a bipartisan project. ”

• Democrats, the More Effective Evil (Chris Hedges)

The desperate measures to stave off an economic crisis are self-defeating. The bag of tricks is empty. Massive defaults on mortgages, student loans, credit cards, household debt, car debt and other loans in the United States is probably inevitable. With no short-term mechanisms left to paper over the disaster, it will usher in a prolonged depression. An economic crisis means a political crisis. And a political crisis is traditionally solved by war against enemies inside and outside the nation. The Democrats are as guilty of this as the Republicans. Wars can get started by Democrats, such as Harry S. Truman in Korea or John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, and perpetuated by Republicans. Or they can get started by Republicans, such as George W. Bush, and perpetuated by Democrats such as Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Bill Clinton, without declaring war, imposed punishing sanctions on Iraq and authorized the Navy and the Air Force to carry out tens of thousands of sorties against the country, dropping thousands of bombs and launching hundreds of missiles. The war industry, with its $768 billion military budget, along with the expansion of Homeland Security, the FBI, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the National Security Agency, is a bipartisan project. The handful of national political leaders, such as Henry Wallace in 1948 and George McGovern in 1972, who dared to challenge the war machine were ruthlessly hounded into political oblivion by the leaders of both parties. Biden’s bellicose rhetoric towards China and especially Russia, more strident than that of the Trump administration, has been accompanied by the formation of new security alliances such as those with India, Japan, Australia, and Great Britain in the Indo-Pacific.

U.S. aggression has, ironically, pushed China and Russia into a forced marriage, something the architects of the Cold War, including Nixon and Kissinger with their opening to China in 1971, worked very hard to avoid. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, after meeting recently in Beijing, issued a 5,300-word statement that condemned NATO expansion in eastern Europe, denounced the formation of security blocs in the Asia Pacific region, and criticized the AUKUS trilateral security pact between the US, Great Britain and Australia. They also vowed to thwart “color revolutions” and strengthen “back-to-back” strategic coordination.

People with principles are dangerous today. But he sabotages himself by NOT getting vaxxed?!

• Novak Djokovic’s Propensity For Self-sabotage Has Become A Defining Trait (G.)

Over the past 11 years of men’s tennis, during which Novak Djokovic rose to dominance and improbably positioned himself as one of the greatest to play the game, the only time his success has been in doubt came after the summer of 2017 when he suffered through many months with an elbow injury. The injury became a point of contention between himself and his then-coach, Andre Agassi, who later said he had swiftly advocated for surgery. But Djokovic addressed the injury by resting for nearly six months, believing his body was built to heal itself naturally. It was not. After returning the next year to pain and early losses, Djokovic finally underwent surgery in February 2018. As he digested his guilt about agreeing to the surgery, he cried for days.

On Tuesday, Djokovic gave his first full interview since his deportation from Australia after arriving in the country without being vaccinated against Covid. Djokovic acknowledged that, as things stand in a worldwide sport that moves from country to country each week, his unvaccinated status means he is unable to play in the majority of tournaments. “That is the price I am willing to pay,” he said. In the same breath, Djokovic said with a smile that at such a critical moment in tennis history he understands his actions may deprive him of the possibility of winning the highest number of grand slam tournaments. He framed his decision in libertarian terms: “The principles of decision making on my body are more important than any title or anything else.”

Djokovic’s conversation with the BBC was a reminder that his propensity for self-sabotage has become a defining trait. The principles that made him so averse to surgery in 2017 were not in tune with reality. After his surgery, he won the final two majors of that 2018 season and he has won eight since. The most controversial on-court moment of his career so far, his disqualification from the 2020 US Open after unintentionally hitting a line judge with a ball, came after near misses from which he failed to learn. Here he is again, his own worst enemy. As Djokovic attempts to navigate the world while unvaccinated – and while his biggest rival, Rafael Nadal, just took advantage of his absence to win a historic 21st grand slam title at the Australian Open – according to the ATP 99% of the top 100 is now vaccinated. He stands alone.

“..to this day, many refuse to cover extensive evidence of how the Clinton campaign manufactured this story that largely occupied the entire term of President Donald Trump.”

• Special Counsel John Durham Has Triggered a Media Meltdown (Turley)

What is striking about the Durham filings is the audacity of the Perkins Coie operation. While the funding was buried away, the lawyers were seemingly unconcerned about approving such efforts or personally reaching out to sympathetic government and media figures. They were, to some degree, justified in their sense of immunity. Indeed, to this day, many refuse to cover extensive evidence of how the Clinton campaign manufactured this story that largely occupied the entire term of President Donald Trump. Before the Steele dossier was given to the FBI and the press, then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed former President Obama on Clinton’s alleged “plan” to tie candidate Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” That operation appears to have been launched through Elias and Perkins Coie.

After the 2020 election, Democratic members and legal experts demanded the disbarring of a host of Republican attorneys for their spreading disinformation of a widespread election fraud. These same figures, however, are entirely silent about the role of Clinton lawyers in secretly funding the debunked Russian collusion claims. There is no interest in whether, as alleged by reporters, figures like Elias lied about the involvement of the Clinton campaign. Sussmann is now facing a trial on this role in the operation. Elias remains unindicted. With little sense of irony, he has established a law firm to deal with ethics and campaign disclosures. Durham’s continued investigation may be pushing the media to the final stage called “postsyncope,” which involves “protracted confusion, disorientation, nausea, dizziness, and a general sense of poor health.”

That has reflected in the flailing effort by some to deflect from the alarming disclosures. New York Times reporter Mike McIntire seemed to express alarm that the Durham story was “trending.” However, McIntire offered “a periodic reminder that Trump’s campaign chairman secretly met and shared info with a Russian intelligence agent.” The “info” was polling data on the campaign that Paul Manafort gave a person with Russian intelligence ties. That, of course, has no relevance to the question of whether the Clinton Campaign spied on the Trump Tower, campaign, or the White House itself. The “periodic reminder” seemed to be to other media that they needed to continue to hold their breath and not recognize a major story. Such “protracted confusion” is natural, but it will not dissipate any time soon. Durham apparently is calling more people into the grand jury.

Durham Zero

How much has the Durham report allegations against the Clinton campaign been covered by “mainstream” media? Zero. pic.twitter.com/v5yML0G8tS

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) February 15, 2022

“This is ’60 Minutes.’ We can’t put on things we can’t verify.”

• ’60 Minutes,’ CNN, MSNBC, Downplayed, Criticized Durham Probe (Fox)

The mainstream media is getting a wake-up call after new allegations in the Durham investigation that President Trump and his campaign were being spied on. Special Counsel John Durham released in a filing Saturday that the Hillary Clinton campaign hired techs to “infiltrate” Trump Tower and White House servers to establish a “narrative” to link Trump to Russia. The new findings contradict various doubtful media coverage from programs like CBS’ “60 Minutes.” In an October 2020 interview, Trump appeared on the newsmagazine to address the ongoing investigation and his claim his campaign was spied on. He was shot down by host Lesley Stahl, who insisted the president was spreading unverified information. “There’s no real evidence,” she said.

“This is ’60 Minutes.’ We can’t put on things we can’t verify.” Meanwhile, former CNN dynamic duo Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo criticized John Durham and the Trump administration back in December 2019 for being adamant about uncovering the truth, yet coming up short. “Nothing happens and they just move on to the next conspiracy theory,” Lemon said to Cuomo during a handover. “It is never going to end and guess what? People who want to believe that BS are going to believe it.” In an October 2021 episode of MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” host Rachel Maddow suggested the intention behind efforts to probe the investigation was always to re-route the investigation away from Trump himself. “It’s a boomerang,” she said.

“Because it’s apparently an ongoing, concerted Republican and pro-Trump project to try to turn the investigation of the Russia scandal into some kind of scandal itself.” Since Durham’s bombshell report dropped, media pundits on the left have gone largely quiet. Publications like the Washington Post and The New York Times have failed to commission any coverage of the latest allegations as of Monday, nor has CNN.

Kolakusic

https://t.co/mI9CfQgmeR

— LR (@gnallspiken56) February 15, 2022

Arthur C. Clarke

In this BBC Horizon documentary from 1964, Arthur C. Clarke made some remarkably accurate predictions about the future we now know, highlighting important breakthroughs, like the Internet [full video: https://t.co/T0FfHRJgco] pic.twitter.com/C31sra0P4N

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) February 15, 2022

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Debt Rattle February 8 2022

Feb 082022

February 8, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:55 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, AstraZeneca, embalment, immune suppression, Joe Rogan, oncogenic, Peltier, Rumble, Russia, spike protein, truckers, wastewater 100 Responses »

Giuseppe Arcimboldo Four elements – Fire 1566

• Wake-Up Call (Jim Kunstler)

• Innate Immune Suppression by SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccinations (Auth.)

• Vaccination Data Update (Fenton)

• Tracking Cryptic SARS-CoV-2 Lineages Detected In NYC Wastewater (Nature)

• Embalmer Richard Hirschman Reveals Novel Clotting In 65% Of Cases (Kirsch)

• Spike Protein As Oncogenic “Seed” (Chesnut)

• Biden Officials Trying To Recalculate US Covid-19 Hospitalizations (Pol.)

• Harm to AstraZeneca Jab’s Reputation ‘Probably Killed Thousands’ (G.)

• Were Masks A Waste Of Time? (Unherd)

• So You’ve Seen The Canadian Truckers, Right? (Denninger)

• Rumble Offers Joe Rogan $100 Million for a 4-Year Censorship-Free Contract (TC)

• US Senator Asks Biden To Release Leonard Peltier (LP)

• EU Sounds Alarm Over Russian Gas Supply (RT)

• NY Times, Washington Post Driving US to War with Russia Over Ukraine (MPN)

• “Censored” NFTs Raising Funds To Help Julian Assange (CD)

The only people still afraid of covid are vaccinated against it.

Dangerous men

Free will pic.twitter.com/qIwQuWhKjp

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2022) February 7, 2022

Armstrong Schwab Young leaders

Martin Armstrong about Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab pic.twitter.com/NwNtwTeNEn

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2019) February 7, 2022

Brand/Stelter

Russell Brand imitating Brian Stelter is my new favorite thing.

pic.twitter.com/EAmL7CDr3F

— Gina Bontempo (@FlorioGina) February 7, 2022

“It’s rumored that the Canadian military told Mr. Trudeau in plain un-Woke Canadian English to fuck-off..”

• Wake-Up Call (Jim Kunstler)

[..] Justin Trudeau — arguably the most fatuous would-be tyrant in the former “Free World” — has failed to emerge from his hidey-hole for the better part of a week, perhaps afraid of his seeing his shadow like the groundhog of legend, and it begins to look as if his days as Prime Minister grow short. It’s rumored that the Canadian military told Mr. Trudeau in plain un-Woke Canadian English to fuck-off, they will not take orders to put down the trucker’s protest, and even the Mounties are wobbling, so it’s left to the Ottawa police, who threaten to arrest anyone aiding the truckers with food, water, and fuel. Wait and see how quickly that will turn to fighting in the streets. Constitutional crisis, ay?

Meanwhile, a dozen or so other members of the Western Civ Club of Nations are ditching their Covid-19 mandates and restrictions. The reason: despite the mighty forces of deliberate organized mind-fuckery and resulting mass delusion, the Covid-19 “vaccines” are finally revealed as a criminal fraud, a danger to all who submitted to them, and an insult to the age-old accrued intelligence of the human race as used-to-be represented by science, ethics, and law. And still, America’s own putative leader, the empty suit known as “Joe Biden,” had the temerity to go on TV last week and once again tell his sore-beset people to “get vaccinated… get your kids vaccinated!” Who does he think he’s speaking to? The counter-information to Tony Fauci’s criminal bullshit is flooding the zone, despite America’s sinister Intel Community attempting to control the captured and discredited legacy news media.

Just last night CBS’s 60-Minutes told its audience that our hospitals are overwhelmed by the unvaccinated with Covid, which is an outright lie. Maybe we should start asking: who are the individual producers and network executives responsible for this arrant mendacity? Would it be interesting to see them in a court of law, having to answer whether they believe their own bullshit? Or is someone telling them to sell it? Some powerful counter-information to The Official Narrative emerged last week from the US military’s own Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) when several whistleblower doctors revealed to attorney Tom Renz heretofore suppressed statistics on the shocking increase in vaccine injuries among young, otherwise able-bodied soldiers.

