Menu Icon

Debt Rattle July 28 2025

Jul 282025
 
 July 28, 2025  Posted by at 8:21 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  55 Responses »


L.S. Lowry The mill, Pendlebury 1943

 

• Trump, EU Reach Tariff Deal To Avoid Trade War (ZH)
• ‘I’ll Never Be the Same’: Dan Bongino on FBI Secrets That Shook Him (Margolis)
• Trump Urges Prosecution of Kamala Harris (Catherine Salgado)
• The John Bolton Connection to the Steele Dossier (Margolis)
• More Russia Hoax Evidence Set To Drop, Implicating Hillary Clinton (Margolis)
• Intel Board Chairman Wants Security Clearances Revoked, Spies Fired (JTN)
• Trump Says Supreme Court’s Immunity Ruling Likely Helps Obama (ET)
• Declassified Russian Probe Material Shows a Familiar Rogue’s Gallery (Turley)
• What Is It With Russia? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• ‘Corrupt’ Ukraine Cannot Be Trusted – Former Trump Advisor (RT)
• EU Slashes $1.7bn In Aid To Ukraine Over Corruption Concerns (ZH)
• The Epstein Saga: What It Is Really About (Paul Craig Roberts)
• German Police Raid AfD MEP’s Property For The 22nd Time (RMX)

 

 

 

 

Ratcliffe

Kirk

Flynn

DOGE

Shell

 

 

 

 

Looking through the deal, I think the negotiators, Ursula first of all, were afraid to be stuck with 35% tariffs on Aug 1. So they agreed to trillions in spending. Good for Europe? Doubtful. Trump now takes it all.

The EU has agreed:
• To purchase $750 billion in energy
• Invest $600 billion in the US on top of existing investments
• Open up countries’ markets to trade with US at zero tariffs
• Purchase “vast amounts” of military equipment

• Trump, EU Reach Tariff Deal To Avoid Trade War (ZH)

President Trump said he reached a trade deal with the European Union late on Sunday, avoiding a trade war with the US’s largest trading partner and marking his biggest deal so far in his attempt to remake the global trading system through higher tariffs for U.S. trading partners. The pact comes less than a week before a Friday deadline for President Donald Trump’s higher tariffs to take effect on August 1. The president in May threatened to impose a 50% duty on nearly all EU goods, adding pressure that accelerated negotiations, before lowering that to 30%. Trump made the announcement at Trump Turnberry, his seaside golf resort in western Scotland, after meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who leads the EU’s executive body.

Trump said the U.S. would set a baseline tariff of 15% for European goods, including automobiles. He said steel and aluminum tariffs, which are currently at 50%, would remain unchanged. He added that the EU had agreed as part of the deal to buy $750 billion worth of energy products from the US, and the EU would agree to invest $600 billion more than previously in the US, although similar to the $550BN “investment” promised by Japan, this is unlikely to every materialize. Adding to the list of ludicrously big numbers disclosed (or as the case may be undisclosed) today, Trump also said that the EU would buy “a vast amount” of military equipment, and while he explained that “we don’t know what number is” but added that the US makes “the best military equipment in the world so you have to do that.”

To summarize, the US EU has agreed:
• To purchase $750 billion in energy
• Invest $600 billion in the US on top of existing investments
• Open up countries’ markets to trade with US at zero tariffs
• Purchase “vast amounts” of military equipment

“I think it’s going to be great for both parties, I think your various countries are very happy about this,” Trump said, sitting alongside von der Leyen. The two met for about an hour with their top representatives. “We made it,” von der Leyen said. She said the two sides wanted to rebalance their trade relationship, “and we wanted to do it in a way that trade goes on between the two of us across the Atlantic.” Currently, the EU faces a 10% baseline tariff on most of its goods exports to the U.S., as well as a 25% tariff on its auto industry and a 50% tariff for steel and aluminum. “I think that basically concludes the deal,” Trump told reporters at his golf club in Turnberry, Scotland. “It’s the biggest of all the deals.” The terms disclosed on Sunday suggest that 15% is likely a new minimum tariff level for most American trading partners. Economists and trade analysts say that tariffs at that level will have an impact on companies’ decisions and are expected to contribute to higher prices for Americans, but won’t stop global trade flows.

“They are not at the level where the global economy burns down,” said Dmitry Grozoubinski, senior trade adviser at Aurora Macro Strategies. The deal comes after a flurry of recent trade announcements. Trump said this past week that he had reached a deal with Japan, another top U.S. trading partner, which put baseline tariffs at 15%. Separate agreements set Vietnam’s baseline tariff level at 20% and established a 19% rate for the Philippines and Indonesia, Trump has said. The U.K. has the lowest tariffs Trump has so far agreed to as part of a deal, at 10%. Trump also was expected to iron out final details of the U.K. agreement in meetings with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Sunday and Monday.

The EU pact removes a major risk for markets and the global economy, a trade war involving $1.7 trillion worth of cross-border commerce, even though it means European shipments to the US are getting hit with a higher tax at the border. The goals, Trump said, were more production in the US and wider access for American exporters to the European market. Von der Leyen acknowledged that part of the drive behind the talks was a rebalancing of trade, but cast it as beneficial for both sides. “The starting point was an imbalance,” von der Leyen said. “We wanted to rebalance the trade we made, and we wanted to do it in a way that trade goes on between the two of us across the Atlantic, because the two biggest economies should have a good trade flow.”

As Bloomberg notes, US and European negotiators had been zeroing in on an agreement this past week. Officials have discussed terms for a quota system for steel and aluminum imports, which would face a lower import tax below a certain threshold and would be charged the regular 50% rate above it. The EU had also been seeking quotas and a ceiling on future industry-specific tariffs, but it’s unclear if the initial agreement will shield the bloc from potential levies that have yet to be implemented. The announcement capped off months of often tense shuttle diplomacy between Brussels and Washington. The EU had prepared to put levies on about €100 billion ($117 billion), about a third of American exports to the bloc, if a deal wasn’t reached and Trump followed through on his warning.

For weeks, the EU has indicated a willingness to accept an unbalanced pact involving a reduced rate of around 15%, while seeking relief on sectoral tariffs critical to the European economy. The US president has also imposed 25% levies on cars and double that rate on steel and aluminum, as well as copper. The deal comes just days after we learned that in June the US collected a new record in tariff revenue, some $26.6 billion: a number which annualizes to an impressive $320 billion. Several exporters in Asia, including Indonesia, the Philippines and Japan, have negotiated reciprocal rates between 15% to 20%, and the EU saw Japan’s deal for 15% on autos as a breakthrough worth seeking as well. Washington’s talks also continue with Switzerland, South Korea and Taiwan.

Read more …

Dan Bongino is a real man.

• ‘I’ll Never Be the Same’: Dan Bongino on FBI Secrets That Shook Him (Margolis)

In a political era addicted to facades and orchestrated outrage, some moments cut through the noise with a force that startles even seasoned observers. Enter Dan Bongino. The former radio firebrand turned deputy director of the FBI has become a lightning rod within Donald Trump’s second-term administration. In recent weeks, there were rumors he was going to quit the administration over frustration with Pam Bondi over how she’s handled the Epstein files. A source close to the matter said Bongino felt betrayed by what he saw as Bondi’s backpedaling and stonewalling—especially after she downplayed the existence of Epstein’s “client list” and dismissed speculation about blackmail or foul play. Bongino, who took the job hoping to help restore public trust, came to believe that mission was dead in the water unless Bondi stepped aside. “He’s done if she stays,” the source said at the time.

And then nothing happened. But Bongino’s recent statement on X is raising eyebrows. In a powerful and emotional message, Dan Bongino pulled back the curtain on what he described as deeply troubling revelations during his time at the FBI, vowing accountability and transparency in the face of corruption. “During my tenure here as the Deputy Director of the FBI,” Bongino began, “I have repeatedly relayed to you that things are happening that might not be immediately visible, but they are happening.” He emphasized a top-down commitment to justice, writing, “The Director and I are committed to stamping out public corruption and the political weaponization of both law enforcement and intelligence operations. It is a priority for us.”

But what he’s uncovered, Bongino said, has changed him forever. “What I have learned in the course of our properly predicated and necessary investigations into these aforementioned matters, has shocked me down to my core. We cannot run a Republic like this. I’ll never be the same after learning what I’ve learned.” He promised that the investigations will be carried out “by the book and in accordance with the law,” adding, “We are going to get the answers WE ALL DESERVE.” “As with any investigation, I cannot predict where it will land,” Bongino admitted, “but I can promise you an honest and dignified effort at truth. Not ‘my truth,’ or ‘your truth,’ but THE TRUTH.”

If that doesn’t sound like a battle cry from inside the halls of federal law enforcement, what does? For years, Americans have watched as justice and intelligence agencies faced allegations of bias, political leaks, and “weaponization” against dissenters from the prevailing establishment narrative. Critics—many of whom once dismissed such talk as conspiracy theory—have realized that these warnings carry real weight. Bongino, who once sat behind a conservative microphone dissecting exactly these threats, now finds himself not only confronting them but, by his own account, being rocked by what he’s uncovered. The message is unmistakable: accountability isn’t optional. Bongino’s cryptic post bears the signature of a man who has glimpsed truths that will shake the nation’s confidence in its governing institutions.

The question is not whether heads will roll, but how deep the rot goes and whether the rot can be cut out before it destroys what those institutions are supposed to protect. Forget the media’s hope for another administration scandal. The real scandal is what Bongino is finding—and what he warns America must soon confront. No matter how much the press wishes otherwise, Bongino’s mission to purge corruption is underway. His refusal to sugarcoat the stakes, and his insistence that “we cannot run a Republic like this,” target the very heart of what’s ailing the country. Whether Bongino ultimately prevails isn’t a footnote; it’s a battle for the soul of the Republic. One thing is certain: Washington can’t ignore Bongino’s warning shot. Nor should anyone else.

Read more …

“Eleven Million Dollars to singer Beyoncé for an ENDORSEMENT (she never sang, not one note, and left the stage to a booing and angry audience!)..”

• Trump Urges Prosecution of Kamala Harris (Catherine Salgado)

The Founding Fathers intended that, in America, no one would have a title and no one would be above the law. Too often in modern times, that no longer seems true of our country. But Donald Trump is starting to call for a change to the double standard of justice. Reviewing potentially illegal payouts from the Democratic Party and apparent bookkeeping errors, Donald Trump understandably wants to get to the bottom of the allegations and wants to see the former vice president in court over them. If you or I committed a federal immigration felony, received massive amounts of money from foreign hostile governments, engaged in money-laundering, committed classified documents felonies, fabricated evidence against a rival, or committed other serious crimes, we would almost certainly be going to jail.

But if you have a title like vice president or congressman or governor now, it seems as if you have the “get out of jail free” card. That is terribly dangerous. We quite simply cannot have a Republic if there is one set of laws for ordinary citizens and a totally different set of standards for rich and powerful people. Trump is at least right to recognize the underlying problem here. Trump posted on Truth Social Saturday, “I’m looking at the large amount of money owed by the Democrats, after the Presidential Election, and the fact that they admit to paying, probably illegally, Eleven Million Dollars to singer Beyoncé for an ENDORSEMENT (she never sang, not one note, and left the stage to a booing and angry audience!), Three Million Dollars for ‘expenses,’ to Oprah, Six Hundred Thousand Dollars to very low rated TV ‘anchor,’ Al Sharpton (a total lightweight!), and others to be named for doing, absolutely NOTHING! These ridiculous fees were incorrectly stated in the books and records.”

It is unclear whether paying large sums to a celebrity for an endorsement definitively violates Federal Election Commission guidelines. However, failing to properly report high-cost endorsement payments is a violation. These allegations would be worth investigating legally and in accordance with election laws and standards.

Trump, though he did not clarify that the violation depends on the amount of the payment for endorsement and the level of coordination with a candidate/campaign, referred to this in his usual emphatic style: “YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO PAY FOR AN ENDORSEMENT. IT IS TOTALLY ILLEGAL TO DO SO. Can you imagine what would happen if politicians started paying for people to endorse them. All hell would break out! Kamala, and all of those that received Endorsement money, BROKE THE LAW. They should all be prosecuted! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

The Federal Election Commission states: Disbursements for endorsements made to the general public are not contributions or expenditures as long as the endorsement is not coordinated with any candidate, candidate committee or its agents. If celebrities were paid huge amounts of money by the Democrat party and Harris’s campaign to endorse Kamala, this would indeed seem to be a violation of the FEC rules.

Read more …

This John Bolton connection is straight out of the Baskervilles. The dog that didn’t bark. He had a file on Brennan and sat on it for years.

• The John Bolton Connection to the Steele Dossier (Margolis)

The Steele Dossier saga isn’t over—not even close. If anything, its rot is more obvious than ever, with each new revelation pointing directly to the highest levels of the Obama administration and even reaching into the early days of the Trump White House. What we now know is already damning: the phony Steele Dossier wasn’t just opposition research—it was weaponized disinformation, deliberately shoved into the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment under orders from Barack Obama himself. Senior analysts warned it was unverified and unreliable, but those concerns were bulldozed in the name of politics.

Obama ordered the revised ICA not because Russia flipped the election, but because the original findings made it clear they hadn’t. That truth was politically inconvenient. So instead of accepting it, they rewrote reality, stuffing baseless allegations into an official intelligence report and turning it into a blunt instrument to kneecap a duly elected president. At the very least, John Brennan, the Obama-era CIA director, may soon find himself in legal jeopardy over his role in this scandal. But this story just took another turn—as it ensnared John Bolton, former national security adviser to President Trump.

In 2018, Bolton received a classified memorandum directly connected to Brennan’s actions. Astonishingly, he chose to bury it, locking it away in a National Security Council safe instead of bringing it to Trump’s attention. His trust in Brennan’s fabricated intelligence prevailed over his duty to the president he served. According to investigative reporter Paul Sperry, in 2018, Bolton received that classified summary, detailing how Brennan manufactured the Putin-Trump intelligence out of thin air—but Bolton left it untouched, sealed from sight and scrutiny.

The list of bad actors goes on. Oleg Smolenkov and Igor Danchenko, once hyped as top-tier Russian sources, turned out to be opportunists with no real intel. But John Brennan needed a show, so Smolenkov was sold as Moscow’s James Bond, just like Comey inflated Steele’s fiction as “Crown material.” It was never about truth—just building a weapon.

Now, thanks to declassified intelligence, reality is catching up with fiction. While Vladimir Putin never possessed any compromising material to blackmail Trump, he did have an extensive dossier on Hillary Clinton. Had she won the presidency, she would have entered the White House compromised, vulnerable to blackmail by Moscow, her decisions always shadowed by the possibility of Russian extortion.

In short, a cabal of partisans weaponized compromised intelligence, invented a Russian conspiracy out of nothing, and employed it to kneecap an incoming president. The deception ran so deep that even those entrusted to defend the presidency—like Bolton—became complicit by omission, not intervention.

Read more …

“CIA Director John Ratcliffe revealed Sunday that explosive new evidence tied to the Russia collusion hoax is about to be declassified..”

• More Russia Hoax Evidence Set To Drop, Implicating Hillary Clinton (Margolis)

CIA Director John Ratcliffe revealed Sunday that explosive new evidence tied to the Russia collusion hoax is about to be declassified—and it points directly at Hillary Clinton and key Obama-era intelligence officials. During an appearance on “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News, Ratcliffe confirmed that the classified annex to Special Counsel John Durham’s report will soon be made public, and what it contains could dramatically shift the narrative on the origins of Crossfire Hurricane. “And what that intelligence shows, Maria, is that part of this was a Hillary Clinton plan, but part of it was an FBI plan to, uh, be an accelerant to that fake Steele dossier, to those fake Russia collusion claims by pouring oil on the fire, by amplifying the lie and burying the truth of … what Hillary Clinton was up to,” Ratcliffe said.

This comes on the heels of fresh scrutiny over former CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and FBI Director James Comey, all of whom, according to Ratcliffe, knowingly pushed a false narrative into official intelligence assessments. “What hasn’t come out yet—and what’s going to come out—is the underlying intelligence that I have spent the last few months making recommendations about for final declassification,” Ratcliffe explained. “That will come out in the John Durham report classified annex.” If accurate, this revelation would confirm what conservatives have long suspected: that the Clinton campaign not only fabricated the Russian collusion story but had help from deep-state operatives inside the federal government.

“And much of that testimony is frankly completely inconsistent with what our underlying intelligence… reflects,” he added, referring to sworn statements given by Brennan, Clinton, and Comey between 2020 and 2022. Ratcliffe emphasized that this was not just a political hit job against Trump—it was a coordinated effort to manipulate both the intelligence community and the public. “You know, Pam Bondi does have a strike force. It is a different Department of Justice, a different FBI, and an opportunity to look at how these people really did conspire to run a hoax, a fraud on the American people, and against Donald Trump’s presidency. ”Despite predictable pushback from Democrats and legacy media dismissing renewed investigations as “revenge” or “retribution,” Ratcliffe said it’s clear why the public supports these efforts.

“They said to everyone, ‘We know what you did to Donald Trump, and we reelected him because we know this was all fake. We know it was a hoax. Now we want to understand how you did it so that it can’t happen again.’” “This declassification process… is so important,” Ratcliffe continued. “There can be accountability and preventability to prevent the same people that did it in 2016 with the Steele dossier, with the Hunter Biden laptop in 2020, from doing it again in the future.” In short, the hoax that consumed years of Trump’s first presidency may finally be fully exposed—and Hillary Clinton’s role in launching it, with FBI help, will no longer be shielded by redactions or media deflection. Investigative reporter Paul Sperry revealed similar news on X Sunday morning:

Read more …

“I just continue to be fascinated by the people who are still carrying a security clearance. It’s amazing who are still in these agencies,” Nunes said..”

• Intel Board Chairman Wants Security Clearances Revoked, Spies Fired (JTN)

The chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board says he believes crimes were committed by intelligence and law enforcement officials who relentlessly pursued President Donald Trump over the last decade, and he also wants to make sure that spies who abused their powers are stripped of their security clearances and their jobs. “Look, it’s really simple. There’s lots of criminals here, and it was a grand conspiracy,” former House Intelligence Committee Chairman and current PIAB chief Devin Nunes told Just the News. “Remember, we made, I don’t know, a dozen criminal referrals when I was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee,” he added during an exclusive interview on the Just the News, No Noise television show Thursday night.

Nunes said whether people are prosecuted now will depend on whether the statute of limitations for crimes have expired, or whether those deadlines get extended by the pursuit of a conspiracy case. He said he’s comfortable leaving those decisions to FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi. The former Republican lawmaker from California said he’s focused in his role as the head of the civilian oversight board for U.S. intelligence on making sure that intelligence officers face discipline and consequences, regardless of whether they are prosecuted eventually.

“I just continue to be fascinated by the people who are still carrying a security clearance. It’s amazing who are still in these agencies,” Nunes said. “And I’m just shaking my head like every time I turn around, like, wait, wait, wait, wasn’t that person in that position a Russia hoax person. “All of those people need to get their security clearances pulled, and they should not be working anywhere near law enforcement or intelligence for that matter,” he added. “So it’s one of the things that our board is tasked with.”

Read more …

There are plenty of them without immunity. Start there.

• Trump Says Supreme Court’s Immunity Ruling Likely Helps Obama (ET)

President Donald Trump on Friday said that former President Barack Obama likely has immunity following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in light of a report that was declassified by Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard earlier this month. Gabbard said the documents showed that Obama and his then-Cabinet members “manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump,” which Obama denied in a statement earlier this week. Gabbard said in a Sunday interview that she referred some Obama-era officials for criminal prosecution to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI. Trump on Friday was asked by a reporter during a press gaggle at the White House, “How do you think that the Supreme Court’s ruling that benefited you on presidential immunity would apply to former President Barack Obama and what you’re accusing him of doing?”

The question for Trump was referring to the Supreme Court’s 6–3 ruling in 2024 that stated presidents have prosecutorial immunity for official acts within the executive presidential authority that Congress has no jurisdiction over.
“It probably helps him a lot,” Trump said in response, adding that the ruling “doesn’t help the people around him at all. But it probably helps him a lot.” The president said he believed Obama had committed “criminal acts,” but that “he has Immunity,” which he said “probably helps him a lot.” “Obama owes me big” for the Supreme Court ruling, Trump said. Earlier this week, the president said that Obama officials “tried to rig the election, and they got caught, and there should be very severe consequences for that.” Responding to accusations from Gabbard, a spokesperson for Obama reiterated the assertion that Russia attempted to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.

“Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes,” the spokesperson said on July 22.
Obama’s spokesperson also pointed to a 2020 Senate Intelligence Committee report, saying the committee affirmed that Russia worked to influence the election. Earlier this week, Gabbard said, “There is irrefutable evidence that details how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew was false.” Among the documents declassified by the DNI is a House Intelligence report dated Sept. 18, 2020, which found that several intelligence reports that suggested Russian President Vladimir Putin aspired to help then-presidential candidate Trump in the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election were “substandard.”

Specifically, three reports published internally by the CIA after the election contained information that was potentially biased, implausible, unclear, or of uncertain origin, the House Intelligence Committee said in the report that was released by Gabbard on Wednesday. “One scant, unclear, and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from one of the substandard reports constitutes the only classified information to suggest Putin ‘aspired’ to help Trump win,” the panel stated. The reports were used as foundational sources for an intelligence community assessment made public in January 2017.

The intelligence community “ignored or selectively quoted reliable intelligence reports that challenged—and in some cases undermined—judgments that Putin sought to elect Trump” and failed to consider plausible alternative explanations, the House report stated. The DOJ on July 23 announced that it was forming a task force following the declassification of the documents. In a statement posted to X, the DOJ said that the task force would “assess the evidence publicized by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and investigate potential next legal steps which might stem from DNI Gabbard’s disclosures.”

Read more …

View from the law professor.

• Declassified Russian Probe Material Shows a Familiar Rogue’s Gallery (Turley)

The release of declassified material has shed new light on the creation of the Russian collusion investigation and many of the names are crushingly familiar. Indeed, Congress is moving to “round up the usual suspects” in light of the new revelations. It is the story of the real Russian conspiracy: how high-ranking officials in the Obama Administration seeded this false claim with the help of an eager, unquestioning press corps. Not surprisingly, the media (which spent years repeating the false Russian collusion claims) is doing a full-court press to kill the story. Yet, many of these key figures are retaining counsel in anticipation of the unfolding investigation. Many previously secured contracts with MSNBC or CNN, or book deals, where they doubled down on the false claims detailed in these new documents. Here are just a few of the usual suspects:

John Brennan, Former Director, Central Intelligence Agency Brennan is arguably the most at risk in the new disclosures, which allegedly contradict his prior testimony before Congress. On May 23, 2017, Brennan testified that the infamous Steele dossier “wasn’t part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had. It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community Assessment that was done.” However, the new material shows that Brennan was the key figure insisting on the inclusion of the Steele dossier in an intelligence assessment, suggesting that the Russians did influence the election in favor of Trump.

Brennan not only intervened to include the dossier but overruled the CIA’s two most senior Russia experts, who said it “did not meet even the most basic tradecraft standards.” One analyst recounted how “[Brennan] refused to remove it, and when confronted with the dossier’s main flaws, [Brennan] responded, ‘Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?’” Notably, it was Brennan who briefed Obama in 2016 about Hillary Clinton’s plan to create a Russian conspiracy “to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.” Months later, it would be Brennan who would actively incorporate the dossier secretly funded by Clinton’s campaign.

James Clapper, Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former DNI under Obama, is expecting the worst and said that he has “lawyered up.” Clapper was in the briefing in July 2016 when Obama was told that Clinton was planning to create a Russian conspiracy narrative. In November 2016, Clapper received an assessment from the intelligence community that Russia was “probably not trying … to influence the election by using cyber means.” He also received talking points from staff on December 7, 2016, “Foreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the US Presidential election outcome.”

On December 9, 2016, another report stated that “Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent US election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure.” That Presidential Daily Brief was scheduled to be published on December 9, 2016, but CDNI Clapper’s office stopped its publication “based on some new guidance.” Clapper later joined Obama with John Brennan, Susan Rice, John Kerry, Loretta Lynch, Andrew McCabe and others, in a meeting where a new assessment was ordered that would detail the “tools Moscow used and actions it took to influence the 2016 election.” Brennan then reportedly handpicked the analysts who seemed to flip the earlier assessments without any credible intelligence.

In a 2018 interview with the Harvard Gazette, Clapper continued to spread the false narrative, referring to the high-confidence judgment that “Putin directly ordered the hacking and election interference.” He added, “I think they [Russians] actually influenced the outcome.” Clapper later added to his tarnished legacy by signing the letter with more than 50 former intelligence officials dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 presidential election as likely “Russian disinformation.”

James Comey, Former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation James Comey would use this contrived intelligence to green-light the investigations that overwhelmed the first Trump term. The FBI was aware early that the Steele dossier was an unreliable political hit job funded by the Clinton campaign. Moreover, the CIA told the FBI that Trump associate Carter Page was a U.S. intelligence asset, not a Russian spy. The FBI ignored such countervailing intelligence, violated protocols, and lied to a federal court to maintain the Russian investigation. In an interview with Fox’s Bret Baier, Comey was asked about the lack of evidence of “Russian collusion.” Comey dismissed the question by saying “collusion’s not a word that I’m familiar with.”

Putting aside the lunacy of that statement, Comey then says the question is whether Americans were “in cahoots with the foreign intelligence activities.” It appears “cahoots” is a word he is familiar with. He then denied knowing, in April 2018, that the Clinton campaign had funded the report. Comey often appears unfamiliar with terms or facts that contradicted his investigation of Trump, even years later. Comey repeatedly testified to a lack of memory on key decisions made in the Russian investigation. However, documents show that it was Comey who pushed back on a planned statement by Clapper, stating that they had not determined the dossier to be reliable.

Andrew McCabe, Former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, now a CNN contributor, was fired after career Justice Department officials found that the former acting FBI director not only lied to investigators but deserved to be fired. That recommendation was reportedly embraced by the career officials in the inspector general’s office. He was accused of lying four times, including twice under oath. Not surprisingly, McCabe makes appearances in the new disclosures. He is not only present at critical meetings, but it also appears that McCabe was allegedly responsible for blocking congressional investigators from interviewing the FBI analysts who supported Brennan and the drafters of the controversial ICA.

Congress alleged that McCabe walled off at least 30 FBI employees associated with the dossier. These and other names are not new. As the media was spreading the false narrative of Russian collusion, many of these figures knew that there was no evidence of such collusion. They said nothing. Instead, after Obama ordered a new assessment, effectively flipping the conclusions of the earlier assessment, anonymous sources leaked the false narrative to the media, which eagerly ran with the story. While leaks of the false narrative were rampant, none of the actual facts were leaked to the media.

In the meantime, figures like Schiff continued to claim, even after the Special Counsel rejected evidence of collusion, that he had secret evidence to the contrary in the House Intelligence Committee. Schiff never revealed that evidence, and the public now knows that the intelligence community rejected the collusion claims from the outset. The public is now learning about the real Russian conspiracy and its key players. It was the most infamous — and successful — political hit job in history. The same media that pushed the false claims are now, again, imposing a news blackout as they did with the Hunter Biden laptop. The problem is that the truth, like water, tends to find a way out. That trickle just turned into a flood for the architects of the Russian collusion hoax.

Read more …

“..only Trump and Putin can resolve the conflict. Trump has made no attempt to resolve it. He has passed it off to Zelensky..”

• What Is It With Russia? (Paul Craig Roberts)

The unreality that prevails in Russia is puzzling. It is not just Putin’s inability to comprehend that by refusing to win the conflict after 3.5 years, he has allowed the conflict to widen out of control. Now Putin is faced with all of Europe organizing to support the West’s proxy war against Russia by purchasing US weapons and supplying the weapons to Ukraine. Trump and Germany have signaled that the next widening is to attack Moscow with missiles. Apparently Russians still haven’t learned anything. Ivan Timofeev, the program director of the Valdai Club, says that “We’re close to the war nobody wants but everyone’s preparing for.” He is wrong. Israel wants America at war with Iran. Zelensky wants Europe at war with Russia. The Zionist neoconservatives want more color revolutions to set at war with Russia. The CIA wants to weaken BRICS by setting India and China against one another.

Putin himself has done more to guarantee future conflict by refusing to use sufficient force to end the conflict in Ukraine before it widens out of control. Timofeev actually believes, God help him, that Trump has pushed for peace in Ukraine. How can Trump push for peace when the military/security complex needs the Russian enemy, without which its budget and power are reduced? Trump has not repudiated the Wolfowitz Doctrine of US hegemony. Trump has not met with Putin. As the Ukraine conflict is Washington’s proxy war with Russia, only Trump and Putin can resolve the conflict. Trump has made no attempt to resolve it. He has passed it off to Zelensky, who cannot resolve it, because it is Washington’s war.

The Western world has not heard a word that Putin has said. Putin said, repeatedly, that the war cannot be resolved unless it deals with the root cause, which is the absence of a mutual security agreement. The West has made it perfectly clear that it does not want a mutual security agreement with Russia. What else explains Washington’s use of the conflict to expand NATO into Finland and Sweden, to militarize Moldavia, to stir up trouble in Soviet Central Asia against Russia? It is extraordinary that one never sees, with the exception of Sputnik journalist Ekaterina Blinova, any intelligent analysis from a Russian commentator available in English. No doubt there is Russian discussion that is kept from us.

