Jan 022023
 
 January 2, 2023  Posted by at 10:03 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  45 Responses »


Edward Hopper Burly Cobb’s House, South Truro 1930-33

 

Drone Attacks Continue On Kyiv And Eastern Ukraine (BBC)
Nancy Pelosi Is Stepping Down As US House Speaker, And Few Will Miss Her (RT)
Twitter’s COVID-19 Censorship Led to Loss of Life – Dr. Scott Atlas (ET)
Fauci Fibbed on the Day Everything Changed (Tucker)
How China Changed Its Zero-COVID Policy to a ‘Zero Non-COVID’ Policy (ET)
States Grand Jury to Hold Big Pharma Accountable for Covid Vaccines (BN)
Elon Musk Says He Is ‘Open’ to Idea of Buying Out Major Media Companies (BN)
In 2023 It Will Be All About The Dollar (Macleod)
USD Exchange Rates Hit Foreign Exchange Reserves (WS)
My Prediction On What 2023 Will Bring (Varoufakis)
1 Year On, EU Alternative To China’s Belt And Road Fails To Deliver (SCMP)
New Year, New Things (Denninger)

 

 

 

 

Free Assange

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Difference between BBC and RT is remarkable.

Drone Attacks Continue On Kyiv And Eastern Ukraine (BBC)

Air raid sirens sounded in Kyiv on Sunday night as the latest wave of drone and missile strikes from Russia continued. An attack which began shortly before midnight targeted critical infrastructure, Kyiv regional governor Oleksiy Kuleba said. One man in Kyiv was injured by debris from a destroyed Russian drone, the capital’s mayor said. The attacks have continued for several days over the New Year period. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Armed Forces said 400 Russian soldiers had been killed in on New Year’s Eve in Makiivka, in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region. In a rare move, pro-Russian authorities admitted to casualties. But Russia refused to confirm the number of deaths, and the BBC is unable to verify this.

It comes after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky wished for victory and a “return to normal” for Ukraine in 2023. In a new year address on Russian TV, President Vladimir Putin said Russia would fight to protest its sovereignty and independence. Kyiv’s military issued a warning of the latest attacks just after 01:00 (23:00 GMT) on Monday. “Air attack on Kyiv… Air alert is on in the capital,” it announced on the Telegram social media site. Serhiy Popko, the city’s military administration head, told people to stay in shelters. Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported an explosion in Kyiv’s northeastern Desnyanskyi district and said emergency services were attending. “An injured 19-year-old man was hospitalised in the Desnyanskyi district of the capital,” he said.

Mr Kuleba said the weapons were Iranian-made Shahed drones, adding that they were “targeting critical infrastructure facilities”. “The main thing now is to stay calm and stay in shelters until the alarm is off,” he said. It comes after a barrage of attacks on New Year’s Eve, which killed at least one person in Kyiv. Russia has been targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for several months, destroying power stations and plunging millions into darkness during the country’s freezing winter.

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“Yeah, we completely agree with Satan on everything.”

Nancy Pelosi Is Stepping Down As US House Speaker, And Few Will Miss Her (RT)

The 118th United States Congress will be inaugurated on January 3, 2023, ushering in a number of changes, including Republican control of the House of Representatives and an attendant flip of the office of the speaker. That means that long-time Democratic Party leader Nancy Pelosi will have to give up her gavel and hand it over, most likely to Republican leader Kevin McCarthy. This has been Pelosi’s second tenure as speaker, as she served the first time from 2007-2011 and made history during that time by being the first – and so far only – woman to hold that title. Indeed, Pelosi’s record as the third-highest constitutional officer in the US has been historic – but maybe for some reasons that aren’t so savory. For one, the California Democrat is a notorious self-dealer. For instance, Pelosi was one of the most high-profile members of Congress implicated in a five-month corruption investigation by Business Insider.

She is reported to have deep holdings in companies such as Tesla, Disney, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), and Meta (Facebook’s parent company), which she is directly responsible for regulating as a member of Congress. And it should also not be a surprise that she has repeatedly come out against barring members of Congress from trading stocks and other financial assets, even if she did an about face when public pressure mounted. “We are a free-market economy. They (members of Congress) should be able to participate in that (trading),” she told reporters in December 2021. There is actually an argument to be made that indeed members of Congress should be able to engage in such investments. After all, they have to pay two sets of housing costs in their district and in the notoriously expensive Washington, DC area.

They also have to pay all of their own traveling expenses to and from their district. And they have to do all of that, plus probably also have a family, with a salary of $174,000. It’s not all that glamorous when you think about it. But if we look at Pelosi’s net worth of $114,662,521, according to 2018 data by OpenSecrets, then we can see that this argument hardly applies. In fact, if you look at the chart of her individual wealth over the years, you’ll notice that her wealth exponentially increased with her position as speaker. It’s like her power in Congress directly translates to her own personal wealth accumulation – which, I think we can all agree, would be the definition of corruption. Along with being greedy, the outgoing speaker is a devout war hawk. She once told reporters in Damascus in 2007, during George W. Bush’s presidency, that “there is no division on policy between us and President Bush, be it on Israel, Palestine or Syria.” For anyone familiar with Bush’s genocidal Middle East scheme, this is basically like saying, “Yeah, we completely agree with Satan on everything.”

[..] To put in perspective how unpopular Pelosi is, according to Public Policy Polling, a higher share of Americans believe that JFK was killed by a conspiracy (51%) and that Bush intentionally misled the public on Iraq’s WMDs (44%) than like Pelosi, with just a bit less (37%) thinking global warming is a hoax. For the sake of our country, it is to be hoped that the 82-year-old will retire from political life after her term as speaker comes to a close. But unfortunately, as is ever the case with Pelosi, her career might just outstay its welcome and drag on endlessly.

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Atlas was completely silenced by Fauci and Birx. Strange story.

Twitter’s COVID-19 Censorship Led to Loss of Life – Dr. Scott Atlas (ET)

When discussing censorship, there are often “vague implications” on the effects of that restriction. But by censoring medical science and health policy, “you are killing people,” Dr. Scott Atlas firmly stated in an interview that aired on Newsmakers by NTD and The Epoch Times on Dec. 28. “Censorship of the correct science and medical information, during this pandemic, absolutely killed people. It prevented people from making intelligent decisions. It prevented people from making the appropriate use of caution,” Atlas alleged of Twitter censoring doctors such as himself. Furthermore, Atlas charged, Twitter’s censorship was particularly “harmful” and “shocking” because the United States was founded on freedom.

“This kind of censorship was, in my view, unheard of in the United States,” Atlas stated. “It’s reminiscent of everything that we, as a free society and democracy, abhor about countries that are authoritarian, like China, the former USSR and now Russia, North Korea. “This is the kind of censorship that occurs in those countries. And now it’s occurring in our country.” According to Atlas, censorship at the government’s behest isn’t limited to social media and is far more insidious than first imagined. “It’s not simply blocking information. It’s also—being less overt about it—it’s limiting the public’s access to information. It’s impugning people who are speaking correct information,” Atlas said.

In Atlas’s view, there was only one acceptable COVID-19 narrative at the height of the pandemic, and that was the one put forward by those in authority, specifically Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx. Consequently, when other health authority figures, such as Atlas, advanced conflicting information, the above authorities enlisted help from the media to squash that dissent. “Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx, etc., went to their friends in the media and undermined people like me. Who, in fact, were saying what was correct, what has been validated as being correct this entire time. “But the reality is, yes, the censorship of science kills people. And it killed people during this pandemic. There’s no doubt about that,” Atlas stated.

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“..he threw around so much data confetti that a person could have easily believed that he was downplaying the severity to promote calm. His intention was the opposite.”

Fauci Fibbed on the Day Everything Changed (Tucker)

Anthony Fauci is finally gone from his government perch. Let us recall that it was he who set this calamity in motion, squandering his credibility, while taking down public health and much else with it. More than anyone, he bears responsibility, even if he was acting on others’ behalf. That is especially true if he was carrying out a hidden agenda (take your pick of theories). There was already growing political and societal panic on March 11, 2020, when the House Oversight and Reform Committee convened a hearing on the new virus circulating. Fauci was the key witness. The only question on everyone’s mind came down to the most primal fear: am I going to die from this thing, like in the movies?

This was one day before Trump’s announcement of the travel ban from Europe, the UK, and Australia, essentially sealing the borders of the US to an extent never before attempted, thus separating families and loved ones and trapping billions of people in their nation states. It was five days before the evil declaration by all health authorities to immediately shut down all places where people could congregate. These few days will remain a case study in irrationality and crowd madness. Fauci, on the day of his testimony, however, seemed like a paragon of stability. He was calm and clear, nearly bloodness in his tone. The substance of what he said, at the same time, was clearly designed to generate panic and create the conditions for a full lockdown.

He had the countenance of a doctor who was telling the family that a beloved father was terminally ill with 30 days to live. In particular, and in contrast to the testimony prepared by CDC/NIH, Fauci spoke to the severity of the virus. To the average member of Congress, the answer here was crucial because it addressed the only two serious issues: “Am I going to die?” and “Will I be blamed and politically punished if my constituents die?” To this, he responded with what seemed like science but was actually completely wrong, dreadfully wrong, catastrophically wrong. He claimed that we knew for sure that at best Covid was 10 times deadlier than the flu. In fact, he threw around so much data confetti that a person could have easily believed that he was downplaying the severity to promote calm. His intention was the opposite.

