Apr 152022
 
 April 15, 2022  Posted by at 8:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  32 Responses »


Paul Cézanne Bibémus quarry 1898-1900

 

Elon Musk Is No Longer Twitter’s Largest Shareholder (WSJ)
What is ‘The Russian World’? (Batiushka)
Here Comes China: The World Rotated One More Time (Amarynth)
The West Needs WWIII – Martin Armstrong (USAW)
Russia Warns of Nuclear Deployments If Finland, Sweden Join NATO (Antiwar)
The UK is Trying to Drag the US into World War III (Tracey)
From Mosul to Raqqa to Mariupol, Killing Civilians is a Crime (CP)
Russia’s Richest Oligarch Bails Out Société Générale In “Fantastic Deal” (F.)
Masks Fail Their Latest Test (Kirsch)
Fauci on Shanghai: “Use Lockdowns to Get People Vaccinated” (TNA)
6 Double Standards Public Health Officials Used to Justify COVID Vaccines (CHD)
Former Monsanto CEO Files Protective Order to Avoid Testifying (CHD)
FBI Documents Expose Bureau‘s Big Jan. 6 ‘Lie‘ (RS)

 

 

A lot of Elon Musk today, for obvious reasons. From his full TED interview to bits of that, as well as other tidbits.

 

 

 

 

Elon TED “My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted & broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.”
“I don’t care about the economics at all.”

 

 

Plan B

Tucker Elon

Tucker Charles Payne

 

 

 

 

The empire strikes back. Twitter is a major mind control tool. Can’t let that go.

Elon Musk Is No Longer Twitter’s Largest Shareholder (WSJ)

While Elon Musk is trying to buy Twitter Inc., he’s no longer the company’s largest shareholder. Funds held by Vanguard Group recently upped their stake in the social-media platform, making the asset manager Twitter’s largest shareholder and bumping Mr. Musk out of the top spot. Vanguard disclosed on April 8 that it now owns 82.4 million shares of Twitter, or 10.3% of the company, according to the most recent publicly available filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The asset-manager increased its stake in the company at some point during the first quarter, according to the filings. Vanguard’s holdings are now worth $3.78 billion, based on Twitter stock’s closing price on Wednesday. That’s enough to knock Mr. Must off the perch as Twitter’s largest shareholder, according to FactSet.


Vanguard isn’t making a directional bet on Twitter. Instead, the majority of its assets are in index and other so-called passive funds. The firm often sides with management on voting issues and doesn’t advocate for changes like a hedge fund or activist investor might. Mr. Musk initially disclosed a stake in Twitter earlier this month of almost 73.5 million shares, but a day later his disclosed stake dropped to 73.1 million shares, or 9.1% of the company. The position momentarily made him the largest shareholder in the company. Vanguard previously reported owning 67.2 million shares of Twitter or about 8.4% of the company as of the end of December, according to FactSet. Mr. Musk along with former Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey, who is number seven on the list, are the only individuals among the top 10 shareholders in the company. The rest of the spots are occupied by financial institutions.

Steve Forbes

Elon Tweets

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“For us, ‘The Russian World’ means something else, far broader. It means wherever live those who are opposed to the exploitative and manipulative Western/Anglo-Zionist/Nazi/NATO/Globalist/Capitalist ideology and project.”

What is ‘The Russian World’? (Batiushka)

In 1991, the Soviet Empire crashed, leaving chaos in Eurasia, which the Western-inspired sticking plaster of the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) did nothing to remedy. Unlike Western European colonial empires, the vacuum left by the USSR covered one contiguous landmass. Moreover, the space vacated had history, going back hundreds of years to the Russian Empire, fallen in the British-organised palace coup of 1917. As nature abhors a vacuum, it was clear that such a vacuum and its chaos could not prevail for long. After the alcohol-hazed and gangster-crazed years of the Harvard-puppeteered Yeltsin and the ensuing genocide and suicide of millions in the old Soviet Union, in the 2000s, sense, order and hope slowly began to re-emerge.