Another example of Kremlin insouciance is the announcement last Friday by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov: “The only way to resolve the Middle East conflict is through the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.” Here we have again the “two-state solution” that has been the cover since 1947 for Israel’s theft of Palestine. Every year Israel steals a little more of Palestine, and the complicit West says “the two-state solution.” The Kremlin is still saying it when there is not a building standing in Gaza and an Israeli government minister has declared the Israeli parliament has in effect annexed the tiny remnants of the West Bank. Trump has already claimed Gaza, so where is Palestine? It is a county that no longer exists. America and Israel have wiped it off the planet.

The Israeli government declaration reads: “the creation of a Palestinian state poses a Mortal danger to Israel’s existence. The Knesset declares that the State of Israel has the natural, historical, and legal right to all parts of the Land of Israel.” In other words, Palestine doesn’t exist. In the face of this unequivocal statement by the Israeli government the Kremlin says the solution is a two-state solution. What more do you need to see that Russia is disconnected from reality, has no comprehension of what is happening, and by failing to exercise a leadership role has committed the world to Third War Three.

Read more …

“This raid reeks – and it smells like gangsterism, not democracy.”

• ‘Corrupt’ Ukraine Cannot Be Trusted – Former Trump Advisor (RT)

Kiev’s recent crackdown on anti-corruption agencies is yet more proof that Ukrainian leaders are leaning towards authoritarianism and “cannot be trusted,” Steve Cortes, a former advisor to US President Donald Trump, has said. Earlier this month, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky moved to place the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) under executive oversight – which would essentially strip them of any independence – while claiming the agencies were under Russian influence. The move, however, prompted mass protests at home and Western criticism, with EU officials warning that they could reconsider further aid to Kiev. In an op-ed for Newsweek on Friday, Cortes, who is now the president of the League of American Workers advocacy group, described the crackdown as “an extra-judicial attack on decency.”

“This raid reeks – and it smells like gangsterism, not democracy.” The move by Zelensky, reportedly backed by his chief of staff, Andrey Yermak – whom Cortes described as “co-president” – shows that they “act in very authoritarian ways themselves – and increasingly reveal to the world that they are not transparent, reliable partners for the United States.” Cortes went on to accuse Kiev of entrenched high-level corruption and argued that continued US aid is unjustified. “It is no wonder that Americans increasingly realize that sending $175 billion of borrowed money to corrupt leaders in Ukraine is just not sound policy,” he wrote. “Sending mountains of borrowed funds to kleptocrats actually harms America’s national security, all while making our country poorer,” he said while urging Americans to stop lionizing Zelensky and comprehend the reality of Ukraine’s corruption.

The American people have been unbelievably generous, but our patience is wearing thin… In this case, given the latest tactics and optics of the Zelensky/Yermak regime, it becomes ever clearer that these counterparts cannot be trusted. Following domestic and international backlash, Zelensky backpedaled on the crackdown, proposing that the independence of Ukraine’s anti-graft institutions be restored. Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova suggested that neither NABU nor SAPO is really fighting corruption but rather are used by Kiev’s backers as tools “to control the flow of money coming to Ukraine from the West.”

Read more …

That seems to be a hopeful first. Then again, if the total is $100 billion…

• EU Slashes $1.7bn In Aid To Ukraine Over Corruption Concerns (ZH)

Have we reached the beginning of the end for Zelensky? Does this spell game-over and victory for Putin and Russia? The following is a very rare admission from the hard news pages of The New York Times: “James Wasserstrom, an American anticorruption expert, said in an interview that “the luster is definitely coming off” Mr. Zelensky’s wartime leadership among governments providing financial assistance. He added, “There is exasperation at Zelensky in the donor community.” Early last week, there were unexpected images coming from Kiev of the largest demonstrations against the Ukrainian government since Russia invaded more than three years ago, as more than 2,000 people gathered near the president’s office, shouting “shame” and “veto the law,” after President Zelensky signed a law gutting the country’s anti-corruption agency.

This was enough to get the attention of Kiev’s biggest donors, and days later on Friday the European Union announced it would suspend part of a €4.5 billion fund tied to good governance standards, with the NY Times reporting that the bloc has frozen €1.5 billion (about $1.7 billion) in financial aid to Ukraine over concerns about corruption and delays in key reforms. The decision is said to not be ‘final’ yet, and on Sunday President Zelensky held a crucial call with President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen. His office confirmed they discussed Ukraine’s anti-corruption system (…or we should say lack thereof). What is tantamount to EU sanctions being on the table would impact access to the funding, dependent on Ukraine meeting specific reform requirements known as “progress benchmarks.”

One critical unmet benchmark is the appointment of judges to the High Anti-Corruption Court, which is supposed to be an independent judiciary apparatus given the power to spotlight and battle elite corruption. The EU has also raised concerns about a lack of transparency and slow progress in the area of judicial reforms. This rare backlash from close allies with the deepest pocketbooks marks a huge blow to Zelensky – who has also kept himself in power way past his term mandate (citing the war with Russia) – after he pushed legislation through the Verkhovna Rada seen as greatly underminng the independence of two key anti-corruption bodies: the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO).

Critics have increasingly highlighted that these actions have come in unison with other martial law policies during the war, including the silencing of journalists, civil society activists, the suppression of the Russian language, the persecution of the Orthodox Church, as well as the wholesale banning of opposition parties. The New York Times comments as follows: “The two agencies — the National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine and the Specialized Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office — had been investigating top ministers in the Zelensky government. The president’s decision to kneecap them, though reversed, prompted accusations of cronyism that jeopardized backing from civil society groups at home and Western nations bankrolling the war.

The European Union established this aid mechanism, the Ukraine Facility, last year and promised 50 billion euros over three years for repairing war damage and preparing the country for E.U. accession. The European Commission spokesman, Guillaume Mercier, told journalists in Brussels on Friday that Ukraine had requested a disbursement in June despite falling short on three of 16 benchmarks, including failing to make appointments to a specialized anticorruption court.”

Further, the report noted “That court tries cases brought by the two agencies whose independence Mr. Zelensky threatened this week.” Even British prime minister Kier Starmer has reportedly phoned Zelensky’s office this past week to discuss his latest moves regarding corruption investigations. And when you’ve potentially lost the Brits and Europeans, your wartime star power has most definitely faded. President Putin and Kremlin officials are sure to seize on the anti-Zelensky momentum diplomatically, as they engage Trump officials behind the scenes as part of ongoing bilateral talks. Trump has of course never been a close friend of “the world’s greatest salesman” Zelensky – and could be ready to dump him especially if the mood turns drastically in Europe.

Read more …

Yes, you can make it confusing. Yes, in some places 8 is the age of consent.

• The Epstein Saga: What It Is Really About (Paul Craig Roberts)

We have to decide whether the Epstein story is child rape or Mossad blackmail. If “child” is defined as under the statutory age of female sexual consent, in the US depending on the state, a child is a female under 16 years of age, under 17 years of age, or under 18 years of age. In New York the age of female consent is 17. In Hawaii it is 16. Hawaii has a “close-in-age” exception that allows 14 year olds to consent with those up to 21 years in age. In Hawaii the goal seems to be not to prevent underaged females from sexual intercourse but to prevent overaged males (over 21) from sex with females declared underaged for them but not for younger men. There is an element here of age discrimination. In the Philippines the age of female consent is 12. In Germany the requirement is for a female to be 14 years old in order for a sexual relationship with a male over 18 to be legal.

In Mexico the age of consent is 15. In Russia it is 16. It Japan it is 13 but is being raised to 16. In England it is 16. In Italy and China the age of consent is 14. In Denmark and Poland it is 15. In Saudi Arabia sex is only legal within marriage. The legal age for marriage for males is 18, for females 16. In the 1950s the age of consent in the state of Georgia was 14. In Delaware in the late 19th century it was 7, yes 7, not a typo. During the 1880s the age of consent in many US states varied between 10 and 12. Whatever the varying legislated age, if the information provided me is correct that some mothers have 12 year old daughters on birth control pills, the de facto age of female sexual consent in the US is 12.

Was Virginia Giuffre a child? If she is American it depends on her state of residence. If she is British, Australian or a New York resident, she is not a child. There was no child rape of Virginia Giuffre for which she collected three million pounds according to reports. Normally we think of a child as before puberty. I don’t know if Epstein had such young kids as sex bait for his entrapment scheme. If so, it would seem to involve kidnapping in addition to illegal underage sex. Would the prominent Jewish billionaires, who Ryan Dawson says was Mossad’s way of directing funds to Epstein, put themselves at risk by being complicit in kidnapping and underage sex? Why would they when there are volunteers attracted to influential men just as groupies are attracted to rock stars.

Young women are not what they formerly were. It is a fact that many young women have porn sites on which they proudly demonstrate themselves in sexual activity that not long ago would have been regarded as depraved. Some of them compete in having the largest number of sexual partners in a 24 hour time period. One has a goal of 1,000 sexual partners in 24 hours, which with no breaks for food, water, or toilet, comes to about 80 seconds per partner. It has become a matter of pride to achieve sexual penetration by 1,000 strangers in 24 hours. According to reports, young women in Internet chat brag about having had 150 sexual partners. True or false, it shows they are not shamed by their behavior whether claimed or real. What I have reported are facts, not a brief for pedophilia. Use the facts to decide whether the Epstein Saga is one of child sex-trafficking or one of a Mossad honey-trap for blackmail purposes to ensure US policy in the Middle East conforms to Israel’s.

Sex-trafficking of children in the US is far more extensive than Epstein’s operation. Principally, the sex-trafficking of illegal alien children. Many were separated from their parents, and if reports are correct tens of thousands, or is it hundreds of thousands, of them have been “lost.” US authorities don’t know where they are. Another source was the seizure of children by Child Protective Services, many of whom allegedly ended up in child prostitution. As far as I know, nothing has been done to find and to rescue these children. As a final suggestion, consider whether the purpose of the hullabaloo over Epstein’s sex-trafficking is to focus attention off the Israeli spy operation that has succeeded in destroying an independent American Middle East policy and five Muslim countries regarded as obstacles to Greater Israel.

Read more …

“Anyone who expresses critical views on war preparations must apparently expect house searches…”

” In the latest Yougov poll, the [..] CDU lost 3.5 percent of the vote, while the AfD has jumped 4.2 points.”

• German Police Raid AfD MEP’s Property For The 22nd Time (RMX)

German police have raided Alternative for Germany (AfD) MEP Petr Bystron’s property for the 22nd time, using the pretext of his connection to the defunct Voice of Europe website, which was run by a man exiled from Ukraine. The house raid came while Bystron was in Washington D.C., meeting with Trump officials, including congressmen and allies of President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. On early Tuesday morning, German police searched an older warehouse where Bystron conducted business a decade ago. “This is targeted terror against the opposition,” Bystron said in a press release. “There is no other way to classify the absurd behavior of the authorities.” Bystron was the target of Czech intelligence services last year, who decided to release a variety of allegations surrounding their investigation at a rather opportune time—right before EU parliamentary elections.

The raid against Voice of Europe (VoE) and the accusations against Bystron, which Remix News covered, was widely seen as damaging the AfD’s reputation before voters headed to the polls. Notably, Czech intelligence claimed to have voice recordings that revealed Bystron was involved with a scheme to provide politicians with money in exchange for conducting interviews with the outlet VoE. The Czech authorities have never made the recording of Bystron public despite demands from the AfD to release it. Nobody has ever been charged to date in connection with the allegations, including Bystron himself. Bystron, however, was the only name that was released in connection with the case, although authorities claimed six European politicians received money from VoE.

The raid against Bystron may be seen as especially provocative as it was conducted at a time when Bystron was out of the country and meeting with Trump officials and congressmen. He is seen as the AfD party’s key bridge to American policymakers and is known for his connections to the Republican Party. Bystron himself said that despite his properties being raided 21 times, the police have not turned up any incriminating information against him. He also said that the police have even raided his elderly mother’s room in her retirement home and took testimony from her, despite her having been officially declared by the court as a dementia patient. “Every single one of these 22 searches was illegal. Each one marks a step away from a democratic constitutional state and toward an authoritarian regime that seeks to silence dissent by any means necessary,” Bystron told the Gateway Pundit.

Notably, the house raid of Bystron also occurred on the same day that a top German court in Leipzig rejected a significant AfD’s appeal. The party was working to overturn its current designation as a “suspected extremist” party by the powerful domestic spy agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). With all appeals now exhausted, this means the BfV can conduct extraordinary surveillance on the AfD, including targeting members with wiretaps, reading their chats and emails, and using informants to infiltrate the party. A number of prominent commentators on the German right have already highlighted the case on X, with Naomi Seibt stating: “They are spitting in the face of J.D. Vance.”

Other news outlets have also met the news of the incredible number of house searches targeting the AfD MEP with concern about Germany’s quickly evolving totalitarian methods for dealing with dissent. “Anyone who expresses critical views on war preparations must apparently expect house searches,” said a reporter from AUF1 in a video post shared by Bystron himself. Pressure has grown on the German government over the incredible growth of the AfD. In the latest Yougov poll, the party is tied for first place with the CDU, with 25 percent of the vote. The CDU lost 3.5 percent of the vote, while the AfD has jumped 4.2 points.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Arno

Piers

Bleach

Blue

Baby owls

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle April 13 2025

Apr 132025
 
 April 13, 2025  Posted by at 9:54 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  38 Responses »


Salvador Dali Mme. Reese 1931

 

• Market Tumult From Fractious Messaging Forces Trump Narrative Shift On Tariffs (JTN)
• Trump Exempts Laptops, Smartphones, Chips From Reciprocal Tariff Blitz (ZH)
• ‘Not Good For China’ To Retaliate Over Tariffs – White House (RT)
• Why China Won’t Call a ‘Tariff-wielding Barbarian’ (Pepe Escobar)
• Trump Envoy Witkoff In First ‘Direct, Constructive’ Contact With Iran (ZH)
• Iran and US Unveil Results Of Nuclear Talks (RT)
• Rubio and Musk Back Witkoff’s Peace Efforts (RT)
• Trump Urges Congress to Work Harder to Make Daylight Saving Permanent (ET)
• What Trump Did With Obama’s White House Portrait Is Epic (Margolis)
• Another District Court Judge Goes Rogue Against Trump Administration (Margolis)
• US Wants Control Of Key Gas Pipeline In Ukraine – Reuters (RT)
• Why The AfD Is Destined For The German Government (Amar)
• Euro-Atlantic Community Gearing For War – Lavrov (RT)
• Steele Dossier Was Discredited In 2017 — But Sold To The Public Anyway (MPN)
• Bill Maher Says ‘Mind Blown’ After Meeting With Trump (ZH)

 

 

 

 

O’Leary

Chamath

Sacks
https://twitter.com/TheChiefNerd/status/1910861025269657952

Soros
https://twitter.com/katee_K1/status/1910772111649419434

Alex

 

 

 

 

Keep things fluid at first. Can’t hurt. Keep them guessing.

• Market Tumult From Fractious Messaging Forces Trump Narrative Shift On Tariffs (JTN)

President Donald Trump’s tariffs have successfully brought at least 70 countries to the negotiating table, but the tumultuous market situation highlights a need for the administration to simplify the message to the public. And they seem to have coalesced around Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s approach of marketing them as a negotiating tactic. The initial “Liberation Day” tariffs saw Trump impose sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs across most of America’s key trading partners and the creation of a baseline 10% tariff for other nations. Close trading partners such as Vietnam, Japan, South Korea and Israel speedily reached out to negotiate deals, with some even announcing the end of tariffs in anticipation of Trump’s initial announcement. The market fell precipitously in the following days amid internal disagreements within the Cabinet on both messaging and the long-term approach. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chief Elon Musk and Bessent became proponents of a negotiation-focused approach to the tariffs, while Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and economic advisor Peter Navarro favored the tariffs on their own merits.

The administration, however, froze the most expansive tariffs this week, with the exception of those on China, which Trump raised to 125%. Markets subsequently soared on the news, leading to higher closures for major indices. They fell again on Thursday as the administration stood by its China tariffs. When making his “Liberation Day” announcement, Trump pitched the tariffs as a means of encouraging domestic production in the United States and revitalizing towns left behind by globalization. “Now it’s our turn to prosper, and in so doing, use trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and pay down our national debt,” he said. “Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country and you see it happening already. We will supercharge our domestic industrial base.”

Not all members of the Cabinet were on the same page and a division emerged between officials emphasizing the tariffs as a negotiating tactic to secure favorable trade deals and those who supported maintaining the tariffs on their own merit in the longer-term for revenue purposes. Musk and Navarro, specifically, had a high-profile disagreement throughout the week, with the pair openly taking potshots at one another on television and social media. Navarro, a tariff proponent, called attention to Musk’s automotive business and suggested it was a motivating factor for his opposition to tariffs. Musk, in turn, dubbed Navarro “Peter Retarrdo” and called him a “moron.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt brushed off the exchanges, saying “boys will be boys.”

As uncertainty in the market grew, however, Trump and his supporters began to shift decidedly toward presenting the tariffs as a negotiating strategy. Trump himself took the lead on this approach, largely through his Truth Social account. On Monday, for instance, Trump posted that “countries from all over the World are talking to us. Tough but fair parameters are being set. Spoke to the Japanese Prime Minister this morning. He is sending a top team to negotiate!” “As I’ve said in the past, no one creates leverage for himself like [Donald Trump],” Bessent said, following Trump’s decision to pause some of the tariffs. Bessent and National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett echoed the negotiation-centered line of messaging throughout the week. Hassett on Thursday confirmed to Fox News that “we’ve already got offers on the table from at least 15 countries.” He further clarified that many more had offered to negotiate but that these nations had submitted tangible proposals.

Even Lutnick, one of the administration’s most vocal tariff proponents, appeared to fall in line by Wednesday, saying “President Trump is standing firm against our global trade imbalances. We will sign the greatest deals in history.” “The Golden Age is coming. We are committed to protecting our interests, engaging in global negotiations and exploding our economy,” he added Thursday. While far from the original messaging, some members of the administration have suggested that the larger tariffs and their subsequent reduction may have been planned as a means of bringing typically intransigent trading partners to the negotiating table. “I think that what’s been going on all along is the president recognizes that in order to get the big change that we need for America’s workers… that we need to create enough pressure on our trading partners that things that American presidents have been asking for, for decades, are actually offered at the table,” Hassett said on CNBC.

Lutnick, for his part, appeared to echo that during a recent meeting, saying “we have so many countries to talk to.” “They have come with offers that they never, ever, ever would’ve come with but for the moves the president has made,” he added. “You’re going to start seeing deals, one after the other.” Potentially boding well for Lutnick’s prediction is the Australian refusal of a Chinese proposal to join forces to oppose American tariffs. Beijing officials have suggested targeted countries work against Washington, though it has evidently struggled to attract partners for the endeavor.

Read more …

“.. still “subject to the tariff under the original IEEPA on China of 20 percent.”

Things that everyone uses. Sensitive. Hurts Americans. Bring production home step by step. Ask Elon.

• Trump Exempts Laptops, Smartphones, Chips From Reciprocal Tariff Blitz (ZH)

Update (1255ET): As Trump adviser Stephen Miller points out, the products are still “subject to the tariff under the original IEEPA on China of 20 percent.”

The White House issued a further clarifying statement that the exemption (from the higher tariffs only) will be retroative to April 5th and all duties received since then will be refunded. Any duties that were collected at or after 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on April 5, 2025, pursuant to Executive Order 14257 and the Subsequent Orders, on imports that are excepted under Executive Order 14257 and the Subsequent Orders because they are “semiconductors,” as explained in this memorandum, shall be refunded in accordance with U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s standard procedures for such refunds.

* * *
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued an updated guidance late Friday night on product exclusions from President Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, imposed under Executive Order 14257 and its amendments (EO 14259). The exclusions cover a wide range of electronic devices, including smartphones, laptops, and related components. First, President Trump paused reciprocal tariffs for non-retaliating countries (e.g., China) for 90 days last week. Now, updated guidance from CBP reveals that some of the highest-value trade—particularly a wide range of electronics—is excluded from the reciprocal tariffs.

Read more …

Come to the table. You will at some point anyway.

• ‘Not Good For China’ To Retaliate Over Tariffs – White House (RT)

The White House has warned China that further retaliation through tariff hikes would not serve Beijing’s interests, as the world’s two largest economies clash over trade. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt has stated that over 75 countries reached out to US President Donald Trump’s administration to initiate trade talks, a sign that Washington’s tariff policy is working, she argued. “The phones have been ringing off the hook to make deals,” she said on Friday during a press briefing at the White House. “These countries wisely heeded President Trump’s warning not to retaliate… and were rewarded with a 90-day pause and substantially lower reciprocal tariff rates,” she added.

In early April, Trump imposed a universal 10% tariff on all imports and higher “reciprocal” tariffs on select countries to promote domestic manufacturing and address trade imbalances. While most elevated tariffs were paused for 90 days, China was excluded from this reprieve. The total tariff on Chinese goods has been hiked to 145%. In response, China imposed a 125% tariff on US imports, while criticizing Washington’s actions as “economic bullying” and warning that continued escalations would render the US a “joke” in global economic history. When asked directly about China, Leavitt reiterated Trump’s stance. “The tariff rate on China remains where it was yesterday at the 145 percent level,” she confirmed. Beijing has signaled that its recent tariff hike might be the last, and that further increases would not make economic sense.

When asked if this meant China was backing down, Leavitt said the US president had made it very clear that “when the United States is punched, he will punch back harder.” Leavitt said the administration remains open to negotiations, claiming Trump would “be gracious if China intends to make a deal with the United States,” but added without elaborating, “If China continues to retaliate, it’s not good for China.” She also rebuffed critics who said the US administration had not pushed China hard enough with tariffs, saying “Trump is finally taking bold and courageous action.” She added that both Democrats and Republicans have talked tough on China for years, but “no other president had the courage, the work ethic, or the stamina to take on such a task.”

Read more …

Pepe sees the Chinese as refined and Trump as a brute. And finance is not his forté.

• Why China Won’t Call a ‘Tariff-wielding Barbarian’ (Pepe Escobar)

The Toddler Temper Tantrum-style Trump Tariff Tizzy (TTT), now accelerated to 145% – and counting – is yet another thunderous trademark pigeon smashing the chessboard gambit. It won’t work. Trump claimed that China would call him to “make a deal”. That’s reality show territory. Reality is more like the statement by the Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council: “Given that U.S. exports to China already have no market acceptability under the current tariff rates, if the U.S. further imposes additional tariffs on Chinese goods, China will simply ignore them.” Translation: keep vociferating/tariffing. We don’t care. And we will stop buying from you. Anything. The Chinese Foreign Ministry: A “tariff-wielding barbarian can never expect a call from China.” Basic numbers. China’s GDP for 2025 is projected at 5%. U.S. imports account for at best 4% of Chinese GDP. China’s share of total exports to the U.S. dropped to 13.4 per cent in 2024.

Goldman Sachs – not exactly a CCP “mouthpiece” – has just projected that TTT will cost China only 0.5% of GDP in 2025, while costing no less than 2% of U.S. GDP. Talk about blowback. Still, from now on, what matters most for Beijing is to keep diversifying the supply chain. Asia-wide, the extra wheels are in motion. President Xi Jinping will soon start an ASEAN mini-tour (Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia). The Shanghai Cooperation Organization – increasingly focused on geoeconomics – is about to meet. The EU, for all the mendacity of its “elites”, is absolutely itching to strike trade deals with China. Zhao Minghao, deputy director at the Centre for American Studies at Fudan University, in Shanghai, refers to the current incandescence as “a game of strategic resolve.” Previously, the eminent Wang Yiwei, international relations star professor at Renmin University in Beijing and an expert on the New Silk Roads, noted that the current tariff rate already made China’s exports to the U.S. “almost impossible”.

This analysis noted how China started to deal with TTT with a “courtesy before force” approach, then turned to “we don’t care”, while cultivating “the art of timing” in its asymmetric attack on U.S. stocks. A fascinating window on the real wheels of Chinese trade is offered by a timely visit to the vast Yiwu International Trade City, the largest concentration of small traders on the planet. Less than 10% of Yiwu’s phenomenal amount of business involves the U.S. Among the 75,000 business operators in Yiwu Small Commodity City, only a little over 3,000 do business with the U.S. TTT is largely the product of two crude Team Trump arrogant/ignorant Sinophobes, economic advisor Peter Navarro and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, who know less than zero about all things China. In fact it was Bessent who right at the start gave the game away:

“This was driven by the president’s strategy… You might even say that he goaded China into a bad position. They responded. They have shown themselves to the world to be the bad actors, and we are willing to cooperate with our allies and with our trading partners who did not retaliate.” A crude trap. With the sole focus on China. That had nothing to do with the initial tawdry plot line: tariffs, Mafia-style, on most of the planet, penguins included. If you don’t retaliate, fine. If you do, we hit harder.

Read more …

We are now supposed to be able to tell “direct” from “indirect” talks.

Witkoff, fresh off that four hour meeting with Putin, moves on to the Iran topic, no problem.

• Trump Envoy Witkoff In First ‘Direct, Constructive’ Contact With Iran (ZH)

Not very much happened at the much-anticipated ‘indirect’ meeting between Iranian and US delegations in Oman on Saturday. While Tehran has been emphasizing the indirect nature of the dialogue, President Trump and his top officials have been calling these ‘direct’ talks. The main ‘positive’ is that the two sides didn’t yell each other out the room, or make new accusations – instead they agreed to keep the diplomatic engagement going. “Iran and the United States will hold more negotiations next week over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program, Iranian state television reported Saturday at the end of the first round of talks between the two countries since President Donald Trump returned to the White House,” The Associated Press reports as the meeting wrapped up.

As for whether they were ‘direct’ or not, Iranian state did say that Trump regional onvoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi “briefly spoke in the presence of the Omani foreign minister” at the end of the talks. This does indeed mark the first direct interaction between the Islamic Republic and the Trump administration. It is Trump during his first term who pulled the US out of the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal (in April 2018). The Iranian side has announced that the next round of talks will take place April 19, in a clear sing that both sides could be ready to do a new deal. This is precisely what Trump has demanded – the inking of a new nuclear deal – while threatening military action against Tehran. Trump has also warned that Israel might ‘lead’ such strikes on nuclear facilities.

According to more details from Muscat, Oman on Saturday: American officials did not immediately acknowledge the Iranian reports, which Tehran likely speeded out to its public ahead of a possible Trump post on a social media. But declaring that the two sides spoke face-to-face — even if briefly — suggests the negotiations went well. The talks began at around 3:30 p.m. local. The two sides spoke for over two hours at a location in the outskirts of Oman, ending the talks around 5:50 p.m. local time. The convoy believed to be carrying Witkoff returned to Muscat, the capital of Oman, before disappearing into traffic around a neighborhood that is home to the U.S. Embassy. Baghaei in follow-up stated that “The objective of the Islamic Republic of Iran is very clear — we have only one goal, and that is to safeguard Iran’s national interests.”

“We are giving a genuine and honest opportunity to diplomacy, so that through dialogue, we can move forward on the nuclear issue on one hand, and more importantly for us, the lifting of sanctions,” he added. No one is in the mood for war (though perhaps Israel?). “Look, this is just a beginning. So it is natural that, at this stage, both sides will present their foundational positions through the Omani mediator,” Baghaei continued. “Therefore, we do not expect this round of negotiations to be lengthy.” Witkoff had previewed to The Wall Street Journal just ahead of the trip, “I think our position begins with dismantlement of your program. That is our position today.” He added: “Where our red line will be, there can’t be weaponization of your nuclear capability.”

However Iran has maintained all along that its program is only for peaceful nuclear energy to meet the nation’s power needs, and further several Ayatollah’s have declared nuclear weapons to be ‘unIslamic’. But recent conflict with Israel means Tehran is likely eyeing escalation of its program, possibly seeing in this the only final deterrent to Israel, and the potential for US-led regime change (as happened in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan).

Read more …

“Iran and the United States held their first diplomatic engagement IN YEARS on Saturday ..”

• Iran and US Unveil Results Of Nuclear Talks (RT)

Iran and the United States held their first diplomatic engagement in years on Saturday in the Omani capital of Muscat, with discussions focused on Tehran’s nuclear program and the potential easing of US sanctions. The two-and-a-half-hour talks were led by Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi and White House Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff. Although the negotiations were conducted indirectly through Omani mediation, the heads of the two delegations – Araghchi and Witkoff – briefly spoke face-to-face in the presence of Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi after the formal talks concluded. Addressing reporters in Muscat, Araghchi described the first round of negotiations as “constructive” and held in a “calm and very respectful atmosphere.”

“No inappropriate language was used, and the two sides demonstrated their commitment to advancing the talks until the achievement of a mutually favorable agreement from an equal position,” the Iranian minister said. According to Araghchi, both sides aim to outline a general framework for a future agreement in the next round of talks. He indicated that the second meeting is scheduled for April 19, although it may not take place in Muscat. “In the next round of the talks, we will try to enter the negotiations’ agenda, which will of course have a timetable alongside it,” he said, expressing hope that the two sides could finalize a basis for starting “real talks” soon. Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday night, President Donald Trump said the talks with Tehran “are going okay.” Nothing matters until you get it done, so I don’t like talking about it. But it’s going okay. The Iran situation is going pretty good.

