Mar 142022
 


Alfred Eisenstaedt The kiss (V-J Day in Times Square) 1945

 

US Farmers Hit Hard By Price Increases, Fertilizer Costs (JTN)
“Media Isn’t Warning You” That US Careening Towards Food Crisis (ZH)
Russian Default On Debts No Longer ‘Improbable’, Says IMF Head (G.)
India Is Mulling Rupee-Ruble Payments System for Trade with Russia (Scofield)
The US Is Still Not Trying Diplomacy With Putin Over Ukraine (Antiwar)
Russia Seeking China’s Military Help In Ukraine, US “Sources” Say (ZH)
The West’s Cancel Culture Targets All Things Russian (JTN)
Responses to the Invasion of Ukraine (Pankaj Mishra)
Deaths Represent 1.3% Of Side Effects Reported For Covid Vaccines (JTN)
How Does It Feel To Be Vindicated? (Malone)
Drs. Walensky and Offit: It’s All in Good Fun (Harrington)
Julian Assange To Marry Fiancee Stella Moris In Belmarsh Prison March 23 (DM)

 

 

 

 

Some day we’ll assess this moment with clear heads
https://twitter.com/i/status/1503265313474977793

 

 

 

 

Veritas FDA
https://twitter.com/i/status/1503264527642775553

 

 

“The cost of fertilizer is up as much as 500% in some areas..”

“..we are not really going to see those impacts until this coming summer.”

US Farmers Hit Hard By Price Increases, Fertilizer Costs (JTN)

Goods and services around the country are becoming increasingly more expensive, but farmers may be among the hardest hit as inflation, supply chain issues, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are expected to send food prices soaring even higher. That impact is being felt by farmers around the country. “The cost of fertilizer is up as much as 500% in some areas,” said Indiana Farm Bureau President Randy Kron. “It would be unbelievable if I hadn’t seen it for myself as I priced fertilizer for our farm in southern Indiana. Fertilizer is a global commodity and can be influenced by multiple market factors, including the situation in Ukraine, and all of these are helping to drive up costs.” Ukraine is a significant supplier of both crops and fertilizer materials, adding to the concern that the invasion will likely lead to shortages and price increases.

Fertilizer prices for nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, called NPK, have exploded since December 2020. “Because of the seasonal aspects of … this agriculture industry, it takes about six to nine months for the impacts felt in the impact market to really work its way through the supply chain and reach the consumer,” said Nathon Carson, head of supply chain operations for Chemical Dynamics, a multi-million dollar fertilizer supplier based in Florida servicing 12 states. “The crazy thing is, fertilizer prices for NPK, especially nitrogen, the most important nutrient, went up by about … doubled essentially in Q4 of 2021, which means we are not really going to see those impacts until this coming summer.” That fertilizer price increase is one of several factors expected to push food prices up even higher this year.

“Food prices are going to continue to go up dramatically,” Carson said. “I was expecting food prices to go up about 10% in the U.S. before midterms, so around August, another 5 or so percent to follow by the end of the year … You could see 20% food price inflation by the end of the year in the U.S. That is a possibility. You won’t see famine in the U.S. Our food system is very, very resilient, but you will see shortages. You won’t have the same product selection that you’re used to.” These food price issues have only been egged on by runaway federal spending, which has helped send inflation soaring in the past year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week that the Consumer Price index, a leading marker of inflation, rose 7.9% in the past 12 months. BLS said that the food price index rose 8.6% over the last 12 months, the largest 12-month spike since April 1981.

Read more …

”Buy a 2nd freezer, and stock it. Soon.”

“Media Isn’t Warning You” That US Careening Towards Food Crisis (ZH)

Two weeks after the Russia-Ukraine crisis began, the world is quickly moving toward a food crisis that could affect millions of people. A spillover of the crisis could soon spark agricultural mayhem in the US. The curtailment of agricultural exports from Russia and Ukraine will have dramatic knock-on effects on global food supplies. Both countries are known as the ‘breadbasket of the world’ and are responsible for a quarter of the international wheat trade, about a fifth of corn, and 12% of all calories traded globally. Another major problem is access to fertilizers, as Russia has banned exports of the nutrients. It’s not whether or not there will be a food crisis. It’s how big that crisis will be.