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Pushing infection?!

“A local official in Shanghai told The Epoch Times on Dec. 27 that his office had received instructions to do whatever it could to push the city into the COVID peak status.”

How China Changed Its Zero-COVID Policy to a ‘Zero Non-COVID’ Policy (ET)

“Zero non-COVID” is the name that people in China are calling the regime’s new pandemic management policy. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has aggressively pushed the whole country towards an all-COVID-positive state. China’s annual rubber-stamp legislature is usually in session during the month of March. It is widely expected that the coming session will focus on saving China’s economy because it is on the edge of collapse after the three-year long zero-COVID policy. Party leader Xi Jinping is clearly willing to pay any price to reopen the country. Government employees of Chongqing City and Zhejiang Province received notices telling them return to their offices to work even if they have tested positive for COVID-19, as long as their symptoms are mild.

The total population of Chongqing City is more than 31 million, and Zhejiang province more than 57 million. Rumors on the Chinese internet talked about local governments of Chongqing City and Zhejiang Province being criticized by Beijing because these regions were too slow to reach a high percentage of COVID positive patients. A local official in Shanghai told The Epoch Times on Dec. 27 that his office had received instructions to do whatever it could to push the city into the COVID peak status. “Let those who are supposed to become positive become positive, and let those who are supposed to die, die,” said Song Wen (pseudonym). All state-owned media are mute about the current situation in the country, and reports from different government agencies are conflicting.

The Zhejiang Provincial government recorded one million new COVID cases on Dec. 25, while the Chinese national CDC only reported 2,983 new cases in the whole nation for the same day. The regime announced that on Jan. 8, 2023, China will totally reopen travel in and out of the country, which has triggered concern in countries around the globe. Italian officials reported on Dec. 28 that 50 percent of passengers on two flights from China tested positive for COVID. China, a country with a population of more than 1.4 billion, moved from the zero-COVID policy to a zero non-COVID policy within a month. The sudden change has left health experts worldwide feeling uncertain, because the explosion in COVID cases in China may lead to the whole world being exposed to new variants.

The Western media have widely attributed the sudden policy change to the late November White Paper protests against the zero-COVID policy in China. However, according to World Health Organization (WHO) emergencies chief Michael Ryan, the COVID spike in China was not due to the lifting of the government mandated restrictions. Before the policy change, “the disease was spreading intensively because I believe the control measures in themselves were not stopping the disease. And I believe China decided strategically that was not the best option anymore,” Ryan said.

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Wonder if this can/will carry over into other states. Perhaps not even necessary, depending on what they find.

States Grand Jury to Hold Big Pharma Accountable for Covid Vaccines (BN)

A states grand jury to investigate Big Pharma for civil and criminal wrongdoing related to its COVID-19 mRNA vaccines has been approved by the Supreme Court of Florida. “A statewide grand jury shall be promptly impaneled for a term of twelve calendar months, to run from the date of impanelment, with jurisdiction throughout the State of Florida, to investigate crime, return indictments, make presentments, and otherwise perform all functions of a grand jury with regard to the offenses stated herein,” the court order stated. “The Petitioner, the Honorable Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida, has alleged that good and sufficient reason exists and that it is in the public interest to impanel a statewide grand jury, with jurisdiction throughout the State of Florida, to investigate crime, return indictments, make presentments, and otherwise perform all functions of a grand jury with regard to the offenses listed,” the court order continued.


The grand jury probe will have sweeping scope and will include many targets for investigation.Those include: “Individuals, persons, and entities, including, but not limited to, pharmaceutical manufacturers (and their executive officers) and other medical associations or organizations involved in the design, development, clinical testing or investigation, manufacture, marketing, representation, advertising, promotion, labeling, distribution, formulation, packing, sale, purchase, donation, dispensing, prescribing, administration, or use of vaccines purported to prevent COVID-19 infection, symptoms, and transmission.” The grand jury will also investigate “other criminal activity or wrongdoing that the statewide grand jury uncovers during the course of the investigation if it determines that pursuing the criminal activity or wrongdoing is in the best interests of the investigation.”

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“The legacy media should worry about its reputation,” Musk retorted. “We have only just begun.”

Elon Musk Says He Is ‘Open’ to Idea of Buying Out Major Media Companies (BN)

Billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk is entertaining the idea of buying out top digital media companies. Journalist and media commentator Dave Rubin started a Twitter thread discussing the tremendous influence that Google and YouTube have on the nation’s politics. “Let me get ahead of this one right now…” Rubin tweeted. “I think YouTube’s (and Google’s) manipulation for political purposes is FAR worse than Twitter’s.” “And we might find out as @rumblevideo will get discovery in its lawsuit against Google…” Rubin added. One user suggested Musk should try to buy Substack, which is a subscription-based platform used by many influential journalists.“You would have the information layer with Twitter and the narrative layer. Corporate media would then have specialize on reporting government leaks, from ‘people familiar with the matter,’” the user said.

Musk responded by saying: “I’m open to the idea.” Earlier in December, Musk also suggested he could try to buy Wikipedia, but was informed it was not for sale by its founder Jimmy Wales. The “Twitter Files,” a series of releases on Twitter showing the prior regime’s coordination between Big Tech and U.S. government agencies, has been spearheaded by a number of notable journalists, such as Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shellenberger. The subsequent Fauci Files and forthcoming Covid Files have additionally spurred independent journalistic accountability that has been denied by corporate media and the U.S. Congress. On Wednesday, Musk dropped a ‘Fauci bomb’ that exposed Twitter’s extreme bias on Covid issues.

“Almost no one seems to realize that the head of bioethics at NIH – the person who is supposed to make sure that Fauci behaves ethically – is his wife,” Musk remarked. “‘Gain-of-function’ in this context is just another way of saying ‘bioweapon’,” Musk added. “Some good nuggets in article. Important to note that Fauci authored 2012 paper arguing for gain-of-function research! Obama wisely put this on pause, but Fauci restarted it.” “Despite these glaring issues, Twitter nonetheless had an internal Slack channel unironically called ‘Fauci Fan Club’,” he added. Dr. Pierry Kory in a Twitter Spaces on Wednesday praised Twitter for providing a forum for physicians and policy critics to discuss the pervasive bias in medicine, which would help correct the “information assymetry” that has been perpetuated by the mainstream media and in medical journals.

Elon Musk also fired a warning shot to the corporate media about his mission to protect free speech and develop a forum for actual journalism. His response came after an attack by Axios reporter Hope King on CNBC, who said that his “reputation is in danger.” “The legacy media should worry about its reputation,” Musk retorted. “We have only just begun.”

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“Putin [..] probably has a greater influence on the dollar’s future than the US Treasury and the Fed combined.”

In 2023 It Will Be All About The Dollar (Macleod)

One of the factors which supported gold in the final quarter, offsetting moderate ETF liquidation of about 300 tonnes over the year has been central bank demand, which the World Gold Council estimates to have been 364 tonnes by October. Including more recent purchases by China and others adds nearly 300 tonnes. The Chinese purchase was confirmed in recent days by Mark Bristow, CEO of Barrick Gold, the world’s second largest gold mining corporation, who claimed China had bought “tonnes of gold around the high 200-tonnes mark”. Why China has bought this gold, when it has ample bullion additional to its declared reserves, is an interesting question. The answer probably lies with President Xi’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia, where it was agreed that sales of oil would be paid in yuan, replacing the petrodollar with petroyuan.

According to Aljazeera, Saudi exports to China are worth $33.4bn equivalent, while its imports are $31.8bn, so the net surplus is $1.6bn. The official communiqué referred to “levelling up trade, investment and financial cooperation”. We know that China is keen to internationalise its markets, which is what investment and financial cooperation is about. The international section of the Shanghai Gold Exchange will be used by Saudi Arabia for its yuan to gold transactions. It is therefore likely that some of China’s purchase of nearly 300 tonnes in recent weeks will be to provide liquidity to backstop this market. With regard to prospects for next year’s gold price, it should be noted that the major factor will be the fate of the dollar. It appears likely that dollar oil prices will increase in the coming months, while foreign holders of dollars will continue to reduce their dollar exposure, which in the year to October declined by $3.8 trillion.

But a rising interest rate trend leading to falling financial asset values and the petroyuan replacing the petrodollar, events could coalesce into a perfect storm for the dollar. This is not how conventional analysts look at the gold price. They would argue that higher interest rates, if they occur, will drive gold lower. But that is an argument that denies the role of gold as money. Tell that to President Putin, who by cornering global hydrocarbon supplies probably has a greater influence on the dollar’s future than the US Treasury and the Fed combined.

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Still amazed at the strength of the USD in the face of so much opposition.

