Feb 232023
 


Fresco from the Minoan Palace in Knossos, Crete, Greece. 16th century BC

 

World War III to Sweep Vaccine Genocide Under the Rug (VF)
The Dire Significance of Putin’s Feb 21 Speech (Sant)
Putin’s ‘Civilizational’ Speech Frames Conflict Between East And West (Escobar)
Russia Sees Events In Ukraine As War With West For Survival – Envoy (TASS)
Talks Should Be Held With Washington, Not Kiev – Russian UN Envoy (TASS)
NATO Head Issues Warning To China (RT)
Seymour Hersh Recalls Hidden History Of US-Norway Covert Ops (RT)
Moscow Takes Aim At West Over Nord Stream Sabotage (RT)
Russia and China Didn’t Discuss Beijing’s ‘Peace Plan’ – Moscow (RT)
Epstein-Linked Clinton Advisor Allegedly Hanged Himself (PM)
The Crusades of the Virtuous (Hoppe)

 

 

 

 

Trump East Palestine
https://twitter.com/i/status/1628489783340048385

 

 

 

 

Trump delivers

 

 

 

 

Yeadon

 

 

 

 

Nap Macgregor

 

 

 

 

“..if I had to guess, the stock market is going to fall apart in the next week or two.”

World War III to Sweep Vaccine Genocide Under the Rug (VF)

There’s an epidemic of sudden death sweeping across the globe – but nary a peep from the legacy media. After three years of COVID measures, lockdowns, and vaccine passports, the “health” of the people is no longer on the minds of those in authority, as excess mortality exceeds 20 million deaths — 13 million more than what we’ve attributed to COVID-19.

Now, with an open Twitter and COVID-19 vaccine compliance down to only 16%, something else appears to be on the horizon — and that something else is World War III. From The Post Millennial: “On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that if China were to ally itself with Russia in the ongoing war in Ukraine, it would mark the start of World War III. “If China allies itself with Russia, there will be a world war, and I do think China is aware of that,” he stated. Zelensky’s comments came the same day Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Kyiv and pledged another $500 million in aid and further sanctions on Russia. On Monday night, former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard responded to Zelenksy’s comments saying, “He [Zelenksy] is doing everything he can to bring us [The United States] and NATO into this war.”


Former President Trump on Tuesday released a video expressing, “World War III has never been closer than it is right now.” “These people have been seeking confrontation for a long time, much like the case in Iraq and other parts of the world. And now, we’re teetering on the brink of World War III.” And Luke Rudkowski asked, “Can we please stop racing towards World War III?” in response to a Feb 21 The New York Times piece:

“World War III solves a lot of issues (for the perpetrators),” attested former Blackrock portfolio manager Edward Dowd.“Why is our administration insanely running into a World War III situation?” Dowd asked. He answered, “And I suspect — I’m a cynical guy — that World War III solves a lot of issues: solves the sovereign debt crisis and solves the vaccine murder that’s gone on — wipes a bunch of stuff off the map — and directs everyone’s attention to a world war.” Edward expressed that he hopes he’s wrong, but that scenario is “definitely in play. And the capital markets may be starting to sniff this out.”


He elaborates. “The U.S. Dollar in a World War III situation would go up quite a bit. And the dollar, the DXY, the basket of currencies, bottomed about two weeks ago and is starting to go up. We think it put in a very significant bottom.” But Edward Dowd is not so optimistic about the stock market’s future. “The stock market is on razor’s edge right now. I don’t like to make predictions, but if I had to guess, the stock market is going to fall apart in the next week or two.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1628461706048335872
https://twitter.com/i/status/1628458245730836483

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“What Mr. Putin has just told us is that the Kremlin now considers nuclear use condition #2 to be true, today..”

The Dire Significance of Putin’s Feb 21 Speech (Sant)

On Tuesday, February 21st President Putin gave a speech that was expected to be very significant. After it was delivered, however, most pundits said he didn’t say anything we didn’t already know. Most of them focused on his announcement of the withdrawal from the START II treaty. However, he said something far more significant. What Mr. Putin said, when read through the lens of international law, should be chilling to the West. We would do well to remember that Mr. Putin majored in international law. His speech made a legal case against NATO. First he listed, by my count, 30 different ways in which the Western nations have attacked Russia. These included the expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders, support of terrorists in Russia, economic war, terrorist sabotage of the Nordstream Pipeline, financing of the coup and war in Ukraine, directly assisting Ukraine to attack targets in Russia including Russia’s nuclear bombers, and plotting to destroy and partition Russia into pieces.

Nestled in the middle of these was an important statement. “This means they plan to finish us once and for all. In other words, they plan to grow a local conflict into a global confrontation. This is how we understand it and we will respond accordingly, because this represents an existential threat to our country.” Putin’s choice of words is extremely significant in light of Russian nuclear doctrine, which states that nuclear weapons could be used by Russia “in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it or its allies, and also in case of aggression against Russia with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened.”

Among the 30 points of evidence of the American war on Russia, Mr. Putin listed several cases of American use of conventional weapons against Russian territory through Ukraine as the thinly veiled proxy, and stated that this represents an “existential threat to [the Russian State].” What Mr. Putin has just told us is that the Kremlin now considers nuclear use condition #2 to be true, today. This statement was accompanied by two related actions. The day before the speech Russia tested a Sarmat II ICBM. And at the end of the speech, Mr. Putin announced that Russia shall immediately withdraw from the START II treaty, which limits the number and range of their nuclear missiles. These three statements and events together should tell the collective West that Russia has just said “Get off my porch!”, and cocked the forty-five. This doesn’t mean that Russia is going to strike the USA tomorrow morning. But, we are definitely now teetering on the cliff’s edge of nuclear war.

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“Even before the start of the SMO, there were negotiations…on the supply of air defense systems… We remember Kyiv’s attempts to obtain nuclear weapons.”

Putin’s ‘Civilizational’ Speech Frames Conflict Between East And West (Escobar)

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s much awaited address to the Russian Federal Assembly on Tuesday should be interpreted as a tour de force of sovereignty.The address, significantly, marked the first anniversary of Russia’s official recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, only a few hours before 22 February, 2022. In myriad ways, what happened a year ago also marked the birth of the real, 21st century multipolar world. Then two days later, Moscow launched the Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine to defend said republics. Cool, calm, collected, without a hint of aggression, Putin’s speech painted Russia as an ancient, independent, and quite distinct civilization – sometimes following a path in concert with other civilizations, sometimes in divergence.

Ukraine, part of Russian civilization, now happens to be occupied by western civilization, which Putin said “became hostile to us,” like in a few instances in the past. So the acute phase of what is essentially a war by proxy of the west against Russia takes place over the body of Russian civilization. That explains Putin’s clarification that “Russia is an open country, but an independent civilization – we do not consider ourselves superior but we inherited our civilization from our ancestors and we must pass it on.” A war dilacerating the body of Russian civilization is a serious existential business. Putin also made clear that “Ukraine is being used as a tool and testing ground by the west against Russia.” Thus the inevitable follow-up: “The more long-range weapons are sent to Ukraine, the longer we have to push the threat away from our borders.”

Translation: this war will be long – and painful. There will be no swift victory with minimal loss of blood. The next moves around the Dnieper may take years to solidify. Depending on whether US policy continues to cleave to neo-con and neoliberal objectives, the frontline may be displaced to Lviv. Then German politics may change. Normal trade with France and Germany may be recovered only by the end of the next decade. All that brings us to the games played by the Empire of Lies. Says Putin: “The promises…of western rulers turned into forgery and cruel lies. The west supplied weapons, trained nationalist battalions. Even before the start of the SMO, there were negotiations…on the supply of air defense systems… We remember Kyiv’s attempts to obtain nuclear weapons.”

Putin made it clear, once again, that the element of trust between Russia and the west, especially the US, is gone. So it’s a natural decision for Russia to “withdraw from the treaty on strategic offensive weapons, but we don’t do it officially. For now we are only halting our participation to the START treaty. No US inspections in our nuclear sites can be allowed.”

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Existential.

Russia Sees Events In Ukraine As War With West For Survival – Envoy (TASS)

Russia views the situation around Ukraine as a war with the collective West for survival, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya said at a special session on Ukraine of the UN General Assembly on Wednesday. “As for our country, we see all of this as a war with the West for survival, for the future of our country, for our children, for our identity,” he said. The diplomat pointed out that the West has been implementing its plan at least since 2014 while “Ukraine is nothing but a bargaining chip in this plot.”.

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“Our opponents have not yet gotten over their futile illusions of defeating a nuclear power..”

Talks Should Be Held With Washington, Not Kiev – Russian UN Envoy (TASS)

Negotiations on settling the Ukrainian crisis should be held with Washington nowadays, not with Kiev, and Moscow is ready to seek a diplomatic solution, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya said at a special session on Ukraine of the UN General Assembly on Wednesday. “The quest to resolve this entire situation fraught with the most negative consequences for all of mankind in the event of a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO should now be held not between Russia and Ukraine anymore but between Russia and the collective West, above all, with Washington which is behind the Kiev regime,” the diplomat said. “We are ready to seek a serious and long-term diplomatic solution to this crisis and have repeatedly stated this,” he added. “Our opponents have not yet gotten over their futile illusions of defeating a nuclear power,” the envoy noted. “This is why we also have to deal militarily with the factors that forced us to launch the special military operation a year ago,” he explained.

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In way over his head.

NATO Head Issues Warning To China (RT)

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has claimed that China is preparing to step up its support for Russia, saying the People’s Republic may seek to back Moscow’s efforts in Ukraine. Beijing rejected the charge, calling it “groundless speculation.” Speaking to the Associated Press for an interview on Wednesday, Stoltenberg was asked whether the US-led military bloc had seen any indication that China might provide weapons or other assistance to Russia. “We have seen some signs that they may be planning for that, and of course NATO allies, the United States, have been warning against it because this is something that should not happen,” he said, insisting Beijing must not take any role in the conflict in Ukraine.

The NATO chief went on to argue that the alliance is “no party” to the hostilities, even while stressing that it would support Kiev for “as long as it takes” in order to “ensure that Ukraine prevails.” China was quick to respond to Stoltenberg’s comments, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin stating that his country “stands on the side of peace” in regard to Ukraine, while accusing the NATO head of “smears” and “groundless speculation.” “It is a known fact that NATO countries, including the US, are the biggest source of weaponry for the battlefield in Ukraine, yet they keep claiming that China may be supplying weapons to Russia,” Wang told reporters during a Wednesday press briefing. “This is a familiar trick used and exposed soon after the Ukraine crisis broke out.”

The spokesman added that while NATO claims to be a “regional defensive alliance,” it has frequently “ignored others’ security concerns” and “constantly sought to reach beyond its traditional defense zone.” Officials in Washington and other Western countries have also alleged that China could soon boost assistance for Russia, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently warning such support would be a “serious problem.” An unnamed European official reached by the AP claimed to have “unambiguous” intelligence showing that Beijing is considering supplying weapons, but said it is unclear whether any decision had been made. To date, officials have provided no evidence to support the allegations.

Beijing has refused to condemn Moscow’s military action in Ukraine and continues to keep good ties with the Russian Federation. Last week, Chinese State Councilor Wang Yi announced that the People’s Republic was working on a peace proposal to end the conflict, but the details of the plan have yet to be revealed. While Wang visited the Russian capital for a meeting with President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, the proposal was not discussed, according to Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

Gonzalo China declares war on US

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“It was a secret war within a secret war,” Hersh wrote, adding that at least two Navy SEALs were wounded on these missions, and received the Medal of Honor in secret.”

Seymour Hersh Recalls Hidden History Of US-Norway Covert Ops (RT)

Six decades before Norway helped the CIA destroy the Nord Stream gas pipelines, it gave the agency heavily-armed boats that it used to target North Vietnam, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote on Wednesday. Norway’s involvement in this secret war was deeper than previously reported, Hersh claimed. Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, claimed earlier this month that the CIA sabotaged the Nord Stream lines on President Joe Biden’s orders. The Norwegian Secret Service and Navy reportedly helped CIA divers choose the correct spot to plant the explosives, and ferried the Americans out on a boat to the location, near Denmark’s Bornholm island in the Baltic Sea.

Explaining why the US chose Norway as its partner in destroying the Russia-to-Germany gas lines, Hersh said on Wednesday that the “Norwegian Navy has a long and murky history of cooperation with American intelligence.” Historical reports show that Norway sold a number of fast attack boats to the US Navy, which were used by the CIA to conduct clandestine attacks along the North Vietnamese coast. By 1964, prior to the US’ official entry into the Vietnam war, at least two Norwegian sailors had confessed to taking part in these raids, while unconfirmed reports claimed that Norwegian officers and crew manned some of these boats.

However, according to Hersh’s source “within the intelligence community,” the CIA was given more boats than previously reported. Manned and captained by Norwegian sailors, these vessels carried US Navy SEALs to missions against “far more aggressive targets that included heavily defended North Vietnamese radar facilities.” While the CIA’s previously reported clandestine attacks were controlled by the American command in Saigon, these more aggressive missions were commanded by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington. “It was a secret war within a secret war,” Hersh wrote, adding that at least two Navy SEALs were wounded on these missions, and received the Medal of Honor in secret.

“This bit of top secret and heretofore unknown history raises, to this reporter, an obvious question: what else do we not know about the secret operation in Norway that led to the destruction of the pipelines?” Hersh concluded. The Biden administration has described Hersh’s reporting on the Nord Stream explosions as “utterly false and complete fiction.” Moscow considers the destruction of Nord Stream an act of “terrorism,” and Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, argued this week that Hersh’s reporting was “more than a smoking gun” suggesting US involvement. Prior to Hersh’s initial article, Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed the explosions on the West, arguing that the US in particular benefited from the attack due to its position as a supplier of LNG to Europe.

Ray Mc Govern at the UN Security Council

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No, this will not go away.

Moscow Takes Aim At West Over Nord Stream Sabotage (RT)

The West is opposed to a transparent investigation into the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday. Earlier this week, Moscow’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, argued that evidence of Washington’s involvement was “more than a smoking gun.” Peskov claimed that “the need for a thorough and transparent investigation” contrasted with the aims of Western countries that would rather let the mystery go unsolved. “We see a brick wall of unwillingness from the collective West [for a transparent investigation]. Quite the opposite, we see their desire to avoid the question and gradually let it fade away into the sand,” he added.

Peskov insisted the incident should be classified as “a terrorist attack towards energy infrastructure, critically important for the European continent.” According to the Kremlin spokesman, those suspicions were backed by “some surprisingly rather detailed investigations towards who was behind the sabotage.” Nord Stream comprised a set of two 1,200km natural gas pipelines stretching along the bottom of the Baltic Sea between Russia and Germany. On September 26, 2022, the pipelines were rocked by a series of underwater explosions. The incident occurred in the international waters and shut off the supply of natural gas to Germany. The blasts occurred during widespread discussions about limiting gas shipments from Russia to Europe as a response to the conflict in Ukraine.

Earlier this month, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh claimed the sabotage was a “covert sea operation” planned and executed by the US with assistance from Norway. The reporter cited an anonymous source “with direct knowledge of the operational planning.” The US denied those claims, with White House National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson calling them “utterly false and complete fiction.” Denmark, Germany, and Sweden are currently investigating the incident. Peskov called Russia’s exclusion from their ongoing probe detrimental to “establishing the truth and determining responsibility.” On Tuesday, the Russian and Chinese ambassadors to the UN demanded a transparent international investigation into the matter.

Sachs

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They await the official presentation.

Russia and China Didn’t Discuss Beijing’s ‘Peace Plan’ – Moscow (RT)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Chinese State Councilor Wang Yi did not discuss Beijing’s yet-to-be-unveiled peace proposal for the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev, the ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, told reporters on Wednesday. “Our Chinese partners explained their thoughts on the root causes of the Ukrainian crisis, as well as their approaches to its political resolution,” she said. The official added “there were no talks of any specific ‘plan’.” Wang first mentioned his “peace proposal” at the Munich Security Conference last week. “We will put forth China’s position on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis,” the diplomat announced. Wang warned that he knew that “some forces might not want to see peace talks materialize” without naming any party in particular.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin also commented on the peace proposal at the Monday press briefing. “The international community is fully aware who is calling for dialogue and striving for peace, and who is fanning the flames and stoking confrontation,” the diplomat said. He then encouraged the US to “seriously reflect on the role it has played” in the Ukrainian conflict so far. On Tuesday, Chinese Ambassador to the UN Zhang Jun said that a “position paper” with China’s consistent views on the conflict would be released “within days.”

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky commented on the plan during a press conference on Tuesday, saying that he had his own “peace formula” supported by a large number of states. Zelensky was apparently referring to the so-called ‘10-point peace plan’ that was presented by him at the G20 summit in November. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Moscow anticipated a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping once Beijing had completed items on its domestic agenda. “We assume that we will realize our plans regarding face-to-face meetings, which will give an additional boost to our relations,” Putin added.

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He hanged AND shot himself. And then ate the gun?

“Ammunition and a gun case were found in Middleton’s vehicle — but the weapon itself never turned up.”

Epstein-Linked Clinton Advisor Allegedly Hanged Himself (PM)

The sheriff’s report on the disturbing scene where a top Bill Clinton advisor with ties to Jeffrey Epstein was found shot and hanged from a tree has finally been released, prompting sleuths to question why the death was ruled a suicide. Mark Middleton, 59, was a special advisor to the former president in the 1990s, authorizing Epstein’s visits to the White House seven out of the 17 times the infamous pedophile met with top government officials there. Additionally, he was also on the flight logs of Epstein’s private jet. According to the Perry County sheriff’s office, Middleton was found dead on May 7, 2022 with a gunshot wound to his chest and an extension cord tying his neck to a tree in Perryville, Arkansas.


As obtained by the Daily Mail, Sheriff’s Deputy Jeremy Lawson’s firsthand report on the mysterious death claims that “I could see what at first appeared to be a man sitting near a tree, as my eyes focused better, I could see a rope of some type going from the tree limb to the male.” Middleton’s body was found at the Heifer Ranch, after worker Samantha McElroy called police after finding Middleton’s abandoned black BMW SUV at the property. “I could see that he had a gunshot wound to the chest and that he had a knot tied in an extension cord that was around his neck and it was attached to the limb directly above him,” Lawson added. Ammunition and a gun case were found in Middleton’s vehicle — but the weapon itself never turned up.

Despite the confusing details of the case, Sheriff Scott Montgomery said Middleton had apparently shot himself in the chest with a shotgun and also somehow hung himself, reported the Arkansas Times. According to the outlet, the late presidential advisor’s family said he “was being treated for depression” before his death. Despite unsealing the sheriff deputy’s report nine months after Middleton’s death, Circuit Judge Alice Gray granted a request from his family to keep the crime scene photos sealed. “The Court finds that since Mr. Middleton’s death, the Middletons have been harassed by individuals with outlandish, hurtful, unsubstantiated, and offensive conspiracy theories regarding Mr. Middleton, his death, and his family, which have caused the Middletons immense harm and anguish,” the decision reads.


“These same individuals have indicated and communicated that they will attempt to obtain the File, including Media Content depicting Mr. Middleton’s body and the scene of his death, by way of an Arkansas Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request,” the judge continued. “The purpose of this Order is to prevent further irreparable injury to the Middletons.” Middleton left the White House in February 1995. The following year, a White House investigation determined that he had “abused his access to impress business clients” leading him to be “barred from the executive mansion without senior approval,” reported the Daily Mail. He has denied those accusations.

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“..Western capitalist ideology has been so successful in setting material, technological progress as the criterion of “a new civilisation”..”

The Crusades of the Virtuous (Hoppe)

The cultural hegemony of the unipolar power is particularly visible in its media events: “international” festivals, extravaganzas, gala ceremonies, etc. A glaring example of this is the tireless and desperate placement of the sniffling buffoon Zelensky at almost all the recent “cultural” events… be they the film festivals of Cannes, Venice, Berlin, ceremonies such as the Golden Globe Awards, the Grammys or music festivals such as Glastonbury. Zelensky has now become the obligatory sprig of parsley for every neoliberal dish. A brand has been created of him. He is probably the most widely seen public figure in the world today. He is the icon of the times: a pathetic, empty puppet, pumped with unlimited cash and drugs, posing as an endearing emissary of the world’s conscience.

His most recent video appearance at the grand inauguration of the Berlin Film Festival was met with cheers and standing ovations by the entire audience whose applause remained throughout his speech … especially when he declared: “Culture chooses a side when it decides to speak out against evil… and it takes a side when it remains silent and in fact helps the evil.” One of the “highlights” of this self-righteous festival so far is a documentary on Zelensky made by Sean Penn entitled “Superpower”. At the end of its premiere the audience once again rose obsequiously to its feet to give both Penn and his collaborators a standing ovation. Just three years ago the Berlinale greeted war criminal Hillary Clinton as a star. This year’s Berlinale rolled the red carpet out for NATO with full condemnation of their enemies Russia, Iran, China and Belarus; even the mascot – the Berlinale bear – appeared in sky blue and yellow, the Ukrainian national colours.

[..] Outside the grand “Berlinale Palast”, climate activists had glued themselves to the legendary Red Carpet. Two days later the same carpet welcomed a silent protest featuring sombre-looking expatriate Iranian actresses in support of the regime-change activists in Iran entitled “Women Life Freedom”. With the exception of Sean Penn’s eulogy of the Ukraine and its jester, there is little press coverage of the films at the festival… Will any be remembered in the future as noteworthy works of art? Because Western capitalist ideology has been so successful in setting material, technological progress as the criterion of “a new civilisation” and in commoditising virtues and morals all over the world, it has become a creed for many to follow… It sets global dictates and trends (e.g.: global warming, gender fluidity, cancel culture, re-adaptations of history, colour revolutions, etc.). And, in the absence of spirituality, many people follow these global trends and dictates religiously in order to secure an “identity” in the modern world.

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Acid rain

 

 


Unusual friendship between a female grey wolf and a male brown bear. They were spotted every night for 10 days straight, spending several hours together between 8pm to 4am. They would even share food together

 

 


The Alpine Ibex’s preferred habitat is the rocky region along the snow line above alpine forests, where it occupies steep, rough terrain at elevations of 1,800 to 3,300

 

 


This couple of sea urchins was discovered by a research vessel near New Caledonia at a depth of 300 m. Photo Steve Jurvetson. Fractals are everywhere.

 

 

 

 

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Feb 142023
 
 February 14, 2023  Posted by at 10:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  79 Responses »


Elaine de Kooning Fairfield Porter #1 1954

 

When Do The Giant Ants Show Up On Fremont Street In Las Vegas? (Kunstler)
30 Million People May be in Danger by East Palestine Disaster (TP)
US Raises Pressure On Kyiv To Make Significant Gains On Battlefield – WaPo (Az)
Taking Odessa, Kharkov To Help Ensure Russia’s Security – Chechen Leader (TASS)
NATO Sounds Alarm Over Ukraine’s Ammo Consumption (RT)
US Has No Long-Range Missiles For Ukraine – Politico (RT)
Former Pentagon Chief: US Uses Ukraine To Achieve Goals Against Russia (Tass)
EU Has No Plans To Urge Its Citizens To Leave Russia (TASS)
Hungary Must Resist America’s Woke Imperialism (Furedi)
Amid Turkiye’s Rubble Lies Erdogan’s Political Fate (Karan)
Clapper: Letter About Russian Links To Hunter Biden Laptop Was ‘Distorted’ (WE)
Seymour Hersh Speaks About His Nord Stream Report and Media Silence (Celente)
Global Debt & Death Spiral – John Rubino (USAW)
30% Of High School Girls ‘Seriously Considered’ Suicide Last Year (ZH)

 

 

 

 

Zel Eu

 

 

 

 

Yes, there is a recent film set in East Palestine that is about an enviromental disaster exactly like the one that happened on Friday

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry Jim, I changed the title…

When Do The Giant Ants Show Up On Fremont Street In Las Vegas? (Kunstler)

Didn’t you get the feeling this weekend that we’re living in HG Wells’ classic tale of the earth invaded by sinister alien spacecrafts? Our government is playing the story like a bassoon concerto. “American officials do not know what the objects were, much less their purpose or who sent them,” The New York Times reported, poaching a line from every horror movie of the 1950s. When do the giant ants show up on Fremont Street in Las Vegas? Looks like they’ll keep up the suspense as long as possible, too. Oh, we can’t retrieve that thing up in Alaska due to white-out weather conditions… Oh, that other thing — the eight-sided silver tic-tac — it fell into Lake Huron, glug glug… and that first one, the big balloon payload, lies deep in Davy Jones’ Locker now. You’ll have to stand by, folks….

Let’s face it, all the other mindfucks set in motion by the folks-in-charge are not just losing their mojo — they’re generating a lot of nasty blow-back in the way of widespread distrust of authority and institutional collapse. Even Woked-up Democrat voters begin to suspect that the vaxxes they greeted like a holy deliverance might not be so good for you after all. I’m waiting for Rob Reiner’s head to explode when he starts to notice how many young SAG-AFTRA members are waking up dead in West Hollywood. More to the point, you are now correct to suspect that the entire Covid-19 episode, from the design of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus to the gene-modification shots put out by Pfizer and Moderna (erroneously labeled “vaccines”), was a joint Intel-DOD operation, not really a public health crisis. The abiding mystery is… why? Why turn Western Civilization upside down and inside out and then try to pound the whole thing down a rat-hole?

Frankly, the only angle that makes sense is that our government is captive to a hostile force. The WEF, the WHO, and the UN are the most obvious culprits, certainly the most talked-up, the most active on-the-scene. But until a few years ago these organizations had no real influence on the world. They were bad jokes… only pretending to protect the global community’s interests… actually completely incapable, utterly incompetent. Klaus Schwab, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus? Please! What Muppet factory were they made in? The UN was a mere collective of Third World hustles and rackets. And everybody knew it, but the developed world played along as a sop to these sad-sack nations and their greedy officials because the grift was chump-change.

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BlackRock, Vanguard, and JPMorgan are the biggest stockholders of Norfolk Southern, the train operator that crashed in Ohio, that’s why there has been a major media blackout on the toxic chemical disaster.