Meanwhile, the White House emphasized that – despite Tehran’s insistence on indirect talks – Witkoff met Araghchi face-to-face, calling the “direct communication a step forward in achieving a mutually beneficial outcome.” Witkoff, a close confidant of President Trump and Washington’s lead negotiator with Moscow, has also played a prominent role in regional diplomacy. Even before Trump took office, Witkoff was credited with allegedly convincing Israel to agree to a Gaza truce. The next round of negotiations with Iran is expected to take place on April 19. While both sides have expressed cautious optimism, analysts noted that significant challenges remain. Iranian officials have publicly opposed major concessions, while President Trump has reportedly given negotiators a two-month deadline, warning of possible military action if talks fail.

Read more …

“Steve Witkoff is busting his ass for President Trump.”

• Rubio and Musk Back Witkoff’s Peace Efforts (RT)

The US leader’s confidant spent over four hours behind closed doors discussing aspects of a potential settlement of the Ukraine conflict with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, before heading to Oman for high-level talks on Iran’s nuclear program on Saturday. White House special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, reportedly managed to convince Israel to agree to a Gaza truce in just one meeting – even before President Donald Trump took office – and has since become one of the key US negotiators on Ukraine.

When he traveled to Russia for the third time in two months – and a video of Witkoff smiling and shaking hands with Putin emerged on Friday – critics rushed to accuse him of everything from acting too cozy and perpetuating “Russian propaganda,” to being too “inexperienced” to conduct negotiations and effectively “taking over” the role of US Secretary of State. “People love attacking Steve Witkoff, but he has done more to advance peace negotiations & hostage releases than any of his career bureaucrat critics have done during their entire careers in the Swamp,” conservative activist Laura Loomer wrote on X, adding that “Steve Witkoff is busting his ass for President Trump.”

“Witkoff is great,” agreed billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, another of Trump’s closest allies, who leads his government waste-cutting task force known as DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also “100%” agreed with Loomer’s post. Witkoff’s first visit to Russia in February resulted in a high-profile prisoner exchange and paved the way for a phone call between the countries’ leaders, kickstarting the resumption of diplomatic relations. Just ahead of Witkoff’s third visit on Friday, Russia and the US conducted another prisoner swap in Abu Dhabi. The discussions between President Putin and Steve Witkoff on Friday involved “aspects of the settlement of the Ukraine conflict,” the Kremlin has announced, declining to provide further details.

Read more …

We can fight over this till the end of time.

“If we called it the ‘Go to Work An Hour Earlier Act,’ rather than the ‘Sunshine Protection Act,’ no one would be voting for it.”

• Trump Urges Congress to Work Harder to Make Daylight Saving Permanent (ET)

President Donald Trump has offered his support for the “lock the clock” movement. “The House and Senate should push hard for more Daylight at the end of a day,” calling the time change “a big inconvenience and, for our government, A VERY COSTLY EVENT!!!” he wrote in an April 11 Truth Social post. Trump’s comments came a day after a bipartisan group of lawmakers conducted a hearing on making daylight saving time permanent. The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing, titled “If I Could Turn Back Time: Should We Lock The Clock?” featured testimony from experts in the public and private sectors, as well as health care experts, all advocating for the push to stop the twice-yearly time change. Daylight saving time was initially a World War I strategy to reduce energy consumption in the evenings.

According to Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-Texas), however, energy efficiency and technological advancements show that currently, the hour change no longer has cost-saving benefits. “Congress has the authority to end this outdated and harmful practice. This hearing is an excellent opportunity to examine a thoughtful and rational approach to how we manage time,” Cruz said in his opening remarks. “Whether we lock the clock on Standard Time year-round or daylight saving time, let’s put our health, the economy, and well-being first and embrace a sensible approach to time management.” Sen. Scott (R-Fla.) introduced the Sunshine Protection Act on Jan. 7 of this year. It has been referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation but has not yet been brought to a vote.

The senator spoke to the committee, encouraging quick action on the bill. Scott called the time change “confusing, unnecessary, and completely outdated.” He said his bipartisan legislation had the support of 17 senators and that Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) has introduced a companion bill in the House of Representatives. “We have a great opportunity to finally get this done with President Trump on board to lock the clock,” Scott said. Hearing witnesses included representatives from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the National Golf Course Owners Association, and the Lock the Clock Movement. All of the testimony provided supported ending the twice-yearly time change, citing health, safety, and economic concerns. While there is widespread support for locking the clock, not everyone agrees on where it should be frozen.

[..] Trump has voiced his support for more daylight at the end of the day, making daylight saving time the likely model going forward. [..] Dr. David Harkey, the president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, testified about the road safety implications of the time change to daylight saving time, saying that the change was associated with an increased risk of fatal crashes. Harkey noted that while adjusting the clock doesn’t increase the number of daylight hours, it can change how those hours align with work and school schedules. “The clearest takeaway from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s research is that there is a strong relationship between increased darkness and fatal crashes, particularly for pedestrians and bicyclists,” he said.

Dr. Karen Johnson, a practicing sleep medicine physician and representative of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, cited evidence of the negative health impacts of changing the clocks, including an increased risk of chronic disease, depression, and suicide. “Permanent standard time would get more Americans to get the opportunity to improve their sleep without even trying,” Johnson said. “The sun is one of the most powerful drivers of health and well-being, but the timing of sunlight is what’s critically important.”Johnson strongly advocates for permanent standard time, saying that daylight saving time would deprive Americans of critical morning light and that while the spring clock change is bad, “permanent daylight saving time is worse.” “Permanent daylight saving time does not make days longer, nor is it the reason why people feel better in the summer,” Johnson said.“Instead, permanent daylight saving time is a hidden mandate to wake Americans up an hour earlier, rather than to their alarm clocks or the sun. “If we called it the ‘Go to Work An Hour Earlier Act,’ rather than the ‘Sunshine Protection Act,’ no one would be voting for it.”

Read more …

Epic? Looks like normal procedure. It’s just that the Trump painting is different.

• What Trump Did With Obama’s White House Portrait Is Epic (Margolis)

Remember that bizarre official portrait of Barack Obama—standing stiffly in a black suit and gray tie, set against a blank white background? The 2022 painting by Robert McCurdy stirred some controversy when it was unveiled, and rightly so. At the time, I called it a perfect metaphor for Obama’s notorious narcissism. Of course he’d want his White House portrait stripped of any setting, context, or symbolism. Just him, front and center—because, in his mind, that’s all that matters. Apparently, it was featured in the White House Entrance Hall:

Why was it on display at the White House? Beats me. I get that it’s Obama’s official White House portrait and all, but doesn’t it belong in a service corridor or a janitor’s closet somewhere? Well, guess what? The portrait was moved from its prime location on Friday, and this prime location is now being used for something so much better— a historic image capturing one of the most defining moments of the Trump presidency. The new portrait, unveiled Friday by the White House, shows President Trump in perhaps his most resolute moment: standing among Secret Service agents immediately after being shot in the ear during an assassination attempt, defiantly shouting “Fight, fight, fight!” It’s an image that perfectly encapsulates the fighting spirit that has defined his presidency.

https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1910764795382349948?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1910764795382349948%7Ctwgr%5E71ad4a8fdabedd535f627c9cc17fdc11a18a7f09%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fmatt-margolis%2F2025%2F04%2F12%2Fwhat-trump-did-with-obamas-white-house-portrait-is-epic-n4938830

Predictably, critics immediately began claiming this was some sort of breach of protocol, suggesting the Obama portrait had been removed entirely. White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung swiftly shut down that narrative with characteristic directness:

The Hill has more: “A portrait of President Trump that depicts him raising his fist immediately following the attempt on his life last summer at a Butler, Pa., rally is replacing an image of former President Obama in a prominent spot inside the White House. Dan Scavino, the White House deputy chief of staff, posted side-by-side photos on social media of the Trump artwork seemingly replacing the Obama painting on Friday at the bottom of the Grand Staircase. The artwork of the 47th president shows him bloodied with an American flag waving behind him after he survived the assassination attempt last July. A White House spokesperson didn’t immediately return a request for comment about the artist behind the painting. The image of Trump appeared to take the place of a portrait of Obama that was unveiled at the White House in 2022.”

The white background, the White House said at the time, “allow the viewer to establish a relationship with the subject.” The paper also notes that such portrait rearrangements are standard practice when new administrations take office. The Obama portrait remains in the Entrance Hall, just in a different location—though the symbolism of its replacement hasn’t been lost on observers from either side of the political aisle. The new portrait serves as a sobering reminder of the assassination attempt on President Trump in Butler, Pa., last July—a moment that demonstrated both the very real dangers presidents face and Trump’s remarkable resilience. While some critics on social media have promoted baseless conspiracy theories suggesting the attempt was staged, such claims ignore the tragic reality that people were killed and wounded during the incident.

Read more …

“Governor Mills would have done well to adhere to the wisdom embedded in the old idiom—be careful what you wish for. Now she will see the Trump Administration in court.”

• Another District Court Judge Goes Rogue Against Trump Administration (Margolis)

The judiciary’s assault on executive power has once again reared its ugly head. A Bush-appointed federal judge just handed Maine’s radical leftist government a major victory in its crusade to destroy women’s sports. U.S. District Judge John A. Woodcock ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze federal education funding that was withheld after the state brazenly defied Trump’s executive order protecting women’s sports from the radical transgender agenda. Make no mistake about it, this is a direct challenge to President Trump’s efforts to preserve fair competition and protect female athletes. The administration had rightfully frozen funding after Maine refused to comply with basic Title IX protections that keep biological males out of women’s sports.

“The state of Maine requests a temporary restraining order to enjoin the United States Department of Agriculture and the United States Secretary of Agriculture from terminating, freezing, or otherwise interfering with the State’s access to federal funds based on alleged Title IX violations without following the process required by federal statute,” the ruling states. “The court orders the defendants to immediately unfreeze and release to the state of Maine any federal funding that they have frozen or failed or refused to pay because of the State’s alleged failure to comply with the requirements of Title IX.” Barack Obama unilaterally reinterpreted Title IX in his final months in office to include “gender identity,” Donald Trump reversed that policy, and Joe Biden promptly restored the Obama standard. Trump reversed it again and legislation codifying that Title IX doesn’t apply to “gender identity” is stalled in Congress because Democrats blocked it in the Senate last month.

Have you ever noticed how the judiciary constantly tries to hide behind procedure when substantive arguments fail them? In 2020, we saw the courts claim that the Trump campaign didn’t have standing to challenge election results over suspected fraud over claims of lack of standing. Judge Woodcock claimed the USDA under Secretary Brooke Rollins didn’t follow proper protocols, completely ignoring the real issue at hand: Maine’s assault on women’s athletics. The state of Maine argued that Secretary Rollins “cannot simply declare that the [s]tate of Maine is in violation of Title IX and terminate federal funding” because “Congress has expressly declared that to terminate or refuse to continue federal financial assistance to a recipient, the agency must first hold a hearing and then make an ‘express finding on the record’ that the recipient violated Title IX.”

The Trump administration wasn’t having any of it. Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor fired back with both barrels: “The Department has given Maine every opportunity to come into compliance with Title IX, but the state’s leaders have stubbornly refused to do so, choosing instead to prioritize an extremist ideological agenda over their students’ safety, privacy, and dignity,” Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said in a statement. “The Maine Department of Education will now have to defend its discriminatory practices before a Department administrative law judge and in a federal court against the Justice Department. Governor Mills would have done well to adhere to the wisdom embedded in the old idiom—be careful what you wish for. Now she will see the Trump Administration in court.”

This is just the latest example of activist judges running interference for the radical left’s gender ideology. Governor Janet Mills and her administration are so devoted to their extremist agenda that they’re willing to sacrifice the rights of female athletes just to push their transgender narrative. In addition to the sports controversy, the Department of Education launched an investigation into Maine schools for hiding student gender transitions from parents. The battle lines are clearly drawn. On one side, we have the Trump administration fighting to protect women’s sports and parental rights. On the other, we have leftist ideologues willing to sacrifice both on the altar of gender ideology. Something tells me this fight is far from over.

Read more …

“..one of the “Easter eggs”..

“..take control of a natural gas pipeline from Russian energy giant Gazprom..”

• US Wants Control Of Key Gas Pipeline In Ukraine – Reuters (RT)

The administration of US President Donald Trump wants Kiev to give Washington control of a pipeline through which Russian gas reaches the EU, according to Reuters. The request is one of the “Easter eggs” contained in the latest draft of the minerals deal that Washington is pressuring the government of Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky to sign, the agency claimed in an article on Friday. Reuters said, citing an informed source, that the text of the agreement put together by Washington includes a “demand that the US government’s International Development Finance Corporation take control of a natural gas pipeline from Russian energy giant Gazprom across Ukraine to Europe.” No gas has been sent through Gazprom’s pipeline since the start of year due to Ukraine refusing to prolong its transit deal with the Russian company.

On Friday, US and Ukrainian officials met in Washington to discuss the deal granting the Americans access to Ukraine’s mineral resources, including rare-earth metals, with the talks going on in a “very antagonistic” environment, according to the source. The strains between the sides stemmed from “maximalist” demands in the latest draft of the agreement, which the Trump administration presented to Kiev last month, the agency’s interlocutor explained. The Ukrainian authorities have hired a US-British law firm, Hogan Lovells, to work as an outside adviser on the deal, the source added. The US came up with harsher terms after Zelensky refused to sign the initial agreement during his White House meeting in late February.

The visit ended with a public spat between the US and Ukrainian leaders, during which Trump accused his guest of being ungrateful for Washington’s assistance during the conflict with Russia and not wanting peace. According to Reuters, the latest draft of the deal would give the US privileged access to Ukraine’s mineral deposits and require Kiev to place in a joint investment fund all income from the exploitation of its natural resources. The agreement does not provide the country with American security guarantees, which the Ukrainian government considers a priority. Trump, who claims that the agreement would enable the US taxpayers to recoup funds spent by the previous administration of Joe Biden on aiding Kiev, warned earlier this month that Zelensky would have “big, big problems” if he backs out of it.

Read more …

“Sensible observers have long predicted it, and now it is becoming ever more obvious: Freezing the AfD out only serves to make it stronger.”

“Germans have felt for a while already that they are in dire trouble; and a preponderant majority thinks that that is where they will be stuck under new old management as well..”

• Why The AfD Is Destined For The German Government (Amar)

Germany has an undeserved reputation for dour rationality and lacking an appreciation of the absurd. In reality, however, Germany is a – for want of nicer terms – very counterintuitive country. If you are running a regime in Kiev (at least according to the official story) and blow up Germany’s vital energy infrastructure, Germans will say thank you and throw money and arms at you, while also helping you blame someone else (the Russians, of course: Germany has never been an imaginative country). If you are in Washington and certainly had a hand in blowing up that infrastructure, and then go on to fleece the Germans by selling LNG at a high cost and promoting their deindustrialization by filching their companies, good Germans get very, very angry – at China.

If you happen to be the single most popular and perfectly legal political party in Germany, get ready to never be allowed to actually participate in governing. Because Germany is also a country in which that single most popular party – the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, commonly known simply as AfD) – is locked out of building governing coalitions. By definition. That system is called a “firewall” – against that nasty most popular party that makes life so difficult for all those other, no longer popular parties. It has absolutely no basis in the constitution or in law. Come to think of it, as the “firewall” systematically and deliberately treats the votes of AfD voters as somehow less effective than those of others, it may well be the “firewall” itself that is unconstitutional, at least in spirit if not even by the letter of the law. So much for Germany, the country that allegedly loves order and rules.

In reality, the “firewall” amounts to a dirty political cartel and a form of disenfranchisement: The traditional parties, feeling threatened by the insurgent AfD have simply decided that they do not care what the voters say and won’t have anything to do with it. Since German governments are virtually always based on coalitions, which means that the AfD and its voters are treated as inferior. That this means that, as of now, in particular voters in the former East Germany are subject to this kind of discrimination, adding a West-East aspect to it that sits very badly with talk about German unity.

To get one thing out of the way: For now, it is only one poll that shows the AfD in the lead; other polls still have it in (barely) second place after the mainstream conservatives of the CDU/CSU bloc (which, in reality, functions as one party) of soon-to-be chancellor Friedrich Merz. But these differences are irrelevant. What matters is that the AfD’s rising trend is unbroken. That is definitely a blow to Merz, even before he has officially assumed office, as international observers are noting. Especially in view of the fact that Merz’s own poll numbers are cratering at the same time. Yet there is a broader point, too: The whole “firewall” strategy is malfunctioning extremely badly. Sensible observers have long predicted it, and now it is becoming ever more obvious: Freezing the AfD out only serves to make it stronger.

One thing that does not make Berlin’s ruling parties, the CDU and SPD, any more popular is that they have concluded their negotiations on how to divvy up the spoils of ministries and other goodies. Indeed, it is extremely embarrassing for the new governing coalition of conservatives and Social-Democrats (SPD) that the most recent AfD milestone breakthrough is happening now. It is a coincidence from hell: there they are, the traditional parties, seemingly safe behind their “firewall” and all ready to go, and the voters – uncouth as they can be – show them just how unpopular they are. Germans expect little from them, even now: A fresh poll shows that two thirds do not believe that things will change under the new coalition of tired old parties.

Note that most Germans have been deeply unhappy with the status quo, as we also know from recent polls: In February, Ipsos found that the general mood was “as bad as never before.” Only 17 percent of citizens – less than a fifth – believed their country was “on a good trajectory.” The other 83 percent were not indifferent or neutral but felt Germany was on the “wrong” trajectory. Even for a nation with something of a culture of angst and doom, those are atrocious figures. Hence, expecting no change now amounts to deep pessimism: Germans have felt for a while already that they are in dire trouble; and a preponderant majority thinks that that is where they will be stuck under new old management as well.

Read more …

“They have failed to strengthen security and stability. The Euro-Atlantic structures have ultimately succeeded in precisely the opposite, stoking international tensions and “remilitarizing Europe..”

• Euro-Atlantic Community Gearing For War – Lavrov (RT)

The international structures centered in the Euro-Atlantic have failed to deliver stability and security to the region, and now the members of this community are preparing for a new major war, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. The top diplomat delivered the remarks on Saturday during a Q&A session at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in Türkiye. Lavrov criticized what he described as “the Euro-Atlantic structures,” including the European Union and Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), stating that the groups have ultimately failed to deliver on their proclaimed goals. “The security issues after the Second World War in our common region were defined in terms of Euro-Atlantic logic. NATO and the EU were essentially European,” Lavrov said.

“The EU recently signed an agreement with NATO. The EU is now part of the Euro-Atlantic policy – there is no doubt about that – including making its territory available for the alliance’s plans to move to the East, to the South, I don’t know where else,” he added, apparently referring to the Joint Declaration on EU-NATO Cooperation inked in early 2023. I believe all these Euro-Atlantic structures have failed. They have failed to strengthen security and stability. The Euro-Atlantic structures have ultimately succeeded in precisely the opposite, stoking international tensions and “remilitarizing Europe,” Lavrov suggested. “All the efforts of this Euro-Atlantic community are focused on preparing for a new war. Germany, together with France and Great Britain, are leading this process,” he added. Lavrov’s remarks come after a meeting of the so-called “coalition of the willing,” a group of Ukraine’s backers predominantly consisting of NATO and EU nations, held earlier this week.

The defense chiefs from the member states discussed a potential deployment of a “peacekeeping” force to Ukraine, with the idea spearheaded by the UK and France. The latest gathering failed to yield any tangible result, with EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas admitting that “different member states have different opinions and the discussions are still ongoing.” While UK Secretary of Defense John Healey insisted that the group’s were “well developed,” multiple of his counterparts publicly questioned the idea, raising concerns about the goals, mission and mandate of the potential deployment. Moscow has repeatedly warned the West against deploying troops to Ukraine under any pretext, specifically objecting to forces from any NATO countries ending up in the country. Last month, former Russian President and the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, said that the potential emergence of any NATO “peacekeepers” in Ukraine would mean a war between the bloc and Russia.

Read more …

“The Pentagon’s academic program studied dissent, protest, and radicalization. Now it’s being replaced by a private AI surveillance network run in total secrecy..”

• Steele Dossier Was Discredited In 2017 — But Sold To The Public Anyway (MPN)

On March 25, Donald Trump signed an executive order declassifying all documentation related to Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s 2016 investigation into alleged collusion between Russia and then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. The order has unexpectedly resurrected buried documents that cast new light on the Steele dossier — and when it was known to be false. It is unclear what new information will be revealed, given substantial previous declassifications, two special counsel investigations, multiple congressional inquiries, several civil lawsuits, and a scathing Justice Department internal review. It has long been confirmed the FBI relied heavily on Steele’s discredited dossier to secure warrants against Trump aide Carter Page, despite grave internal concerns about its origins and reliability, and Steele’s sole “subsource” for all its lurid allegations openly admitted in interviews with the Bureau he could offer no corroboration for any of the dossier’s claims.

Such inconvenient facts and damning disclosures were nonetheless concealed from the public for several years following the dossier’s January 2017 publication by BuzzFeed News, now defunct. In the intervening time, it became the central component of the Russiagate narrative, a conspiracy theory that was a major rallying point for countless mainstream journalists, pundits, public figures, Western intelligence officials, and elected lawmakers. In the process, Steele attained mythological status. For example, NBC News dubbed the former MI6 operative “a real-life James Bond.” Primetime news networks dedicated countless hours to the topic, while leading media outlets invested enormous time, energy and money into verifying the dossier’s claims without success. Undeterred, legacy reporters relied on a roster of mainstream “Russia experts,” including prominent British and U.S. military and intelligence veterans, and briefings from anonymous officials to reinforce Steele’s credibility and the likely veracity of his dossier. As award-winning investigative journalist Aaron Maté told MintPress News:

“Media outlets served as unquestioning stenographers for Steele. If his dossier’s claims themselves weren’t sufficient to dismiss it with ridicule, another obvious marker should have set off alarms. Reading the dossier chronologically, a clear pattern emerges – many of its most explosive claims are influenced by contemporary media reporting. For instance, it was only after Wikileaks published the DNC emails in July 2016 that the dossier mentioned them. This is just one example demonstrating the dossier’s true sources were overactive imaginations and mainstream news outlets.” Even more damningly, leaked documents reviewed by MintPress News reveal that while Western journalists were hard at work attempting to validate Steele’s dossier and elevating the MI6 spy to wholly undeserved pillars of probity, the now-defunct private investigations firm GPW Group was, in early 2017, secretly unearthing vast amounts of damaging material that fatally undermined the dossier’s content, and comprehensively dismantling Steele’s previously unimpeachable public persona. It remains speculative what impact the firm’s findings might have had if they had been released publicly at the time.

The Pentagon’s academic program studied dissent, protest, and radicalization. Now it’s being replaced by a private AI surveillance network run in total secrecy., academic surveillance programs, AI in warfare, AI-powered social control, DARPA social science, military surveillance, Minerva Initiative, MKUltra, Pentagon AI research, Stargate, Stargate AI program, Trump AI initiative, U.S. GPW’s probe of Steele and his dossier was commissioned by Carter Ledyard & Milburn, a law firm representing Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven, and German Khan — owners of Alfa Bank. The dossier leveled several serious allegations against them. The trio purportedly possessed a “kompromat” on Vladimir Putin, delivered “illicit cash” to him throughout the 1990s, and routinely provided the Kremlin with “informal advice” on foreign policy — “especially about the U.S.” Meanwhile, Alfa Bank supposedly served as a clandestine back channel between Trump and Moscow.

“In order to build a profile of Christopher Steele…as well as the broader operations of both Orbis Business Intelligence and Fusion GPS,” which commissioned the dossier on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, GPW consulted “a variety of sources.” This included “U.S. intelligence figures,” various journalists, “private intelligence subcontractors” who had previously worked with Steele and Orbis, and “contacts who knew the man from his time with [MI6]…and, in one instance, directly oversaw his work.” The picture that emerged of Steele sharply contrasted with his mainstream portrayal as a “superstar.” One operative who “acted as Steele’s manager when he began working with [MI6] and later supervised him at two further points” described him as “average, middle of the road,” stating he had never “shined” in any of his postings. Another suggested Steele’s founding of Orbis “was the source of some incredulity” within MI6 due to his underwhelming professional history and perceived lack of “commercial nous.”

Yet another suggested Steele’s production of the dossier reflected his lack of “big picture judgment.” Sources consulted by GPW were even more critical of Fusion GPS chief Glenn Simpson. One journalist described him as a “hack” without “a license or the contacts to do…actual investigations,” instead outsourcing “all” work ostensibly conducted by his firm to others while skimming commissions. They also “openly admitted” to disliking Simpson, described by GPW as “not an uncommon attitude amongst those to whom we spoke.”

Read more …

Trump is quite a bit smarter than Maher.

• Bill Maher Says ‘Mind Blown’ After Meeting With Trump (ZH)

While Bill Maher may change opinions like a windsock depending on who he’s pandering to, the “Real Time” host told his mostly-Democrat audience that Donald Trump, aka Hitler-Stalin-Mussolini, was “gracious and measured” at their recent meeting last week. We know, duh… but considering the influence Maher has on the left, his comments are interesting nonetheless. “You can hate me for it, but I’m not a liar. Trump was gracious and measured,” Maher said. “And why isn’t that in other settings- I don’t know, and I can’t answer, and it’s not my place to answer. I’m just telling you what I saw, and I wasn’t high.” Maher said the meeting, brokered by their mutual friend Kid Rock, wasn’t “some kind of summit.”

“I have no power. I’m a fucking comedian, and he’s the most powerful leader in the world!” he continued. “I’m not the leader of anything, except maybe a contingent of centrist-minded people who think there’s got to be a better way of running this country than hating each other every minute.” Maher admitted that he went in ready for a fight – only to find Trump absolutely charming. “Everything I’ve not liked about him was, I swear to God, absent. At least on this night, with this guy,” Maher, 69, said – seemingly shocked at his own admission. “I never felt I had to walk on eggshells around him. And honestly, I voted for Clinton and Obama, but I would never feel comfortable talking to them the way I was able to talk with Donald Trump,” he continued, adding “Make of it what you will.”

“I’ve had so many conversations with prominent people who are much less connected. People that don’t look you in the eye. People that don’t really listen because they just want to get to their next thing. People whose response to things you say just doesn’t track. None of that with him,” Maher continued. “Mostly he steered the conversation to ‘what do you think about this?’ I know. Your mind is blown. So is mine.” Maher added that Trump gave him a bunch of MAGA hats, which are stored in the same room where former President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky engaged in extracurricular activities. At one point in the dinner, Maher says Trump asked him about his thoughts on the Iran nuclear situation. After he allegedly gave Trump shit for eliminating the Obama-era nuclear deal, Trump “didn’t get mad or call me a left-wing lunatic. He took it in.”

According to Maher, Trump used the word ‘lost’ in relation to the 2020 presidential election. “And I distinctly remember saying, ‘Wow, I never thought I’d hear you say that.’ He didn’t get mad. He’s much more self-aware than he lets on in public,” Maher said, adding that in private, Trump is just normal. “Just for starters, he laughs,” Maher stated in disbelief. “I’d never seen him laugh in public. But he does — including at himself — and it’s not fake. Believe me, as a comedian of forty years, I know a fake laugh when I hear it.” Watch:

Meanwhile, journalist Laura Loomer is jumping all over conservative “Bill Maher Simps,” while she says she had “a productive week in Cali, which included my deposition of Bill Maher,” who she’s suing for defamation.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Increase

 

 

Cholesterol
https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1910755326653059144

 

 

RFK
https://twitter.com/liz_churchill10/status/1911150761905717473

 

 

 

 

Babysitters
https://twitter.com/atensnut/status/1910846503096111548

 

 

Cheetah

 

 

Elephamily

 

 

Bamba
https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1911059202795098239

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle November 18 2021

Nov 182021
 
 November 18, 2021  Posted by at 9:51 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  142 Responses »


Francisco Goya Witches’ Sabbath 1797-98

 

• OSHA Suspends Enforcement of Biden’s Vaccine Mandate (NR)
• FDA Asks Judge to Grant it Until 2076 to Release Pfizer Vaccine Data (Siri)
• Fauci Says Covid-19 Booster Might Become New Standard For Being Vaccinated (NYP)
• Hospital Files Motion to Dismiss Dr. Paul Marik’s Landmark Case (FLCCC)
• 37% of US Truckers Will Not Comply With Vaccine Mandate (CTH)
• “T-Cell Priming” Vaccine Could Provide Better Immunity Than mRNA Vaccines (Salon)
• The US Is A Powder Keg (Tucker)
• Kyle Rittenhouse Defense Moves For A Mistrial With Prejudice (AT)
• The Steele Dossier and the End of Shame In American Politics (Turley)

 

 

 

 

John Campbell references the same German vit. D study I did several times, last in The End of Mass Vaxx.

 

 


Germany now has more deaths per day than 1 year ago, despite 85% of the adult population vaccinated

 

 

Lost.

• OSHA Suspends Enforcement of Biden’s Vaccine Mandate (NR)

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has suspended implementation and enforcement of the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for private employers after a federal court blocked the measure. The OSHA website page dedicated to the COVID Vaccine Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) reads: “While OSHA remains confident in its authority to protect workers in emergencies, OSHA has suspended activities related to the implementation and enforcement of the ETS pending future developments in the litigation.” Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit fully blocked Biden’s executive order requiring companies with over 100 workers to mandate vaccination for their employees after temporarily staying it on November 12.

