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Conservative MP Robert Halfon "strongly welcomes" the U-turn on mandatory jabs for NHS workers.

"I felt it was wrong and a step too far. Thousands of NHS workers would have left. It would lead to a slippery slope in terms of power of the state."@JuliaHB1 | @halfon4harlowMP pic.twitter.com/pmyAe6Glg5

— TalkTV (@TalkTV) January 31, 2022

Mass formation.

• 1 in 5 Canadians May Never Be Comfortable Without Masks, Vaccine Mandates (I.)

As we approach the second anniversary of the declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic and viral case loads continue to break records, it’s not surprising that many Canadians are wary about “returning to normal.” A new Ipsos poll conducted on behalf of Global News shows that while one in five (18%) Canadians feel things are normal now, the same proportion (19%) say they’re not sure they’ll ever be ready to live without masks or vaccine mandates. Regardless of when Canadians feel the new normal will materialize, two thirds (64%) agree (27% strongly, 37% somewhat) that governments are not doing enough to facilitate the return to normal, a figure that is higher among Albertans[..].

How will we reach the new normal? Four in ten (38%) Canadians think mandatory vaccination is the most effective means of getting COVID-19 under control. This opinion is stronger among men (42% vs. 34% women) and Boomers (50% vs. 37% Gen X, 29% Millennials, 27% Gen Z). The use of border closings and rapid tests in the workplace are also both favoured by 14%. Relatively few Canadians believe that removing all public health measures and allowing COVID-19 to spread more quickly (10%), penalizing people who don’t get their vaccines (i.e. a tax, further restrictions, etc.) (9%), or shutting down all non-essential businesses (8%) would be the most effective way to get the pandemic under control.

“This is, perhaps, the greatest act of cowardice from a sitting Canadian PM in this nation’s history..”

• Did Justin Trudeau Pick the Wrong Fight With Canadian Truckers? (Bridge)

Since Jan. 15, unvaccinated truckers entering Canada are required to be tested and quarantined for 15 days; the U.S. mandated similar restrictions on Jan. 22. Naturally such regulations made their job impossible to perform. Thus, the mandates have removed some 20-25% of the estimated 175,000 cross-border American and Canadian truckers due to noncompliance in both countries. But these sidelined workers are not leaving their jobs without a fight, and it seems that many Canadians support the cause.

While mainstream media and social media has largely been able to control the flow of information that Canadians receive with regards to Covid and the vaccination mandates, the trucker convoy has given the public a chance to really express themselves. Judging by early indications it doesn’t look particularly good for the Trudeau administration. Telegram, the censorship-free messenger application, is chockfull of videos and photographs of overpasses near Toronto loaded with placard-waving supporters as the convoy grinds its way towards Ottawa to the east. Other platforms showed the local residents of small towns handing out meals to the truckers despite the frigid temperatures.

Undoubtedly the most influential advocate of the truckers’ cause thus far has been Elon Musk, who tweeted a three-word message that certainly did not sit well with Justin Trudeau: “Canadian truckers rule.” Speaking of Trudeau, the 50-year-old leader of the Labor Party announced just this week that he had been “exposed to Covid-19,” and would therefore be isolating at home for five days. That announcement sparked a small riot on social media, with many suggesting that the Canadian leader had used the excuse of Covid to hopefully avoid the truckers. Keean Bexte, a journalist with Counter Signal, suggested in a tweet that a new variant of “Coward-19” was detected.

“This is, perhaps, the greatest act of cowardice from a sitting Canadian PM in this nation’s history,” Bexte wrote in an accompanying article. “When Canadians finally take a stand, finally take real action, Trudeau merely waves it away, practically flipping them the bird through a single Tweet, ending it with “please get vaccinated” to rub salt in wounds he’s opened.” This is the problem when the media and government refuses to permit any sort of formal debate on a serious issue that affects millions of people on so many different levels. Trudeau has given his countrymen just one option, and that is to get the vaccination or essentially become second-class citizens in their own country. Unlike other effected industries, however, truckers have the option of putting their machines to use for a very effective form of protest, and one that promises to cause severe logistical problems as far as transport goes.

Sikh
https://twitter.com/i/status/1487882022844448769

“..there is already this parallel community. It’s already being built. There is already everything,”

• Unvaccinated and Undeterred: Austria Holdouts Dig In Despite New Law (Y!)

Despite vaccination against Covid-19 becoming mandatory in Austria on Friday, musician Katharina Teufel-Lieli insists she won’t bow to pressure to get the jab. “I have the right to decide over my body… to simply say ‘no,'” the harpist told AFP at her home in Neumarkt-am-Wallersee, not far from the western city of Salzburg. Austria this week becomes the first European Union country to make Covid-19 vaccination legally compulsory for adults. Under the new law, those holding out against the jab can face fines of up to 3,600 euros ($4,100) from mid-March after an introductory phase. Teufel-Lieli, 49, is one of tens of thousands to have joined massive demonstrations against the law and other coronavirus-related measures since November, when plans for the legal change were announced.

The mother of six said that she used to be “apolitical” but the state is “overstepping the mark” by “attacking people” through this act of “totalitarianism”. Access to certain services has already been restricted since last year under government-imposed measures. Entry to restaurants, hairdressers, hotels, non-essential shops, sports and cultural venues has only been permitted since November to those who are vaccinated or recently cured. This has sparked complaints within the retail sector about staff having to act as “an auxiliary police” in checking vaccine passes in shops. Frustrations since the beginning of the pandemic have also led opponents to create a new political party, known by its acronym, MFG which stands for People, Freedom, Fundamental Rights.

One of three MFG representatives to have already won a state legislature seat, Dagmar Haeusler, said that she just did not see the point of compulsory Covid vaccination. “If there was a valid reason, as with smallpox which has a mortality rate of 20 to 30 percent, we could talk about mandatory vaccination, which would benefit everyone. “But in the case of Covid-19, I don’t see the point,” the 38-year-old biomedical scientist and MFG co-founder told AFP. Demonstrators and other opponents say the measures just create a “parallel society” — with the unvaccinated forced to do things under the radar. According to Teufel-Lieli, there are already hairdressers willing to cater to those not vaccinated or cured, while people still have coffee together in private meet-ups, mostly organised over social networks. “In fact, there is already this parallel community. It’s already being built. There is already everything,” she said.

“..legislation that they say keeps the government from interfering with doctors..”

• Concern As Republicans Push To Make Dubious Covid Cures Easier (G.)

Republican state lawmakers across the United States have proposed – and in some cases passed – legislation that they say keeps the government from interfering with doctors who want to prescribe ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to help prevent and treat Covid-19. But those treatments have not proven effective at preventing or treating Covid and infectious disease experts see the bills as examples of right-wing lawmakers politicizing medicine – a trend that is increasing as the pandemic wears on in America in to its third year amid an increasingly fraught political atmosphere. And so it goes with the latest suspect Covid-19 treatment that has become about more than just a drug, but rather about whether to trust established public health organizations or doctors who stray from their guidelines, and podcast and cable news hosts.

“We really need to have the politicians step aside and let scientists and public health officials make the decisions on what is going to be beneficial in preventing and treating Covid,” said Sunil Parikh, an associate professor of epidemiology and infectious diseases at the Yale School of Public Health. Kansas is one of at least 11 states, according to Buzzfeed, where Republican lawmakers have proposed, and in some cases passed, legislation to limit medical licensing boards’ ability to take action against providers who prescribe ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, another drug that has not been shown to be effective against Covid but nevertheless promoted by some politicians on the right. “We are leaving it up to medical professionals like it should be, not bureaucrats trying to maintain a single message,” said Kansas state Senator Richard Hilderbrand, the chair of the committee that sponsored the legislation.

“..the nation’s first clinical trial of ivermectin to treat COVID-19..”

Just how crazy is that?

• University of Minnesota Ivermectin Trial Nearing Completion (Star T.)

University of Minnesota researchers expect to finish enrollment this week in the nation’s first clinical trial of ivermectin to treat COVID-19, and the study’s highly anticipated results could be only a month away. The COVID-OUT study is reviewing three common drugs, including the antidepressant fluvoxamine and the diabetes treatment metformin, but gained attention for its inclusion of ivermectin. The controversial drug has been championed by opponents of COVID-19 vaccines, despite a warning from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that ivermectin is cleared only to treat parasitic infections, head lice and certain skin conditions. Anti-inflammatory benefits of all three medications prompted the U study, which was delayed by slow enrollment over the summer until the delta and omicron waves of the pandemic emerged.

Lead researcher Dr. Carolyn Bramante said the results will provide clinical guidance to doctors who are facing record pandemic cases and to the FDA about whether to authorize the drugs for treatment of COVID-19. “Sooner would have been better, but I’m really proud of my team,” she said. “We will be done very quickly.” Proven outpatient COVID-19 treatments have been limited, and supplies in Minnesota have been scarce. Providers in the state discontinued two types of monoclonal antibody infusions in December because they were ineffective against the omicron variant, and providers had to ration the effective types. New antiviral COVID-19 pills that have received emergency FDA approval are coming in small shipments every other week to Minnesota.

[..] The U trial is enrolling 1,100 patients with COVID-19 to receive fluvoxamine and ivermectin, alone or in combination with metformin, or a nonmedicating placebo for comparison. The study is tracking whether patients taking the drugs for 14 days avoid hospitalization and maintain healthy blood oxygen levels. Bramante said the drugs have potential to reduce excessive inflammation — a hallmark of some of the most severe and fatal COVID-19 cases. Ivermectin has been tried in other countries, such as India, with less access to vaccine, despite a World Health Organization warning against its use outside clinical trials until its benefits are proven. Some global studies of the drug have been debunked while others in the U.S. are behind the U study.