They’re actually telling people the water is safe…

30 Million People May be in Danger by East Palestine Disaster (TP)

30 million people, or 10% of the United States population, may be in danger after a train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio that led to the release of toxic chemicals. “We basically nuked a town with chemicals so we could get a railroad open,” said Sil Caggiano, a hazardous materials specialist. As public officials try to calm the public, animals are falling sick and dying. “Out of nowhere, he just started coughing really hard, just shut down, and he had liquid diarrhea and just went very fast,” said resident Taylor Holzer while he explained the mortally ill confition of his foxes. “Smoke and chemicals from the train, that’s the only thing that can cause it, because it doesn’t just happen out of nowhere,” Holzer said. “The chemicals that we’re being told are safe in the air, that’s definitely not safe for the animals … or people.”

According to a new report, the situation may become much more widespread through the Ohio River Basin. As noted by Stew Peters, 10% of the United States population may be in trouble. “10% of the U.S. population, over 30 MILLION PEOPLE, live in the Ohio River Basin!” he tweeted. “The Ohio River itself provides drinking water to over 5 MILLION PEOPLE!” According to Upward News, the dangerous chemicals are making their way as far as West Virginia through the Ohio River. “Toxic chemicals from the train derailment & explosion in East Palestine have reportedly “contaminated” the Ohio River as far as West Virginia, a water source for over 5 million,” they reported. “The Ohio River is one of the nation’s great natural resources. Over 30 million people, or about ten percent of the U.S. population, live in the Ohio River Basin. With numerous public drinking water intakes and industries, the river provides drinking water to +5,000,000 people.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1624910190847094784

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“‘As long as it takes’ pertains to the amount of conflict,” the official added. “It doesn’t pertain to the amount of assistance.”

Note that Stoltenberg in the video talks about the THIRD invasion.

US Raises Pressure On Kyiv To Make Significant Gains On Battlefield – WaPo (Az)

As the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nears, US officials are telling Ukrainian leaders they face a critical moment to change the trajectory of the war, raising the pressure on Kyiv to make significant gains on the battlefield while weapons and aid from the United States and its allies are surging, Report informs, citing the Washington Post. Despite promises to back Ukraine “as long as it takes,” Biden officials say recent aid packages from Congress and America’s allies represent Kyiv’s best chance to decisively change the course of the war. Many conservatives in the Republican-led House have vowed to pull back support, and Europe’s long-term appetite for funding the war effort remains unclear. Several officials noted the strong bipartisan support that has accompanied every Ukraine package, adding that Congress gave the White House more than it asked for, but they acknowledged that was under a Democrat-led House and Senate.


“We will continue to try to impress upon them that we can’t do anything and everything forever,” said one senior administration official, referring to Ukraine’s leaders. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters, added that it was the administration’s “very strong view” that it will be hard to keep getting the same level of security and economic assistance from Congress. “‘As long as it takes’ pertains to the amount of conflict,” the official added. “It doesn’t pertain to the amount of assistance.” “Ukraine has expended significant resources and troops defending Bakhmut in the eastern Donbas region. Zelenskyy, however, attaches symbolic importance to Bakhmut and believes it would be a blow to Ukrainian morale to lose the city,” two senior administration officials said.

Stoltenberg
https://twitter.com/i/status/1625115812896841731

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“We are fighting for peace, so that we are not killed, not shot at…”

Taking Odessa, Kharkov To Help Ensure Russia’s Security – Chechen Leader (TASS)

Taking control of Odessa and Kharkov will ensure Russia’s security, Ramzan Kadyrov, head of Russia’s Republic of Chechnya, said on Monday. “Although some say that it will take a year, or two, or even three [to complete the special operation], I think that by the end of the year, we will have completed 100% of our task. I believe that the least we must do is take Odessa and Kharkov, which will go a long way in ensuring the security of our state,” he said in an interview with the 60 Minutes program on the Rossiya-1 television channel. According to Kadyrov, up to 200 trained soldiers are sent to the frontline from Chechnya every week. “We are fighting for peace, so that we are not killed, not shot at. All of us must work this way now. Every week, we send 200 soldiers. It is not easy. People are coming from all over Russia and we train them, <…> provide them with outfit and footwear, armor vests and helmets – we give them everything that is necessary,” he added.

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It’s obvious they’re running out. But they can’t admit it.

NATO Sounds Alarm Over Ukraine’s Ammo Consumption (RT)

Ukraine is consuming an “enormous amount” of ammunition, and the West needs to boost production to keep up, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Monday. Stoltenberg also called on the bloc’s members to increase their intelligence efforts, accusing China and Russia of spying on them with balloons. “The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of ammunition,” he said ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels. “This puts our defense industries under strain,” he continued, adding that “we need to ramp up production and invest in our production capacities.” Stoltenberg then pledged, as he has repeatedly since Russia’s military operation in Ukraine began, that “NATO stands with Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

“Standing with Ukraine” has proven costly for NATO, particularly its European members. After decades of underinvestment, the German military rapidly emptied its stockpiles for Ukraine and reportedly has only enough ammunition for two days of warfare. Furthermore, Berlin will not be able to send its full complement of 187 Leopard 1 tanks to Kiev until refurbishment is complete in 2024, and even then, reports suggest that ammunition for these tanks is in short supply. The situation in the UK is similar, with the British Army reportedly having just enough ammunition for days or even hours of full-scale fighting. Meanwhile, multiple European nations have walked back promises of tanks for Ukraine, citing shortages and the vehicles’ state of disrepair.

Stoltenberg has repeatedly called on NATO members to boost arms and ammo production since the conflict in Ukraine began. On Monday, however, he also urged them to increase their intelligence gathering and sharing capacities, claiming that China and Russia are “increasing their intelligence and surveillance activities against NATO allies.” The NATO chief claimed that both nations are using “balloons” to spy on the West, referring to four aircraft shot down over the US and Canada in recent days. One of these airships came from China, while the origin of the other three is unclear. US authorities have not linked any of the four to Russia, and Beijing insists that the first was a “civilian airship” that veered off course.

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“..If Europe were to fight Russia, some countries would run out of ammunition in days.”

US Has No Long-Range Missiles For Ukraine – Politico (RT)

The US will not supply Ukraine with its Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) due to concerns it will not have enough for itself, officials told Politico. Kiev continues to demand longer range missiles and other heavy weapons, despite $30 billion in military aid already authorized by the White House. Ukrainian officials were informed that Washington has no ATACMS missiles to offer during a recent meeting in the US capital, with the Pentagon concluding that transfers would “dwindle America’s stockpiles and harm the US military’s readiness,” the outlet reported on Monday. “With any package, we always consider our readiness and our own stocks while providing Ukraine what it needs on the battlefield. There are other ways of providing Ukraine with the capabilities it needs to strike the targets,” a senior military official said on condition of anonymity.

While it is unclear how many ATACMS remain in US stocks, weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin has produced only about 4,000 units of various makes over the last 20 years, with around 600 used up by US forces during the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War. A number of those missiles have also been sold to allies, including Bahrain, Greece, Poland, Qatar, Romania, South Korea, and Turkey. Short of obtaining the weapon directly from the US, Kiev is considering whether to ask one of those allied countries to provide the ATACMS instead, a move that would have to be approved by Washington. Arms transfers to Ukraine have stressed US stocks over the last year, with shortages in Javelin and Stinger missiles reported as early as last March, just weeks after the conflict with Russia kicked off. As of February 3, Washington has sent at least 1,600 Stinger systems and more than 8,000 Javelins, in addition to a massive quantity of other arms, including drones, mortars, howitzers, armored combat vehicles, and dozens of HIMARS multi-launch rocket systems.

In addition to concerns about shrinking arms inventories, US officials also fear that Ukrainian forces would use the ATACMS to “attack deep inside Russian territory” given their range of 190 miles, according to Politico. Though the White House has approved increasingly heavy weapons for Kiev – including the M1 Abrams main battle tank – it believes strikes on Russian soil could cross a “red line” with the Kremlin.The NATO bloc has urged member states to “ramp up production” of weapons and ammunition to keep up with Kiev’s needs, with the alliance’s head, Jens Stoltenberg, warning on Monday that the Ukrainian military is consuming an “enormous amount” of materiel. A recent NATO assessment obtained by Reuters found that arsenals across the alliance have been significantly depleted thanks to the conflict, with one official telling the outlet that “If Europe were to fight Russia, some countries would run out of ammunition in days.”

Moscow has repeatedly urged against foreign arms deliveries to Ukraine, saying they would only prolong the fighting without changing the outcome of the conflict. The Kremlin has also warned that the aid creates a greater risk of escalation, especially if Western weapons are used to strike Russian cities or to try to seize Russian territory.

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“The Ukrainian people are doing the dirty work of what we never wanted to do here in the United States..”

Former Pentagon Chief: US Uses Ukraine To Achieve Goals Against Russia (Tass)

The Ukrainian people in the conflict with Russia are ‘doing dirty work’ that the US would not want to do, former US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told the Russian pranksters Vladimir Kuznetsov (Vovan) and Alexey Stolyarov (Lexus). The pranksters called Esper on behalf of former Ukrainian President Petr Poroshenko and asked the former Pentagon chief for his opinion on US involvement in the conflict in Ukraine. “The Ukrainian people are doing the dirty work of what we never wanted to do here in the United States, which is why we should continue to support you [Ukraine] with everything we can, whether it’s munitions or arms or intelligence,” Esper said.


According to him, the expansion of Russian influence in other countries, including Africa, “is a problem” for the United States. At the same time, the former Pentagon chief expressed concern that US technology could end up in the hands of other countries because of arms deliveries to Ukraine. He stressed that it was important for the US to make sure that its technology would not fall into the wrong hands.

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France just did.

EU Has No Plans To Urge Its Citizens To Leave Russia (TASS)

The EU has no plans to follow the US’ example and recommend its citizens or people with double citizenship to leave Russia, European External Actions Service Spokesman Peter Stano said Monday. “The EU has made no such decision, and we have no discussions in this regard. That is a question for EU member states. Consular decisions are a responsibility of member states, not the EU,” he said. Previously, the US Embassy in Russia called on US nationals to immediately leave the country, claiming that the Russian said can allegedly deny US citizens the recognition of their double citizenship; strip them of access to consular aid; mobilize them to the armed forces or to prevent them from leaving the country.

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Wokeness is a smokescreen. All they care about is Orban not joining the war.

Hungary Must Resist America’s Woke Imperialism (Furedi)

Samantha Power, head administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), arrived in Budapest last week with one mission – to save Central European nations from themselves. Her main target was Hungary. According to a press release issued by USAID to accompany her trip to the Hungarian capital, Power wants ‘to help support democracy in Central Europe’. And she wants ‘independent media to thrive and build new audiences’. ‘[A] free and diverse press is a cornerstone of democracy’, she tweeted, ‘and in Hungary, independent journalists are facing real challenges’. By a ‘free’ and ‘independent’ media, what Power really meant are outlets that freely propagate the worldview of the Biden administration. Central to this worldview, it seems, are LGBT rights.

That’s why USAID’s press release explicitly told the Hungarians that the US will ‘continue to stand as an ally with LGBTQI+ people and all marginalised groups in their struggle for equality’. Power’s attempt to impose the White House’s obsession with LGBT issues on Hungary is not especially surprising. It is worth remembering that one of Biden’s earliest foreign-policy initiatives was to send the State Department a memo ‘to ensure that US diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of LGBTQ+ persons’. But of course, it’s not just LGBT rights driving the US’s intervention in Central Europe. Last December, when USAID announced its Central Europe programme, it also claimed it was going to support ‘new locally driven initiatives in Central Europe with the goal of strengthening democratic institutions, civil society and independent media, which are all pillars of resilient democratic societies’.

For USAID, these ‘locally driven initiatives’ refers not to any grassroots organisations, but to NGOs. And through these NGOs, USAID claims it is building ‘the watchdog skills of civil society and media to enhance rule-of-law observance, combat corruption and increase access to justice’. The use of the word ‘watchdog’ is telling. As is well known, a watchdog usually has a master – and one does not need a PhD in political science to guess that this watchdog’s master is not a million miles away from 2201 C Street Northwest, Washington, DC – the home of the State Department. USAID’s promise to ‘support democracy’ and ‘strengthen democratic institutions’ is entirely cynical. In practice, USAID wants to use local NGOs and other institutions to translate Washington’s cultural narrative and political priorities into a local language.

This is to create the impression that what’s ‘made in America’ appears as locally grown. In reality, of course, it’s nothing of the sort. This represents a clear attempt on the part of Washington to erode the sovereignty and exert influence over the democratic decision-making processes of Hungary and other nations in Central Europe. The US is effectively assuming the role of a moral guardian of democratic life in Central Europe. The arrogance is breathtaking. It seems that the Biden administration believes it possesses an inalienable right to influence the political and cultural life of Hungary and other Central European nations.

Frank Furedi is the executive director of the think-tank, MCC-Brussels.

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“..the TAF’s ability and capacity to respond to such disasters had been significantly reduced after and even before the 2016 attempted coup…”

Amid Turkiye’s Rubble Lies Erdogan’s Political Fate (Karan)

Turkiye’s Disaster and Emergency Management Agency (AFAD), under the Ministry of Interior, is responsible for handling national disasters and emergencies. Unlike many other countries where disaster response executives are military experts, AFAD executives in Turkiye are mostly Imam-Hatip (religious school) graduates with questionable qualifications. The agency was also criticized for being understaffed and having major coordination issues. In the first critical hours after the earthquake, AFAD officers either never arrived at the wreckage or came to only take notes. The lack of available equipment, such as cranes and construction equipment, made it difficult to reach the affected areas. Experienced miners in the Black Sea region were not dispatched until 48 hours after the earthquake. In contrast, the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) were deployed within a short period of time during the 1999 Golcuk earthquake, but only 3,500 soldiers were deployed in the first 24 hours this time round.

On 7 February, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency (OHAL) in the disaster zone and a week of mourning. Despite the outpouring of support from the opposition municipalities and civil society, the government faced criticism for its slow response and lack of preparation. In addition, the Turkish Red Crescent was virtually absent on the ground. Erdogan responded to criticism by lashing out and claiming that he would address the “lies” and “distortions” leveled at his administration in due course. However, the very next day, social media, which was being used by civil society to save lives via search and rescue posts, was shut down, causing immense outrage. Access was restored only after celebrated Turkish singer Haluk Levent, known for his charity work, called out the authorities and referred to the social media ban as “equivalent to murder.”

Perhaps the most controversial issue was the response of the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) to the catastrophe. Despite the presence of 50 thousand Turkish soldiers in Syria, only 3500 troops were deployed in the first 24 hours after the earthquake. Minister of National Defense Hulusi Akar was correct when he explained that Turkish troops were delayed due to weather conditions and destroyed land routes. But the failure of President Erdogan to effectively mobilize the TAF did not go unnoticed. Retired officers who took part in the relief efforts for the 1999 Golcuk earthquake had raised warnings in the early hours of this month’s disaster. Retired Rear Admiral Cem Gurdeniz called for amphibious ships to be sent to the Iskenderun Bay to help Hatay. Meanwhile, teams from countries such as Russia, Spain, and Israel had already established field hospitals.

Experts pointed to the fact that the TAF’s ability and capacity to respond to such disasters had been significantly reduced after and even before the 2016 attempted coup. The closure of the prestigious Gülhane Military Medical Academy (GATA) was cited as an example. Retired Admiral Turker Erturk, former Black Sea commander, emphasized the importance of the army’s role in both responding to natural disasters and external threats, stating: “The government destroyed the health facilities and capabilities of the Turkish army and the field hospitals. They also enacted a law so that the TAF would not interfere in such matters. The TAF had security, public order and aid plans called EMASYA, and the Natural Disaster Relief Plan called DAFYAR. Erdogan made laws and destroyed them. He prevented the military from rushing to the aid of the people.”

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““All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation..”

Yeah sure. Watch the 2020 video.

Clapper: Letter About Russian Links To Hunter Biden Laptop Was ‘Distorted’ (WE)

The former director of national intelligence for President Barack Obama is blaming Politico for the “distortion” of a letter signed by more than 50 ex-intelligence officials that had baselessly claimed Russia’s involvement in the Hunter Biden laptop saga. Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign quickly dismissed the laptop story as a Russian disinformation operation. After the New York Post published emails belonging to his son, Biden called the story “garbage” and part of a “Russian plan” during an October 2020 debate with then-President Donald Trump. Biden said at the time: “There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan. They have said this is, has all the — four, five former heads of the CIA. Both parties say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage.”

He was referring to a Politico report about the letter in an article titled “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.” The title was a bit misleading because the letter never directly called the story Russian “disinformation.” Ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper complained about the Politico headline to the Washington Post this week. “There was message distortion,” Clapper told the outlet. “All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation. Politico deliberately distorted what we said.” Clapper did not speak up about this during the 2020 election, however, despite the Biden campaign exploiting the letter to dismiss the Hunter Biden laptop stories as a Kremlin disinformation operation, and he implausibly claimed in his new interview that he was unaware of how Joe Biden described the letter during the 2020 debate.

“It could have been bad information, false information. But we had no evidence, no inside baseball that it was. The intent of the letter was that this could be Russian disinformation — emphasis on could,” Clapper told the outlet. “It’s a very important nuance … a distinction that people are always ignoring.” Although the October 2020 letter hedged a bit at various times, it did repeatedly contend there was Russian involvement with the laptop stories, arguing that “if we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election” and expressing “our view that the Russians are involved in the Hunter Biden email issue.” The letter claimed that the laptop saga “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” and that “our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”

Clapper 2020

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“..they have The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSN, and CNN fronting for them..”

Seymour Hersh Speaks About His Nord Stream Report and Media Silence (Celente)

Seymour Hersh spoke to Radio War Nerd about his recent column on the Nord Stream blast that blames the Biden administration of carrying out the attack. It was his first interview after his story was published that has been largely ignored by the Western propaganda media. Hersh said he was asked about how he found the story, and said his friend told him he is an “expert at deconstructing the obvious.” He said German newspapers have been “nasty” to him and outlets like The Washington Post and New York Times simply ignore him. He said these outlets want him to name his source, which he will not, because the individual will end up in jail. “The problem is, it’s all been cheapened. Because now the New York Times and the Washington Post think an unnamed source can be a press guy, a press secretary, that whispers something to them on the side. I don’t know, they don’t seem to have anyone inside,” he said.


He theorized that mainstream outlets in the U.S. avoided his stories because it gives a “pro-Russian” impression. “The way I look at it, you know, the White House, despite all the criticism of [President Joe] Biden…they have The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSN, and CNN fronting for them,” Hersh said. Hersh said the only reporter to call him was Fox News’s Tucker Carlson. “It’s amazing to be how they fall in line, my colleagues,” he said.

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“Welcome to the end game for the world’s big currencies.”

Global Debt & Death Spiral – John Rubino (USAW)

Analyst and financial writer John Rubino says we’re are in a “debt and death spiral” that will force dramatic changes on the world. Rubino explains, “The debt spiral part of this means things from here continue to get worse and worse for the big currencies of the world until they die. In other words, until people lose faith in them, refuse to use them and hold them anymore until their value falls to their intrinsic value, which is zero. That manifests to hyperinflation. The value of the currency falls as opposed to the things you buy with it. . . . Things feel basically okay for a long time as long as governments could force interest rates down to really low levels. The side effects of that are massive money creation and, eventually, inflation. That’s what we are dealing with now. So, here we go. Welcome to the end game for the world’s big currencies.”

Rubino contends things have gotten so out of control that there is no stopping what is coming. Rubino says, “We are in the part of the cycle now where things just get worse, and there is nothing we can do about it. You are going to see companies that have borrowed huge amounts of money to buy back their stock, and now they see their interest costs explode. Governments around the world have the same problem, and there is nothing central banks can do about this. The next stage of this is when everybody realizes that there is no fix. Daddy is not going to come home and take care of all of this, and there is no adult supervision. The financial markets are basically on their own with so much debt that there is nothing left to do.

You either have mass bankruptcies or inflate away the currencies of the world, and we’re there—finally. 2023 is going to be an amazing year . . . and we make the decision about what kind of a crisis we fall into. We have a 1930’s style deflationary depression, which is what happens if we keep raising interest rates. Or, a Weimar Germany kind of hyperinflation, which is what happens if we try to inflate our way out of our current debt problems. And that’s it. This is not something on the distant horizon anymore. It’s something right here staring us in the face.”

Rubino talks about the threat of global nuclear war and contends our extreme financial problems will seem timid if the nukes fly. In the nuclear war scenario, the global population could get cut in half with “radiation and starvation.” Rubino also talks about ways to be more resilient, and that starts with shedding as much debt as you can. It also includes food, water, cash, defensive investments and precious metals. Rubino thinks the economy is so weak, with so many different financial bubbles, that one bubble pop could bring the entire system down rapidly. Rubino says look out for big European banks to go insolvent as a warning sign of trouble if the trillion-dollar derivative complex blows up. There is much more in the 52-minure interview.

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The CDC is your friend…

30% Of High School Girls ‘Seriously Considered’ Suicide Last Year (ZH)

A staggering 30% of high school girls in the United States who were surveyed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they had “seriously considered attempting suicide” in 2021, up from (a still shocking) 19% in 2011. Panning back, almost 60% of high school girls surveyed said they felt ‘persistent sadness or hopelessness’ in 2021, an increase of roughly 60% over the same time period. “Though both high-school girls and boys reported experiencing mental-health challenges, girls reported record high levels of violence, sadness and suicide risk, the CDC said. In 2021, 57% of high-school girls reported experiencing persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in the past year, compared with 36% in 2011. Thirty percent reported they seriously considered attempting suicide in 2021, up from 19% in 2011.” -WSJ

When it comes to boys in high school, 29% reported persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness in 2021 vs. 21% in 2011, while 14% reported seriously considering a suicide attempt, up from 13% in 2011. Following the survey, federal officials noted a spike in mental health among young people – particularly girls, in new data released on Monday which was gathered from a biennial survey spanning 2011 to 2021, of 9th through 12th-graders across the country. According to mental health experts, girls are particularly vulnerable to anxiety and depression, given higher rates of harassment and discrimination they face compared with boys. And of course, now they’re all competing with TikTok Barbies who set even more unrealistic and unhealthy standards.

And as the Wall Street Journal notes, the evidence suggests that the stress, isolation and loss during the pandemic amplified mental health issues among young people who were already struggling. “These data show our kids need far more support to cope, hope and thrive,” said CDC chief medical officer, Debra Houry. According to the CDC, there LGBTQ teens are showing ‘ongoing and extreme distress,’ with more than half of these students reporting a recent episode of poor mental health, and 22% reporting an actual suicide attempt in the past year.

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Elon bad now

 

 

 

 

 

 

The EU has approved a 4th species of insects for human consumption. From now on, it will be possible to sell food products made out of the larvae of the Lesser Mealworm.

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Mar 222022
 
 March 22, 2022  Posted by at 9:37 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  50 Responses »


Salvador Dali Birth of liquid desires 1932

 

National Assisted Suicide (Kunstler)
Kremlin Rejects Proposed Zelensky-Putin Meeting (ZH)
US Sanctions China Officials Hours After Demanding Beijing Condemn Russia (ZH)
Is Ukraine the Representative Autocracy Washington Hopes To Achieve Here? (CTH)
American Imperial Infantilism (Lawrence)
The Takeover Of America’s Legal System (Sibarium)
Ukraine Refugees Uninterested In Vaccination, Wary Of The Vaccinators (Eugyp)
More VAERS-Reported Vaccine Deaths In Our Military Than COVID Deaths (Blaze)
He Faces 20 Years For Jan 6. His Lawyers Say He Just Went To Protest. (DW)
Donald Trump’s PAC Has More Cash Than Republicans, Democrats Combined (NW)
Barr: Biden ‘Lied To The American People’ About His Son Hunter’s Emails (NYP)
White House Ignores Its Hunter Problem (Devine)

 

 

“War does not determine who is right, only who is left.”
– Bertrand Russell.

 

 

 

 

Macgregor
https://twitter.com/i/status/1505652525843857421

Macgregor Jimmy Dore
https://twitter.com/i/status/1505636837280395264

 

 

 

 

Malone WEF

 

 

“..a place removed from the USA to set up bio-weapons labs when our own government called an at-home “moratorium” on gain-of-function research in 2014..”

National Assisted Suicide (Kunstler)

“Joe Biden” and company might have prevented Russia’s “operation” there by simply reiterating what NATO itself had declared: that Ukraine would not be invited to join the alliance. But Ukraine has been a special client of the USA since 2014, when we changed-out a pain-in-the-ass government there. Since then, we’ve used Ukraine as an international money laundry, a proxy forward base for NATO, and, apparently, a place removed from the USA to set up bio-weapons labs when our own government called an at-home “moratorium” on gain-of-function research in 2014. Part of the forward base activity in Ukraine since 2014 was the training and arming of the 600,000-troop Ukrainian army, one of the biggest armed forces in the world, which Russia now feels constrained to disarm and neutralize.

How successful Russia might be in that endeavor, with an operational force of about 200,000, is the subject of a propaganda war being waged one level removed from the action on the ground. The reality, as one might expect from such basic troop numbers, has been an onerous grind for the Russians. American javelin missiles have proven deadly to Russian tanks and armored vehicles. But, contrary to the narrative script of CNN and The New York Times, Russia is hardly “losing” the contest. Russian forces are in the process of kettling up Ukraine’s most potent units, the notorious Azov battalions, along the Donbass line in the east. There are a lot of them. They are surrounded, cut off from their central command, and now given the choice of surrendering or being slaughtered. For the moment, it is Ukraine’s choice.

For the Russians, this is, as they say, an existential matter, something they have faced before and understand the stakes of — think Napoleon and Hitler. The US has shown, at least, an exorbitant will to antagonize Russia using Ukraine. This, too, is yet more insanity. In Mr. Putin’s early years as head-of-state, Russia asked to join NATO, in Russia’s quest to be treated as a normal European nation after overcoming 75 years of Soviet insanity. Request rebuffed. Twenty years later, and many instances of antagonism in the meantime, Russia had enough. It is doing something America no longer can do: establishing boundaries. Ukraine will not be used as a platform for further antagonisms. Our response: wreck the global economy starting with the international money system, and possibly bring on a world famine by destroying supply lines for fossil fuels and things made from them, such as fertilizer.

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Russia’s demands are clear. Respond to them, and then you can have your meeting.