The court ordered that OSHA “take no steps to implement or enforce” the vaccine mandate “until further court order.” By its mandate, the Biden administration is claiming that the federal government, through congressional legislation, has regulatory power to issue a medical mandate for the sake of public health and therefore general welfare. However, since the directive was announced, many legal scholars have challenged its constitutionality, given that the legislation it relies on for authority explicitly states that an ETS can only be issued when employees are exposed to a “grave danger” that necessitates immediate action. That case is becoming increasingly difficult to argue, given the fact that some vaccinated individuals can transmit the disease and that treatment options for COVID infections are expanding.


As of Tuesday, the Biden administration is planning to purchase 10 million doses of Pfizer’s antiviral medication to treat patents with COVID. Some lawmakers and pundits have speculated that Biden’s strategy with the vaccine mandate recognized that the order would likely be indefensible in court but hoped that its chilling effect would pressure employers to comply in advance of any litigation. After the federal appeals court first issued a motion to stay the order, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki still urged employers to implement coercive measures to increase vaccination numbers among their labor forces, although without the teeth of government enforcement.

Read more …

It took 108 days to approve the vaccine. It will take over 20,000 days to tell us why.

• FDA Asks Judge to Grant it Until 2076 to Release Pfizer Vaccine Data (Siri)

The FDA has asked a federal judge to make the public wait until the year 2076 to disclose all of the data and information it relied upon to license Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. That is not a typo. It wants 55 years to produce this information to the public. As explained in a prior article, the FDA repeatedly promised “full transparency” with regard to Covid-19 vaccines, including reaffirming “the FDA’s commitment to transparency” when licensing Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. With that promise in mind, in August and immediately following approval of the vaccine, more than 30 academics, professors, and scientists from this country’s most prestigious universities requested the data and information submitted to the FDA by Pfizer to license its COVID-19 vaccine.

The FDA’s response? It produced nothing. So, in September, my firm filed a lawsuit against the FDA on behalf of this group to demand this information. To date, almost three months after it licensed Pfizer’s vaccine, the FDA still has not released a single page. Not one. Instead, two days ago, the FDA asked a federal judge to give it until 2076 to fully produce this information. The FDA asked the judge to let it produce the 329,000+ pages of documents Pfizer provided to the FDA to license its vaccine at the rate of 500 pages per month, which means its production would not be completed earlier than 2076. The FDA’s promise of transparency is, to put it mildly, a pile of illusions.


It took the FDA precisely 108 days from when Pfizer started producing the records for licensure (on May 7, 2021) to when the FDA licensed the Pfizer vaccine (on August 23, 2021). Taking the FDA at its word, it conducted an intense, robust, thorough, and complete review and analysis of those documents in order to assure that the Pfizer vaccine was safe and effective for licensure. While it can conduct that intense review of Pfizer’s documents in 108 days, it now asks for over 20,000 days to make these documents available to the public. So, let’s get this straight. The federal government shields Pfizer from liability. Gives it billions of dollars. Makes Americans take its product. But won’t let you see the data supporting its product’s safety and efficacy. Who does the government work for?

Read more …

What happened to the story of puppies eaten alive?

• Fauci Says Covid-19 Booster Might Become New Standard For Being Vaccinated (NYP)

COVID-19 booster shots may become the new standard to be considered fully vaccinated, according to the nation’s top doctor. Dr. Anthony Fauci discussed the impending need for hundreds of millions of Americans to roll up their sleeves and get the jab during a pre-taped interview that aired at the 2021 STAT Summit in Boston this week, according to ABC News. “I happen to believe as an immunologist and infectious disease person that a third shot boost for an mRNA [vaccine] … should be part of the actual standard regimen, where a booster isn’t a luxury,” the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases reportedly said.

“A booster isn’t an add-on and a booster is part of what the original regimen should be. So that when we look back on this, we’re going to see that boosters are essential for an optimal vaccine regimen,” Fauci told the audience, according to the network. The remarks came as New York City and several states expanded booster shot eligibility to all adults who were vaccinated against COVID-19 at least six months ago this week. Until then, the jabs were only available to people 65 years of age and over and those in high-risk situations. The guidance from the president’s chief medical advisor came as Moderna filed an application with the FDA seeking emergency use authorization of vaccine booster shots for all US residents 18 and older. Pfizer last week asked federal regulators to expand its booster shot eligibility to all Americans.


Some 31.5 million Americans had already received a booster shot on Wednesday, according to CDC data. More than a third of the recipients were over 65. The number of vaccinated US residents stood at 196 million people, according to the agency — which noted that more than 40 percent of the country was not fully inoculated. The push for booster shots came as the seven-day rolling average of cases increased by 27 percent since Oct. 25, US data showed. Fauci had said over the summer he was “certain” Americans would need additional doses of COVID-19 vaccines.

Read more …

They, too, have a deal with Pfizer.

• Hospital Files Motion to Dismiss Dr. Paul Marik’s Landmark Case (FLCCC)

On Friday, November 12, 2021, Sentara Hospital System in Virginia submitted a motion to dismiss the complaint filed against it earlier in the week by Dr. Paul Marik—co-chief medical officer of the FLCCC, tenured professor, and the Director of the Intensive Care Unit at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. Dr. Marik filed suit seeking a temporary injunction to lift the ban Sentara Healthcare System had placed on a range of highly effective COVID-19 treatments used by Dr. Marik to save critically ill COVID-19 patients. These components, including IV vitamin C, dutasteride, fluvoxamine, finasteride, and ivermectin, had previously been successfully used—with the exception of ivermectin, the use of which Sentara never permitted —to reduce COVID deaths in the ICU by as much as 50 percent. The result of the prohibition has been a sharp increase in mortality at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.

The hospital’s motion to dismiss Marik’s lawsuit rests on their claim that Dr. Marik has “lack of standing” to bring the lawsuit against the hospital. According to the hospital, “The alleged causes of action against Sentara, if any, reside with the patients in the hospital, not those patients’ attending physician.” The hospital also asserted in its motion that Virginia’s Advance Directive Statute and/or the Health Care Decisions Act do not “afford the patient the ability to specifically direct or demand his or her course of treatment by a physician or hospital.” But Dr. Marik’s complaint argues that “Sentara’s prohibition of these medicines is causing needless deaths, because it violates patients’ rights to informed consent, and because it contravenes Virginia’s Health Care Decisions Act.”

Under Virginia law, Dr. Marik, as the “attending physician” of his patients in the ICU, is personally and legally responsible for the exercise of professional skill and judgement in determining what a patient under his care receives. Because Dr. Marik is prohibited from giving his patients medications that are potentially lifesaving—and have been demonstrated as such in peer-reviewed studies—he is forced to abandon his professional duty. His actions are regulated by the hospital in such a way that it causes him to violate the rights of his patients.

The hospital’s motion to dismiss or continue the hearing — scheduled for Thursday, November 18 at 1PM ET in Norfolk — also argues that Dr. Marik has lack of standing to bring the lawsuit because he has not been “injuriously affected” by the prohibition of the medications since he himself was not a patient who was denied “the alleged” lifesaving treatment. Yet, if Dr. Marik were to violate the hospital’s prohibition, he would be subject to revocation of his hospital privileges. Furthermore, due to Sentara’s prohibition, he is the one who faces potential legal liability for failing to provide his patients with the medications which, in his professional judgment, had the capacity to save their lives. Therefore, Dr. Marik has solid standing to seek vindication of the rights of his patients and of himself as treating physician.

Read more …

Think there’s a supply chain issue now? Just wait.

• 37% of US Truckers Will Not Comply With Vaccine Mandate (CTH)

A very interesting interview with Chris Spear, president and CEO of the American Trucking Association. During a House Transportation Committee hearing on supply chain issues, CEO Chris Spear shares an internal survey showing that 37% of truck drivers “not only said no, but said hell no” to the Biden vaccine mandates. To give some perspective of the downstream consequence, the ATA President noted that “if just 3.7 percent, not 37 percent, just 3.7 percent” of the drivers left the industry, there would be over a quarter million vacancies resulting in a “catastrophic” collapse of the U.S. supply chain. Mr. Spear also shared his opinion the OSHA rule is completely unworkable and unlawful.

The consequences are grave if just 3.7% did not work. However, if ten times that many, 37 percent of truck drivers, stopped hauling products because of the Biden vaccine requirement, American civic society would collapse within days as panicked citizens took to the streets. Desperate Americans would be clamoring for scarce products, and the impact on society could not be measured. As we have continued to point out, a federal vaccine mandate might sound like a good idea on a think tank, academic or white paper policy level of consideration; but on a practical level, wiping out a large percentage of your most productive workforce over a vaccine mandate is unworkable, and might even end the operation of the entire business.


It is important to note the recent NBC poll on this issue amid the outlook of the vaccine mandates. A majority of the country do not support the vaccine mandates, and worse still, the number of unvaccinated workers is essentially unwavering in the past six weeks. Remember, the number of Americans who willingly quit their jobs increased to 4.3 million in August, and then increased again to 4.4 million in September. People are not f**king around now.

Read more …

Challenging the spike protein monopoly?

• “T-Cell Priming” Vaccine Could Provide Better Immunity Than mRNA Vaccines (Salon)

The development of mRNA vaccines, a long-promised and much-touted biotechnology, is regarded as a great victory of medical research spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic. Nowadays, millions of people have been inoculated with these novel vaccines, which comprise both the Pfizer/BioNTech shot as well as Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine. Yet mRNA vaccine technology is not the only immunological innovation that may emerge from the pandemic. Now, a company based in the United Kingdom called Emergex is preparing to test a next-generation COVID-19 vaccine based on a radical new technology. Unlike the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines — which inject a bespoke strand of messenger RNA that generates Spike proteins within the human body — this new vaccine technology is delivered via a skin patch, and relies on T cells, which are white blood cells that are part of the immune system, to kill infected cells.

It is believed that a T-cell vaccine would incite a more rapid and durable response to fighting the infection. “Although current COVID-19 vaccines have made significant progress in reducing mortality and morbidity, challenges still remain, especially with the development of new variants,” said Professor Blaise Genton, Principal Investigator for the trial from the Center for Primary Care and Public Health (Unisante) at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. “This exciting new scientific approach to developing a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 addresses the need to generate a T-cell response to elicit long term immunity.”


One of the constituent types of immune system cells, T cells play a vital role in fighting threatening foreign substances in the human body. Unlike some immune system cells, T cells do not attack any foreign body; rather, they are laser-focused only on specific pathogens. This trait, researchers believe, could be exploited such that their vaccine could instill a T-cell response in the human body — without actually giving their immune system the dangerous SARS-CoV-2 virus first. Emergex’s proposed vaccine would prepare T cells to remove infected cells from the body right after being infected. This would prevent the virus from replicating and progressing to COVID-19. By targeting and priming the T cells, this would also reduce the transmissibility between infected and non-infected people because it would stop the virus from replicating and prevent the onset of symptoms.

Read more …

Closer to exploding than almost anyone appears to think.

• The US Is A Powder Keg (Tucker)

A USA Today poll shows that Biden’s approval has sunk to 38%. The trend line here is truly devastating. We can speculate why. Inflation plays a role. But also the vaccine mandate seems to have hit the Biden approval rating very hard. In the coming month, millions of jobs could be affected by this. The protests are growing in every city, and the people protesting are union members, city employees and even tech workers. They are furious that government would presume the right to tell people what medicines they must inject into their bodies. Some of the protesters are themselves vaccinated against their will. They are bitter and angry about it. The news of adverse outcomes from vaccination is leaking out through family networks and alternative news venues, though it continues to be suppressed by the media. So this mandate is now being seen as a direct threat to individual health.

That’s something that will inspire people to take to the streets. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a stay against OSHA’s mandate on businesses. The Biden administration attempted a response, but the result was lame. It just said that it stands by the mandate on health grounds, period. Perhaps this won’t surprise you, but the president himself instructed businesses to go ahead and proceed, essentially advocating that they ignore the court ruling. In other words, the Biden administration has gone completely lawless, not just ignoring the U.S. Constitution but also advocating that businesses ignore the courts. That’s dangerously close to announcing that we now live with dictatorship. It’s no wonder that even Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is talking about secession from the union. If he is saying this, I truly cannot imagine the kind of anger there is among the citizens.

If you wanted to live in exciting times, you chose a great time to be alive. The conditions are ripe not only for continuing electoral bloodbaths but more street protests, explosive town halls, hate-filled school board meetings and much worse. A more divisive and destructive policy is hard to imagine. Sadly, these policies are dividing friends and family. Some people with vaccinations don’t see the big deal here. Just get the jab, they say, and then you can be free. Others find this idea to be outrageous, an immoral acquiescence to power that can only lead to even worse outcomes. I just watched several hours of testimony from big shots at the NIH and the CDC. It might as well have been a paid advertisement from Moderna and Pfizer. Nearly every word out of the bureaucrats’ mouths was structured to push the vaccines that most everyone knows by now have failed to live up to their promise.

Indeed, if they were as good and safe as they say, government would not need to mandate them. The mandates, ironically, undermine public confidence. It’s hard to imagine that public confidence in everything could fall further, but it will. To top it off, making all the above much worse, the vaccination is now coming for the kids. Mandates will surely follow. You want revolution in this country? This is a good way to foment one. The current regime has another year of unchecked power. It seems unfathomable. So far, they have not been deterred by anything, not the courts, not public opinion, not even sinking election prospects. The U.S. has become a powder keg.

Read more …

The prejudice will be needed, or the whole circus can start again.

• Kyle Rittenhouse Defense Moves For A Mistrial With Prejudice (AT)

During the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, the prosecution argued that Kyle provoked the men who attacked him by waving his gun. To prove this, during the trial, the prosecution gave the defense fuzzy drone footage. There was a great deal of argument about what could be extrapolated from that fuzzy view. It turns out that the prosecution had within its possession a high-quality video that it played for the judge after the trial ended. On this, and other evidentiary grounds, the defense moved for a mistrial with prejudice. The defense motion states the facts with sufficient clarity that I’m going to reprint them here verbatim:

“On November 5. 2021, the fifth day of trial on this case, the prosecution turned over to the defense footage of a drone video which captured some of the incident from August 25, 2020. The problem is, the prosecution gave the defense a compressed version of the video. What that means is the video provided to the defense was not as clear as the video kept by the state. The file size of the defense video is 3.6 MB and the state’s is 11.2 MB. Further, the dimensions on our video are 480 x 212, the state’s, 1920 x 844. The video which was in the state’s possession, wasn’t provided to the defense until after the trial concluded. During the jury instructions conference, the defense played their version of the video for the court to review. The state indicated their version was much clearer and had their tech person come into court to have the court review their clearer video. The video is the same; the resolution of that video, however, was not. The state did not provide their quality video to the defense until Saturday, November 13, 2021, and only did so upon specific request by Attorney Wisco — two days before closing arguments and after the evidence had been closed.”


Under Wisconsin law, when the defense makes a demand, the prosecution must provide to the defense “[a]ny physical evidence that the district attorney intends to offer in evidence at the trial” and “[a]ny exculpatory evidence.” That’s Wisconsin Stat. § 971.23(1)(g) & (h). I don’t have the time to research the law, but my bet is that if Wisconsin’s appellate court ever had before it the question of whether the prosecutor may get away with producing bastardized, degraded versions of the requested evidence, it would say emphatically not. The motion for a mistrial with prejudice also raises the fact that, when Kyle Rittenhouse took the witness stand, the prosecutors improperly accused him of keeping silent after his arrest. That right, of course, is enshrined in the famous Miranda rights warning that all arrestees in America receive: “You have the right to remain silent …” The corollary to that right is that this silence cannot be used against the defendant in a court of law, but that’s exactly what the prosecution tried to do.

Rittenhouse videos
https://twitter.com/i/status/1461035214977777674

Read more …

“Schiff’s spin is enough to cause permanent vertigo.”

• The Steele Dossier and the End of Shame In American Politics (Turley)

The famous philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal once declared that “the only shame is to have none.” The problem with shame is that it requires a sense of guilt over one’s actions. In the age of rage, there appear fewer and fewer actions that are beyond the pale for politics. Take Adam Schiff and the Steele dossier. While even the Washington Post has admitted that it got the Russian collusion story wrong in light of the findings of Special Counsel John Durham, House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is still insisting that he was absolutely right to promote the discredited Steele dossier. Schiff’s interview on NBC’s Meet the Press may be the final proof of the death of shame in American politics.

Schiff was one of the greatest promoters of the Steele dossier despite access to briefings casting doubt about Steele and the underlying claims. However, Schiff recently has attempted to defend himself by claiming that Steele was a respected former spy and that he was lied to by a Russian source. Schiff told host Chuck Todd: “I don’t regret saying that we should investigate claims of someone who, frankly, was a well-respected British intelligence officer. And we couldn’t have known, of course, years ago that we would learn years later that someone who is a primary source lied to him. [Igor] Danchenko lied to Christopher Steele and then lied to the FBI. He should be prosecuted. He is being prosecuted. And I’ll tell you this, if he’s convicted, he should not be pardoned the way Donald Trump pardoned people who lied to FBI agents, like Roger Stone and Mike Flynn. There ought to be the same standard in terms of prosecuting the liars. But I don’t think there ought to be any pardon, no matter which way the lies cut.”

Schiff’s spin is enough to cause permanent vertigo. Some of us have spent years being pummeled for questioning the obvious problems with the Steele dossier, including the long-denied connection to the Clinton campaign. Schiff was the main voice swatting down such criticism and his endorsements were treated as dispositive for media from MSNBC to the Washington Post. After all, he was the chair of the House Intelligence Committee and assured the public that our criticisms were meritless and the dossier was corroborated. Schiff’s spin, however, continues to deny the obvious about the Russian collusion scandal.

First, many would guffaw at the claim that Steele was and remains a “well-respected British intelligence officer.” Soon after the dossier was shopped to the FBI, British intelligence flagged credibility problems with Steele. The FBI severed Steele as an asset. Even his own sources told the FBI that Steele wildly exaggerated information and distorted intelligence. Most recently, Steele went public with a laughable claim that Michael Cohen, Trump’s former counsel, was lying to protect Trump despite spending years trying to get Trump charged criminally.

Second, Schiff ignored repeated contradictions in Steele’s dossier as well as evidence that the dossier was paid for and promoted by the Clinton campaign. In 2017, even fired FBI agent Peter Strzok admitted that “we are unaware of ANY Trump advisors engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials” and “Steele may not be in a position to judge the reliability of his subsource network.” Schiff would have had access to some of this intelligence. Indeed, while the Clinton campaign was denying that it funded the dossier, American intelligence knew that that was a lie. Indeed, until the Durham indictments, Schiff continued to defend the Russian collusion investigation and the Steele dossier.

Third, Schiff attempts to portray the sole problem with the Steele dossier as Russian analyst Igor Danchenko. That is simply not true. Schiff was long aware that there were allegations of misleading or false information given by the FBI to the secret court. Indeed, the first Durham conviction was of Kevin Clinesmith, the former FBI agent who pleaded guilty. Schiff was aware that President Barack Obama was briefed in 2017 that Hillary Clinton was allegedly planning to manufacture a Russian collusion scandal — just days before the start of the Russian investigation. The dossier was riddled with disproven allegations. Fourth, Schiff states that he merely sought to investigate allegations. However, Schiff was one of the most active members fueling the Russian collusion allegations. Indeed, when the Mueller investigation found no proof of Russian collusion, Schiff immediately went public to claim that he had evidence of collusion in his committee files. It was meant to keep the scandal alive. Schiff has never produced his promised evidence of collusion.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Kill the Bill

 

 

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

 

Debt Rattle November 15 2021

Nov 152021
 
 November 15, 2021  Posted by at 9:43 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  85 Responses »


Francisco Goya Fire at night 1793-94

 

• Is Vaccine Efficacy A Statistical Illusion? (Fenton)
• What They Didn’t Tell You (Denninger)
• New Pfizer Drug and Ivermectin (Campbell)
• COVID-19 Vaccine-Myocarditis Paper To Be Permanently Removed: Elsevier (RW)
• Delta Variant Displays Moderate Resistance To Neutralizing Antibodies (bioRxiv)
• Patient Trajectories Among Hospitalised Covid-19 Patients (medRxiv)
• The Media’s Epic Fail On The Steele Dossier (Axios)
• Alan Dershowitz: Kyle Rittenhouse ‘Should Be Acquitted’ And Sue Media (JTN)
• Was Rittenhouse’s Possession of the AR-15 Unlawful? (Turley)

 

 

The 1905 SCOTUS case Jacobson v Massachusetts held that mandates can only be considered to “prevent the spread of contagious disease.”


As all studies show the shots don’t stop transmission, Covid mandates are obviously illegal.

 

 

The Miracle Vaccine Nobody Will Talk About: Covax-19

 

 

 

 

Can’t catch it well in this format, do read it. He shifts reporting of deaths by just a week, and the world looks entirely different.

Norman Fenton is Professor in Risk Information Management

@profnfenton: “Turns out that, simply by delayed reporting of deaths by 1 week, it’s inevitable a placebo will appear to reduce mortality in those who receive it compared to those who don’t..”

• Is Vaccine Efficacy A Statistical Illusion? (Fenton)

Suppose we want to examine and compare the mortality rates of the unvaccinated and vaccinated cohorts based on the data in Table 2. Figure 1 shows this comparison, and we can see that the mortality rate is consistently lower for the vaccinated than that for the unvaccinated throughout the roll out of the vaccination programme and it reduces as soon as vaccination nears population saturation at close to 100%.


Figure 1 Reported weekly mortality rates vaccinated against unvaccinated

We might conclude that those who remain unvaccinated look to be suffering much higher levels of mortality than the vaccinated. The reporting delay therefore creates a completely artificial impression that the vaccine must be highly effective. In fact, it looks like a magic ‘cure all’ wonder drug! The fact that the mortality rate of the unvaccinated peaks when the percentage of those vaccinated peaks should ring some alarm bells that something strange is going on (unless there is independent evidence that the virus was peaking at the same time).


While the placebo vaccine example was purely hypothetical, Figure 2 shows the vaccinated against unvaccinated mortality using the data in the latest ONS report mortality in England by Covid-19 vaccination status (weeks 1 to 38)[1], complemented by NIMS vaccination survey data (up to week 27 only). Here we show other-than covid mortality to remove the virus signal.


Figure 2 Reported weekly other-than covid mortality rates for vaccinated versus unvaccinated for 60-69 age group for weeks 1-38 2021

Note that we see the same features as the shifted graph in Figure 1. In other words, a perfectly reasonable explanation for what is observed here could be that there is no difference in mortality rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated and the mortality differences are simply a result of a delay in death reporting. Moreover, given we have removed covid deaths (which were only a small percentage of all-cause deaths in the reported data) we get a near identical result for non-covid mortality to that which would result if the vaccine were a placebo! Thus, we appear to have created a statistical illusion of vaccine efficacy.

If this is not a statistical illusion how is it possible that the unvaccinated are dying from non-covid causes at a higher rate than vaccinated? Also how is it possible that, at the time vaccination rates are ramped up to nearly 100% of the population, the nonvaccinated are dying from non-covid deaths at almost twice the rate of those who are vaccinated?

These same patterns are also observable in the 70-79 and 80+ age groups (with the mortality peaks for the unvaccinated appearing at different weeks because these age groups received vaccinations earlier). This strongly suggests that what we are observing is a genuine statistical illusion unexplainable by any real impact of the vaccine on mortality rates. There could, of course, be reasons other than just delays in death reporting or misclassification. For example, any systematic underestimation of the actual proportion who remain unvaccinated would lead to a higher mortality rate for unvaccinated higher than that for the vaccinated, even if the mortality rates were equal in each category.

Read more …

“It can’t happen if there are no susceptible people. But it is. So there are susceptible people. How did they become susceptible when they weren’t before in any material size? We jabbed them.”

• What They Didn’t Tell You (Denninger)

This study is a bit dense — but has been peer-reviewed, and makes clear that indeed, what I hypothesized was true — and had to be, given the circumstances with Diamond Princess and elsewhere, in fact validates by scientific fact. “In summary, RTC regions like polymerase, expressed in the first stage of the viral life cycle, are highly conserved among HCoV and are preferentially targeted by T-cells in pre-pandemic and SN-HCW samples. A subset of T-cells from donors able to abort infection could cross-recognise SARS-CoV-2 and HCoV sequences at individual RTC epitopes, pointing to prior infection with HCoV as one source of pre-existing cross-reactive T-cells. ” “SN-HCW” are health-care workers who were repeatedly exposed and while they did not get sick or seroconvert “(SeroNegative)” showed very rapid response to Covid-19 from cross-reaction as a result of other coronavirus exposures.

Remember that Diamond Princess only had about 20% of the population on board that got sick despite all of them being confined together over an extended period, and even more-telling, there were multiple instances where one member of a cabin pair (husband and wife, usually) got seriously ill while the other did not only not get ill they did not test positive either. This also occurred among a couple I know early in the pandemic; one (the husband) was killed by the virus, the other (the wife) never got sick. What’s even more damning is that by May of this year about 20% of the population, according to a NEJM study that I wrote on, had seroconverted. This strongly implies that statistically everyone who could get Covid-19 and have a serious problem with already had done so.

So how is that we had a “surge” this summer and continue to see infections this fall? It can’t happen if there are no susceptible people. But it is. So there are susceptible people. How did they become susceptible when they weren’t before in any material size? We jabbed them. The CDC and hospitals do not count someone who gets Covid before 2 weeks after their last jab as “vaccinated.” So if you have a cycle of 28 days from first to second from the first jab to a period of time six weeks later if you get Covid-19 you’re considered “unvaccinated.” Every place where we’ve had very high vaccination uptake as the uptake occurred we have seen material spikes in infection contemporary with the jabs, even out of regular season with normal respiratory viral patterns.

Why? The reasonable hypothesis is that the jabs are destroying pre-existing resistance that formerly was sufficient to prevent significant, seroconverting infections in about 8 out of 10 people, but post-jab that resistance is suppressed either temporarily or permanently and thus they are able to get significantly infected.

Read more …

‘No one’s saying that the information [about ivermectin’s efficacy] has been deliberately hidden away while millions of people have died’

• New Pfizer Drug and Ivermectin (Campbell)

Read more …

Lots of Pfizer ads? How many millions on a yearly basis?

• COVID-19 Vaccine-Myocarditis Paper To Be Permanently Removed: Elsevier (RW)

A paper claiming that cases of myocarditis spiked after teenagers began receiving COVID-19 vaccines that earned a “temporary removal” earlier this month will be permanently removed, according to a publisher at Elsevier. As we reported last week, the article, “A Report on Myocarditis Adverse Events in the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) in Association with COVID-19 Injectable Biological Products,” was published in Current Problems in Cardiology on October 1. Sometime between then and October 17, the article was stamped “TEMPORARY REMOVAL” without explanation other than Elsevier’s boilerplate notice in such cases:


“The Publisher regrets that this article has been temporarily removed. A replacement will appear as soon as possible in which the reason for the removal of the article will be specified, or the article will be reinstated. The full Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal can be found at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy.” In an email to co-author Peter McCullough, Elsevier publisher Diana Goetz said that “the journal is not willing to publish the paper.” Here’s the entire email:

Goetz did not respond to requests for comment from Retraction Watch about whether a retraction notice explaining the move would appear. Elsevier’s policy on such matters has changed slightly over the years, but the central lack of transparency on their “withdrawals” has been the subject of our coverage since 2013. Jessica Rose, the other author of the paper, told Retraction Watch: “We are very motivated to get the information in our paper to the public: pediatricians, parents and policy-makers alike. This is why we decided to publish in the first place. It is extremely frustrating for us to face such censorship when professionals are in need of scientific data and discourse on the subject of myocarditis in children in these very strange times.” Rose’s affiliation on the removed version of the paper is the Institute of Pure and Applied Knowledge’s Public Health Policy Initiative, and McCullough’s is the Truth for Health Foundation in Tucson.


As we noted in our previous post, IPAK is “..a group that has been critical of vaccines and of the response to COVID-19 and has funded one study that was retracted earlier this year… Last month, Baylor Scott & White obtained a restraining order against McCullough — whom Medscape says “has promoted the use of therapies seen as unproven for the treatment of COVID-19 and has questioned the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines” — for continuing to refer to an affiliation with the health care institution despite a separation agreement. “Since the Baylor suit, the Texas A&M College of Medicine, and the Texas Christian University (TCU) and University of North Texas Health Science Center (UNTHSC) School of Medicine have both removed McCullough from their faculties,” Medscape reported at the time.”

Read more …

Variants of variants.

• Delta Variant Displays Moderate Resistance To Neutralizing Antibodies (bioRxiv)

The SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617 lineage variants, Kappa (B.1.617.1) and Delta (B.1.617.2, AY) emerged during the second wave of infections in India, but the Delta variants have become dominant worldwide and continue to evolve. The spike proteins of B.1.617.1, B.1.617.2, and AY.1 variants have several substitutions in the receptor binding domain (RBD), including L452R+E484Q, L452R+T478K, and K417N+L452R+T478K, respectively, that could potentially reduce effectiveness of therapeutic antibodies and current vaccines. Here we compared B.1.617 variants, and their single and double RBD substitutions for resistance to neutralization by convalescent sera, mRNA vaccine-elicited sera, and therapeutic neutralizing antibodies using a pseudovirus neutralization assay.