USD Exchange Rates Hit Foreign Exchange Reserves (WS)

The last three years were complicated for the dominant reserve currency. At first there was the Fed’s $5-trillion money-printing orgy and interest-rate repression. Then there was raging inflation, which the Fed brushed off as “transitory.” Through this period, the dollar fell against other currencies. But then the Fed got religion and began to tighten: since March 2022, it has hiked rates by 425 basis points, accompanied over the past six months by $414 billion in QT so far. As a result, the dollar bounced off and shot higher against other currencies, particularly the euro and the yen – the #2 and #3 reserve currencies.

At the end of Q3, the share of US-dollar-denominated foreign exchange reserves rose to 59.8%, the third quarter in a row of increases, and the highest since Q3 2020, according to the IMF’s new COFER data on reserve currencies. Since the end of 2021, the share of the dollar rose by nearly 1 percentage point. But this increase came off a 26-year low at the end of 2021. Note that this does not include the dollar-denominated assets on the Fed’s balance sheet, but only dollar-denominated assets held by foreign central banks and foreign official institutions.

[..] The euro is the second largest reserve currency. The Eurozone encompasses 19 countries with a population of 340 million people. Over two decades ago, when the euro was being promoted to Europeans, they often talked about “parity” of the euro with the dollar on all levels: as global reserve currency, as trading currency, and as financing currency. This reserve currency parity made progress until the Euro Debt Crisis brought to light the euro’s structural weakness. And that put an end to this parity talk. Since then, the euro has had a share of about 20% of global reserve currencies (in Q3, 19.7%), about as large as all also-rans combined. But it was far below the dollar (black line, red dots in the chart below).

The yen (purple line at the top of the colorful spaghetti at the bottom in the chart) had a share of 5.3%. It became the #3 reserve currency in 2018, when its share surpassed that of the British pound. The British pound, the #4 reserve currency, had a share of 4.6% (blue line just under the yen in the spaghetti). The Chinese renminbi, the #5 reserve currency, dipped to a share of 2.8% in Q3 — only 2.8%, despite the huge size and global interconnection of China’s economy!

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“..the designed irrelevance of the European Union.”

My Prediction On What 2023 Will Bring (Varoufakis)

This will be the year that Europeans realize the designed irrelevance of the European Union. The quagmire in Ukraine’s killing fields will bring on the realization of the need for a diplomatic process to end the war, but also the realization that the EU is radically incapable of playing any significant role in it. Who will represent Europe in these talks? The EU’s eastern and Nordic governments trust neither Paris nor Berlin – without whom, however, there can be no EU role.


On the economic front, the German mercantilist economic model will remain broken even as inflation abates – with dire repercussions for a eurozone still reliant on German surpluses. Europe’s deepening economic and geopolitical woes will, naturally, reinforce America’s hegemony and, with it, exacerbate its chosen policy of escalating a new cold war with China. Caught up in all this, humanity will be spending another year not investing in the green transition on which our species’ future hinges.

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Competing with the BRI is just a weird pipe dream. They wanted to do it in a year. China’s been building it for many years.

1 Year On, EU Alternative To China’s Belt And Road Fails To Deliver (SCMP)

In December 2021, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stood on a Brussels podium and confidently announced that the European Union’s new infrastructure drive would be a “true alternative” to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. “We are able to do that. Countries made their experience with the Chinese investments. They need better and different offers,” she said of Global Gateway, a spending drive that promised to mobilise up to €300 billion (US$318 billion) by 2027 for modern infrastructure projects outside the EU. With some blowback forming towards China’s trillion-dollar plan to connect China with the rest of the world after high-profile allegations of “debt-trap diplomacy”, both Europe and the United States were positioning to offer a different model, grounded in democratic norms, transparency of funding, and with sustainable objectives.

But one year on, observers are growing increasingly sceptical about von der Leyen’s claims. So far, Global Gateway has delivered plenty of hype, but little in terms of concrete projects, while confusion reigns in Brussels and beyond about what the initiative actually is. At a hearing in the European Parliament last month, lawmakers pressed officials for details, only to learn that none of the €300 billion would be “new”. “Global Gateway does not bring new financial means – there is no additional money when it comes to the EU level,” said Vincent Grimaud, an acting director in the commission’s department for international partnerships. The statement sparked incredulity from members of the parliament. “There’s no new money. And I’ve always held the view that if there’s no new money, there’s no new policy,” said Barry Andrews, an Irish lawmaker with the centrist Renew group.

“This is a communications exercise. It’s a strategy to put together what was already going to happen and present it as something new. And if our partners are tricked by this, then more fool them.” Hildegard Bentele, a German member from the centre-right European People’s Party, said she had been trying to find German companies who are “part of this adventure”, but had failed to locate any. “If I talk to journalists, journalists are asking me what are these Global Gateway projects? If I go on the website of the European Commission, I do not find it – this is really difficult,” she said. The commission’s efforts to promote the initiative have added to the bemusement. A recent gala event held in the metaverse to explain the Global Gateway concept to 18-35 year olds was lampooned online after just a handful of users logged on – despite the EU forking out €387,000 (US$410,000) to host it.

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“..the utter failure of the “green energy shift” in the face of real-world tests..”

TVA=Tennessee Valley Authority.

New Year, New Things (Denninger)

So it is January 1st, 2023. Those reading this made it there. That’s good, I think. With that said here’s some “news” on The Ticker itself and my intentions going forward as to focus. You can take it for whatever you think its worth, but this, from my perspective, is the right way to look at things in the world. Of course there is room for plenty of other opinions all over the ‘net and so-called “traditional media” too, so it is what it is. If you remember a big shift occurred during the second Trump impeachment coverage, which I was doing on a daily basis, including most days a podcast. That of course was Covid, which showed up right on the tail end of that. That chapter has run in America and even the “mainstream media” is reporting that (like it or not, politicians) running stories about, for example, Atlantic City and its prospects forward – – and that they’re now returning to their regularly-scheduled debate (like, for instance, can you smoke in a casino?)

We’ve got plenty to talk about, such as, for instance, the utter failure of the “green energy shift” in the face of real-world tests. In a just world people would already be in irons and headed for prison; TVA, for example, was only able to produce 68% of its claimed capacity when all of it was required. WPLN tries to blame this on “natural gas being the bet” but in fact the reality of it is that TVA has shut down what was plenty of coal capacity and they did it on purpose over the space of years without replacing that with known reliable generation. In the summer the peak of demand tends to mostly-track with when the sun is up because its hottest and, while the peak shifts a bit off noon its not at 3:00 AM. In winter it is every time; its coldest when there’s no sun at all and thus the solar generation capacity is always zero at the times of peak demand in winter.

Thus any solar you put in must be counted as zero in the winter months when things get nasty, because it will either be snowing, icing (both of which wildly cut solar cell output) or at 3:00 AM when there’s no solar radiation available at all. Wind has similar issues; you can fit windmills with heating systems but obviously they require energy and they have both a lower and upper wind limit where they either produce nothing of value or must be intentionally shut down to avoid destruction. Thus you can’t count them as anything other than zero in the winter because you can’t count something that is less than 100% available, with proper maintenance and such, as “there.” We also know that in the face of such nasty weather EVs are worthless too. They’re nice secondary vehicles, basically, but when you must be able to rely on them they’re just not up to the job. People are figuring this out and that will continue; in short how you were sold these cars and light trucks was a lie and worse, the people selling them knew all that as they did the engineering on them.

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Richard Fleming

 

 

 

 

Bernardi WEF

 

 

 

 

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Nov 282021
 
 November 28, 2021  Posted by at 9:57 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  65 Responses »


René Magritte Youth 1924

 

Early Action Against Omicron Is Imperative (Birney)
South African Medical Head: Slow-Roll the Panic Over Omicron (RS)
My Opinion On The New African Variants (VanDenBossche)
Are We Overreacting to Omicron? (BI)
The Right Way To Handle The Pandemic (Kirsch)
Only Two Things Are Infinite…. (Denninger)
45% of Deaths After Covid Vaccination Happen In The First 2 Weeks (Kirsch)
Vaxxing Our Kids (CR)
Think Carefully About Accepting The Concept of Vaccine Passports (CTH)
A President Betrayed by Bureaucrats: Scott Atlas’s Masterpiece on Covid (Tucker)
“A Lot of Mistakes”: The Guardian and Julian Assange (MPN)

 

 

 

 

May 2021

 

 

Ireland: at least 6 jabs.

 

 

We often hear people say: “Now is not the time to panic!”

But these are different times. There’s no such thing as too much panic today.

Ewan Birney is deputy director general of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and director of EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute.

Early Action Against Omicron Is Imperative (Birney)

It was only a matter of time before a new Sars-CoV-2 variant of concern emerged, requiring an urgent global response. It would seem that the Omicron variant, identified by scientists across Africa, including the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), poses the next major threat in the course of the pandemic. Early evidence from their genomic surveillance suggests that this new variant is a serious cause for concern and it is imperative that we act fast in response to this new information. The variant has also been detected in Botswana and Hong Kong, and will undoubtedly continue to arise in other territories in the coming days; travel-related cases have appeared in Belgium and Israel. Two cases of the new variant have been detected in the UK at the time of writing.