Stephanie Seneff, Greg Nigh, Anthony M. Kyriakopoulos, Peter A McCullough

• Innate Immune Suppression by SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccinations (Auth.)

The mRNA SARS-CoV-2 vaccines were brought to market in response to the widely perceived public health crises of Covid-19. The utilization of mRNA vaccines in the context of infectious disease had no precedent, but desperate times seemed to call for desperate measures. The mRNA vaccines utilize genetically modified mRNA encoding spike proteins. These alterations hide the mRNA from cellular defenses, promote a longer biological half-life for the proteins, and provoke higher overall spike protein production. However, both experimental and observational evidence reveals a very different immune response to the vaccines compared to the response to infection with SARS-CoV-2. As we will show, the genetic modifications introduced by the vaccine are likely the source of these differential responses.

In this paper, we present the evidence that vaccination, unlike natural infection, induces a profound impairment in type I interferon signaling, which has diverse adverse consequences to human health. We explain the mechanism by which immune cells release into the circulation large quantities of exosomes containing spike protein along with critical microRNAs that induce a signaling response in recipient cells at distant sites. We also identify potential profound disturbances in regulatory control of protein synthesis and cancer surveillance. These disturbances are shown to have a potentially direct causal link to neurodegenerative disease, myocarditis, immune thrombocytopenia, Bell’s palsy, liver disease, impaired adaptive immunity, increased tumorigenesis, and DNA damage. We show evidence from adverse event reports in the VAERS database supporting our hypothesis. We believe a comprehensive risk/benefit assessment of the mRNA vaccines excludes them as positive contributors to public health, even in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Heart injury occurring in children below the age of 12

Heart injury occurring in children below the age of 12@P_McCulloughMD pic.twitter.com/U8S2FzPJSj

— Abir Ballan (@abirballan) February 7, 2022

I wrote the other day that I was seeing more reports linking the vaccines to cancer. This Twitter thread from @Parsifaler dives into that.

• Spike Protein As Oncogenic “Seed” (Chesnut)

SPIKE PROTEIN AS RAS CUE BALL: THE ONCOGENIC CASCADE- SPIKE PROTEIN AS ONCOGENIC “SEED”. It is not only what it stakes claim to, but also what it removes. I can’t think of anything more carcinogenic than the Spike Protein of SARS-CoV-2. LOCAL RAS WORKS IN A PARACRINE FASHION. Think of the Spike Protein as a cue ball that sets off a cascade to CREATE A TUMOR MICROENVIRONMENT while SIMULTANEOUSLY inducing the EPIGENETIC MODULATIONS to COMMENCE A TUMOR. JUST LIKE A SEED, the Spike Protein (tumor) not only can “grow” itself (once it takes hold), it can also FEED ITSELF by CREATING IT’S OWN IDEAL ENVIRONMENT.

After all, is what follows not exactly what the Spike Protein does? Local RAS works synergistically and independently of systemic RAS in a paracrine fashion. Ang II mediates effects that reduce tumor perfusion and oxygenation, resulting in hypoxia and subsequent acidosis within the tumor stroma. For example, local Ang II, predominantly exists in hypoxic regions of nasopharyngeal carcinoma and breast cancer cells, where it is autocrinely produced by chymase-dependant rather than ACE dependent mechanism. In which case the action of ACEi will not be effective to inhibit tumor growth.

“..the vaccinated – and especially the triple vaccinated are disproportionately being hospitalized with Covid.”

• Vaccination Data Update (Fenton)

The letter exposes – on a small but important scale – much of what we have been saying about the misrepresentation and manipulation of data comparing vaccinated v unvaccinated.How massively exaggerated are claims about unvaccinated dominating Covid hospitalizations. The original FOI request already revealed the extent to which widespread claims that ‘the vast majority of patients with Covid are unvaccinated’ are wrong: it stated that only 14 out of the 182 patients hospitalized with Covid in Blackpool Victoria on 22 Jan 2022 were unvaccinated (i.e. over 92% were vaccinated).

How the data on the vaccinated is continually changed and manipulated. When it was pointed out that the data seemed to be suggesting that NONE of the vaccinated patients had been triple vaccinated, the hospital conceded that there had been ‘1 small error’ which just happened to be the fact that 130 of those who had been previously classified as having 2 doses, had in fact had three doses (and there was indeed there were two other genuinely small errors, namely that 162 and not 161 as previously stated had at least 2 doses, while only 13 rather than 14 were unvaccinated). So in total 93% were vaccinated and: • 7% were vaccine-free (a more accurate term than ‘unvaccinated’) • 4% had one dose •17.6% had two doses • 71.4% had 3 doses. Here is the Government’s latest data today on proportion of people vaccinated in Blackpool:

Note that this is dated 5 Feb, so the proportion of triple vaccinated on 22 Jan will have been lower that the 56.9% currently showing. Whichever way you look at it the vaccinated – and especially the triple vaccinated are disproportionately being hospitalized with Covid.

@EthicalSkeptic: “Omicron lineages continue to show as more diverse than is possible for a recently-appeared variant.”

• Tracking Cryptic SARS-CoV-2 Lineages Detected In NYC Wastewater (Nature)

Tracking SARS-CoV-2 genetic diversity is strongly indicated because diversifying selection may lead to the emergence of novel variants resistant to naturally acquired or vaccine-induced immunity. To monitor New York City (NYC) for the presence of novel variants, we deep sequence most of the receptor binding domain coding sequence of the S protein of SARS-CoV-2 isolated from the New York City wastewater. Here we report detecting increasing frequencies of novel cryptic SARS-CoV-2 lineages not recognized in GISAID’s EpiCoV database. These lineages contain mutations that had been rarely observed in clinical samples, including Q493K, Q498Y, E484A, and T572N and share many mutations with the Omicron variant of concern.

Some of these mutations expand the tropism of SARS-CoV-2 pseudoviruses by allowing infection of cells expressing the human, mouse, or rat ACE2 receptor. Finally, pseudoviruses containing the spike amino acid sequence of these lineages were resistant to different classes of receptor binding domain neutralizing monoclonal antibodies. We offer several hypotheses for the anomalous presence of these lineages, including the possibility that these lineages are derived from unsampled human COVID-19 infections or that they indicate the presence of a non-human animal reservoir.

A Schematic of SARS-CoV-2 and the amplification locations. B Distribution of SARS-COV-2 variants based on patient sequences (patient data obtained from GISAID) and wastewater surveillance. Polymorphisms detected from amplicon sequencing that were used to assign sequences to lineages are shown in the legend. The variants detected from the 14 NYC WWTPs were weighted by flowrate to generate a city-wide average distribution. C Novel lineages detected from WWTPs. Schematic highlights shared sequences identified from WWTP 10, 11, and 3 are shown. The percent of the sequences from each date that contained the indicated polymorphisms is shown below each lineage. The viral copies/L corresponding to each date are shown in Supplementary Table 3. Some sequences have additional polymorphisms not listed. WNY lineage designations are shown for sequences used for tropism and antibody neutralization analysis. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.

Autopsies, embalming, that’s where you should see what is really going on.

• Embalmer Richard Hirschman Reveals Novel Clotting In 65% Of Cases (Kirsch)

Richard Hirschman has been an embalmer for over 20 years. In 2021, he started noticing very odd blood clots that he had never seen before. In Jan 2022, 65% of his cases exhibited these clots. The only rational conclusion is that the clots, which are deadly, are all associated with the COVID vaccines. Nobody from the mainstream media or medical community wants to touch this story. It’s not just Richard who is seeing this; it is everyone in the industry he’s talked to about it. They are all seeing it, but Richard is the only person in the US (so far) willing to speak out about it.

[..] Hirschman’s data is explosive because it establishes a relative proportion of people affected which we can then use to establish an absolute rate of death. So let’s say the actual rate of vaccine-caused deaths is 40% of all deaths which is less than the 65% rate that Hirschman is seeing. The CDC says around 65,000 people die a week. So that would be 26,000 people a week killed by the vaccine. He started noticing these deaths in May (they could have started sooner), so let’s just say it’s only been in the last 6 months to be conservative. 26 weeks *26,000 deaths/week=676,000 vaccine-related deaths. That’s a lot of deaths. So you see why this observation is explosive.

Are they going to correct the umbers of the past 2 years as well?

• Biden Officials Trying To Recalculate US Covid-19 Hospitalizations (Pol.)

The Biden administration is working on recalculating the number of Covid-19 hospitalizations in the U.S., according to two senior officials familiar with the matter. A task force comprised of scientists and data specialists at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are working with hospitals nationwide to improve Covid-19 reporting. The group is asking hospitals to report numbers of patients who go to the facility because they have Covid-19 and separate those from individuals who go in for other reasons and test positive after being admitted, the two officials said. The administration’s goal is to get a more accurate sense of Covid-19’s impact across the country and whether the virus is causing severe disease.

Senior Biden health officials have increasingly relied on hospitalization numbers, rather than case counts, to determine how to respond to the virus as well as the efficacy of the vaccines. Lower hospitalization rates could inform the administration’s thinking on public health measures such as masking. More accurate Covid-19 numbers also could provide a better picture of the strain on hospitals and which resources they might need during surges. Recalculating the hospitalization rate will not be easy, said Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research and former advisory board member of the Covid Tracking Project, a team that worked to collect and synthesize local Covid-19 data during the peak of the pandemic.

Odd, but then, it’s the Guardian.

“I think bad behaviour from scientists and from politicians has probably killed hundreds of thousands of people – and that they cannot be proud of that..”

• Harm to AstraZeneca Jab’s Reputation ‘Probably Killed Thousands’ (G.)

Scientists and politicians “probably killed hundreds of thousands of people” by damaging the reputation of the AstraZeneca vaccine, according to an Oxford scientist who worked on the jab. Prof John Bell said: “They have damaged the reputation of the vaccine in a way that echoes around the rest of the world.” “I think bad behaviour from scientists and from politicians has probably killed hundreds of thousands of people – and that they cannot be proud of that,” he told a BBC Two documentary When the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab was rolled out in the UK government advisers recommended under-40s should be offered an alternative due to a link to very rare blood clots. Fears over the links to blood clots also led other countries, including Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, the Republic of Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Bulgaria, Iceland and Thailand, to pause their use of the vaccine.

The AstraZeneca vaccine has also not played a significant role in the booster programme. The BBC reported it accounted for only 48,000 of the more than 37m booster doses given in the UK. The AZ vaccine was celebrated as a UK success story and billed as “Britain’s gift to the world” when it was developed. It was designed to be cheap, and developers had the ambition that it should be available at low cost. Unlike the mRNA vaccines, it could be transported at low cost and stored at fridge temperature. Nearly half of the adult population in the UK received two doses of the vaccine. The AZ vaccine’s approval in the UK coincided with Britain’s separation from the EU. “I don’t think it made relations with Europe any easier that it was promoted as the British vaccine,” Bell told the documentary, AstraZeneca: A Vaccine for the World, to be broadcast on the BBC on Tuesday at 9pm.

“The most disastrous failing of the experts has been their lack of curiosity about the actual results of the policies they have staked their reputations on.”

• Were Masks A Waste Of Time? (Unherd)

The most disastrous failing of the experts has been their lack of curiosity about the actual results of the policies they have staked their reputations on. Mask mandates have been, in Miller’s phrase, “a population-wide experiment”, but few within the US scientific and medical establishment have seemed interested in parsing the resulting data, leaving that task to outsiders like Miller. Astonishingly, there have been just two randomised controlled trials on masking published since the pandemic began. One found no significant effect at all, while the other found a small effect of 11% for surgical masks and no significant effect for cloth ones. The first was largely ignored or dismissed, while the second was optimistically glossed as proving that masks work.

Moreover, even the most bullish case for the technical efficacy of at least some higher-quality masks does not constitute a case for mask mandates, a distinction that most commentary elides. The only way to measure the efficacy of mandates is to look at their actual track record. This is what Miller has done, and the result, he argues, is clear: “mask mandates have demonstrated very little impact, if any, on case curves throughout the United States and in many other international locations.” Miller is justifiably derisive about the experts who have oversold dubious policies at every turn, but the ironic implication of his book is that much of the expert guidance from prior to 2020 has been vindicated. Before Covid appeared, scientists and officials advised time and again that masks would be ineffective at containing a pandemic respiratory virus, and the evidence Miller has compiled suggests they were correct.