Pseudoviruses with the B.1.617.1, B.1.617.2, and AY.1 spike showed a modest 1.5 to 4.4-fold reduction in neutralization titer by convalescent sera and vaccine-elicited sera. In comparison, similar modest reductions were also observed for pseudoviruses with C.37, P.1, R.1, and B.1.526 spikes, but seven- and sixteen-fold reduction for vaccine-elicited and convalescent sera, respectively, was seen for pseudoviruses with the B.1.351 spike. Four of twenty-three therapeutic neutralizing antibodies showed either complete or partial loss of neutralization against B.1.617.2 pseudoviruses due to the L452R substitution, whereas six of twenty-three therapeutic neutralizing antibodies showed either complete or partial loss of neutralization against B.1.617.1 pseudoviruses due to either the E484Q or L452R substitution.

Against AY.1 pseudoviruses, the L452R and K417N substitutions accounted for the loss of neutralization by four antibodies and one antibody, respectively, whereas one antibody lost potency that could not be fully accounted for by a single RBD substitution. The modest resistance of B.1.617 variants to vaccine-elicited sera suggest that current mRNA-based vaccines will likely remain effective in protecting against B.1.617 variants, but the therapeutic antibodies need to be carefully selected based on their resistance profiles. Finally, the spike proteins of B.1.617 variants are more efficiently cleaved due to the P681R substitution, and the spike of Delta variants exhibited greater sensitivity to soluble ACE2 neutralization, as well as fusogenic activity, which may contribute to enhanced spread of Delta variants.

Read more …

Hard to speak in clear terms when you’re scientists, but:

“We observed no difference in [..] odds of in-hospital death between vaccinated and unvaccinated patients.”

Dr Anthony Hinton: “Norway Study Finds ZERO Vaccine Effectiveness Against Death for Covid Hospital Patients. The Pfizer trial never made this claim they only claimed symptom reduction.”

• Patient Trajectories Among Hospitalised Covid-19 Patients (medRxiv)

Objectives With most of the Norwegian population vaccinated against COVID-19, an increasing number and proportion of COVID-19 related hospitalisations are occurring among vaccinated patients. To support patient management and capacity planning in hospitals, we estimated the length of stay (LoS) in hospital and odds of intensive care (ICU) admission and in-hospital mortality among COVID-19 patients ≥18 years who had been vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine, compared to unvaccinated patients.

Methods Using national registry data, we conducted a cohort study on SARS-CoV-2 positive patients hospitalised in Norway between 1 February and 30 September 2021, with COVID-19 as the main cause of hospitalisation. We used a Cox proportional hazards model to examine the association between vaccination status and LoS. We used logistic regression to examine the association between vaccination status and ICU admission and in-hospital mortality.

Results We included 2,361 patients, including 70 (3%) partially vaccinated and 183 (8%) fully vaccinated. Fully vaccinated patients 18–79 years had a shorter LoS in hospital overall (adjusted hazard ratio for discharge: 1.35, 95%CI: 1.07–1.72), and lower odds of ICU admission (adjusted odds ratio: 0.57, 95%CI: 0.33–0.96). Similar estimates were observed when collectively analysing partially and fully vaccinated patients. We observed no difference in the LoS for patients not admitted to ICU, nor odds of in-hospital death between vaccinated and unvaccinated patients.

Conclusions Vaccinated patients hospitalised with COVID-19 in Norway have a shorter LoS and lower odds of ICU admission than unvaccinated patients. These findings can support patient management and ongoing capacity planning in hospitals.

Read more …

Axios: “A reckoning is hitting news organizations for years-old coverage of the 2017 Steele dossier, after the document’s primary source was charged with lying to the FBI.”

• The Media’s Epic Fail On The Steele Dossier (Axios)

A reckoning is hitting news organizations for years-old coverage of the 2017 Steele dossier, after the document’s primary source was charged with lying to the FBI. Why it matters: It’s one of the most egregious journalistic errors in modern history, and the media’s response to its own mistakes has so far been tepid. Outsized coverage of the unvetted document drove a media frenzy at the start of Donald Trump’s presidency that helped drive a narrative of collusion between former President Trump and Russia. It also helped drive an even bigger wedge between former President Trump and the press at the very beginning of his presidency.

Driving the news: In wake of the key source’s arrest and further reporting on the situation, The Washington Post on Friday corrected and removed large portions of two articles. To The Post’s credit, its media critic, Erik Wemple, has written at length about the mistakes made by The Post and other media outlets in their coverage of the dossier. BuzzFeed News, which made waves in 2017 by publishing the entire dossier, says it has no plans to take the document down. It’s still online, accompanied by a note that says “The allegations are unverified, and the report contains errors.” Ben Smith, who was BuzzFeed’s editor-in-chief at the time and is now a media columnist at The New York Times, told Axios, “My view on the logic of publishing hasn’t changed.”

BuzzFeed defended the decision in a 2018 lawsuit by arguing that because the FBI opened an investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, the dossier itself was newsworthy, whatever the merits of its contents turned out to be. It won that case. Other outlets that gave the document outsized coverage have so far been less forthcoming. CNN and MSNBC did not respond to requests for comment about whether they planned to revisit or correct any of their coverage around the dossier. Mother Jones Washington bureau chief David Corn began reporting about the dossier prior to the 2016 election. Asked by Wemple whether he planned to correct the record, Corn said,” My priority has been to deal with the much larger topic of Russia’s undisputed attack and Trump’s undisputed collaboration with Moscow’s cover-up.”

The Wall Street Journal told Axios, “We’re aware of the serious questions raised by the allegations and continue to report and to follow the investigation closely.” Axios was among the outlets that did not publish the dossier or original reporting based on its contents. What to watch: The Steele screwup will undoubtedly cause an even bigger rift in trust between Democrats and Republicans.

Read more …

“It’s CNN who is involved in vigilante justice. It’s The New Yorker that’s guilty of vigilante justice.”

• Alan Dershowitz: Kyle Rittenhouse ‘Should Be Acquitted’ And Sue Media (JTN)

Alan Dershowitz, the famed Harvard law professor emeritus, said Kyle Rittenhouse “should be acquitted” of injuring a man and killing two others in Kenosha, Wis., and sue media outlets that are claiming he’s guilty of vigilante justice. “If I were a juror, I would vote that there was reasonable doubt [and] that he did act in self-defense,” Dershowitz told Newsmax on Saturday.”Then he’ll bring lawsuits, and that’s the way to answer… vigilante justice is what CNN is doing, not what a 17-year-old kid under pressure may have done right or wrong. It’s CNN who is involved in vigilante justice. It’s The New Yorker that’s guilty of vigilante justice.”


Dershowitz referenced then-Kentucky high school student Nicholas Sandmann and how he sued and settled with CNN and The Washington Post for defamation as they accused him of being racist following viral videos of an encounter he had with a Native American activist in Washington, D.C. “The idea is to make the media accountable for deliberate and willful lies,” he said. Dershowitz added that “the left-wing media … is attacking this judge for trying to be fair. They want an outcome. They want a result and if they don’t get their results and you know this seeps through to the jury, and I worry that the jury could be influenced by the fear that if they vote to acquit, they’ll be called racist and they’ll be attacked.”

Read more …

Judge: “I have been wrestling with this statute with, I’d hate to count the hours I’ve put into it, I’m still trying to figure out what it says, what’s prohibited. I have a legal education.”

• Was Rittenhouse’s Possession of the AR-15 Unlawful? (Turley)

In covering the motions hearing last week in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, I noted a surprising comment from Judge Bruce Schroeder that he had “spent hours” with the Wisconsin gun law and could not state with certainty what it means in this case. The statement could effectively knock out the misdemeanor gun possession count — the one count that could still be in play for the jury after the prosecution’s case on the more serious offense appeared to collapse in court. A close examination of that provision reveals ample reason to question not just its meaning but its application to this case. The unlawful possession of the gun has been a prominent fact cited not only by the prosecutors but the press. At trial, however, prosecutor Thomas Binger at points seemed to be learning the governing law from Rittenhouse.

For example, he pressed Rittenhouse on why he did not just purchase a handgun rather than an AR-15. Rittenhouse replied he could not possess a hand gun at his age. Binger then asked in apparent disbelief that the law allowed him to have an AR-15 but not a handgun and Rittenhouse said yes. Binger then moved on after seemingly drawing out a point for the defenseThe exchange was all the more baffling because it drew attention to the fact that one of Binger’s alleged “victims” was an adult named Gaige Grosskreutz who also decided to bring a handgun to the protests and pointed his .40 caliber Glock at the head of Rittenhouse when he was shot in the arm. However, the most damaging moment came outside of the presence of the jury when the judge drilled down on the law.

He told the prosecutors “I have been wrestling with this statute with, I’d hate to count the hours I’ve put into it, I’m still trying to figure out what it says, what’s prohibited. I have a legal education.” He added that he failed to understand how an “ordinary citizen” could understand what is illegal. It is hard to understand how the count could be given to the jury without a clear understanding of what it means. It is also hard to instruct a jury on an ambiguous statute. Criminal laws are supposed to be interpreted narrowly. It is called the “rule of lenity” and has been around in the English system for centuries. For example, in 1547, the court was faced with a law making it a felony to steal “Horses, Geldings or Mares.” Given the use of plural nouns, the court ruled that it did not apply to stealing just one horse.

The problem with the Wisconsin statute is not a problem of pluralization but definition. It is not clear that the statute actually bars possession by Rittenhouse. Indeed, it may come down to the length of Rittenhouse’s weapon and the prosecutors never bothered to measure it and place it into evidence. In Wisconsin, minors cannot possess short-barreled rifles under Section 941.28. Putting aside the failure to put evidence into the record to claim such a short length, it does not appear to be the case here. Rittenhouse used a Smith & Wesson MP-15 with an advertised barrel length of 16 inches and the overall length is 36.9 inches. That is not a short barrel.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

Debt Rattle November 5 2021

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


Ernst Haas Greece 1952

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

The BMJ report is rattling some windows.

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

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

• Are Vaccines Driving Excess Deaths in Scotland ? (DS)

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 


Betrayal – Mario Sánchez Nevado

 

 

Grewal

 

 

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

 

Debt Rattle April 1 2021

Apr 012021
 
 April 1, 2021  Posted by at 8:15 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  48 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Jacqueline in Turkish costume 1955

 

• Biden Unveils $2T Infrastructure Plan, Tax Increases (OAN)
• Emergence Of Dominant Selective Immune Escape Variants (Vanden Bossche)
• Therapeutics and COVID-19: Living Guideline (WHO)
• Judge Demands That Belgium Scraps All Corona Measures Within Thirty Days (AD)
• France Headed For New National Lockdown As COVID Cases Surge (ZH)
• Outdoor Mask Decree Met With Dismay By Spain’s Tourism Industry (G.)
• Washington State ‘Vaccine Breakthrough’: 100s Get Covid Weeks After Jab (JTN)
• 15 Million Doses Of J&J Vaccine Ruined By Ingredient Mix-up (DM)
• Bipolar Corona-Politics Positive? (OffG)
• Russiagate Prober Couldn’t Verify Anything in the Steele Dossier (RCI)
• US Dollar’s Status as “Global Reserve Currency” Drops to 25-Year Low (WS)
• Ron Paul: Gold and Bitcoin Are At Risk Of Government Crackdown (Kitco)
• Journalists Are “Centering” Their “Trauma” To Acquire Power (Tracey)

 

 

We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.
— Elie Wiesel

 

 

Tucker Greenwald Vaccine passports
https://twitter.com/i/status/1377095450440785924

 

 

The problem with such schemes in the US can be summarized in one word: pork.

• Biden Unveils $2T Infrastructure Plan, Tax Increases (OAN)

Joe Biden has unveiled his massive infrastructure plan, projected to cost roughly $2 trillion in taxpayer money. Dubbed the American Jobs Plan, the details of it were made public during an event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Wednesday. “So today, I’m proposing a plan for the nation that rewards work, not just rewards wealth,” Biden said. “That builds a fair economy and gives everybody a chance to succeed, and it’s going to create the strongest, most resilient, innovative economy in the world.” The plan’s largest proposed investment is $621 billion devoted to transportation, with a heavy focus on transitioning to so-called “green energy,” followed by $400 billion to home care services, $300 billion to manufacturing and $213 billion to housing. It would also allocate funds to digital infrastructure, schools and workforce development.

Biden claimed the package would modernize the American economy and boost job creation. “It will create millions of jobs, good paying jobs, it will grow the economy, make us more competitive around the world, promote our national security interests, and put us in position to win the global competition with China in the upcoming years,” Biden stated. Yet despite Biden’s grandiose claims of an American revival brought about by government spending, conservatives have balked at the huge price tag attached to his plan, and how he intends to pay for it. The package proposed a reversal of the Trump administration’s 2017 cut to the corporate tax rate, raising it from 21 to 28 percent. It would introduce a minimum tax of 15 percent on book income, the income reported by companies to their investors rather than the IRS.

Additionally, it would increase the global minimum tax on international subsidiaries of U.S. corporations from 13 to 21 percent, regardless of where their profits were made. This last point is notable, as it creates a strong incentive for U.S. companies to reincorporate abroad and ultimately bypass the higher tax rates the Democrat administration wishes to levy from them. This has prompted leading Republicans to heavily criticize Biden’s plan for using infrastructure as a smokescreen to sneak in tax hikes favored by Democrat politicians. “I think the Trojan horse will be called infrastructure, but inside the Trojan horse will be all the tax increases that Senator Scott and others have talked about,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said. “They want to raise taxes across the board and the only way I think they could pull that off would be through a reconciliation process. They have one more of those available to them.”

Read more …

Vanden Bossche is not giving up.

• Emergence Of Dominant Selective Immune Escape Variants (Vanden Bossche)

Mass vaccinaton of vulnerable groups does not abrupt viral transmission chains but increasingly redirects transmission events to asymptomatic carriers (i.e., vaccinated subjects as well as not yet vaccinated young and healthy people, several of whom experienced asymptomatc infecton without mounting long-lived Ab titers2 ). As ongoing mass vaccinaton campaigns are shifing the ‘reservoir’ of viral transmission to asymptomatcally infected subjects (whether vaccinated or not), the likelihood for unvaccinated, previously asymptomatcally infected subjects to experience re-infecton with Sars-CoV-2 while being endowed with suboptmal and short-lived ant-S Abs substantally increases.


This is to say that within the populaton that is now most actvely involved in viral transmission, new, spontaneously emerging S variants have plenty of opportunity to train under suboptmal immune pressure such as to ultmately adapt to the human host and become part of the dominant circulatng Sars-Cov-2 populaton. This is how – afer inital breeding of viral variants as a direct result of infecton preventon measures – subsequent mass vaccinaton campaigns will drive enhanced circulaton of additonal, more infectous viral S variants. ‘Training’ of such more infectous immune escape variants is thought to be refected by the plateau that follows the vaccine-mediated decline in cases and the height of which exceeds the one following the previous wave of cases.

Read more …

They test for those things that are most likely to fail.

• Therapeutics and COVID-19: Living Guideline (WHO)

This fourth version of the WHO living guideline addresses the use of ivermectin in patients with COVID-19. It follows the increased international attention on ivermectin as a potential therapeutic option. While ivermectin is also being investigated for prophylaxis, this guideline only addresses its role in the treatment of COVID-19. Ivermectin is relatively inexpensive and accessible, and some countries have already witnessed its widespread use in the treatment of COVID-19; in other countries, there is increasing pressure to do so (14).

In response to this international attention, the WHO GDG now provides recommendations on ivermectin for treatment of COVID-19. Ivermectin is an antiparasitic agent that interferes with nerve and muscle function of helminths through binding glutamate-gated chloride channels (15). We currently lack persuasive evidence of a mechanism of action for ivermectin in COVID-19, and any observed clinical benefit would be unexplained (see Section 5).

[..] Benefits and harms: The effects of ivermectin on mortality, mechanical ventilation, hospital admission, duration of hospitalization and viral clearance remain uncertain because of very low certainty of evidence addressing each of these outcomes. Ivermectin may have little or no effect on time to clinical improvement (low certainty evidence). Ivermectin may increase the risk of SAEs leading to drug dicontinuation (low certainty evidence). Subgroup analyses indicated no effect modification based on dose. We were unable to examine subgroups based on patient age or severity of illness due to insufficent trial data (see Section 5). Therefore, we assumed similar effects in all subgroups. This recommendation applies to patients with any disease severity and any duration of symptoms.

Certainty of the evidence: For most key outcomes, including mortality, mechanical ventilation, hospital admission, duration of hospitalization and viral clearance, the panel considered the evidence of very low certainty. Evidence was rated as very low certainty primarily because of very serious imprecision for most outcomes: the aggregate data had wide confidence intervals and/or very few events. There were also serious concerns related to risk of bias for some outcomes, specifically lack of blinding, lack of trial pre-registration, and lack of outcome reporting for one trial that did not report mechanical ventilation despite pre-specifying it in their protocol (publication bias).

Read more …

Google translate

• Judge Demands That Belgium Scraps All Corona Measures Within Thirty Days (AD)

The Brussels court of first instance orders the Belgian government to end the corona measures within thirty days, on pain of a penalty of 5000 euros per day. According to the judge, the current measures are based on laws that cannot serve as the basis for the ministerial decisions by which the corona measures are issued. The ruling follows a lawsuit brought by the League for Human Rights and has been confirmed to the Belgian media by the lawyers involved. The League is an independent Belgian foundation that fights “injustices and arbitrary attacks on the rights of the individual or the community”. The court finds that the measures taken by the governments to prevent the further spread of the corona virus are illegal. According to Lackner, the court actually says that the legal basis on which the ministerial decisions are based is not valid.

According to the court, the measures in Belgium to prevent the further spread of the corona virus are illegal. The measures are based on the 2007 Civil Security Act and two other laws, De Standaard writes about the case. That law came after a major train disaster in Ghislenglien to be able to act quickly and with urgency after such disasters. The court finds that this basis is not sufficient for the imposed corona measures. The judge gives the Belgian state thirty days to provide a solid legal basis on pain of a penalty of 5000 euros per day that that term is exceeded, up to a maximum of 200,000 euros. The Belgian Ministry of the Interior is said to be studying the verdict. An appeal is possible against the decision.

Belgium announced last week that it will continue to be locked, because the number of hospital admissions and infections with the corona virus continue to rise. The non-essential stores may only open by appointment and the very large stores for a maximum of fifty people at a time. The non-medical contact professions such as hairdressers also have to close again for the time being for four weeks. The number of people with whom Belgians are allowed to meet outside their families in the open air will be reduced from ten to four people. A number of corona measures remain, such as the curfew. Non-essential journeys from Belgium will also remain prohibited until April 19. According to Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, a “short period of pain, an Easter break” has been chosen in the hope of reducing the virus.

Read more …

It’s just sad.

• France Headed For New National Lockdown As COVID Cases Surge (ZH)

Despite expanding lockdown measures to cover more than one-third of the country (including Paris and other major cities) earlier this month, and other areas French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to follow German Chancellor Angela Merkel by imposing strict new nation lockdown measures as Europe’s “third wave” of COVID cases intensifies. France has seen COVID cases (adjusted for population) surge to the highest level in Western Europe, while only hard-hit ex-eastern bloc countries like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have it worse than France, as the chart below shows. This has inspired Germany and Spain to restrict travel from the country.

Bloomberg reports that President Macron is planning to announce during a national address on Wednesday evening that he will impose new nationwide measures to contain the spike, and that these measures could include school closures and a ban on inter-city travel. The new national edict would mark the end of the “regional” approach that France has relied on all year. Although he declined to elaborate, government spokesman Gabriel Attal said Wednesday after a defense council meeting that “decisions have been made” regarding new lockdown measures, but he declined to elabroate. Macron will address the nation at 2000 local time (1400ET). If Macron follows through with the school closures, that would also mark a major reversal for France, which had insisted on keeping schools open over the past year, unlike many of its European neighbors.

Macron has so far been “unapologetic” about his resistance to more restrictive measures, according to Bloomberg. As the EU vaccination push lags for a number of reasons (primarily a shortage of supplies, and widespread skepticism) more than 8MM people have received at least one jab of the vaccine, which represents more than 10% of the population. The target to vaccinate all French adults willing to get the jab by the end of the summer remains in place. Notably, Macron ignored the advice of his health minister who began advocating for more restrictive measures earlier this year. Instead, the government imposed a nationwide curfew, closed malls and expanded travel curbs – but didn’t go all in on a national lockdown. The hope was that the most pessimistic forecasts wouldn’t become a reality – but they have.

Read more …

On the beach.

• Outdoor Mask Decree Met With Dismay By Spain’s Tourism Industry (G.)

The Spanish tourist industry has reacted with dismay to the government’s decree that face masks must be worn in all outdoor spaces, including beaches and swimming pools, even when it is possible to maintain social distancing. “We’re going through hell with thousands of jobs and businesses threatened and now they want to turn the beaches into open-air field hospitals,” José Luis Zoreda, vice-president of Exceltur, the umbrella organisation that represents Spain’s tourism industry, told El País newspaper. Industry representatives complain that they were not consulted over the decision, which was announced in an official state bulletin on Tuesday. “We’ve already given up on Easter as a lost cause,” said Zoreda. “Now we have to put our hopes on summer.”


He said the “improvised measures” did not inspire confidence on the part of the foreign visitors whom the struggling industry is desperate to bring back. Tourism accounts for about 12% of Spain’s GDP. Masks have been obligatory indoors and out in Catalonia since last July and in Valencia since early this year, despite claims by scientists that there is a very low risk of contagion in the open air. Earlier this month Fernando Simón, head of Spain’s coordination centre for health emergencies and alerts, said: “I don’t believe that masks are the key to reducing transmission. It’s not necessary for everyone to wear one. What’s important is that people who are infected wear one, although we don’t know who is infected and who isn’t.” Simón added that they should be obligatory in enclosed spaces.

Read more …

Building trust.

• Washington State ‘Vaccine Breakthrough:’ 100s Get Covid Weeks After Jab (JTN)

The state of Washington is investigating what officials are calling a “vaccine breakthrough,” after roughly 100 cases of people testing positive for the virus about two weeks after being vaccinated. Epidemiologists report evidence of 102 breakthrough cases in 18 Washington counties, among millions of vaccinated residents. Two patients who received the vaccination died after becoming infected with the virus. “DOH is investigating two potential vaccine breakthrough cases where the patients died. Both patients were more than 80 years old and suffered underlying health issues,” officials said in a news release.


The health department also said the majority of those vaccinated who tested positive experienced mild symptoms, but at least eight have been hospitalized. “It is important to remember that every vaccine on the market right now prevents severe disease and death in most cases,” said Dr. Umair A. Shah, the states’s health secretary. “Finding evidence of vaccine breakthrough cases reminds us that, even if you have been vaccinated, you still need to wear a mask, practice socially distancing, and wash your hands to prevent spreading COVID-19 to others who have not been vaccinated.”

Read more …

“..poorly trained employees, cracked vials and mold around one of its facilities..”

• 15 Million Doses Of J&J Vaccine Ruined By Ingredient Mix-up (DM)

The Biden administration knew more than a week ago that 15million doses of Johnson & Johnson had been ruined by its contractor – potentially causing significant delays in the vaccine rollout, senior administration officials said. Two senior officials on the government’s Covid-19 response team told Politico that it was clear there were serious problems at the West Baltimore plant of Emergent BioSolutons, a little-known company at the center of the vaccine supply chain. A third official said the Department of Health then found out last week that Emergent had ruined 15 million doses of vaccine by adding the wrong ingredient. ‘It was no secret that Emergent did not have a deep bench of pharmaceutical manufacturing experts,’ that official told Politico.

The news finally became public on Wednesday when Johnson & Johnson said that a batch of vaccine made by Emergent at its Baltimore factory, known as Bayview, can’t be used because employees accidentally swapped in an ingredient meant for a different vaccine into the J&J shot, the New York Times reported Wednesday. The Emergent BioSolutions plant is also manufacturing doses for AstraZeneca, and apparently used an ingredient for the UK firm’s vaccine in a batch of J&J’s. The gaff occurred two weeks ago and will delay tens of millions doses of J&J’s shot slated to ship next month while the FDA investigates.

The company at the center of quality problems that led Johnson & Johnson to discard 15 million doses has a had string of citations from U.S. health officials for quality control problems. Emergent, which was key to Johnson & Johnson’s plan to deliver 100 million doses of its vaccine to the U.S. by the end of May, has been cited repeatedly by the Food and Drug Administration for problems such as poorly trained employees, cracked vials and mold around one of its facilities, according to The Associated Press.

Read more …

“He trusts the government would only deliver a safe, effective vaccine.”

• Bipolar Corona-Politics Positive? (OffG)

I had a patient this morning. More precisely, I telephoned him. He suffered a myocardial infarction last year and is on anti-hypertensives. His last few BP measurements showed very good, stable control. He barricades himself in his home against the rogue cold virus each time the government locks-down. He expressed terror about the link between hypertension and an enhanced Covid-19 risk. I would say he is, like the government, somewhat delusional about it or at the very least harbours some fixed false beliefs towards it. Hence, he measures his blood pressure many times a day. It fibrillates up and down with the propaganda. Masks are not enough for him. He refuses to leave his home until Johnson and Hancock lift lockdown. He asks me to increase his medications without seeing him.

The easy cure might be to turn off his TV and smartphone. But, there is more bipolarity, more paradox, more human folly. He refuses to come out for a hypertension review until he receives his Covid-19 vaccinations. I ask him how he suggests doing that? Perhaps he could find it reasonable to specifically come for his vaccine and have an opportunistic BP? He pauses, and then refuses. Classic Joseph Heller, Catch-22. Nothing surprises me these days in medical practice, so without a pause I remind him that we are not currently offering a bespoke domiciliary vaccination service. He remains insistent. As his doctor, I try to reassure him he is not at any great risk. I remind him we pay great lip service to all the viral psychological interventions such as porous ill-fitting mask, alcohol gel and … polythene apron.

Rather selectively, he dismisses these sacred verses of the government propaganda. As if to out-fox me, he replies in denouement, ‘Okay, I won’t come in, then.’ I leave it open for him to come back to us. It is not only the rule of law, but also the practice of medicine which has succumbed to hysteria. He is the ideal citizen of the corporate pharmaceutical Gods. Open to suggestion, vulnerable to propaganda, crouched with bayoneted rifle in trench against an unavoidable, invisible particle. Always willing to go above and beyond the unreasonable demands of tyrants. He trusts the government would only deliver a safe, effective vaccine.

Read more …

“..without the dossier, the warrants could not have been obtained.”

• Russiagate Prober Couldn’t Verify Anything in the Steele Dossier (RCI)

For the past four years, Democrats and the Washington media have suspended disbelief about the Steele dossier’s credibility by arguing that some Russia allegations against Donald Trump and his advisers have been corroborated and therefore the most explosive charges may also be true. But recently declassified secret testimony by the FBI official in charge of corroborating the dossier blows up that narrative. The top analyst assigned to the FBI’s Russia “collusion” case, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane, admitted under oath that neither he nor his team of half a dozen intelligence analysts could confirm any of the allegations in the dossier — including ones the FBI nonetheless included in several warrant applications as evidence to establish legal grounds to electronically monitor a former Trump adviser for almost a year.

FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten made the admission under questioning by staff investigators for the Senate Judiciary Committee during closed-door testimony in October. The committee only this year declassified the transcript, albeit with a number of redactions including the name of Auten, who was identified by congressional sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. “So with respect to the Steele reporting,” Auten told the committee, “the actual allegations and the actions described in those reports could not be corroborated.” After years of digging, Auten conceded that the only material in the dossier that he could verify was information that was already publicly available, such as names, entities, and positions held by persons mentioned in the document.

His testimony, kept secret for several months, is eye-opening because it’s the first time anybody from the FBI has acknowledged headquarters failed to verify any of the dossier evidence supporting the wiretaps as true and correct. As one of the FBI’s leading experts on Russia, Auten was highly familiar with the subject matter of the dossier and the Russian players it cited. He also had a team of intelligence analysts at his disposal to pore over the material and chase down leads. They even traveled overseas to interview the dossier’s author, former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, and other sources. Still, they could not corroborate any of the allegations of Trump-Russia “collusion” in the dossier, and actually debunked many of them — including the rumor, oft-repeated by the media, that Trump attorney Michael Cohen flew to Prague in the summer of 2016 to secretly huddle with Kremlin agents over an alleged Trump-Russia plot to hack the election.

They determined that Cohen had never even been to the Czech Republic. Yet Auten and his Crossfire teammates — who referred to the dossier as “Crown material,” as if it were valuable intelligence from America’s closest ally, Britain — never informed a secret surveillance court that the dossier was a bust. Instead, they used it as the basis for all four warrant applications to spy on Carter Page, a tangential 2016 Trump campaign adviser. Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who personally signed and approved the final application, has testified that without the dossier, the warrants could not have been obtained.

Read more …

But I see the remarkable strength of the USD. Yes, the euro has taken a few percent, and so has the yen. So what?