Duluth-based Essentia Health on Monday announced it was joining the ongoing national ACTIV-6 clinical trial that is studying ivermectin in combination with fluvoxamine and fluticasone, an inhaled steroid. “The aim of the study is to see if these medications make you feel better sooner and prevent hospitalization,” said Dr. Rajesh Prabhu, an Essentia infectious disease specialist. Bramante is not allowed to see the patient data from the U study until after enrollment is finished, but she said it is a positive sign that a data safety monitoring board has allowed it to continue. That means the drugs aren’t causing harm but also there is no proof yet they absolutely work or don’t work against COVID-19.

Japan goes its own way.

• Japan’s Kowa Says Ivermectin Effective Against Omicron In Phase III Trial (R.)

Japanese trading and pharmaceutical company Kowa Co Ltd said on Monday anti-parasite drug ivermectin has been found effective for treating the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in a Phase III trial. The trial found ivermectin has “an antiviral effect” against the variant, Kowa said without providing further details. The firm has been working with Kitasato University, a medical university in Tokyo. Clinical trials evaluating the drug, which is used to treat parasites in animals and humans, are ongoing but promotion of the drug as a COVID-19 treatment has generated controversy. The drug is not approved for treatment of COVID-19 in Japan and the U.S. Federal Drug Administration has repeatedly warned against its use.

Yes, it’s about vaccines.

• University Offers Help To Students ‘Affected By A Free Speech Event’ (DM)

Colorado State University is promoting resources aimed at students who claim to be ‘affected by a free speech event’ on campus. A sign was spotted on campus and posted to social media which reads: ‘If you (or someone you know) are affected by a free speech event on campus, here are some resources.’ The sign then proceeds to list 17 different departments or offices on the university campus that may be of help. It includes Multicultural Counseling, Incidents of Bias Reporting, the Office of Equal Opportunity, and a Victim’s Assistance Hotline. Even university staff are taken care of with specific services for employees including the Office of Ombuds, and the Employee Assistance Program.

The roll call continues with a host of departments and programs set up to assist minority students, including Student Diversity Program centers for Asian Pacific, Black/African, and Native Americans. LGBTQ+ are not forgotten either with various services and cultural resources designated for the community. Students with disabilities and given their own hotline together with women, through the Women and Gender Advocacy Center. Campus Reform first reported on the sign. The sign was posted on the Instagram account Turning Point USA Rockies Territory. Turning Point Action is an American nonprofit organization that advocates for conservative values on high school, college, and university campuses across the country. The account called out the school for ‘intolerance,’ adding, ‘We haven’t even had an event yet gotta love the intolerance of @coloradostateuniversity.’

Colorado State University, where tuition is $31,712 a year for out-of-state students, has been hostile in recent months to conservative organizations. Several incidents occurred during the fall 2021 semester. In one, a student was filmed harassing Turning Point group members calling them ‘right-wing goons’ and noting that ‘disrupting one of your activities is actually probably one of the most ethical and best things I can do with my time.’ [..]Also in the fall, a student was caught as they stole a sign advocating against vaccine mandates after the university threatened any student who didn’t register their vaccine status with arrest for trespassing. The university later clarified their policy saying that they were ‘not arresting students who are unvaccinated’, so long as they provided their vaccination information or declared an exemption.

Whole cloth.

• US Close To Approving ‘Mother Of All Sanctions’ Against Russia (G.)

The leaders of the Senate foreign relations committee said on Sunday they were on the verge of approving “the mother of all sanctions” against Vladimir Putin, warning there would be no appeasement as the Russian president contemplates an invasion of Ukraine. “We cannot have a Munich moment again,” the panel’s Democratic chair, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, told CNN’s State of the Union, referring to the 1938 agreement by which allies ceded parts of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, believing it would stave off war. “Putin will not stop if he believes the west will not respond,” Menendez said. “We saw what he did in 2008 in Georgia, we saw what he did in 2014 in pursuit of Crimea. He will not stop.”

Menendez said he believed bipartisan negotiations for severe sanctions were “on the one-yard line”, despite disagreements with Republicans over whether measures should be imposed before or after any Russian invasion. The UK government promised to ramp up sanctions against Putin and his associates. The negotiations come ahead of an expected UN security council meeting on Monday, at the request of the US, to give Russia the opportunity to explain its actions. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN, said: “We’re going to go into the council prepared to listen to Russia’s security concerns, but we’re not going to be distracted by their propaganda.”

On Sunday, Kyiv urged Moscow to pull back its troops from Ukraine’s border and continue dialogue with the west if it was “serious” about de-escalating tensions that have soared amid fears of a Russian invasion. Canada moved its Ukraine-based military units westward on Sunday and announced the temporary withdrawal of all non-essential employees from its Kyiv embassy, citing ongoing Russian threats along the border. “We will continue to take all precautions necessary to keep our Canadian Armed Forces safe and secure,” said Canada’s Defense Minister Anita Anand at a press conference in Kyiv. Canada has 900 military members supporting the Nato mission in Ukraine via “land, air and sea,” she said.

Eurocrat

• EU Threatens To Halt Nord Stream 2 & Cut Russia Off From SWIFT (RT)

The EU is discussing the possibility of excluding Russia from the SWIFT international bank payment system and completely putting a halt on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline if Moscow launches an invasion of Ukraine, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has revealed. Speaking to CNN on Thursday, the Eurocrat said the EU would not rule out any possible angles for sanctions, adding that nothing is “off the table.” The EU and the US are currently working on a package of measures designed to deter Russia from considering a military incursion into Ukraine. Moscow stands accused of placing 100,000 troops on the border, with some alleging it is planning an attack. This claim has repeatedly been denied by the Kremlin.

Von der Leyen’s latest statement comes despite some reports that many foreign leaders have given up on some of the harshest sanctions, including on the financial and energy sectors, due to fears that the European economy and the continent’s energy security could see significant blowback. These include the suggestion that the EU could place a total ban on the usage of Nord Stream 2, a controversial gas pipeline that connects Russia to Germany. “I want to be very clear: Nothing is off the table, everything is on the table,” von der Leyen said when asked directly if the EU would make sure the energy system is stopped from ever being used. She repeated the same line when also asked about SWIFT. “The Commission is responsible for designing, shaping, and developing the sanctions – in the financial field, in the economic field, in the technology field. This includes everything,” she explained.

According to von der Leyen, any EU sanctions against Russia would have a devastating effect. Brussels is Moscow’s largest trading partner, and 75% of direct foreign investment in Russia comes from the EU, she explained, suggesting that economic measures would be painful. Earlier in January, German newspaper Handelsblatt reported that the EU and the US had refused to consider disconnecting Russia from the SWIFT international bank payment system. It noted that it could destabilize financial markets and help create an alternative payment infrastructure that would no longer be dominated by Western nations.

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
~ Albert Einstein

• Year in Review 2021 Part 3 – Rise of Global Authoritarianism (Dave Collum)

So, here we are at the third and final part of the 2021 Year in Review and it’s no longer 2021. Sorry about that pfuck-up. Think of it as not in 2021 but from 2021. You may have noticed that the first 200 pages (parts 1 and 2) were laced with a recurring catchphrase, “WTF is happening?” It was a literary device for noting that the events ceased to make sense within a conventional worldview, suggesting it is time to torch the old model and start anew. Our response to a disease that was killing a very small slice of the population was to sequester and vaccinate the entire population with an experimental drug of real but unquantified fatality rate. The apparent scientific illiteracy was not some mass psychosis. Y’all just got suckered by America’s Most Trusted Psychopathic Mass Murderer assisted by an epic media blitz sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry that had a distinct authoritarian quality.

During the brief period after uploading part 2 while grinding on this last portion, the Supreme Court took on the vaccine mandate issue, ruling that the only people forfeiting control of their own healthcare are the healthcare workersref 2 The court also illustrated their profound ignorance of the pandemic and what they were even charged to assess—the Constitutionality of mandates, not the efficacy.ref 3 The CEO of a major insurer reported a 40% spike in fatalities within the 18–65 age bracket that was not from Covid.ref 4 He said 10% would be a 3-sigma, once-every-200-year event: 40% is unheard of. Although he refrained from identifying a cause—deaths of despair, neglected healthcare, or a toxic vaccine—he knows precisely what did them in. They have been studying this stuff for centuries. I suspect his real message was that the insurance industry is about to contribute to inflation with rising premiums.

Meanwhile, the pathological liars running the covid grift decided after two years the masks you’ve been wearing served no medical purpose and that the vaccines don’t work either. Wait: who said the masks and vaccines don’t work?

“I was a civil rights hero, darn it! It’s time for the rest of the world to catch up!”

• Biden Promises To Replace Tom Brady With A Woman Of Color (BBee)

Legendary quarterback Tom Brady has announced his plan to retire from the NFL to spend more time carving little wooden toys for his grandkids. In response to the earth-shattering news, President Joe Biden has announced his commitment to replace the outgoing football star with a woman of color. “Listen, folks, it’s time,” said Biden to the press. “In the hundred-year history of the NFL, not a single quarterback has ever been a woman of color. That’s racist! We all know that poor women are just as smart and powerful as white kids. As president, I will nominate a new quarterback to replace Tom Brady that reflects America’s diversity.”

When told he doesn’t have the authority to nominate quarterbacks to the NFL, Biden told his staff he would just sign the executive order and let the courts deal with it later. “There’s no excuse,” said Biden. When I used to play Nine Pins with Jehoshaphat Jenkins and the townsfolk, we always used to let the black women play with us. I was a civil rights hero, darn it! It’s time for the rest of the world to catch up!” So far, candidates being considered for the empty position include Michelle Obama, Tyler Perry, and Colin Kaepernick in a woman’s wig.