It is not difficult to see why mask mandates proved irresistible to politicians. Masks are the perfect form of hygiene theatre, conveying an intuitive sense of safety regardless of demonstrable efficacy at scale. They also offload responsibility for controlling the pandemic to ordinary people. The overcrowding of ICUs can be blamed on the bad behavior of “anti-maskers”, rather than on the allocation of resources by governments and hospital CEOs. When cases and deaths spike, it is the fault of the citizenry, not the leadership.

“..plenty of people get Covid-19 who had the jabs and the CDC itself admits that against Omicron the efficacy is statistically zero.”

• So You’ve Seen The Canadian Truckers, Right? (Denninger)

It is not my place to pass judgment on another nation’s sovereign decisions. I can certainly agree or disagree, but one of the principles of national sovereignty is that short of projecting something into another nation the limit of it is whether you choose to trade with said nation and its people or not. But here, in the United States, since I’m a US Citizen, its a different story. For two years now, approximately, we’ve listened to nothing but lies. We now have two alleged “approved vaccines” for Covid-19, both of which, in the FDA’s approval letter, claims they prevent Covid-19. We know this is a lie; plenty of people get Covid-19 who had the jabs and the CDC itself admits that against Omicron the efficacy is statistically zero.

Since Omicron is the only circulating variant of statistical importance right now (again, per the CDC) these claims by the FDA are frauds since, to whatever extent they were valid, that disease no longer exists. A jab against something that doesn’t exist is stupid. But more to the point is that none of these are actually available in the US. All the arm-waving is pure performative art, that is, theater intended to convince people and businesses that an experimental drug really isn’t — when in fact, from a legal and marketing perspective it is experimental and nothing has factually changed. I have, since the first letter, challenged people to send me a photograph of a vial with the approved drug on the label, its lot number visible and that same lot and drug entered on the person’s vaccine card.

That is, not only is it available said person got that shot, per the certified actions of a health care professional which, if they lied, would constitute use of a mislabeled drug and is a criminal violation of law. I’ve yet to receive even one such piece of evidence. Perhaps that’s because it doesn’t exist. This much is utterly certain when it comes to stopping government lies, whether related to Covid-19 or anything else: Without the voluntary actions of a whole lot of people, specifically truckers, rail personnel and similar, you get nothing whatsoever.

Spotify has deleted 135 episodes by now?

• Rumble Offers Joe Rogan $100 Million for a 4-Year Censorship-Free Contract (TC)

Rogan signed a $100 million deal giving Spotify exclusive rights to “The Joe Rogan Experience” in 2020. However, Spotify is facing increasing pressure to censor the popular podcast over Rogan’s willingness to speak to guests with different perspectives about the pandemic. Though the company has said they will not pull the plug on the podcast, they have removed approximately 70 episodes from their library in recent days. Launched in 2013, Rumble runs its own infrastructure — so the company says it is “immune to cancel culture.” Rumble went public through a deal with CF Acquisition Corp. VI with an initial enterprise value of $2.1 billion in December. In a letter to Rogan tweeted by the company, CEO Chris Pavlovski urged Rogan to join Rumble.

Pavlovski wrote, “We stand with you, your guests, and your legion of fans in desire for real conversation. So we’d like to offer you 100 million reasons to make the world a better place.” “How about you bring all your shows to Rumble, both old and new, with no censorship, for 100 million bucks over four years?” Pavlovski continued. The letter concluded, “this is our chance to save the world. And yes, this is totally legit.” Though episodes are being removed, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has defended keeping Rogan on the platform. Ek told upset employees last week that the solution is not to get rid of Rogan’s podcast, but perhaps to obtain more exclusive content from different perspectives.

“The real thing here is to try to go for an even broader set of exclusives that represent even more voices,” Ek said. “There are many things that Joe Rogan says that I strongly disagree with and find very offensive. But let me go back to what I said earlier, if you want even a shot at achieving our bold ambitions, it will mean having content on Spotify that many of us may not be proud to be associated with,” he continued. “Not anything goes, but there will be opinions, ideas, and beliefs that we disagree with strongly and even makes us angry or sad.” He pointed out that there have been episodes of the podcast that did not make it onto the platform because they violated the rules.

“..imprisoned for 46 years for crimes he maintains he never committed..”

• US Senator Asks Biden To Release Leonard Peltier (LP)

The president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate, Patrick Leahy, called for the release of Native American activist Leonard Peltier, imprisoned for 46 years for crimes he maintains he never committed. “There is no question that our criminal justice system is imperfect, and Peltier knows firsthand how imperfect it can be,” the Vermont Democratic lawmaker told President Joe Biden in his unequivocal plea for clemency. His trial was so riddled with flaws that even one of the prosecutors who tried him acknowledged that Peltier was wrongly convicted, he added in his request to the president. According to Leahy, releasing the inmate from prison on an expedited basis “is the right thing to do”. In prison since Feb. 6, 1976, Peltier is now 77 years old and ill with multiple health problems, he recalled.

“I have long believed that pardons and commutations are vital tools to provide clemency and relief, especially when our criminal justice system has been contorted to propagate injustices,” Leahy concluded. In a recent statement, Peltier, considered America’s longest-serving political prisoner, described the conditions of his confinement in a Florida federal prison as a “torture chamber.” “The loneliness and lack of care are like a torture chamber for sick and elderly people,” warned the also writer and poet. Of Anishinaabe Lakota descent, leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM), which arose in the 1960s in the heat of the struggles for Civil Rights, Peltier was accused of the murder of two FBI agents in 1975 during a shooting that took place in the Pine Ridge aboriginal reservation, in South Dakota.

At that time, massacres of natives took place and as a consequence of this harassment of the Lakota people, more than 250 people of this indigenous nation were murdered, without the crimes having been investigated until now.
Several international organizations denounced irregularities in the trial that condemned Peltier in 1977 to two consecutive life sentences and it is even said that there are more than 10,000 pages with categorical evidence that would absolve him immediately. Filmmaker Michael Moore urged Barack Obama to review the multiple documents that prove that Peltier did not have a fair trial, but the former African-American president followed the same line of his predecessors. Born on September 12, 1944, when he was imprisoned in February 1976 he was a young fighter for the rights of native peoples and had already known repression and jail, historians point out.

“..Russia has done far more to build resilience to Western sanctions than the European Union has to improve its ability to survive disruption..”

• EU Sounds Alarm Over Russian Gas Supply (RT)

Russia has done far more to build resilience to Western sanctions than the European Union has to improve its ability to survive disruptions in the gas supply chain, the EU high representative for foreign affairs said on Sunday. Writing in his weekly blog, Josep Borrell accused Moscow of using energy supplies for “political purposes” and suggested any further measures against the Kremlin have serious blowback effects for the EU, including a reduction of gas available to the bloc. His comments came ahead of a meeting of the EU-US Energy Council, due to be held on Monday, in America. “Energy prices have surged due to global supply and demand issues,” Borrell wrote. “With the severe crisis that we are currently going through with Russia, it has become not only a price issue but also a matter of security of supplies.”

According to the Eurocrat, over 40% of EU gas imports come from Russia, while the EU provides over 60% of Russia’s import revenues. “However, in recent years, Russia has enhanced its resilience against economic sanctions, by increasing its foreign currency reserves, more than we have done to enhance our capacity to face potential gas supply cuts,” he explained, calling on the bloc to begin developing EU strategic gas reserves and boost investment in renewable sources of energy. In the last three months, Moscow has been threatened by Western nations with the possibility of hard-hitting sanctions, following fears that it is planning an invasion of Ukraine. Russia stands accused of placing more than 100,000 troops on the frontier, with some believing that this is a sign of an upcoming military incursion. This claim has repeatedly been denied by the Kremlin.

However, despite serious rhetoric, the media has suggested that the EU is not unanimously in agreement over potential measures. Last month, America’s Bloomberg news agency reported on a German demand that proposed measures do not include restrictions on energy, insisting that the sector be exempted.

Happens every year. Just a bit louder this time.

• NY Times, Washington Post Driving US to War with Russia Over Ukraine (MPN)

Western media and governments have expressed alarm over a suspected buildup of Russian military forces close to its over-1200-mile border with Ukraine. There are reportedly almost 100,000 troops in that vicinity, causing President Joe Biden to warn that this is “the most consequential thing that’s happened in the world in terms of war and peace since World War II.” Yet this is far from the first media panic over a supposedly imminent Russian invasion. In fact, warning of a hot war in Europe is a near yearly occurrence at this point. In 2015, outlets such as Reuters and The New York Times claimed that Russia was massing troops and heavy firepower, including tanks, artillery and rocket launchers right on the border, while normally sleepy frontier towns were abuzz with activity.

In 2016 there was an even bigger meltdown, with media across the board predicting that war was around the corner. Indeed, The Guardian reported that Russia would soon have 330,000 soldiers on the border. Yet nothing came to pass and the story was quietly dropped. With the next spring came renewed warnings of conflict. The Wall Street Journal claimed that “tens of thousands” of soldiers were being deployed to the border. The New York Times upped that figure to “as many as 100,000.” A few months later, U.S. News said that thousands of tanks were joining them. In late 2018, The New York Times and other media outlets were again up in arms over a fresh Russian buildup, this time of 80,000 military units.

And in the spring of last year, it was widely reported (for instance, by Reuters and The New York Times) that Russia had amassed armies totaling well over 100,000 units on Ukraine’s border, signaling that war was imminent. Therefore, there are actually considerably fewer Russian units on Ukraine’s border than there were even 11 months ago, according to Western numbers. Furthermore, they are matched by a force of a quarter-million Ukrainian troops on the other side. Thus, many readers will be forgiven for thinking it is Groundhog Day again. Yet there is something different about this time: coverage over the conflict has been enormous and has come to dominate the news cycle for weeks now, in a way it simply did not previously. The possibility of war has scared Americans and provoked calls for a far higher military budget and a redesign of American foreign policy to counter this supposed threat.

“The organization has independently raised around 12,569 ETH, i.e., approximately $38.8 million, to bid on the ‘Clock’ NFT..”

• “Censored” NFTs Raising Funds To Help Julian Assange (CD)

The auction for the upcoming ‘Censored’ NFT collection that consists of two generative interactive blockchain artworks will start from February 7, 2 PM GMT. The first part is a single edition NFT title ‘Clock,’ which counts the total number of days that Assange has been in prison. The NFT is dynamic and generative and is programmed to keep counting the days. It is designed to blink in a rhythmic heartbeat, and the bidding for the piece will start at 1 ETH on the censored.art website. In mid-December, the US government won its appeal against a UK court ruling that prevented Assange’s extradition. Once extradited to the US, Assange will face 175 years in prison under charges of “publishing truthful information.”

On the same day, a group of ‘cypherpunk’ organized in a Telegram group and decided to set up the decentralized autonomous organization AssangeDAO to raise awareness and support for the liberation of Julian Assange from prison. The organization has independently raised around 12,569 ETH, i.e., approximately $38.8 million, to bid on the ‘Clock’ NFT and contribute to Julian Assange’s legal defense fund. The founder of Wikileaks is currently being held in a London prison and is fighting extradition to the U.S. AssangeDAO members are raising ETH in return for JUSTICE governance tokens which they will use to bid on the NFT released by Pak in collab with Assange. All auction proceeds will be deposited in the Wau Holland Foundation to support Assange’s case.

The second part of the collection, ‘Censored,’ is a 48-hour open edition. This means that it will have unlimited NFTs, and anyone can participate in it over the span of 48 hours. Participants can tokenize a message that they want to broadcast to the community by minting an NFT that will display the message. This can include a word, symbol, statement, purpose, hypothesis, idea, question, vision, belief, plan, clue, thought, feeling, or scheme. The message that will be displayed as an NFT will be struck through to represent censorship. The NFTs can be minted free of cost, but contributions of any amount are being welcomed. Pak has already minted the first NFT in the collection as a message that reads ‘Pak was here’ and contributed 100 ETH to the cause. All the proceeds from the Open Edition collection will go to organizations promoting freedom of information, education, digital privacy, health, and animal rights organizations.