• US Dollar’s Status as “Global Reserve Currency” Drops to 25-Year Low (WS)

Two decades ago, when the dollar had a share of about 70% of reserve currencies, a presumed competitor became day-to-day reality: The euro, which combined the currencies of the member states into one currency, thereby combining their weight as reserve currency. Since then, the dollar’s share has dropped by 11 percentage points. By contrast, between 1977 and 1991, the dollars share had dropped by 46 percentage points – with huge plunges in 1979 and 1980 possibly linked to US inflation which was threatening to spiral out of control, peaking at nearly 15% in 1980. The plunge bottomed out in 1991, with inflation more or less under control. And the dollar’s share then surged by 25 percentage points until 2000:


The euro’s share had since been in the range between 19.5% and 20.6%, but it Q4 it broke out of the range and rose to 21.4%, the highest in the data. The ECB’s holdings of euro-denominated assets that it acquired as part of its QE are not included in the euro-denominated foreign exchange reserves. The rest of the reserve currencies are also-rans – the spaghetti at the bottom in the chart below. This includes the Chinese renminbi, the bold red line at the bottom:

The renminbi’s share is still only 2.25%, despite the magnitude and global influence of China’s economy, and despite the hype when the IMF elevated the renminbi to an official global reserve currency in October 2016 by including it in the basket of currencies that back the Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). But the renminbi’s share has been creeping up ever so slowly. At the rate it has been gaining momentum over the past two years (+0.36 percentage points in two years), it would take the renminbi another 50 years or so to reach a share of 25%. Clearly, other central banks are still leery of the renminbi and its implications, and are not eager to dump their dollars all at once in exchange for renminbi; easy does it.


To see what’s going on with the spaghetti at the bottom of the above chart, I magnified the scale and limited it to the range of 0% to 6%. This takes the dollar and the euro out of the picture, and allows for a detailed look of the other reserve currencies. What sticks out is the surge of the yen, the third largest reserve currency. This includes a 2.0-percentage point gain since Q4 2016, which blew away the 1.15-percentage point gain over the same period by the renminbi. With regards to the yen, the renminbi is losing ground.Despite Brexit and all the scary hoopla around it, the pound sterling (GBP), the fourth largest reserve currency, has not given up any share.

Read more …

“I was banking committee for all those years, I couldn’t even go to the Open Market Committee meeting. There was no way that would be permissible..”

• Ron Paul: Gold and Bitcoin Are At Risk Of Government Crackdown (Kitco)

The best way to protect against economic turbulence is with hard assets like precious metals and real estate, but even these are under threat from the government, said former Congressman and host of The Liberty Report, Ron Paul. “The government is a threat,” Paul said. “They will crackdown because they have the ability to do it. We had a taste of [a free society]. If you don’t know where to start, just start with the Constitution, that might give you an idea of what a free society is all about.” Paul noted that this “crackdown” could take the form of taxes. On President Biden’s proposed infrastructure bill, Paul said that its outcome would be “worse than average.”

“Most likely it will do what those kinds of programs always do, they spend a lot of money, they’re inefficient, they always cost more than they thought they should. Besides, it’s built on some mystical belief that you shouldn’t have any concern about the deficit…everybody’s just in a dream,” he said. During Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s testimony to Congress last week, Republican Senator John Neely Kennedy from Louisiana questioned whether or not the central banks around the world are still “independent” entities, or if they’ve already become intertwined with politics. Paul commented that “independence” was never the objective of central banks to begin with.

“This whole idea of independence…I just don’t believe they’re interested in secrecy because I don’t think of the Treasury or the Federal Reserve and the fiscal people in Congress as really representing a whole lot. I think about the people in the shadow government, in the Deep State, because there’s people pulling strings that have a lot of power and clout. I was banking committee for all those years, I couldn’t even go to the Open Market Committee meeting. There was no way that would be permissible,” he said.

Read more …

Virtue signalling in overdrive.

• Journalists Are “Centering” Their “Trauma” To Acquire Power (Tracey)

On March 28, Washington Post journalist Felicia Somnez posted a Twitter thread describing the intense trauma she said she’d endured over the past year. An editorial policy imposed by the paper’s management had greatly exacerbated this trauma, she alleged, causing her to burst into tears during a recent therapy session and frequently lapse into spells of “vacant staring.” Somnez, a Harvard graduate in her 30s who holds one of the most prestigious journalism jobs in the country, spoke of being “silenced” by her editors, which in turn kicked her “trauma response” into overdrive and worsened her condition further. She declared that the new crop of young journalists now beginning at the Post “deserve better” than how she’d been treated, particularly on account of their being so “diverse, talented and relentless in their fight for equity.”

If any of these buzzwords and/or phrases sound familiar, it’s because their usage now dependably instigates a swift capitulatory reaction from the people who run legacy media institutions. The editorial policy adjustment that Somnez had demanded be effectuated did in fact get effectuated, within a matter of hours. Her elaborately confessional Twitter thread — a well-worn tactic by this point — worked fantastically. Whatever the merits of the proposed policy adjustment at issue (and she may well have been on sound footing in demanding it), no one can dispute that her chosen self-advocacy approach achieved what she set out to achieve. Because increasingly, as this episode once again demonstrated, the key to coaxing stodgy old editors into acquiescence is to publicly “call them out” using a now-familiar punchy, emotionally inflammatory rhetorical style.

We can just take Somnez at her word and grant that this professional adult journalist genuinely did undergo the debilitating trauma she described, vacant staring spells and all. It’s impossible to judge the precise veracity of these trauma-related claims anyway, given how inextricable they are with the interior mental state of the individual in question. So we’ll have to just accept that Somnez being “attacked online,” as she put it, really did result in the kind of extraordinary psychological turmoil she says she experienced. What can be judged, however — and what has to be judged given its rapidly increasing prominence in public life — is the wider impact of the rhetorical style used so adroitly by Somnez. Because it very clearly gets results. Call it therapeutic trauma jargon.

Read more …

 

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, you are now not just a reader, but an integral part of the process that builds this site. Thank you for your support.

 

 

Lagarde

 

 

Engineered food

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime. Click at the top of the sidebars to donate with Paypal and Patreon.

 

Debt Rattle January 12 2021

Jan 122021
 
 January 12, 2021  Posted by at 10:28 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  43 Responses »


Alfred Wertheimer Elvis 1956

 

• New Covid “Super Strain” is a Game-Changer for Schools and More (Parramore)
• WHO Warns Of ‘Highly Problematic’ New Covid-19 Variants (F.)
• An Epidemic of COVID Positive Tests (John Hunt)
• Lockdown ‘Ineffective’ Against Spread Of Covid-19, May Even Increase Risk (RT)
• French Government “Shocked” at Twitter Banning of Trump (SN)
• Twitter Has Suspended More Than 70,000 Accounts Since Friday (ZH)
• The Big Tech Backfire (Miller)
• We Need a New Media System (Taibbi)
• Insurrection Versus Insurrection (Kunstler)
• The Rise and Fall of the ‘Steele Dossier’ (Maté)
• Assange Is Still In Prison. And America’s Principles Are Still At Stake. (NBC)
• 50 Countries Commit To Protection Of 30% of Earth’s Land and Oceans (G.)
• Economic Failures of the IPCC Process (Steve Keen)
• Dutch Officials Seize Ham Sandwiches From British Drivers (G.)
• ‘Let’s All Remain Peaceful,’ Says Trump In Clear Incitement To Violence (BBee)

 

 

The B.1.1.7 COVID variant is starting to look as scary as the social media giant censorship.

 

 

A call on the US to close its borders to the UK. At present, dozens of flights arrive from London every day.

“I’ve never seen an epi curve like this. The B.1.1.7 variant is spreading like wildfire in the UK and Ireland. If it spreads here, it will make an already-bad situation even worse.”

 

 

Lynn Parramore taks to Phillip Alvelda, a former NASA & DARPA technologist.

• New Covid “Super Strain” is a Game-Changer for Schools and More (Parramore)

LP: New, fast-spreading “super strains” are raising a lot of concerns, such as more infection among young people. You’ve been studying the U.K. variant, which has shown up in the United States. What do we need to know?

PA: We saw the U.K. strain coming for some time. All of a sudden there began to be dramatic upticks in infection rates, even without material changes in individual behavior en masse or the abatement measures enacted and observed. England has not been the most Johnny-on-the-spot responder to the coronavirus, and there has been a lot of confusion about what abatement measures should be observed, in which areas, etc. Of the developed nations, the U.S. and the U.K. have struggled the most as societies to communicate, plan and observe reasonable measures that other countries have more successfully applied. The U.K. variant, which has now spread across Europe and into several U.S. states, has what appear to be a couple of important mutations in the spike protein, which allows the virus to attach to the receptors in the lungs. Apparently, the new variant is stickier – better at binding to the receptors. That means that it takes less of the virus to get you sick, or the same viral load gets you sicker.

A big change is that the U.K. variant appears be somewhere between 40 and 70% more infectious. For a person who has this variant, they’re likely to infect 40% to 70% more people. If you think about what we have done to reduce the effectiveness of transmission, getting people to wear masks has been a successful campaign. But some masks are better at protecting people than others. A well-fitted N95 and KN95 masks will filter 95% of the virus particles from coming into your lungs, but there are also terrible masks that don’t protect people much at all. If you average mask-wearing over the population, it seems that the mask mandates reduce the infectiousness of the virus by about 40 to 50%. To put the U.K. variant in perspective, with its faster spread, we are effectively put back to where we once were without masks — even when we’re now wearing masks!

LP: The idea of young people under 20 getting infected at high rates is alarming, though there have been conflicting reports as to why those numbers are higher, such as behavior patterns. What’s your take?

PA: There is no doubt that the U.K. strain is infecting more young people than any prior variants. I think the conflicting reports may have more to do with where that variant is prevalent and where it is not. It would not be true to say that all of the hospitals in the U.K. are being overrun by younger patients. But in those regions where the new variant is prevalent, the hospitalization and case data now show that more than ever before, young people are having almost as many cases and hospitalizations as the older people. That is a substantial change. With older variants, symptoms were usually not bad enough to even bring the kids in to test — and we know there were a lot of asymptomatic carriers that were never tested or acknowledged.

With the new variant, symptoms are bad enough that kids need the testing and they’re being hospitalized. It’s probably premature to speculate on the lethality. There is some hope, for example, that the U.K. variant could be more infectious but less lethal. But we just don’t know. It’s likely going to be weeks before the case trend that is now beginning to translate into the hospitalization trend will translate into the mortality trend. Unfortunately, given what we’ve seen in the past from the virus, it’s our expectation that if the case data is showing more young people infected, and the hospitalization data is showing more of them hospitalized, in a matter of weeks we will see more deaths.

Read more …

They’re talking again about “immunity” provided by vaccines. But have we seen any proof of that?

• WHO Warns Of ‘Highly Problematic’ New Covid-19 Variants (F.)

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Monday issued a dire warning about the new variants of Covid-19 that are emerging across the globe, noting that because those variants can be more contagious, the surge in cases they’re likely to cause could further stress hospitals and health workers already stretched to the brink. During a press briefing Monday, Ghebreyesus said that more contagious variants of the coronavirus “can drive a surge of cases and hospitalizations, which is highly problematic for health workers and hospitals already close to the breaking point.” The added strain on hospitals puts other essential health services at risk, he added, meaning that critical surgeries or procedures may become more difficult because hospital resources are more limited.

While these variants have been found to be more contagious, experts say they don’t appear to cause more severe sickness or increase the risk of death. Dr. Tom Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned last week that the U.S. is “close to a worst-case scenario” because of the rapid spread of a new, highly contagious strain of Covid-19. New variants of Covid-19 have been found in the United Kingdom, the United States (where 63 cases have been detected), Canada, South Africa, and Nigeria, among other countries, the CDC says. Japan’s health authorities announced over the weekend that they had detected a new variant of the virus in four travelers from Brazil, Reuters reported.

Scientists are keeping track of new mutations as they emerge and studying how they will impact the effectiveness of vaccines. “I’m quite optimistic that even with these mutations, immunity is not going to suddenly fail on us,” Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, told the healthcare publication STAT. “It might be gradually eroded, but it’s not going to fail on us, at least in the short term.” A recent study from the University of Texas and pharma giant Pfizer found that Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine is still effective in protecting against new variants of the virus.

Read more …

Excellent analysis: “The more it is used wrongly, the more misinformation ensues.”

• An Epidemic of COVID Positive Tests (John Hunt)

How does this same 95% sensitive/95% specific test work in this screening setting? The good news is that this test will likely identify the 5 people out of every 1000 with Relevant Infectious COVID! Yay! The bad news is that, out of every 1000 people, it will also falsely label 50 people as COVID-positive who don’t have Relevant Infectious COVID. Out of 55 people with positive tests in each group of 1000 people, 5 actually have the disease. 50 of the tests are false positives. With a Positive Predictive Value of only 9%, one could say that’s a pretty lousy test. It’s far lousier if you test only people with no symptoms (such as screening a school, jobsite, or college), in whom the up-front likelihood of having Relevant Infectious COVID Disease is substantially lower.

The very same test that is pretty good when testing people who are actually ill or at risk is lousy when screening people who aren’t. In the first scenario (with symptoms), the test is being used correctly for diagnosis. In the second scenario (no symptoms), the test is being used wrongly for screening. A diagnostic test is used to diagnose a patient the doctor thinks has a reasonable chance of having the disease (having symptoms like fever, cough, a snotty nose, and shortness of breath during a viral season). A screening test is used to check for the presence of a disease in a person without symptoms and no heightened risk of having the disease.

A screening test may be appropriate to use when it has very high specificity (99% or more), when the prevalence of the disease in the population is pretty high, and when there is something we can do about the disease if we identify it. However, if the prevalence of a disease is low (as is the case for Relevant Infectious COVID) and the test isn’t adequately specific (as is the case with PCR and rapid antigen tests for the COVID virus), then using such a test as a screening measure in healthy people is forcing the test to be lousy. The more it is used wrongly, the more misinformation ensues. Our health authorities are recommending more testing of asymptomatic people. In other words, they are encouraging the wrong and lousy application of these tests.

Read more …

“The proportion of COVID-19 deaths that occurred in nursing homes was often higher” under tough restrictions “rather than under less restrictive measures.”

• Lockdown ‘Ineffective’ Against Spread Of Covid-19, May Even Increase Risk (RT)

A Stanford University study claims mandatory stay-at-home orders and business closures have “no clear, significant beneficial effect” on Covid-19 case growth and may even lead to more frequent infections in nursing homes. Researchers at Stanford University in California aimed to assess how tough lockdowns influence the growth in infections as compared to less restrictive measures. They used data from England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, and the US, collected during the initial stages of the pandemic in the spring 2020. They compared the data from Sweden and South Korea, two countries that did not introduce tough lockdowns at that time, with that from the other eight countries.

They found that introducing any restrictive non-pharmaceutical interventions’ (NPIs) such as reduced working hours, working from home and social distancing helped curb the rise of infections in nine out of 10 study countries, except for Spain, where the effect was “non-significant.” However, when they compared epidemic spreads in places that implemented less restrictive measures with those opting for a full-blown lockdown they found “no clear, significant beneficial effect” of the latter on the number of cases in any country. The research goes on to suggest that empirical data from the later wave of infections shows that restrictive measures fail to protect vulnerable populations. “The proportion of COVID-19 deaths that occurred in nursing homes was often higher” under tough restrictions “rather than under less restrictive measures.”

It also says that there’s evidence suggesting that “sometimes under more restrictive measures, infections may be more frequent in settings where vulnerable populations reside relative to the general population.” The research admits that lockdowns in early 2020 were justified because the disease was spreading rapidly and overwhelming health systems, and scientists or medics did not know what the mortality data of the virus was. However, it points at the potential harmful health effects of tough restrictions, such as hunger, health services becoming unavailable for non-Covid diseases, domestic abuse and mental health issues, and the effects of these on the economy mean that the benefits of the tough restrictions might be overrated and need to be studied carefully.

Read more …

“..social media giants shouldn’t have the power to decide who has the right to free speech…”

• French Government “Shocked” at Twitter Banning of Trump (SN)

The French government has echoed Angela Merkel’s sentiment in saying it is “shocked” at Twitter’s banning of President Trump, asserting that Big Tech is a threat to democracy. Junior Minister for European Union Affairs Clement Beaune said the decision to silence Trump proved the need for Big Tech platforms to be tightly regulated. “This should be decided by citizens, not by a CEO,” he told Bloomberg TV on Monday. “There needs to be public regulation of big online platforms.” Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire also said that “the digital oligarchy” was “one of the threats” to democracy and should be reigned in by the state. As we highlighted earlier, the German government also warned that Big Tech’s deplatforming of Trump set a very dangerous precedent.

Communicating via a spokesman, Chancellor Angela Merkel called the move “problematic,” adding that social media giants shouldn’t have the power to decide who has the right to free speech.

“This fundamental right can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators — not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms,” said the statement. While Republicans were completely toothless in their efforts to control Big Tech during Trump’s administration, Poland could be set to pass a law that would fine social media companies $2.2 million a pop for censoring lawful free speech. “In the event of removal or blockage, a complaint can be sent to the platform, which will have 24 hours to consider it. Within 48 hours of the decision, the user will be able to file a petition to the court for the return of access. The court will consider complaints within seven days of receipt and the entire process is to be electronic,” reported Poland In.

Read more …

Anyone setting up a better alternative will be crushed.

• Twitter Has Suspended More Than 70,000 Accounts Since Friday (ZH)

In a Monday night blog post, Twitter lays out all the latest details of a historic purge that started with the suspension of president Trump and has escalated into the ban of tens of thousands of conservative voices, or as Twitter puts it, “steps taken to protect the conversation on our service from attempts to incite violence, organize attacks, and share deliberately misleading information about the election outcome.” Odd how none of those considerations emerged during the summer when US cities were literally burning as a result of countless violent protests and frequent riots, but we digress. In any case, In twitter’s own delightfully ironic words, “It’s important to be transparent about all of this work as the US Presidential Inauguration on January 20, 2021, approaches.” Which is a probably a good idea in the aftermath of the biggest censorship purge in twitter history, one which sent Twitter stock tumbling. So this is what how twitter justifies “the purge”:


We’ve been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm. Given the violent events in Washington, DC, and increased risk of harm, we began permanently suspending thousands of accounts that were primarily dedicated to sharing QAnon content on Friday afternoon. And with tens of thousands of accounts suspended (most of them permanently), banned, or merely disappeared, it will hardly be a surprise that according to Tiwtter, “more than 70,000 accounts have been suspended”. What is the justification? “These accounts were engaged in sharing harmful QAnon-associated content at scale and were primarily dedicated to the propagation of this conspiracy theory across the service.”

Read more …

“Sunlight has always been the best disinfectant as a way of fighting radicalization.”

• The Big Tech Backfire (Miller)

Some are excusing Big Tech’s foray into massive censorship by arguing that these are private companies and can choose who they provide service to. Anyone who has a problem with their behavior, they reason, should just create their own platforms. But that is exactly what Parler did, and it was subsequently crushed. Unfortunately, because Big Tech companies have grown so large and monopolistic, the only real way to have a viable competitor is to create an entirely new internet. Amazon’s hypocritical justification for banning Parler shows that these companies will do basically anything in order to destroy the competition. Amazon claimed that Parler is responsible for the content that it allowed users to publish, which is the exact same argument made by people who wish to remove Section 230 protections for social media companies.

Amazon thus introduced a moral and legal standard for a potential competitor that it would resist tooth and nail if applied to itself. The company notably used Section 230 as a defense in a recent court case to try to avoid liability for selling defective products. It’s worth noting that many conservatives do not believe that social-media companies should do away with all content moderation. The problem is that platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and now Amazon, do not enforce their policies equally. After suspending Trump, Twitter was still hosting virulent anti-Semites, Chinese Communist party propaganda, vaccine conspiracists and antifa glorification accounts like the New York Times. If these companies only enforce policies against accounts with certain political leanings, it will radicalize a base of the population even more.

The people who are targeted online by Twitter and Facebook’s increasingly wide nets will simply find deeper and darker holes to communicate. Sunlight has always been the best disinfectant as a way of fighting radicalization. Deleting the account of someone with a radical opinion does not stop that person from holding that opinion; in fact, it may cause them to dig in even deeper in retaliation. Meanwhile, people who are unfairly targeted by social media platforms may start to sympathize with the radicals.

Read more …

“Drifting apart into two separate tribes, with a separate set of facts and separate realities, with nothing in common except our hostility towards each other and mistrust for the few national institutions that we all still share.”

• We Need a New Media System (Taibbi)

The moment a group of people stormed the Capitol building last Wednesday, news companies began the process of sorting and commoditizing information that long ago became standard in American media. Media firms work backward. They first ask, “How does our target demographic want to understand what’s just unfolded?” Then they pick both the words and the facts they want to emphasize. It’s why Fox News uses the term, “Pro-Trump protesters,” while New York and The Atlantic use “Insurrectionists.” It’s why conservative media today is stressing how Apple, Google, and Amazon shut down the “Free Speech” platform Parler over the weekend, while mainstream outlets are emphasizing a new round of potentially armed protests reportedly planned for January 19th or 20th.

What happened last Wednesday was the apotheosis of the Hate Inc. era, when this audience-first model became the primary means of communicating facts to the population. For a hundred reasons dating back to the mid-eighties, from the advent of the Internet to the development of the 24-hour news cycle to the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the Fox-led discovery that news can be sold as character-driven, episodic TV in the manner of soap operas, the concept of a “Just the facts” newscast designed to be consumed by everyone died out. News companies now clean world events like whalers, using every part of the animal, funneling different facts to different consumers based upon calculations about what will bring back the biggest engagement kick.

The Migrant Caravan? Fox slices off comments from a Homeland Security official describing most of the border-crossers as single adults coming for “economic reasons.” The New York Times counters by running a story about how the caravan was deployed as a political issue by a Trump White House staring at poor results in midterm elections. Repeat this info-sifting process a few billion times and this is how we became, as none other than Mitch McConnell put it last week, a country: “Drifting apart into two separate tribes, with a separate set of facts and separate realities, with nothing in common except our hostility towards each other and mistrust for the few national institutions that we all still share.”

Read more …

Jim holds on to the last straws.

• Insurrection Versus Insurrection (Kunstler)

Mr. Trump is still president, and you’ve probably noticed he has been president for four years to date, which ought to suggest that he holds a great deal of accumulated information about the seditionists who have been playing games with him through all those years. So, two questions might be: how much of that information describes criminal acts by his adversaries — most recently, a deeply suspicious national election based on hackable vote-tabulation computers — and what’s within the president’s power to do something about it? I guess we’ll find out. Or, to state it a little differently, it is impossible that the president does not have barge-loads of information about the people who strove mightily to take him down for four years.

At least two pillars of the Intel Community — the CIA and the FBI — have been actively and visibly working to undermine and gaslight him, but you can be sure that the president knows where the gas has been coming from, and these agencies are not the only sources of dark information in this world. Also consider that not all the employees at these agencies are on the side of sedition. By its work this weekend, starring Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Zuck (Facebook), Tim Cook (Apple), and Jeff Bezos (Amazon and The WashPo), you know exactly what you would be getting with The Resistance taking power in the White House and Congress: unvarnished tyranny. No free speech for you!

They will not permit opposing voices to be heard, especially about the janky election that elevated America’s booby-prize, Joe Biden, to the highest office in the land. Now there’s a charismatic, charming, dynamic, in-charge guy! He’s already doing such a swell job “healing America.” For instance, his declaration Tuesday to give $30-billion to businesses run by “black, brown, and Native American entrepreneurs” (WashPo). Uh, white folks need not apply? Since when are federal disbursements explicitly race-based? What and who, exactly, comprise the committee set up to operate Joe Biden, the hypothetical, holographic President?

Read more …

If anything calls for a Special Counsel, it’s Russiagate. But with the Dems back in power, the chances are zero.

• The Rise and Fall of the ‘Steele Dossier’ (Maté)

On January 10, 2017, BuzzFeed News published the “Steele dossier,” the collection of DNC-funded reports alleging a high-level conspiracy between Trump and Moscow. The catalyst had come four days earlier, when then–FBI Director Jim Comey personally briefed Trump on the dossier’s existence. Their meeting was then promptly leaked to the media, giving BuzzFeed the news hook to publish the Steele material in full. Despite its outlandish assertions and partisan provenance, Steele’s work product somehow became a road map for Democratic leaders, media outlets, and, most egregiously, intelligence officials carrying out the Russia investigation.

According to Steele, Trump and the Kremlin engaged in a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation.” Russia had, Steele alleged, been “cultivating, supporting and assisting Trump for at least five years,” dating back to the time when Trump was merely the host of The Apprentice. Russia, Steele claimed, handed Trump “a regular flow of intelligence,” including on “political rivals.” The conspiracy supposedly escalated during the 2016 campaign, when then–Trump lawyer Michael Cohen slipped into Prague for “secret discussions with Kremlin representatives and associated operators/hackers.”

This purported plot was not just based on mutual nefarious interests but, worse, outright coercion. To keep their asset in line, Steele alleged, the Russians had videotaped Trump hiring and watching prostitutes “perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) show,” in a Moscow Ritz-Carlton hotel room. This “kompromat” meant that the leader of the free world was not only a traitor but also a blackmail victim of his Kremlin handlers. If the Steele dossier’s far-fetched claims were not enough reason to dismiss it with ridicule, another obvious marker should have set off alarms. Reading the Steele dossier chronologically, a glaring pattern emerges: Steele has no advance knowledge of anything that later proved to be true, and, just as tellingly, many of his most explosive claims appear only after some approximate prediction has come out in public form.

Despite his supposed high-level sources inside the Kremlin, it was only after Wikileaks published the DNC e-mails in July 2016 that Steele first mentioned them. When Steele made the headline-consuming claim that “the TRUMP team had agreed to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue” in exchange for Russian help, he did so only after a meaningless Ukraine-related platform change at the RNC was reported (and mischaracterized) in The Washington Post. When Steele claimed that former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was offered up to a 19 percent stake in the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft if he could get Trump to lift Western sanctions, it was only after the media had reported Page’s visit to Moscow.

In short, far from having access to high-level intelligence, Steele and his “sources” only had access to news outlets and their own imaginations.

Read more …

Support that comes way too late.

• Assange Is Still In Prison. And America’s Principles Are Still At Stake. (NBC)

The Justice Department’s case against Assange raised serious press freedom concerns from the outset. This is partly because so much of the indictment is devoted to describing activity that journalists engage in routinely — like cultivating government sources, communicating with them confidentially, protecting their identities and publishing classified secrets. In defending the indictment, Justice Department spokespeople have insisted that the case does not implicate press freedom because Assange himself is not a journalist and because WikiLeaks, which Assange founded, is not a media organization. But this defense misses the point. The point is that Assange is being prosecuted for activities that national security journalists engage in every day — and that they need to engage in if they are to serve as a meaningful check on government power.

Of particular concern are three counts in the indictment that charge Assange with having violated the Espionage Act merely by publishing classified information. As the Justice Department knows, publishing government secrets is an important part of what American news organizations do. The Washington Post disclosed classified information when it revealed the CIA’s network of black sites. The New York Times disclosed classified information when it exposed the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program. The truth is that there is no way that American news organizations could report responsibly about war, foreign relations or national security without sometimes disclosing classified information. Max Frankel of The New York Times famously made this point in an affidavit filed 50 years ago in the Pentagon Papers case, and the point is even more true today.

The ruling issued in London on Monday by Judge Vanessa Baraitser will forestall the Justice Department, at least for now, from pursuing Assange’s prosecution in U.S. courts. This is a significant thing. While the indictment certainly has a chilling effect on national security journalism, a successful prosecution of Assange under the Espionage Act would be even more oppressive — indeed, it would likely compel U.S. news organizations to radically curtail some of the most important work they do. The problem with Baraitser’s ruling, from the perspective of press freedom, is that it rejected the extradition request only because of concerns relating to Assange’s mental health and the conditions in which he would be imprisoned were he handed over to the United States. This aspect of Baraitser’s ruling appears to be well supported by the evidence, but, significantly, its protection does not extend beyond Assange.

Read more …

Really? The UK goverment will protect the planet? And Prince Charles makes a cameo? Fool me once, shame on you.

• 50 Countries Commit To Protection Of 30% of Earth’s Land and Oceans (G.)

A coalition of 50 countries has committed to protect almost a third of the planet by 2030 to halt the destruction of the natural world and slow extinctions of wildlife. The High Ambition Coalition (HAC) for Nature and People, which includes the UK and countries from six continents, made the pledge to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and oceans before the One Planet summit in Paris on Monday, hosted by the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
Scientists have said human activities are driving the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth, and agricultural production, mining and pollution are threatening the healthy functioning of life-sustaining ecosystems crucial to human civilisation.

In the announcement, the HAC said protecting at least 30% of the planet for nature by the end of the decade was crucial to preventing mass extinctions of plants and animals, and ensuring the natural production of clean air and water. The commitment is likely to be the headline target of the “Paris agreement for nature” that will be negotiated at Cop15 in Kunming, China later this year. The HAC said it hoped early commitments from countries such as Colombia, Costa Rica, Nigeria, Pakistan and Canada would ensure it formed the basis of the UN agreement. The UK environment minister Zac Goldsmith said: “We know there is no pathway to tackling climate change that does not involve a massive increase in our efforts to protect and restore nature.