Kremlin Rejects Proposed Zelensky-Putin Meeting (ZH)

At a moment Russian forces are believed to be on the cusp of taking the major southeast city of Mariupol, after the Ukrainians rejected the Kremlin’s terms of surrender for the city, a fresh statement from the Russian side has yet again cited “no significant progress” in ceasefire talks, while stating Moscow is not ready for a proposed meeting with Zelensky. The invasion which kicked off on Feb.24 and shocked the world will reach a full month by close of this week. Starting last week reports emerged that Turkey was working hard to get Presidents Putin and Zelensky at the negotiating table in face to face talks. Given Russia’s overwhelming manpower and military superiority, despite reports of serious losses, it’s not expected that the Russian leader would agree to any top level negotiations like this anytime soon.

“For us to speak of a meeting between the two presidents, homework has to be done. Talks have to be held and their results agreed upon,” Putin spokesperson Dimitry Peskov said Monday, according to Reuters. “There has been no significant progress so far.” Last week Peskov had said that “when there’s progress, we’ll tell you” – in reference to the continuing negotiations taking place between lower level delegations toward reaching a battlefield ceasefire, or at least longer lasting local ceasefires. As for the Ukrainians, according to comments given to CNN on Sunday, Zelensky told Fareed Zakaria he’s “ready to talk to Putin at any time.” But Zelensky is simultaneously urging Europe to ban Russian energy and ratchet up sanctions measures even more, pleas which have without doubt angered the Kremlin.

CNN detailed of the interview, “His offer came more than three weeks into a war that appears to be entering a new, more deadlocked stage on the battlefield. And while that counts as an extraordinary military success for outgunned Ukraine, it will also leave its cities and people even more vulnerable to brutal Russian bombardments.” And more via CNN: “It’s a stalemate. But we should note it’s a bloody stalemate,” ex-CIA Director David Petraeus, a retired general who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “Also, arguably, it’s a battle of attrition.” For now each side is blaming the other for failure to significant progress through five rounds of talks: Peskov on Monday also suggested that Russia was more willing to engage in talks than Ukraine. “Those [countries] who can should use their influence over Kyiv to make it more accommodating and construction at these talks,” Peskov said, according to Reuters.

Stop hating Russians

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The US opinion of itself is grossly outdated and distorted. That is dangerous.

US Sanctions China Officials Hours After Demanding Beijing Condemn Russia (ZH)

Apparently not content with diplomatic war on one front with Russia, the Biden administration appears ready to escalate with China following on the heels of last week’s persistent accusations that Beijing was mulling cooperation with Moscow on weapons resupplies for its Ukraine operation, as well as assistance on Western sanctions evasion. Monday afternoon Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced more visa restrictions on Chinese officials related to prior charges that state authorities are overseeing the ethnic cleansing of Uighurs. It’s certainly interesting timing in terms of pulling out the the human rights card, given that throughout last week the admin’s China criticisms seemed exclusively focused on its “fence-sitting” over Ukraine.

Blinken called on China to “end its ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, repressive policies in Tibet, crackdown on fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong, and human rights violations,” as cited in Bloomberg. “The United States rejects efforts by (Chinese) officials to harass, intimidate, surveil, and abduct members of ethnic and religious minority groups, including those who seek safety abroad, and U.S. citizens, who speak out on behalf of these vulnerable populations,” Blinken said. “We are committed to defending human rights around the world and will continue to use all diplomatic and economic measures to promote accountability.”

It’s unclear as yet which and how many Chinese state officials will be impacted by the new visa restriction measures, which will effectively ban them from travel into the United States, and it’s an expansion of prior Trump restrictions. Earlier, the White House issued a statement saying – like UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s words over the weekend – that Beijing must condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and stop downplaying it.

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“western representative democracy” collapsed under the weight of COVID-19 and was replaced with unilateral authoritarian emergency power.”

Is Ukraine the Representative Autocracy Washington Hopes To Achieve Here? (CTH)

Tucker Carlson used his monologue tonight to note something we have discussed at length here. Western government leaders continue to make statements about “representative democracy” in comparison to “autocratic non-western government”, yet they make these public statements while personifying autocracy itself. An example was Joe Biden making statements to the media during a 9-11 commemoration visit to Shanksville Pennsylvania. In his remarks, Joe Biden decried Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladmir Putin as autocrats, yet Biden had just announced forced mandatory medical procedures for all U.S. workers a mere 36 hours before. It is a fact that throughout the last two years – the leaders of Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States have used declarations of emergency to position themselves with massive power. This is not debatable.


As a consequence, the prior definition of “western representative democracy” collapsed under the weight of COVID-19 and was replaced with unilateral authoritarian emergency power. When you look around, every single government in the west is still trying to extend those COVID powers by extending the emergency declarations that provide them. Again, none of this is up for debate; it is empirically true. Tucker asks a really good question. Is the autocratic system of government that existed in Ukraine before the Russian invasion – which is (not coincidentally) identical in many ways to the COVID-19 inspired system of government created by Western leaders – actually, the real motive for those western leaders to unite in their support and current propaganda campaign on behalf of Ukraine? I think he might be onto something. WATCH:

Is western autocracy the real objective, and is modern fascism (i.e. corporatism) the technique to get there? There is a massive synergy visible if you think about the WEF selecting leaders in this process. The problem for western leaders, who want to be dictators, has always been the voice of the people. Replace traditional democracy by merging modern corporatism with a new version of western autocracy, and we end up with a never-ending system of oppressive government just like we have been dealing with for the past two years throughout the pandemic.

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“The U.S. has no one capable of sailing its ship of state, no one in a position of influence worthy of the title “diplomat.”

American Imperial Infantilism (Lawrence)

When those purporting to serve as America’s statesmen and stateswomen think calling other world leaders names is properly part of the diplomatic repertoire — a prominent part, I’ll add — we are left with only one conclusion: The U.S. has no one capable of sailing its ship of state, no one in a position of influence worthy of the title “diplomat.” To qualify it, I’m certain there are plenty of mid-level people trained in the foreign service now in mid-level positions at the State Department. But they do not count, by and large, because what passes for diplomacy in Washington is driven not by skill, experience or subtle intelligence but by fidelity to American ideology and a nose for what plays in Peoria. Over the weekend I found myself thinking about FDR. I thought about Roosevelt in that famous photograph with Churchill and Stalin at the Yalta Conference.

There they are in their overcoats against the cold of February 1945 (FDR in a dashing cape). Then I thought about Biden and his nonsense name-calling and his refusal to even consider an encounter with Putin at this crucial moment. I had choice between laughing or the other emotion. It’s simply not easy to find truly good diplomats in the post–1945 annals of the American Foreign Service. I am talking about people who understand that one of the primary responsibilities of a diplomat is to understand how those on the other side of the table think and see things, what the other side wants and why. Here’s why they don’t exist anymore: Simply stated, power obviates the need for serious statecraft. The powerful nation has no need of diplomacy.


A figure such as George Kennan was the exception proving the rule, and he was an exception because he saw the need to understand how the world looked to the Soviet Union. Henry Kissinger proved the rule: For all his claim to diplomatic skill, Hank K. was a wielder of American power with a calculating mind, nothing more. The rest follows naturally: Antony Blinken is not a serious diplomat. Samantha Power is not a serious diplomat. As a diplomat (and various other things), Hillary “He’s Hitler” Clinton is a walking calamity. Biden, who’s spent his career selling snake oil off the back of a buckwagon, is not a statesman of any kind, serious or otherwise. We should consider when, precisely, calling other leaders names became an accepted feature of American “statecraft” (and I insist on the quotation marks.) When, why, and what are the consequences of this undignified practice?

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They want it all.

The Takeover Of America’s Legal System (Sibarium)

As of last month, the American Bar Association is requiring all accredited law schools to “provide education to law students on bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism,” both at the start of law school and “at least once again before graduation.” That’s in addition to a mandatory legal ethics class, which must now instruct students that they have a duty as lawyers to “eliminate racism.” (The American Bar Association, which accredits almost every law school in the United States, voted 348 to 17 to adopt the new standard.) Trial verdicts that do not jibe with the new politics are seen as signs of an inextricable hate—and an illegitimate legal order. At the Santa Clara University School of Law, administrators emailed students that the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse—the 17-year-old who killed two men and wounded another during a riot, in Kenosha, Wisconsin—was “further evidence of the persistent racial injustice and systemic racism within our criminal justice system.”

At UC Irvine, the university’s chief diversity officer emailed students that the acquittal “conveys a chilling message: Neither Black lives nor those of their allies’ matter.” (He later apologized for having “appeared to call into question a lawful trial verdict.”) Professors say it is harder to lecture about cases in which accused rapists are acquitted, or a police officer is found not guilty of abusing his authority. One criminal law professor at a top law school told me he’s even stopped teaching theories of punishment because of how negatively students react to retributivism—the view that punishment is justified because criminals deserve to suffer. “I got into this job because I liked to play devil’s advocate,” said the tenured professor, who identifies as a liberal. “I can’t do that anymore. I have a family.

Other law professors—several of whom asked me not to identify their institution, their area of expertise, or even their state of residence—were similarly terrified. Nadine Strossen, the first woman to head the American Civil Liberties Union and a professor at New York Law School, told me: “I massively self-censor. I assume that every single thing that is said, every facial gesture, is going to be recorded and potentially disseminated to the entire world. I feel as if I am operating in a panopticon.” This has all come as a shock to many law professors, who had long assumed that law schools wouldn’t cave to the new orthodoxy.

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“It’s rare, because the West is so totalising, but every now and then you get an idea of what it must be like to look into this funhouse from the outside.”

Ukraine Refugees Uninterested In Vaccination, Wary Of The Vaccinators (Eugyp)

Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bavarian Public Radio) notices that Ukrainian refugees are overwhelmingly unvaccinated: “Only about a third of Ukrainians have been vaccinated against Corona, in part with vaccines that are unapproved in the EU. The low vaccination rate could cause problems in the refugee centres. The city of Nürnberg, for example, has set up three gymnasiums to accommodate 600 people, where many must share a small space. …Anyone who wants to can receive a vaccination a few hundred metres away … free of charge for Ukrainian refugees.“Unfortunately, we’re finding that the refugees aren’t exactly snatching the vaccines out of our hands,” says Nürnberg Mayor Marcus König.“Many new arrivals are very worried about ‘forced vaccinations’,” adds Thomas Jung, Mayor of Fürth. He says you have to approach the topic with sensitivity. …”

It’s been months of overt coercion to accept vaccination from politicians and the press here in the Federal Republic of Germany. Months of social exclusion and jeopardised careers and all the rest of it. Nobody has given the slightest thought to “sensitivity.” Why are they now at pains to accommodate the feelings of Ukrainians? Jung explains that city officials pressed a Ukrainian doctor into service, to begin delicately preaching the Gospel of Vaccination to refugees last Friday. It’s rare, because the West is so totalising, but every now and then you get an idea of what it must be like to look into this funhouse from the outside. You flee a war-zone and end up sleeping on the floor of some repurposed gym, while the locals scheme madly about how to inject you with their latest mRNA tech.

Dear Ukrainians: You’re entirely right to be terrified of forced vaccination. We are too.

https://twitter.com/BRebellion777/status/1505654134875340800

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Any questions?

More VAERS-Reported Vaccine Deaths In Our Military Than COVID Deaths (Blaze)

Both political parties are salivating to draw our military into the Russia-Ukraine war, but neither of them seems to care about what our own leaders have done to these soldiers. It is now abundantly clear from numerous data points that the shots have caused unimaginable injury among the general population. Military doctors have come forward to show the enormity of this damage in the military, yet the military has chosen to cover it up and tamper with their own health surveillance data in order to conceal the magnitude of the injury. Meanwhile, new data presented in a Florida federal court on behalf of a Navy SEAL demonstrates that, at a minimum, more people died from the shot than from COVID.

On March 10, attorney Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel presented data in court showing 127 VAERS-reported COVID vaccine-related deaths in the military in 2021. That is more than the 93 reported COVID deaths in the military since the beginning of the pandemic. And keep in mind, COVID deaths tend to be overestimated, while VAERS-reported deaths, especially in the military, are underreported. Even CDC researchers recently conceded that “the actual rates of myocarditis per million doses of vaccine are likely higher than estimated” by VAERS reports. The military VAERS data was initially discovered by Dr. Jessica Rose, a biologist and mathematician who has likely published more information on VAERS than anyone in the world. VAERS has a box to check for those in the military to select upon submission, and she counted 127 reported deaths stemming from service members in 2021.

This safety signal from the universal reporting system is the most significant evidence to date that the DMED (Defense Medical Epidemiology Data) specifically monitoring the military, as originally presented by the whistleblowers, was correct when it showed a massive surge in injuries ranging from neurological and cardio to cancers and immune disorders. According to the military, though, the 2016-2020 baseline used by the whistleblowers was plagued by a glitch just at the time these military doctors pulled the information (not before and not after!) and the numbers for those years were always as high as those in 2021. The problem is that the VAERS data, by definition, indicate that 2021 had to have experienced a surge in injuries. It’s just a question of how much. Here is the VAERS data for vaccine-related hospitalizations in 2021 compared to previous years.

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As another guy killed himself after he was told ‘he would not receive a fair trial in this town’.

He Faces 20 Years For Jan 6. His Lawyers Say He Just Went To Protest. (DW)

Knowlton, now 41, has recruited a team of high-profile attorneys who hope the court examines the evidence without judging him by the actions of other defendants. They view his case as having major First Amendment implications. “He went to Washington to exercise his First Amendment right to petition the government for what he believed was a redress of grievances,” Alan Dershowitz, an attorney for Knowlton, told The Daily Wire in an interview. “And he’s been lumped together with people who caused damage or who intended to obstruct. He wasn’t intending to do that. He just intended to protest.” A few minutes before Knowlton entered the Capitol, police held the door for a group of protesters inside who exited through the Upper West Terrace. Soon after, another protestor held the exterior door open and waved for others to flood in.

The defendant’s lawyers say Knowlton heard a message echo through the crowd that officers were allowing people inside. Surveillance footage shot inside the Capitol after Knowlton entered corroborates that officers were shaking hands with protestors — furthering an argument held by some January 6 defense attorneys that police did not take necessary steps to protect the building. At 2:51 p.m., Knowlton and a group walked peacefully with an “officer escort” and left two minutes later, according to a memo based on discovery. Hundreds of protestors trekked through the Upper West Terrace doors, as officers turned their backs, until 2:47 p.m. The U.S. Capitol Police declined to comment. Knowlton’s attorneys cite judicial precedent as a key factor in showing his innocence. He was nonviolent and not “stopped or told by any officer” that his conduct was “unlawful or prohibited in any way,” they say.

But arguably the most significant prosecution flaw, the lawyers say, is the DOJ’s decision to prosecute him for obstructing a congressional “proceeding.” Ronald Sullivan, who directs Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Institute and is an attorney for Knowlton, called it “a unique” and “unprecedented use of the statute.” Section 1512, which carries a hefty sentence and could have the effect of “strongly encouraging defendants to accept plea bargains,” has never before been applied to protests “of this sort, or any sort,” Sullivan said in an interview. David Warrington, a constitutional lawyer who is a partner at Dhillon Law Group, told The Daily Wire that the statute relates to things like the destruction or alteration of evidence and witness tampering — not an electoral certification.

Warrington said its usage by the DOJ against defendants who trespassed, vandalized, or committed violence is “unprecedented” and an “expansion” of its scope. Lawyers who The Daily Wire interviewed questioned whether the certification of an election even constitutes an “official proceeding.”

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By 2024, the US may be a complete disaster. You want to inherit that?

Donald Trump’s PAC Has More Cash Than Republicans, Democrats Combined (NW)

Former President Donald Trump’s “Save America” political action committee has more cash on hand than the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) combined, according to financial data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Kenneth Vogel, a journalist with The New York Times, noted the disparity between Trump’s PAC and the committees’ funds in a tweet on Monday. Vogel said that FEC records show Save America reported $110.4 million in cash on hand as of February 28, compared to the DNC’s $52.9 million and the RNC’s $24.5 million. Trump has suggested multiple times since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021 that he might mount another run at the White House in 2024, though he has not yet officially announced a campaign.

However, he’s held multiple “Save America” rallies and proven to be the most prodigious fundraiser within the GOP. Though he legally cannot use the PAC funds directly for a comeback race, he’s allowed to use the money toward such political expenses as television ads and investing in his own businesses. On Sunday, Bloomberg reported that although Trump’s war chest has grown, he has not yet donated any of the money from it in 2022 to the dozens of candidates he’s endorsed in upcoming elections. “Trump has endorsed GOP candidates at the federal, state and local level, focusing on those who support his baseless claims the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him or are challenging Republican incumbents who opposed him,” Bloomberg’s Bill Allison wrote. “He’s championed more than 130 candidates since leaving the White House, more than half of whom are running for federal office.”

Allison also noted that while Save America has given $350,500 to candidates since July, 2021, it has not reported making a single donation in 2022. In a separate story in February, Allison wrote in Bloomberg that Save America spent $838,000 “on event staging and related expenses in January.”

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Thanks for telling us now, Bill.

Barr: Biden ‘Lied To The American People’ About His Son Hunter’s Emails (NYP)

Former US Attorney General Bill Barr on Monday accused President Biden of having “lied to the American people” during a presidential debate when he called the Post’s exposure of his son Hunter Biden’s emails “a Russian plant.” During an appearance on Fox News, Barr said, “I was very disturbed during the debate when candidate Biden lied to the American people about the laptop.” “He’s squarely confronted with the laptop, and he suggested that it was Russian disinformation and pointed to the letter written by some intelligence people that was baseless — which he knew was a lie,” Barr said. “And I was shocked by that.”

The comments from Barr — who recently authored a tell-all memoir, “One Damn Thing After Another,” that’s critical of former President Donald Trump — came after the New York Times last week said emails it obtained had been authenticated by sources familiar with them and with the federal probe into Hunter Biden’s taxes. The Times and other media outlets previously denigrated The Post’s exclusive reporting on the emails, saying the material hadn’t been independently verified. During the Oct. 22, 2020, debate, Trump suggested the emails showed Biden was “a corrupt politician” and called his scandal-scarred son’s computer “the laptop from hell.”

Biden responded that “there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what this, he’s accusing me of, is a Russian plant.” “They have said that this has all the characteristics — four, five former heads of the CIA, both parties — say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage.” Last week, only five of 51 former officials — including former National Security Director Jim Clapper — told The Post they still stood by an Oct. 19, 2020, public statement that said the release of the emails had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Five others declined to comment, while 39 signers didn’t respond and two couldn’t be contacted.

Biden 2016

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10% for the Big Guy.

White House Ignores Its Hunter Problem (Devine)

It is hardly vindication of The Post’s flawless reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop that 17 months late, the New York Times has admitted the laptop is real. It is an indictment of the Times and a betrayal of their readers who were kept in the dark about the true nature of Joe Biden before the 2020 election. But now that we are all on the same page, there are some serious questions the administration needs to answer, which go to America’s national security at a time of international peril. President Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, refused to answer The Post’s White House reporter, Steven Nelson, when he had the rare opportunity to ask her two of those questions last week. Psaki’s excuse was that Hunter Biden “doesn’t work in the government.” But she wasn’t being asked about Hunter. She was being asked about her boss, the president.

“How is President Biden navigating conflicts of interest when it comes to sanctioning people who have done business with his family?” asked Nelson. “What would be his conflicts of interest?” Psaki coolly replied. Well, just for starters, Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina, who paid $3.5 million into a bank account associated with Hunter and his business partner Devon Archer, was not sanctioned along with other oligarchs allied with President Vladimir Putin this month. Why not? Was it an oversight? A favor? It’s a serious question that deserves a serious answer. Baturina wired $3.5 million on Feb. 14, 2014, to Rosemont Seneca Thornton, a consortium formed between Rosemont Seneca — the firm co-founded by Hunter, Archer and Chris Heinz — and the Thornton Group.

Baturina’s wires were flagged in “suspicious activity reports” provided by the Treasury Department to a Senate Republican inquiry by the Finance and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committees. Hunter’s lawyer has denied Hunter profited from the transaction, telling CNN: “The claim that he was paid $3.5 million is false.” So who received the $3.5 million and did they pay tax on it? Seven weeks after Baturina’s wire transfer, Hunter and Archer flew to Lake Como, Italy, and had a meeting with her at Villa d’Este, a favorite haunt of Russian oligarchs. A year later, in April 2015, Baturina and her husband, the former corrupt mayor of Moscow and political ally of Putin, Yury Luzhkov, would appear on a guest list Hunter prepared for a dinner at Washington’s Cafe Milano where his father, then VP, would meet with his son’s overseas business partners from Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

After The Post published details of that dinner last year, the White House quietly admitted to a Washington Post fact-checker that Biden did attend the dinner, but only briefly. That’s a pretty important admission, because during the election campaign, Biden repeatedly denied meeting Hunter’s overseas business partners. Specifically, he denied meeting Hunter’s Ukrainian paymaster, Vadym Pozharskyi, who also was invited to the dinner. Pozharskyi was an executive of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, owned by Russia-aligned oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, who was paying Hunter $83,333 a month. “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together,” Pozharskyi wrote in an email to Hunter on April 17, 2015, two days after the dinner.

That email, found on Hunter’s abandoned laptop, was the basis of the bombshell story The Post published three weeks before the 2020 election. It was that email that 51 former intelligence officials declared without evidence, in a partisan letter issued five days after The Post’s story, had all the “hallmarks” of Russian disinformation. Biden used that letter from the Dirty 51 to get off the hook in an election-eve debate against President Donald Trump. He called The Post’s reporting a “bunch of garbage” and the laptop a “Russian plant.”

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Nov 202021
 
 November 20, 2021  Posted by at 9:14 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , ,  40 Responses »


Jean-Francois Millet In the Auvergne 1869

 

German States With Higher Vaccination Rates Have Highest Excess Mortality (RS)
Official UK Data Says COVID Infection Rates Higher in Vaxxed Than Unvaxxed (SN)
Covid Rates Take Germany To ‘Nationwide State Of Emergency’ (RT)
Mathew Crawford: The Vaccines Are Useless (Steve Kirsch)
Kirsch Offers Newsom ‘Unlimited’ Money To Prove Booster Didn’t Harm Him (JTN)
COVID Is Over -If You Want It- (QTR)
Head of German Clinic Commits Suicide: “COVID-19 Vaccine Is a Genocide” (StN)
Seven Hurt As Netherlands Police Fire On Anti-lockdown Rioters (DM)
Onward Into Darkness (Kunstler)
Army to Begin Forcing Out Soldiers Who Refuse COVID Vaccine (DOne)
Rittenhouse Aquittal: The Ancient Right of Self Defense (NYSun)

 

 

 

 

The experts
https://twitter.com/i/status/1461750873445568515

 

 

Compulsory vaccination is a crime against humanity!

Violation of:
1) Nuremberg Code
2) UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (art.6).
3) UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (art. 7).
4) UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (art. 3).

 

 

Google translate.

“The excess mortality increases with the increase in the vaccination rate”

German States With Higher Vaccination Rates Have Highest Excess Mortality (RS)

The physicist Dr. Ute Bergner, who formerly belonged to the FDP parliamentary group in the Thuringian state parliament, has meanwhile switched to the Citizens for Thuringia party, held on November 17. A speech in front of the Thuringian state parliament in which she presented an analysis she had commissioned. She commissioned two statisticians to investigate whether there was a connection between the vaccination rate and excess mortality in the 16 federal states. Prof. Dr. Rolf Steyer and Dr. Gregor Kappler analyzed the period from week 36 to week 40.

The results are alarming. The summary of the analysis states: Excess mortality can be found in all 16 states. The number of Covid deaths reported by the RKI in the period under review consistently only represents a relatively small part of the excess mortality and above all cannot explain the critical issue: • The higher the vaccination rate, the higher the excess mortality. The most direct explanation is: • Complete vaccination increases the likelihood of death.

Of course, more indirect explanations are possible: • The higher the proportion of old people, the higher the vaccination rate and excess mortality. Therefore, the vaccination rate and excess mortality also correlate. (This explanation is not very plausible, however, as the proportion of old people would have to have changed significantly between 2016-2020 on the one hand and 2021 on the other.) • Higher vaccination rates are achieved through increased stress and anxiety in the country concerned, and the latter lead to higher numbers of deaths.

[..] For the statisticians among you: The correlation coefficient is +0.31. In the eyes of the two scientists this is “astonishingly high”. Especially since the sign is wrong. Actually, we expect a different relationship: the more vaccinations, the lower the mortality. After all, the intention of the “vaccination” is to protect people. Now the connection is positive: “The excess mortality increases with the increase in the vaccination rate”. This requires urgent clarification, demand the two statisticians. Furthermore, in view of “the pending political measures aimed at containing the virus […] this figure is worrying and requires explanation if further political measures are to be taken with the aim of increasing the vaccination rate”.

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Infection rates, excess mortality: the vaccines make everything worse.

Official UK Data Says COVID Infection Rates Higher in Vaxxed Than Unvaxxed (SN)

The Spectator has published an article citing official data from Public Health England, which states that for the over 30’s, “the rates of Covid infection per 100,000 are now higher among the vaxxed than the unvaxxed.” Well, this is awkward. The article, written by Lionel Shriver, is titled ‘The absurd theatre of vaccine passports’. It points out that according to official data, vaccines only offer about 17 per cent protection for the over-fifties. “As I observed then, this would mean the vaxxed and unvaxxed pose a comparable danger to each other,” writes Shriver. “All Covid apartheid schemes are therefore insensible.” She then clearly explains how the official data undermines the entire argument behind vaccine passports, which ban the unvaccinated from entering innumerable venues.

“Fresher information has fortified this conclusion of the summer. In every age group over 30 in the UK, the rates of Covid infection per 100,000 are now higher among the vaxxed than the unvaxxed. Indeed, in the cohorts aged between 40 and 79, infection rates among the vaccinated are more than twice as high as among the unvaccinated. PHE’s fruitlessly rechristened body, the UK Health Security Agency, frantically clarifies that the data ‘should not be used to estimate vaccine effectiveness’, a caveat which I include for the sake of accuracy. But the differences in the infection rates are drastic enough for you to draw your own conclusions.” Shriver then summarizes how that data demolishes the reason for implementing vaccine passport schemes.