CNN sucks
https://twitter.com/i/status/1490891558929190913

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Debt Rattle February 5 2022

Feb 052022

February 5, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:00 am Finance Tagged with: Antifa, Assange, Bannon, Elon Musk, Fauci, Freedom Convoy, GiveSendGo, GoFundMe, mass formation, NFT, Russia, trap 60 Responses »

René Magritte The black flag 1937

• Why Are People Deliberately Infecting Themselves With Covid-19? (RT)

• Don’t Overload The Immune System With Repeated Vaccinations – EMA (FS)

• It’s Really Rather Simple (Denninger)

• The Mass Formation Madness Must Stop (Malone)

• Fauci Says He’s Mystified by Lagging Vaccine Booster Rates

• Attorney Representing Freedom Convoy Shares a Message (CTH)

• GoFundMe Shuts Down Freedom Convoy Fundraiser (RT)

• Freedom Convoy Finds New Crowdfunding Platform & Crashes It (RT)

• Elon Musk Slams GoFundMe Over Protesting Truckers (RT)

• GoFundMe Supported Antifa’s ‘CHAZ/CHOP’ Even After People Were Murdered (PM)

• New Filing Accuses Feds Of Snooping On Bannon Lawyer (JTN)

• What a US Trap for Russia in Ukraine Might Look Like (Lauria)

• Death Wish (Jim Kunstler)

• Record-Breaking Artist Pak Joins Forces With Assange To Make NFT History (CF)

Based on wastewater surveillance data. Infections in Massachusetts back down to Pre-Omicron surge levels. Hospitalizations, & deaths should follow in upcoming weeks

Unmitigated disaster

After 37 weeks, 20% of myocarditis cases have not healed. Not so mild?!

So they will be able to work. How sad it that?

• Why Are People Deliberately Infecting Themselves With Covid-19? (RT)

If you are, like me, vaccinated against Covid-19 and do not want to catch this nasty virus, you may find it counterintuitive that some people are deliberately infecting themselves with it. But that is what is happening, especially in places with strict rules placing limits on what unvaccinated people can do. Where I live in Italy, there is increasing evidence of Covid self-infection as limitations on unvaccinated people are strengthening. I first noticed news of Corona ‘parties’ for people to get infected last November in northern Italy.Sky reported these parties were attracting a lot of attention in Telegram groups in the Bolzano area and that these had spread from Austria and Germany, where the report claimed the superspreading shindigs were born. Indeed, the report noted the tragic death of a 55-year-old man in Austria after he was infected at a Corona party.

At the time, I thought self-infection involved very few people and mostly hard core ‘anti-vax’ activists in places like Bolzano, which has had a reputation for low Covid-19 vaccination rates for a long time. Yet self-infection with Covid-19 has become more widespread in Italy, as laws restricting participation in work, education, and social life for unvaccinated people are implemented. Since last summer, to work in healthcare in Italy, it has been necessary to possess a green pass, which indicates being vaccinated against Covid-19 or recently having recovered from the virus. “We have received various notifications of dinners with positive people organized by unvaccinated nurses,” stated Samanta Grossi, the president of the Professional Nurses association in my nearby city of Treviso. Unvaccinated nurses and other healthcare employees who test positive for Covid-19 avoid suspension from work and pay.

Similarly, employees in education in Italy have been required to demonstrate they are vaccinated or have recently recovered from Covid-19 since last September. An unvaccinated preschool teacher who has been suspended from work recently decided to infect herself with the virus. Police and school headteachers have reported that teachers have been able to get infected and continue teaching in schools by attending dinners with people who are positive with Covid-19. In some instances, they were told some teachers were prepared to pay 200 to 300 euros to do so.

Google translation from France Soir.

• Don’t Overload The Immune System With Repeated Vaccinations – EMA (FS)

For the past few weeks, several scientists have been increasing warnings against vaccine reminders against Covid-19, warnings confirmed on January 11, during a press briefing held at the EMA (European Medicines Agency). While the vaccine booster started several weeks ago in the vast majority of European countries, the United States and Israel, Marco Cavaleri, head of biological health threats and vaccine strategy at the European Medicines Agency , made known his fears about too frequent booster shots. Boosters every four months could cause a problem with the immune response, insists this vaccination official who is also concerned about the risk of fatigue among the population with the continuous administration of boosters.

Boosters “can be done once or even twice, but we don’t think they need to be repeated constantly,” said Marco Cavaleri, who urges countries to allow more time between booster programs and advises perform at the beginning of the cold season in each hemisphere, following the plan established for influenza vaccination strategies. It also invites reflection on how we can move from the current pandemic framework to a more endemic one. The advice comes as several countries consider the possibility of offering people a second booster shot to further protect them against a resurgence of infections with the Omicron variant. A pioneering country in vaccination, Israel believed for a few weeks that it had overcome the epidemic. Now, with more than 40,000 a day, the government has reserved the fourth injection for people over 60 and those with co-morbidities.

In a lengthy interview with CNBC, Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer , echoed the European Medicines Agency’s recommendation. “I don’t know if there’s a need for a fourth booster. It’s something that needs to be tested. And I know that Israel has already started some of these experiments, and we’re going to be running some of these experiments as well. to make sure that if necessary, we will use it,” he said. Indeed, clinical trials to know the quality of the protection of these booster doses, but also the tolerance, would have been desirable before they are administered in the general population.

Whether they are biologists or doctors, big names in science such as Professors Didier Raoult, Jean-Marc Sabatier or Jacques Fantini and his team have made known their doubts about the effectiveness of a vaccination developed from the wild strain from Wuhan and which would have become completely obsolete since the appearance of the Delta variant and especially the Omicron variant. Guest of the program Touche pas à mon poste, Professor Raoult said last week: “It is in the countries where the most vaccines have been made that there are the most cases”. A fact that he supports with scientific explanations still little known to the general public. “There is a significant number of cases that follow a vaccine injection within 15 days to three weeks. This is due to a scientific phenomenon called facilitating antibodies. That is, there are antibodies that facilitate infection. Their effect is seen in the three weeks following the injection” also added the professor.

“Is this proof that the jabs killed those people? No, but its damn good evidence.”

• It’s Really Rather Simple (Denninger)

There is a clear elevation of all-cause mortality in the 25-44 age bracket coinciding with Covid-19 showing up. There is also an elevation in the other age brackets, by the way. All-cause is just that – while some of this is undoubtedly Covid-19, policy-driven deaths are also in there. Suicides, ODs and similar were and are up materially over the 2019 numbers, and these are also in that figure. Dead is dead, I remind you; why is not material to either the dead person or their loved ones. But what we do know, by simple comparison with other age brackets, is that most of it wasn’t Covid. How do we know this? Because the winter of 2020 came and went, where a huge number of older people died as a result of Covid-19 and during most of it there were no jabs available to anyone. This age group saw a small – measurable, but small – bump during that time.

We thus know that Covid simply doesn’t kill people in this age group all that frequently — and, in fact, the mitigations killed far more people than the disease. But then….. Joe Biden’s administration and private employers started issuing threats: Take the jab or get fired. And…. there were a lot of jabs given to people who would have otherwise not taken them, most of which came after the big summer spike of Delta cases. There was an exact correlation in the rise of deaths with the threats. Remember that Biden (and many others) crowed that threats work.

Well, they sure do work, by the data: Threats are deadly and they did in fact kill. Is this proof that the jabs killed those people? No, but its damn good evidence. What’s worse, however, is that post the spike the death rate did not go back to baseline among this age group — and now, it STILL hasn’t. In other words the intervention was worthless and might actually be enhancing infections since (1) you can only die once, (2) the >85 cohort IS seeing reduced mortality (they got hit hard prior, and once dead they no longer can die again) and the same is true, to a lesser-extent, in the 65+ group. There is no net benefit if for a given number of jabs one person is killed by the jab and one person doesn’t die from Covid. That’s a net zero and the only valid means of computing public health benefit is a decrease in all-cause mortality.

Everyone of working age either got nothing or was harmed and worse, there is no follow-on benefit either as in these groups the mortality rate has not decreased compared to prior to jabs being available which, if they actually did reduce all-cause mortality, would be evident in the data. This is now established; net-net on a broad societal basis they’re worthless at best*.

“Society, our government, is doing an unprecedented and known amount of damage to the healthy development of our children. This has to stop.”

• The Mass Formation Madness Must Stop (Malone)

I have written and spoken out about vaccine mandates for children and why they are wrong. Children are rarely at risk of severe disease from COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 and almost all deaths of children have been those with co-morbidities. The vaccines have a high adverse event profile in children that has not been fully analyzed. This is reason enough to not allow mandates, even State government or regional school board mandates. But I have not written as much about masks, school closures, and the selfishness of teacher’s unions, who are more interested in protecting themselves than children. Children are at very little risk from COVID-19 severe disease. Most kids in the USA now have natural immunity, many have been vaccinated, and Omicron is nothing more than a cold for the vast majority of children and adults.

Even during Delta, children rarely develop severe COVID-19 disease. They have strong, healthy immune systems. This disease is stratified by age and co-morbidities. We all know this by now. Furthermore, neither masks nor vaccines prevent infection, replication or transmission of the Omicron strain of SARS-CoV-2. There is no reason to mask children in schools. There is no reason to mask children in shops, restaurants, parks, after school program, etc. There is no reason for children to have plexiglass shields around them in the class room. There is no reason why we need to deny children exercise programs, sports, after school care and physical education. It is time to end social distancing programs and let kids be kids. Children are social beings.

Having normal social interactions with other people, with other children is critical to growing up in a healthy environment. Social isolation of children is not ok. Sports, after school program, childcare, recreational activities and extracurricular activities need to return to normalcy. One important way children learn is by mimicry. Facial expressions of friends, teachers, mentors, parents not only are important for speech development, they are important for children to learn emotional norms and behaviors. We do not know what damage we are doing by masking. At this point, long term effects are unknown.

Furthermore, the COVID-19 unvaccinated children must be treated no differently than any other child. It is not anyone’s business other than the parent’s whether a child is vaccinated for COVID-19 or not. American’s have a fundamental right to privacy and there is no exclusionary clause for people younger than a certain age. Unvaccinated children or unmasked children should not be segregated, shamed or put in special rooms. They should not be excluded from the playground or sports activities. Society, our government, is doing an unprecedented and known amount of damage to the healthy development of our children. This has to stop.

Listen to The Science, damn it!

• Fauci Says He’s Mystified by Lagging Vaccine Booster Rates

White House COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci said he is confused as to why booster rates are lagging and said he doesn’t “have an easy explanation” for the phenomenon. When asked by a reporter on Wednesday about why fully vaccinated individuals aren’t getting as many boosters, Fauci noted that “about half” of all eligible Americans have received booster doses so far. Fauci made the remarks alongside COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients at a White House briefing. “Why would people who had enough understanding of the risk to go ahead and get the primary series—why we don’t have more getting the booster,” Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, said in response. “I don’t have an easy explanation for that.”

Fauci said that he believes that federal health data suggests that it is “stunningly obvious” that vaccinated people should get a booster dose. “So, the only thing that we can do is to continue to come out with the data and to make sure the American public appreciates why it is so important for optimal protection to get boosted,” he said. Fauci’s comments come as several recent studies have shown that natural immunity, or the immunity achieved by prior COVID-19 infection, provides effective and lasting protection. One preprint study published in Italy in late January suggested that natural immunity lasts about 18 months.

“At 18 months, 97 percent participants tested positive for anti-NCP, hinting towards the persistence of infection-induced immunity even for the vaccinated individuals,” researchers wrote in a study posted to the Medrxiv website, referring to nucleocapsid, a type of protein within the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

“Chief Sloly outlined that federal intelligence authorities will be “collecting financial, digital, vehicle registration, driver identification, insurance status and other related evidence that will be used in prosecution.“

• Attorney Representing Freedom Convoy Shares a Message (CTH)

Keith Wilson is the lawyer representing the “Truckers for Freedom” organization. Earlier today, prior to the GoFundMe announcement, Mr. Wilson posted a video message for everyone concerning the earlier announcement made by the Ottawa Police chief Peter Sloly. One note: I believe the referenced Canadian Freedom Charter was suspended as part of the national state of emergency declared by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as the justification for the restrictions now being protested.

Earlier Today – Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly held a press conference on Friday announcing measures to combat the continued Freedom Convoy protests in the streets, and to block any additional protesting support from arriving. In essence, the Ottawa police are going to use domestic terrorism authority against the Canadian freedom protest groups. The outlined measures include deploying an additional 150 municipal police officers and undercover federal agents to infiltrate the protest and gather intelligence useful for the purpose of eliminating their effort. Chief Sloly outlined that federal intelligence authorities will be “collecting financial, digital, vehicle registration, driver identification, insurance status and other related evidence that will be used in prosecution.” The jackboots will focus on using acts of mischief, hate, harassment, intimidation and other threatening behaviors, whether real or created by Canadian intelligence operations, to target the protestors.