McCullough

Public health officials cannot and will not cite the data so the people can verify the scientific reporting. When I go on an interview, I am precise, accurate, and honest with scientific inference. Press hard to have your public health officials up their game. Be relentless! pic.twitter.com/jhEUmz5F6U

— Peter McCullough, MD MPH (@P_McCulloughMD) January 30, 2022

Super immunity

Dr. Richard Urso on The Highwire discusses vaccine vs naturally acquired immunity https://t.co/u4CxvYNv6J @richardursomd @delbigtree pic.twitter.com/pruuARu6iu

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) January 28, 2022

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Debt Rattle January 30 2022

Jan 302022

January 30, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:31 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, Fauci, Hippocrates, Joe Rogan, NATO, Redfield, Russia, Spotify, truckers 99 Responses »

René Magritte The menaced assassin 1927

• ‘Government Overreach Is Coming to an End’ (ET)

• Media’s Handling Of Trucker Convoy One-sided, Inflammatory, Shameful (Lilley)

• Covid Vaccine Tricks (IP2)

• Truth or Covid? -or, “Why We Know Everything They’re Telling Us Is A Lie”- (OffG)

• Fauci-Shaped Paper on Origins of COVID-19 ‘Antithetical to Science’ (ET)

• The Story of N-Antibodies And Why They Are So Important (Kirsch)

• How a Sarasota Nurse Practitioner Saved Covid Lives Without Vaccines (Walsh)

• Child With Unvaccinated Parents to Receive Transplant in Greece (GR)

• NATO Knows Truth About Russia ‘Invasion’ Plans – Source (RT)

• Spotify Has Become The Battleground For Big Tech’s Censorship Civil War (QTR)

• The Pressure Campaign on Spotify to Remove Joe Rogan (Greenwald)

• UK Court Should Slap Down US Justice Department In The Assange Case (Goodale)

McCullough
https://twitter.com/i/status/1487229999262412804

Merck’s COVID-19 pill encourages sexually actively men “to use a reliable method of contraception correctly and consistently during treatment and for at least 3 months after the last dose of molnupiravir. The risk beyond 3 months after the last dose of molnupiravir is unknown”

Peak deaths in reality on 21 Jan were 92% below the prediction of SAGE should Boris not introduce more restrictions before Xmas. Their peak was 2,890 around 21 Jan and reality is closer to 200 deaths.

German about UK research
https://twitter.com/i/status/1487363763774787588

“We’re done with the mandates, were done with the government telling us what to do, we will continue and we will follow just like the rest of the world on these trucker protests, and they will be 100 percent legal, they will abide by the law.”

• ‘Government Overreach Is Coming to an End’ (ET)

American truckers protesting against vaccine mandates and government overreach have been joining a record-breaking Canadian convoy of tens of thousands of vehicles headed to Ottawa. Brian Von D, the administrator at “Convoy to DC 2022” announced that they will “join forces” to ride from California to Washington, adding that “America is next.” “As [the Canadian convoy] moved from the west to the east, [the American truckers] have been filtering into this convoy, and it is absolutely massive. It is known worldwide, it is the largest thus far,” he said in a live video on Facebook. Tens of thousands of vehicles were reported to have departed from all parts of Canada. A large number from the United States have been joining along the way. Brian clarified that some numbers “running around” on social media about the trucks joining the convoy are not correct.

Support truckers

Support truckers!! pic.twitter.com/UzyCp73zbf

— Jack Posobiec ☦️ (@JackPosobiec) January 29, 2022

“A post says 100,000 to 5,000. Those aren’t correct. Somebody made those numbers up. There’s no way for us to put a number on exactly how many United States trucks have gone over there.” Speaking about the upcoming U.S. convoy, he said “it will start in California and it will end in DC and we’re gonna stay there, just like Canada is doing,” Brian said. “You’re gonna have your main artery … everybody will join in as they go down the interstate to DC.” He added that dates and planned routes would be released soon on a website and various social media platforms, and a GoFundMe page would only be released on their CONVOY TO DC 2022 Facebook page. “We’re done with the mandates, were done with the government telling us what to do, we will continue and we will follow just like the rest of the world on these trucker protests, and they will be 100 percent legal, they will abide by the law.”

Brian added that nobody has been kicked out of the convoy so far for failing to abide by agreed-upon terms. “It’s been a unity that I’ve never seen before, not anywhere in the north. Canada has definitely shown that—the most peaceful protest in the convoy I have seen to date,” Brian further stated. “America, it’s your turn, it’s your turn to step up and show what you’re made of. “We don’t care what side you’re on, we don’t care where you’re from, if you live in America, in Canada, or anywhere you may come from, we’re doing it for you,” he said. Businesses of different sizes, as well as families in the two countries, have helped the convoys with food, shelter, and gas.

CBC Russia

If chlamydia could talk…

pic.twitter.com/lAwVmkQlDD

— MAX (@maxkeiser) January 29, 2022

From the Toronto Sun. Must be the only Canadian paper that doesn’t cheerlead Trudeau.

• Media’s Handling Of Trucker Convoy One-sided, Inflammatory, Shameful (Lilley)

Run for your lives, the barbarians are at the gates! That pretty much sums up the reaction of most in the Canadian media to the trucker convoy that has been winding its way across the country for the last week before descending upon Ottawa on Saturday. If you haven’t heard, this protest is destined to become Canada’s January 6th, the storming of the American capital that took place just over a year ago. Where did the idea come from that people involved in the convoy wanted to attempt a violent overthrow of the Canadian government? It wasn’t from any of the organizers, it was an anonymous comment made online and referenced by Global News in one of their reports. It was enough to set the tone of the coverage for days to come — these are violent extremists. Beware!

I’ve covered all kinds of political protests from the Summit of the Americas riots in Quebec City to riots in Montreal, violent protests in Ottawa and the Idle No More campaign that took hold near Parliament Hill for weeks. Never have I seen our national media, led by those on Parliament Hill, spend so much time digging into the comments and views of a group of people trying to find those they can demonize. Yes, some supporters have been using terms like fascist and Nazi to describe the government. That’s far from accurate, regardless of your political views, but do you take that extreme rhetoric and pin it on the organizers of the convoy? Those terms are thrown at me by supporters of the Trudeau government on a daily basis and I don’t pin that on the PM and his cabinet.

People have lost all sense of decorum online and immediately jump to extreme rhetoric. It happens on all sides. Normally though, journalists will say that organizers of a protest want a peaceful protest even as extreme elements threaten violence. That isn’t happening with this protest because it’s not one most in the media like or understand — it’s a group of people they look down upon. The media in this country is not acting as a neutral observer and conduit for news on this matter, most have decided the trucker convoy is the enemy and are treating it as such. Watch any of the news networks or, more importantly, read the Twitter accounts of supposedly objective journalists, or listen to the contempt in their voices as they ask questions to see that they have clearly taken sides.

When Trudeau referred to the convoy as a “fringe minority” with “unacceptable views” the journalists covering him didn’t push back and ask him why he would use such language. They just moved along. Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole has faced more difficult questions on this front at every step than Trudeau has. Apparently, the journalists on Parliament Hill these days think their job is to hold the opposition and not the government to account. It also appears their job to support some protest movements and attack others based on the personal preferences of the journalists. The line between columnists and commentators, like myself, and supposedly neutral, objective reporters gets blurrier by the day. The behaviour of Canada’s media from reporters to news anchors, show hosts to editors, has been shameful over the past few weeks. Can we really be shocked that public trust in the media continues to fall?

Ottawa live cams
https://twitter.com/i/status/1487514289791545346

Very instructive.

• Covid Vaccine Tricks (IP2)

Those paying attention will already know that we have been deceived over covid numbers thanks to PCR false positives, “died of” vs. “died with” confusion and a “case” definition that, in the UK, has included literally millions of perfectly healthy people. Grossly inflated counts have been used to mess with people’s minds and direct opinion. Now we have vaccines. Did you think the authorities would suddenly start playing it straight? This 10 minute video aims to identify three specific ways in which the performance of the covid vaccines has been misrepresented. Tricks have been played.

“permanent ‘state of exception.’”

• Truth or Covid? -or, “Why We Know Everything They’re Telling Us Is A Lie”- (OffG)

In the world of the “new normal,” anyone who mentioned “civil rights” was hustled off social media and into First Amendment limbo. Democracy was mocked as a reactionary’s pipe dream – when it was mentioned at all. That’s the record, in brief, of the past two years. And if we have learned anything from this cavalcade of deceit, it is, or should be, that the COVID coup is fundamentally not about medicine or science. It is not about inflated “case” rates or jiggered statistics or fake news or the pseudo-studies circulated by propaganda outfits like the World Health Organization or the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yes, all those things have figured in the derangement of constitutional democracy that has characterized the COVID coup. But at bottom it’s not about any of them.

The real nature of the campaign is at once simpler and far more dangerous. What we’re experiencing is an attack on the very foundation of ordered liberty, an assault that is already in the process of submerging democracies beneath what the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has called a “permanent ‘state of exception.’” To put it bluntly: our ruling classes, in one country after another, have effectively switched off their nations’ constitutions and the whole set of civil liberties that are supposed to accompany them – not by formally abolishing them, mind you, but by adopting the extra-legal mechanisms of a “state of emergency” in place of normal constitutional procedures, with the result that the ordinary rules of democracy and the rights of individuals have, for most practical purposes, been indefinitely suspended.

That’s why the COVID coup began, in my own country, with declarations of an “emergency” in four-fifths of the states – and why, with very rare exceptions, those “states of emergency” remain in effect to this day, nearly two years later. Again, this cannot be explained away as a response to a respiratory virus. When an “emergency” involves suspending constitutional government for two years, it should be obvious that the “emergency” has ceased to be a real emergency (if it ever was one) and has become an extralegal norm – and this is even more emphatically true when virtually no one in the political opposition, the civil rights bar or the mainstream media so much as mentions this fundamental fact.

My point is that those of us who recognize what is happening are going to have to shift our tactics. We can no longer attack COVID19 propaganda in piecemeal fashion, challenging one medical falsehood at a time. That approach, I’m afraid, is likely to be self-defeating. As long as we focus on disproving each particular COVID “narrative,” the Infallible Ones can continue to manage the debate in mass media as a conflict between the interpretations of “experts” and those of “conspiracy theorists.” And that allows them to skirt the real issue. COVID fascism is not a comedy of scientific errors. For all intents and purposes, it is a coup d’état. And it must be resisted accordingly.