“Gatekeeping of pleasure palaces promotes the wrong impression — statistically, the lie — that the unvaccinated riff-raff exiled to the pavement pose a far graver threat of communicable disease than the diners in the nearby banquette who, like you, have righteously got the shot. In truth, the double-jabbed airline passenger in 24A can be just as risky a seat-mate as the great unwashed banished from the flight.” Meanwhile, the Times reports the results of another study which “found the double-jabbed are just as likely to pass on Covid-19 as unvaccinated people.” After Public Health England published the data, government bureaucrats begin to panic that people would use it to suggest vaccines were not that effective. Office for Statistics Regulation director Ed Humpherson called an urgent meeting with U.K. Health Security Agency during which he worried about the data having “the potential to mislead.” “We noted that these data have been used to argue that vaccines are ineffective,” Humpherson subsequently wrote.

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Vaccine failure writ large.

Covid Rates Take Germany To ‘Nationwide State Of Emergency’ (RT)

Germany has been plunged into a “nationwide state of emergency” because of its current high level of Covid infections, acting health minister Jens Spahn has said. He also refused to rule out further lockdowns. “The situation is serious, the dynamic is unbroken,” Spahn told a press conference Friday. “The incidence has increased fivefold in four weeks. We see sadly high values in the death rate. We are in a national emergency.” Spahn refused to rule out the possibility of another lockdown, saying that in such a drastic health situation “we can’t rule anything out”. The head of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Lothar Wieler, added to the gloomy picture by saying that “all of Germany is one big outbreak,” with an estimated half a million active Covid cases in the country – and numbers rising.


For the third day in a row, more than 50,000 cases have been registered in the country, while the death toll in Germany since the start of the pandemic is above 98,700, according to figures compiled by the RKI. Wieler added that with many hospitals already overwhelmed, more should be done to tackle the spread of the virus. Besides obvious measures such as vaccination and wearing masks, he also suggested closing poorly-ventilated bars. On Thursday, lawmakers in the Bundestag approved new measures in the fight against coronavirus, including requirements to prove vaccination status, a negative test or proof of recovery from infection before employees can access communal workspaces or use public transport. The measures will have to be passed by the upper house before they can take effect. Neighboring Austria announced on Friday that it would enter full lockdown as of Monday, November 22.

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Long interview. But two interesting guys.

Mathew Crawford: The Vaccines Are Useless (Steve Kirsch)

Statistician Mathew Crawford talks to me about why he believes that the vaccines are completely ineffective based on the data. He also talks about gaming of the clinical trials to make the data look good when in fact the vaccines are killing people who are more susceptible to the virus which then makes the survivors look more immune. This is a long interview, but if you really want to understand the games that are being played and how the medical community is fooled, you’ll want to listen to the interview.

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“We’d make the Guinness Book of World Records for highest price ever paid for a blank piece of paper!”

Kirsch Offers Newsom ‘Unlimited’ Money To Prove Booster Didn’t Harm Him (JTN)

When California Gov. Gavin Newsom disappeared from public view for nearly two weeks after getting his COVID-19 vaccine booster — missing even a Zoom appearance for the United Nations climate summit — his administration denied speculation he’d had an adverse reaction to the shot. The tech industry veteran who coinvented the optical mouse and is now funding COVID early treatment research didn’t buy the official explanation, speculating Newsom had developed Bell’s palsy from the shot. Steve Kirsch is now making escalating financial offers to the Democrat to publicly disclose “any and all vaccine-related conversations” with his doctors, and documentation including medical records, since his booster shot.


“If you are telling the truth, you have absolutely nothing to lose” Kirsch wrote in his newsletter Monday. “Our doctors will not be able to tell me anything since there is nothing to tell!” He started with a $1 million offer to Newsom, raising that to $5 million on Wednesday and “name your price” on Thursday. That latest offer was made to Newsom’s wife Jennifer in a private email, he said. “No response so far?” Kirsch wrote. “Wow. Unlimited $ for a blank piece of paper. I’m impressed. We’d make the Guinness Book of World Records for highest price ever paid for a blank piece of paper!” Newsom can also respond to Kirsch’s challenge and have the money donated to a charity, the philanthropist said. “If Gavin ignores my offer, I will start billboard/newspaper/ online advertising.”

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“Together, we have dealt with an assault on our senses for nearly two years and, this holiday season, it’s time to just let that shit go..”

COVID Is Over -If You Want It- (QTR)

To me, it feels like the nation is on the verge of collectively exhaling after what can only be described as a physically arduous and psychologically burdensome 24 months. We’ve lost some family and friends, we’re all a couple years older, our perspectives have shifted – yet, if you’re reading this, you’re one of the billions of members of the human race relentlessly marching forward. Together, we have dealt with an assault on our senses for nearly two years and, this holiday season, it’s time to just let that shit go. Worse than the virus itself has been the continued incessant reminders to get vaccinated, two-faced mask requirements from hypocritical politicians, spurious and useless mandates and individuals and businesses who suffered personal or economic losses.

The psychological toll from Covid easily rivals, if not surpasses, the physical toll we have paid. And why wouldn’t it be? Every day, the mainstream media brutalizes us with new sensationalist claims about how Covid is waiting around the corner with a gun, getting ready to shoot us in the face in our own homes if we do something as meaningless as use a one-way door labeled “Exit” to enter a building. And if the virus doesn’t shoot us (hyperbole), the government might (less hyperbole). Just ask Australia. What have we been rewarded with, as a nation – as a human race – for obeying all of these rules? We have been lied to and deceived at almost every instance possible.

There have been deceptions about herd immunity, Dr. Fauci has lied willingly about whether or not he helped fund gain of function research, the media has lied about potentially efficacious Covid treatments, FDA staff have resigned in protest over pressure to approve boosters and the stocks of companies like Moderna have gone through the roof. Yesterday was another day that I woke up and watched the mainstream media narrative alternate between trying to scare the shit out of people and complete and total implosion. Almost one year to the day after President Biden said “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations,” the following headline made its way onto MSNBC.

The article read: “What we’re starting to see now is an uptick in hospitalizations among people who’ve been vaccinated but not boosted,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease, said Tuesday in an interview. Surprise, surprise. The goalposts have been moved again. Oh, and look: vaccination status continues to be pushed as controversial.

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YouTube is censoring his video and his farewell letter.

Head of German Clinic Commits Suicide: “COVID-19 Vaccine Is a Genocide” (StN)

On Tuesday, Dr Thomas Jendges, Head of the Chemnitz Clinic, committed suicide by jumping from the top of the clinic’s building in Flemmingstrasse, Germany, according to Bild . He was 55 years old. The Doctor died on the spot from his injuries. Jendges had only been appointed sole managing Director of the Chemnitz Clinic since October 1st 2021. Since April, he was acting as Managing Director of East Germany’s largest municipal hospital. Sven Schulze explained on Tuesday afternoon, on the city’s website that, the Chemnitz Clinic, despite the tragic death of Dr. Thomas Jendges is still able to act. Schulze: “The expanded management team will be in charge of business in the coming days.” “It is with great dismay that I have just learned of the tragic death of Dr. Thomas Jendges’ experience. Last night (Monday, ed) we talked at length about the difficult situation of the crown “, said the mayor of Chemnitz Sven Schulze (50, SPD) on Tuesday morning.

Reports of a letter that the deceased alledgly left behind are circulating. Jendges alledgly killed himself to set an example against the corona vaccinations. These are “bio-warfare agents”, so it says in the postings. He is also said to have described the vaccine in his letter as genocide and a crime against humanity”, according to Tag24. According to Las repúblicas, In the lengthy farewell letter Dr. Thomas Jendges wrote before his suicide and demanded its publication, he is said to have harshly criticized the information policy of governments in dealing with the dangerousness of Covid vaccines. The constant lies and deceit to the patient and the vaccinated that the vaccines are supposedly harmless, he could no longer bear them, it is said in the letter.

He condemns vaccinating the population with experimental and lethal vaccines against Covid-19, which is in fact more of a biological warfare agent created and manipulated for that use, than for any other known utility. For Dr. Thomas Jendges a genocide and a crime against humanity is taking place, they report that he says the letter, according to the German press such as the Bild newspaper. Because the mayor threatened to fire him if he no longer stayed in the submissive line imposed by government order and refused to vaccinate patients at the clinic, there were presumably no more options for Jendges. This director has not wanted to support a crime of the federal government, the state government and his faithful henchmen.

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Giant vaccine failure.

Seven Hurt As Netherlands Police Fire On Anti-lockdown Rioters (DM)

Seven people have been hurt after Dutch police fired on anti-lockdown rioters on Friday night, amid rising anger at the re-introduction of European Covid-19 measures. Police confirmed the injuries in Rotterdam on Friday and said they had fired both ‘warning shots’ and directly at protesters – but did not say if live ammunition or rubber bullets were fired. Local media reported that at least 20 people were arrested. Police also fired water cannons to disperse demonstrators who lit fires and set off fireworks in one of Rotterdam’s main shopping streets, one week after the new Covid-19 measures came into force.

The violent scenes came amid a rising anger at coronavirus measures across Europe, with Austria making vaccines mandatory and introducing a full lockdown from Monday, and German ministers not ruling out following its neighbour’s lockdown lead. Restrictions have also been placed on the unvaccinated in Germany – where they have been banned from Restaurants – as well as in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Video from social media appeared to show a person being shot in Rotterdam, but there was no immediate word on what happened. Police said in a tweet that it was ‘still unclear how and by whom’ the person was apparently shot.

Local media reported seven people were injured and at least 20 were arrested, with one eyewitness – a press photographer – telling De Telegraaf they saw shell casings ‘everywhere on the floor’. Police spokesperson Patricia Wessels confirmed that police fired shots, though it was not immediately clear what type of rounds were fired. ‘We fired warning shots and there were also direct shots fired because the situation was life-threatening,’ she said. ‘We know that at least two people were wounded, probably as a result of the warning shots, but we need to investigate the exact causes further.’

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“Dr. Fauci’s vaccines undermine immune systems, making the vaxxed more susceptible to disease, and not just the illness called Covid-19, but to disease generally, including cancer..”

Onward Into Darkness (Kunstler)

Tripping over the doorsill into “Joe Biden’s” dark winter, what do you see out in the gathering gloom? That old Shining City on a Hill is looking more like Detroit in a sleet-storm, with dumpster fires sputtering here and there in the broken streets. The darkness descending is something more ominous than any ordinary night. In the shadows, an insectile legion seems to be stealing away with what remains of your country. Was it reassuring to see Dr. Anthony Fauci declare on MSNBC: “What we’re starting to see now is an uptick in hospitalizations among people who have been fully vaccinated but not boosted”?


And the moral of that story? Get more of the same thing that’s not working — and if you don’t volunteer to get it, maybe we can find a way to force you. How does this lying prick get to remain as America’s chief public health officer? Has he not done enough damage? In case you can’t put it together, that “uptick” is happening because Dr. Fauci’s vaccines undermine immune systems, making the vaxxed more susceptible to disease, and not just the illness called Covid-19, but to disease generally, including cancer, and to all kinds of mischief and mayhem around the organs as well. Now, in the gathering darkness of winter, we’ll see how far this “uptick” goes and whether public opinion will flip over the dastardly trick that’s been played on it.

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“We are getting to this point where the federal government and state governments are essentially fighting over who has control of the [National Guard]..”

Army to Begin Forcing Out Soldiers Who Refuse COVID Vaccine (DOne)

Soldiers who refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccine and have not requested an exemption will no longer be allowed to re-enlist or be promoted, effectively ending their military careers. The new directive applies to active-duty troops as well as reservists and National Guardsmen, including those serving in states whose governors do not require the vaccine. The Nov. 16 memo, signed by Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, says troops’ service records will be flagged the day they make their final vaccine refusal, which follows a meeting with a medical professional and a secord order to get vaccinated. This flag will bar them from being promoted, reenlisting, continuing to receive enlistment bonuses, attending service-related schools, or receiving tuition assistance.

“I authorize commanders to impose bars to continued service…for all soldiers who refuse the mandatory vaccine order without an approved exemption or pending exemption request,” Wormuth wrote in the memo. “The Soldier will remain flagged until they are fully vaccinated, receive an approved medical or administrative exemption, or are separated from the Army.” The issue of vaccinating the force, including the hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the Army National Guard, has come to a head in recent days. Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt has rebuffed President Joe Biden’s directive that all federal employees, including troops in uniform, be vaccinated, and his state’s adjutant general has told Oklahoma National Guardsmen that they need not comply with the directive.

“We are getting to this point where the federal government and state governments are essentially fighting over who has control of the force,” said Anthony Kuhn, a managing partner at the Tully Rinckey law firm and a New York State Army reservist who specializes in military law. National Guard troops are largely under Title 32 orders, which puts them under the control of their state governors. When they are activated under Title 10, such as when they deploy overseas, they are under federal control. To retain that ready force for overseas missions—for example guard units were heavily relied upon throughout the miltary’s campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan—the federal government foots the bill for those troops even though they report to their governors, complicating who has authority to direct those Guardsmen to be vaccinated.

In 2020, the National Guard was used more heavily than it has been since World War II, with members called up to respond to wildfires, domestic unrest, to give COVID shots and respond to flooding and hurricanes. But the use of the Guard has become more contentious. The issue of who has ultimate authority over the Guard is likely to end up in the courts, said Eugene Fidell, a military law professor at the NYU School of Law.

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Far from over.

Rittenhouse Aquittal: The Ancient Right of Self Defense (NYSun)

The acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse on charges of killing two persons and wounding a third during the riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, will likely go down in history as a broad reaffirmation in America of the ancient right to self defense. Mr. Rittenhouse was ordered by Judge Bruce Schroeder to stand and face the verdict shortly after noon. He stood solemnly, his hands crossed in front of him, until the pronouncement of not guilty on the third charge, when he began to weep. As the fifth acquittal was announced, he collapsed. The verdict was brought in by a jury that — apparently — was uncowed by threats of violence and more riots should it acquit the 18-year-old who had come to Kenosha with a semi-automatic rifle and been pursued by rioters. Mr. Rittenhouse’s actions were caught on video tape that apparently played a role in convincing jurors he acted in self defense.

The video evidence made plain that Mr. Rittenhouse was in a chaotic situation and under physical threat and seemed, prima facie, to undermine the prosecution’s attempts to cast as beyond a reasonable doubt the idea that Mr. Rittenhouse had committed murder. During the trial, Mr. Rittenhouse gave lengthy testimony in his own defense. An effort by the prosecution to suggest that Mr. Rittenhouse’s bearing a weapon in Kenosha was in and of itself a provocation. That notion apparently had little impact on the jury. A misdemeanor charge against Mr. Rittenhouse for carrying the rifle was dropped by the judge during the trial when it turned out the barrel length of the gun he was carrying made it legal. The trial had been marked by controversy. Judge Schroeder was criticized for not allowing the persons Mr. Rittenhouse shot to be described as “victims,” noting that this would tend to prejudice the case against the defendant.

Judge Schroeder himself criticized press coverage of the trial, calling it “really quite frightening.” He was upset at personal attacks on himself, and on the lawyers on both sides. An MSNBC producer was arrested for a traffic incident while trailing a bus carrying the jurors, and Mr. Schroeder banned the network from the courtroom. The judge decried the “grossly irresponsible handling of what comes out of this trial” and said he was rethinking ever again having cameras in the courtroom. And there were other controversies that related directly to due process. One question was in respect of the resolution of a video the prosecution had supplied the defense, which was less clear than the original. Speculation at the time was that this could lead to a mistrial, but the issue was ultimately written off to a technical problem with making and transmitting the digital copy.

Demonstrators had been gathering outside the Kenosha County courthouse in increasing numbers over the week as the jury deliberated, most supporting the prosecution but some also in support of the defense. A few scuffles broke out, and some arrests were made. Overall the mood was peaceful, with the two sides chatting and sharing pizza on Wednesday. Some demonstrators, however, chanted, “If Kenosha don’t get it, shut it down,” raising the prospect of renewed unrest in the wake of an acquittal. “Burn it down” began trending on Twitter, and persons at the courthouse chanted “No justice, no peace.” One demonstrator at the courthouse said after the verdict was announced, “when it’s a state-sanctioned murder, you get to riot!” Five hundred Wisconsin National Guard troops were put on standby earlier this week to deal with possible outbreaks of violence. A Black Lives Matter group announced a peaceful vigil would be held at the courthouse Friday evening.

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

 

Sep 252020
 


Louis Anquetin Avenue de Clichy 1887

 

Durham, Barr, Jensen and DOJ Production to Sidney Powell (CT)
FBI Analysts Bought Insurance Fearing They’d Be Sued For Flynn Case (JTN)
Brennan Overruled Dissenting Analysts Who Said Russia Favored Hillary (RCI)
FBI Investigated Steele Dossier Source As A Possible Russian Spy In 2010 (DC)
McCabe At Center Of Durham’s Probe, Source A Suspected Russian Agent (SAC)
House Dems Prep Bill To Limit Supreme Court Justice Terms To 18 Years (F.)
Hunger In America, Especially For Children, Has “Skyrocketed” (Int.)
UK, France Break Daily COVID Case Record As Europe Braces For 2nd Wave (F.)
Territorial Reach—The 1961 Amendment That Imperils Assange (Lauria)
Assange a ‘Resilient Man’ Not at Risk of Suicide If Extradited – “Expert” (Sp.)
Assange Hearing Day 17 (Craig Murray)
This Is Lake Trump And It Is In Kosovo (GE)

 

 

40 days before the election, US Attorney Jeff Jensen handed over a pile of documents to Michael Flynn attorney Sidney Powell yesterday. They are damning for a lot of people at the FBI, CIA and Obama White House. And this can no longer be labeled a politcal move. Powell published the documents right away, something Jensen and Bill Barr couldn’t have done at this point in time. The docs also show that FBI agents even took out insurance in case they would be sued. It may come in handy. Powell will no longer settle for a full exoneration of Flynn, she will go after the people who set him up, and that includes Obama.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joe Rogan interviews Edward Snowden. Long but recommended.

 

 

Taibbi Putin

 

 

An option I wrote down months ago, but I don’t think I ever finished my piece on Sidney Powell: that Bill Barr knew any of his moves would be labeled “(party) political”, but if he handed over files to Sidney Powell, that would not be possible. Or, rather, he even had Jeff Jensen hand them over.

Durham, Barr, Jensen and DOJ Production to Sidney Powell (CT)

The document production by USAO Jeff Jensen to Michael Flynn attorney, Sidney Powell, provides an opportunity for me to share a detached research opinion from my ongoing time outside the wire in the center of the swamp. No matter what open source information is collected; and no matter what evidence congress can assemble; the toxic political environment in DC is the primary driver of DOJ investigative events. It shouldn’t be, but the reality of action reflects an uncomfortable truth. Here’s my opinion on what is happening.

Attorney General Bill Barr is trying to split the baby against two competing narratives. On one hand there is enough evidence to indict former officials for gross abuses of power, falsifying information to a FISA court (violating fourth amendment protections); manipulating investigative effort for political purposes; weaponizing the intelligence apparatus of the U.S. to target political opposition, and then using their positions to cover-up their corrupt and unlawful conduct. On the other hand there is a current highly toxic political environment; consisting of elected politicians and a fully vested branch of government; attempting to cloud the reality that corrupt former government officials worked hand-in-glove with deceitful media, which includes agents of Lawfare, who collaborated in the effort.

This leads to current DC officials and people within those remaining institutions saying: there are delicate balances. In my opinion, in an effort to thread this needle -and considering the timing of the 2020 election- Bill Barr is using the document production from Missouri USAO Jeff Jensen as a backdoor method to provide the information he will not/cannot put forth in a press conference, report or series of indictments. This is why Jensen is providing new information to Michael Flynn s defense attorney Sidney Powell. The U.S. Attorney General knows Powell will make this information public; therefore Powell becomes a conduit to receive significant amounts of evidence previously hidden by the Special Counsel (Weissmann/Mueller) cover-up operation; the “insurance policy” of sorts.


Barr is essentially funneling information through Powell in lieu of a report which would include much of the same evidence. This is just how all indications align. Occam’s razor. Much of the released information has no direct bearing on Flynn *IF* there was going to be an alternate use of the evidence. Bill Barr is splitting the baby.

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“The new AG might have some questions….then yada yada yada…we all get screwed..”

FBI Analysts Bought Insurance Fearing They’d Be Sued For Misconduct in Flynn Case

FBI analysts working on the Michael Flynn Russia investigation originally planned to end the inquiry in fall 2016 and eventually bought liability insurance fearing they could be sued after their bosses continued to keep the investigation open based on “conspiracy theories,” explosive new text messages showed Thursday. “We all went and purchased professional liability insurance,” one analyst texted on Jan. 10, 2017, just 10 days before Trump took office. “Holy crap,” a colleague responded. “All the analysts too?” “Yep,” the first analyst said. “All the folks at the Agency as well.” “Can I ask who are the most likely litigators?” a colleague responded. “As far as potentially suing y’all.”

“Haha, who knows….I think the concern when we got it was that there was a big leak at DOJ and the NYT among others was going to do a piece,” the original analyst texted back. The explosive messages were attached to a new filing by Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell, who argued to the court that is considering dismissing her client’s guilty plea that the emails show “stunning government misconduct” and “wrongful prosecution.” A hearing is scheduled for next Tuesday. “There was no case against General Flynn,” Powell wrote in the new motion. “There was no crime. The FBI and the prosecutors knew that. This American hero and his entire family have suffered for four years from public abuse, slander, libel, and all means of defamation at the hands of the very government he pledged his life to defend.”


The new FBI evidence was turned over late Wednesday and included a stunning revelation that FBI agents originally planned to close Flynn’s probe, known as Crossfire Razor, on Nov. 8, 2016, nearly a year before he was charged with lying to the FBI. “He said shut down Razor” and “so glad they’re closing Razor,” an FBI official texted that day. “However [redacted] was silent though, so who knows what he will want.” By January, the FBI analysts were alarmed that their agency was engaged in misconduct that could be discovered by President Trump’s new attorney general. “The new AG might have some questions….then yada yada yada…we all get screwed,” one official wrote.

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But how do you prosecute him? Also a job for Sidney Powell?

Brennan Overruled Dissenting Analysts Who Said Russia Favored Hillary (RCI)

Former CIA Director John Brennan personally edited a crucial section of the intelligence report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and assigned a political ally to take a lead role in writing it after career analysts disputed Brennan’s take that Russian leader Vladimir Putin intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump clinch the White House, according to two senior U.S. intelligence officials who have seen classified materials detailing Brennan’s role in drafting the document. The explosive conclusion Brennan inserted into the report was used to help justify continuing the Trump-Russia “collusion” investigation, which had been launched by the FBI in 2016. It was picked up after the election by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who in the end found no proof that Trump or his campaign conspired with Moscow.

The Obama administration publicly released a declassified version of the report — known as the “Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent Elections (ICA)” — just two weeks before Trump took office, casting a cloud of suspicion over his presidency. Democrats and national media have cited the report to suggest Russia influenced the 2016 outcome and warn that Putin is likely meddling again to reelect Trump. The ICA is a key focus of U.S. Attorney John Durham’s ongoing investigation into the origins of the “collusion” probe. He wants to know if the intelligence findings were juiced for political purposes.


[..] The two officials said Brennan, who openly supported Clinton during the campaign, excluded conflicting evidence about Putin’s motives from the report, despite objections from some intelligence analysts who argued Putin counted on Clinton winning the election and viewed Trump as a “wild card.” The dissenting analysts found that Moscow preferred Clinton because it judged she would work with its leaders, whereas it worried Trump would be too unpredictable. As secretary of state, Clinton tried to “reset” relations with Moscow to move them to a more positive and cooperative stage, while Trump campaigned on expanding the U.S. military, which Moscow perceived as a threat.

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So you have the CIA involved -Brennan- and cooperating with the FBI. They had Danchenko in their sights as early as 2005. Did they introduce him to Steele?

FBI Investigated Steele Dossier Source As A Possible Russian Spy In 2010 (DC)

The FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation on the primary source for dossier author Christopher Steele, and considered obtaining a warrant to wiretap him in 2010, according to a document released Thursday. The FBI was also aware of the information about the source, identified elsewhere as Igor Danchenko, by December 2016, according to the document. “This is the most stunning and damning revelation the committee has uncovered,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said in a statement after releasing an FBI memo about the dossier source. The document shows that the FBI considered a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant of Danchenko years before the bureau relied heavily on information that he had provided Steele, a former British spy, to obtain FISAs against Carter Page.

Danchenko is not named in the memo, though is attorney has confirmed to reporters that the Russian national was Steele’s source. The information also could increase concerns that Russian disinformation was fed to Steele, a former MI6 officer who investigated the Trump campaign on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC. A Justice Department inspector general’s report released Dec. 9 said that the FBI received evidence in January and February 2017 that Russian intelligence officers may have fed false information into Steele’s network of sources. Footnotes from the IG report say that two Russian intelligence officers knew in July 2016 that Steele was investigating the Trump campaign.


According to the FBI document, Danchenko had contact with suspected Russian intelligence officers in Washington, D.C. in 2005 and 2006. The document says that the FBI had an investigation into Danchenko open from May 2009 to March 2011, based on an interaction he allegedly had with three employees of an American think tank. Danchenko worked at the time as a Russia analyst for the Brookings Institution, a prominent liberal foreign policy think tank. An employee of the think tank said that another employee, seemingly Danchenko, told others that if they got jobs in the government and obtained classified security clearances, they might be put them in touch with people so they could “make a little extra money.” “The coworker did express suspicion of the employee and had questioned the possibility that the employee might actually be a Russian spy,” the FBI memo says.

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“…were contacted last week by the DOJ and were warned that a “shit storm was heading their way.”..”

McCabe At Center Of Durham’s Probe, Source A Suspected Russian Agent (SAC)

Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Lindsey Graham hinted more than a week ago that more bombshell information regarding the FBI’s handling of its probe into President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia was about to be public. He was right because it was Graham’s committee that discovered the information. A letter released Thursday night by Graham’s committee from Justice Department Attorney General William Barr revealed a declassified summary from the bureau indicating that former British spy Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source in his debunked dossier was believed to be a Russian spy. Not only was the sub source believed to be a spy but the FBI knew about it and had conducted a counterintelligence investigation on the individual.

“In light of this newly declassified information, I will be sending the FISA Court the information provided to inform them how wide and deep the effort to conceal exculpatory information regarding the Carter Page warrant application was in 2016 and 2017,” said Graham. “A small group of individuals in the Department of Justice and FBI should be held accountable for this fraud against the court. I do not believe they represent the overwhelming majority of patriotic men and women who work at the Department of Justice and FBI.” One of those individuals being investigated by Connecticut Prosecutor John Durham is former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired from the FBI by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions for lying to the Inspector General on multiple occasions.