Additionally, a “surge and contain” strategy will be used to isolate the protest in the red zone area in front of Parliament Hill. Ottawa police will use heavy concrete barriers as barricades, to create no-access roadways throughout the downtown core, and they will likely close highway off-ramps and bridges to stop additional support and/or protest groups from arriving. The goal is to isolate the current protest groups, cut off their supply and support logistics, and pick them off. Further, any police officer who is caught aiding, assisting, supporting, sympathizing with or facilitating the ongoing freedom protest in the city, will be removed from duty and subject to arrest. All Ottawa police officers are to regard the protesting group as an unlawful, extremist and hate-filled mob and have a duty to comply with the instructions of the command and control structure.

GoFundMe will become a lot smaller. People don’t like their money stolen, or redirected.

• GoFundMe Shuts Down Freedom Convoy Fundraiser (RT)

Crowdfunding site GoFundMe has shut down a campaign in support of the anti-vaccine mandate movement in Canada, after it amassed nearly $8 million, claiming that the protest is no longer peaceful. Following a review of “relevant facts” and “multiple discussions with local law enforcement and city officials,” the fundraising was found to be in violation of the platform’s rule that “prohibits the promotion of violence and harassment,” the company said in a statement on Friday. The platform admitted that the organizers “provided a clear distribution plan for the initial $1M that was released earlier this week and confirmed funds would be used only for participants who traveled to Ottawa to participate in a peaceful protest,” but claimed that the situation has since “evolved” and no further funds will be released.

“Given how this situation has evolved, no further funds will be directly distributed to the Freedom Convoy organizers — we will work with organizers to send all remaining funds to credible and established charities verified by GoFundMe.” The fundraiser has garnered $7,964,141 (Can$10,096,400) as of Wednesday night, when it was suspended for “review.” GoFundMe said all donors may now submit a request for a full refund until February 19, 2022. The crowdfunding site said it wants to remain a “trusted platform” and insisted that it “supports peaceful protests.” The Freedom Convoy kicked off last week in protest of a vaccination mandate for truckers traveling between the United States and Canada, seeing scores of vehicles blockade a border crossing near Coutts, Alberta and create a miles-long backup stretching into Montana.

Convoy Milk River

An incredible scene here at RCMP check point in Milk River.

Hundreds of protestors HONKERED down in support of truckers in Coutts, who blocked the border earlier this week in defiance of the mandates.

Lane's have since been opened.

Food, fires, family and lots of wind. pic.twitter.com/xIaj2bFP5F

— K2 (@kiansimone44) February 5, 2022

GiveSendGo is working hard to accomodate the overwhelming amount of donations.

• Freedom Convoy Finds New Crowdfunding Platform & Crashes It (RT)

A website hosting a new fundraising effort to support truck drivers protesting vaccine mandates in Canada is experiencing major technical difficulties, with a wave of traffic crashing the platform after GoFundMe canceled a prior campaign that garnered millions of dollars. Shortly after GoFundMe gave the boot to the ‘Freedom Convoy 2022’ campaign on Friday afternoon, organizers made another attempt on Christian crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo, raising more than $150,000 in just a matter of hours. A spike in visitors has caused problems for the website, however.

“We know the site is slow, or getting a server error. We are working on it! All hands on deck. There’s thousands on [the site] making successful donations so please try again if you get an error!” it said. The new fundraiser features a brief video from organizer Tamara Lich, who explained that GoFundMe had shut down the previous campaign that raised around $8 million (Can$10 million) after only disbursing $1 million, freezing the rest. “We decided to team up with an organization called GiveSendGo, which is going to enable us to get donations into the hands of the truckers much, much quicker while everybody gets the rest of this stuff sorted out,” she said, adding “You know we plan to be here for the long-haul, as long as it takes to ensure that your rights and freedoms are restored.”

The money is being raised to support a convoy of truckers who have descended on the Canadian capital to demand an end to cross-border vaccine requirements, staging a massive protest in Ottawa. Others have gathered near the border with the US, creating a blockade of big rigs and other vehicles. While local police have denounced the gatherings as disruptive and unlawful, authorities have been unable to disperse the demonstrators for several days. On the heels of GoFundMe’s decision to scrap the original fund drive, the Ottawa Police Service cheered the move, thanking the site for “listening to our concerns as a City and a police service.” “The decision to withhold funding for these unlawful demonstrations is an important step and we call on all crowdfunding sites to follow,” it said.

The Canada I love
https://twitter.com/i/status/1489334216672305152

“Protesters in downtown Ottawa “remain highly organized, well-funded, extremely committed to resisting all attempts to end the demonstration safely,” Sloly said.”

That’s the same guy who said last week that the protest was uniquely peaceful.

And they’re quite willing to end the demonstration safely, just not on Trudeau’s terms.

• Elon Musk Slams GoFundMe Over Protesting Truckers (RT)

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted a meme on Saturday, calling US-based fundraising platform GoFundMe “professional thieves.”Musk also posted a screenshot of the platform’s 2020 tweet promoting a campaign to raise money for farming inside the ‘CHOP’ zone (Capitol Hill Occupied Protest) in downtown Seattle, Washington, which was occupied by activists during the peak of the anti-racism and police brutality protests in the US that year. GoFundMe’s tweet from two years ago said: “In a community with no police, this farmer is feeding people and bringing them closer together.” “Double standard?” Musk wrote on Saturday, referring to the platform’s recent decision to stop the campaign to raise money for Canadian truckers protesting the country’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate. Musk also denied reports that he had donated to the protesters.

[..] Ottawa Police thanked GoFundMe on Twitter. “The decision to withhold funding for these unlawful demonstrations is an important step and we call on all crowdfunding sites to follow,” they wrote. Police earlier said they were aware of “inappropriate and threatening language on social media” related to the protests. Ottawa police chief Peter Sloly described the protests on Friday as “increasingly volatile and increasingly dangerous.” Protesters in downtown Ottawa “remain highly organized, well-funded, extremely committed to resisting all attempts to end the demonstration safely,” Sloly said.

What Musk was referring to.

• GoFundMe Supported Antifa’s ‘CHAZ/CHOP’ Even After People Were Murdered (PM)

GoFundMe, the crowdfunding platform that recently seized over $10 million in funds intended for the Canadian truckers’ Freedom Convoy, financially supported and promoted the illegal “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” or CHAZ/CHOP in Seattle, Washington during the height of the summer 2020 riots that broke out in the wake of George Floyd’s death. As detailed by Jack Posobiec on Twitter, GoFundMe tweeted an advertisement publicizing one of the many crowdfunds set up in the CHAZ/CHOP, which was established by Black Lives Matter supporters, local gangs, and elements of Antifa, who set up a cop-free perimeter that encased several neighborhoods in Seattle’s Capitol Hill district. Several people, including three minors, were gunned down at the location.

In a tweet, GoFundMe promoted the CHAZ/CHOP: “In a community with no police, this farmer is feeding people & bringing them closer together.” The organization linked to a Bloomberg Quicktake video about revolutionary gardening – an endeavor that was widely mocked on social media after videos and pictures showed a “garden” being planted by CHAZ/CHOP “residents” who spread cardboard on turf with soil above it. Crucially, GoFundMe has supported violent, illegal movements such as CHAZ/CHOP but has cited “police reports of violence and other unlawful activity” and its policies against “violence and harassment” as its reason for seizing the Freedom Convoy’s crowdfund.

“If the Government failed to follow the applicable rules – which will be revealed through additional discovery – a ground may exist to dismiss the indictment.”

• New Filing Accuses Feds Of Snooping On Bannon Lawyer (JTN)

The legal team for former Trump adviser Steve Bannon leveled explosive charges Friday night, accusing federal prosecutors of snooping on one of his defense lawyers and the FBI of misleading the grand jury through omissions. In a motion filed in U.S. District Court where Bannon is charged with contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena for the Jan. committee, lawyers disclosed evidence the Justice Department and phone carriers turned over to them show prosecutors obtained phone and email records for defense lawyer Robert J. Costello. “The Government used grand jury subpoenas to investigate Mr. Bannon’s attorney, Robert J. Costello, Esquire, at the very time that Mr. Costello was communicating with the prosecution team and advocating on Mr. Bannon’s behalf,” the defense motion stated.

“There are stringent rules that apply to the investigation of attorneys. Such rules exist because these types of investigations may constitute an impermissible interference with the attorney-client relationship, and the effective assistance of counsel as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” it added. “If the Government failed to follow the applicable rules – which will be revealed through additional discovery – a ground may exist to dismiss the indictment. The lawyers submitted evidence turned over by the DOJ that appears to confirm Costello’s email and phone records were obtained, including a letter from the prosecutors themselves, but it does not indicate whether the records were obtained as a result of Bannon’s case or another. Costello also represents former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

“Mr. Costello represented Mr. Bannon before the January 6th Select Committee in relation to the subpoena it issued to Mr. Bannon and is, therefore, a witness to the conduct charged in the Indictment,” prosecutor Amanda Vaughn explained in a Jan. 7 letter. But Vaughn wrote that “the Government has not taken any steps to obtain any attorney-work product relating to any attorney’s representation of Mr. Bannon or to obtain any confidential communications between Mr. Bannon, Mr. Costello, and Mr. Katz, or between Mr. Bannon and any other attorneys.”

Do you see Putin walking into a trap? Or is he the one setting the trap?

• What a US Trap for Russia in Ukraine Might Look Like (Lauria)

United States plans to weaken Russia by imposing punishing sanctions and bringing world condemnation on Moscow depend on Washington’s hysteria about a Russian invasion of Ukraine actually coming true. At his press conference on Tuesday, Vladimir Putin said, “I still believe the United States is not that concerned about Ukraine’s security, though they may think about it on the sidelines. Its main goal is to contain Russia’s development. This is the whole point. In this sense, Ukraine is simply a tool to reach this goal. This can be done in different ways: by drawing us into some armed conflict, or compelling its allies in Europe to impose tough sanctions on us like the US is talking about today.”

At the U.N. Security Council on Monday, Russia’s U.N. envoy Vassily Nebenzia said: “Our Western colleagues say that de-escalation is needed, but they are the first to build up tension, enhance rhetoric and escalate the situation. Talks about an imminent war are provocative per se. It might seem you call for it, want it and wait for it to come, as if you wanted your allegations to come true.” The war mania being drummed up in U.S. and British media recalls even Zbigniew Brzezinski‘s warning that “whipping up anti-Russian hysteria … could eventually become a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Without an invasion the U.S. seems lost. No sanctions, no world opprobrium, no weakening of Russia. If the U.S. is trying to lure Russia into a trap in Ukraine, what might it look like?

Ukraine says it is not planning an offensive against the breakaway provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, which border Russia in the east. But just ten days ago Ukrainian President Zelensky said: “We have learned to contain external threats. It is time we begin offensive actions aimed at securing our national interests. Our citizens are united in wanting their territory returned” Joe Biden has said a Russian invasion will come in February, when the ground freezes. But it could also be the time for a Kiev offensive to recover the two Donbass provinces. NATO nations are pouring weapons into Ukraine supposedly to defend it against the “invasion.” But the weapons transfers could instead be preparation for an offensive, on orders from Washington. Since the 2014 U.S.-backed coup the U.S. essentially runs the country and all Ukrainian leaders, including Zelensky, serve at the pleasure of the U.S. president.

The ground will also be frozen for Kiev’s forces in February, which was the month of the 2014 coup, while Putin was in Sochi for the Winter Olympics. He is now in Beijing for the 2022 Winter Olympics, away from the command center in Moscow. (The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing was also the time Georgia instigated its war with Russia against its renegade provinces at the behest of the United States.) When Kiev stepped up attacks against Donbass in March and October 2021, Russia both time increased its troop deployments near the Ukraine border, which this time is being interpreted by Washington as plans for an “imminent” invasion. It is an invasion the U.S. absolutely needs to implement its plans to weaken Russia (and ultimately to replace Putin with a pliable leader in the mold of Boris Yeltsin.) As Moscow has never openly threatened such an invasion, the U.S. appears to be devising ways to get it.

“..even the news media is tired of its role in the controlled demolition of our country.”