When Omicron was first detected, viral genomic experts already noted the large number of changes relative to the original Wuhan strain. Worryingly, a significant number of these mutations are linked to the spike protein, which the virus uses to infect our cells, and some of these were changes known to be responsible for either faster transmission or immune escape in other strains. However it is possible that other changes in this strain made the virus less good at transmission. It appears that the Omicron variant is on the rise. The South African researchers could be more confident of this due to a quirk in the virus also seen in the Alpha variant; there is a change that affects the readout of some of the routine PCR tests (“S-gene target failure”).

This means that the South African researchers could reprocess the routine tests they have to create an effective proxy for the rise of this variant. The strong growth inferred by proxy (albeit from a low baseline), and the sequence information we have, mean that there is a high likelihood this is either a more transmissible or immune-system evading virus, or some of both. There is not yet data to suggest that the Omicron variant increases the severity of disease or resistance to our current vaccines. This will require future laboratory investigation and continued surveillance in many countries over the coming weeks. And we should consider this potential immune-escape discovery, which was on nearly every epidemic plan, in the context of our progress: genomic sequencing identified the new variant at high speed; thanks to open data-sharing, the global scientific community was alerted to it and has sprung into action – yet again – to understand what the dangers are.

Finally, our experience and understanding of the Alpha and Delta variants make it clear that early action is far better than late response. It may turn out that this variant is not a major threat, but the consequences of not acting early could be devastating. The real heroes of this story, though, are the Botswanan and South African scientists who rapidly assembled data, delivering insightful analysis, and were open and transparent about their results.

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“So are we seriously worried? No. We are concerned and we watch what’s happening. But for now we’re saying, ‘OK: there’s a whole hype out there. [We’re] not sure why.’”

South African Medical Head: Slow-Roll the Panic Over Omicron (RS)

The variant was just discovered this week, but already you can hear the race to paint it in the worst light possible, suggesting that there was a lot to be concerned about because it was “heavily mutated,” that immunity and the vaccines might not protect against it. We saw the Dow take a huge plunge immediately after, likely in part because of thinking that this news could lead back to more government restrictions and problems. The Biden administration reacted in a chaotic fashion. First, Dr. Anthony Fauci said they weren’t going to be jumping to banning travel from affected areas and then a couple of hours later, Biden announcing there would be a ban on eight African countries starting Monday at the recommendation of Fauci.

Now obviously, the new variant was just discovered, so I don’t know how anyone can be drawing any real conclusions about it yet; they haven’t had the time to actually study it much yet. It is, of course, wise to be cautious about it. But being wise and causing panic are not the same thing. It’s important not to miss what the people who discovered it — the folks in South Africa — are saying about what they’ve seen with the variant so far. The chairwoman of the South African Medical Association called imposing the travel restrictions on the country “hasty.” Dr Angelique Coetzee said it was too early to tell what impact the variant would have. She told BBC News: “We think it is a premature decision that has been taken, I think it is a hasty decision.

“I would understand if it was two weeks later and we know much more about this viral infection that is going around, or this mutation, but for now, it is like a storm in a teacup. “We have only become aware of this viral mutation, or the new strain we are seeing, last week.” She added: “From us as medical practitioners, we picked up, last week, the different clinical pictures, we looked at the advisory committees and so far what we have seen is very mild cases. [I’m] not sure why we are all up in arms. “We know there are a lot of mutations but no-one can tell us at this stage if it means something, or if it is just going to fade away. We just don’t know.”

Coetzee told the Guardian the cases they had seen so far were extremely mild. “It’s all speculation at this stage. It may be it’s highly transmissible, but so far the cases we are seeing are extremely mild,” she said. “Maybe two weeks from now I will have a different opinion, but this is what we are seeing. So are we seriously worried? No. We are concerned and we watch what’s happening. But for now we’re saying, ‘OK: there’s a whole hype out there. [We’re] not sure why.’” Coetzee said she’d only seen it in healthy people so far, so she wasn’t sure how it would do in unhealthy people with co-morbidities. In other words, it might change and there may be causes for concern, but they’re not freaking out yet about it because they don’t have the evidence yet since it just appeared.

“Omicron variant “presents mild disease with symptoms being sore muscles and tiredness for a day or two not feeling well. […] as medical practitioners, we don’t know why so much hype is being driven” – Dr. Angelique Coetzee, Chair of SAMA

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“Mass vaccination has compressed the evolutionary trajectory of the virus from a few hundred years (?) down to one year.”

My Opinion On The New African Variants (VanDenBossche)

The world may be taken by surprise but that doesn’t include us. It remains to be seen whether Omicron can outcompete Delta (to be confirmed). If that’s the case, we’re definitely not in good shape. In case of CoV, innate immunity protects the individual and the ‘herd’ (sterilizing immunity, no natural selection pressure, herd immunity) whereas adaptive immunity induced with leaky vaccines has exactly the opposite effect. THE big Q is whether such an immune escape variant could even resist naturally acquired Abs in people who recovered from C19 disease. I am, indeed, cautious and worried about ADE, even in the unvaccinated who recovered from C-19 disease as they may no longer be able to control viral infection. ADE would equal ‘enhanced virulence’. Difficult to predict. Mass vaccination has compressed the evolutionary trajectory of the virus from a few hundred years (?) down to one year. Hope that naturally primed individuals can deal with that speed.

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“..while the vaccine provides temporary protection against infection, the efficacy declines below zero and then to negative efficacy territory at approximately 7 months..”

Are We Overreacting to Omicron? (BI)

[..] governments asked us for two weeks to flatten the curve to help prepare hospitals so that they can tend to surges and other non-Covid illnesses. We as societies gave our governments 2 weeks, not 21 months. They failed to tend to the non-Covid illnesses and we locked down the healthy and well (children and young and middle aged healthy persons) while failing to properly protect the vulnerable and high-risk persons such as the elderly. We failed and it was like killing fields in our nursing homes. This failure rests on public health messaging and government. Additionally, what did our governments in the US, Canada, UK, Australia etc. do with the tax money for the hospitals and PPE etc.? Hospitals must be prepared by now. Governments have failed! Not the people. The Task Forces have failed, not the people.

These nations thought that they could stay locked down and wait for a vaccine. This is a reasonable view though I was against lockdowns as they would and did cause crushing harms on especially poor persons and children. The problem is there was an opportunity cost because the vaccine we were waiting on was suboptimally developed without the proper safety testing or assessment of effectiveness. We have data that the Pfizer vaccine loses 40% of antibodies per month, meaning in 3 months post-shot, you have low effective vaccinal immunity. We see it clearly playing out now whereby you got to tamp down spread with the draconian lockdowns, but you did it at the cost of natural immunity. That is the opportunity cost. So we spent on getting the vaccine and it cost us natural immunity and thus herd immunity.

For example, the vaccine has failed to stop infection and spread against Delta. We have research findings by Singanayagam et al. (fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts), by Chau et al. (viral loads of breakthrough Delta variant infection cases in vaccinated nurses were 251 times higher than those of cases infected with prior strains early 2020), and by Riemersma et al. (no difference in viral loads when comparing unvaccinated individuals to those who have vaccine “breakthrough” infections and if vaccinated individuals become infected with the delta variant, they may be sources of SARS-CoV-2 transmission to others) that reveal the vaccines have very suboptimal efficacy.

This situation of the vaccinated being infectious and transmitting the virus has also emerged in seminal nosocomial outbreak papers by Chau et al. (HCWs in Vietnam), the Finland hospital outbreak (spread among HCWs and patients), and the Israel hospital outbreak (spread among HCWs and patients). These studies have also revealed that the PPE and masking were essentially ineffective within the healthcare setting. All of the HCWs were double-vaccinated yet there was extensive spread to themselves and their patients.

[..] the Swedish study (retrospective with 842,974 pairs (N=1,684,958) is particularly alarming for it shows that while the vaccine provides temporary protection against infection, the efficacy declines below zero and then to negative efficacy territory at approximately 7 months, underscoring that the vaccinated are highly susceptible to infection and eventually become highly infected (more so than the unvaccinated). A further example emerges from Ireland whereby reporting suggests that the Waterford city district has the State’s highest rate of Covid-19 infections, while the county also boasts the highest rate of vaccination in the Republic (99.7% vaccinated). Reports are that the U.S. Covid-19 deaths for 2021 surpassed the deaths from 2020, leading some to state that “more people have died from COVID-19 in 2021, with most adults vaccinated and nearly all seniors), than in 2020 when nobody was vaccinated.”

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A long list. These are just the vaccines.

The Right Way To Handle The Pandemic (Kirsch)

1/ Stop the vaccines now. The current COVID vaccines kill more people than they can possibly save from COVID, even if they were 100% effective so should be taken off the market immediately. For example, the vaccine may kill 117 kids for every kid that is saved from COVID.

2/ The liability exemption is now lifted retroactively. Patients who have been harmed by the COVID vaccines can now sue the drug company for damages up to $100M per case of fatality or disability.

3/ Every post-vaccination ailment, affliction and death appearing within 4 weeks of vaccination that appears at a rate of 10X or more vs. baseline should be attributed to the vaccine unless and until proven otherwise, by irrefutable evidence, with costs of all diagnostic procedures to be born by the pharmaceutical manufacturer.

4/ For future approved vaccines, informed consent provide shall include any and all symptoms that are elevated in VAERS by 10X or more over “baseline” reporting rates.