Always wondered why Redfield was replaced by Wolensky. Or rather, why he didn’t cry foul a lot louder.

• Fauci-Shaped Paper on Origins of COVID-19 ‘Antithetical to Science’ (ET)

The claim that the virus that causes COVID-19 definitely was not from a laboratory, put forth in a paper quietly shaped by Dr. Anthony Fauci that was cited by other scientists who called the lab idea a “conspiracy theory,” was “antithetical to science,” a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director says. “The purpose of science is to have rigorous debate about different hypotheses. I’ve never really experienced in my life where there was private telephone calls among scientists that had a decision on what position they would take collectively, and to see that position then published in a scientific journal like Lancet, to say that individuals that thought like myself, had a different scientific hypothesis, somehow had to be put down and viewed as conspirators, this is really antithetical to science,” Dr. Robert Redfield, the agency’s head until Jan. 20, 2021, said during a Jan. 26 appearance on Fox News.

Emails recently made public show that Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), played a key role in shaping a paper published by Nature in early 2020. The authors, most of whom messaged repeatedly with Fauci, joined him on a teleconference shortly before the paper was published, and have since received millions from Fauci’s agency, claimed that their analyses “clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.” The Nature article was one of those cited by EcoHealth Alliance founder Peter Daszak and a separate group of scientists in an article later published in The Lancet. “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” wrote Daszak, whose group funneled money from Fauci’s agency to scientists in Wuhan, China, and the other authors.

Many experts later acknowledged there’s no clear evidence that the CCP virus has a natural origin, and some have said the bulk of the evidence points to it coming from the set of laboratories in Wuhan. Redfield is one of them. “I don’t think it’s biologically plausible that this virus emerged from a bat to some intermediate species into humans and became one of the most transmissible viruses that we know in human disease. This virus clearly had a detour and that detour was being educated how to infect human tissue in the laboratory. I think that’s the most plausible explanation,” he told Fox.

“..vaccinated people do not appear to form antibodies against the nucleocapsid protein, the envelope of the virus, which is an important part of the response in unvaccinated people.”

• The Story of N-Antibodies And Why They Are So Important (Kirsch)

UCSF Professor Aditi Bhargava brought up the issue with N-antibodies in November of 2021. People have been too quick to dismiss her concern. In its Week 42 “COVID-19 Vaccine Surveillance Report” (published 21 October 2021), the UK Department of Health admits on page 23 that “recent observations from UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) surveillance data that N antibody levels appear to be lower in individuals who acquire infection following 2 doses of vaccination.” What does this mean? It means that the vaccine interferes with the body’s ability to make antibodies after infection against other parts of the virus.

In particular, vaccinated people do not appear to form antibodies against the nucleocapsid protein, the envelope of the virus, which is an important part of the response in unvaccinated people. The observation may explain why the vaccines actually produce negative efficacy as was shown in the Denmark study, for example. Reuters did a “fact check” on this concerning observation and, as expected, found nothing wrong. Who’d have guessed? They said that since the S-protein response was so robust, your body had no need to mount a robust N-antibody response. Not so fast… this is hardly a “known effect.” This seems more like a hand-waving argument to me. In checking with the experts I knew, nobody was aware of this being something to simply ignore.

This is why Professor Bhargava voiced her concerns in her blog on November 3, 2021: New studies from the British Health Ministry suggests that COVID vaccines might interfere with the ability of our immune system to produce antibodies against other parts of the virus, crucial aspect for developing cross protection The data agrees with her: it is showing the vaccines are producing negative efficacy and making our bodies more susceptible to being infected with other diseases including cancers and shingles (see Incriminating Evidence for references). She also said in that same article, “Ideally, no one should be tested unless they have symptoms.” I couldn’t agree more with that statement.

Fired for being unvaxxed, she set up her own clinic.

• How a Sarasota Nurse Practitioner Saved Covid Lives Without Vaccines (Walsh)

What happened next, over the next twelve months, was a dizzying and exhilarating— sometimes harrowing—24/7 whirlwind, with Hamalian deep in the treacherous trenches and on the frontlines of covid-19. With her and husband’s savings, they took an all-or-nothing risk and opened her own family practice in Sarasota. From July 2021 to mid-January 2022, Hamalian and her Latitude Clinic have treated 1,092 covid patients. For most of them, she prescribed the much-disparaged drug, ivermectin, and to all of them the treatment protocols of the much-disparaged doctors of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance. Her results would shame mainstream medicine: Only one of Hamalian’s patients died.

None was intubated. None was put on a ventilator. Only ten were hospitalized. The one who died was a man of advanced age with multiple end-stage cormorbities. Hamalian says, except for the one deceased patient, “all are better and have returned to their normal lives. Some of the long-haul patients we are still working with and do not know if they will recover to 100 percent of the pre-covid health. Most of our long-haul patients say they have recovered completely. Most that are not fully recovered say they are 70 percent to 90 percent improved so far.”

More hospitals willing to let people die. Even children. What about Hippocrates? FIRST, do no harm!

Parents DID get vaxxed in the end, but then had to wait 6 weeks, big risk to their child. Offered to let friends accompany the kid, but “all children undergoing such procedures must be accompanied by their guardians”.

• Child With Unvaccinated Parents to Receive Transplant in Greece (GR)

A child from Cyprus who was refused a heart transplant in Germany because his parents are unvaccinated will have the procedure in Greece. Due to be transported by air ambulance to Germany for the procedure, the three year old was taken off the transplantation list for a new heart because of the unvaccinated status of his parents. He was then hospitalized in Nicosia’s Makarios Hospital with serious heart disease, after he was denied treatment in Germany because his parents were not vaccinated against the coronavirus. Although they later agreed to become inoculated, six weeks would need to go by before they could be considered completely vaccinated. The three-year old was flown to Greece Saturday afternoon in order to have the procedure at the pediatric clinic of the Mitera Hospital in Athens. Dr. Giorgos Sarris will conduct the operation.

According to Dr. Avraam Elia, the head of the Makarios hospital’s pediatrics clinic where the child was hospitalized, both of his parents have since received the first shot of a two-dose vaccine. The boy was supposed to have been placed upon an air transport bound for a hospital in Germany that specializes in cardiology on Thursday morning. But the family received late word that the child’s organ transplant will not take place on Thursday, with the German institution canceling the lifesaving procedure. Hospital officials insist that they cannot accept the patient if his parents are unvaccinated — even if he is accompanied on the trip by other people who are vaccinated. According to reports in the Cyprus Mail, the German institution held firm to its policy that all children undergoing such procedures must be accompanied by their guardians in these cases.

“..Lavrov said on Friday that NATO’s written response to Moscow’s security proposals, in which the bloc is said to have dismissed Russia’s key concerns, was “embarrassing.”

• NATO Knows Truth About Russia ‘Invasion’ Plans – Source (RT)

Despite weeks of escalating tensions and claims that Russian troops and tanks could begin streaming over the border into Ukraine at a moment’s notice, Moscow doesn’t actually appear to be masterminding an invasion of its neighbor, a top NATO official has reportedly admitted. The senior figure, who represents an EU member state in the bloc’s Brussels HQ has told pan-European news outlet Euractiv that they believe Russia is not on the verge of starting a military incursion into Ukraine. “To invade such a large country with such military forces [like Ukraine], you need military capabilities other than those that have been currently deployed,” the source said.

The unnamed source also added that the US-led bloc is neither legally bound to militarily intervene in Ukraine, nor does it have “the right” to do so, because Ukraine is not a member of NATO. The country is still the bloc’s “partner of increased opportunities,” the source said, which means NATO has “some moral obligations” to sanction Russia in case of an aggression against Kiev. At the same time, the official argued that it may be a good idea if the West “pulled Ukraine’s ear a bit,” as there are some in Kiev adding fuel to the fire and risking provocations. “There are also problems in Ukraine; who is in power, who has the upper hand in the army…” the source went on.

Western countries have accused Russia of massing troops and military hardware along the frontier with the intention of attacking its neighbor, claims which Russia has consistently denied. Moscow, in turn, sees Western military infrastructure close to its borders as a threat and wants legal assurances that the NATO will not expand further eastward, effectively barring Kiev from membership. The bloc has rejected this demand, pointing to its stated ‘open-door policy’ and maintaining Kiev should have the right to aspire to membership. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday that NATO’s written response to Moscow’s security proposals, in which the bloc is said to have dismissed Russia’s key concerns, was “embarrassing.”

“..how will the platform react if a barrage of artists starts to make similar threats?”

• Spotify Has Become The Battleground For Big Tech’s Censorship Civil War (QTR)

This week, the decrepit clutches of cancel culture continued their “war” against Rogan (read: open minded discussion) in the form of 76 year old aging rock star Neil Young, who threatened to pull his catalog of music – which he doesn’t even fully own the rights to – from Spotify as a result of what he calls “misinformation” being presented on Rogan’s show. Now that we’ve redefined “controversial” as “open minded discussion”, it’s also crucial we redefine “misinformation”. Nowadays, “misinformation” means any utterance of thoughts that weren’t handed down directly from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the CDC, the mainstream media or global elites and central planners. In response to Young’s temper tantrum this week, Spotify did precisely nothing and, at Young’s request, deftly pulled the artist’s music from their platform.

Perhaps feeling defeated by Spotify’s common sense decision, or perhaps motivated by the perverse amount of press Young received for his “declaration against misinformation”, a second septuagenarian former rocker, 78 year old Joni Mitchell, also joined the fray and threatened to pull her music from Spotify, as well. As her reasoning for the ultimatum, Mitchell claimed that “irresponsible people are spreading lies”. At first, I thought maybe she had looked back on the “official” declarations that cloth masks would work against the virus, vaccinations would end Covid altogether and that ivermectin was nothing more than veterinary horse paste. Instead, it turns out she, too, was referring to Rogan’s podcast.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that people threatening to pull their music from Spotify are extremely wealthy. Mitchell has an estimated net worth of $100 million and Young has an estimated net worth of $200 million. [..] Young and Mitchell were immense successes because they tapped into the same vein of American culture that Rogan now resides in: the incessant need to hear “the other side of the story” from what “the man” was preaching. Whether the dialogue is about protesting the Vietnam war or Covid lockdowns is moot: these are the issues of our respective generations. The irony is uncanny, if you can zoom out and look at the bigger picture. Joe Rogan is now what these artists used to be: an iconoclast.