It arrived in the quite ancient concept of ‘The Russian World’ (‘Russky Mir’), which was first officially used in its modern sense in 2007, when President Putin decreed the establishment of the government-sponsored ‘Russky Mir Foundation’. From here on, this term became more and more common and is notably widely used by the multinational Russian Orthodox Church. However, what does this term actually mean? For some, the term ‘The Russian World’ means wherever Russians live. If it means only that, then this is a purely nationalistic project. It would mean that the remaining elitist oligarchs inside Russia, the Euro-Atlanticists, who as fifth columnists co-operate with CIA agents inside and outside Russia, belong to ‘The Russian World’. It would mean that the corrupt and treacherous aristocrats/oligarchs who after 1917 moved mainly to Paris and since 1991 have moved mainly to London, Tel Aviv and New York, also belong to ‘The Russian World’. Do they?

For some, the term ‘The Russian World’ means the Russian-speaking world. If it means only that, then this is a purely linguistic project. And yet there are many all over the world, from China to Venezuela, from New Zealand to Scotland, who strongly identify with Russia and her aims, but who do not speak any Russian. Are they then excluded? For some, the term ‘The Russian World’ means wherever Orthodox Christians live. If it means only that, then this is a purely denominational project. Given some 500 fringe intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals, who formally belong to the Orthodox Church and who compiled a Declaration on the ‘Russian World’ Teaching on 13 March 2022, calling it an “ideology”, “a heresy” and “a form of religious fundamentalism” that is “totalitarian in character.” So do they belong to ‘The Russian World’?

For us, ‘The Russian World’ means something else, far broader. It means wherever live those who are opposed to the exploitative and manipulative Western/Anglo-Zionist/Nazi/NATO/Globalist/Capitalist ideology and project. Although we mainly live in Russia, China, India, Africa, Latin America, the Muslim World, Indonesia and Kazakhstan, we exist all over the world, even within the conquered heartlands of the Evil Empire, in the USA, Canada, the UK, Israel, the EU, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. We are those who resist the carefully-orchestrated campaign of slander of the elite, which arrogantly calls itself ‘the international community’. For those who live in the virtual world and who fly the made-up Lower Austrian flag of the made-up Ukraine, of whose history and geography they know nothing, the lies of that elite seem real. For us who live in the real world, the Russian world, they are both absurd and evil.

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“China’s top offshore oil and gas producer CNOOC Ltd. is preparing to exit its operations in Britain, Canada, and the United States, because of concerns in Beijing that assets could become subject to Western sanctions.”

Here Comes China: The World Rotated One More Time (Amarynth)

The world rotated one more time since the last report on China. So, what do we know? China is rock-solid behind Russia in all of Russia’s objectives, and in some instances, up ahead. It almost seems as if an agreement was, if not stated, then understood. Russia will do the shootin’ for now, and China will keep the economic boat afloat. We see consistent commenting such as China is a consistent stabilizing force in a changing world Overall NATO is feeling the pressure and ‘resetting’ and trying to clone itself as Aukus in the east while trying to strengthen itself in the west. We have Stoltenberg announcing: “What we see now is a new reality, a new normal for European security. Therefore, we have now asked our military commanders to provide options for what we call a reset, a more longer-term adaptation of NATO.”.

In this speech, he announced that plans are being worked up to transform NATO into a major force capable of taking on an invading army and states that NATO deepens partnerships in Asia in response to a rising “security challenge” from China. Yet, in the east, the Quad is one less, given India’s refusal to follow the U.S. regarding Russia. Japan has been asked to join Aukus as a Japan, US, Australia, UK alliance intending to project a strong regional balance of power against China, Russia (and maybe India then?) in Asia. This Aukus will then have synergy,, they say, with Japanese technologies in areas such as hypersonic weapons and electronic warfare. Somehow I don’t see Japan as a suitable switch out for India, but then again, we’re dealing with desperate last gyrations of a world hegemon here, trying to project that it still has many friends.

A quick look at India. These days, if you see a country being threatened, you know already that they have started decoupling from so-called western democracy and Blinken has just threatened India yet again. He says the US is “monitoring rise in rights abuses in India” So, suddenly the US cares about human rights abuses in India. This bellicose rhetoric is not effective and way beyond its sell-by date. It is clear that Russia is decoupling from Europe, and this started before sanctions. But did you know that China is decoupling from Britain, Canada, and the US? This is a brand-new trend. China’s top offshore oil and gas producer CNOOC Ltd. is preparing to exit its operations in Britain, Canada, and the United States, because of concerns in Beijing that assets could become subject to Western sanctions. As it seeks to leave the West, CNOOC is looking to acquire new assets in Latin America and Africa, and also wants to prioritize the development of large, new prospects in Brazil, Guyana, and Uganda.