We’ve already noted a handful of emerging market countries to monitor as the Russian invasion is choking off grain exports to them and causing prices to rise, which may result in social unrest. Even in the Western world, agricultural markets have not been immune, and higher prices have stung consumers. A tweet from Douglas Karr, the founder of the businesses blog Martech Zone, made the point the “media isn’t even warning you” a food crisis in America is emerging. Karr said he spoke with numerous folks in the food industry who said farmers in the South and Midwest are having trouble procuring fertilizer to grow crops ahead of planting season. He said farmers in the “Midwest are switching,” likely referring to crops that need fewer nutrients because they “can’t get nitrogen nor fertilizer.”

Even before Russia invaded Ukraine, the global food system was strained. Snarled supply chains and adverse weather conditions in top growing regions of the world resulted in low crop yields and rising prices. The supply shock of Ukraine will amplify the crisis as the UN warned global food prices could jump 8%-20% from here (prices are already at record highs). Responding to Karr’s viral tweet, some people said they were buying a freezer to panic hoard food supplies as the worst food crisis has yet to come. “Likely getting a 2nd chest freezer soon and stuffing it with meats/frozen vegetables/etc. Also, it looks like “preppers” who were dismissed or made fun of last decade are about to be set on being right,” one person said. Another person said, “Read this and then understand why in the last 6 months several publications have been grooming us to accept eating bugs. All of this was planned. Buy a 2nd freezer, and stock it. Soon.”

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“Siluanov said on Sunday that it would be “absolutely fair” for Russia to make sovereign debt payments in roubles until its foreign exchange reserves were unfrozen..”

Russian Default On Debts No Longer ‘Improbable’, Says IMF Head (G.)

A Russian default on its debts after western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine is no longer “improbable”, but would not trigger a global financial crisis, the head of the International Monetary Fund said on Sunday. The Washington-based fund’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, said the sanctions imposed by the United States and other nations were already having a “severe” impact on the Russian economy and would trigger a deep recession there this year. The war in Ukraine will also drive up food and energy prices, leading to hunger in Africa, she added. Georgieva told CBS’s Face the Nation programme: “In terms of servicing debt obligations, I can say that we no longer think of Russian default as an improbable event. Russia has the money to service its debt, but cannot access it.

“What I’m more concerned about is that there are consequences that go beyond Ukraine and Russia.” Last week, the World Bank’s chief economist, Carmen Reinhart, warned that Russia and its ally Belarus were “mightily close” to default. Asked whether a Russian default could trigger a financial crisis around the world, Georgieva said: “For now, no.” The total exposure of banks to Russia amounted to around $120bn, an amount that while not insignificant, was “not systematically relevant”, she said. Last week, she said the IMF would downgrade its previous forecast for 4.4% global economic growth in 2022 as a result of the war. Separately, Russia said on Sunday that it was counting on China to help it withstand the blow to its economy from sanctions, but the US has warned Beijing not to provide that support.

The Russian finance minister, Anton Siluanov, said Moscow was unable to access $300bn of its $640bn in gold and foreign exchange reserves, but still held part of its reserves in the Chinese currency, the yuan. “And we see what pressure is being exerted by western countries on China in order to limit mutual trade with China. Of course, there is pressure to limit access to those reserves,” he said. “But our partnership with China will still allow us to maintain the cooperation that we have achieved, and not only maintain, but also increase it in an environment where western markets are closing.” Russia is due to make two interest payments on 16 March. However, it will have a 30-day grace period to make the coupon payments. Siluanov said on Sunday that it would be “absolutely fair” for Russia to make sovereign debt payments in roubles until its foreign exchange reserves were unfrozen, according to Interfax.