“So as co-host of the next Climate Cop, the UK is absolutely committed to leading the global fight against biodiversity loss and we are proud to act as co-chair of the High Ambition Coalition. “We have an enormous opportunity at this year’s biodiversity conference in China to forge an agreement to protect at least 30% of the world’s land and ocean by 2030. I am hopeful our joint ambition will curb the global decline of the natural environment, so vital to the survival of our planet.”

Read more …

A feature not a bug?!

• Economic Failures of the IPCC Process (Steve Keen)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the premier international body collating the scientific assessment of climate change, and proposals for mitigation. A joint creation of the United Nations agencies the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), it brings together scientists from myriad disciplines to assess and summarize the current research on climate change, collating knowledge that is then used to inform governments and politicians. The scientists work on a volunteer basis. The IPCC relies upon its member governments and “Observers Organizations” to nominate its volunteer authors. This means that, subject to their willingness to volunteer, the most prestigious individuals specialising in climate change in each discipline become the authors of the relevant IPCC chapter for their discipline.


They then undertake a review of the peer-reviewed literature in their field (and some non-peer-reviewed work, such as government reports) to distil the current state of knowledge about climate change in their discipline. A laborious review process is also followed, so the draft reports of the volunteer experts is reviewed by other experts in each field, to ensure conformity of the report with the discipline’s current perception of climate change. The emphasis upon producing reports which reflect the consensus within a discipline has resulted in numerous charges that the IPCC’s warnings are inherently too conservative. But the main weaknesses with the IPCC’s methodology are firstly that, in economics, it exclusively selects Neoclassical economists, and secondly, because there is no built-in review of one discipline’s findings by another, the conclusions of these Neoclassical economists about the dangers of climate change are reviewed only by other Neoclassical economists. The economic sections of IPCC reports are therefore unchallenged by other disciplines who also contribute to the IPCC’s reports.

Given the extent to which economists dominate the formation of most government policies in almost all fields, and not just strictly economic policy, the otherwise acceptable process by which the IPCC collates human knowledge on climate change has critically weakened, rather than strengthened, human society’s response to climate change. This is because, commencing with “Nobel Laureate” William Nordhaus, the economists who specialise on climate change have falsely trivialized the dangers that climate change poses to human civilization. In his 2018 Nobel Prize lecture, William Nordhaus described a trajectory that would lead to global temperatures peaking at 4°C above pre-industrial levels in 2145 as “optimal” because, according to his calculations, the damages from climate change over time, plus the abatement costs over time, are minimised on this trajectory.


He estimated the discounted cost of the economic damages from unabated climate change — which would see temperatures approach 6°C above pre-industrial levels by 2150 — at $24 trillion, whereas the 4°C trajectory had damages of about $15 trillion and abatement costs of about $3 trillion. Trajectories with lower peak temperatures had higher abatement costs that overwhelmed the benefits. In a subsequent paper, Nordhaus claimed that even a 6°C increase would only reduce global income by only 7.9%, compared to what it would be in the complete absence of global warming.

Read more …

“Welcome to Brexit, sir, I’m sorry.”

• Dutch Officials Seize Ham Sandwiches From British Drivers (G.)

Dutch TV news has aired footage of customs officers confiscating ham sandwiches from drivers arriving by ferry from the UK under post-Brexit rules banning personal imports of meat and dairy products into the EU. Officials wearing high-visibility jackets are shown explaining to startled car and lorry drivers at the Hook of Holland ferry terminal that since Brexit, “you are no longer allowed to bring certain foods to Europe, like meat, fruit, vegetables, fish, that kind of stuff.” To a bemused driver with several sandwiches wrapped in tin foil who asked if he could maybe surrender the meat and keep just the bread, one customs officer replied: “No, everything will be confiscated. Welcome to Brexit, sir, I’m sorry.”

The ban came into force on New Year’s Day as the Brexit transition period came to an end, with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) saying travellers should “use, consume, or dispose of” prohibited items at or before the border. “From 1 January 2021 you will not be able to bring POAO (products of an animal origin) such as those containing meat or dairy (eg a ham and cheese sandwich) into the EU,” the Defra guidance for commercial drivers states. The European commission says the ban is necessary because meat and dairy products can contain pathogens causing animal diseases such as foot-and-mouth or swine fever and “continue to present a real threat to animal health throughout the union”.

Dutch customs also posted a photograph of foodstuffs ranging from breakfast cereals to oranges that officials had confiscated in the ferry terminal, adding: “Since 1 January, you can’t just bring more food from the UK.” The customs service added: “So prepare yourself if you travel to the Netherlands from the UK and spread the word. This is how we prevent food waste and together ensure that the controls are speeded up.”

Read more …

“Let’s all remain peaceful,” he said, which clearly meant, “Go burn down the Capitol Building.”

• ‘Let’s All Remain Peaceful,’ Says Trump In Clear Incitement To Violence (BBee)

A review of Trump’s statements last week made it clear that he was inciting violence, as he very clearly told people to “remain peaceful” and not carry out any violence. The dangerous cult leader encouraged his followers to protest at the Capitol, but to remain peaceful, which is an obvious instance of inciting violence, according to leading language experts and journalists. “Let’s all remain peaceful,” he said, which clearly meant, “Go burn down the Capitol Building.” “No violence!” added the deranged lunatic, which, according to the New York Times, was a dog whistle for “Minions, attack!” “Go home,” he added, which meant, “Keep pressing the attack! We will not be defeated! Blow stuff up!” At publishing time, Trump had said, “I’ve always encouraged peaceful protesting,” which meant he wanted his followers to go ransack an Arby’s.

Read more …

 

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, you are now not just a reader, but an integral part of the process that builds this site.

Click at the top of the sidebars for Paypal and Patreon donations. Thank you for your support.

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in 2021. Click at the top of the sidebars to donate with Paypal and Patreon.

 

Biden IS the Swamp

Nov 082020
 
 November 8, 2020  Posted by at 4:22 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  14 Responses »


Jasper Johns Three flags 1958

 

 

Since the US has no official institution to call an election soon after the polls have closed, and people want a result fast, it has befallen on the media to make the announcement. And by and large, this hasn’t been that big a deal. But when those same media have for 4 years relentlessly hounded one of the two candidates, it should be obvious that this “system” should not be applied. If only because it has no legal status whatsoever.

However, people both in the US and abroad don’t appear to be aware of this. So when the New York Times et al declare a winner, this is seen as an “official” announcement. It is not. That won’t come until the Electoral College gathers in December (8-14th?!). And at least until then, Trump will have every right to contest the election in court. Still, “world leaders” are congratulating the “next president”. Do they really not know how this works?

The idea behind it all is obvious, of course: to make Trump look like a sore loser, and Biden the president-elect, a title the media claim they can bestow upon him. Do remember that both Biden’s and Kamala’s campaign were considered dead in the water at one point, before they were magically resurrected by the party machine, which ensured that =two people very unpopular in their own party now lead the ticket. Be careful what you wish for.

In that light. I found this intriguing. Twitter adds a warning to this Trump tweet: “Official sources may not have called the race when this was Tweeted”. I haven’t seen one instance where they attached the same warning to tweets about Biden winning and being President Elect. But wouldn’t that be the same thing?

 

 

No, I don’t particularly mind Biden winning, Washington is a shit hole whoever occupies the White House and other posts, but this is not about Biden. It’s about the people behind him. About the people who elected him to be a candidate, and that’s not his voters; it’s the DNC, the FBI and media that made him possible.

Everyone in the MSM is talking about Trump’s alleged lies, as they have for 5 screeching years, main news networks on Thursday even cut off/short a speech by the President of the United States -that must be a first-, but nobody reflects on the 5-year neverending constant lies they have all told ABOUT Trump, on the entire Russiagate episode, the Mueller report based on only lies, the whole shebang.

The DNC that paid for the Steele dossier without which there would never have been a Mueller special counsel, commissioned by Rod Rosenstein when he was Deputy Attorney General, which was based on lies, exclusively, the FBI that used the Dossier to falsify FISA applications, people like Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler and Nancy Pelosi who kept on lying about having evidence of Russian collusion.

And still these are the people accusing Trump of lying. And they feel they can get away with it, because their media also incessantly repeated their lies, and is still doing that. Forget for a moment about what you think about Donald Trump, and tell me how you feel about an attempt to unseat an elected American president with nothing but lies.

Do you think that will be a one-off? If so, you’re blind. If Joe Biden and his handlers ever get into the White House, respect for the Office of the Presidency will still be gone, and it will be for a long time, decades. That’s the price the American people pay for the attempt to unseat Trump based on lies only. Do you really feel that’s a price worth paying? I suggest you give that some serious thought.

 

 

With Biden you don’t get Biden, you get the entire cabal that went after Trump, the Democratic Party, the media, the intelligence agencies. And yes, Biden was and is very much part of that cabal. How people do not find that a whole lot scarier than Donald Trump is beyond me.

If -and no that is not when- Joe Biden is inaugurated on January 20 2021, that cabal will take over the country. And we’ve seen plenty indications that they intend to make it impossible for the Republicans to ever get one of their own elected as president again. Moreover they will not be investigated for what they concocted over the past 4-5 years.

How the Hillary campaign and the DNC leaked things to the FBI, and the FBI to the MSM, how they lied in courtrooms to get FISA applications on Trump campaign people like Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. How they set up Lt.-Gen. Michael Flynn so he wouldn’t be Trump’s National Security Adviser, because Flynn knew too much.

It’s a scheme so full of illegal actions that it will be devastating for the entire American political system if it is never investigated, or even if it isn’t investigated very very thoroughly, by an impartial party. And it won’t be if Biden becomes president.

The cabal wants you to think this is about Trump, and any given way to get rid of him is justifiable no matter what, but that is a very dangerous way of thinking. If crimes have been committed, they must be brought into daylight and before a court.

Problem is, of course, that at least half the nation has no idea of what’s been going on. Because they get their news and information from those media that are in on the whole deal. They won’t know that the DNC paid for the Steele Dossier, or that is was just a bunch of lies, or that the FBI knew this even before Rosenstein appointed Mueller as Special Counsel. All that has been kept away from them.

 

 

And yes, 4 years ago Trump said he would fight the swamp, but landed right in the middle of it. Early in his presidency he found himself surrounded by the likes of McMaster, John Kelly, Tillerson, and many other swamp creatures, and today he still has people like Mike Pompeo. But at least Trump is an outsider, and if anything can ever be done to drain the swamp, it will have to come from an outsider. That it may take more than 4 years is something we have to take for granted.

The swamp has fought back, and they may yet win. Joe Biden is the face of that. But people who celebrate that victory should think again, whether they like Trump or not. The swamp is not good for you, and it’s not good for your country, your rights, your freedoms. Its entire MO is to take all these away from you. This is not a partisan thing; the fat ass of the swamp easily fits and sits across the divide.

Joe Biden is not Joe Biden, the man doesn’t stand for anything other than holding on to power while getting richer off that power. He’s done it for 47 years. Term limits are desperately needed in Washington, but the only people who can make that decision are those who profit most from not having term limits. If there’s one area where McConnell and Schumer and Pelosi and Lindsey Graham agree, it’s that.

And meanwhile, Trump, unlike Joe Biden, is just Trump. He doesn’t represent a cabal, or a swamp. Even if he’s surrounded by them. Trump is not the biggest threat to America, that’s just something they’ve been wanting you to think for the past 4 years. Successfully, too, for millions of Americans.

The swamp is the biggest threat, whether their handpuppets come in a Democratic or Republican disguise. But to recognize that, you would have to be able to think for yourself, and if you read or watch the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, you simply can’t do that. You just think you can.

 

 

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, you are now not just a reader, but an integral part of the process that builds this site.

Click at the top of the sidebars for Paypal and Patreon donations. Thank you for your support.

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime, election time, all the time. Click at the top of the sidebars to donate with Paypal and Patreon.

 

Debt Rattle October 13 2020

Oct 132020
 
 October 13, 2020  Posted by at 9:28 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  15 Responses »


Giotto Legend of St Francis, Exorcism of the Demons at Arezzo c.1297-1299

 

• Declassified FBI Spreadsheet Exposes Folly Of Steele Dossier (JTN)
• Steele Dossier: Media Reports On FBI Reports Of Media Reports (sundance)
• Team Obama Invented The Whole Russiagate Scandal (NYP)
• The Truman Show Election: The Public Is Left In The Dark (Turley)
• What’s Behind No-Show Joe (Jim Kunstler)
• Coup Who? (Hemingway)
• Kidnapping Dissent: The Whitmer Plot and the End of Freedom (MPN)
• IMF Seizes on Pandemic to Pave Way for Privatization in 81 Countries (MPN)
• CDC: 85% of COVID19 Patients Report ‘Always’ Or ‘Often’ Wearing A Mask (JS)
• Johnson&Johnson Covid19 Vaccine Study Paused Due To Unexplained Illness (STAT)
• Economists Are More Like Storytellers Than Scientists (Benack)

 

 

Imagine if the MSM had refused to report on Watergate. That is what is happening now. And this is starting to feel a whole lot worse than that. Not sure “folly” covers it.

• Declassified FBI Spreadsheet Exposes Folly Of Steele Dossier (JTN)

An FBI spreadsheet that evaluated the credibility of Christopher Steele’s dossier found almost no corroborating evidence from official intelligence reporting, leaving analysts to grope after flimsy sources like a Democratic operative, a Russian propaganda news site and U.S. news media story leaks that amounted to circular reporting.In one entry, FBI analysts tried to evaluate one of Steele’s most lurid claims — later debunked — that Trump was videotaped committing lewd sex acts with prostitutes at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Moscow. “There is no confirmation that Trump stayed here,” they found. “There is no ‘Presidential Suite’ currently listed.”

[..]Another entry encapsulated much of the FBI’s assessment of Steele’s reporting: It seemed based on Internet rumors that could never be corroborated.”Other than open source speculation, the only reporting that mentions this is the Steele Reporting from 5 July 2016 and 2 August 2016,” the analysts wrote about a claim in the dossier that the Russian spy agency known as the FSB had a “pervasive and sophisticated” operation focused on Trump. Other entries dinged the Steele dossier for sloppiness like misspellings of key names, or for making claims that were debunked by official travel records like passport entry records.

“There doesn’t appear to be any record of Trump visiting Baku or the presidential palace,” one entry read, knocking down a claim the future president visited the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. Added another: “There is no record of Trump personally organizing a Congressional Delegation (CODEL) visit to Baku.”Likewise, one of the most famous claims of the now-discredited dossier — that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen flew to Prague in summer 2016 to help cover up a Russia-Trump plot — was debunked by analysts. “The CROSSFIRE HURRICANE team has been unable to verify travel by Cohen to the Czech Republic in August 2016,” analysts wrote.

With little formal intelligence reporting to back anything Steele had offered the FBI, analysts often turned to suspect sources, such as biased actors connected to the Democratic National Committee or leaked news media stories that could be traced back to Steele and his boss, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson. “On September 23, 2016 Yahoo News published an article claiming Carter Page was under investigation by the FBI and US intelligence due to his ties with Russia,” analysts wrote, citing that source as the only piece of evidence corroborating former Trump adviser Carter Page’s alleged meeting with a senior Russian official. The FBI later determined the meetings never happened.

Read more …

They are hoping to bury it all after the election.

FBI agents getting paid by the press for leaks.

• Steele Dossier: Media Reports On FBI Reports Of Media Reports (sundance)

CBS News Catherine Herridge has obtained a 94-page spread sheet showing dates of media reports, dates of Steele reports on the same material, and the FBI effort to verify or validate the circular process. In essence this is evidence of the process we initially shared almost three years ago; only now we know the names. Former SSCI staffer Dan Jones, former Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson, and Simpson’s crew at Fusion-GPS, pitched and planted phony Trump-Russia evidence with the media and simultaneously gave those fake points to Chris Steele to supplement the dossier. Using the same method of Ezra Klein’s “JournOList” replication, Dan Jones and Fusion-GPS paid the journalists to run the stories.

Steele then used the same information from Jones and Fusion in his Dossier and cited the planted media reports; as evidence to substantiate. The Dossier is then provided to the FBI. The journalists then provide *indulgences* to the FBI as part of the collaboration. The FBI, specifically Lisa Page, Peter Strzok and public information office Mike Kortan, then leak the outcomes of the FBI Dossier investigative processes to the same media that have reported on the originating material. It is all a big circle of planting and laundering the same originating false material; aka a “wrap up smear.” Michael Isikoff highlighted the level of how enmeshed media is with the Fusion team in February 2018 when he admitted his reporting was being used by the DOJ and FBI to advance the political objectives of the intelligence community.

Additionally, FBI investigator Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page were shown in their text messages to be leaking stories from the Clinton Investigation, the Trump investigation and the Mueller investigation to journalists at Politico, The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was busted by the Inspector General leaking stories to the media and then lying about it to INSD and IG investigators. FBI Director James Comey admitted to leaking stories to the New York Times, and even hired his friend Andrew Richman (off-the-books), gave him access to FBI and NSA databases, and then leaked information to Richman along with another friend Benjamin Wittes at Lawfare blog.

Lest we forget, the IG report on how the FBI handled the Clinton investigation revealed that dozens of FBI officials were actually taking bribes from the media for information: IG REPORT – “We identified numerous FBI employees, at all levels of the organization and with no official reason to be in contact with the media, who were nevertheless in frequent contact with reporters. Attached to this report as Attachments E and F are two link charts that reflect the volume of communications that we identified between FBI employees and media representatives in April/May and October 2016. We have profound concerns about the volume and extent of unauthorized media contacts by FBI personnel that we have uncovered during our review.”

Read more …

” In notes also released last week, Brennan describes telling Obama about the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 28 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to villify [sic] Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.”

• Team Obama Invented The Whole Russiagate Scandal (NYP)

In mid-2016, the FBI got word that Russian intelligence believed Hillary Clinton’s campaign was planning to frame Donald Trump as colluding with Russia’s Vladimir Putin to hack her computers. Yet somehow, the crack agents never connected the dots when handed the Steele “dossier” commissioned and paid for by the Clinton campaign that claimed Trump was colluding with Putin. Instead, the Justice Department used that dossier as a pretext to spy on at least Trump aide Carter Page as it investigated the clearly spurious charges. Justice also distorted the facts about Page’s past relations with the CIA to suggest he had a history of working with Russian agents when his actual record involved turning them in. Meanwhile, it buried the fact that Steele’s main source was himself a suspected Russian agent.

Nor did it connect the dots to another “Russiagate” lead, the third-hand rumors passed along by a Clinton-allied diplomat that supposedly implicated another Trump aide, George Papadopoulos. The news of the 2016 intel comes from Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe’s gradual release of Russiagate records — which show that the true scandal was the investigation itself. Maybe the Russian analysis was mistaken. But the info should have prompted far greater skepticism on all the Clinton-connected “dirt” on Trump, none of which ever panned out, despite years of investigation. From Justice to the CIA, the Obama administration politicized a host of nonpartisan institutions to stain the Trump campaign and then sabotage the Trump administration. And, with selective leaks to major media, the plotters managed to convince much of the country.


The info was credible on its face: US intelligence “obtained insight” into the Russian analysis using highly classified methods (which are redacted in the now-public documents). The Russians had determined that Clinton wanted to blame Trump for the hacking of Democratic National Committee e-mails to distract from the growing scandal over her use of a non-secure home-brew server for official business as secretary of state. The US intel community found it was authentic Russian analysis, though it couldn’t judge the veracity of the claim. And President Barack Obama was briefed on it, per his CIA director, John Brennan. In notes also released last week, Brennan describes telling Obama about the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 28 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to villify [sic] Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.”

Read more …

“All of this recent evidence happens to tie in to other earlier facts, from the Clinton campaign lying about funding the dossier to Steele misrepresenting his sources and his conclusions.”

• The Truman Show Election: The Public Is Left In The Dark (Turley)

As news emerged that United States Attorney John Durham uncovered some serious and possibly criminal conduct in the Russia investigation, Democrats demanded that he not release his report before the election. Indeed, the federal rules tell prosecutors to avoid timing “investigative steps or criminal charges for the purpose of affecting an election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.” However, major cases often do affect elections, and they are not sealed in amber until the votes are counted. The investigation by Durham is focused on conduct in the election four years ago. His subjects of scrutiny are not candidates on this ballot but rather federal officials involved in the investigation of potential collusion between Russia and the Donald Trump campaign in 2016.

This proved to be unfounded. Ultimately, there was no evidence of collusion, let alone anyone who committed crimes related to collusion. Indeed, disclosed evidence shows the FBI was told early on that the allegations were not only dubious but possibly disinformation from Russia. In recent weeks, we learned that the primary source used by Christopher Steele in his now infamous dossier was believed to be an agent of Russia. Recent declassified material also showed that in 2016, then CIA director John Brennan had briefed President Obama on an alleged plan by Hillary Clinton to tie then candidate Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” The handwritten notes from Brennen would seem extremely serious on their face. Indeed, the allegation was sufficiently serious to brief the president.


It reflected intelligence reports given to the FBI and then director James Comey. When asked last week about the report, Comey simply said it did not “ring a bell.” What rings his bell is precisely what the investigation by Durham could reveal. All of this recent evidence happens to tie in to other earlier facts, from the Clinton campaign lying about funding the dossier to Steele misrepresenting his sources and his conclusions. There are arguments for delaying the release of the report by Durham this close to the election. But there is a lack of assurances that we would ever know the findings after the election. If Democrats control both chambers of Congress, it is unlikely they will have hearings on the report. Democrats on the intelligence committees have said they want the investigations into 2016 to end so we can all “look ahead rather than back.” If Biden becomes the next president, the Justice Department could shut down or curtail the investigation, or even classify its final report as privileged.

Read more …

“Criminal liability may even extend into the news media itself — though they may only be named as unindicted co-conspirators.”

• What’s Behind No-Show Joe (Jim Kunstler)

Something even stranger and more sinister than the Covid-19 virus is creeping across the USA: Joe Biden’s Flying Dutchman campaign which, like the ghost-ship of legend, plies the vasty electoral seas with a skeleton crew and no hope of ever landing. Late last week, the candidate blew into Yuma, AZ, for a rare, joint appearance with veep pardner Kamala Harris and, guess what, absolutely no civilians (i.e. voters) showed up at the event, though the local TV news had publicized it. Weird, a little bit? Face it: we’re living in the days of fantastic high-tech information mischief. Virtually all of the traditional news media, plus the powerful new social media, plus the news media of foreign lands, and scores of other embeds in the federal bureaucracy, are behind the story that Ol’ White Joe and his understudy, Ms. Harris, are way ahead in the polls.

Do you ask yourself, as I must, whether this is all a gigantic psy-op? And why would it be? All right, I know that many readers are cross-eyed to the point of nausea over the Barr-Durham investigation, especially the failure to deliver indictments before the election. The complete absence of leaks from that outfit has been crazy-making itself for many. But I take that as a sign of the profound seriousness of the investigation. Durham’s crew is methodically making a case for the worst and largest seditious conspiracy in US history. It requires the most extreme care. They are not going to blow it by allowing any suspicion that it is being used as a campaign ploy on behalf of Mr. Trump.

Sometime after the election and before the 20th of January, a great big hammer is going to come down on the people who organized the RussiaGate op and many of its spinoffs. As the late Tom Petty observed, the waiting is the hardest part, and not only for those in the Counter-resistance who have already connected the felonious dots based on publicly available documents, but also for the targets of the Barr-Durham RussiaGate probe, the Resistance itself — the long log of Obama Admin officials, Clinton campaign minions, and even senators who worked to prevent Donald Trump’s election by foul means and then tried to disable and overthrow him when it didn’t work, in order to cover up their criminal culpability.

You understand that the targets of Barr and Durham are almost all lawyers, Democratic Party-connected lawyers, that is. And so, what they are doing in the shadows of Joe Biden’s ghost campaign is attempting to mount a last-ditch lawyers’ assault on their antagonists, who have regained control of a rogue Justice Department. Thus: Lawfare. If RussiaGate was the most dastardly crime of government against itself ever in US history, then the final result will be the most awful roundup and prosecution of disgraced former officials ever seen in the history of the world’s great nations. Criminal liability may even extend into the news media itself — though they may only be named as unindicted co-conspirators.

Read more …

“Should you remain silent, you will be complicit in a coup d’état.”

• Coup Who? (Hemingway)

In August, two retired military officers published a piece in Defense One which literally encouraged America’s top military leadership to have the 82nd airborne to descend on Washington in the event of a disputed election and escort President Trump out of office. “In the Constitutional crisis described above, your duty is to give unambiguous orders directing U.S. military forces to support the Constitutional transfer of power,” they write. “Should you remain silent, you will be complicit in a coup d’état.” In other words, the military must prevent a coup by staging one of their own. Thankfully, the Pentagon publicly condemned John Nagl’s and Paul Yingling’s musings.

In some regards it is unremarkable in a nation with millions of military veterans that two of them would have some kind of Clockwork Orange-style MSNBC viewing party and put crayon to paper long enough to come up with this violent fantasia. However, the problem isn’t so much that Nagl and Yingling gamed out this scenario – every election that I can remember for the last 30 years has featured fringe voices expressing concern that the current occupant will refuse to leave. The real problem is that, for once, a respectable media outlet went ahead and published it. If anything, the Defense One op-ed was just the most explicit example of the anti-Trump coup pornography that’s become a staple of mainstream media.


And when the media is not baselessly fretting Trump will refuse to leave office, they’re outrageously and falsely characterizing Trump and his administration in ways that justify his violent removal. The Washington Post recently ran an “analysis” in the business section, quoting a bunch of academics warning that Trump was leading America into autocracy. The article ended with this kicker quote from a Swedish political scientist, Staffan I. Lindberg at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg: “‘if Trump wins this election in November, democracy is gone’ in the United States, [Lindberg] says. He gives it about two years. ‘It’s really time to wake up before it’s too late.’”

Read more …

“..all of the individuals charged in the plot had been under intense scrutiny by the Federal Bureau of Investigation months prior to the scheme being hatched..”

• Kidnapping Dissent: The Whitmer Plot and the End of Freedom (MPN)

Stoked for decades by an extremist capitalist oligarchy which has slowly and methodically disabled the levers of democracy to achieve its interests, the latent racial tensions that haunt America’s collective psyche are being exploited in ways never before possible with the advent of online disinformation mashups, like QAnon, Antifa, BLM and others along the spectrum of modern-day social media constructs. As we near the 2020 presidential election, the skeletons in America’s closet are being dressed in the latest fashion and paraded before a terrified citizenry, whose health and peace of mind is under siege as a result of the pandemic crisis while simultaneously bombarded with apocalyptic scenarios of societal collapse and civil war, like the alleged conspiracy to kidnap and murder Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer as part of a larger plan to storm the Michigan State Capitol with hundreds of armed men.

But, considering the fact that all of the individuals charged in the plot had been under intense scrutiny by the Federal Bureau of Investigation months prior to the scheme being hatched, it is not surprising that suspicions of entrapment by the FBI have begun to swirl around the high profile case, which was filed before the U.S. District Court of Western Michigan last Tuesday.

[..] Prior to the 2018 midterm victory that put her in the governor’s mansion, Whitmer had served in the Michigan state Senate from 2006 until 2014. More recently, she had assumed the role of interim Ingham County prosecutor in 2016 after the serving prosecutor had to resign over a lurid sex scandal. Whitmer beat Republican Bill Schuette to take the governorship and after just one year in office, she came into the national spotlight for the first time when she was selected to deliver the Democrats’ response to the Trump’s last State of the Union address in February, which also coincided with the start of the FBI’s investigation into her would-be kidnappers.

In August, Whitmer again garnered national attention amid speculation that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden was going to choose her as his running mate. By then, the FBI had compiled hours of conversations between the ragtag crew of convicted criminals and U.S. Marines, who in June, allegedly targeted Governor Whitmer as part of a grand plan to storm the Michigan State Capitol with 200 men and take hostages before the upcoming presidential election. The group’s motivation is said to come from Whitmer’s “unilateral” lockdown policies, extending the state’s coronavirus emergency measures beyond the original April 30 cut-off date through executive order.

The move elicited an immediate reaction from conservatives in the state and the very influential Koch-funded Mackinac Center, which filed an injunction against the governor’s executive action in May. After challenges to the governor’s orders were struck down in lower courts, the Republican-majority Michigan Supreme Court last week added fuel to the fire by ruling Whitmer’s executive orders to be unconstitutional and setting off a firestorm of controversy on the same day FBI agents murdered Eric Mark-Matthew Allport in Detroit and just before the FBI decided to submit their affidavit against the Whitmer plotters.

Read more …

Never let a good crisis go to waste.

• IMF Seizes on Pandemic to Pave Way for Privatization in 81 Countries (MPN)

The enormous economic dislocation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic offers a unique opportunity to fundamentally alter the structure of society, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) if using the crisis to implement near-permanent austerity measures across the world.76 of the 91 loans it has negotiated with 81 nations since the beginning of the worldwide pandemic in March have come attached with demands that countries adopt measures such as deep cuts to public services and pensions — measures that will undoubtedly entail privatization, wage freezes or cuts, or the firing of public sector workers like doctors, nurses, teachers and firefighters.

The principal cheerleader for neoliberal austerity measures across the globe for decades, the IMF has recently (quietly) begun admitting that these policies have not worked and generally make problems like poverty, uneven development, and inequality even worse. Furthermore, they have also failed even to bring the promised economic growth that was meant to counteract these negative effects. In 2016, it described its own policies as “oversold” and earlier summed up its experiments in Latin America as “all pain, no gain.” Thus, its own reports explicitly state its policies do not work.