• Death Wish (Jim Kunstler)

Looks like the backup plan is for “Joe Biden’s” geniuses in the foreign affairs and intel bureaucracy to start a war with Russia over Ukraine, our dearest ally in the whole wide world (not). Yesterday, State Department spox Ned Price floated up a raggedy balloon about Russia pulling a “false flag” stunt in Ukraine’s Donbass frontier to get things going. It sounded like he was just making shit up. And he was conspicuously short on details. “Our intel people something something, blah blah….” Skeptical reporters shot the balloon down with a few barbed remarks — the darn thing just zinged around the press room with the air rushing out and crashed on the spox’s podium — suggesting that even the news media is tired of its role in the controlled demolition of our country.

More likely, though, the financial scaffold of Late Modernity gives way under the burden of rackets and Ponzis it has been asked to support. This week, Facebook (a.k.a. Meta) scored the world record for biggest single-day market value drop ever, shedding $232-billion in capital losses. You go, Zuck! The Everything Bubble has achieved supernova scale and everybody knows she’s gonna blow as soon as Jay Powell lifts the Fed Funds rate twenty-five basis points. When that finally happens, things get realer than real and Truth comes marching in like the saints with bells on. It’ll be the Left’s Masque of the Red Death… ashes, ashes, all fall down.

The actual global economy itself — the thing that sends, you know, products from one place to another — is seizing up like the engine on a beater 1998 Buick Regal. Long about right now, lots of things are not going from point A to Point B, including stuff of a food nature. It’s starting to irk the home-folks. When all that goes south, you’ll hear no more about Covid-19, systemic racism, the patriarchy, the drag queen story hour, and all the other hobgoblins that infest the Left’s gospel garden of Wokery. The kryptonite is coming on hard. They are done… and for the moment we are stuck with them running the country.

“..his collection ‘The Merge’ set a new record for an artwork sold publicly by a living artist at US $91.8 million..”

• Record-Breaking Artist Pak Joins Forces With Assange To Make NFT History (CF)

Censored’ is a digital art collection created by NFT artist Pak in collaboration with imprisoned WikiLeaks-founder Julian Assange.The art collection titled ‘Censored’ will be unveiled shortly in time for the auction on February 7th. ‘Censored’ is shrouded in mystery and is set to make NFT history.Pak has dropped some hints with tweets about censorship and freedom. On January 5th, Pak’s Twitter account @muratpak tweeted “nine hundred ninety nine”, signifying the number of days that Julian Assange had spent in prison. The following day, @muratpak tweeted “define freedom”, followed by “freedom as a medium” and linked to a WikiLeaks tweet. Renowned digital artist Pak is one of the highest grossing artists alive, known for pushing conceptual and stylistic boundaries. Pak became a household name in the traditional art world after Sotheby’s auctioned his collection ‘The “Fungible’ in April 2021, selling for US $16.8 million. In December 2021, Pak again made headlines as his collection ‘The Merge’ set a new record for an artwork sold publicly by a living artist at US $91.8 million, surpassing Jeff Koons’s “Rabbit”. [..]

‘Censored’ is a two-part NFT collection: The first part is a one of a kind (“1/1 edition”) NFT, which Pak describes as “dynamic and generative”. “Dynamic” means that the digital art piece changes over time. “Generative” means that the artwork is generated from the artist’s instructions on the blockchain. The single edition NFT is expected to attract major collectors and NFT-world cooperative funds known as Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). The second part of the collection is an “open edition,” which in addition to being “dynamic” will also be participative. The open edition is designed to be more accessible and therefore draw a broader pool of collectors. As a reference point, Pak’s record-breaking collection ‘Merge’ set the record for open editions with 30,000 collectors and grossing US $91.8 million.

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Debt Rattle February 4 2022

Feb 042022

February 4, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:20 am Finance Tagged with: despotism, false flag, free speech, immunity, Joe Rogan, Molnupiravir, ports, restrictions, Russia, Trudeau, Vitamin D 101 Responses »

James McNeill Whistler Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket 1875

• 12 Countries Roll Back COVID Restrictions, Israel Scraps ‘Green Pass’ (CHD)

• Israel Will Abolish The Vaxx Passport And Most Testing Requirements (Haa.)

• Italy’s Covid Despotism Just Got Worse (Salonia)

• What The Omicron Wave Is Revealing About Human Immunity (Nature)

• Lethal Mutagenesis As An Antiviral Strategy (Science)

• British Children Up To 52 Times More Likely To Die Following A Covid Shot (LSN)

• Rejoice! An End To The Dreaded Covid Count… (Hoenderkamp)

• Study Offers Strongest Proof Yet Of Vitamin D’s Power To Fight Covid (ToI)

• Calls for Help From Families of Patients Hospitalized With COVID-19 (ET)

• Justin Trudeau is a Bungler and Menace to His Nation (Kohlmayer)

• We Were Warned About the Ports (Sammon)

• Spotify Spat Shows Why Joe Rogan And His Podcast Matter (FT)

• Can Joe Rogan Save Free Speech? (Turley)

• North Korea Hacked Him. So He Took Down Its Internet (Wired)

• Reporter Shreds Admin Spox Over ‘Russian False Flag’ Claims (ZH)

Lab Leak Conspirancy

“..no longer a “socially critical disease.”

• 12 Countries Roll Back COVID Restrictions, Israel Scraps ‘Green Pass’ (CHD)

Europe is accelerating steps to roll back COVID restrictions as efforts to control the spread of the virus have failed and countries downgrade the threat posed by SARS-CoV-2. Sweden and Switzerland joined Denmark, Norway, Finland, Ireland, The Netherlands, Italy, Lithuania, France and the UK in announcing they will lift COVID restrictions and open up their countries. Top Israeli officials also announced this week they are abolishing the country’s “Green Pass” COVID vaccine passport for restaurants, hotels, gyms and theaters. The policy update will take effect Feb. 6, Prime Minister Naftali Bennet’s government said, pending approval by a parliamentary committee. Israel’s proof-of-vaccination policy will remain in effect for events such as parties or weddings.

“To continue the green pass in the same way can create false assurances,” said Nadav Davidovitch, an epidemiologist and public health physician advising Prime Minister Naftali Bennet’s government. “It’s not reducing infections in closed spaces like theatres. It needs to be used mainly for high-risk places like hospitals, elderly care homes, or events when you are eating and singing and dancing.” Sweden will lift all COVID restrictions by Feb. 9, the Swedish government said today. According to Politico, the Swedish Public Health Agency said it reassessed COVID as “not being socially critical” due to a better understanding of the Omicron variant, which is milder and associated with fewer hospitalizations.

“It’s time to open up Sweden,” said Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson. “The pandemic isn’t over, but it is moving into a new phase.” The decision to open Sweden came a day after Switzerland, citing high immunity levels and the milder Omicron variant, announced it will abolish mandatory work-from-home and the quarantine rules beginning today. The government also will lift health measures at the borders and tourists will no longer need to receive Swiss COVID certificates. The Swiss government said it planned to phase out other restrictions after consulting with 26 cantons, employers, trade unions and parliamentary committees.

[..] Just days before Sweden and Switzerland’s announcements, Denmark became the first country in the European Union to lift all COVID restrictions, reclassifying COVID as an endemic disease. Danish Health Minister Magnus Heunicke on Feb. 1 wrote a letter to the parliament’s epidemiology committee stating COVID was no longer a “socially critical disease.” Based on the recommendations of the committee, the government decided to scrap COVID restrictions. [..] Italy, France, Norway, Lithuania, England and Finland also relaxed restrictions, Bloomberg reported. “We should discuss whether it’s time for us to take a different viewpoint and start unwinding restrictions even with a high number of infections,” Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin told reporters. “I hope that we can be rid of restrictions during February.”

“..effectively removing barriers to entry for the unvaccinated..”

• Israel Will Abolish The Vaxx Passport And Most Testing Requirements (Haa.)

Israel’s coronavirus cabinet decided to abolish its so-called green passport program for most places of entertainment, including hotels, restaurants, gyms and movie theaters, effectively removing barriers to entry for the unvaccinated. The new policy will come into effect on Sunday, and will leave the proof of vaccination in place for events “with significantly greater risk of infection,” such as weddings and parties. The cabinet also decided to scrap the requirement to present a PCR test upon exiting the country. Following recommendations of the Health Ministry, the cabinet further scrapped the expiration date on green passports for anyone who has received a third or fourth dose of the vaccine, meaning those passes would be valid indefinitely.

But for people who have only had two doses, or who recovered from the virus but aren’t vaccinated, the pass will be valid for only four months from the date of the second dose or the recovery. Those who are not fully vaccinated and employed in the education, health and welfare sectors will still be required to undergo biweekly tests. The decisions come in the midst of Israel’s omicron wave, with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett saying that he predicts “one-and-a-half to two hard weeks ahead of us.” [..] Meanwhile, the Health Ministry reported that the R number – the average number of people each coronavirus carrier infects – further declined on Tuesday to 0.92. Any number under 1 indicates that the pandemic is shrinking. The figure is calculated according to data from the previous 10 days.

“..they are to be allowed access to supermarkets only to buy “goods of primary necessity.”

• Italy’s Covid Despotism Just Got Worse (Salonia)

A couple of weeks ago, a new decree of the Draghi government established yet more rules restricting the lives of people who have not been injected with the latest vaccine booster and who therefore cannot show the latest version of the Green Pass. These second-class citizens, who have already been stripped of their right to move, work, and participate in a great number of social activities, are now forbidden from entering post offices to withdraw their pension, and they are to be allowed access to supermarkets only to buy “goods of primary necessity.” In other words, the Italian government decides what kind of food and what other goods (if any) these people will be able to purchase.

Among Western countries, Italy has been one of those experiencing the most systematic denial of basic civil rights over the past two years. Coalition governments led first by Giuseppe Conte and then by Mario Draghi have empowered an unelected committee of “experts” called the Comitato Tecnico Scientifico, which has in turn empowered the governments by assigning a scientific aura to every decree, every action, and every word coming from the executive. This has resulted in an endless series of lockdown measures that for long periods have erased freedom of movement, the right to work, property rights over businesses and shops, freedom to assemble, freedom to worship, and even the distinction of jurisdictional spheres between church and political authority (with state bureaucrats closing churches and then handing out petty instructions on what rites could be carried out, how liturgies should be curtailed, and how many people if any could be present at masses and funerals).

In the meantime, the legislative branch has been humbled, and government by urgent decrees from the executive has become the norm. The very constitutional structure of the country has been bent, and a new concept called “stato di emergenza” (state of emergency) has been invented out of thin air, even though it is nowhere to be found in Italy’s republican constitution. If we were not living in the age of CNN, fake news, and outrageous subsidies handed out by politicians to newspapers and the media, one could legitimately wonder where the journalists were while all this was going on? In fact, journalists in Italy are among the main culprits of the current dystopian reality, since they have given platforms to “experts” who agreed with lockdowns and other measures that expanded government control over all aspects of life, while at the same time they ferociously mocked and ostracized doctors and scientists who dared to question the logic of outdoor mask mandates and curfews for restaurants.

Anybody who dared to point out the disastrous consequences of a prolonged lockdown on mental health and on people suffering from other pathologies, or the link between the economy and public health, was accused of being a “covid denier.” This is a pattern that surely readers recognize, as they have seen it in the US and many other countries over the past two years. The fact that virtually every opinion labelled by the media as “conspiracy theory” has turned out to be true just three or four months later has done nothing to shake the arrogance of the corrupt mass media, who are entrenched in their monopoly over the news cycle, thanks to their access to state funding and political favors. And this is true in Italy as virtually everywhere else.

Nature Magazine tries hard to find a role for the vaccines. It’s not there.

The vaccines don’t want to help or boost our immune system, they want to take over its role. And that is every bit as bad as it sounds.

• What The Omicron Wave Is Revealing About Human Immunity (Nature)

Immune memory depends on more than just antibodies. Even when antibody levels drop, memory B cells can recognize a return invader, divide, and quickly start churning out antibodies to fight it. And the memory B-cell response improves over time, at least in the short term. Six months after vaccination, the individuals in Wherry’s study6 had elevated numbers of memory B cells that responded not only to the original SARS-CoV-2, but also to three other variants of concern. And then there are T cells, the third pillar of immune memory. On coming into contact with an antigen, these multiply into a pool of effector cells that act to wipe out the infection. Killer T cells quickly divide to assassinate infected cells, and various types of helper T cell secrete chemical signals that stimulate other parts of the immune system, including B cells. After the threat has passed, some of these cells persist as memory T cells.