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Can’t pay in rubles, IMF? Not so fast…

India Is Mulling Rupee-Ruble Payments System for Trade with Russia (Scofield)

India is discussing how to set up a rupee-ruble payment mechanism to enable it to trade with Russia, to circumvent the U.S. sanctions regime. India abstained from voting on the March United Nations (UN) General Assembly Resolution demanding an end to Russian offensive in Ukraine (General Assembly resolution demands end to Russian offensive in Ukraine). Since its Independence, India has tried to steer a neutral course between the U.S. and Russia (and previously, the USSR). During the 1950s, India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a prime architect behind the Non-Aligned Movement, under which developing countries tried to pursue their national interests without binding themselves to either the U.S. or Soviet bloc. India, Indonesia, and Yugoslavia were mainstays of that movement, which today includes 120 member states, 18 observer states, and 10 international organisations.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, India developed closer relations with the United States. Most recently, under prime minister Narendra Modi, India’s policy tilted even more decisively in a pro-U.S. direction. Modi and Trump shared a strong affinity, and Modi even travelled to the U.S, to host massive rallies intended to galvanize Indian Americans in support of Trump. See this BBC account for further details, What did the Trump-Modi ‘bromance’ achieve? During the last several months, several considerations have prompted the Modi government to rethink the wisdom of putting all its eggs in the U.S. basket. Instead, India is returning to a more balanced approach, assessing its national interests vis-a-vis those of other countries and acting accordingly.

Two developments this summer caused India to question the reliability and integrity of the U.S. as an ally. The first was the manner of the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan, which had External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar wondering about the value of U.S. security guarantees. Washington’s Ukraine policy is only increasing those misgivings. The United States was willing to push Ukraine to take actions that many – including Henry Kissinger, George Kennan, and Noam Chomsky – warned Russia couldn’t abide. But then when the shooting started, the United States wasn’t willing to get in line of fire. And in the second, in September, the U.S. stunned many when it announced a new Australia/United Kingdom/United States security grouping (AUKUS), as part of which Australia would receive American nuclear submarines.

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They must be enjoying the situation…

The US Is Still Not Trying Diplomacy With Putin Over Ukraine (Antiwar)

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its third week, there is still no sign that the Biden administration is attempting high-level diplomacy with Moscow as a way to possibly end the fighting. The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the Biden administration doesn’t see the conflict ending anytime soon and that its current strategy is to impose economic pain on Russia and support Ukraine’s military “in its effort to inflict as many defeats on Russia as possible.” It’s clear at this point that the Western sanctions were factored into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to attack Ukraine as they haven’t done anything to deter him. But US officials still say they are in no rush to engage directly with Putin.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed that in the months leading up to the invasion, the US gave Putin “possible off-ramps.” But during the negotiations, the US ignored Putin’s key demands. Putin wanted a guarantee that Ukraine wouldn’t ever join NATO, and even though President Biden said Kyiv wouldn’t be joining the military alliance anytime soon, the US refused to make the promise. Now, Russia has said it will stop its assault if Ukraine declares neutrality, recognizes Crimea as Russian territory, and recognizes the independence of the breakaway Donbas republics. Instead of supporting negotiations on these terms that could lead to a potential ceasefire, the US is working with its NATO allies to flood weapons into Ukraine.

Blinken said on Wednesday that the Biden administration expects “a strategic defeat” of Russia in Ukraine despite Moscow’s “short-term” gains. “We’ll accomplish this by backing Ukrainians in their fight, by remaining united in holding Russia accountable through the devastating sanctions, the diplomatic isolation and other measures,” Blinken said. While Blinken says the US expects a Russian defeat in Ukraine, Biden officials told the Post that they don’t see a “clear end to the military phase of this conflict,” meaning the US expects a long, bloody insurgency in Ukraine, and is willing to support it.

Read more …

Russia attacks Yavoriv because of weapons deliveries. There are no US miilitary left there.

Russia Seeking China’s Military Help In Ukraine, US “Sources” Say (ZH)

According to Reuters, when asked about claims that Russia is requesting military help from China, the spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington responded “I’ve never heard of that.” The spokesperson, Liu Pengyu, said China’s priority was to prevent the tense situation in Ukraine from getting out of control. “The current situation in Ukraine is indeed disconcerting,” he said in an emailed response to a query from Reuters, adding that “the high priority now is to prevent the tense situation from escalating or even getting out of control.” Earlier when commenting on what’s been reported as “significant progress” made in Russia-Ukraine talks, we noted that “It remains to be seen if this is the start of a peaceful resolution to the war or just another false dawn.”