He is now in Durham’s crosshairs, along with multiple other former senior FBI officials that were involved in the investigation, according to a source with direct knowledge. McCabe, along with other FBI officials, withheld that information from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, as well as some of the FBI special agents investigating Trump’s campaign and its alleged ties to Russia, according to the source. “McCabe and others were suppressing information, misrepresenting it or lying about the information that they had in order to purposefully undermine the Trump candidacy and that turned into the predication for undermining the Trump presidency,” said a source with direct knowledge of the situation.


The source, who is familiar with the ongoings of the senior brass at the FBI, told this reporter the FBI Director Christopher Wray, along with Deputy Director David Bowdich, were contacted last week by the DOJ and were warned that a “shit storm was heading their way.” The source alleged that McCabe is now a central figure in Durham’s investigation, along with several other senior FBI officials who were aware of the information but failed to disclose it.

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Everyone’s first reaction: They should limit their own terms.

House Dems Prep Bill To Limit Supreme Court Justice Terms To 18 Years (F.)

Democrats in the House of Representatives will reportedly introduce a bill next week to limit the tenure of U.S. Supreme Court justices to 18 years as Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death puts a spotlight on the partisan fight over vacancies. Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Ca.), Joe Kennedy III (D-Ma.) and Don Beyer (D-Va.) said they plan to introduce the Supreme Court Term Limits and Regular Appointments Act on Tuesday, Khanna told Reuters. “It would save the country a lot of agony and help lower the temperature over fights for the court that go to the fault lines of cultural issues and is one of the primary things tearing at our social fabric,” said Khanna. The bill would limit each president to nominating two justices per four-year term, per Reuters which said it obtained a copy.

It would be the first legislation to set Supreme Court term limits by statute, according to Gabe Roth, the executive director of the judicial advocacy group Fix the Court, who notes Ginsburg’s death has brought more attention to the idea of term limits for the justices, who currently have lifetime appointments, with legal scholars and politicians from both sides of the aisle weighing in with potential proposals. [..] A 77% majority of Americans favor restrictions on the tenure of Supreme Court justices while 23% are against it, according to a recent PBS survey commissioned by Fix the Court.


The survey found that 70% of Republicans, 72% of Democrats and 68% of Independents found the statement, “No one with a position as powerful as Supreme Court justice should serve for life,” either “somewhat” or “very” persuasive. It also found that 70% of Republicans, 73% of Democrats and 68% of Independents were somewhat or very persuaded by the argument that, “Vacancies on the Supreme Court often occur unexpectedly and sporadically; term limits will make it so that vacancies are routine, which will reduce the political gamesmanship around them.”

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But bankers and “investors” are fine.

Hunger In America, Especially For Children, Has “Skyrocketed” (Int.)

The level of hunger in U.S. households almost tripled between 2019 and August of this year, according to an analysis of new data from the Census Bureau and the Department of Agriculture. Even more alarming, the proportion of American children who sometimes do not have enough to eat is now as much as 14 times higher than it was last year. The Agriculture Department conducts yearly studies on food insecurity in the U.S., with its report on 2019 released this month. The Census Bureau began frequent household surveys in April in response to Covid-19 that include questions about hunger.

The analysis, by the Washington, D.C.-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, found that 3.7 percent of U.S. households reported they sometimes or often had “not enough to eat” during 2019. Meanwhile, the most recent Census data from the end of August of this year showed that 10 percent of households said they sometimes or often did not have enough to eat within the past seven days. Levels of food insecurity in Black and Latino households are significantly higher, at 19 percent and 17 percent, respectively, compared to 7 percent in white households. Even worse, while about 1 percent of adults with children said their children sometimes or often went hungry in 2019, between 9 and 14 percent of such adults said the same about their kids in August 2020.


CBPP estimates that this adds up to about 5 million school-aged children in such households. “What I see every day from the pandemic is amazingly-increased numbers of severely underweight children coming to our clinic, and parents really panicked about how they’re going to find enough food,” says Dr. Megan Sandel, an associate professor of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine. [..] The increase in hunger among children is particularly disturbing, for several reasons. Generally, explains Dottie Rosenbaum, another CBPP expert, “parents shield their children.” Sandel says that “parents are reporting to me sometimes at mealtime going back into the kitchen so the kids don’t notice that they are not eating themselves.” So when children are going hungry, there is little food for anyone.

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Greece is preparing military and private hospitals for a patient influx. But tourists from countries like France and Holland, which have huge increases in cases, are still welcome.

UK, France Break Daily COVID Case Record As Europe Braces For 2nd Wave (F.)

Both the United Kingdom and France counted record-breaking new daily coronavirus infections Thursday, and while officials partly credit an increased testing capacity, the numbers point toward a possible second coronavirus wave sweeping across Europe. The U.K. reported a record of 6,634 new coronavirus cases Thursday, the highest number recorded by the country, even before its nationwide lockdown. However, Health Secretary Matt Hancock told Sky News the situation is not as dire as during the peak of the pandemic, when the government estimates that as many as 100,000 people were being infected with the virus per day, though lower testing rates at the time mean the daily infection figures from that period don’t reflect the virus’ true spread.

“Now we estimate that it’s under 10,000 people a day getting the disease,” Hancock said. “That’s too high, but it’s still much lower than in the peak.” Just across the English Channel, France also counted a record-breaking 16,096 new daily cases Thursday, the fourth time the record has been broken in just the past week or so. The news comes just after new coronavirus crackdowns were placed on cities like Paris, Marseilles, Bordeaux and Lyon to help damper a resurgence of new cases after the nationwide lockdown was scaled back. Like in the U.K., French officials say improved testing has meant more infections are being detected and recorded, though the country has seen a worrying trend of increased hospitalizations—the number of coronavirus patients in Paris’ hospitals has doubled over the past few weeks and will likely increase nearly twofold again before October, a Parisian hospital system official told Agence France-Presse.

“Although these numbers reflect more comprehensive testing, it also shows alarming rates of transmission across the region,“ the European director of the World Health Organization Hans Kluge said last week according to the BBC, when daily new cases began to rival the pandemic’s peak in spring. Kluge added that those numbers “should serve as a wake-up call for all of us.” European countries, some of the hardest hit early on in the coronavirus pandemic, were hailed as a model for the rest of the world after their governments enacted strict, nationwide lockdowns that drastically decreased the number of new coronavirus cases. However, many of those successful countries have reported a resurgence of cases in recent months after emerging from lockdown and gradually returning to a more normal life.


Countries like Spain, France, the U.K., The Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria, France and the Netherlands have all counted jumps in cases. The surges of new infections—though not considered as serious as the situation in spring, the peak of the pandemic in Europe—has led to new, often localized crackdowns in a bid to keep new cases at bay. The spikes across the continent have been blamed on young people shunning social distancing guidelines and attending parties after long months of isolation and people going on holiday despite travel warnings. While the European resurgence of the virus is concerning, it is still nowhere near the devastation seen in countries like the United States, which counted its 200,000th coronavirus death this week.

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Should have been banned right there and then.

Territorial Reach—The 1961 Amendment That Imperils Assange (Lauria)

If the original 1917 Espionage Act were still in force, the U.S. government could not have charged WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange under it. The 1917 language of the Act restricted the territory where it could be applied to the United States, its possessions and international waters: “The provisions of this title shall extend to all Territories, possessions, and places subject to the jurisdiction of the United States whether or not continguous thereto, and offenses under this title when committed upon the high seas or elsewhere within the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the United States …” WikiLeaks publishing operations have never occurred in any of these places. But in 1961 Congressman Richard Poff, after several tries, was able to get the Senate t0 repeal Section 791 that restricted the Act to “within the jurisdiction of the United States, on the high seas, and within the United States.”

Poff was motivated by the case of Irvin Chambers Scarbeck, a State Department official who was convicted under a different statute, the controversial 1950 Subversive Activities Control Act, or McCarran Act, of passing classified information to the Polish government during the Cold War. (Congress overrode a veto by President Harry Truman of the McCarran Act. He called the Act “the greatest danger to freedom of speech, press, and assembly since the Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798,” a “mockery of the Bill of Rights” and a “long step toward totalitarianism.” Most of its provisions have been repealed.) Polish security agents had burst into a bedroom in 1959 to photograph Scarbeck in bed with a woman who was not his wife. Showing him the photos, the Polish agents blackmailed Scarbeck: turn over classified documents from the U.S. embassy or the photos would be published and his life ruined. Adultery was seen differently in that era.


Scarbeck then removed the documents from the embassy, which is U.S. territory covered by Espionage Act, and turned them over to the agents on Polish territory, which at the time was not. Scarbeck was found out, fired, and convicted, but he could not be prosecuted under the Espionage Act because of its then territorial limitations. That set Congressman Poff off on a one-man campaign to extend the reach of the Espionage Act to the entire globe. After three votes the amendment was passed. The Espionage Act thus became global, ensnaring anyone anywhere in the world into the web of U.S. jurisdiction. After the precedent being set by the Assange prosecution, it means that any journalist, anywhere in the world, who publishes national defense information is not safe from an Espionage Act prosecution.

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He had not even evaluated Julian.

Assange a ‘Resilient Man’ Not at Risk of Suicide If Extradited – “Expert” (Sp.)

A psychiatrist testifying for the government says that whilst the WikiLeaks publisher is suffering from mild clinical depression he does not think he is a suicide risk if he is extradited to the United States to face espionage charges. A psychiatrist testifying for the US government in the extradition case of Julian Assange told the Old Bailey on 24 September 2020 that in his assessment the WikiLeaks publisher “would be able to resist any suicidal impulse” were he to be sent to the United States. During the examination-in-chief conducted by James Lewis QC, for the prosecution, Dr Nigel Blackwood, Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist with the NHS, explained that he saw Mr Assange in April 2020, in Belmarsh maximum-security prison. The doctor thought Mr Assange was “moderately depressed”, in the clinical sense, though a review of his most recent medical records from Belmarsh leads him to believe that there is some improvement of his state of mind.

Dr Blackwood did not think Mr Assange suffered from a “severe depressive disorder with psychotic symptoms” in November 2019, though he had not himself evaluated Mr Assange at that time and relied in his assessment on other observations made by the prison staff. The doctor, who consults with inmates at Wandsworth prison, notes some risk of suicide but that risk has been very carefully managed in Belmarsh, and the publisher engages closely with treatments to manage that risk. He believes Mr Assange retains the capacity to resist suicide, the court heard. Dr Blackwood says that he disputes that Mr Assange “was at the very severest end of the spectrum” and complains that Professor Michael Kopelman, a defence expert, “did not recognise” that if the treating physician at Belmarsh would have been bound to refer Mr Assange to a secure unit and that that did not occur.


Defence experts told the court earlier in the week that that they believed the risk that Mr Assange may commit suicide if extradited is “high” or even “very high”. Dr Blackwood explained that a person’s description of their own mood and mental state “will definitely be coloured” by their personality and own perspective. He thinks Mr Assange may have had a self-dramatising or hyperbolic approach to describing the symptoms and insisted that one must look very clearly at the psychological records Dr Blackwood also told the court that he has “anxieties” about making an autism diagnosis in a 49-year-old man where there has been no such diagnosis historically, despite Mr Assange’s contact with the medical community earlier in his life.

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“..three psychiatrists and a physician with extensive experience of treating trauma have all testified in court that Assange’s mental and physical condition deteriorated while he was in “healthcare” for several months. ..”

Assange Hearing Day 17 (Craig Murray)

During the hearing of medical evidence the last three days, the British government has been caught twice directly telling important lies about events in Belmarsh prison, each lie proven by documentary evidence. The common factor has been the medical records kept by Dr Daly, head of the jail’s medical services. There has also been, to put it at its very lightest, one apparent misrepresentation by Dr Daly. [..] This is Mr Kemp’s description of the medical wing at Belmarsh: “Security is on another level here with six times more staff per inmate than the rest of the jail.” While in the medical wing or “healthcare”, Julian Assange was in effect in solitary confinement, and three psychiatrists and a physician with extensive experience of treating trauma have all testified in court that Assange’s mental and physical condition deteriorated while he was in “healthcare” for several months.

They also said he improved after he left “healthcare”. That says something profound about the “healthcare” being provided. The same doctors testified that Assange has a poor relationship with Dr Daly and will not confide his symptoms or feelings to her, and this has also been asserted by defence council. That is all essential background to the lies. Now let me come to the lies. Unfortunately to do so I must reveal details of Julian’s medical condition which I had withheld, but I think the situation is so serious I must now do that. I did not report that Professor Michael Kopelman gave evidence that, among other preparations for suicide, Julian Assange had hidden a razor blade in his folded underwear, but this had been discovered in a search of his cell.

As I did report, Kopelman was subjected to an extremely aggressive cross-examination by James Lewis, which in the morning had focused on the notion that Julian Assange’s mental illness was simply malingering, and that Kopelman had failed to detect this. The razor blade was a key factor in Lewis’s browbeating of Kopelman, and he attacked him on it again and again and again. [..] In an attempt to humiliate Kopelman, Lewis said “You say you do not rely on the razor blade for your diagnosis. But you do rely on it. Let us then look at your report. You rely on the razor blade at paragraph 8. You mention it again at paragraph 11a. Then 11c. Then paragraph 14, paragraph 16, 17b, 18a. Then we come to the next section and the razor blade is there at paragraph 27 and 28. Then again in the summary it is at paragraphs 36 and again at paragraph 38. So tell me Professor, how can you say that you do not rely on the razor blade?” [I do not give the actual paragraph numbers; these are illustrative].


Lewis then went on to invite Kopelman to change his diagnosis. He asked him more than once if his diagnosis would be different if there was no razor blade and it were an invention by Assange. Kopelman was plainly unnerved by this attack. He agreed it was “very odd indeed” it was not mentioned in the medical notes if it were true. The plain attack that he had naively believed an obvious lie disconcerted Kopelman. Except it was Lewis who was not telling the truth. There really was a concealed razor blade, and what Assange had told Kopelman, and what Kopelman had believed, was true in every single detail. In a scene straight out of a TV legal drama, during Kopelman’s testimony, the defence had managed to obtain the charge sheet from Belmarsh Prison – Assange had been charged with the offence of the razor blade. The charge sheet is dated 09.00 on 7 May 2019

Read more …

Ha ha! In gold letters please!

This Is Lake Trump And It Is In Kosovo (GE)

It all started as an idea to relax negotiations between Kosovo and Serbia delegations, but the idea to name the Gazivoda/Ujman Lake “Lake Trump” as seen in the photo seems more serious than initially thought. An idea that started as a joke for the Ujman Lake, which Serbs refer to as Gazivoda, to find a compromise name seems to be taking shape. During the negotiations at the White House, the US Presidential envoy for the dialogue, Richard Grenell, gave the idea to name the lake after Trump. Initially everybody laughed with the idea. But not today. Gazeta Express has learned that Kosovo Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti expressed his readiness to support Grenell’s idea at a meeting with him.


The same idea was endorsed also by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic at another meeting. The debate, and later the Agreement, about Ujman Lake have triggered a wave of reactions in Kosovo. Kosovo has reached an agreement with the US for the State Department to carry out a feasibility study on how to share the lake’s resources. The Ujman/Gazivoda Lake is mostly located in Kosovo’s territory but almost 20 percent of it is part of Serbia’s territory. This artificial lake was accumulated decades ago by the “Iber Lepenci” company, back when Kosovo was part of Yugoslavia. After the end of the war in 1999, there was a lot of tension caused about the lake as Kosovo considers it as its own property, while Serbia claims its ownership since part of it is in Serbia.

Read more …

 

 

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Support the Automatic Earth in virustime.

 

Feb 252020
 


Andreas Feininger Production B-17 heavy bomber at Boeing plant, Seattle Dec 1942

 

The Fall of Wuhan (Ben Hunt)
40-70% Of People Will Be Infected With COVID19 – Epidemiologist (Atl.)
Xi Jinping Rings Alarm On Economy As China Shifts Priority To Growth (SCMP)
Confusion In Wuhan As Move To Ease Coronavirus Lockdown Is Reversed (SCMP)
How Iran’s Death Toll Came To Be The Highest Behind Only China (SCMP)
China Overestimating Economic Recovery By Leaving Out Small Businesses (SCMP)
South Korea To Test 200,000 Sect Members As Pandemic Fears Hit Markets (G.)
Virus Spreads Despite Best Efforts Of Top Healthcare Systems (Fox)
Closures Reveal Vast Scale Of China’s Secretive Wildlife Farm Industry (G.)
Why Didn’t We See That Coming? (Kunstler)
Airline Stocks Tumble As Coronavirus Spreads Outside Of China (CNBC)
Weinstein To Face 8 More Allegations After New York Verdict (G.)
US Proposals To Whitewash Idlib Terrorists Unacceptable – Lavrov (RT)
Julian Assange ‘Suicide Risk’ If Extradited From UK To US – Lawyer (SCMP)
Assange Fight Draws In Trump’s New Intel Chief (Pol.)
Julian Assange ‘At High Risk Of Suicide’ If Extradited To US -Lawyer (Ind.)

 

 

Now that the MSM is slowly and finally waking up to the reality of the virus, the information to read and post and comment on, becomes overwhelming. Last week I twice took out the virus-related info to include in separate articles (Virus Rattles if you will), but today I need the extra time doing that involves, for other things.

Still, one observation: yesterday, we saw the highest daily death toll of the entire crisis. Today, we see the lowest. As Xi is pushing hard for the economy. Credibility remains a major issue.

 

Cases 80,328 (+ 621 from yesterday’s 79,707).

Deaths 2,707 (+ 81 from yesterday’s 2,626)

 

From SCMP:

 

 

 

 

From Worldometer:

 

 

Ben Hunt keeps his eyes on the ball:

“..build dedicated treatment wards before they’re required..”

“..protect healthcare professionals before they get sick..”

“..update our testing and diagnostic capabilities before they are swamped..”

“..bolster our healthcare systems BEFORE the need overwhelms the capacity..”

The Fall of Wuhan (Ben Hunt)

Last week I wrote about the corrupt political response of the World Health Organization to COVID-19. This week I’m writing about the corrupt political response of the United States to COVID-19. Because it’s happened before. In August 2005, the city of New Orleans fell. New Orleans did not fall because of Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans fell because of the corrupt political response to Hurricane Katrina. “We can stabilize the situation. Again, I want to thank you all. Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job!” – President George W. Bush. In January 2020, the city of Wuhan fell. Wuhan did not fall because of COVID-19. Wuhan fell because of the corrupt political response to COVID-19.

“Wuhan is a heroic city, and people of Hubei and Wuhan are heroic people who have never been crushed by any difficulty and danger in history. All regions and departments performed their duties actively and conscientiously.” – Xi the Commander (no, I am not making this up; this is how the Xinhua news service describes him now … “Xi the Commander”) A corrupt political response is always the same. It never changes in form. It never changes in function. A corrupt political response occurs when a political leader sacrifices national interest for regime or bureaucratic interest … when a constructed narrative of “Yay, Calm and Competent Control!” is maintained for the political benefit of the Leader at the expense of the Led.

Oh, the Leader and his flunkies will convince themselves that the narrative “is in the public interest” … that the narrative will “buy them time” … that the narrative is necessary because “the other side” would do the same or worse if given half a chance. It’s all the excuses that all the Renfields to all the professional politicians tell themselves as they slowly sell their souls. It’s what every President and every Director-General and every Senator and every CEO eventually comes to believe, that their personal interests are identical to “their” people’s interests.

[..] Every once in a very great while, an honest-to-god crisis reveals the political self-interest and mendacity behind your carefully constructed narrative of “Yay, Calm and Competent Control!” . Like the fall of New Orleans revealed George W. Bush. Like the fall of Wuhan revealed Xi Jinping. What we must prevent today is the NEXT city to fall. We must prevent the fall of Daegu. We must prevent the fall of Qom. We must prevent the fall of Milan. Looking ahead, we must prevent the fall of Yokohama. We must prevent the fall of San Francisco. Because containment has failed. What we’re seeing in South Korea, Iran and Italy is what exponential disease propagation looks like in the real world. Real world data is spiky. Real world data is messy. Real world exponential growth looks like nothing, nothing, nothing … then cluster, cluster, cluster … then BOOM!

[..] Containment has failed. And so now we must fight. As individuals that means social distancing. As individuals that means doing what we can to stay healthy and prepare for a storm. As a nation that means a war-footing to build dedicated treatment wards before they’re required, to protect healthcare professionals before they get sick, to update our testing and diagnostic capabilities before they are swamped … to do everything possible to bolster our healthcare systems BEFORE the need overwhelms the capacity. Above all, that means calling out our leaders for their corrupt political responses to date, and forcing them through our outcry to adopt an effective virus-fighting policy for OUR benefit, not theirs. We got this.

Read more …

2nd-3rd scientist saying this. By then mortality rate will likely be 1% or so. But 1% of a huge number is a huge number in itself.

40-70% Of People Will Be Infected With COVID19 – Epidemiologist (Atl.)

The Harvard epidemiology professor Marc Lipsitch is exacting in his diction, even for an epidemiologist. Twice in our conversation he started to say something, then paused and said, “Actually, let me start again.” So it’s striking when one of the points he wanted to get exactly right was this: “I think the likely outcome is that it will ultimately not be containable.” [..] Lipsitch predicts that, within the coming year, some 40 to 70 percent of people around the world will be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. But, he clarifies emphatically, this does not mean that all will have severe illnesses. “It’s likely that many will have mild disease, or may be asymptomatic,” he said. As with influenza, which is often life-threatening to people with chronic health conditions and of older age, most cases pass without medical care. (Overall, around 14 percent of people with influenza have no symptoms.)

Lipsitch is far from alone in his belief that this virus will continue to spread widely. The emerging consensus among epidemiologists is that the most likely outcome of this outbreak is a new seasonal disease—a fifth “endemic” coronavirus. With the other four, people are not known to develop long-lasting immunity. If this one follows suit, and if the disease continues to be as severe as it is now, “cold and flu season” could become “cold and flu and COVID-19 season.” At this point, it is not even known how many people are infected. As of Sunday, there have been 35 confirmed cases in the U.S., according to the World Health Organization. But Lipsitch’s “very, very rough” estimate when we spoke a week ago (banking on “multiple assumptions piled on top of each other,” he said) was that 100 or 200 people in the U.S. were infected.

That’s all it would take to seed the disease widely. The rate of spread would depend on how contagious the disease is in milder cases. On Friday, Chinese scientists reported in the medical journal JAMA an apparent case of asymptomatic spread of the virus, from a patient with a normal chest CT scan. The researchers concluded with stolid understatement that if this finding is not a bizarre abnormality, “the prevention of COVID-19 infection would prove challenging.” Even if Lipsitch’s estimates were off by orders of magnitude, they wouldn’t likely change the overall prognosis. “Two hundred cases of a flu-like illness during flu season—when you’re not testing for it—is very hard to detect,” Lipsitch said. “But it would be really good to know sooner rather than later whether that’s correct, or whether we’ve miscalculated something.

The only way to do that is by testing.” Originally, doctors in the U.S. were advised not to test people unless they had been to China or had contact with someone who had been diagnosed with the disease. Within the past two weeks, the CDC said it would start screening people in five U.S. cities, in an effort to give some idea of how many cases are actually out there. But tests are still not widely available. As of Friday, the Association of Public Health Laboratories said that only California, Nebraska, and Illinois had the capacity to test people for the virus.

Read more …

The sleight of hand used to argue for factories restarting: “Xi said that as many as 1,396 counties and districts, some 46% of the nation’s total, had not reported a single confirmed case of the coronavirus.”

Xi Jinping Rings Alarm On Economy As China Shifts Priority To Growth (SCMP)

President Xi Jinping has rung the alarm bell on China’s economic growth as worries mount over the coronavirus’ impact on the economy, unemployment and global supply chains. Speaking on Sunday, Xi made it clear that the priority for most of the country was to get the world’s second biggest economy up and running after extensive delays. “It is unavoidable that the novel coronavirus epidemic will have a considerable impact on the economy and society,” said Xi in a lengthy televised address that was watched by as many as 170,000 officials and published by state news agency Xinhua. But Xi, China’s most powerful leader in decades, added the country’s social and economic system “can’t be paused for a long”.


The edited version of Xi’s speech was published soon after it was delivered, reflecting the urgency of the guidelines. Containment measures including mandatory quarantine for workers, partial shutdowns of factories and transport restrictions have caused significant disruptions to the economy, which was already growing at record low levels before the virus outbreak. Xi said that as many as 1,396 counties and districts, some 46 per cent of the nation’s total, had not reported a single confirmed case of the coronavirus. These low-risk zones, along with areas with only a small number of infections, should “comprehensively restore production” and life as usual, he said. “Medium-risk” regions should resume production in an “orderly manner”, while the priority for hard-hit areas like Hubei, the province at the centre of the outbreak, was still containing the virus, he said.

Read more …

Comments about Wuhan from the video:

• 40 portable incinerators X 30 corpses/incinerator/day = 1,200 corpses/day
• 100 additional portable incinerators ordered
• In addition to 47 crematories running in full capacity
• Another 1MM incinerators on the way!

And people tell me I’m exaggerating!

Confusion In Wuhan As Move To Ease Coronavirus Lockdown Is Reversed (SCMP)

Just three hours after announcing that visitors trapped in Wuhan – the Chinese city at the heart of the coronavirus epidemic – could leave on Monday, authorities reversed the decision, saying it had been made without approval. The local government revoked the notice it said had been issued by a subordinate working group from the city’s disease control command centre without approval from their superiors. “The centre, headed by Wuhan mayor Zhou Xianwang, said the officials who had issued the order without authorisation had been reprimanded. “Wuhan resolutely adheres to the spirit of Chinese President Xi [Jinping] … strictly controls every exit from Wuhan and the management of personnel, in order to prevent the spread of the [coronavirus],” it said in a statement retracting the earlier notice.

Extreme lockdown measures have been in place in Wuhan – capital of Hubei and home to 11 million people – since January 23, with all residential areas quarantined and roads and transport links closed. The retracted order would have allowed non-residents who did not have symptoms of the virus and had not had contact with infected patients to leave the city. It had also said locals involved in disease control efforts or essential daily services such as utilities and the delivery of necessities, as well as those who needed specialist medical treatment outside Wuhan, could leave without permission.