5/ For future approved vaccines, require autopsies for anyone who dies within 2 weeks of getting the vaccine. The autopsy reports should be posted in a public database with Names and other PHI related data redacted

6/ Failure to file a VAERS report for anyone who dies within 30 days of COVID vaccination shall be liable to a fine of $100,000 per incident.

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“Note that on the evidence to date there is no reason to believe this “variant” is either more-dangerous or more transmissible. SA had a surge in cases at the exact same time last year. It’s called “seasonality” and its real. It’s why we have a “flu season.”

Only Two Things Are Infinite…. (Denninger)

This “variant” has been found all over the world already. Therefore its already everywhere. Locking down travel after it is already in your nation is stupid and does nothing. The variant is either going to become dominant or it will not. You cannot alter that course once it gets to you — and no matter where you are it already has. This “variant” has no evidence of being more-deadly; it may in fact be less-so. Indeed that is the natural mutational pattern coronaviruses follow over time. There is no evidence in the form, for example, of higher hospital admissions, ICU utilization and death in those in which this variant has been detected. In other words thus far all the scaremongering has been based on….. exactly nothing as there are no facts currently in evidence to support such fear.

The vaccines clearly do not work. International travel has been vaccinated-only everywhere for quite some time. So the person(s) who brought the virus into your nation with this “variant” were vaccinated. The market, of course, responded to this news by spiking the vaccine companies, specifically Moderna. You have to wonder what sort of stupidity would drive someone to consider a firm that has one product which clearly did not work a “buy” in a situation like this. Mass psychosis is the only reasonable explanation. Lockdowns and constraints clearly do not work either. The virus mutated because that’s what viruses do, and specifically coronaviruses do this all the time. It’s common.

Further, vaccinating into an outbreak promotes vaccine-resistant strains because that’s just how natural selection works. You want the opposite but you can’t get there from here by vaccinating people while an outbreak is going on so the better option is to focus on early treatments and even prophylaxis which does not place immune pressure on the virus to evade your jabs. Meanwhile we the evidence continues to mount that prior infection confers better resistance than vaccines. Perfect immunity? No. But much better immunity and, to three nines, perfect protection against critical illness and death.

[..] Only infection has ever conferred critical and fatal outcome protection with coronaviruses through history. There are no exceptions. Not only have all previous attempts ended in failure several have resulted in vaccine-enhanced disease ripping through the vaccinated test subjects on re-challenge with several of those trials ending in the death of all or nearly all test subjects — which were fortunately animals and not humans. This time around we have performed a mass experiment with zero evidence over a period of years to demonstrate that what has happened 100% of the time in the past will not happen again. It appears we’re losing that bet — a loss that, on the basis of history, we had every reason to believe would happen and yet instead of every single firm manufacturing this crap being an instant zero several are being rewarded. What the hell sort of rampant, outrageous stupidity is that?

While the data is not yet in there is reason to believe, given the mutations described in this newest “variant”, that the vaccinated may be ****ed as the mutations may confer full evasion and yet the binding antibodies you get from being jabbed are still there. If that pans out here comes the exact same thing that has repeatedly happened with coronavirus vaccine attempts except this time we were dumb enough to mass-vaccinate humans rather than a handful of cats. Note that on the evidence to date there is no reason to believe this “variant” is either more-dangerous or more transmissible. SA had a surge in cases at the exact same time last year. It’s called “seasonality” and its real. It’s why we have a “flu season.”

The confluence of mutations does raise questions though, including the possibility that our “best friends” are angling for the very scenario I put forward about a year ago — which you’d better pray is wrong, by the way, although it’ll be a while before we know. Before you poo-poo this note that there are reports the closest match to any known sequenced Covid-19 virus date to April of 2020. I have not yet personally verified this, but if its true then it is wildly improbable that an “in the wild” mutational pattern of this sort occuring by natural means would have escaped surveillance. Incidentally if you got jabbed there’s not a damn thing you can do about it if that turns out to be the case.

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Steve Kirsch makes multi-million bets all the time, but puts up a paywall?!

45% of Deaths After Covid Vaccination Happen In The First 2 Weeks (Kirsch)

My friend Albert Benavides (aka WelcomeTheEagle88) did a quick analysis for me on the deaths reported after vaccination in VAERS. 45% of all reported deaths happened within two weeks after vaccination. Peter Schirmacher, one of the world’s top pathologists, said that 30% to 40% of people who died within 2 weeks after vaccination died were killed by the vaccine. His results were replicated by other German pathologists (since no US pathologist would dare accuse the vaccine of causing death or they would be immediately fired).

So taking a very conservative view that VAERS is 100% reported (so only a total of 8664 deaths), then 44% of 8664 = within 2 weeks = 3812 killed in the first two weeks. If just 30% was caused by the vaccines, then that is 1,143 people killed by the vaccine at a minimum. For 230M vaccinated, then that is 4.9 deaths per million minimum killed by the vaccine. This means these vaccines are at least 5X deadlier than the smallpox vaccine which we pointed out is deemed to be too unsafe to use. Note that this estimate assumes that only the deaths in the first two weeks are caused by the vaccine and assumes after 2 weeks all the excess deaths we caused by something else. Note: The actual number killed by the vaccines is at least 150K (estimated 8 different ways), but we’re trying to be as conservative as possible here giving any critics nothing to complain about.

Here are the % of total deaths for each week for the first 5 weeks:
1/ 33.6% meaning that in the first week, 33.6% of all the vaccine related deaths happened in the first week
2/ 10.97% in the second week, so now we’ve killed nearly 45% of all the deaths
3/ 8.4%
4/ 6.04%
5/ 4.19% by the fifth week out, 63% of all deaths have happened

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Don’t.

Vaxxing Our Kids (CR)

As a father of a young child, I am pressured to get my daughter vaccinated for COVID-19. And like many Americans, I have concerns about giving my six-year-old a new vaccine that was not tested on humans until last year, and that has been approved only for “emergency use” in kids. The feverish hype by government officials, mainstream media outlets, and Big Pharma, and the systematic demonization and censorship of public figures who raise questions about the campaign, provide further cause for concern. This year, Pfizer has banked on selling 115 million pediatric doses to the U.S. government and expects to earn $36 billion in vaccine revenue. Congress is so in the pocket of Big Pharma that it’s against the law for our government to negotiate bulk pricing for drugs, meaning taxpayers must pay retail.

Corporate news and entertainment programs are routinely sponsored by Pfizer, which spent $55 million on social media advertising in 2020. Even late night comedians like Jimmy Kimmel, who has called for denying ICU beds to unvaccinated people, have been paid by Big Pharma to promote the COVID-19 vaccine. It is thus not surprising that most of the information reported in the press about vaccine safety and efficacy appears to come directly from Pfizer press releases. This recent headline from NBC News is typical: “Pfizer says its Covid vaccine is safe and effective for children ages 5 to 11.” Moreover, by not advertising their vaccines by name, Pfizer-BioNTech and other drugmakers are not obliged, under current FDA regulations, to list the risks and side effects of the vaccine.

Most Americans are vaguely aware that COVID vaccines carry some potential risks, such as heart inflammation, known as myocarditis, seen most often in young males. But no actual data from the vaccine trials has been provided to the public. After promising “full transparency” with regard to COVID-19 vaccines, the FDA recently went to court to resist a FOIA request seeking the data it relied on to license the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, declaring that it would not release the data in full until the year 2076—not exactly a confidence-building measure.

Also troubling is a recent report in the British Medical Journal, a peer-reviewed medical publication, which found that the research company used by Pfizer falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported in Pfizer’s pivotal phase III trial. The whistleblower, Brook Jackson, repeatedly notified her bosses of these problems, then e-mailed a complaint to the FDA and was fired that same day. If this scandal was ever mentioned in the corporate press, it was with a headline like this from CBS News: “Report questioning Pfizer trial shouldn’t undermine confidence in vaccines.”

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“The checkpoints are essentially gateways where QR codes are being scanned from the cell phones of the compliant vaccinated citizen. Yes comrades, there’s an App for that.”

Think Carefully About Accepting The Concept of Vaccine Passports (CTH)

As the architects of the Build Back Better society assist you in creating easier ways to show your vaccinated and compliant status, perhaps it is prudent to pause and think about the discussions that take place behind the opaque glass doors. Right now, as you are reading this, under the guise of enhancing your safety, the U.S. federal government is in discussions with multinational corporations and employers of citizens to create a more efficient process for you to register your vaccine compliance. You may know their conversation under the terminology of a COVID passport. The current goal is to make a system for you to show your authorized work status; which, as you know, is based on your obedience to a mandated vaccine.


Beta tests are being conducted in various nations, each with different perspectives and constitutional limitations based on pesky archaic rules and laws that govern freedom. For the western, or for lack of a better word ‘democratic‘ outlook, Australia is leading the way with their technological system of vaccination check points and registered state/national vaccination status tied to your registration identification. The checkpoints are essentially gateways where QR codes are being scanned from the cell phones of the compliant vaccinated citizen. Yes comrades, there’s an App for that. Currently the vaccine status scans are registered by happy compliance workers, greeters at the entry to the business or venue. Indeed, the WalMart greeter has a new gadget to scan your phone prior to allowing you custody of a shopping cart.