Some people might carry memory T cells from past coronavirus infections — such as those that cause common colds — that can recognize SARS-CoV-2. These cells could help to fight the infection, or even stop it completely. One study7 found that health-care workers who were exposed to SARS-CoV-2 but never tested positive had subtle signs of a response to infection. The researchers hypothesize that cross-reactive T cells shut the infection down before it could take hold. “These people did have an infection in a sort of loosest sense of the word,” says Mala Maini, an immunologist at University College London who led the study. But “there’s probably not much virus around because it’s being shut down very quickly”. This idea is still controversial, and the phenomenon might be rare. Memory cells typically can’t block infection in the way that neutralizing antibodies can, but they don’t necessarily need to.

With COVID-19, infection happens quickly, but it takes a little while to cause serious illness. That gives memory T cells some time to do their jobs. When re-exposed to a virus or booster, these cells will kick into overdrive, “proliferating like crazy”, Crotty says. “In a 24-hour period, you can get a tenfold increase in the number of your memory T cells.” That’s probably not fast enough to have much of an effect on getting sick, he adds. But it could be fast enough to prevent hospitalization. And it’s much harder for the virus to find a way around the T-cell response. That’s because T cells in one individual recognize different parts of the virus than do T cells in another individual. So a virus could mutate to escape one person’s T-cell response, but not another’s. “Escape is meaningless at the population level,” Crotty says. Also, T cells can see parts of the virus (or the spike protein) that antibodies can’t, including pieces that are less likely to mutate.

More on RNA potential to change DNA, via reverse transcriptase. Don’t be a guinea pig.

• Lethal Mutagenesis As An Antiviral Strategy (Science)

There is a gap in our knowledge in scaling short-term lab-based assays (using bacteria, animal cells, and animal models) for mutagenic activity with long-term risk to human health. Mutagens that are incorporated during cellular DNA synthesis are problematic for a developing fetus (where cells are undergoing rapid division), male germline cells (which continue to divide throughout life), and cancer risk (where the small fraction of human cells that are dividing have the potential to incorporate a mutation that could contribute to cancer development). Humans are exposed to mutagens throughout life—for example, DNA mutations are induced by x-ray imaging or during air travel—so there are levels of DNA damage that are considered to be largely inconsequential.

If the molnupiravir metabolite NHC really is a mutagen in dividing animal cells, how should negative data in an animal model be interpreted? Are such negative data sufficient to ensure long-term safety in humans, or does the lack of knowledge about the link between negative results in animal assays and long-term outcomes in human health need to be acknowledged? Molnupiravir use will come with some restrictions around short-term risks associated with reproductive health, but it may take years before potential long-term risks are understood. The best outcome, which is the assumption from the negative results in animals, is that molnupiravir treatment falls within the background level of exposure to mutagens that humans already experience and tolerate. The half-life of molnupiravir metabolites in human tissue is unknown.

[..] Molnupiravir has the potential to lower the disease burden of SARS-CoV-2 infections and help contain future emerging RNA viruses. However, how can its potential long-term effects as a mutagen be assessed? The following steps are suggested: Treatment should be restricted to those who will benefit the most, such as those who cannot tolerate other available treatments, those who have a preexisting condition that enhances the risk of COVID-19, and those who are more than 50 years of age and would be less affected by a potential long-term risk of cancer or reproductive risks. A registry of a cohort of people who received molnupiravir should be kept to longitudinally monitor the frequency of cancer and other potential outcomes so that the opportunity to understand the risk (or lack thereof) associated with the use of a mutagenic ribonucleoside as an antiviral is not missed.

Strategies to limit metabolism of mutagenic analogs from the ribonucleotide pool into the 2′ -deoxyribonucleotide pool should be explored to limit the potential DNA mutation load in the host. In addition, the viral population diversity should be evaluated after treatment with molnupiravir in those who fail to clear the virus to see whether the treatment accelerates viral evolution. Lethal mutagenesis has the potential to be an important antiviral strategy for RNA viruses, especially in emerging infections when there is an absence of virus-specific antivirals. The potential of this strategy should be exploited, but the possible risks should be acknowledged and addressed.

Hmmm. A bit skeptical. The ONS provides stats in 100,000 person-years instead of 100,000 population, and for good reason, but what do they mean when numbers are very low?

• British Children Up To 52 Times More Likely To Die Following A Covid Shot (LSN)

In December, the ONS published age-standardized data on the mortality rates of individuals in 5-year age sets in Britain, grouped by their “vaccination” status for the COVID-19 shots. The data accounts for the period from January 1 to October 31, 2021. The ONS tabulated “Monthly age-standardised mortality rates by age-group and vaccination status for deaths involving COVID-19, per 100,000 person-years” but presented the data only for ages 18 and over. However, the jabs are available to children as young as 12, and those children are allowed to receive the shot against their parents’ wishes. In limited cases, children as young as 5 have been given a reduced dosage of the shots.

Nevertheless, as noted by The Exposé, a separate table outlining “deaths and person-years by vaccination status” includes 5-year age groups from 10-years-old and up. From the data provided, a calculation of the mortality rate per 100,000 person-years can be made. The rate per 100,000 person-years delineation is used in preference over the simpler 100,000 population calculation to better represent the mortality rates over a specific period of time, as people in one “vaccination” group – such as un-jabbed, single-jabbed, and double-jabbed – soon move into the next group.

[..] the 100,000 person-years calculation can be made, with the younger group coming out at 20.9 un-jabbed per 100,000 person-years and the older group at 15.9. Following this, the mortality rate per 100,000 person-years is worked out by dividing the number of deaths within each group by the 100,000 person-years calculation. The result is that for the 10-14 year group, the un-jabbed mortality per 100,000 person-years is 4.6 while the un-jabbed mortality rate per 100,000 person-years for the 15 19 group is 10.1. Using the same data set and calculation, the mortality rate for 10-14-year-olds who received one dose of the jabs suffered a 45.1 per 100,000 person-years death rate, while 15 19-year-olds with one jab suffered 18.3 deaths per 100,00 person-years.

[..] the 15 per cent recorded when the death rate was at its peak in May 2020.. [..] by Tuesday the CFR had fallen to 0.19 per cent…

• Rejoice! An End To The Dreaded Covid Count… (Hoenderkamp)

The Government last month signalled its intention to scrap the legal requirement for infected people to self-isolate on March 24, and yesterday it was claimed that it will stop releasing daily Covid updates in April. To which I say ‘Rejoice!’ – but why can’t we end both practices today? And, while we’re about it, stop testing too. If you think such a course sounds alarmingly precipitate, allow me to explain why there is no need to delay a moment longer. The truth is that the advent of the highly infectious (although markedly milder) Omicron variant has changed everything. Last week the Case Fatality Rate (CFR) – the proportion of infected people who died of Covid – was hovering at around 0.95 per cent.

That is way below the 15 per cent recorded when the death rate was at its peak in May 2020 when testing was minimal. And since Monday, when the Office For National Statistics included ‘reinfections’ – people who have contracted the virus more than once – on its daily Covid dashboard for the first time, the CFR has plummeted still further. With the addition of hundreds of thousands of cases to the weekly total, by Tuesday the CFR had fallen to 0.19 per cent, a percentage akin to that of flu, an illness which currently has a fatality rate of between 0.1 and 0.2 per cent. The average age of death from Covid, meanwhile, remains at the pre-pandemic 82, with data from the US showing that 75 per cent of people who die with Covid have no fewer than four underlying serious conditions.

Oh c’mon, we need to study that? “We found it remarkable, and striking..” says a doctor. How many lives were lost?

• Study Offers Strongest Proof Yet Of Vitamin D’s Power To Fight Covid (ToI)

Israel scientists say they have gathered the most convincing evidence to date that increased vitamin D levels can help COVID-19 patients reduce the risk of serious illness or death. Researchers from Bar Ilan University and the Galilee Medical Center say that the vitamin has such a strong impact on disease severity that they can predict how people would fare if infected based on nothing more than their ages and vitamin D levels. Lacking vitamin D significantly increases danger levels, they concluded in newly peer-reviewed research published Thursday in the journal PLOS One. The study is based on research conducted during Israel’s first two waves of the virus, before vaccines were widely available, and doctors emphasized that vitamin supplements were not a substitute for vaccines, but rather a way to keep immunity levels from falling.

Vitamin D deficiency is endemic across the Middle East, including in Israel, where nearly four in five people are low on the vitamin, according to one study from 2011. By taking supplements before infection, though, the researchers in the new Israeli study found that patients could avoid the worst effects of the disease. “We found it remarkable, and striking, to see the difference in the chances of becoming a severe patient when you are lacking in vitamin D compared to when you’re not,” said Dr. Amiel Dror, a Galilee Medical Center physician and Bar Ilan researcher who was part of the team behind the study. He noted that his study was conducted pre-Omicron, but said that the coronavirus doesn’t change fundamentally enough between variants to negate vitamin D effectiveness.

“What we’re seeing when vitamin D helps people with COVID infections is a result of its effectiveness in bolstering the immune systems to deal with viral pathogens that attack the respiratory system,” he told The Times of Israel. “This is equally relevant for Omicron as it was for previous variants.” [..] In June, researchers published preliminary findings showing that 26 percent of coronavirus patients died if they were vitamin D deficient soon before hospitalization, compared to 3% who had normal levels of vitamin D. They also determined that hospitalized patients who were vitamin D deficient were 14 times more likely, on average, to end up in severe or critical condition than others.

Attorney’s advice: “Stay out of the hospital, no matter what.”

• Calls for Help From Families of Patients Hospitalized With COVID-19 (ET)

Attorney Esther Bodek in Aurora, Colorado, also knows of a patient’s family members who were arrested when communications with a hospital went sour. She says requests from families of COVID-19 patients have flooded in since November. “It’s traumatizing,” Bodek said, “because it is a level of civil rights abuses that I have never encountered in my entire life.” In case after case, she’s seen a pattern of separating COVID-19 patients from their families and restricting visitation. “And during that period of time is usually when the remdesivir is administered.” Some families coming to her for help often strenuously object to treatment with remdesivir. When other treatments have failed, they desperately want to try things the hospital won’t allow, such as ivermectin and vitamins.

Those are part of a popular protocol used by independent doctors around the country and by people treating themselves at home. Bodek has fought many times to obtain those medications as a last-ditch effort to save a patient. She said the resistance she faces when dealing with the hospitals is maddening. “Any question about treatment starts immediate combativeness [by hospital staff], from what I’ve seen in the pattern of our cases,” she said. She’s had clients denied fluids and nutrition to the point of near-starvation. Since taking those cases she works night and day seven days a week. On the weekend, “I’ll be on the phone and talking to somebody in tears,” she said. “The hospital’s telling them they want to pull the plug and they’re trying to make a decision.

The doctor says, ‘We’re going to take him off life support now.’ And I’ve had to say ‘No! That’s not their choice!’” One of her clients works in billing in a hospital and told her that hospitals receive a bonus payment of $17,000 from the federal government for every patient confirmed to have COVID-19, Bodek said. A bonus payment of $37,000 is paid for any patient going on a ventilator, according to that client, Bodek said. [..] Bodek’s advice: “Stay out of the hospital, no matter what. And if it happens that you’re admitted, have a medical power of attorney immediately written up to say no to remdesivir.” She’s looking into filing civil rights violations lawsuits if claims of medical malpractice won’t work. “I’m determined to find a way to stop this abuse,” Bodek said. “This is definitely a fight we’re not giving up.”

Vaccine Insanity Syndrome (VIS).

• Justin Trudeau is a Bungler and Menace to His Nation (Kohlmayer)

At the beginning of January, Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, posted a message on Twitter in which he announced that he had just received his Covid vaccine booster and urged others to do likewise. At the end of January, Justin Trudeau posted a message on Twitter in which he announced that he had tested positive for Covid-19. Astoundingly, at the conclusion of his message Trudeau urged everyone to get the shots even though they failed to protect him from the disease. “Everyone, please get vaccinated and get boosted,” he insisted. Trudeau’s message shows the depth of irrationality – bordering on insanity – to which many have fallen victim. We propose to call this phenomenon the Vaccine Insanity Syndrome (VIS).