[..] More than 75 per cent of deaths in China from the new coronavirus – which causes a disease known as Covid-19 – have been in Wuhan, where the outbreak is believed to have originated in December. [..] According to Taoran Notes, a social media account affiliated with the official Economic Daily newspaper, the earlier notice had been issued by one of Wuhan’s five deputy mayors without authorisation, but it did not name the official.

Read more …

600 “official” cases, 50 deaths. That rhymes with Worldometer’s 9% mortality rate. But sure, it could also mean a huge amount of undetected or unconfirmed cases.

How Iran’s Death Toll Came To Be The Highest Behind Only China (SCMP)

Iran has been thrust to the forefront of rising global concern about the spread of the novel coronavirus after reporting by far the most deaths of any country apart from China. Iranian health officials have confirmed 12 deaths from the Covid-19 disease among 61 cases in the country, while a parliamentarian representing the city at the centre of the outbreak in the country has claimed the death toll stands at 50. Either figure would dwarf death tolls in South Korea, Japan and Italy, until now the most severely-affected countries outside China…

After insisting as recently as last week that the country had no cases of the coronavirus, Iranian authorities on February 19 confirmed the deaths of two elderly people in the city of Qom, about 145km south of the capital Tehran, followed by more fatalities in subsequent days. On February 24, officials raised the death toll to 12, from eight the previous day – making the outbreak in Iran the deadliest outside China. Ahmad Amirabadi Farahani, a lawmaker for the city of Qom, said on the same day there had been in fact 50 deaths, claiming the government was late to announce the outbreak and his city was ill-equipped to deal with the public health emergency.

Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi disputed those claims in a press conference on state television, pledging to resign if the death toll was even one-quarter of the higher figure. [..] After officials earlier speculated about possible sources of the outbreak including Chinese workers and pilgrims from Pakistan, Iran’s health minister Saeed Namaki on Sunday said the contagion was believed to be linked to a merchant from Qom who regularly travelled between Iran and China. The Iranian, who died from the virus, had been using indirect flights to get around a ban on direct flights between the countries introduced at the end of January.

[..] The disproportionately high fatality rate in Iran’s official figures – with about one in five of those infected succumbing to the virus, compared to one in 50 in China – has been taken by some experts as a sign the true number of cases in the country is far higher than currently known. Assuming a fatality rate of about 2 per cent, the official death toll so far would translate into about 600 cases overall in Iran, about 10 times the current count.

Read more …

More sleight of hand. I’ve been saying for a long time that it’s sbout SMEs, not Apple suppliers. Small firms account for at least 80% of jobs.

China Overestimating Economic Recovery By Leaving Out Small Businesses (SCMP)

China’s economic recovery amid the coronavirus outbreak has likely been overstated as data only covers larger companies and excludes the vast majority of the smaller workshops and manufacturers. [..] On Monday, National Development and Reform Commission spokesman Cong Liang said that over 90 per cent of industrial enterprises in Zhejiang province, one of the country’s top manufacturing bases, had resumed operation. According to Cong, over 70 per cent of production in the manufacturing and export hubs of Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong and Liaoning had also restarted. However, the official figures only cover larger firms, namely enterprises with capacities “above state designated sizes”, which are enterprises that have a minimum annual turnover of 20 million yuan (US$2.85 million), according to the government’s official definition.


China’s state statistics system normally only covers industrial enterprises with an annual turnover above this level as they accounted for around 90 per cent of the nation’s output in terms of value. In addition, the figures concerning firms that have resumed operation overlook the level of production within a specific factory, as the official data classes a factory that may have only resumed slightly more than half of its capacity as having resumed production. [..] The smaller firms, for example, are often unable to met virus prevention conditions set by local governments, including having enough facial masks for employees. A monthly survey of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China, conducted by Standard Chartered Bank for the period up to the start of last week, found that firms were on average operating at 42 per cent, while only 47 per cent of workers had returned on average.

Read more …

Please imagine how you would test 200,000 people. Do they really have that many test kits? Where do they buy them?

South Korea To Test 200,000 Sect Members As Pandemic Fears Hit Markets (G.)

South Korea has stepped up its “maximum measures” to contain the coronavirus with plans to test around 200,000 members of a secretive church believed to be at the centre of the country’s outbreak. Along with an emergency budget and a crackdown on the hoarding of face masks, the government in Seoul will test members of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus after its founder agreed to provide authorities with the names of all its members in the country. It came as financial markets saw more heavy losses across Asia Pacific on Tuesday over fears the coronavirus was spreading more widely from China and will cause disruption in countries such as South Korea, the world’s 12th biggest economy.

The Nikkei in Tokyo was down 3.3% while the Shanghai Composite sank 2%. Stocks in Australia fell 1.6% and Hong Kong was also in the red although futures trading pointed to a recovery later in the day in European and US markets. In Japan, a fourth person from the Diamond Princess cruise ship died and the country’s education minister said schools with reported coronavirus cases should be temporarily closed. Koichi Hagiuda told reporters on Tuesday that education boards of Hokkaido in northern Japan and Chiba City near Tokyo have been told to take this preventive measure, NHK says.

In China, where 71 new deaths and 508 new cases were reported on Tuesday, health officials said strict control and prevention measures would remain in place in Hubei province, the epicentre of the global outbreak. The national health commission added it would also strictly control the outbound movement of people in Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province with existing traffic controls. At Tianjin University, near Beijing, scientists said they had developed an oral vaccine for Covid-19. The professor who led the project, Huang Jinhai, said the vaccine could also serve as a potential therapy for infected patients. Chinese state media said the university was looking for partners to run clinical trials.

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” South Korea has a fantastic health care system. They tested over 20,000 people and ended up with over 800 positive cases. That’s showing that this is a highly contagious virus..”

Virus Spreads Despite Best Efforts Of Top Healthcare Systems (Fox)

Fears of a global pandemic continue to grow as coronavirus cases spike in several countries, including Italy, South Korea and Iran, as the U.S. stock market nosedived early Monday. A staggering 50 people died in the Iranian city of Qom from the new coronavirus in the month of February, Iran’s semiofficial ILNA news agency reported on Monday. The new death toll is significantly higher than the latest number of confirmed cases that Iranian officials had reported just a few hours earlier, which stood at just 12 deaths out of 47 cases, according to state TV. The 50 deaths date back as far as Feb. 13, according to an Iranian official. Iran previously reported its cases and deaths from the virus on Feb. 19.


Authorities are struggling to contain and understand the outbreak in those countries, where infected cases have skyrocketed as they have increased over 2,000 percent in the past couple of weeks. Italy is considered the site of Europe’s first major outbreak and the largest outside of Asia. The number of infected cases jumped to 152, compared to just three 10 days ago. Siegel told anchor Ed Henry that it’s even “more concerning” to hear there are more than 800 cases reported in South Korea. “I’ve been saying that it’s all about health care infrastructure, that China doesn’t have it, we have it, other Western countries have it. Well, guess what, South Korea has a fantastic health care system. They tested over 20,000 people and ended up with over 800 positive cases. That’s showing that this is a highly contagious virus that is spreading despite the best efforts of top health systems to contain it,” he said.

Read more …

China is also the main market for many endangered species from elsewhere in the world. Can we please stop that too? Just boycott the country for allowing rhino, tiger and elephant body parts trade. Full boycott. Here’s our chance..

Closures Reveal Vast Scale Of China’s Secretive Wildlife Farm Industry (G.)

Nearly 20,000 wildlife farmsraising species including peacocks, civet cats, porcupines, ostriches, wild geese and boar have been shut down across China in the wake of the coronavirus, in a move that has exposed the hitherto unknown size of the industry. Until a few weeks ago wildlife farming was still being promoted by government agencies as an easy way for rural Chinese people to get rich. But the Covid-19 outbreak, which has now led to over 1,800 deaths and more than 72,000 known infections, is thought to have originated in wildlife sold at a market in Wuhan in early December, prompting a massive rethink by authorities on how to manage the trade. China issued a temporary ban on wildlife trade to curb the spread of the virus at the end of January and began a widespread crackdown on breeding facilities in early February.


The country’s top legislative officials are now rushing to amend the country’s wildlife protection law and possibly restructure regulations on the use of wildlife for food and traditional Chinese medicine. The current version of the law is seen as problematic by wildlife conservation groups because it focuses on utilisation of wildlife rather than its protection. “The coronavirus epidemic is swiftly pushing China to reevaluate its relationship with wildlife,” Steve Blake, chief representative of WildAid in Beijing, told the Guardian. “There is a high level of risk from this scale of breeding operations both to human health and to the impacts on populations of these animals in the wild.” Further instructions from the National People’s Congress are expected next week to give authorities more tools to enforce the ban and restrict trade until the law is amended.

Read more …

“The China boom was a lot like the shale oil “miracle.” They were both great stunts. They produced a lot of stuff by borrowing from the future. Now we have all that stuff and we have to maintain it, keep if running, borrow more money to make that happen… and suddenly, that’s no longer plausible. ”

Why Didn’t We See That Coming? (Kunstler)

And now the Corona virus steps onstage to ramify that situation, beginning with a virtual shut-down of the excessively complex, over-engineered, just-in-time global economy. Things are not being produced and supply lines are shutting down. Car-makers outside China have a couple of weeks before their production lines halt for a lack of parts. But, of course, every other industry will have similar problems and stoppages. Many working Americans are barely getting by from one paycheck to the next. How many missed paychecks will it take for genuine hunger to kick in and desperation with it? We don’t know because the US news media has been busy conjuring the many loves of Vlad Putin.

This is getting serious now. Some of you may have noticed this morning that the stock indexes are heading into the worst open in years. Today, Mr. Market woke up, like Rip Van Winkle, and discovered that the world changed while he was sleeping. There’s a fair chance that the conditions of daily life in America will deteriorate sharply in the months ahead. We’ve been remote-viewing the empty streets of Wuhan and other Chinese cities since January, thinking it was like one of our cable-network horror shows. It’s not inconceivable that an American City, or more than one, will be subject to quarantine, or that a whole lot of people just won’t leave their houses for a period of time. Will the truckers still truck things that people need? We don’t know. How do you hold a political convention in a situation like that, or even an election?

The situation in China may be too far gone already. The country’s finances were a gigantic game of pretend. In the old Soviet Union, beloved by Bernie, the joke was, “they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work” — not a great formula for enduring prosperity. In China, the updated joke was “we pretend to make loans, and you pretend to pay them back.” The China boom was a lot like the shale oil “miracle.” They were both great stunts. They produced a lot of stuff by borrowing from the future. Now we have all that stuff and we have to maintain it, keep if running, borrow more money to make that happen… and suddenly, that’s no longer plausible. The entire industrialized world has fallen for the debt stunt. Observers have been waiting to see what would finally provoke the unwinding of massive false promises. Looks like the wait is over.

Read more …

Gee, what a surprise.

Airline Stocks Tumble As Coronavirus Spreads Outside Of China (CNBC)

Airline stocks fell Monday as fears about the spread of the coronavirus beyond China added to worries about travel demand and the broader economy, despite a drop in fuel prices. American Airlines shares led the S&P 500 lower with an 9.8% slide in midday trading, hitting a more than four-month low. Delta Air Lines’ stock lost 7.2% to the lowest price in nearly four months, while United Airlines was off 4.3%. All U.S. airline stocks were down more sharply than the broader market. The S&P 500 fell 2.6%. Close to 80,000 cases of the virus, now known as COVID-19, have been reported along with at least 2,621 deaths. Cases outside of China, where most of the infections are located, have increased, with Italy reporting more than 220 and South Korea confirming more than 830.


Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade warned citizens not to travel to affected areas, helping drive down shares of European carriers. Budget airline easyJet lost more than 16% while rival Ryanair was down 12%. Deutsche Lufthansa fell 8.8%, British Airways’ parent, International Consolidated Airlines Group, was off 9% and Air France-KLM fell 8.4%. More than 200,000 flights to, from and within China have already been canceled because of the virus, according to aviation consulting firm Cirium, and more disruptions are possible if the virus continues to spread. The coronavirus is expected to eat into carriers’ revenue this year. Air travel demand globally is set to fall for the first time since 2009 and cost airlines some $29 billion — mostly in the Asia-Pacific region — in revenue, the International Air Transport Association warned last week.

Read more …

Weinstein still has plenty money to pay for whoever he wants. They couldn’t get him on the most serious charges. Just throw away the key.

Weinstein To Face 8 More Allegations After New York Verdict (G.)

The verdict in the New York case against Harvey Weinstein is only the beginning of the movie mogul’s prosecution, with separate charges against the disgraced producer ahead in Los Angeles. In the most high-profile trial of the #MeToo movement yet, a New York jury on Monday found Weinstein guilty of third-degree rape for an attack in a New York hotel and guilty of a criminal sex act for forcing oral sex on a former television production assistant. The fallen titan of Hollywood, who was taken away in handcuffs, could face 25 years in prison and will have to register as a sex offender. Next, Weinstein is due to face a criminal case in LA, which stems from investigations by law enforcement in southern California into eight allegations.


LA prosecutors have filed charges for two incidents that allegedly occurred within a two-day period. Those charges include forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by use of force and sexual battery by restraint, carrying a potential 28-year prison sentence. It’s not yet clear how LA prosecutors plan to proceed following Monday’s verdict in New York. Weinstein could be immediately brought to California after his 11 March sentencing in New York. He could pursue a plea deal in LA after his guilty verdict in Manhattan, or he could end up facing a second trial, said Laurie Levenson, criminal law professor at Loyola Law School. Either way, it’s an uphill battle for the former movie producer, she said: “When he heads to LA, he’s already a convicted rapist.”

Read more …

Putin is about to hand Erdogan an ultimatum or two. The US must go home.

US Proposals To Whitewash Idlib Terrorists Unacceptable – Lavrov (RT)

Moscow will resist any attempts to whitewash the terrorists holed up in Idlib, Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, adding that engaging in talks with them as the US is hinting is out of question. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Al-Qaeda offshoot previously known as Al-Nusra, which controls Idlib, has been designated as a terrorist organization not only by the UN, but by the US itself, Lavrov said. However, officials in Washington, including the special envoy for Syria, James Jeffrey, “allow themselves statements, from which a conclusion can be made that ‘it’s not such a terrorist organization anymore’ and that dialogue with it can be established under some circumstances,” he said. “It’s not the first time we hear such hints and we consider them absolutely unacceptable.”


The foreign minister also said that another round of consultations between Russia and Turkey is currently being prepared in ordered “to agree on ways of turning Idlib into a real de-escalation where the terrorists aren’t in charge.” Tensions are high between Moscow and Ankara after Turkey sent troops to Idlib a few weeks ago amid a large-scale offensive by the Syrian military on the last terrorist stronghold in the country. The move provoked clashes between the Turkish and Syrian forces, with casualties on both sides. Ankara is demanding that Moscow pressure Damascus into ceasing its operation, while Russia has told Turkey that its promise to separate the ‘moderate opposition’ from the terrorists still remains unfulfilled.Lavrov insisted that it was no surprise for the Turkish military that the terrorists were being targeted. Earlier Russian-Turkish agreements on Idlib never envisaged that strikes against Hayat Tahrir al-Sham would stop, he added.

Read more …

“Edward Fitzgerald QC: Mental state of Assange deteriorating such that there is possibility he may not be able to participate in his own trial. Defense outlines why they believe it’s unjust an oppressive to pursue trial so long after alleged offenses..”


“Julian Assange faces life in prison for publishing true information that was in the public interest..if truth becomes treason we are all in trouble.”

Still, making it all against Trump doesn’t seem the wisest move. Try US Intel. Obviously, Trump’s role is terrible as well, but Assange went into the Embassy in 2012. Trump became president in 2017.

Julian Assange ‘Suicide Risk’ If Extradited From UK To US – Lawyer (SCMP)

Julian Assange should not be extradited to the United States as he would not get a fair trial and would be a suicide risk, his lawyer told a British court hearing on Monday. Assange’s lawyer, Edward Fitzgerald, said extradition would expose Assange to inhumane and degrading treatment by a disproportionate sentence and prison conditions. Fitzgerald said the extradition request was motivated by politics rather than any genuine crimes. He said it would be unjust and oppressive to extradite him because of his mental state and risk of suicide. He said the US attitude to Assange had changed when Donald Trump came to power and that the US president wanted to make an example of his client.


Fitzgerald said in 2013 the US government under former President Barack Obama had decided that Assange should not face any action. But that in 2017, after the 2016 election of Trump, an indictment was brought against Assange. Why the change? “The answer is President Trump came into power with a new approach to freedom of speech and a new hostility to the press amounting effectively to declaring war on investigative journalists,” Fitzgerald said. The indictment was brought, “not on the basis of new revelations, but because it had become politically expedient and desirable,” Fitzgerald said.

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The background Assange’s lawyers will provide. They promise big surprises.

Assange Fight Draws In Trump’s New Intel Chief (Pol.)

Attorneys for Julian Assange [..] plan to introduce evidence in the WikiLeaks founder’s extradition hearing involving President Donald Trump’s new intel chief Richard Grenell. Gareth Peirce, a lawyer representing Assange in his extradition proceedings in London, plans to argue this week that the process to try to extradite her client was abused from early on. Representatives for Assange’s defense team say they expect to introduce recordings and screenshots of communications of a close Grenell associate, including a secondhand claim that Grenell was acting on the president’s orders. Grenell’s sudden embroilment in Assange’s extradition fight comes at an inconvenient time, as Democrats and national security veterans criticize him as ill-suited and unqualified to be the acting director of national intelligence.

And it threatens to spotlight his close relationship with President Trump, feeding the widespread perception that the president is politicizing intelligence work for partisan ends. At the heart of the Assange team’s argument is an ABC News report from last April alleging that, while serving as Trump’s ambassador to Germany, Grenell told Assange’s Ecuadorean hosts that the U.S. government would not pursue the death penalty for Assange if Ecuador allowed British officials to enter its embassy in London and arrest him. Assange’s legal team will claim that Grenell’s role was more extensive than previously known, and that it corrupted the extradition process early on. The suggestion will be that the U.S. was so desperate to get Assange in its custody that American officials, via Grenell, agreed in advance to take a particular sentence off the table before even allowing a trial and sentencing to play out.

The WikiLeaks founder’s attorneys are also expected to present evidence that they believe shows Trump explicitly tasked Grenell with making the offer, thereby politicizing the process. One of Assange’s lawyers, Edward Fitzgerald, hinted at this argument in his opening statement on Monday, when he said that Assange’s prosecution was “not motivated by genuine concerns for criminal justice but politics.” The evidence submitted this week will include new materials submitted to Assange’s legal team by political activist and journalist Cassandra Fairbanks, a staunch defender of Assange who has worked for the Russian state-run news site Sputnik and the far-right outlet Gateway Pundit. She is expected to be listed as a formal witness in the case.

Fairbanks recorded two phone calls she had with one of Grenell’s close associates, Arthur Schwartz, and took screenshots of their conversations about Assange and Grenell. [..] Schwartz appeared to grow frustrated and fearful after Fairbanks tweeted, on Sept. 10, 2019, that Grenell “was the one who worked out the deal for Julian Assange’s arrest.” “I don’t want to go to jail,” Schwartz told Fairbanks in a September 2019 phone call, accusing her of posting “classified information” in the tweet. Fairbanks posted the tweet around the time Grenell’s name was being floated to replace John Bolton as Trump’s national security adviser. “Please. I’m begging you,” Schwartz says in the recording. “They look at you, they see that we speak, that’s bad.”

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The US is trying to make this about the risk Assange has exposed sources to. But in 2013, even anti-Assange paper the Guardian said

The US counter-intelligence official who led the Pentagon’s review into the fallout from the WikiLeaks disclosures of state secrets told the Bradley Manning sentencing hearing on Wednesday that no instances were ever found of any individual killed by enemy forces as a result of having been named in the releases.

Not only did none of them die, they weren’t even hurt. It’s all a fable, coming from US intel hiding behind state secret veils. The actual story for at least some of the releases is more or less the opposite: that Assange spent entire sleepless nights redactingout namea and details in docs that sources like the Guardian wanted to publish in full.

Julian Assange ‘At High Risk Of Suicide’ If Extradited To US -Lawyer (Ind.)

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is at “high risk of suicide” if he is sent to the US to face claims he endangered the lives of whistleblowers around the world, a court has heard. At an extradition hearing in London, Assange’s lawyers argued he is the victim of a politically motivated prosecution that forms part of Donald Trump’s “war on investigative journalists”. But the US government claimed some sources had “disappeared” after the WikiLeaks founder put them at risk of “serious harm, torture or even death” by leaking classified information. James Lewis QC, opening the case against Assange, said on Monday that information published by WikiLeaks was useful to enemies of the US.Mr Lewis told Woolwich Crown Court, which is sitting as a magistrates’ court, that most of the charges related to “straightforward criminal activity” in a “conspiracy to steal from and hack into” the Department of Defence computer system.


“These are ordinary criminal charges and any person, journalist or source who hacks or attempts to gain unauthorised access to a secure system, or aids and abets others to do so, is guilty of computer misuse,” the barrister said. “Reporting or journalism is not an excuse for criminal activities or a licence to break ordinary criminal laws.” Mr Lewis said that the US identified hundreds of “at-risk and potentially at-risk people” around the world due to WikiLeaks’ actions and made efforts to warn them of the danger they faced. “The US is aware of sources, whose redacted names and other identifying information was contained in classified documents published by WikiLeaks, who subsequently disappeared, although the US can’t prove at this point that their disappearance was the result of being outed by WikiLeaks,” he added.

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Size matters.

 

 

 

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Aug 122019
 


Samuel Peploe Paris-plage 1907

 

Jeffrey Epstein’s Trail Of Bankruptcy And Ruined Lives (WaPo)
Jeffrey Epstein Kept “Meticulously Detailed” Secret Diaries (Mirror)
New York Coroner ‘Confident’ Epstein’s Death Was Suicide (R.)
Lawyers Say Epstein Victims To Sue Financier’s Estate This Week (R.)
Hong Kong Airport Cancels All Outgoing Flights Over Protests (BBC)
Hong Kong Protests: Brutal Undercover Police Tactics Spark Outcry (G.)
Britons Have Spent £4bn Stockpiling Goods In Case Of No-Deal Brexit (PA)
The Biggest Migration Since the Barbarian Invasions of Rome (Casey)
Assange’s Lawyer Pleads With Australians To Help Bring Him Home (TND)
Ai Weiwei On Leaving Berlin: ‘Germany Is Not An Open Society’ (Local.de)

 

 

Not a great article, but it does add something interesting to the picture: the image of Epstein as an ordinary swindler, albeit on a large scale (Ponzi). His victims are not only the underage girls.

Jeffrey Epstein’s Trail Of Bankruptcy And Ruined Lives (WaPo)

The story of Epstein’s first great escape is a tale of financial wizardry and brazen criminality, in which hundreds of thousands of Americans lost their retirement money, their life’s savings, on an investment intended to enrich only its creators. “That money would have been my real retirement,” said Veriena Braune, a 91-year-old retired teacher in Granbury, Texas, who invested all of her savings – $112,000 – in bonds that a young Epstein sold for his partner, Steven Hoffenberg. She lost every penny of the money. “Somebody should know: that Epstein did a number on a little teacher in Texas,” Ms Braune said.

Mr Hoffenberg, who headed up the investment scheme and spent 18 years in prison because of it, said in an interview with The Washington Post this week that Epstein was “the architect of the scam.” Federal prosecutors agreed. Yet Epstein was never charged. His name, initially included in prosecutors’ descriptions of the scheme, quickly vanished from the record. “I thought Jeffrey was the best hustler on two feet,” Mr Hoffenberg said. “Talent, charisma, genius, criminal mastermind. We had a thing that could make a lot of money. We called it Ponzi.” Mr Hoffenberg pleaded guilty in 1995 to mail fraud, obstruction of justice and tax evasion in two scams – one designed to misuse the assets of two Illinois insurance companies and the other fleecing more than $460 million from about 200,000 investors who bought notes and bonds from Mr Hoffenberg’s Towers Financial Corp.

[..] Sometimes, the machinations went very wrong. The money Towers used to try to buy control of Emery Air Freight was lost when Emery’s stock price plummeted. By 1993, prosecutors in Illinois and New York who had spent years investigating Mr Hoffenberg’s companies were ready to spell out their findings. In front of a grand jury in Chicago, federal prosecutor Edward Kohler walked Mr Hoffenberg, who had just agreed to cooperate with the government, through the design of the scam. In the narrative Mr Kohler laid out, Epstein was the technical wizard who kept the money moving around to support Mr Hoffenberg’s various schemes. Over and over, Mr Kohler asked Mr Hoffenberg whether Epstein had designed Towers’ scams.

Mr Hoffenberg affirmed the prosecutor’s story at every turn. “Jeffrey Epstein was the person in charge of the transactions,” Mr Hoffenberg said. “Epstein was trying to manipulate the price of the stock?” Mr Kohler asked. “Yes,” Mr Hoffenberg replied. “You didn’t object to that, sir?” “No,” Mr Hoffenberg said. That was in November 1993. Three months later, Epstein’s name disappeared from the case. In court hearings, FBI reports and affidavits throughout 1994 and 1995, prosecutors and FBI agents referred to Hoffenberg’s “co-conspirators,” “confederates” and “others.” A review of court files finds no further reference to Epstein as the case moved towards a conclusion that convicted Mr Hoffenberg and sent him to prison for 18 years.

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Prince Andrew under pressure.

Jeffrey Epstein Kept “Meticulously Detailed” Secret Diaries (Mirror)

Sources revealed Epstein kept a diary detailing his friendships with powerful associates – including Andrew and socialite Ghislaine Maxwell – as an “insurance policy”. Epstein’s diary will be a source of great anxiety to her and the other senior royals. Its existence emerged as lawyers for the victims look to obtain a statement from the Prince as part of ongoing investigations by various US law enforcement authorities. Despite Epstein’s death, government prosecutors have vowed to continue their enquiries, indicating they will pursue all those involved in the billionaire’s offending. US Attorney Geoffrey Berman said: “To those brave young women who have already come forward and to the many others who have yet to do so, let me reiterate that we remain committed to standing for you.”