“The IMF has sounded the alarm about a massive spike in inequality in the wake of the pandemic. Yet it is steering countries to pay for pandemic spending by making austerity cuts that will fuel poverty and inequality,” Chema Vera, Interim Executive Director of Oxfam International, said today. “These measures could leave millions of people without access to healthcare or income support while they search for work, and could thwart any hope of sustainable recovery. In taking this approach, the IMF is doing an injustice to its own research. Its head needs to start speaking to its hands.”

Read more …

Wouldn’t many say that so they look like good citizens?

• CDC: 85% of COVID19 Patients Report ‘Always’ Or ‘Often’ Wearing A Mask (JS)

An underreported, recently-published CDC study adds to the pile of evidence that cloth masks or other forms of mandated face coverings only contribute negatives to our COVID-19 problem. The study also displays — despite the constant accusations of widespread misbehavior from public health officials — that Americans are adhering to mask wearing, but mask wearing is not doing us any good. The CDC study, which surveyed symptomatic COVID-19 patients, has found that 70.6% of respondents reported “always” wearing a mask, while an additional 14.4% say they “often” wear a mask. That means a whopping 85% of infected COVID-19 patients reported habitual mask wearing. Only 3.9% of those infected said they “never” wear a face covering.


The study offers insight into the reality that tens of thousands of Americans are acquiring COVID-19 on a daily basis despite overwhelming adherence to mask wearing. Masks simply aren’t working to “slow the spread” or “stop the spread.” The study also dismisses “public health experts’” claims from individuals such as Dr. Anthony Fauci and others that Americans are not following the guidance being disseminated by the CDC and other disease control agencies. Americans are following the CDC guidance. It’s just not working.

Read more …

These trials all have problems.

• Johnson&Johnson Covid19 Vaccine Study Paused Due To Unexplained Illness (STAT)

The study of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine has been paused due to an unexplained illness in a study participant. A document sent to outside researchers running the 60,000-patient clinical trial states that a “pausing rule” has been met, that the online system used to enroll patients in the study has been closed, and that the data and safety monitoring board — an independent committee that watches over the safety of patients in the clinical trial — would be convened. The document was obtained by STAT. Contacted by STAT, J&J confirmed the study pause, saying it was due to “an unexplained illness in a study participant.” The company declined to provide further details.

“We must respect this participant’s privacy. We’re also learning more about this participant’s illness, and it’s important to have all the facts before we share additional information,” the company said in a statement. J&J emphasized that so-called adverse events — illnesses, accidents, and other bad medical outcomes — are an expected part of a clinical study, and also emphasized the difference between a study pause and a clinical hold, which is a formal regulatory action that can last much longer. The vaccine study is not currently under a clinical hold. J&J said that while it normally communicates clinical holds to the public, it does not usually inform the public of study pauses. The data and safety monitoring board, or DSMB, convened late Monday to review the case.


J&J said that in cases like this “it is not always immediately apparent” whether the participant who experienced an adverse event received a study treatment or a placebo. Though clinical trial pauses are not uncommon — and in some cases last only a few days — they are generating outsized attention in the race to test vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. Given the size of Johnson & Johnson’s trial, it’s not surprising that study pauses could occur, and another could happen if this one resolves, a source familiar with the study said. “If we do a study of 60,000 people, that is a small village,” the source said. “In a small village there are a lot of medical events that happen.”

Read more …

Fairy tales.

• Economists Are More Like Storytellers Than Scientists (Benack)

When you listen to an economist, chances are you’ll hear a lot of statistics. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s speech at the National Association for Business Economics on Oct. 6 is a case in point. In the first two minutes alone he referred to a dizzying range of economic indicators: growth, unemployment rate, personal consumption expenditures inflation, labor force participation, productivity gains, real wage gains and so on. But if you watch the speech, you may notice that he rarely cites the actual numbers. That’s because Powell, and economists generally, tend to be more interested in the direction in which the numbers are going rather than the numbers themselves. Is unemployment high or low? Is the Dow up or down? Is GDP growth trending upward or downward?

In other words, Powell is telling you a story. And although economists have historically wanted their field to be associated with the so-called hard sciences – a conjuring act exemplified by the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences – I’ve come to see it as having a lot more in common with literature, especially novels, than physics or chemistry. As a literary scholar researching economics and its history, I have found that being aware of the similarities between economists and novelists helps us to better evaluate the claims they make. Both are telling stories. Understanding that empowers us to judge the credibility of what they’re saying for ourselves. The notion that economics shares a lot with fiction may seem counterintuitive. That feeling is not incidental.

Ever since the inception of economics in the late 1800s, economists have sought to associate their discipline with the very opposite of fiction: the natural sciences. Unlike economics, which deals with human relationships, the hard sciences study phenomena in the natural world. As such, a claim by a natural scientist reflects a different kind of truth than one by an economist. For example, the law of gravity describes an immutable physical fact; the law of supply and demand describes a relationship between people. What we know as mainstream economics today began with the concept of marginal utility, which posits that individuals make purchases by considering how much happiness they will derive from each additional unit of a good or service.

What attracted many economists to the concept was that it provided a way to make economics more mathematical. The concept of marginal utility allowed economists to turn sensations into quantities. Happiness was imagined as a pile of many little units of pleasure, which some economists actually believed could be physically measured. Francis Y. Edgeworth even conceived of a “psychophysical machine” to do precisely that in his beautifully titled book “Mathematical Psychics.” This is to say that, in the 19th century, the resemblance of economics to the natural sciences fooled even some of its own practitioners.

Read more …

 

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, you are now not just a reader, but an integral part of the process that builds this site.

Click at the top of the sidebars for Paypal and Patreon donations. Thank you for your support.

 

 

“Medieval man was a cog in a wheel he did not understand; modern man is a cog in a complicated system he thinks he understands.”
– Nassim Nicholas Taleb

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime, election time, all the time. Click at the top of the sidebars for Paypal and Patreon.

 

Debt Rattle January 31 2020

Jan 312020
 
 January 31, 2020  Posted by at 10:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  37 Responses »


Walker Evans Waterfront in New Orleans. French market sidewalk scene 1935

 

• WHO Declares International Health Emergency Over Coronavirus Outbreak (RT)
• Spate Of Anti-Chinese Incidents In Italy As Two Cases Of Virus Confirmed (G.)
• Hillary Clinton Refuses To Be Served Tulsi Gabbard’s Defamation Lawsuit (NYP)
• Major Blow For Democrats At Trump Trial (BBC)
• Warren Questions Roberts ‘Legitimacy’ Without Trial Witnesses (Fox)
• Was The Bolton Leak Too Perfect? (Turley)
• Simon & Schuster Won’t Back Down On John Bolton’s Memoir (NYP)
• Steele Trump-Russia Dossier Was “Completely Fabricated” (SHTF)
• UK Brings Down Curtain On EU Membership After 47 Years (Ind.)
• Ambassador Warns That Trump Will Put US Firms First In UK Trade Talks (G.)
• Welcome To The Trump Recession (Ind.)
• Justice Department Drops Demand For Jail For Flynn (Turley)
• Government and Media Are Prepping America for a Failed 2020 Election (Webb)
• Greece Plans To Build Sea Barrier Off Lesbos To Deter Migrants (G.)

 

• 2019nCoV death toll rose from 170 to 213 today. (deaths over past seven days: 15, 15, 25, 25, 26, 38, 43)

• 9,821 confirmed cases worldwide, 98 abroad, the rest in China

• 25,060 probable cases

• 15,238 new suspected cases

• 102,427 Chinese under observation

• Recovered: 171

 

 

Jim Bianco posted these graphs tracking mortality and infections, respectively:

 

 

WHO is as late as China and the US. Maybe that’s why they’re complementing China: that way their own failure gets obscured.

• WHO Declares International Health Emergency Over Coronavirus Outbreak (RT)

The World Health Organization has declared a “public health emergency of international concern” over the outbreak of the 2019nCoV, or the Wuhan coronavirus. The international body didn’t recommend travel and trade restrictions. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the coronavirus “a previously unknown pathogen, which has escalated into an unprecedented outbreak” at a press conference on Thursday, but said the WHO was not recommending restrictions of trade or travel with China, where the virus originated. Tedros pointed out that the declaration was “not a vote of no confidence in China,” but made out of concern for other countries, with “weaker” healthcare systems.


China’s response to the outbreak has been “very impressive,” the WHO chief added. “So is China’s commitment to transparency and to supporting other countries.” China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response. While the majority of coronavirus cases have been registered in China, the WHO confirmed there were 98 confirmed cases elsewhere in the world – including eight cases of direct transmission in Germany, Japan, Vietnam and the US. The “vast majority” of cases outside of China have either traveled to Wuhan or been in contact with someone who has, the WHO officials noted. “The only way we will defeat this outbreak is for all countries to work together in a spirit of solidarity and cooperation,” Tedros said. “We are all in this together, and we can only stop it together.”

Read more …

Inevitable. Wait till the first people start dying in countries such as Italy.

• Spate Of Anti-Chinese Incidents In Italy As Two Cases Of Virus Confirmed (G.)

Chinese people in Italy have been the target of racist abuse as paranoia mounts over the spread of the deadly coronavirus, as the first two cases of the virus were reported in Rome. Two Chinese tourists tested positive for the virus and are being treated at Rome’s Lazzari Spallanzani national institute for infectious diseases. The couple are reported to be from Wuhan and arrived in Milan on 23 January. The prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, said on Thursday night that there was “no reason for panic or alarm”. He added that close checks were being carried out trace the tourists’ movements in Italy in order “to absolutely avoid any additional risk”.

Flights between China and Italy have been stopped, Conte said. There have been several incidents of xenophobia and calls to avoid Chinese restaurants and shops amid the coronavirus outbreak. Roberto Giuliani, the director of the Santa Cecilia Conservatory, one of the oldest music institutes in the world, was criticised by colleagues on Wednesday after telling students from China, Japan and South Korea not to come to class until after a doctor visits their homes to ensure they have not contracted the virus. Similarly, another music institute in Como told students returning from China after the lunar new year to stay at home for 14 days.


Fears over coronavirus have affected Chinese populations in other countries too. On Wednesday the mayor of Toronto condemned racism against Chinese Canadians. There have also been reports of anti-Asian racism in the UK. In France, Chinese residents have been sharing their experiences using the hashtag #JeNeSuisPasUnVirus (I am not a virus). Other episodes reported in Italian media include two Chinese tourists being spat at by a group of children in Venice, and three Chinese tourists being insulted in a restaurant in Turin.

Read more …

Not unexpected. If Hillary would sue Tulsi, would her Secret Service detail do the same?

• Hillary Clinton Refuses To Be Served Tulsi Gabbard’s Defamation Lawsuit (NYP)

Hillary Clinton has now twice snubbed a process server attempting to deliver the defamation lawsuit filed against her by Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, according to Gabbard’s attorney. “I find it rather unbelievable that Hillary Clinton is so intimidated by Tulsi Gabbard that she won’t accept service of process,” the congresswoman’s attorney, Brian Dunne, told The Post. “But I guess here we are.” Dunne said their process server first attempted to effect service at Clinton’s house in Chappaqua on Tuesday afternoon — but was turned away by Secret Service agents.


The agents directed the server to Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, who on Wednesday claimed at his Washington, DC, firm, Williams & Connolly, that he was unable to accept service on Clinton’s behalf, said Dunne. Gabbard sued the former secretary of state for $50 million last week for calling her a “Russian asset.” Clinton has refused to retract the statement. Dunne said his team was weighing next steps.

Read more …

Schiff will carry this straight into the election. But they have to find a viable candidate. Schiff, Hillary, Bloomberg?

• Major Blow For Democrats At Trump Trial (BBC)

US Democrats have been dealt a major blow in their efforts to call witnesses at President Trump’s impeachment trial. They needed four Republicans to vote with them to allow witness testimony, but one of the few wavering senators said he would not support the measure. Lamar Alexander said the Democrats had proved Mr Trump acted inappropriately but it was not an impeachable offence. The announcement paves the way for the possible acquittal of the president by the Senate as early as Friday. The Democrats had especially wanted to call former National Security Adviser John Bolton who reportedly said Mr Trump told him directly that he was withholding US military aid to Ukraine until it agreed to investigate his rival, Joe Biden.

In a statement late on Thursday after a long question-and-answer session at the Senate, Mr Alexander, who represents Tennessee, said the Democrats had proven that Mr Trump’s actions were “inappropriate”. But the 79-year-old said: “There is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the United States Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offence.” He added: “The question then is not whether the president did it, but whether the United States Senate or the American people should decide what to do about what he did. I believe that the Constitution provides that the people should make that decision in the presidential election that begins in Iowa on Monday.”


[..] Each side is expected to present closing arguments in Friday’s session, before the Senate votes on hearing witnesses. If the vote were to end in a tie, it would mean that the motion had failed unless US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who is presiding over the trial, decided to break it, which is unlikely.

Read more …

A pivotal moment yesterday for me: Roberts reads question that says some claim Trump didn’t pay Giuliani, so who did? Schiff comes on, says he doesn’t know, but still takes the full 5(?) minutes to repeat for the 1000th time his schtick about Ukraine.

• Warren Questions Roberts ‘Legitimacy’ Without Trial Witnesses (Fox)

Chief Justice John Roberts seemed visibly irritated when Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., formally asked a question during President Trump’s impeachment trial Thursday that referenced him and questioned the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and Constitution in relation to the proceedings. In accordance with Senate rules, the chief justice of the United States must read aloud the questions posed by senators to the impeachment managers and the president’s counsel. Roberts formally recognized Warren, a Democratic presidential candidate, who then submitted her written question to a clerk. Roberts read her question from the card — which referenced him.

“At a time when large majorities of Americans have lost faith in government, does the fact that the chief justice is presiding over an impeachment trial in which Republican senators have thus far refused to allow witnesses or evidence contribute to the loss of legitimacy of the chief justice, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution?” Roberts read from the card handed to him by the clerk. When he finished reading the question — explicitly posed to the House Impeachment managers — Roberts pursed his lips and shot a chagrined look.


After a moment, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the lead impeachment manager, appeared at the dais to answer the question — standing mere feet in front of Roberts. Schiff appeared to try to distance himself from Warren’s question, offering a short answer to the question before speaking at length about a tangential exchange. “I would not say that it leads to a loss of confidence in the chief justice,” Schiff said, adding that Roberts has thus far “presided admirably.”

Read more …

Nice take: ” It felt like the sudden discovery of a gun near the victim at the scene of a police shooting.”

• Was The Bolton Leak Too Perfect? (Turley)

It was the seeming Perry Mason moment of President Trump’s impeachment trial. Just after the White House team presented its defense denying any quid pro quo over Ukrainian aid, former national security adviser John Bolton jumped up from the gallery to scream, “He did it!” Not really, but close. A few hours after the start of the president’s defense, details from Bolton’s forthcoming book leaked, including his account of Trump asserting that $391 million in military aid would be withheld until Ukraine announced investigations into the 2016 election and the Bidens. If that seems a tad contrived for either an episode or an impeachment, that is because it is.

In responding to a defense built around Trump’s insistence that his call was “perfect,” this leak was perfect to a fault. Perfect timing. Perfect content. It was so perfect that there is little doubt that the Senate is being played. The leak happened at the exact time that it would inflict the most damage on the defense and throw the trial into disarray. It occurred hours after the White House team gave opening statements that seriously undermined critical points made by the House managers, including the assertions that Trump never previously raised corruption in other countries or that this type of hold on aid was uncommon. It felt like the sudden discovery of a gun near the victim at the scene of a police shooting.

That does not mean the leak will not succeed. The disclosure about Bolton’s book could well make the difference in securing the four Republican votes needed to obtain witnesses. But it could also succeed too well if it leads senators to plunge into the unknown of calling witnesses such as former vice president Joe Biden or his son Hunter. There are already indications that the leak may have secured the four votes for witnesses, while even Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) has said the Senate may need to subpoena the book draft itself.

[..] Trump has never denied asking for the investigations, but insisted that they were meant to deal with his concerns over ongoing corruption in Ukraine. Moreover, the first of the two investigations could not be a basis for impeachment. Trump asked for assistance in investigating allegations into the 2016 election — matters that were currently being investigated by U.S. Attorney John Durham. It is the Biden investigation that raises legitimate questions, but it comes down again to a question of intent. Finally, the leak refers to the freeze on the funds but does not indicate that Trump was prepared to hold the aid past the deadline at the end of September. (It was released on September 11th.).

Read more …

It has lost all relevance though. Good luck.

• Simon & Schuster Won’t Back Down On John Bolton’s Memoir (NYP)

Despite the uproar surrounding John Bolton’s new memoir, publisher Simon & Schuster is standing firm on its intended March 17 publication date. An S&S spokesman declined to make an official statement amid blowback from President Donald Trump, saying only that there is “no change” in the publication date for “The Room Where it Happened.” Trump has called for his former national security adviser’s memoir to be blocked, claiming that it contains classified material.


The yet-to-be-published manuscript played a central role in Senate impeachment discussions this week after the New York Times late Sunday reported that Bolton’s claims that Trump told him in August 2019 that he was withholding $391 million in aid to Ukraine until he had a promise that the powers that be there would launch investigations into Joe Biden, whose son had ties to Ukraine. Trump on Monday denied he said it. “If John Bolton said this, it was only to sell a book,” he said. Bolton lawyer Charles Cooper said he does not believe “The Room Where It Happened” contains classified material but is pushing for an expeditious decision from the National Security Council on its content — even as it remains possible for Bolton to be called to testify in the Senate impeachment trial.

Read more …

I forgot to include this in earlier Debt Rattles, but it should be read. We must wonder, and investigate, how the dossier became the pillar on which Russiagate rested when it was such obvious nonsense.

“Some of the most glaring mistakes were those such as treating one particular source as an expert in three entirely different fields or making up the existence of the Russian consulate in Miami, Florida. The source in question starts out as a middle-manager at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow, but is later described as an expert on cyber warfare, and later yet as an expert on money-laundering by Russian immigrants in the US, West explained.”

• Steele Trump-Russia Dossier Was “Completely Fabricated” (SHTF)

In some not so surprising news, a spy expert has come out saying what most of us already knew: the Steele dossier was completely “fabricated.” Nigel West, one of Britain’s leading experts on espionage, was hired to examine the dossier written by his friend Christopher Steele. He concluded it was all manufactured falsehoods. West, hired to examine the dossier back in 2017, quickly concluded that “there is… a strong possibility that all Steele’s material has been fabricated,” according to the Sunday Times. “Steele’s scandalous document, which claimed extensive ties between the then-US President-elect Donald Trump and the Kremlin, was published by BuzzFeed in January 2017 and quickly became the cornerstone of “Russiagate.” Media talking heads insisted that much of it had been corroborated. In fact, nothing was.” –RT

It took West a long time to come out with the information that the dossier was an utter fabrication. It isn’t clear why he waited so long to reveal what most already knew anyway. Even the FBI director at the time, James Comey, described the dossier as“salacious and unverified” in testimony to Congress. But the fact that this dossier was “unverified” did not stop Comey from signing an application for a FISA warrant that the Bureau used to spy on the Trump campaign via one of its advisers, Carter Page. Steele himself was paid purely above-board, of course: by Fusion GPS, which was a client of the law firm Perkins Coie LLP, on behalf of the Democratic National Committee, at the direction of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.


West told RT that he was surprised Steele made such obvious errors in the dossier. Some of the most glaring mistakes were those such as treating one particular source as an expert in three entirely different fields or making up the existence of the Russian consulate in Miami, Florida. The source in question starts out as a middle-manager at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow, but is later described as an expert on cyber warfare, and later yet as an expert on money-laundering by Russian immigrants in the US, West explained. “On the face of it, it looked inherently improbable that this single source was as proclaimed.”

Read more …

Hardly any celebrations. What happened?

“A light display beamed onto the frontage of No 10 will be visible only to a few journalists and security staff inside the black gates of Downing Street. And a pre-recorded video message risked going unseen by TV viewers, due to a spat with broadcasters”

• UK Brings Down Curtain On EU Membership After 47 Years (Ind.)

Britain brings down the curtain on 47 years of European Union membership on Friday with little in the way of official ceremony to mark the historic moment. Some 1,317 days after the 2016 referendum vote to Leave, the formal departure from the 28-nation bloc will take place at 11pm UK time – midnight in Brussels. Boris Johnson, who served as the figurehead of the Vote Leave campaign and last Friday signed the withdrawal treaty after its passage through parliament, said the day would signal “the dawn of a new era”. But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said that the country stood at “a crossroads” with many of the most important decisions about its future relations with the EU and the wider world yet to be made.

And Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, is expected to say that Scotland is being taken out of the EU against the wishes of the “overwhelming majority” of its people, in a speech setting out the next steps in her battle for an independence referendum. Downing Street made clear the prime minister will not be making any public appearance to celebrate the moment of withdrawal. After chairing cabinet in Sunderland – the city whose vote for Brexit was the first sign of Leave’s victory on referendum night – the prime minister will return to London to attend an evening reception with staff behind closed doors. A light display beamed onto the frontage of No 10 will be visible only to a few journalists and security staff inside the black gates of Downing Street.


And a pre-recorded video message risked going unseen by TV viewers, due to a spat with broadcasters who objected to No 10’s insistence of filming the footage itself rather than following the normal practice of inviting in a pool camera from one of the television companies.

Read more …

Who could have predicted that?

• Ambassador Warns That Trump Will Put US Firms First In UK Trade Talks (G.)

Donald Trump will put the interests of corporate America first and demand that the NHS pays higher prices for US drugs in a free-trade deal with the UK, the outgoing British ambassador to Washington has told the Guardian. Kim Darroch, in his first interview since his resignation from his post in July, from where he spearheaded attempts to grow trade with the US, insisted that Trump would reward his backers in drug firms and farming communities by opening up British markets, while questioning where the UK’s gains would be found. The former British envoy, who left Washington after a leak of his confidential cables to London, said it was doubtful whether the UK had the resources for parallel negotiations with the US and the EU, a strategy championed by Downing Street as a way to give British negotiators leverage in Brussels.


Darroch, who said that similar warnings on the US’s trade demands had been made to No 10 during his tenure in Washington DC, also said it was “impossible” for a deal to get through Congress by the end of 2020 and that it appeared to be “a narrow and rocky path to get to where they [the UK government] want to be”. He said: “I know what the US will be pitching for when they negotiate a free-trade deal with us. They will pitch for massively greater access for agricultural products. People talk about chlorinated chicken – it is a lot more than that. Farmers in America vote for Trump, pretty much all of them vote for Trump … “They also want us to pay the same for American pharmaceuticals as they pay in their own market. Do they want us to pay more for their pharmaceuticals? Do the pharmaceutical companies want to use this leverage? Of course they do.”

Read more …

Dems’ final weapon? For now the article feels contrived.

• Welcome To The Trump Recession (Ind.)

Donald Trump won’t have to run his re-election campaign amid a 2020 recession — but numbers now emerging are bad enough, and their shape is bad enough, to show he won’t be running a Morning in America campaign either. New government data Thursday showed the economy’s GDP grew at a 2.1 per cent annual rate in the fourth quarter — the second straight quarter at that tepid number, closing out the weakest year of Trump’s presidency. Worse, the slowdown is aimed straight at Trump’s base, including a decent-sized manufacturing recession. It’s based directly on the failure of Trump’s policies. And the details belie the idea, popular in Washington, that consumer confidence is high and that such confidence begets confidence in the president.

Let’s walk through this fairly complicated argument one step at a time. First, the economy really didn’t do well in the last nine months of 2019, even if the stock market thinks it did. Thursday’s report marks the third straight quarter where the economy grew at 2.1 per cent or less, since the second quarter of the year saw only 2.0 per cent growth. Forecasts for the first half of 2020 are a little worse: Consulting firm IHS Markit expects first-quarter growth at a 2 per cent annual rate, and High Frequency Economics thinks it could go as low as 1.2 per cent as Boeing attempts to solve its 737 Max safety issues. “Welcome to 2016, when it was one quarter after another of roughly 2 per cent growth,” said Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors.


“We have had three consecutive quarters right about that level. And sifting through the data, there is no reason to think that will change significantly in one direction or the other.’’ The details, though, are nastier than headline numbers. Consumer spending grew only 1.8 per cent annualized, down from 3.2 per cent in the third quarter — which Naroff attributes to slowing income gains. Private investment — investment was supposed to surge because of a 2017 tax cut focused on corporations and small business owners — was down 6.1 per cent. Imports were way down — which propped up short-term growth, given the technical details of how economists measure growth. But exports of manufactured goods were also down.

Read more …

They got scared. Time for Sidney Powell to go into full attack mode. Go after Comey, McCabe, Strzok.

• Justice Department Drops Demand For Jail For Flynn (Turley)

The Department of Justice has dropped its demand for former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to serve time under his plea agreement. Flynn was attempting to withdraw his plea after the Justice Department set out in what was an overtly vindictive campaign against him in court. The Flynn case remains a troubling matter for those who have followed the Russian investigation. He pleaded guilty to a false statement that seems relatively minor in comparison to false statements made by Justice officials like Andrew McCabe or leaks by figures like James Comey. Only a few weeks ago, the Justice Department was demanding up to six weeks of jail time. Some of us have questioned the case for years. Prosecutors threatened to go after Flynn’s son and to bankrupt him if he continuing to assert his innocence. Flynn broke with his prior lawyers and accused them of giving him poor advice.


He now maintains that he did not lie to two FBI agents in 2017. His recent filings slam the process and the charges. He wrote “One of the ways a person becomes a 3-star general is by being a good soldier, taking orders, being part of a team, and trusting the people who provide information and support. Lori and I trusted Mr. Kelner and Mr. Anthony to guide us through the most stressful experience in our lives, in a completely incomprehensible situation. I have never felt more powerless.” The position of the Justice Department seemed wholly at odds with other cases, including the light sentences received by individuals sentenced as part of the Russian investigation. He was also the subject of a bizarre hearing with Judge Emmet Sullivan where he was accused of things outside of his charges or the record. He is due to be sentenced on Feb. 27.

Read more …

US intelligence has taken over, writes Whitney Webb.

• Government and Media Are Prepping America for a Failed 2020 Election (Webb)

[..] what is particularly odd about this narrative surrounding imminent “chaos” and meddling in the upcoming 2020 election is the fact that, not only have the instruments of said meddling been named and described in detail, but their use in the election was recently simulated by a company with deep ties to both U.S. and Israeli intelligence. That simulation, organized and run by the Israeli-American company Cybereason, ended with scores of Americans dead, the cancellation of the 2020 election, the imposition of martial law and a spike in fear among the American populace.

Many of the technologies used to create that chaotic and horrific scenario in the Cybereason simulation are the very same technologies that U.S. federal officials and corporate media outlets have promoted as the core of the very toolkit that they claim will be used to undermine the coming election, such as deep fakes and hacks of critical infrastructure, consumer devices and even vehicles.


While the narrative in place has already laid the blame at the feet of U.S. rival states China, Russia and Iran, these very technologies are instead dominated by companies that are tied to the very same intelligence agencies as Cybereason, specifically Israeli military intelligence. With intelligence agencies in the U.S. and Israel not only crafting the narrative about 2020 foreign meddling, but also dominating these technologies and simulating their use to upend the coming election, it becomes crucial to consider the motivations behind this narrative and if these intelligence agencies have ulterior motives in promoting and simulating such outcomes that would effectively end American democracy and hand almost total power to the national security state.

Read more …

They’ll simply use another route, another island.

• Greece Plans To Build Sea Barrier Off Lesbos To Deter Migrants (G.)

The Greek government has been criticised after announcing it will build a floating barrier to deter thousands of people from making often perilous sea journeys from Turkey to Aegean islands on Europe’s periphery. The centre-right administration unveiled the measure on Thursday, following its pledge to take a tougher stance on undocumented migrants accessing the country. The 2.7km-long netted barrier will be erected off Lesbos, the island that shot to prominence at the height of the Syrian civil war when close to a million Europe-bound refugees landed on its beaches. The bulwark will rise from pylons 50 metres above water and will be equipped with flashing lights to demarcate Greece’s sea borders.

Greece’s defence minister, Nikos Panagiotopoulos, told Skai radio: “In Evros, natural barriers had relative [good] results in containing flows,” referring to the barbed-wire topped fence that Greece built along its northern land border with Turkey in 2012 to deter asylum seekers. “We believe a similar result can be had with these floating barriers. We are trying to find solutions to reduce flows.” Amnesty International slammed the plan, warning it would enhance the dangers asylum-seekers and refugees encountered as they attempted to seek safety.


“This proposal marks an alarming escalation in the Greek government’s ongoing efforts to make it as difficult as possible for asylum-seekers and refugees to arrive on its shores,” said Massimo Moratti, the group’s Research Director for Europe.“The plan raises serious issues about rescuers’ ability to continue providing life-saving assistance to people attempting the dangerous sea crossing to Lesbos. The government must urgently clarify the operational details and necessary safeguards to ensure that this system does not cost further lives.”

Read more …

 

 

 

Include the Automatic Earth in your 2020 charity list. Support us on Paypal and Patreon.

 

 Older Entries