My guess is that more aging rockers may also follow suit and that, even if they don’t, the fever pitch to censor Joe Rogan is going to be dialed up even further for Spotify. Many people may be thinking we have seen what Spotify is made of in its decision to tell Neil Young to go pound sand; but how will the platform react if a barrage of artists starts to make similar threats?

Brief history of cancel culture.

• The Pressure Campaign on Spotify to Remove Joe Rogan (Greenwald)

When liberals’ favorite media outlets, from CNN and NBC to The New York Times and The Atlantic, spend four years disseminating one fabricated Russia story after the next — from the Kremlin hacking into Vermont’s heating system and Putin’s sexual blackmail over Trump to bounties on the heads of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, the Biden email archive being “Russian disinformation,” and a magical mystery weapon that injures American brains with cricket noises — none of that is “disinformation” that requires banishment. Nor are false claims that COVID’s origin has proven to be zoonotic rather than a lab leak, the vastly overstated claim that vaccines prevent transmission of COVID, or that Julian Assange stole classified documents and caused people to die.

Corporate outlets beloved by liberals are free to spout serious falsehoods without being deemed guilty of disinformation, and, because of that, do so routinely. This “disinformation” term is reserved for those who question liberal pieties, not for those devoted to affirming them. That is the real functional definition of “disinformation” and of its little cousin, “misinformation.” It is not possible to disagree with liberals or see the world differently than they see it. The only two choices are unthinking submission to their dogma or acting as an agent of “disinformation.” Dissent does not exist to them; any deviation from their worldview is inherently dangerous — to the point that it cannot be heard.

The data proving a deeply radical authoritarian strain in Trump-era Democratic Party politics is ample and have been extensively reported here. Democrats overwhelmingly trust and love the FBI and CIA. Polls show they overwhelmingly favor censorship of the internet not only by Big Tech oligarchs but also by the state. Leading Democratic Party politicians have repeatedly subpoenaed social media executives and explicitly threatened them with legal and regulatory reprisals if they do not censor more aggressively — a likely violation of the First Amendment given decades of case law ruling that state officials are barred from coercing private actors to censor for them, in ways the Constitution prohibits them from doing directly.

[..] The same attack was launched, and is still underway, against Substack, also for the crime of refusing to ban writers deemed by liberal corporate outlets and activists to be hateful and/or fonts of disinformation. After the first wave of liberal attacks on Substack failed — that script was that it is a place for anti-trans animus and harassment — The Post returned this week for round two, with a paint-by-numbers hit piece virtually identical to the one it published last year about Rumble. “Newsletter company Substack is making millions off anti-vaccine content, according to estimates,” blared the sub-headline. “Prominent figures known for spreading misinformation, such as [Joseph] Mercola, have flocked to Substack, podcasting platforms and a growing number of right-wing social media networks over the past year after getting kicked off or restricted on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube,” warned the Post. It is, evidently, extremely dangerous to society for voices to still be heard once Google decrees they should not be.

James C. Goodale is the former general counsel and vice chairman of the New York Times and the author of “Fighting for the Press: The Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles.”

• UK Court Should Slap Down US Justice Department In The Assange Case (Goodale)

As the lead attorney for the New York Times in the “Pentagon Papers” case in 1971, I’ve been doing a slow burn ever since over the government’s behavior in that instance: lies, disregard of court rules, arrogance, destruction of documents. All of this was brought to mind earlier this week when a British court hinted in the Julian Assange case that the U.S. government has acted in the same way once again. It asked Britain’s supreme court to determine the appropriateness of a late filing by the government that completely undercut a ruling that Assange could NOT be extradited to the U.S. This followed British trial court Judge Vanessa Baraitser, who was hearing Assange’s extradition case, ruling that Assange might commit suicide if held in a U.S. prison in solitary confinement under what is called Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) and, so, he could not be extradited.

As soon as she announced her decision, the U.S. government filed assurances that Assange would not be held in that kind of detention, although it reserved the right to revoke the assurance if circumstances changed. The judge was unmoved by this assurance, but she was reversed on appeal. The U.K.’s supreme court has now asked to consider the timeliness of this filing. I do not believe the U.S. government’s assurances are worth the paper on which they have been written. Its behavior in this case has been rampant. Most outrageously, the CIA discussed a plot to kidnap Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he was holed up, and to kill him. The CIA also tapped into conversations in the Ecuadorian Embassy, including those with Assange’s lawyers.

There is not much question whether all of this is true. There was testimony about it in open court, and Mike Pompeo, the CIA director at the time and later secretary of State during the Trump administration, has conceded that there is “some truth” in the foregoing. I do not pretend to be particularly familiar with the extradition laws of the U.K. But common sense tells me that you deliver highly important documents about a case — such as government assurances — before the case begins, not after it has been decided. U.K. counsel representing the U.S. disagrees, saying he can deliver documents when he wants and if he loses the appeal, he will start the extradition proceedings all over again.

Bad morning
https://twitter.com/i/status/1487439987889086467

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Debt Rattle January 28 2022

Jan 282022

January 28, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:12 am Finance Tagged with: Biden, Clinton, CNN, Musk, natural immunity, truckers, Trudeau, Ukraine, vaccine failure, Zelensky 78 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Bust of woman with arms raised 1922

• White House Calls CNN Report On Russian Invasion ‘Completely False’ (RT)

• The Covid Evidence Dismissed By The BBC As ‘Conspiracy-laden’ (Beck)

• The High Cost of Disparaging Natural Immunity to Covid (Makary)

• 4 Out of 5 Americans Have Covid ‘Natural Immunity’ (KB)

• Denmark Declares Covid-19 No Longer ‘Socially Critical Disease’ (TH)

• Sweden Opts Against Covid Jabs For Children (RT)

• Vaccine Failure In Two Charts And Two Graphs From Four Countries (Berenson)

• Most Covid Patients In Wales In Hospital For Other Conditions (BBC)

• Biden Admin Used Billions In Hospital Covid-19 Funds To Pay Drugmakers (STAT)

• The Folly of Pandemic Censorship (Taibbi)

• Joe Rogan, Elon Musk React To Canadian Trucker Convoy (RT)

• Truckers Inspired By Canada Begin ‘Freedom’ Convoys Around The World (JTN)

• Musk Unloads On ‘Puppet’ Biden In Twitter Rant (RT)

• China Warns US Over Ukraine & Blasts “Interference” In Beijing Olympics (ZH)

• Why Do American Elites Want War in Ukraine? (Kassam)

• What Did Clinton Know and When Did She Know It? (Sperry)

US military: average per year 1.7 million reports of all diseases combined. First 10 months 2021: 22 million.

1/5 Sécurité des vaccins: un scandale se profilerait-il au Département de la Défense (USA) ?
"J'ai la confiance de personnes très haut placées au DoD, des médecins."
"Vous avez en moyenne 1,7 mio de déclarations de maladies par an."
"2021: en 10 mois , l'année du vaccin, 22 mio!" pic.twitter.com/DQuqE34boh

— Collectif Sauver la Science (@GabinJean3) January 27, 2022

Scary indeed.

Ryan Cole

Dr. Ryan Cole – shocking if true… pic.twitter.com/UwWr0H57Kl

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2019) January 28, 2022

Natasha Bertrand posted a story about a Biden-Zelensky call that didn’t go well, but deleted it soon afterward. Still, people from the White House, Ukraine and CNN itself reacted to it. Was it all for clickbait?

• White House Calls CNN Report On Russian Invasion ‘Completely False’ (RT)

The White House has pushed back on a CNN report about Thursday’s phone call between US President Joe Biden and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, calling it “completely false.” “President Biden said that there is a distinct possibility that the Russians could invade Ukraine in February. He has previously said this publicly and we have been warning about this for months. Reports of anything more or different than that are completely false,” Emily Horne, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, tweeted on Thursday evening. She was responding to a tweet by CNN’s senior national security correspondent Alexander Marquardt, who was quoting his colleague in Kiev, Matthew Chance.

“A Russian invasion is now virtually certain once the ground freezes, Biden said to Zelensky, a senior Ukrainian official told [Chance]. Kyiv could be ‘sacked,’ Russian forces may attempt to occupy it, ‘prepare for impact’, Biden said, according to this official,” Marquardt tweeted. CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper had Chance cite “the Ukrainian official” live on air. “The capital, Kiev, this city here, could be “sacked.” That’s the word he [Biden] apparently used, according to this Ukrainian official. [It could be] sacked by Russian forces,” Chance told Tapper. Chance went on to quote what he called a “quite impactful line” from the Biden-Zelensky call as narrated to him by the anonymous Ukrainian official. “President Biden [was] telling his Ukrainian counterpart that Ukraine should prepare for impact. Quite a stark warning there from the US leader.”

The quote was quickly picked up by other outlets, such as the Independent, the Express and the Daily Mail. Meanwhile, CNN anchor Jim Sciutto quoted Horne as saying that “anonymous sources are ‘leaking’ falsehoods” about the call. Zelensky’s spokesman Sergii Nykyforov likewise dismissed reports citing the alleged “senior Ukranian official” as “completely false.” “Correct information can only be found in official releases from the Ukrainian and American sides,” he stated.

Phone call

Ukrainian official describes Biden-Zelensky phone call to @mchancecnn NOTE: Since this report, WH & Zelensky spokesman have disputed official’s claims (see thread) pic.twitter.com/B2WV4ACL28

— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) January 28, 2022

The UK Yellow Card system fails as badly as VAERS. And that is not a coincidence. It takes 40 minutes to fill out a form.