And yesterday, lawyer Jack Scarola, who represents scores of victims, told the Mirror his clients “will not rest” in their fight for justice. It comes four years after an attempt to ask Andrew to testify under oath about his time with Epstein failed. Following the billionaire’s jail-cell death, it was claimed Epstein’s associates were “breathing a huge sigh of relief”. Now, as questions are being asked about whether the 66-year-old took his own life or was killed to silence him, the pervert’s secrets are set to spark panic among his powerful circle of friends, including Donald Trump and Bill Clinton. A source revealed: “All Jeff ever had he bought, including his friends. “He used his wealth to buy buddies and then bestow his money on those he courted.

“Jeff knew his relationships with the rich and famous brought him protection. “He kept a diary in meticulous detail in case he ever needed it. “One former congressman said there are a lot of people ‘breathing a huge sigh of relief’ now Jeff is dead. “They should hold their breath for a long time to come. It ain’t over.”

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Meaningless.

New York Coroner ‘Confident’ Epstein’s Death Was Suicide (R.)

New York City’s chief medical examiner is confident Jeffrey Epstein died by hanging himself in the jail cell where he was being held without bail on sex-trafficking charges, but is awaiting more information before releasing her determination, the New York Times reported on Sunday, citing a city official. An autopsy was performed earlier in the day on the disgraced financier found unresponsive on Saturday in a New York City jail, chief medical examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson said. A private pathologist observed the autopsy on behalf of Epstein’s representatives, which she called “routine practice.”


A determination on the cause of death “is pending further information at this time,” Sampson said in a statement. The suspicion in Epstein’s death was hanging, said a city official not authorized to speak on the record. The Times did not say why it could not identify the source of information on the medical examiner’s likely determination of the cause of death. Epstein, 66, was not on suicide watch at the time in his cell in the Special Housing Unit of the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), a source said. Epstein, a well-connected money manager, was found hanging by his neck, according to the source, who was not authorized to speak on the record.

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“The “Child Victims Act,” which takes effect on Aug. 14, gives people a year to sue over allegations of sexual abuse, regardless of when the alleged acts occurred.”

Lawyers Say Epstein Victims To Sue Financier’s Estate This Week (R.)

Lawyers for several women who say they were sexually abused by disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein plan to file lawsuits this week against his estate following his apparent suicide in a New York jail cell. Los Angeles attorney Lisa Bloom, who represents two women, told Reuters “we intend to promptly file those civil claims” having held off suing while federal prosecutors pursued sex trafficking charges against Epstein. New York lawyer Roberta Kaplan said she hopes to file on Wednesday on behalf of a client to take advantage of a new New York State law which makes it possible to pursue decades-old claims of abuse.


The “Child Victims Act,” which takes effect on Aug. 14, gives people a year to sue over allegations of sexual abuse, regardless of when the alleged acts occurred. Kaplan will sue on behalf of a woman described in the indictment against Epstein as a minor victim. The unidentified woman was recruited to engage in sex acts with Epstein around 2002 and paid hundreds of dollars for each encounter with the financier, according to the indictment. She was 14 when it happened, Kaplan said. [..] Epstein’s death is likely to “unleash an avalanche of civil suits against his estate,” said New York attorney Paul Callan, who is not involved with the case.

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“..one of the world’s busiest..”

Hong Kong Airport Cancels All Outgoing Flights Over Protests (BBC)

Hong Kong International Airport has cancelled departing flights, as anti-government protests in its main terminal continue for a fourth day. Thousands are gathered at the airport – which is one of the world’s busiest. In a statement, officials said operations had been “seriously disrupted” by the public assembly. Many of those protesting are critical of the actions of police, who on Sunday were caught on film firing tear gas and non-lethal ammunition at close range. Hong Kong’s mass demonstrations and unrest show no sign of abating, more than two months after they were sparked by a controversial extradition bill. In a statement on Monday, Hong Kong’s Airport Authority said they were cancelling all flights that were not yet checked in. They advised members of the public not to travel to the airport but said arrivals already heading into Hong Kong would be allowed to land.

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Looked ugly.

Hong Kong Protests: Brutal Undercover Police Tactics Spark Outcry (G.)

Rights groups and democracy activists have accused police in Hong Kong of using excessive force after teargas was fired into an enclosed subway station and officers posed as protesters before making arrests during an intense weekend of clashes. “Clashes between protesters and police over the weekend escalated to another level especially on the police side,” said Man-Kei Tam, director of Amnesty International Hong Kong. Tam cited video footage of police firing teargas into a subway station on Sunday night in Kwai Fong. It was not clear how many protesters were inside the station at the time, but it has been rare for officers to fire tear gas indoors. He also shared footage of police firing non-lethal projectiles at close range as protesters attempted to flee down a separate subway station escalator.

Tam questioned the need for such force in both cases as protesters appeared to be showing “no aggression” towards officers. “These are all very ugly things,” he said. Pro-democracy street protests in Hong Kong stretched into their 10th week on Monday with no sign of either side backing down. The police have also reported injuries among their ranks, including eye irritation from laser pointers and burns from a petrol bomb. Civil Rights Observer, a local rights group that sends observers to protests, said it had “very serious concerns” about police violence and had seen “very clear evidence to show the police are violating their guidelines”, according to spokesman Icarus Wong.

Wong said the group was particularly concerned by the use of undercover officers for the first time, who later turned on protesters on Sunday night. He said it was unclear if they may have acted as agitators before making mass arrests. During the weekend protests, website Hong Kong Free Press showed footage of one arrest that appeared to include officers dressing as protesters who injured a demonstrator pressed to the ground. The young man, who said his name was Chow Ka-lok and asked for a lawyer, was left with bleeding head wounds and a broken tooth.

Read more …

Otherwise, the economy would even look much worse.

Britons Have Spent £4bn Stockpiling Goods In Case Of No-Deal Brexit (PA)

Britons have spent £4bn stockpiling goods in preparation for a possible no-deal Brexit, new research suggests. One in five people are already hoarding food, drinks and medicine, spending an extra £380 each, according to a survey by the finance provider Premium Credit. The survey found that about 800,000 people have spent more than £1,000 building up stockpiles before the 31 October Brexit deadline. If the UK leaves with no deal, businesses predict there will be short-term supply problems, which the government says it is mitigating. Similar research in the weeks leading up to the original deadline for the UK to leave the EU found that about 17% of the population had spent some money building up supplies, with a total stockpile spend calculated at £4.6bn ahead of the 31 March deadline.


Of the people who are stockpiling, 74% of those surveyed said they had bought extra food, 50% bought medicines and 46% bought drinks. Brexit-related stockpiling is also hitting cashflow, according to the report, with companies taking out credit to cover the cost of insurance and other fixed costs. Adam Morghem of Premium Credit said: “The level of stockpiling by British businesses and households is well documented, but there has been little focus on the impact this has had on cashflow, which has been quite negative. “Interestingly, over the past three months we have seen an increase in clients looking to use premium finance to pay for their insurance, and we believe a key factor behind this is the impact of stockpiling on cashflows, forcing more businesses and households to spread the cost of their insurance. “Businesses should also check with their brokers to make sure their stockpiled goods are properly insured.”

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The Chinese move to Africa and the Africans move to Europe.

The Biggest Migration Since the Barbarian Invasions of Rome (Casey)

Africa is the only part of the world where the population is still growing and growing rapidly. Africa south of the Sahara was about 6% of the world’s population in the ’50s, now it’s about 16%. But by the turn of the century, it’s going to be 45%. Assuming there isn’t some kind of catastrophe. It’s not clear that the Africans can grow enough food for billions more people. In fact, if the West stops supporting the continent with capital and technology, it could be in for very tough times. [..] Few people realize how fast the population is growing, and things are changing in Africa. I ask knowledgeable people what they think the biggest cities in the world will be at the turn of the next century. They all guess cities in China or India.

But that’s not true. Eighty years from now, Lagos, Nigeria, will be the largest city in the world. It’s on track to have a population of more than 90 million. The world’s second biggest city will be Kinshasa in the Congo with about 80 million people. Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, will be the world’s third biggest city with a population of roughly 75 million people. It’s quite amazing. When I first visited Dar in the early ’80s, it was a quiet, exotic seaport with old tramp steamers in the harbor. Now all those people have cell phones, and they’re well aware of the fact that the standard of living is vastly higher in Europe and every other part of the world than in Africa. And they’re well aware of the fact that there are welfare benefits of all types if they can get to Europe.

[..] It’s a growing tidal wave. With the European population diminishing and the African population growing, you’re going to see Europe basically taken over by Africa in the next several generations.

Read more …

An article in Australia’s The New Daily about Jennifer Robinson’s efforts to wake up the country turns into yet another smear piece.

Assange’s Lawyer Pleads With Australians To Help Bring Him Home (TND)

Assange still has a support base in Australia, but it has dwindled in the years since he entered the embassy. Between sexual assault allegations, alleged connections to the Russian government and a failed tilt at electoral success with the WikiLeaks Party, Assange has become a divisive character. His supporters are desperately trying to separate his extradition to the US from the other storms blowing around him. Lead campaign adviser in Australia Greg Barns is asking Australians to put aside “what they think” about Assange. “At the end of the day we need to remember what is it he exposed, for which he’s been prosecuted. He revealed war crimes and he’s being punished for it,” he said.


“Irrespective of the DNC (Democratic National Committee) emails and what people think about the matters relating to Sweden, even if you don’t support Assange – you have to differentiate that from the US prosecuting him.” But Assange’s public image has suffered as debate has raged around his motives and connections. Some think he’s a neo-right activist, some a Russian agent, while others label him a leftist crusader. Ms Robinson says none of these labels matters. “If you take any of the publications since 2010, the principle of what they’ve done is the same. They publish in the public interest, irrespective of the politics. “The principle has not changed, whatever the politics. It’s about publishing in the public interest.”

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“This country doesn’t need me because it’s so self-centered.”

Ai Weiwei On Leaving Berlin: ‘Germany Is Not An Open Society’ (Local.de)

Ai Weiwei, the Chinese activist and artist, has lived in self-imposed exile in Berlin since 2015. But he plans to leave Germany because he believes it is too intolerant. In an interview with the German daily Welt published Friday, Ai said: “Germany is not an open society. It is a society that wants to be open, but above all it protects itself. German culture is so strong that it doesn’t really accept other ideas and arguments.” Ai, 61, added that there is “hardly any room for open debate”. The artist, who is an outspoken critic of China’s government, moved to Berlin in July 2015 after spending four years under house arrest in China. The artist said he had reported experiences of discrimination to authorities while living in Berlin, such as being thrown out of taxis.


However, the office investigating them had come to the conclusion the incidents involved “cultural differences” rather than discriminatory offences, he said. Ai added: “This sounds to me like the Chinese government justifying its violations of human rights with ‘cultural differences’ to the West. Ai also slammed German politicians and cultural institutions for not denouncing Chinese human rights violations. “My family and I enjoyed living here very much, but I am leaving Berlin,” he said. “This country doesn’t need me because it’s so self-centered.” The artist doesn’t yet know where he’ll move to with his family. “I don’t have a place I belong to because China has rejected me since I was born,” he said. “Those who know their destination are no longer refugees. I am a refugee.”

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Aug 102019
 


Pablo Picasso Man with ice cream cone 1938

 

My first thought after reading about Jeffrey Epstein’s so-called suicide is: let it go, watch a movie instead, or go out to dinner. But a suicide of someone under suicide watch is just too much. And then I understand NBC -oh wait, and Reuters too- said he wasn’t even on suicide watch anymore. A guy who allegedly tried to kill himself two weeks ago. But of course. Why should he be?

The FBI has announced an investigation, and so has Bill Barr’s DOJ. Problem is, there are so many people with strong connections to both FBI and DOJ that these investigations are as likely to bury the truth as they are to reveal it. Because this ceased being about Epstein the very moment he was apprehended at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey July 6.

It became about Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Alan Dershowitz, Ehud Barak, and god knows who else. It wasn’t about Jeffrey Epstein anymore, it was about his ‘friends’. It was also about Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter and heiress of media tycoon and Mossad asset Robert Maxwell, another ‘victim’ of an apparent suicide two decades ago.

Ghislaine who still walks around free, who hasn’t been charged with a thing, after having been credibly and repeatedly accused of procuring at least dozens of underage girls for Epstein and his friends.

It’s pretty safe to say that in the highest, re: richest, circles of our societies, this is what goes on. A lot. Presidents, prime ministers, corporate tycoons, they were/are in Epstein’s black book, and it makes no difference whether they succeed in making that book disappear. We just got another glance at their world.

Sociopaths and psychopaths are the shit that floats to the top of our societies. Because that’s where they can do most damage. Because that’s where they find the power their distorted minds crave more than anything.

Jeffrey Epstein to my knowledge never ordered bombing campaigns that killed 1000s of people in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan. But some of the people he hung out with, and provided young girls and boys for, did.

We can only hope that Bill Barr and Donald Trump are going to be serious about finding out everything about Epstein’s world. I understand that the warrant on his Manhattan mansion stands, and now that he’s gone, there’s no-one left to fight it, so everything on the premises is fair game, whoever is mentioned in all the files, videos, books etc.

But I can’t say I’m very hopeful. For instance, it appears overly obvious that Prince Andrew plays a very dark role in the whole Epstein play, but what are the odds he’ll be arrested for it? I would venture that the odds MI6 murdered Epstein are much higher. But that’s just me, and I’m not a betting man.

 

Epstein was arrested at Teterboro on July 6. I wrote the piece linked below on July 19, three weeks ago to the day. His first ‘suicide attempt’ was two weeks ago. When he ‘killed himself’ today he was allegedly no longer on suicide watch.

What did George W. Bush say again about ‘fool me twice’? “I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee that says, ‘Fool me once, shame on … shame on you. Fool me… You can’t get fooled again!'”

And wait a minute, who’s going to get all of Epstein’s money? Here’s me on July 19:

 

How Long is Jeffrey Epstein For This World?

There are three main threats to Jeffrey Epstein’s life (or four, if you include his victims).

No. 1 is his fellow inmates in the Manhattan MCC. He’ll be in very strict isolation, because inmates and pedophilia is a very explosive combination. So isolation, but that’s never 100%. And Judge Berman yesterday ordered him in jail until his trial(s), instead of in his $77 million Manhattan mansion not far from that same prison, so he’ll be there a while; that trial could take a very long time to happen, even years. All the more chance for an inmate to make an easy $1000 by offing him.

The no. 2 threat is Epstein himself. Berman’s decision means he’s very unlikely to ever get out again. Chances of him being declared innocent are as close to zero as as anything Kelvin. So why would he want to continue to live? Perhaps his lawyers try and tell him he’s always got a shot, and there’s always a next court date, but he doesn’t strike me as fully delusional. I could be wrong, sure, about much of all this, but I don’t think so.

The no. 3 threat is, obviously, the people he might “sing” about. And that’s an litany of the world’s who’s who. No doubt the FBI may already have their IDs and photos and what-not, but why chance it when you can take down the -potential- crown witness?

 

[..] …Fox, also from July 18, because it targets Prince Andrew. Is MI6 going to be able to muffle away the obviously very strong and long-term connection between Epstein and Andrew? I’m thinking they’d probably have to get those 2,000 pages re-sealed. Or, you know, burned down. Nuked. To summarize my thoughts on this, and the reason I started writing this, I can’t see Epstein living much longer. There are too many people who would rather see him dead, including perhaps himself. And there are very few people who want him to get into lengthy talks with prosecutors who are actually looking for the truth.

Now of course we must wonder if any prosecutor wants that truth. Alex Acosta left his US government job because “Epstein is intelligence” was not enough to let him keep his job. And if we can believe some of the stories about the CIA, the State Dept and Mossad being linked to Epstein (and we got worse than that), it looks like he’s just got to go. Unless someone, or some party involved, has a reason to protect him against all odds. If only to handicap some other people.

 

 

 

 

Sep 262018
 
 September 26, 2018  Posted by at 9:14 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  5 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Five women 1907

 

Europe, Russia And China Join Forces To Dodge Iran Sanctions (CNBC)
Europe Unveils “Special Purpose Vehicle” To Bypass SWIFT (ZH)
Fed Likely To Raise Rates, Possibly End ‘Accommodative’ Policy Era (R.)
Free-Riding Investors Set up Markets for a Major Collapse (Rickards)
Corbyn Vows To End ‘Greed-is-Good’ Capitalism In UK (G.)
Why Corbyn Is Promising A “Green Jobs Revolution” (NS)
Brexit Agreement Could Come In October – Merkel (CNBC)
1000s Told To Flee As Florence-Triggered Floods Wash Into South Carolina (R.)
Global Waste Could Increase By 70% By 2050 – World Bank (WEF)
The Man Who Beat Monsanto: ‘They Have To Pay For Not Being Honest’ (G.)
Monsanto’s Glyphosate Linked To Global Decline In Honey Bees (ZH)
IRC Warns Of Mental Health Crisis On Lesbos As Greece Moves Asylum Seekers (R.)
Ending Decades Of Doubt, ‘Biggest Bird’ Dispute Put To Nest (AFP)

 

 

Not much on the Kavanaugh front right now, other than the same voices saying more of the same. We don’t expect that to last through the day today. We expect mayhem. But first, some economy:

Europe, Russia And China Join Forces To Dodge Iran Sanctions (CNBC)

In the latest sign of the growing divide between Washington and its allies, the European Union’s foreign policy chief announced Monday that the bloc was creating a new payment mechanism to allow countries to transact with Iran while avoiding U.S. sanctions. Called the “special purpose vehicle” (SPV), this mechanism would aim to “assist and reassure economic operators pursuing legitimate business with Iran,” according to a joint statement released by the remaining members of the Iran nuclear deal — France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China.

“This will mean that EU member states will set up a legal entity to facilitate legitimate financial transactions with Iran and this will allow European companies to continue to trade with Iran in accordance with EU law and could be open to other partners in the world,” Federica Mogherini, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. The technical details will be worked on by experts in future meetings, she said. American sanctions have already been imposed on a number of Iran’s industries — including aviation, metals, automotives and its ability to trade gold and acquire dollars — as a result of President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal. On November 4, a second round of penalties will fall on Iran’s massive oil sector, which accounts for 70 percent of the country’s exports. Iran is the world’s seventh-largest oil producer.

Read more …

More detail on the above.

Europe Unveils “Special Purpose Vehicle” To Bypass SWIFT (ZH)

Germany, France and the U.K. would set up a multinational state-backed financial intermediary that would deal with companies interested in Iran transactions and with Iranian counter-parties. Such transactions, presumably in euros and pounds sterling, would not be transparent to American authorities. European companies dealing with the state-owned intermediary technically might not even be in violation of the U.S. sanctions as currently written. And, in a potentially massive development, the system would be likely be open to Russia and China as well as it would enable the world’s economies to trade with each other, fully independent of SWIFT.

Europe would thus provide an infrastructure for legal, secure sanctions-busting — and a guarantee that the transactions would not be reported to American regulators. That said, Washington would not be without recourse, although at that point, all the U.S. could do is sanction the participating countries’ central banks or SWIFT for facilitating the transactions (if the special purpose vehicle uses SWIFT, rather than ad hoc messaging).

That, Hellman and Batmanghelidj wrote, would be self-defeating: “There are two possible outcomes if these institutions proceed to work with Iran despite U.S. secondary sanctions. Either U.S. authorities fail to take enforcement action given the massive consequences for the operations and integrity of the American financial system, serving to “defang” the enforcement threats and reduce the risk of European self-sanctioning on the basis of fear, or U.S. authorities take such an enforcement action, a step that would only serve to accelerate European efforts to create a defensible banking architecture that goes beyond the Iran issue alone.”

Europe, naturally, needs a “neutral” pretext to implement this SPV, and that would be Brussels’ desire to continue transacting with Iran: “We are not backing down [on the Iran nuclear agreement],” said a European diplomat. He said the speeches of European leaders at a Security Council meeting Mr. Trump is hosting on Wednesday on nonproliferation, including Iran, will reflect the Monday night statement. Additionally, as basis for the potentially revolutionary development, the participants of the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA, “underlined their determination to protect the freedom of their economic operators to pursue legitimate business with Iran.”

Read more …

There’s one thing only that keeps the wheeels turning: cheap debt. They’re about to take that away. I added the graph.

Fed Likely To Raise Rates, Possibly End ‘Accommodative’ Policy Era (R.)

With the Federal Reserve widely expected to raise interest rates on Wednesday, financial markets are focused on whether signs of an acceleration in U.S. economic growth will prompt the central bank to ramp up the pace of monetary policy tightening. This week’s two-day policy meeting could mark the formal end of the “accommodative” level of rates the Fed has used to support the American economy since the onset of the 2007-2009 recession. The Fed’s current policy statement has included that description of loose policy as a staple element in recent years, though officials recently have described it as out of date and likely to be removed, either this week or in the near future.

The probability the Fed will raise its benchmark overnight lending rate by a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday, in what would be its third hike this year, is nearly 95 percent, based on an analysis of fed fund futures contracts by CME Group. The larger question is whether the Fed reshapes its monetary policy outlook for the next few years to factor in stronger GDP growth or whether concerns about a possible global trade war or economic slowdown cause it to stick close to its current view.

Read more …

Jamie Dimon as a parasite.

Free-Riding Investors Set up Markets for a Major Collapse (Rickards)

The biggest free riders in the financial system are bank executives such as Jamie Dimon, the CEO of J.P. Morgan. Bank liabilities are guaranteed by the FDIC up to $250,000 per account. Liabilities in excess of that are implicitly guaranteed by the “too big to fail” policy of the Federal Reserve. The big banks can engage in swap and other derivative contracts “off the books” without providing adequate capital for the market risk involved. Interest rates were held near zero for years by the Fed to help the banks earn profits by not passing the benefits of low rates along to their borrowers. Put all of this (and more) together and it’s a recipe for billions of dollars in bank profits and huge paychecks and bonuses for the top executives like Dimon.

What is the executives’ contribution to the system? Nothing. They just sit there like parasites and collect the benefits while offering nothing in return. Given all of these federal subsidies to the banks, a trained pet could be CEO of J.P. Morgan and the profits would be the same. This is the essence of parasitic behavior. Yet there’s another parasite problem affecting markets that is harder to see and may be even more dangerous that the bank CEO free riders. This is the problem of “active” versus “passive” investors. An active investor is one who does original research and due diligence on her investments or who relies on an investment adviser or mutual fund that does its own research.

T he active investor makes bets, takes risks and is the lifeblood of price discovery in securities markets. The active investor may make money or lose money (usually it’s a bit of both) but in all cases earns her money by thoughtful investment. The active investor contributes to markets while trying to make money in them. A passive investor is a parasite. The passive investor simply buys an index fund, sits back and enjoys the show. Since markets mostly go up, the passive investor mostly makes money but contributes nothing to price discovery.

Read more …

That’ll be good for a whole lot more smear. The Telegraph runs a we ad right now that says: “We must ditch Chequers or be condemned to a crazed Corbynista takeover”. And a photo of Hitler accompanied by: “The Nazis were socialists”.

Corbyn Vows To End ‘Greed-is-Good’ Capitalism In UK (G.)

Jeremy Corbyn will on Wednesday attack the “greed-is-good” capitalism that he claims has resulted in large swaths of the UK being left behind, promising a raft of new policies including a “green jobs revolution” that will create 400,000 new positions. The Labour leader will attempt to reset the theme of the Labour conference which has so far been dominated by deep divisions over its Brexit stance and return to his core argument about the failure of the broken economic system. Corbyn will use his main conference speech to set out his plans to change the direction of the economy, following a week in which his shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, laid out a series of redistributive policies.

The Labour leader will say: “Ten years ago this month, the whole edifice of greed-is-good, deregulated financial capitalism, lauded for a generation as the only way to run a modern economy, came crashing to earth, with devastating consequences.” ”But instead of making essential changes to a broken economic system, the political and corporate establishment strained every sinew to bail out and prop up the system that led to the crash in the first place. “People in this country know – they showed that in June last year – that the old way of running things isn’t working any more. That’s why Labour is offering a radical plan to rebuild and transform Britain.” Corbyn will announce plans for a rollout of green technologies including 13,500 onshore and offshore wind turbines, solar panels on thousands of roofs and wide-scale home insulation.

Read more …

Well, he doesn’t hold back.

Why Corbyn Is Promising A “Green Jobs Revolution” (NS)

A Labour government would “kickstart a green jobs revolution” in a bid to radically overhaul the economy after Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn will say in a conference speech that implicitly criticises the last Labour government tomorrow. Laying out his party’s vision to reduce carbon emissions and create 400,000 new skilled jobs by 2030, the Labour leader will tell delegates in Liverpool that his government will return “skills and security to communities held back for too long” with a large-scale programme of investment in green infrastructure and training. Sources close to Corbyn have described the speech as a direct pitch to communities that voted for Brexit – “the millions of people who have been most directly affected by deindustrialisation and austerity” – and its policy platform as a bid to remedy to its root economic causes.

Corbyn will announce plans to reduce carbon emissions by 60 per cent by 2030, and to zero by 2050, through a large-scale programme of public sector investment and sweeping changes to planning regulations. A Labour government would seek to increase offshore wind power by seven times, double onshore wind, treble solar panel, and would launch a £12.8 billion home insulation programme. An independent panel of researchers said that the plans – which would involve both public and private sector investment – would create some 400,000 skilled jobs. Corbyn will describe the plans as a “radical plan we need to rebuild and transform Britain”, adding: “The old way of running things isn’t working anymore.”

Read more …

If May gives in enough, it could come later today.

Brexit Agreement Could Come In October – Merkel (CNBC)

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday that a Brexit agreement between the European Union and the U.K. is possible in October, but it is not yet clear what the British government wants. Speaking at a conference in Germany, Merkel said the U.K. cannot choose to be part of the single market — the European common area where goods, services and people move freely — without respecting all its principles. The U.K. government wants to control the number of European citizens moving to the U.K. During a cabinet meeting Monday, Prime Minister Theresa May’s government agreed that EU workers should face the same immigration rules as non-EU citizens. Some have argued that restricting the number of low-skilled EU migrants will hurt the U.K. economy.

Merkel also said Tuesday that European businesses need clarity, which demands “hard work” from Brexit negotiators in the next six to eight weeks. There have been repeated comments from both sides of the English Channel that negotiations need to be intensified to reach a deal by no later than November. However, many analysts are sceptical that a Brexit agreement will be reached. “We have highlighted for some time that the risks of ‘no deal’ are appreciably high,” Dean Turner, economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, said in a note Tuesday morning. “We don’t believe that this will happen by design, as it is in neither sides’ interests to generate the kind of economic disruption that would likely ensue. But with every day that passes without progress, the risks grow that such an outcome could occur by accident.”