Well, just a few hours later the false dawn has arrived via a bombshell FT report citing anonymous Biden administration officials who say that Russia has issued a formal request from China for military support in its invasion of Ukraine. This was followed minutes later with similar Washington Post and New York Times stories in what looks like a US “coordinated leak” effort to send a message and warning to China. “Russia has asked China for military equipment to support its invasion of Ukraine, according to [anonymous] US officials, sparking concern in the White House that Beijing may undermine western efforts to help Ukrainian forces defend their country,” FT writes.

[..] The fresh attack on Yavoriv is being taken also as a clear warning to Washington, again given it was a well-known site which previously housed US military trainers engaged in short-term missions to support Ukrainian national forces prior to the invasion began. Training was going on up until earlier in February. Setting the stage for a potential major escalation with Western and NATO powers, the Kremlin warned on Saturday that the Russian military is prepared to target Western arms shipments that are continuing to pour into Ukraine. Russia’s Deputy FM Sergei Ryabkov said on state TV that Washington had been informed in the last days that Moscow will see weapons supply convoys entering Ukraine as “legitimate targets”.

“We warned the United States that the orchestrated pumping of weapons from a number of countries is not just a dangerous move, it is a move that turns these convoys into legitimate targets,” Ryabkov said in the remarks, which served as a severe warning to the West.

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“There tends to be a lot of virtue signaling in how people behave these days, and to take it out on a business like this is unfortunate.”

The West’s Cancel Culture Targets All Things Russian (JTN)

In New York City, despite many owners of Russian restaurants opposing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine — or even being Ukrainian themselves — they have experienced canceled reservations, bad reviews and social media campaigns, unusually low turnout, and vandalism, The New York Times reported. Even as some restaurants have plastered signs in support of Ukraine on their doors, they are still dealing with backlash from customers. Some patrons, however, are showing support for the restaurants as they struggle to cope with the commercial fallout from the invasion, according to the Times. “We just thought Russian businesses are probably being unfairly treated, and it would be the right thing to do to have dinner here,” a customer at Russian Samovar told the Times last week. “There tends to be a lot of virtue signaling in how people behave these days, and to take it out on a business like this is unfortunate.”

[..] Daily Wire podcast host and bestselling author Matt Walsh compared the treatment of Russians to other forms of bigotry, tweeting on Monday: “There was so much concern about potential ‘Islamophobia’ after 9/11, and ‘anti-Asian’ backlash after China unleashed covid on the world, and yet it seems to be open season on Russians right now. It’s almost like bigotry is okay as long as the targets are perceived to be white.” [..] On Thursday, a Meta spokesperson confirmed that Facebook and Instagram would allow users in some countries to violate the company’s rules and call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers with regard to the invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reported. “As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement, “we have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders.’ We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians.”

Author and columnist Larry Taunton retweeted an article on the Meta announcement, saying, “And people wonder how we ended up with Japanese internment camps.” [..] American grocery stores Kroger, Publix, and Food Lion have all said they removed Russian vodka from their shelves, according to Business Insider. Some bar owners are also dumping out their Russian vodka. However, “[l]ess than 1% of vodka consumed in the United States is produced in Russia,” CNN reported, noting that more than half of all vodka in the U.S. is American-made. “If you’re posting the Ukrainian flag and boycotting Russian vodka but you’re still going to vote for Democrats and you still won’t support oil production in the United States,” Walsh tweeted, “kindly shut the hell up you ridiculous virtue signaling phony.”

Read more …

From London Review of Books. Many authors, Mishra is one.

“..while an infotainment media works up citizens into a state of paranoid patriotism, a service class of intellectuals talks up the American Revolution and the international liberal order.”

Responses to the Invasion of Ukraine (Pankaj Mishra)

Foreigners have long envied the way the American system, built by and for slave-owners and programmed to boost oligarchies and dynasties, secures mass consent: while an infotainment media works up citizens into a state of paranoid patriotism, a service class of intellectuals talks up the American Revolution and the international liberal order.