Those who suffer from VIS have largely lost touch with reality and things like common sense, evidence and logic no longer gain any traction in their thinking. Just to summarize the absurdity of the whole situation: Having been previously vaccinated, Trudeau gets additionally boostered and three weeks later contracts Covid-19. To put it in a different way, shortly after getting his third shot, Canada’s Prime Minister falls ill with the very disease against which these “effective” injections were supposed to protect him. But rather than repenting of his mistake, he goes on Twitter and advises the Canadian people to do the same. Where is any logic in this? Has Covid affected Trudeau’s brain? Or was it the injections that somehow diminished his capacity for thought and reflection?

If anything, Trudeau should be “Exhibit One” for why people should not get vaccinated and boostered, since he is now Canada’s poster boy for vaccine failure. Why, then, is he telling Canadians to do what he did? It cannot be because the vaccines and boosters will protect them against infection. The opposite is, in fact, the case. The data coming from all over the world is showing that the vaccinated are more likely to become infected than the unvaccinated. According to Steve Kirsch, “The numbers in the Denmark study described below are now confirmed by government data from Germany showing that vaccinated people are 8X more likely to develop Omicron than unvaccinated people. This is not surprising since a paper from Germany showed the same thing: the more you vaccinate, the worse it gets.”

Justin Trudeau, however, does not have to go to foreign lands to learn of vaccine failure. Below is a chart from Ontario which gives case numbers according to vaccination status. You will notice that the numbers for the fully vaccinated are more than three times those of the unvaccinated.

“It took Columbus less time to cross the Atlantic..”

• We Were Warned About the Ports (Sammon)

In July 2015, the Federal Maritime Commission, a federal agency with little name recognition and even less influence, released a report sounding the alarm about the state of America’s ports. A congestion crisis had been building for years and was fast becoming untenable; even the country’s relatively tepid economic-growth rate was straining against decades of disinvestment at its most critical trading hubs. Chassis weren’t available, trucks couldn’t get in or out, and terminals stayed perpetually clogged. That crisis had “resulted from events that have developed or emerged over a considerable period of time and from within the system itself, rather than being the result of external shocks, such as unanticipated surges in container volumes or management-labor issues,” the report surmised.

“Many seem to think it is inevitable that embracing ‘business as usual’ will lead to significant further declines in the performance of the U.S. intermodal transportation system.” And then, of course, business went on as usual. Almost five years passed before the coronavirus announced itself on American shores, and another year after that before the disease gave an already fissured supply chain the nudge it needed to fully rupture. And while the circumstances of a global pandemic, its shutdowns and labor shortages, seemed exceptional, it was something as routine as a double-digit import growth, feared specifically by the FMC since at least 2006, that sent shipping container volume skyrocketing and brought the system to a grinding halt. A prophecy that few heard and no one heeded had finally come true.

Before the Biden administration was even sworn in, the ports were already in a state of chaos. It got worse throughout the year, and by the time the administration appointed its ports czar John Porcari and began looking toward emergency intervention, only minor measures were even available to remedy decades of bipartisan mismanagement. Today, congestion at the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, collectively the nation’s largest, is “at historic high levels,” as the shipping giant Maersk announced in a customer advisory in late December. Reporting indicated that there were 133 vessels en route to San Pedro Bay, with delays stretching upward of 41 days. One ship in particular had left Busan, South Korea, on November 17 and was not scheduled to dock until January 2, a 47-day duration for a routine voyage that should take, at most, half that time. “It took Columbus less time to cross the Atlantic,” said Sal Mercogliano, an associate professor and maritime historian at Campbell University.

Jemima Kelly’s FT ed. tries to defend Rogan, but what’s this?:

“..when he is wrong, he admits it, as he did recently when his claim that young people were at greater risk of developing myocarditis after the vaccine than they were after contracting Covid was swiftly corrected by a guest on his show..”

• Spotify Spat Shows Why Joe Rogan And His Podcast Matter (FT)

The contrast between the vague virtue-signalling of the Sussexes’ statement and Rogan’s engaged response — which seemed authentic, humble and searching — shows why his show has become Spotify’s most popular podcast. With an estimated 11mn listeners per episode, the 54 year-old comedian and mixed martial arts commentator must be considered one of the most influential media figures in the world. With that power comes moral and intellectual responsibility and Rogan does not always seem totally aware of that. He was perhaps not mindful enough of the potential impact on his mainly young fans when he casually declared that if a fit and healthy 21-year-old asked him whether to get vaccinated, he would tell them not to.

He also gets his facts wrong sometimes, despite asserting them confidently. But when he is wrong, he admits it, as he did recently when his claim that young people were at greater risk of developing myocarditis after the vaccine than they were after contracting Covid was swiftly corrected by a guest on his show. One should not imagine that if Rogan were shut down, we would be rid of anyone wanting to pursue ideas that run against the grain. Nor should we want such a world — as Rogan points out in his video, some things once dismissed as conspiracy theories, such as the lab leak theory of Covid-19’s origins, are now considered plausible. Conspiracy theories did not spring into being with the arrival of podcasts or the internet — Gallup polling suggests that in 1976, 81 per cent of Americans believed there had been a conspiracy to kill John F Kennedy, contrary to the official line.

It is surely healthier, then, to have someone like Rogan willing to discuss controversial opinions with those who hold them than to confine these people to a corner of the internet where they are less visible but also less easy to correct when they are wrong. That’s quite apart from the fact that it would be utterly ineffective for Spotify to oust Rogan. The idea that the company gives him a platform that he would otherwise lack is fanciful. When Spotify reportedly paid more than $100mn for the exclusive rights to Rogan’s podcast in 2020, it was so as to benefit from the platform he already had.

I told a friend that I might write about Rogan in my column this week. The response I got was “Oh, God!” and a grimace, quickly followed by a confession that she had actually never listened to his podcast. The truth is that many of the people castigating Rogan haven’t either. If they had, they would know that the presenter is an open-minded host who seeks out all sorts of opinions rather than blindly following those of a particular tribe, and who seems genuinely keen to pursue the truth. Joe Rogan doesn’t need Spotify, but Spotify needs him; maybe we all do.

“Trust in the media has fallen to just 46 percent and as low as 40 percent in recent polling. Where are people going for information? It seems many have gone to podcasts — and specifically to Joe Rogan, at least 11 million of them.”

• Can Joe Rogan Save Free Speech? (Turley)

[..] social media companies and other corporations now regulate speech in the United States to a degree that an actual state media would struggle to replicate. Faced with a growing cancel culture, companies are scrubbing their platforms of dissenting viewpoints and converting forums into echo chambers. In the use of private companies, the left has achieved an ignoble distinction. While liberal writers and artists were blacklisted and investigated in the 1950s, liberal activists have succeeded in censoring opposing views to a degree that would have made Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wis.) blush. Rather than burn books, they have simply gotten stores to ban them or blacklist the authors.

For these companies, there is no value to protecting the speech rights of dissenting voices with powerful politicians, academics, and even some in the media demanding more censorship. But then they went after Rogan. Rogan’s popularity is precisely due to the fact that he is uncensored in what he says. As many networks and newspapers have become more of an echo chamber, viewers and readers have fled en masse. Trust in the media has fallen to just 46 percent and as low as 40 percent in recent polling. Where are people going for information? It seems many have gone to podcasts — and specifically to Joe Rogan, at least 11 million of them. While Young reportedly relies on Spotify for 60 percent of his royalty income, Spotify does not rely on Young or other rock stars for its primary profits. It is the reverse of market conditions from just a couple years ago.

The problem with controlling speech is that it has to be complete; it doesn’t work if there are alternatives to echo-chambered media. Rogan’s podcast is one of the biggest. With 11 million listeners, he surpassed cable and network audiences as well as the readership of the largest papers. His program allows people across the political spectrum to speak freely, including those who question official positions on vaccines and treatments. While Rogan has promised to be more careful in how information is presented on his show (and Spotify will add “advisories” on podcasts), his podcast survived the celebrity onslaught. As various investors seek to create free speech alternatives to Twitter and YouTube, there may be an emerging market for free speech products.

North Korea doesn’t have much internet. But still funny.

• North Korea Hacked Him. So He Took Down Its Internet (Wired)

For the past two weeks, observers of North Korea’s strange and tightly restricted corner of the internet began to notice that the country seemed to be dealing with some serious connectivity problems. On several different days, practically all of its websites—the notoriously isolated nation only has a few dozen—intermittently dropped offline en masse, from the booking site for its Air Koryo airline to Naenara, a page that serves as the official portal for dictator Kim Jong-un’s government. At least one of the central routers that allow access to the country’s networks appeared at one point to be paralyzed, crippling the Hermit Kingdom’s digital connections to the outside world.

Some North Korea watchers pointed out that the country had just carried out a series of missile tests, implying that a foreign government’s hackers might have launched a cyberattack against the rogue state to tell it to stop saber-rattling. But responsibility for North Korea’s ongoing internet outages doesn’t lie with US Cyber Command or any other state-sponsored hacking agency. In fact, it was the work of one American man in a T-shirt, pajama pants, and slippers, sitting in his living room night after night, watching Alien movies and eating spicy corn snacks—and periodically walking over to his home office to check on the progress of the programs he was running to disrupt the internet of an entire country.

Just over a year ago, an independent hacker who goes by the handle P4x was himself hacked by North Korean spies. P4x was just one victim of a hacking campaign that targeted Western security researchers with the apparent aim of stealing their hacking tools and details about software vulnerabilities. He says he managed to prevent those hackers from swiping anything of value from him. But he nonetheless felt deeply unnerved by state-sponsored hackers targeting him personally—and by the lack of any visible response from the US government. So after a year of letting his resentment simmer, P4x has taken matters into his own hands. “It felt like the right thing to do here. If they don’t see we have teeth, it’s just going to keep coming,” says the hacker. [..] “I want them to understand that if you come at us, it means some of your infrastructure is going down for a while.”

You’re inclined to say: EPIC! But it’s really just what every reporter should do every single time.

• Reporter Shreds Admin Spox Over ‘Russian False Flag’ Claims (ZH)

Earlier on Thursday the Biden administration and US intelligence came out with some explosive and outlandish claims, saying Russia is planning to release a video depicting graphic scenes of a “staged false explosion with corpses, actors depicting mourners, and images of destroyed locations and military equipment,” as CNN described it. This in order to justify a military invasion of Ukraine, given the false flag operation would feature Russian-backed separatists under attack by Ukrainian forces. Given such a narrative has been advanced in public, grabbing global headlines, but without so much as a shred of evidence – even mainstream media pundits are scratching their heads. Watch Associated Press writer Matt Lee demolish the State Department’s Ned Price, who refuses to provide any level of proof backing the bizarre and surprising claims. “This is like Alex Jones territory you’re getting into now!” Lee points out…

Peace?

[..] “Lee challenged Price, saying the State Department had presented “no evidence” that Russia has actually created a “crisis actor” video and insisting that he wouldn’t be satisfied with the administration’s claims alone. “If you doubt the credibility of the U.S. government, of the British government, of other governments and want to, you know, find solace in information that the Russians are putting out, that is for you to do,” Price responded.” Lee then pointed that given the extraordinary claims, some level of evidence is demanded given the mounting numbers of whopping government lies over the past two decades, including ‘Iraq WMDs’.

Price hid behind the “that’s classified” classic line often used whenever government officials want to shut down legitimate skepticism of their claims… “Like, ‘crisis actors’? This is Alex Jones territory you’re getting into,” he said. “Where is the declassified information?,” he repeated multiple times.In pressing for evidence to justify the administration’s claims, the veteran reporter referenced numerous U.S. intelligence failures that led to catastrophe in recent decades, including the “weapons of mass destruction” speculation that served as a pretext for America’s 2003 military intervention in Iraq as well as the U.S. timeline for Afghanistan’s fall to the Taliban that was totally upended in August.

@StateDeptSpox
https://twitter.com/i/status/1489374971948376064

“We’re declassifying evidence Government X may try to misinform you”
“What’s the evidence you’re declassifying?”
“I just gave you the evidence”
“Uhhh, you just made a statement, that’s not evidence”
“If you don’t trust my bizarre claims, something is wrong with you”

steroidbanking

When criminality of the financial system has be normalised to the point the general population accept it as the done thing, there is a disconnect between fact and fiction. #steroidbanking pic.twitter.com/HIDJX8vypW

— Ben Rickert (@Ben__Rickert) February 3, 2022

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