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Remember: Fauci and Birx destroyed Atlas.

A President Betrayed by Bureaucrats: Scott Atlas’s Masterpiece on Covid (Tucker)

I’m a voracious reader of Covid books but nothing could have prepared me for Scott Atlas’s A Plague Upon Our House, a full and mind-blowing account of the famed scientist’s personal experience with the Covid era and a luridly detailed account of his time at the White House. The book is hot fire, from page one to the last, and will permanently affect your view of not only this pandemic and the policy response but also the workings of public health in general. Atlas’s book has exposed a scandal for the ages. It is enormously valuable because it fully blows up what seems to be an emerging fake story involving a supposedly Covid-denying president who did nothing vs. heroic scientists in the White House who urged compulsory mitigating measures consistent with prevailing scientific opinion. Not one word of that is true. Atlas’s book, I hope, makes it impossible to tell such tall tales without embarrassment.

Anyone who tells you this fictional story (including Deborah Birx) deserves to have this highly credible treatise tossed in his direction. The book is about the war between real science (and genuine public health), with Atlas as the voice for reason both before and during his time in the White House, vs. the enactment of brutal policies that never stood any chance of controlling the virus while causing tremendous damage to the people, to human liberty, to children in particular, but also to billions of people around the world. For the reader, the author is our proxy, a reasonable and blunt man trapped in a world of lies, duplicity, backstabbing, opportunism, and fake science. He did his best but could not prevail against a powerful machine that cares nothing for facts, much less outcomes.

If you have heretofore believed that science drives pandemic public policy, this book will shock you. Atlas’s recounting of the unbearably poor thinking on the part of government-based “infectious disease experts” will make your jaw drop (thinking, for example, of Birx’s off-the-cuff theorizing about the relationship between masking and controlling case spreads). Throughout the book, Atlas points to the enormous cost of the machinery of lockdowns, the preferred method of Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx: missed cancer screenings, missed surgeries, nearly two years of educational losses, bankrupted small business, depression and drug overdoses, overall citizen demoralization, violations of religious freedom, all while public health massively neglected the actual at-risk population in long-term care facilities.

Essentially, they were willing to dismantle everything we called civilization in the name of bludgeoning one pathogen without regard to the consequences. The fake science of population-wide “models” drove policy instead of following the known information about risk profiles. “The one unusual feature of this virus was the fact that children had an extraordinarily low risk,” writes Atlas. “Yet this positive and reassuring news was never emphasized. Instead, with total disregard of the evidence of selective risk consistent with other respiratory viruses, public health officials recommended draconian isolation of everyone.”

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Why use the word “mistakes”? Call a spade a spade.

“A Lot of Mistakes”: The Guardian and Julian Assange (MPN)

On September 21, 2018, the Guardian published a bombshell report entitled “Revealed: Russia’s secret plan to help Julian Assange escape from UK.” The story detailed an alleged conspiracy between Russian diplomats and WikiLeaks to illicitly smuggle Assange out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. During the months before publication, Guardian correspondent Stephanie Kirchgaessner seemed eager to connect Assange to a Russian plot to escape the embassy. On July 12, 2018, Kirchgaessner wrote to a source at UC Global, the private security company hired by the Ecuadorian government to protect Assange and its embassy in London: “We heard that the Russians wanted to help Assange and maybe get him a diplomatic visa. This was last year. But then the plan was rejected. By the Russians or by Assange? Why? Can you help? Do you know?”

On August 30, 2018, three weeks before publication, Kirchgaessner wrote again: “Hello. I am trying you again. I want to write a story about the discussions last year to get JA out of the embassy. The talks that happened with the Russians. Can I send you some questions?” When the article was eventually published, the authors — Kirchgaessner, Dan Collyns, and Luke Harding — claimed that “Russian diplomats held secret talks in London … with people close to Julian Assange to assess whether they could help him flee the UK” in late 2017. Though it was acknowledged that “details of the Assange escape plan are sketchy,” the authors used two unnamed sources to assert that Fidel Narváez, the former consul at the Ecuadorian Embassy, “served as a point of contact with Moscow.”

The story appeared to add weight to the “Russiagate” narrative – the belief that the Donald Trump campaign colluded with Russia to subvert the 2016 U.S. presidential election, with help from WikiLeaks. The authors noted that the alleged escape plan “raises new questions about Assange’s ties to the Kremlin.” Two individuals with first-hand knowledge of events reject the Guardian’s story, however, and provide details about what really happened in late 2017 when Assange tried to leave the embassy. In an exclusive interview, Aitor Martinez, a lawyer who oversaw Ecuador’s effort to grant Assange diplomatic protection, explained that plans were drawn up to appoint Assange as an Ecuadorian diplomat and transport him to a third country. That way, Assange could legally leave the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he was subject to arbitrary detention and where his health was declining.

Martinez drew up a list of countries that Ecuador should approach: China, Serbia, Greece, Bolivia, Venezuela or Cuba, noting: Of course, they were the countries that don’t have good relations with the U.S. and could accept the appointment. Russia was never, ever on that list. There was a huge conspiracy theory in the U.S. with Russiagate; it didn’t make sense. So those were the countries.” Martinez continued: It took two or three weeks and we didn’t get any answer from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And suddenly the Ministry said that they had appointed him to Russia.” Foreign Minister María Fernanda Espinosa’s cousin worked at the Ecuadorian Embassy in Moscow and, through this cousin, she concocted a plan to appoint Assange to the one country that was the subject of mass-media hysteria. “Julian and all of us at the legal team refused this appointment,” Martinez explained. “We said, ‘that’s crazy, what are you talking about?’ We refused.”

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Nov 142021
 
 November 14, 2021  Posted by at 10:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  74 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Landscape 1920

 

The Texas Miracle (Steve Kirsch)
CDC: No Record of Naturally Immune Transmitting COVID-19 (ET)
Houston Doctor Suspended For ‘Spreading Dangerous Misinformation’ (ABC13)
Dr. Scott Atlas Unloads On Fauci, Birx, Redfield In Forthcoming Memoir (Fox)
Fauci and Birx Stuck To ‘Irrational’ Lockdown Policies – Atlas (DM)
Deaths In Children, Young People In UK With Covid Infection In 1st Year (RS)
CDC Shifts Pandemic Goals Away From Reaching Herd Immunity (LAT)
As America Falls Apart, Profits Soar (Taibbi)
Bezos Predicts Only Limited Number Of People Will Get To Remain On Earth (RT)
God Develops Ultra-Realistic Metaverse, Calls It ‘Universe’ (BBee)

 

 

 

 

Melbourne
https://twitter.com/i/status/1459635157070233602

 

 

 

 

“..unvaccinated people were 40 times more likely to experience COVID-19-associated death than fully vaccinated people.”

The Texas Miracle (Steve Kirsch)

Someone texted this article to me and asked me what I thought. My immediate reaction is that if you are vaccinated, you’d want to move to Texas. And if you are unvaccinated, I suggest you move to another state where you will be safer! OK, just kidding. The study says this: “From January 15, 2021 to October 1, 2021, unvaccinated people were 40 times more likely to experience COVID-19-associated death than fully vaccinated people.” Wow. A 40X death benefit. That’s impressive. I read the Pfizer Phase 3 6 month study and it showed just a 2X death benefit. But the numbers were small there. The study also says this: “According to the state’s study, between Jan. 15 and Oct. 1, “unvaccinated people were 45 times more likely to have an infection with COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people.”

OK, if the Texas study is right, then how do we explain the Harvard study Figure 1? The line should slope the other way since cases would be way down the more fully vaccinated you are. And how do we explain the UCSF study which showed the same viral loads for vaccinated and unvaccinated which means the vaccine didn’t work at all? Here’s what one of my team members wrote (I think she missed seeing the full report): “If you can get the data, I can try to make a proper interpretation. This one they present, is clearly garbage.” Another wrote: “My best friend in Dallas is a firefighter and EMT who drives ambulances. He told me before I flew to San Juan that almost everyone they drove was vaccinated.” Whoops! That anecdote has to be pretty embarrassing for their study! Reality seems to match the Harvard study.


Generally, the techniques they use to game these studies are: • Definitions of “vaccinated” restricted • Most cases during period of legacy variants • No accounting for naturally immune • No accounting for early treatment • Since unvaxxed are tested in the hospital with all kinds of fatal conditions and the vaxxed are not, many dying of other conditions are swept into the unvaxxed C19 group without clinical C19. All designed to frighten Texas into vaccinating.

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There’s that definition of “Naturally Immune” again.

CDC: No Record of Naturally Immune Transmitting COVID-19 (ET)

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says it has no record of people who are naturally immune transmitting the virus that causes COVID-19. The federal health agency was asked during the fall by a lawyer on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network for documents “reflecting any documented case of an individual who: (1) never received a COVID-19 vaccine; (2) was infected with COVID-19 once, recovered, and then later became infected again; and (3) transmitted SARS-CoV-2 to another person when reinfected.” Persons who recover from COVID-19 are also known as naturally immune. In a response dated Nov. 5 and made public this week, the CDC said it does not have any documents pertaining to the request.