Hyper-patriotic media have emerged in India, China and Russia over the last decade, together with pseudo-thinkers who have upgraded national self-images by hailing the glories of Hindu civilisation, Russian empire and Confucian harmony. As the hacks, trolls and conspiracy theorists of digital media cemented these ideological ecosystems in place, dissent was condemned to impotence. Today, the news and analysis received by the vast majority of people in India and China as well as Russia is – in the words of the head of the Levada Centre, Russia’s independent public opinion research organisation – a compendium of ‘lies and hatred on a fantastical scale’. And so Modi’s brutalising of Kashmir, Putin’s annexation of Crimea and Xi’s herding of Uighur Muslims into concentration camps faced as little domestic challenge as America’s endless wars and killings in Asia and Africa.

Humiliation in Iraq and Afghanistan, and at home by Trump, demoralised the exporters of democracy and capitalism. But Putin’s atrocities in Ukraine have now given them an opportunity to make America seem great again. The Russian bear has long guaranteed, more reliably than ‘Islamofascism’ or China, income and identity to many in the military-industrial and intellectual-industrial complex. An ageing centrist establishment – battered by the far right, harangued by post-Occupy and post-BLM young leftists, frustrated by legislative stalemate in Washington – seems suddenly galvanised by the prospect of defining themselves through a new cold war.

As Russian troops attacked a nuclear reactor, George Packer wrote in the Atlantic that ‘for the first time in decades, an American president is showing that he, and only he, can lead the free world.’ The New York Times exulted over the new-found resolve of the free world: ‘Nato has been revitalised, the United States has reclaimed a mantle of leadership that some feared had vanished in Iraq and Afghanistan.’ Boris Johnson claimed that he had never seen such a stark ‘dividing line between right and wrong’. More remarkably, Hillary Clinton called on MSNBC for a rerun in Ukraine of the ‘very motivated’ and ‘armed insurgency’ that ‘basically drove the Russians out of Afghanistan’.

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CDC numbers.

Deaths Represent 1.3% Of Side Effects Reported For Covid Vaccines (JTN)

Deaths following mRNA vaccination against COVID-19 represented 13 out of every 1,000 reports (1.3%) to the federal government’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), the CDC’s Atlanta-based researchers said Monday. Another 66 reports out of every 1,000 (6.6%) were categorized as “serious,” resulting in “inpatient hospitalisation, prolongation of hospitalisation, permanent disability, life-threatening illness, congenital anomaly or birth defect,” according to their study published in The Lancet, the U.K-based medical journal. VAERS is often dubbed a passive surveillance system because it accepts reports from anyone. The CDC previously told Just the News that most reports come from manufacturers or healthcare providers, who have mandatory reporting requirements.

But the researchers said they also consulted an “active” smartphone-based voluntary monitoring system, v-safe, created in 2020. The data show that “most reported adverse events were mild and short in duration,” with 18-49 year-olds representing a plurality (45%) and females a supermajority (75%). Mainstream media uncritically ran with the CDC’s framing, with USA Today touting researcher David Shay’s assurance that the death rate was expected given the elderly population studied. About a quarter of reports were from ages 65 and up. A large subset of young people was almost entirely excluded, however: minors. The study only reviewed the first six months of emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, covering 340,000 reports and 299 million doses.

That time period ends just a month after Pfizer’s vaccine was authorized for 12-15 year-olds and predates its EUA for children 5-11, while Moderna’s vaccine remains unauthorized for anyone under 18. The study’s youngest age range is 16-17, representing 2% of all reports. “Why the cut-off at six months? There are now data that extend for 14 months, and those data include children,” Robert Malone, the mRNA vaccine pioneer-turned-critic, wrote in his newsletter. Health authorities worldwide have recognized young people, particularly males, as having a higher risk for heart inflammation following mRNA vaccination, especially after the second dose. That was the FDA’s rationale to indefinitely pause consideration of Moderna’s vaccine for adolescents.

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The biomedical world that I thought I was living in has been revealed to be a sham.”