Read more …

Two weeks on…

1000s Told To Flee As Florence-Triggered Floods Wash Into South Carolina (R.)

Thousands of people in the Georgetown, South Carolina, area were urged to evacuate their homes on Tuesday as rainwater unleashed by Hurricane Florence surged down rivers, threatening to submerge some neighborhoods under 10 feet of water. Georgetown, which sits at the confluence of the Waccamaw, Great Pee Dee and Sampit rivers, was largely spared the initial fury of Florence, which came ashore on Sept. 14 as a Category 1 hurricane, killing 46 people in three states. But the port city of more than 9,000 stands in the path of what the National Weather Service has said could be significant flooding as water dumped by the storm system drains to the ocean.

“We are urging people to take this event seriously. We expect the flooding to be worse than Hurricane Matthew a couple years ago,” said Randy Akers, deputy public information officer for Georgetown County. “We always urge people to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.” Akers said between 6,000 and 8,000 people have been exhorted to leave, but it was not clear how many had done so as of Tuesday evening. He said the county lacked authority to mandate evacuations.

Read more …

They blame it on mismanagement. Not on producing the waste in the first place. World Bank.

Global Waste Could Increase By 70% By 2050 – World Bank (WEF)

Global waste could grow by 70 percent by 2050 as urbanisation and populations rise, said the World Bank on Thursday, with South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa set to generate the biggest increase in rubbish. Countries could reap economic and environmental benefits by better collecting, recycling and disposing of trash, according to a report, which calculated that a third of the world’s waste is instead dumped openly, with no treatment. “We really need to pay attention to South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, as by 2050, South Asia’s waste will double, sub-Saharan Africa’s waste will triple,” said Silpa Kaza, World Bank urban development specialist and report lead author.

“If we don’t take any action it could have quite significant implications for health, productivity, environment, livelihoods,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Belarus. The rise in rubbish will outstrip population growth, reaching 3.4 billion tons by 2050 from around 2 billion tons in 2016, according to the report. High-income countries produce a third of the world’s waste, despite having only 16 percent of world’s population, while a quarter comes from East Asia and the Pacific regions, it said. While more than a third of waste globally ends up in landfill, over 90 percent is dumped openly in lower income countries that often lack adequate disposal and treatment facilities, said the report.

Read more …

“This guy is dealing with the reality of his mortality..”

The Man Who Beat Monsanto: ‘They Have To Pay For Not Being Honest’ (G.)

Regardless of the outcome, Johnson v Monsanto was always going to be a newsworthy trial, because the judge allowed the cancer patient’s legal team to bring scientific arguments to the courtroom. The proceedings further shined a light on internal Monsanto emails over the years that Johnson’s attorneys said showed how the company had repeatedly rejected critical research and expert warnings. Some evidence suggested that Monsanto had also strategized plans to “ghostwrite” favorable research. Monsanto, which was bought by pharmaceutical giant Bayer earlier this year, has continued to argue that Roundup does not cause cancer and that critics are “cherrypicking” studies while ignoring research that showed its products were safe.

The jury disagreed. They ruled that Johnson also deserved $250m in punitive damages and $39.2m for losses. When the verdict was announced, Johnson said his body briefly went into a kind of shock. “I felt like all the fluids went out of my body and rushed back in,” he recalled. The jury’s unanimous decision said Monsanto’s products presented a “substantial danger” to people and the company failed to warn consumers of the risks. “They have been hiding for years and getting away with it,” Johnson said. “They have to pay the price for not being honest and putting people’s health at risk for the sake of making a profit.”

Prior to the verdict, Johnson said he had no expectations about the outcome. “I never really discussed winning or money or amounts with the legal guys,” he said, adding that he did fear the implications of a Monsanto win: “If we lose, the facts won’t keep coming out. That would be the worst part.” Pedram Esfandiary, one of Johnson’s lawyers, said he was consistently impressed with Johnson’s ability to remain optimistic and focused on exposing the facts and protecting others from Roundup hazards. “This guy is dealing with the reality of his mortality,” he said. “His life is on the line because of what happened … He was concerned about getting the truth out.”

Read more …

Time for a boycott. Demand labels that say whether glyphosate was used in crops.

Monsanto’s Glyphosate Linked To Global Decline In Honey Bees (ZH)

In recent times, US beekeepers have reported a massive loss of bees or CCD. Millions of bees mysteriously disappeared, leaving farms with fewer pollinators for crops. Officials have been baffled, and the media has been quite about the bee population collapse. Explanations for the phenomenon have included exposure to pesticides or antibiotics, habitat loss, and bacterial infections. The latest study now adds herbicides to the list as a possible contributing factor. “It’s not the only thing causing all these bee deaths, but it is definitely something people should worry about because glyphosate is used everywhere,” said Motta.

And that, researchers, believe, is evidence that glyphosate might be contributing to the collapse of honeybees around the world. The Western honeybee, the world’s premier pollinator species, has been in high demand for its services on fruit, nut, and vegetable farmers. Among the nuts, almond growers have the largest need for bee pollination. Bee pollination is worth $15 billion to the US farming industry.

Any sharp change in global bee populations could affect the beef and dairy industries. Bees pollinate clover, hay, and other forage crops. As the bee population dwindles, it increases the cost of feedstock. That forces inflation into beef and milk prices at the grocery store and ultimately hurts the American consumer. This could then lead to increased imports of produce from foreign countries where bee populations are healthy, further widening the trade deficit. Couple this with the current trade war and this particular “black swan” – or rather “black bee” – problem, may be just the tipping point that finally forces the US economy to catch down to the rest of the world.

Read more …

EU starts investigating abuse of funds. Been going on for years now. 30% of people have attempted suicide.

IRC Warns Of Mental Health Crisis On Lesbos As Greece Moves Asylum Seekers (R.)

Greece moved another 400 people from its biggest migrant camp on Tuesday as the International Rescue Committee (IRC) charity warned of a mental health emergency there with 30 percent of people having attempted suicide. The government, under pressure from aid groups and local authorities, has said it will transfer 2,000 people from Moria camp on Lesbos to the mainland by the end of the month. In a report published on Tuesday, the IRC said asylum-seekers in Moria, most of whom are Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan, were under “enormous mental strain”. Citing testimonials of patients who have visited its own clinic on the island, IRC said that in addition to the 30 percent of people who had attempted suicide about 60 percent had contemplated it.

“Several times I have attempted suicide,” it quoted Ahmad, a 35-year-old Iraqi single father of four children as saying. “The only reason I am glad I didn’t succeed is because of the children.” Asylum seekers were living in conditions that did not meet humanitarian standards, IRC said. Eighty-four people shared one shower and 72 shared one toilet. “The sewage system is so overwhelmed that raw sewage has been known to reach the mattresses where children sleep, and flows untreated into open drains and sewers,” IRC said. Moria, in a disused military base, now holds nearly three times as many people as it was designed to, according to government figures, forcing hundreds to spill over in tents in an olive grove.

Close to 900 people were moved between Sept. 10-20 and a another 1,000 will be transferred this week, Migration Minister Dimitris Vitsas said on Monday. Most are taken to facilities in northern Greece.

Read more …

Oh, to once have met one, just the once.

Ending Decades Of Doubt, ‘Biggest Bird’ Dispute Put To Nest (AFP)

[..] scientists said Wednesday they have finally solved the riddle of the world’s largest bird. For 60 million years the colossal, flightless elephant bird — Aepyornis maximus — stalked the savannah and rainforests of Madagascar until it was hunted to extinction around 1,000 years ago. In the 19th century, a new breed of buccaneering European zoologist obsessed over the creature, pillaging skeletons and fossilised eggs to prove they had discovered the biggest bird on Earth. But a study released Wednesday by British scientists suggests that one species of elephant bird was even larger than previously thought, with a specimen weighing an estimated 860 kilogrammes (1,895 pounds) — about the same as a fully grown giraffe.

“They would have towered over people,” James Hansford, lead author at the Zoological Society of London, told AFP. “They definitely couldn’t fly as they couldn’t have supported anywhere near their weight.” In the study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, Hanson examined elephant bird bones found around the world, feeding their dimensions into a machine-learned algorithm to create a spread of expected animal sizes. Until now, the largest-ever elephant bird was described in 1894 by the British scientist C.W. Andrews as Aepyornis titan — a larger species of Aepyornis maximus. But a French rival of Andrews dismissed the discovery of titan as just an outsized maximus specimen, and for decades the debate remained deadlocked.

Hanson said his research proved titan was indeed a different species. But he also found that its bones were so distinct from other elephant bird specimens that titan was in fact an entirely separate genus. Named Vorombe titan – Malagasy for “big bird” – the creature would have stood at least three metres (10 feet) tall, and had an average weight of 650 kilogrammes, making it the largest bird genus yet uncovered. “At the extreme extent we found one bone that really pushed the limits of what we now understand about bird size,” said Hanson, referring to the 860-kilogramme specimen. “And there were some that led up to that too, so it’s not an outlier — there was a range of masses that are extraordinarily large.”

Read more …

Aug 282018
 
 August 28, 2018  Posted by at 9:38 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  17 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Cypresses in starry night (reed pen) 1889

 

Meadows: FBI/DOJ Leaked To Press, Used Articles To Obtain FISA Warrants (ZH)
Lanny Davis Admits Being Source For CNN Trump Tower “Bombshell” (ZH)
Trump Announces US-Mexico Trade Deal, Setting Stage For Nafta Overhaul (G.)
Iran Says It Has Full Control Of Gulf And US Navy Does Not Belong There (R.)
Theresa May Says A No-Deal Brexit ‘Wouldn’t Be The End Of The World’ (G.)
Out In Left Field (Kunstler)
Skripals – When the BBC Hide the Truth (Craig Murray)
‘Criminal’ Roger Waters Blacklisted By Ukraine Over Russian Interviews (RT)
Greece Needs €4.7 Billion In Additional Tax Revenues To Reach Targets (K.)
Children Attempting Suicide At Greek Refugee Camp (BBC)
The Impending End Of Most Life On Earth (G.)

 

 

2nd special counsel, where are you?

Meadows: FBI/DOJ Leaked To Press, Used Articles To Obtain FISA Warrants (ZH)

Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC) dropped a late-night bombshell on Monday suggesting there’s evidence that the FBI and DOJ rigged their own FISA spy warrants by leaking information to the press, then using the resultant articles to obtain court authorization to surveil targets. “We’ve learned NEW information suggesting our suspicions are true: FBI/DOJ have previously leaked info to the press, and then used those same press stories as a separate source to justify FISA’s,” tweeted Meadows. Until now, we’ve known that the creator of the so-called Steele Dossier, former UK spy Christopher Steele, leaked information directly to Yahoo! News journalist Michael Isikoff – whose article became a supporting piece of evidence in the FBI’s FISA warrant application and subsequent renewals for Trump adviser Carter Page.

So while we’ve known that Steele seeded Isikoff with information from his dubious dossier, and that the FBI then used both Steele’s dossier and Isikoff’s Steele-inspired article to game the FISA system, Rep. Mark Meadows now says that the FBI/DOJ directly leaked information to the press, which they then used for the same type of FISA scheme. Strong evidence was discovered in January suggesting that former FBI employee Lisa Page leaked privileged information to Devlin Barrett, formerly of the Wall Street Journal and now with the Washington Post. Whether any of Barrett’s reporting was subsequently used to obtain a FISA warrant is unknown.

Meanwhile, Rep. Meadows’s Monday night tweet comes hours before twice-demoted DOJ employee Bruce Ohr is set to give closed-door testimony to the House Oversight Committee. Ohr was caught lying about his involvement with opposition research firm Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson – who employed Steele. Ohr’s CIA-linked wife, Nellie, was also employed by Fusion as part of the firm’s anti-Trump efforts, and had ongoing communications with the ex-UK spy, Christopher Steele as well.

Read more …

Cohen’s lawyer is the best thing that happened to Trump in ages.

Lanny Davis Admits Being Source For CNN Trump Tower “Bombshell” (ZH)

On July 26th, CNN unleashed a “bombshell” report that Michael Cohen was claiming that candidate Trump knew in advance about the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting. Dropping this line in the middle of their story: “Contacted by CNN, one of Cohen’s attorneys, Lanny Davis, declined to comment.”Then, last week, amid the deafening euphoria of the ‘anti-Trump’-ers, Davis told Anderson Cooper: “I think the reporting of the story got mixed up in the course of a criminal investigation. We were not the source of the story.” Davis increasingly backed away from the story in recent days, telling the Washington Post that he is not certain if the claim is accurate, and that he could not independently corroborate it. Destroying CNN’s “bombshell” story, crushing the hopes of millions of ‘not my president’-ers.

As Buzzfeed notes, after Davis publicly backtracked from the claims, the New York Post and the Washington Post outed him as their confirming source and published apologies from Davis But, of course, CNN was giving up such a great story so easily (whether it’s true or fake news), and followed up anxiously by none other than Brian Stelter who gushed over Twitter in the face of Davis’ refutation of their entire story that: ” Re: CNN’s July 27 story about Cohen claiming that Trump knew in advance about the Trump Tower meeting: “We stand by our story, and are confident in our reporting of it.”” All of which brings up to date, safe in the knowledge that despite Davis’ denial that CNN’s story ever occurred, CNN has “a source” that confirmed it and that’s good enough for them.

BUT… Now, after all that pre-amble, double-talk, and utterly bullshit fake news reporting, Lanny Davis – who we perhaps need to remind readers once again is an extremely well-paid f**king lawyer and communications expert – has told Buzzfeed that he was the anonymous source in a July CNN story. Tonight, Davis told BuzzFeed News that he regrets both his role as an anonymous source and his subsequent denial of his own involvement. Davis told BuzzFeed News that he did, in fact, speak anonymously to CNN for its story, which cited “sources with knowledge” — meaning more than one person. “I made a mistake,” Davis said. Regarding his comments about a month later to Cooper, he added, “I did not mean to be cute.”

Read more …

Canada on hold.

Trump Announces US-Mexico Trade Deal, Setting Stage For Nafta Overhaul (G.)

Donald Trump has said he will strike a new trade deal with Mexico while ripping up the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) and threatening a trade war with Canada. “I’ll be terminating the existing deal and going into this deal,” the US president told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. “We’ll be starting negotiating with Canada relatively soon. They want to negotiate very badly.” He added: “One way or the other, we have a deal with Canada. It’ll either be a tariff on cars or it will be a negotiated deal. Frankly, a tariff on cars is a much easier way to go but perhaps the other would be much better for Canada.”

Trump also said it might be possible to make a deal involving all three countries, like the 24-year-old Nafta pact, but that separate bilateral agreements are also a possibility. However, any trade deal would have to first be approved by Congress, and time is running out. Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto will soon leave office and there is no guarantee his successor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will agree to the same terms. Nafta reduced most trade barriers between the US, Mexico and Canada. But Trump and other critics say it encouraged US manufacturers to move south of the border to exploit low-wage Mexican labour.

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They have a point.

Iran Says It Has Full Control Of Gulf And US Navy Does Not Belong There (R.)

Iran has full control of the Gulf, and the U.S. Navy does not belong there, the head of the navy of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, General Alireza Tangsiri, said on Monday, according to the Tasnim news agency. The remarks come at a time when Tehran has suggested that it could take military action in the Gulf to block oil exports of other regional countries in retaliation for U.S. sanctions intended to halt its oil sales. Washington maintains a fleet in the Gulf which protects oil shipping routes. Tangsiri said Iran had full control of both the Gulf itself and the Strait of Hormuz that leads into it. Closing off the strait would be the most direct way of blocking shipping.

“We can ensure the security of the Persian Gulf and there is no need for the presence of aliens like the U.S. and the countries whose home is not in here,” he said in the quote, which appeared in English translation on Tasnim. Tension between Iran and the United States has escalated since President Donald Trump pulled out of a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers in May and reimposed sanctions.

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Just the end of her.

Theresa May Says A No-Deal Brexit ‘Wouldn’t Be The End Of The World’ (G.)

Theresa May claimed that a no-deal Brexit “wouldn’t be the end of the world” as she sought to downplay a controversial warning made by Philip Hammond last week that it would cost £80bn in extra borrowing and inhibit long-term economic growth. The prime minister conceded that crashing out of the European Union without a deal “wouldn’t be a walk in the park” but went on to argue that the UK could make an economic success of the unprecedented situation if it proved impossible to negotiate a satisfactory divorce. Her comments were designed to distance herself from pessimistic Treasury forecasts highlighted by the chancellor at the end of last week, predictions that incensed the Tory right and led to renewed calls from hard Brexiters for Hammond’s dismissal.

Speaking to reporters as she began a three-day trip to Africa, May cited and endorsed remarks about the Brexit situation made last week by Roberto Azevêdo, the director general of the World Trade Organisation, to justify a gentle rebuke of the chancellor. The prime minister said: “Look at what the director general of the World Trade Organisation has said. He has said about the no-deal situation that it will not be a walk in the park, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world. “What the government is doing is putting in place the preparation such that if we are in that situation, we can make a success of it, just as we can make a success of a good deal.”

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Huber. Remember the name.

Out In Left Field (Kunstler)

With Russian “meddling” stalled in the dead letter office, The New York Times has apparently re-branded itself Floozie Central in its quixotic campaign to unseat the Golden Golem of Greatness by all means necessary. The Stormy Daniels affair, and its slime-trail of payoffs, is the slender thread that the Resistance hopes to hang Donald Trump on. The great legal minds of cable TV have been very busy trying to suss out which part of the $130,000 non-disclosure payoff might apply as a campaign financing violation. If Rudy Giuliani still had his wits about him, of course, he would claim that the money was just Ms. Daniel’s going rate for an overnight frolic amongst her legendary twin peaks, that is, a sex worker’s simple transaction fee.

Where does it say in the constitution that a president may not consort with tramps and hussies? It was hilarious to discover that Mr. Trump’s erstwhile personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, picked DC Swamp attorney and Clinton insider, Lanny Davis, to represent him in negotiations with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. It must be like the old days in the locker room of the Burning Tree Golf Club for Lanny and Bob. They go back at least to the days when the Clintons fended off accusations of issuing pardons to special friends for a $450,000 payoff on Bubba’s last day in office, January 19, 2001. And there must have been a reunion around 2010 on the Uranium One matter, in which a tidy $145-million from Russian Oligarch Central landed in the Clinton Foundation coffers after Madam Secretary Hillary signed onto a go-ahead with the U-1 deal.

Meanwhile, way out in Left Field — Salt Lake City, actually —a forgotten lone ranger named John W. Huber is ostensibly toiling away on a roster of allegations so far ignored by the Mueller team, namely the politicization of the FBI and the Department of Justice, and the actions taken deviously by senior employees there against Mr. Trump during and after the 2016 election. Mr. Huber was tapped to carry out this assignment by Attorney General Jeff Sessions late in 2017.

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BBC Newsnight correspondent Mark Urban met with Skripal multiple times in 2017.

Skripals – When the BBC Hide the Truth (Craig Murray)

On 8 July 2018 a lady named Kirsty Eccles asked what, in its enormous ramifications, historians may one day see as the most important Freedom of Information request ever made. The rest of this post requires extremely close and careful reading, and some thought, for you to understand that claim. “Dear British Broadcasting Corporation, 1: Why did BBC Newsnight correspondent Mark Urban keep secret from the licence payers that he had been having meetings with Sergei Skripal only last summer. 2: When did the BBC know this? 3: Please provide me with copies of all correspondence between yourselves and Mark Urban on the subject of Sergei Skripal. Yours faithfully, Kirsty Eccles

The ramifications of this little request are enormous as they cut right to the heart of the ramping up of the new Cold War, of the BBC’s propaganda collusion with the security services to that end, and of the concoction of fraudulent evidence in the Steele “dirty dossier”. This also of course casts a strong light on more plausible motives for an attack on the Skripals. Which is why the BBC point blank refused to answer Kirsty’s request, stating that it was subject to the Freedom of Information exemption for “Journalism”.

“The information you have requested is excluded from the Act because it is held for the purposes of ‘journalism, art or literature.’ The BBC is therefore not obliged to provide this information to you. Part VI of Schedule 1 to FOIA provides that information held by the BBC and the other public service broadcasters is only covered by the Act if it is held for ‘purposes other than those of journalism, art or literature”. The BBC is not required to supply information held for the purposes of creating the BBC’s output or information that supports and is closely associated with these creative activities.”

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Fun.

‘Criminal’ Roger Waters Blacklisted By Ukraine Over Russian Interviews (RT)

Pink Floyd founder Roger Waters has found himself blacklisted by being added to the Ukrainian database of national enemies, after statements to Russian media about Crimea and the conflict in Ukraine. Waters, 74, is wrapping up his US+Them European tour with concerts in St. Petersburg and Moscow this week and spoke with several Russian outlets about both music and his political activism. The rock musician has been an outspoken champion of the Palestinian cause and a critic of Western-backed rebels in Syria. On Monday, however, his name appeared in the “purgatory” database of Mirotvorets (Peacemaker), maintained by people connected with Ukraine’s security and intelligence services and listing alleged enemies of the state.

The site says “criminal” Waters is responsible of “anti-Ukrainian propaganda, attacks on the territorial integrity of Ukraine [and] participation in attempts to legalize the Russian annexation of Crimea.” As proof, the site lists links to two interviews Waters gave to Russian media outlets RIA and Izvestiya, and quotes specifically a statement about the city of Sevastopol being Russian and important to Russians. Waters called “laughable” the idea of blaming Russia for the conflict in Ukraine and said the blame rests with Victoria Nuland, the senior State Department official for Europe and Eurasia during the Obama administration. [..] Waters also expressed concern about the US leadership, which he said does not seem to recognize any agreements and does whatever it wants. Such a policy will eventually get everyone killed, the rock star told Izvestiya, in an interview published Monday.

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Already grossly overtaxed.

Greece Needs €4.7 Billion In Additional Tax Revenues To Reach Targets (K.)

The Greek government will have to collect additional tax revenues of 4.7 billion euros in the first post-bailout period of enhanced supervision (2018-2022) by its creditors, in order to achieve the agreed primary surpluses and record surpluses. These revenues are not expected to come only from economic growth but also from the imposition of new taxes, notably the trimming of the tax reduction from a current level of 1,900 euros to 1,250 euros – a change that will affect 6 million salaried employees and pensioners.

In 2018, direct taxes are projected to generate 17.4 billion euros, slightly less than the 17.7 billion of 2017. The reduction is entirely attributable to the fact that high tax rates result in an ever-increasing reduction of declared incomes. As for indirect taxes, they are expected to drop to 35.2 billion euros this year compared with 35.4 billion in 2017, while no significant change is expected for 2019, despite the projected economic growth. For 2020, tax revenues are expected to rise further when the government is seen reducing the tax-free threshold. It is indicative that revenues from direct taxes are seen rising to 18.40 billion euros that year, versus 17.43 billion in 2019.

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“..her family spend all day queuing for food at the camp and all night ready to run..”

Children Attempting Suicide At Greek Refugee Camp (BBC)

At Moria camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, there is deadly violence, overcrowding, appalling sanitary conditions and now a charity says children as young as 10 are attempting suicide. The Victoria Derbyshire programme has been given rare access inside. “We are always ready to escape, 24 hours a day we have our children ready,” says Sara Khan, originally from Afghanistan. “The violence means our little ones don’t get to sleep.” Sara explains that her family spend all day queuing for food at the camp and all night ready to run – in fear of the fights that break out constantly. Conditions are so appalling that charities have actually left in protest.

The place smells of raw sewage, and there are around 70 people per toilet, according to medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). Some people live in mobile cabins, but rammed in-between them all are tents and tarpaulin sheets – homes for those who cannot obtain any official living space. The camp is also now sprawling into surrounding countryside. One tent houses 17 people – four families under one canvas. MSF says there are currently more than 8,000 people crammed into Moria camp, which was supposed to house 3,000. [..] The camp opened in 2015 and was initially designed as a transit post for people to stay for a matter of days – but some have been here for years.

It is controlled by the Greek government, and the overcrowding is because Greece is enforcing the EU’s “containment” policy, keeping people on the island rather than transferring them to the Greek mainland. It is part of the EU-Turkey deal which aims to return thousands of refugees to Turkey, and it has been in force since March 2016. From then to July 2018, according to EU figures, 71,645 new refugees arrived in Greece by sea and only 2,224 have been returned to Turkey. George Matthaiou, a Greek government press representative on Moria, concedes conditions are terrible, but blames the EU rather than Greece. “We don’t have the money. You know the situation of Greece, economically,” he says. “I want to help but I can do nothing, because the European Union closed the borders.”

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“I’m not going to write anymore because there’s nothing more that can be said..”

The Impending End Of Most Life On Earth (G.)

We’re doomed,” says Mayer Hillman with such a beaming smile that it takes a moment for the words to sink in. “The outcome is death, and it’s the end of most life on the planet because we’re so dependent on the burning of fossil fuels. There are no means of reversing the process which is melting the polar ice caps. And very few appear to be prepared to say so.” Hillman, an 86-year-old social scientist and senior fellow emeritus of the Policy Studies Institute, does say so. His bleak forecast of the consequence of runaway climate change, he says without fanfare, is his “last will and testament”. His last intervention in public life. “I’m not going to write anymore because there’s nothing more that can be said,” he says when I first hear him speak to a stunned audience at the University of East Anglia late last year.

From Malthus to the Millennium Bug, apocalyptic thinking has a poor track record. But when it issues from Hillman, it may be worth paying attention. Over nearly 60 years, his research has used factual data to challenge policymakers’ conventional wisdom. In 1972, he criticised out-of-town shopping centres more than 20 years before the government changed planning rules to stop their spread. In 1980, he recommended halting the closure of branch line railways – only now are some closed lines reopening. In 1984, he proposed energy ratings for houses – finally adopted as government policy in 2007. And, more than 40 years ago, he presciently challenged society’s pursuit of economic growth.

[..] In 1971, 80% of British seven- and eight-year-old children went to school on their own; today it’s virtually unthinkable that a seven-year-old would walk to school without an adult. As Hillman has pointed out, we’ve removed children from danger rather than removing danger from children – and filled roads with polluting cars on school runs. He calculated that escorting children took 900m adult hours in 1990, costing the economy £20bn each year. It will be even more expensive today.

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