• The Covid Evidence Dismissed By The BBC As ‘Conspiracy-laden’ (Beck)

Ms Bayliss has been gathering witness statements from those who allege they are vaccine-injured, and from potential expert witnesses in the US and the UK. She said: ‘We have subsequently uploaded 103 statements regarding vaccine associated deaths and injury, and 13 from identifiable whistleblowers, medical experts and scientists.’ To build his case, Mr Hyland investigated our medicines regulatory authority, specifically the alleged negligence of June Raine, chief executive of the MHRA. He said: ‘The charge against the MHRA is that they negligently conducted themselves and have caused British citizens real harm and suffering. ‘They have failed to act on any of the Yellow Card reports they have received. There are currently 2,000 deaths reported and 500,000 adverse events. They should have stopped the programme before the deaths reached 100 and launched a thorough investigation.’

The Yellow Card data show that 1 in 120 people have reported an event they considered serious enough to spend 40 minutes filling out a Yellow Card form. ‘This may be just the tip of the iceberg,’ said Ms Bayliss, ‘as the MHRA admit they receive information from around 10 per cent of those damaged.’ The figure is low because some doctors find they cannot access the Yellow Card scheme from their hospital computers, while others do not know about it. Members of the public are generally not informed about Yellow Card and most who complain to their GP that they think they have suffered a serious adverse event are told that the vaccine is an unlikely cause and their symptoms are put down to ‘coincidence’, as the Royal College of General Practitioners has not issued them with any advice.

If the coincidence theory held water, you would expect an even spread of reports across the three vaccinations used in Britain. We have Pfizer-BioNTech’s experimental mRNA jab introduced in December 2020, and Oxford/AstraZeneca’s more traditional one which has been available since January 2021. Plus the new kid on the block, Moderna’s mRNA jab introduced in April 2021. Although we began using it four months after Pfizer and three months after AstraZeneca, Moderna is clocking up 50 per cent more Yellow Cards than AZ, who have 60 per cent more reported injuries than Pfizer. Oxford/AstraZeneca has been received by 24.9million people and the Yellow Card scheme shows that 1 in 103 have been impacted, while Pfizer-BioNTech’s has been received by 25.3million people and Yellow Card shows that 1 in 162 people have been impacted.

Moderna has been given to 1.6million people and its Yellow Card reporting rate shows that 1 in 50 people have been impacted. On average, 1 in 120 people have suffered an adverse reaction. ‘In our view, we have enough evidence to show gross negligence,’ said Mr Hyland. ‘It is clear that the MHRA have failed to follow up concerns about vaccine injury and they failed to withdraw harmful batches when they knew about the issues. ‘They also exaggerated the risk of Covid by failing to distinguish the difference between dying with Covid, which is when someone has other illnesses, or of Covid, which is when the patient has no other illnesses.’ Covid-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, has a low fatality rate: less than one per cent of those who contract it. The Office of National Statistics has revealed under a Freedom of Information request that only 13,597 deaths in England and Wales out of 140,000 attributed to Covid were caused by Covid alone. The bulk of deaths were of people with comorbidities.

The immune system works.

• The High Cost of Disparaging Natural Immunity to Covid (Makary)

For most of last year, many of us called for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to release its data on reinfection rates, but the agency refused. Finally last week, the CDC released data from New York and California, which demonstrated natural immunity was 2.8 times as effective in preventing hospitalization and 3.3 to 4.7 times as effective in preventing Covid infection compared with vaccination. Yet the CDC spun the report to fit its narrative, bannering the conclusion “vaccination remains the safest strategy.” It based this conclusion on the finding that hybrid immunity—the combination of prior infection and vaccination—was associated with a slightly lower risk of testing positive for Covid. But those with hybrid immunity had a similar low rate of hospitalization (3 per 10,000) to those with natural immunity alone. In other words, vaccinating people who had already had Covid didn’t significantly reduce the risk of hospitalization.

Similarly, the National Institutes of Health repeatedly has dismissed natural immunity by arguing that its duration is unknown—then failing to conduct studies to answer the question. Because of the NIH’s inaction, my Johns Hopkins colleagues and I conducted the study. We found that among 295 unvaccinated people who previously had Covid, antibodies were present in 99% of them up to nearly two years after infection. We also found that natural immunity developed from prior variants reduced the risk of infection with the Omicron variant. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of the two-dose Moderna vaccine against infection (not severe disease) declines to 61% against Delta and 16% against Omicron at six months, according to a recent Kaiser Southern California study. In general, Pfizer’s Covid vaccines have been less effective than Moderna’s.

The CDC study and ours confirm what more than 100 other studies on natural immunity have found: The immune system works. The largest of these studies, from Israel, found that natural immunity was 27 times as effective as vaccinated immunity in preventing symptomatic illness. None of this should surprise us. For years, studies have shown that infection with the other coronaviruses that cause severe illness, SARS and MERS, confers lasting immunity. In a study published in May 2020, Covid-recovered monkeys that were rechallenged with the virus didn’t get sick. Public-health officials have a lot of explaining to do. They used the wrong starting hypothesis, ignored contrary preliminary data, and dug in as more evidence emerged that called their position into question.

Many, including Rochelle Walensky, now the CDC’s director, signed the John Snow memorandum in October 2020, which declared that “there is no evidence for lasting protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection.” Many clinicians who talk to other physicians nationwide had have long observed that we don’t see reinfected patients end up on a ventilator or die from Covid, with rare exceptions who almost always have immune disorders. Meanwhile, public-health officials recklessly destroyed the careers of everyday Americans, rallying to fire pilots, truck drivers and others in the supply-chain workforce who didn’t get vaccinated. And in the early months of the vaccine rollout, when supplies were limited, we could have saved many more lives by giving priority to those who didn’t have recorded natural immunity.

The Great Barrington guys also come from Yale, Harvard, and Stanford. And look what Collins and Fauci did to them.

• 4 Out of 5 Americans Have Covid ‘Natural Immunity’ (KB)

In the United States, the media barely mention Covid prior infections or the existence of natural immunity. But a CDC-sponsored database in partnership with Yale, Harvard, and Stanford universities shows that the overwhelming majority of Americans have natural immunity from prior infections, Wildfire can exclusively report. The CDC released a study last week called “COVID-19 Cases and Hospitalizations by COVID-19 Vaccination Status and Previous COVID-19 Diagnosis — California and New York, May–November 2021.” The findings were reported by Agence France-Presse. “During America’s last surge of the coronavirus driven by the Delta variant, people who were unvaccinated but survived Covid were better protected than those who were vaccinated and not previously infected,” AFP noted about the new study.

“The finding is the latest to weigh in on a debate on the relative strengths of natural versus vaccine-acquired immunity against SARS-CoV-2, but comes this time with the imprimatur of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),” AFP added. The U.K.’s Health Security Agency (UKHSA), issued a report that echoes much of the CDC’s findings on natural immunity. It showed that those with prior infections to Covid were much less likely to test positive for Covid infections than those in the vaccinated groups. Those with prior infections even in the pre-Alpha period were tested to have natural immunity roughly equivalent to those with vaccinated immunity acquired from three shots. The UKHSA report also showed that nearly the entire population of Great Britain has some form of antibodies to Covid-19.

Poof!

• Denmark Declares Covid-19 No Longer ‘Socially Critical Disease’ (TH)

As some countries double down on punishing the unvaccinated and continue with draconian Covid-19 restrictions, Denmark has taken the opposite approach, announcing Wednesday that all safety measures will be lifted next week. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the Nordic country is reclassifying Covid-19; it will no longer be considered a “socially critical disease.” “Tonight we can shrug our shoulders and find the smile again. We have incredibly good news, we can now remove the last coronavirus restrictions in Denmark,” Frederiksen said at a press conference. Frederiksen acknowledged that the decision may seem unusual as Omicron infections are spiking in the country, with 46,000 new Covid cases reported on Wednesday.

“Recent weeks have seen very high infection rates, in fact the highest in the entire pandemic,” she noted. “Therefore, it may seem strange and paradoxical that we are now ready to let go of the restrictions.” Health Minister Magnus Heunicke pointed to high rates of vaccination and fewer hospitalizations as the reasons officials have taken this approach. “The situation in Denmark is that we have this decoupling between infections and intensive care patients, and it is mainly due to the large attachment among Danes to revaccination. That is the reason why it is safe and the right thing to do now,” Heunicke said. The UK, Ireland and the Netherlands have all taken a similar approach.

For children 5-11 years old. Fauci wants 3 jabs each for every kid over 6 months.

• Sweden Opts Against Covid Jabs For Children (RT)

The Sweden Public Health Agency on Thursday announced that it had opted against following some western countries in endorsing vaccination against Covid-19 for children 5-11 years old. Administering shots in that age group wouldn’t have a major effect on the spread of Covid-19 and would offer little medical benefit to the individual children receiving them, the agency said in its guidance for the upcoming spring term. “With the knowledge we have today, with a low risk for serious disease for kids, we don’t see any clear benefit with vaccinating them,” agency official Britta Bjorkholm told reporters. The decision may be revisited if new information becomes available or a new variant of the virus changes the risk-reward analysis for vaccinating children.

Sweden’s decision is contrary to a trend toward countries approving vaccination of younger and younger children, especially with Covid-19’s Omicron variant spreading rapidly. Such counties as Germany, France, Italy and Spain have approved jabs for children as young as 5. In the US, chief White House medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci told reporters on Wednesday that he expects three-dose regimens to eventually be approved for children as young as 6 months old. Proponents of vaccinating children have argued that even though risks of serious illness or death from Covid-19 are relatively low in young people, they can spread the virus to more vulnerable segments of the population. Swedish health officials, however, argue that vaccinating small kids would entails no great benefit – either to them or to the people around them. “A general vaccination from the age of 5 is also not expected to have any major effect on the spread of infection at present, neither in the group of children aged 5–11 nor among other groups in the population,” the Public Health Agency said.