The CDC confirmed to The Epoch Times that its Emergency Operations Center did not find any records responsive to the request. The agency declined to say whether any documentation had been found between Nov. 5 and Nov. 12, directing The Epoch Times to file a Freedom of Information Act Request for that information, which it did. “You would assume that if the CDC was going to crush the civil and individual rights of those with natural immunity by having them expelled from school, fired from their jobs, separated from the military, and worse, the CDC would have proof of at least one instance of an unvaccinated, naturally immune individual transmitting the COVID-19 virus to another individual. If you thought this, you would be wrong,” Aaron Siri, a lawyer who sought the records on behalf of the network, said in a blog post.

The CDC’s disclosure drew responses from several medical experts, including Johns Hopkins Dr. Marty Makary, who said it underlined how little data the agency has released concerning the recovered. Makary called on the CDC to make public data on any re-infections that have resulted in hospitalization or death, with information on the patient’s comorbidities or lack thereof. “CDC should be transparent with data on natural immunity. Instead we get glimpses from FOIA requests like this one,” he wrote on Twitter.

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“She recently tweeted that she was focusing on treating the unvaccinated..”

Houston Doctor Suspended For ‘Spreading Dangerous Misinformation’ (ABC13)

Houston Methodist has suspended privileges for a Houston doctor after officials claim she was ‘spreading dangerous misinformation’ about the COVID-19 vaccine and treatments. Dr. Mary Bowden, an ear, nose and throat specialist with a popular private practice on Kirby Drive, has been outspoken about vaccine mandates and treatments. She recently tweeted that she was focusing on treating the unvaccinated. Friday night, a spokesperson with Houston Methodist said her privileges had been suspended pending an investigation. In response, Dr. Bowden defends her tweets, and said she has the utmost respect for Houston Methodist and her colleagues. Her suspension came just days after the U.S. Surgeon General released a guide to stop misinformation, which he called an urgent threat to public health.

Houston Methodist officials posted a statement on Twitter about Bowden’s suspension. “Dr. Bowden is using her social media accounts to express her personal and political opinions about the COVID-19 vaccine and treatments. These opinions, which are harmful to the community, do not reflect reliable medical evidence or the values of Houston Methodist, where we have treated more than 25,000 COVID-19 inpatients, and where all our employees and physicians are vaccinated to protect our patients.” The hospital added she is “spreading dangerous misinformation which is not based in science.” Houston Methodist said Bowden recently joined the medical staff and, as of Friday, had never admitted a patient. She also told the hospital she is vaccinated, as is required.

Her attorney, Steven Mitby, released a statement Friday night. “Dr. Mary Bowden is a Stanford-trained physician who owns a successful medical practice in Houston and has provided top quality care to thousands of Houstonians. Dr. Bowden has treated more than 2,000 patients with COVID-19, many with co-morbidities, and has yet to have one of her patients end up in the hospital. Her early treatment methods work and are saving lives. If America had more doctors like Dr. Bowden, COVID outcomes would be much better. Dr. Bowden is not anti-vaccine. Like most Americans, Dr. Bowden believes that people should have a choice and believes that all people, regardless of vaccine status, should have access to the same high quality health care without discrimination. Dr. Bowden has the utmost respect for Houston Methodist and is proud of the work she has done along with her colleagues at Houston Methodist.”

“The press is hunting physicians in coordination with Big Pharma.”

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The first expert annihilated by Fauci and Pfizer et al.

Dr. Scott Atlas Unloads On Fauci, Birx, Redfield In Forthcoming Memoir (Fox)

Former White House Coronavirus Response team member Dr. Scott Atlas blasted Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx and former CDC Director Robert Redfield in a new book saying that he was “disgusted” by their dismissal of scientific data he presented to them during the Trump administration. In the book, “A Plague Upon Our House” which Fox News Digital obtained an advance copy of, Atlas says he presented data and studies showing that schools should be reopened and that children are not significant spreaders of the coronavirus but was virtually ignored by Fauci and others on the team. “As I finished, there was silence,” Atlas wrote. “No one offered any contrary data. No one spoke of scientific studies. No one even mentioned the discredited Korea study. Zero comments from Dr. Birx. Nothing from Dr. Fauci.

And as always, not a single mention by Birx or Fauci about the serious harms of school closures. In my mind, this was bizarre. Why was I the only one in the room with detailed knowledge of the literature? Why was I the only one considering the data on such an important topic with a critical eye? Were the others simply accepting bottom lines and conclusions, without any analytical evaluation? Weren’t they supposed to be expert medical scientists, too? I waited.” Atlas said that Birx told him his opinion was “out of the mainstream” and said he was part of a “fringe” group of people who believed schools should be opened. “Meanwhile she insisted that all experts agreed with her,” Atlas wrote.

“I shook my head, thinking of some of the world-class epidemiologists who agreed with me—John Ioannidis and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford, Martin Kulldorff of Harvard, Carl Heneghan and Sunetra Gupta of Oxford—and wondered if she or Fauci had ever read a single publication by them.” Atlas wrote that he “explained with numbers” that children did not have a significant risk of illness or death from the virus and cited statistics from New York City, California, and elsewhere documenting that while also noting data from Sweden showing zero deaths despite schools not closing and also not imposing mask mandates. “The icing on the cake was the evidence that almost all coronavirus transmission to children comes from adults, not the other way around,” Atlas wrote.

“That was not a predicate for opening schools, given the massive harms to kids if they were closed. But that evidence was already shown by contact tracing and other studies in Iceland, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Japan, Switzerland, and elsewhere. Opened schools and childcare centers did not show significant dangers to children, adults, or teachers…”They found zero instances of a child passing the infection to an adult.” Atlas says Redfield responded to the data by saying “the jury is still out.” “I was disgusted at Redfield’s apparent lack of knowledge, shocked at his ignoring the scientific studies that had been published from around the world,” Atlas wrote. “I looked around the room, wondering if anyone else understood the glaring incompetence on display. Clearly, Pence needed more input.”

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“..she refused to attend meetings where he would be present..”

Fauci and Birx Stuck To ‘Irrational’ Lockdown Policies – Atlas (DM)

‘By the time I arrived, lockdowns had already been implemented throughout the country for months—including strict business restrictions and school closures as well as quarantines of healthy, asymptomatic people,’ he writes. ‘Those lockdowns were continually pushed, successfully, by Drs. Fauci and Birx to nearly all governors and throughout the media. ‘Those policies – the Birx-Fauci lockdowns – were widely implemented, and they were destroying America’s children and families. ‘Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of deaths kept piling up, including tens of thousands of elderly Americans – their policies were in place and were failing.’ Throughout, he portrays his role as critical thinker, asking awkward questions of the conventional wisdom while his opponents sought to block the president’s wishes.

Why, he asks, were scientists developing and promoting White House policy when their role should have been to offer advice and expertise to the nation’s elected leaders. Instead, Atlas says he pushed for reopening coupled with shielding of those at risk. Testing and isolating healthy people, he said, was a waste of time and resources, and compounded a culture of fear. Leaks quickly suggested he was pushing for a policy of ‘herd immunity,’ essentially by letting the virus spread until the level of natural immunity meant the coronavirus had nowhere left to go. He denies that is what he was proposing, instead describing how he once described the principle of ‘herd immunity’ in a meeting. ‘Not once did I advocate allowing infections to spread – not in that meeting nor in any other meeting, and never to the president,’ he says.

Throughout, he expresses frustration that the White House coronavirus task force was dominated by the views of Fauci and Birx – even as they advocated policies that contradicted Trump’s stated desire to reopen schools and businesses. Trump’s inner circle, he writes, seemed reluctant to rock the boat and reduce the power of two advisers that were popular with the public ahead of the election. ‘They had let Birx and Fauci tell governors to prolong the lockdowns and school closures and continue the severe restrictions on businesses – strategies that failed to stop the elderly from dying, failed to stop the cases, and destroyed families and sacrificed children,’ he writes. ‘The closest advisers to the president, including the VP, seemed more concerned with politics, even though the task force was putting out the wrong advice, contrary to the president’s desire to reopen schools and businesses.’

The result, he says, was dangerous and confusing mixed messaging from the White House. Atlas resigned in November, shortly before his term was due to end. Since then Fauci has been a target of Republicans, who accuse him of flip-flopping in his recommendations and of misleading the public over ‘gain-of-function’ research that they say may have triggered the pandemic. Both have been unstinting in their criticism of Atlas. In recent closed-door testimony to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, Birx accused Atlas of using incomplete information to draw dangerous conclusions.

‘I was constantly raising the alert in the doctors’ meetings of the depth of my concern about Dr. Atlas’ position, Dr. Atlas’ access, Dr. Atlas’ theories and hypothesis, and the depths and breadths of my concern,’ she said. She also confirmed that she refused to attend meetings where he would be present. ‘I felt like by my presence and my discussions with him, by even legitimizing my responses to him, that I was giving his theories credibility,’ she said.

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“..a mortality rate of 2/million..” What’s the myocarditis rate?