How Does It Feel To Be Vindicated? (Malone)

I have been getting the question “How does it feel to be vindicated?” Dr. Jill (Glasspool-Malone) keeps noodling me to write a piece describing my feelings on this topic. Personally, I dislike focusing on the psychology of how these last two years have impacted on me (and us). Much as I am very wary of the “cult of personality” aspect of my newfound fame. I have not spoken out because I sought attention, I have done this because it was the right thing to do, and I seemed to have a unique widow of opportunity to speak for those whose voices were so actively suppressed. But I certainly have had to take hits for it. The slander, defamation, gaslighting, and globally coordinated character assassination have been non-stop. But as time has gone by, and more and more has been revealed about the hidden hands that seek to manage what we are allowed to hear, see, and think, I have been transformed.


The biomedical world that I thought I was living in has been revealed to be a sham. The legitimacy of the industry and discipline that I have committed my entire professional life to is in shambles. I am now embarrassed to call myself a vaccines and biodefense expert, because the fundamental corruption inherent in those domains has been so clearly revealed. I cannot unsee what I have seen. I cannot recapture all of those years spent in a profoundly corrupt academic system, spent supporting a deeply compromised discipline which appears primarily driven by financial interests rather than by what I had naively believed was a commitment to saving lives. I chose to not pursue the careers of my father and father in law, which were spent building weapons of war. Only to find that I had inadvertently played a significant role in enabling one of the most tragic medical follies in the history of man.

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“And while she was exonerating herself, she made time to give the masses a little bitty sermon on the nature of science itself. Remember science?”

Drs. Walensky and Offit: It’s All in Good Fun (Harrington)

A few days back Rochelle Walensky was invited to give an interview at her alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis. The first part of the discussion pivoted around softball questions which allowed her to pontificate on her decidedly race-infused views of public health. It was more than halfway into the interview before her interlocutor finally got around to asking her about where she and the CDC might have gone wrong in their management of the Covid epidemic. Here is what followed. First, she told of how pleased she was when she heard (from a “CNN feed” no less) about the “95% effectiveness” of the vaccines because, like all of us, she just wanted to get the pandemic behind us. And then she expresses, between chuckles, her shock upon learning that the vaccines might diminish in effectiveness over time “Nobody said waning…Nobody said what if the next variant…what if it’s not as potent against the next variant?”

You see, even though a humanities professor like me with no scientific training knew —thanks to my readings of the Moderna, Pfizer and Janssen EUAs and from reading numerous scientific papers on vaccine effectiveness and safety and listening to people like Sucharit Bkahdi, Geert Vande Bossche and Michael Yeadon— by very early 2021 that the vaccines probably would not prevent transmission and might actually promote new resistant varieties of the virus, none of this was conceivable or knowable to the Director of the CDC. Like the human hologram she apparently is, we are led to believe that she was there, but she was not really there. She was responsible, but really someone else was. “No one could have known,” she exclaims, except, of course, the hundreds of thousands of us amateurs who did, in fact, know, and were censored and called science-hating anti-vaxxers for our troubles.

And of course, holograms don’t do guilt or responsibility. Did she express any sympathy for the people that were forced out of jobs over their refusal to take what we now know, and she admits, were largely ineffective vaccines? Nope, again even though she was in the chair, it was, of course, all beyond her control. And as a powerless spectator—cue the folksy music—just like you and me, she was disappointed and surprised. Mistakes were made. She meant well. Her only real faults, as she said in the same talk, were the clearly well-intentioned ones of having “too little caution and too much optimism.” And while she was exonerating herself, she made time to give the masses a little bitty sermon on the nature of science itself. Remember science?

Read more …

How happy can we afford to be for them?

Julian Assange To Marry Fiancee Stella Moris In Belmarsh Prison March 23 (DM)

Julian Assange’s fiancée has spoken of her joy at being allowed to marry the WikiLeaks founder despite restrictions being placed on their wedding. Stella Moris, 38, will marry the 50-year-old in Belmarsh Prison, south east London on March 23, just weeks before the third anniversary of his dramatic arrest when he was dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy in the capital in April 2019. He has been held in the high-security jail ever since as he fights extradition to the United States, where he is wanted over an alleged conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information following WikiLeaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. He has always denied wrongdoing and has won support for his case from human rights organisations and journalist groups across the world.