Here’s two of them. It’s repeated everywhere. The vaccinated are dying.

• Vaccine Failure In Two Charts And Two Graphs From Four Countries (Berenson)

I could make the long case about original antigenic sin, falling antibodies, the issues around cellular immunity, myocarditis, and all the rest. But I’m just going to offer these four images because they speak more clearly than anything I could say. Scotland, Britain, Israel, and Denmark are four of the world’s most highly vaccinated countries. They all have 90 percent adult Covid vaccination rates and 60 percent adult boosters. Yet the vast majority of deaths are occurring in vaccinated people; serious cases are soaring; and infections are almost literally off the charts. This is Covid vaccine failure at the most profound and basic level.

SCOTLAND: Covid death rates (RATES, not raw numbers) by vaccination status for the last four weeks. Death rates in vaccinated but unboosted people have been higher than rates in the unvaccinated each week. Also, 87 percent of total deaths occurred in vaccinated people in the most recent week:

BRITAIN: (the data in the British chart below is United Kingdom-wide and thus includes Scotland – some British readers asked me to make that clear.) Covid deaths by vaccination status in the most recent four weeks (2,845 out of the 3,860 people for whom vaccine status could be determined were vaccinated – 74 percent):

But you still label them Covid patients?

• Most Covid Patients In Wales In Hospital For Other Conditions (BBC)

Well over half of patients with confirmed cases of Covid in hospital in Wales are being treated for other conditions, official figures show for the first time. A total of 42.2% of confirmed Covid patients were being “actively” treated for it on Tuesday. This means nearly six out of 10 are “incidental” Covid patients being treated for other conditions. Meanwhile, Covid hospital figures continue to fall. The number of patients being treated primarily for Covid is far higher for those in critical care – nearly 90%, according to Digital Health and Care Wales. The average for the last week for Covid patients is just over 40% being treated primarily for the virus.

Even though patients might “incidentally” have Covid, it does not mean that it cannot add complications to their health or treatment, and it still presents challenges for patient management for hospitals. Meanwhile, there were another 220 patients who “probably” or “definitely” caught Covid while in hospital, according to Public Health Wales figures for the last week. The daily average number of Covid patients in hospital beds dropped for the 12th day in a row to 560 on Wednesday, according to Digital Health and Care Wales. The daily average for those patients in critical care or on invasive ventilation with Covid has also fallen to 22 – the lowest figure since 11 August. Daily Covid admissions are also still falling, down to 27 a day.

The big hospitals are fine. The smaller ones, not so much.

• Biden Admin Used Billions In Hospital Covid-19 Funds To Pay Drugmakers (STAT)

The Biden administration quietly took nearly $7 billion from a fund meant to help hospitals and clinics affected by the pandemic and used it to buy Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics, according to a document obtained by STAT. The move is similar to the Trump administration’s decision to divert $10 billion from the same fund to Operation Warp Speed, which STAT reported exclusively in March. Now, the hospital money, known as the Provider Relief Fund, has run dry, and has no new money left to allocate, according to the agency that administers it. Providers have only been able to submit requests for expenses incurred through March 2021 — before both the Delta and Omicron surges battered the health care system.

With the new $7 billion shift, which has not been previously reported, the diversion to drugmakers totals nearly $17 billion, or roughly 10% of the overall money Congress allotted for the fund for hospitals and physician practices. Congress set aside that money to help health care providers pay for pandemic-related expenses including staffing, personal protective equipment, care for uninsured patients, and vaccine distribution. The new details about the Biden administration’s spending decision come as hospitals across the country are struggling with a crushing surge of Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths due to the Omicron variant. And their representatives in Washington are furious.

[..] A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said using the money to pay drugmakers for contracts was a reasonable use of the hospital and clinic funds because the vaccines and therapeutics purchased were given to providers at no cost. “All Provider Relief Fund dollars have been used for Provider Relief Fund purposes,” the spokesperson said. However, there is no transparency into which contracts the money was used for, and where those products were distributed. Government watchdog reports offer clues to the timeline of the spending. As of March 1, 2021, $10 billion had been used to pay drugmakers. By Aug. 31, that number jumped to $14.8 billion. And per the document obtained by STAT, the total is $16.7 billion through Dec. 23.

“People know authorities lie, which is why the more they clamp down, the bigger their trust problem usually becomes. ”

• The Folly of Pandemic Censorship (Taibbi)

NIAID director Anthony Fauci has told three different stories about masks, including an episode in which he essentially claimed to have lied to us for our own good, in order to preserve masks for frontline workers — what Slate called one of the “Noble lies about Covid-19.” Officials turned out to be wrong about cloth masks anyway. Here is Fauci again on the issue of what to tell the public about how many people would need to be vaccinated to achieve “herd immunity,” casually explaining the logic of lying to the public for its sake: “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent. Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, “I can nudge this up a bit,” so I went to 80, 85.”

We’ve seen sudden changes in official positions on the efficacy of ventilators and lockdowns, on the dangers (or lack thereof) of opening schools, and on the risks, however small, of vaccine side effects like myocarditis. The CDC also just released data showing natural immunity to be more effective in preventing hospitalization and in preventing infection than vaccination. The government had previously said, over and over, that vaccination is preferable to natural immunity (here’s NIH director Francis Collins telling that to Bret Baier unequivocally in August). This was apparently another “noble lie,” designed to inspire people to get vaccinated, that mostly just convinced people to wonder if any official statements can be trusted.

To me, the story most illustrative of the problem inherent in policing “Covid misinformation” involves a town hall by Joe Biden from July 21 of last year. In it, the president said bluntly, “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations,” pretty much the definition of Covid misinformation: It was bad enough when, a month later, the CDC released figures showing 25% of a sample of 43,000 Covid cases involved fully vaccinated people. Far worse was a fact-check by Politifact, which judged Biden’s clearly wrong statement “half true.” “It is rare for people who are fully vaccinated to contract COVID-19, but it does happen,” the site wrote. They then cited CDC data as backup.

“The data that the CDC collected before May 1 show that, of 101 million people vaccinated in the U.S., 10,262 (0.01%) experienced breakthrough cases.” Politifact’s “bottom line”: Biden “exaggerated,” but “cases are rare.” Anyone paying attention to that story will now distrust the president, the CDC, and “reputable” mainstream fact-checkers like the Pew Center’s Politifact. These are the exact sort of authorities whose guidance sites like the Center for Countering Digital Hate will rely upon when trying to pressure companies like Substack to remove certain voices.

Big campaign to vilify the truckers. Trudeau, had Covid and is well jabbed, happens to get infected and goes in hiding for 5 days, to avoid the PR mess.

• Joe Rogan, Elon Musk React To Canadian Trucker Convoy (RT)

Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk and podcaster Joe Rogan have spoken about the Canadian truckers driving across the country to protest the government’s Covid-19 mandates, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau denounced them as a “fringe minority” with “unacceptable views.” “Canadian truckers rule,” Musk tweeted on Thursday afternoon. The ‘Freedom Convoy’ that set out from British Columbia and is expected to reach the Canadian capital of Ottawa sometime this weekend was ignored by the major media outlets at first. As it approached Ontario, however, the convoy became a political football. Trudeau denounced the truckers and said they “do not represent the views of Canadians” in a televised speech on Wednesday.

On Thursday morning, he announced he had been “exposed” to Covid-19 and would quarantine for five days – thereby missing the convoy’s arrival in Ottawa – even though he has already had the virus and been vaccinated and boosted. Jagmeet Singh, whose New Democrats are propping up Trudeau’s minority government, also condemned the truckers and accused them of spreading “false information” via “inflammatory, divisive and hateful comments.” He also criticized his brother-in-law for donating to the protest. Canadian media reported that Jodhveer Singh Dhaliwal had asked for his donation back after being told of “the true nature” of the convoy.

[..] Benjamin Dichter, one of the organizers of the ‘Freedom Convoy’ and the group’s official spokesman, said they are peaceful and law-abiding. He told the Toronto Sun that the convoy is a protest over Trudeau’s government forcing drivers to wear masks even when alone inside their trucks, a vaccine mandate, and a requirement to get the jab before crossing the US-Canada border. Dichter also denied reports that GoFundMe has frozen some Can$5 million in donations for the convoy, calling them “fake news.” Joe Rogan, who hosts the immensely popular podcast on Spotify, also shone a spotlight on the convoy during his show on Wednesday. Speaking to a guest from Montreal, he showed footage of the truckers and described it as Canada being “in revolt” over the government’s mandates. “It’s a giant convoy of trucks,” Rogan said. “That’s apparently some insane amount of people. Fifty thousand trucks are headed to Ottawa to protest the vaccine mandates by Trudeau.”

Canada: We’re Not Gonna Take it!

Canada: We're Not Gonna Take it!

(crank it up!)

#TruckersConvoy2022 pic.twitter.com/Dg2i0YHgDe

— G■■■en A■vi■e (@RichardStiller4) January 27, 2022

My guess would be Canada won’t be repeated. The truckers also want to block US-Canada border crossings.

• Truckers Inspired By Canada Begin ‘Freedom’ Convoys Around The World (JTN)

Truckers around the world are creating their own convoys to protest COVID-19 vaccine mandates after being inspired by the Canadian Freedom Convoy, which reportedly has thousands of trucks. Freedom Convoy 2022, the group that organized the Canadian trucker protest, reported initially having 1,600 trucks. The convoy, which now has nearly 50,000 trucks, will be in Ottowa by Saturday with the goal of getting “the government of Canada to repeal its cross border Covid tracking passport / phone app and ALL Covid-19 vaccine mandates,” according to a press release. The Canadian convoy has reportedly been joined by some American truckers and in Ontario, farmers came in tractors to show support. Both the United States and Canada mandate cross-border truckers to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Americans are invited to also protest the mandate this Saturday at three border locations: Houlton, Maine; Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan; and Sweet Grass, Montana. In Australia, the “2022 Official Convoy to Canberra” has more than 44,000 members on Facebook and more than 10,000 followers on Telegram as of Thursday. The group is planning to meet in the capital by Jan. 31 to protest vaccine mandates. European truckers are organizing to protest vaccine mandates as well. The European Convoy Telegram channel has more than 7,300 members. Truckers are organizing across Europe, including the Netherlands, France, Hungary and more, to converge on Brussels by Feb. 7. The truckers have received an outpouring of support from celebrities as well.