Deaths In Children, Young People In UK With Covid Infection In 1st Year (RS)

Background Deaths in children and young people (CYP) following SARS-CoV-2 infection are rare. Quantifying the risk of mortality is challenging because of high relative prevalence of asymptomatic and non-specific disease manifestations. Therefore, it is important to differentiate between CYP who have died of SARS-CoV-2 and those who have died of an alternative disease process but coincidentally tested positive.

Methods During the pandemic, the mandatory National Child Mortality Database (NCMD) was linked to Public Health England (PHE) testing data to identify CYP (<18 years) who died with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test. A clinical review of all deaths from March 2020 to February 2021 was undertaken to differentiate between those who died of SARS-CoV-2 infection and those who died of an alternative cause but coincidentally tested positive. Then, using linkage to national hospital admission data, demographic and comorbidity details of CYP who died of SARS-CoV-2 were compared to all other deaths. Absolute risk of death was estimated where denominator data were available.

Findings 3105 CYP died from all causes during the first pandemic year in England. 61 of these deaths occurred in CYP who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. 25 CYP died of SARS-CoV-2 infection; 22 from acute infection and three from PIMS-TS. 99·995% of CYP with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test survived. The 25 CYP who died of SARS-CoV-2 equates to a mortality rate of 2/million for the 12,023,568 CYP living in England. CYP >10 years, of Asian and Black ethnic backgrounds, and with comorbidities were over-represented compared to other children.

Interpretation SARS-CoV-2 is very rarely fatal in CYP, even among those with underlying comorbidities. These findings are important to guide families, clinicians and policy makers about future shielding and vaccination.

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Goal posts are made to be shifted.

CDC Shifts Pandemic Goals Away From Reaching Herd Immunity (LAT)

Since the earliest days of the pandemic, there has been one collective goal for bringing it to an end: achieving herd immunity. That’s when so many people are immune to a virus that it runs out of potential hosts to infect, causing an outbreak to sputter out. Many Americans embraced the novel farmyard phrase, and with it, the projection that once 70% to 80% or 85% of the population was vaccinated against COVID-19, the virus would go away and the pandemic would be over. Now the herd is restless. And experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have set aside herd immunity as a national goal. The prospects for meeting a clear herd-immunity target are “very complicated,” said Dr. Jefferson Jones, a medical officer on the CDC’s COVID-19 Epidemiology Task Force.

“Thinking that we’ll be able to achieve some kind of threshold where there’ll be no more transmission of infections may not be possible,” Jones acknowledged last week to members of a panel that advises the CDC on vaccines. Vaccines have been quite effective at preventing cases of COVID-19 that lead to severe illness and death, but none has proved reliable at blocking transmission of the virus, Jones noted. Recent evidence has also made clear that the immunity provided by vaccines can wane in a matter of months. The result is that even if vaccination were universal, the coronavirus would probably continue to spread. “We would discourage” thinking in terms of “a strict goal,” he said. To Dr. Oliver Brooks, a member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, it was a sobering new message, with potentially worrisome effects.

With just 58.5% of all Americans fully vaccinated, “we do need to increase” the uptake of COVID-19 shots, said Brooks, chief medical officer of Watts Healthcare in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, he said, Jones’ unexpected admission “almost makes you less motivated to get more people vaccinated.” Brooks said he worries that as the CDC backs off a specific target for herd immunity, it will take the air out of efforts to run up vaccination levels. And if public health officials stop talking about the “herd,” people may lose sight of the fact that vaccination is not just an act of personal protection but a way to protect the community. A public tack away from the promise of herd immunity may also further undermine the CDC’s credibility when it comes to fighting the coronavirus.

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“BREAKING REPORT: Judge in Rittenhouse Trial receiving MULTIPLE THREATS ahead of closing arguments..”

A fair trial? Not possible. Media. Found it remarkable that hardly anyone knows the people he shot, after they attacked him, were not black.

As America Falls Apart, Profits Soar (Taibbi)

The Mayhem Watch is on. Closing arguments in the trial of “Kenosha Shooter” Kyle Rittenhouse are expected Monday, and after weeks of hype, the country is primed to explode again. Wisconsin governor Tony Evers announced 500 National Guard troops will be on hand for potential post-verdict “unrest,” which seems almost guaranteed, no matter the result.

As with all major news stories lately, the Rittenhouse case saw idiosyncrasies wash away as coverage accumulated, with pundits pounding the trial into yet another generalized referendum on American culture war. Prestige media made Rittenhouse a stand-in for the Proud Boys, January 6th, school board protests, anti-mask protests, QAnon, Blue Lives Matter, Trump, “Domestic Terrorism,” fascism, school shooters, and every other naughty thing, with everyone from then-candidate Joe Biden to The Intercept blithely declaring him a white supremacist. The efforts to cast Rittenhouse as a symbol of racism and white rage have been awesome in quantity and transparently, intentionally provoking, with even leading papers like the New York Times standardizing a practice of underscoring Rittenhouse’s race (“white teenager”) while leaving the identities of those shot out of coverage. Glenn Greenwald pointed out that his old outlet, The Intercept, noted Rittenhouse’s race 20 times in one piece while keeping schtum about the color of those shot. This has gone on for so long, we’ve seen a foreign newspaper misreport that the two people killed in the case were black. In the public consciousness, they might as well have been.

Because Rittenhouse from the day of the shooting was made a symbol of Fox-watching, Trump-loving conservatives, he was also quickly adopted in red media as a hero, which “he surely wasn’t,” as Andrew Sullivan put it. This turbo-charged the freakout even more, as Rittenhouse’s defenders turned his case into a referendum on everything from media coverage of last summer’s protests of Black Lives Matter to the performance (or non-performance, as it were) of police during the George Floyd/Jacob Blake demonstrations, to a dozen other things that made public passions rise in the last year.

Rittenhouse in other words became a symbol of so many things to so many people that the specifics of his legal case have ceased to be relevant. There seems to be no such thing as an editorialist who has negative feelings about, say, Rittenhouse posing with Proud Boys, yet also believes that incident can’t be evidence since it happened after the shooting. Everyone picks a side and stays there. Pundits are telling us that any opinion on how the jury should rule can only be understood as a reflection of racial attitudes. “If you’re defending Kyle Rittenhouse, you might be a white supremacist. Just sayin,” is how Tweeter-with-beard and sometimes-journalist David Leavitt puts it.

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Not the Onion. Can’t decide who’s crazier, he or Zuckerberg.

Bezos Predicts Only Limited Number Of People Will Get To Remain On Earth (RT)

Humanity will move most industry into space and allow only a select few to remain on our planet, which will be turned into a natural resort, according to self-funded space explorer Jeff Bezos. The Amazon billionaire enthusiastically shared his predictions for what human civilization will look like in the future – with him personally helping to bring that future closer – during a talk at the annual Ignatius Forum in Washington, DC. He expects vast cylindrical space colonies spinning to create artificial gravity for millions of residents to take over most industrial production. Meanwhile, Earth will be turned into a natural reserve with restricted access similar to US national parks today.

“This place is special, we can’t ruin it,” the founder of Amazon said of our planet. “Millions of people will move from Earth to space over time. And that’s the vision of Blue Origin – millions of people working in space,” he said, referring to his own firm. “Over centuries, most or many of the people will be born in space. It will be their first home. They will be born on these colonies, they will live on these colonies. They may visit Earth the way you would visit Yellowstone National Park,” Bezos predicted. He said that the colonies themselves “will have rivers and forests and wildlife,” which arguably brought his speech out of the realm of futurology and towards optimistic science fiction.

Amazon is infamously resourceful when it comes to squeezing its workers for every drop of productivity. That’s why the similarly rosy description of ‘Amazon factory towns’ solving economic inequality in the US was met with horror, when it was proposed by a Bloomberg columnist in September. Bezos referred to Princeton physicist Gerard O’Neill, who proposed the concept of space habitats in 1976, as the source of inspiration for him. He said the sort of expansion he predicted was inevitable, if humanity is to grow in a sustainable way. “This Earth can support, let’s say, 10 billion people to a certain degree. We’d have to work really hard to figure out how to do that without degrading the planet… The solar system can support a trillion people,” he said.

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We know where to send Bezos.

God Develops Ultra-Realistic Metaverse, Calls It ‘Universe’ (BBee)

In a bold announcement to all of His children, God unveiled the creation of an ultra-realistic metaverse where people can talk, learn, and work with other people, stating this unique new metaverse will be called “Universe.” “This is more realistic than any virtual reality I’ve experienced before,” said reality enthusiast Miles Kann while walking through one of the Universe’s city parks in real-time. “I can literally smell the fresh air, touch the cool grass, and interact with other players in incredible ways.” Another early adopter of God’s Universe demonstrated how detailed and immersive the player-to-player interaction was as she showed off her humble home, complete with husband, children, and dog.


She thanked God for providing her with a sense of purpose and fulfillment unmatched by any competing product. Critics were quick to point out possible bugs in the Universe, listing wars, injustices, violence, and disease, and suggested God either label it “Early Access” or reboot altogether. These criticisms, however, were countered by God’s supporters who were well-versed in the instruction manual, stating a truly realistic Universe must come with the full experience of joy and pain, choice and accountability, life and death, but that the end game was worth it. According to witnesses, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg screamed in terror at the frightening, immutable reality of God’s Universe.

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