Ms Moris said that just four guests and two witnesses will be allowed to attend the ceremony, as well as two security guards. Dame Vivienne Westwood is designing Ms Moris’s wedding dress, and a kilt for Assange, whose parents are of Scottish extraction. The guests will have to leave immediately after the event, even though it is being held during normal visiting hours. The couple are still waiting to hear if they will be allowed a photographer. Ms Moris said: ‘Obviously we are very excited, even though the circumstances are very restrictive. ‘There continues to be unjustified interference in our plans. Having a photographer for an hour is not an unreasonable request. [..] Julian is looking forward to the wedding because it is finally happening, many months after we first made the request.’

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Guardiola is a Catalan
https://twitter.com/i/status/1503007813873848333

 

 

Pelosi

 

 

 

 

It wasn’t me
https://twitter.com/i/status/1502234046809657355

 

 

22 years

 

 

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

 

 

 

Feb 262022
 
 February 26, 2022  Posted by at 9:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  72 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Guitar 1925

 

Ukraine’s Deadly Gamble (Lee Smith)
Biden Admin Tells Zelenskyy to Stop Negotiating Meeting With Russia (CTH)
From the Black Sea to the East Med, Do Not Poke The Russian Bear (Escobar)
The Party of Chaos Blows Its Cover (Kunstler)
Why Putin Went to War (Lauria)
EU ‘Moving Forward’ On Russia SWIFT Shut-Out, ‘Not Nuclear Option’ (ZH)
Here’s Why the Russian Sanctions Are a Dud (Martens)
‘This War Will Last’ – Macron (AFP)
Sean Penn Making Documentary In Ukraine (RT)
Granny Gets Her Gun – From A Bunch Of Shameless Neo-Nazis (Peter Hitchens)
Institute On Claims Vaccine Side Effects Massively Underreported (Eugyp)

 

 

 

 

The primrose path

 

 

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

 

 

Stephen Cohen

 

 

MPN

 

 

Lukashenko

 

 

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

Ukraine’s Deadly Gamble (Lee Smith)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Party of Chaos Blows Its Cover (Kunstler)

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

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

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

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

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

Why Putin Went to War (Lauria)

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

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

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

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

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Hot air.

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

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

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

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

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Big banks.

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

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

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

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

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

‘This War Will Last’ – Macron (AFP)

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


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

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

Sean Penn Making Documentary In Ukraine (RT)

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


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

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From last Sunday.

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

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

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

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

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

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Not much Covid today.

Institute On Claims Vaccine Side Effects Massively Underreported (Eugyp)

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Jon Stewart MMT

 

 

Highest Ground

 

 

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

 

Feb 242022
 


Pablo Picasso Glass, bread and cheesee 1923

 

Russia Conducts ‘Precision Strikes’ on Ukrainian Military Targets (Sputnik)
Russia Has ‘No Plans’ To Take Over Whole Of Ukraine – Putin (RT)
Disarming Ukraine (MoA)
Saudi-Russia Collusion Is Driving Up Gas Prices (IC)
Trudeau Discontinues Emergencies Act (RT)
Canada Instructs Banks to Unfreeze Freedom-Convoy Accounts (WSJ)
Significant Underreporting of Vaccine Side Effects: German Health Insurer (ET)
Genetic Code of Covids Spike Protein Linked to Moderna Patent (DM)
China’s Property Bubble Collapse Gets Worse (Lacalle)
Biden Officials Fear Elon Musk Would Embarrass President At WH (NYP)

 

 

David Mamet

 

 

Putin

 

 

Sputnik. Propaganda from the other side.

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

Disarming Ukraine (MoA)

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

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


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

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Odd detail.

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

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

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

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

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You’d think Russia tried to invade.

Trudeau Discontinues Emergencies Act (RT)

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


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

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

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

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


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

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Tick, tick, tick…

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

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

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

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

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

But lots of questions.

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

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

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

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

China’s Property Bubble Collapse Gets Worse (Lacalle)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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