Entrepreneur Elon Musk, one of the wealthiest men in the world tweeted his support for the convoy. “Canadian truckers rule,” he said, later adding: “If you scare people enough, they will demand removal of freedom. This is the path to tyranny.”

Trudeau hiding
https://twitter.com/i/status/1486870820177649666

“Last year, the United Auto Workers union said Ford “put corporate greed and more potential profits over American jobs”..”

• Musk Unloads On ‘Puppet’ Biden In Twitter Rant (RT)

Tesla tycoon Elon Musk referred to Joe Biden as a “damp sock puppet in human form” on Thursday, in response to the US president’s photo-op with General Motors chair Mary Barra. In the video, which was posted on Biden’s official Twitter account on Wednesday evening, the president praised GM’s investment in electric vehicle manufacturing as a blow to climate change. Responding to the message, Musk argued that electric vehicle manufacturing in the US “Starts with a T / Ends with an A / ESL in the middle.” He then took a dig at the president, completing his tweet with a “sock” emoji.

Musk also claimed that Biden was “treating the American public like fools” while responding to another Twitter user, who argued that Biden was “trying to cancel a great American company and rewrite EV history” by endorsing GM and Ford. Amateur fact-checkers pounced on the thread to back up Musk, posting data that shows Tesla’s Model Y and Model 3 were by far the top-selling electric vehicles in the US – and both made domestically. GM’s Bolt came in at a distant fourth place in 2021, with Ford’s Mustang Mach-E beating it out for third place, according to Car & Driver. In a video with Barra, Biden wrote that “companies like GM and Ford are building more electric vehicles here at home than ever before,” while Barra announced a $7 billion investment in Michigan along with a battery cell plant to be opened in the US.

At least some of Ford’s electric vehicles are manufactured in Mexico, not the US. Last year, the United Auto Workers union said Ford “put corporate greed and more potential profits over American jobs” with a plan to build a new electric model in Mexico, rather than in Ohio.

1 week till Olympics. Xi is nervous.

• China Warns US Over Ukraine & Blasts “Interference” In Beijing Olympics (ZH)

China on Thursday blasted the US for continuing to interfere in its affairs, further saying nothing has fundamentally changed, but instead charging there’s been “new shocks” since the Biden-Xi virtual summit of two months ago. The scathing rebuke came on Thursday as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a phone call with his counterpart Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Importantly, Wang took the opportunity to for the first time side with Russia in the direct communication with the US top diplomat, saying Moscow has “reasonable security concerns” over Ukraine that must be “taken seriously”. Chinese state media and Beijing-linked pundits have also become increasingly vocal on the issue, charging NATO with overstepping…

He urged calm on the part of all sides but specifically called on the West to “abandon its Cold War mentality”. It’s been no secret that Washington sanctions and punitive actions against officials in both countries have served to make Russia and China unlikely allies against a common enemy. “All parties should completely abandon the Cold War mentality and form a balanced, effective and sustainable European security mechanism through negotiation,” Wang spelled out in the call with Blinken, according to AFP. The tough rhetoric echoed the words of Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian during a Wednesday press briefing. In response to US claims that Russia is likely to invade Ukraine during the Beijing Winter Olympics, Zhao said,

“As the world’s largest military alliance, NATO should abandon the outdated Cold War mentality and ideological bias, and do things that are conducive to upholding peace and stability.” He suggested that NATO is outdated and contributes to instability: “China firmly opposes all kinds of small cliques,” he added, and urged “fully consider each other’s legitimate security concerns, avoid antagonism and confrontation, and properly address differences and disputes through equal consultation on the basis of mutual respect.”

Wang focused much of his Thursday call with Blinken on the “urgent priority” that the “US should stop interfering in the Beijing Winter Olympics.” The swipe appeared not just aimed at Washington’s continued emphasis on China’s human rights abuses, including allegations of detention centers and “genocide” targeting Uighur Muslims, but in response to the words the day prior from Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. Sherman had unexpectedly linked the Ukraine crisis with the Olympic games hosted by China: “We all are aware that the Beijing Olympics begin on Feb. 4, the opening ceremony, and President Putin expects to be there. I think that, probably, [Chinese] President Xi Jinping would not be ecstatic if Putin chose that moment to invade Ukraine, so that may affect his timing and his thinking,” Sherman said in a virtual conference.

“Putin is the devil and Russia subverted American democracy” has become a moralistic mantra for every Biden booster and Foggy Bottom staffer.”

• Why Do American Elites Want War in Ukraine? (Kassam)

George Orwell’s The Lion and the Unicorn (1941) contains the following description of the English elite: “One thing that has always shown that the English ruling class are morally fairly sound, is that in time of war they are ready enough to get themselves killed…. What is to be expected of them is not treachery or physical cowardice, but stupidity, unconscious sabotage, an infallible instinct for doing the wrong thing. They are not wicked, or not altogether wicked; they are merely unteachable. Only when their money and power are gone will the younger among them begin to grasp what century they are living in.”

America’s own ruling class has more than its share of the unteachable types, as well as the cynical scoundrelism of Orwell’s description of the U.S. ruling elite as “mere bandits…consciously clinging to unjust privileges and beating down opposition by bribery and tear-gas bombs.” And when it’s not bombs at home, it’s bombs away. Or perhaps in Joe Biden’s case, both. The current president is perhaps the leading exemplar of American banditry, coupling treachery with an infallible instinct for doing the wrong thing. His own former boss, President Barack Obama, is said to have remarked upon his Vice President’s “ability to f*** things up.” And that ability has not diminished with time.

So, of course, to war. Whether in lock-step or goose-step, the rest of the ruling class amplifies Biden’s thirst for something, anything that provides respite from domestic catastrophe. We are just days away from front-page headlines dubbing the tent cities across America “Bidenvilles.” Something must be done. And that thing, to paraphrase Vice President Kamala Harris, is the thing they have been doing, every day: point at Russia. “Putin is the devil and Russia subverted American democracy” has become a moralistic mantra for every Biden booster and Foggy Bottom staffer. But flaccid, obfuscatory jaw-jawing over the moral turpitude of Russia’s dealings with Ukraine has also whet the appetites of the long-benched war lobby. That lobby wants its turn back at the helm. Sanctions ain’t good enough, cry its advocates on Capitol Hill and in the media. Stiffen the sinews. Summon up someone else’s blood. Cry Ukraine for democracy, Joey and Uncle Sam! No one’s buying it.

I get the feeling that if Durham doesn’t do it, someone else will. And what did Obama know?

• What Did Clinton Know and When Did She Know It? (Sperry)

As indictments and new court filings indicate that Special Counsel John Durham is investigating Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for feeding false reports to the FBI to incriminate Donald Trump and his advisers as Kremlin agents, Clinton’s role in the burgeoning scandal remains elusive. What did she know and when did she know it? Top officials involved in her campaign have repeatedly claimed, some under oath, that they and the candidate were unaware of the foundation of their disinformation campaign: the 35-page collection of now debunked claims of Trump/Russia collusion known as the Steele dossier. Even though her campaign helped pay for the dossier, they claim she only read it after BuzzFeed News published it in 2017.

But court documents, behind-the-scenes video footage and recently surfaced evidence reveal that Clinton and her top campaign advisers were much more involved in the more than $1 million operation to dredge up dirt on Trump and Russia than they have let on. [..] Dossier author Christopher Steele himself has suggested Clinton was briefed on his reports. On July 5, 2016 — the same day the FBI publicly exonerated Clinton in her email scandal — Steele handed off the first installments of the dossier to an FBI agent overseas who had handled him previously as an informant. In their London meeting, Steele noted that Clinton was aware of his reporting, according to contemporaneous notes Steele took of their conversation.

“The notes reflect that Steele told [his FBI handler Michael Gaeta] that Steele was aware that ‘Democratic Party associates’ were paying for [his] research; the ‘ultimate client’ was the leadership of the Clinton presidential campaign; and ‘the candidate’ was aware of Steele’s reporting,” Justice Department watchdog Michael Horowitz wrote in his 2019 report examining the FBI’s use of the dossier to justify spying on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Later that same month, during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, the CIA picked up Russian chatter about a Clinton foreign policy adviser who was trying to develop allegations to “vilify” Trump. The intercepts said Clinton herself had approved a “plan” to “stir up a scandal” against Trump by tying him to Putin. According to handwritten notes, then-CIA chief John Brennan warned President Obama that Moscow had intercepted information about the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016, of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump.”

Kolakusic
https://twitter.com/i/status/1486641636784357381

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Debt Rattle November 18 2021

Nov 182021

November 18, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:51 am Finance Tagged with: Fauci, Marik, OSHA, Pfizer, Rittenhouse, Schiff, Steele dossier, T cells, truckers 142 Responses »

Francisco Goya Witches’ Sabbath 1797-98

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

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

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

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

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

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

• The US Is A Powder Keg (Tucker)

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

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

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

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

Lost.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What happened to the story of puppies eaten alive?

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

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

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

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

They, too, have a deal with Pfizer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Challenging the spike protein monopoly?

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

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

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

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

Closer to exploding than almost anyone appears to think.

• The US Is A Powder Keg (Tucker)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kill the Bill

It's 2 years of labeling us as lunatics, us, standing up for the core values of our ancestors. Wake up! pic.twitter.com/rW2LiAtP64

— Wake Up From COVID (@wakeupfromcovid) November 17, 2021

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