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“There is not a pension fund in Europe that is solvent at this stage of the game. . . . The European government is collapsing. If they end up defaulting, you are going to have millions of people down there with pitch forks storming the parliament. So, to avoid that, they need war. . ”

The West Needs WWIII – Martin Armstrong (USAW)

Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong thinks the New World Order’s so-called “Great Reset” plan for humanity now needs war to try and make it work. It could happen in the next few weeks. Armstrong explains, “What they are trying to do is deliberately poke the bear. . . . They are increasing the pressure on just about everything under the sun. The West needs World War III. They just need it. The real problem here is they went to negative interest rates in 2014 in Europe. They have been unable to stimulate the economy, and Keynesian economics have completely failed. . . . I would say this is mismanagement of government on a global scale. The problem is that central banks have no control over the economy. Add to this, this type of inflation is substantially different than a speculative boom.

This inflation is based upon shortages. These morons with covid . . . with lockdowns, ended up destroying the supply chains. . . . Things that are there, I buy extra of because next time it might be gone. So, everybody is increasing their hoarding. . . . So, what we have with Europe, with its negative interest rates, they have wiped out all the pension funds. They need 8% to break even, not negative rates. There is not a pension fund in Europe that is solvent at this stage of the game. . . . The European government is collapsing. If they end up defaulting, you are going to have millions of people down there with pitch forks storming the parliament. So, to avoid that, they need war. . . . The Biden Administration has deliberately destroyed the world economy.”

If there is war in Europe, the “U.S. dollar will get stronger initially and not weaker” according to Armstrong. Armstrong also says, “This is all deliberate. There is no return to normal here. Unfortunately, this is where we are headed.” Armstrong contends, war in Europe could break out in a couple of weeks, and the EU and NATO are pushing this. Armstrong says, “They want Russia to do something. . . . This thing with Russia is the same thing all over again. Unfortunately, we are headed for war.”

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US/NATO comes ever closer to Russia, and with more weapons. While claiming to want peace.

Russia Warns of Nuclear Deployments If Finland, Sweden Join NATO (Antiwar)

A close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Thursday that if Finland and Sweden join NATO, Russia would have to bolster its forces on its western border and said a “nuclear-free” Baltic region would no longer be possible. “If Sweden and Finland join NATO, the length of the alliance’s land borders with the Russian Federation will more than double. Naturally, these borders will have to be strengthened,” said Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, who served as Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012. Finland shares an over 800-mile border with Russia, and if it is admitted to NATO, Medvedev said Moscow would significantly bolster its forces in the Gulf of Finland, the easternmost part of the Baltic Sea.

He said Russia will “seriously strengthen the grouping of land forces and air defense, deploy significant naval forces in the waters of the Gulf of Finland. In this case, it will no longer be possible to talk about any nuclear-free status of the Baltic – the balance must be restored.” The Russian enclave of Kaliningrad is on the Baltic Sea, wedged between NATO members Poland and Lithuania. In 2018, Russia deployed nuclear-capable Iskander missiles to Kaliningrad, but it’s not clear if they are tipped with nuclear warheads. Medvedev also suggested hypersonic missiles could be deployed. “No sane person wants higher prices and higher taxes, increased tensions along borders, Iskanders, hypersonics, and ships with nuclear weapons literally at arm’s length from their own home,” he said. “Let’s hope that the common sense of our northern neighbors will win.”

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden are moving closer to joining NATO. Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said Wednesday that the decision could be made “within weeks.” While Russia is against NATO absorbing the two Nordic countries, Medvedev said Moscow views the situation differently than Ukraine’s aspirations to join the military alliance. “We don’t have territorial disputes with those countries like we do with Ukraine,” he said. “For that reason, the price of their membership for us is different.”

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“I underline how critical it is: if Odesa falls, then I’m afraid it’s going to be very, very difficult for us to turn this around.”

The UK is Trying to Drag the US into World War III (Tracey)

There’s a chap called Tobias Ellwood who’s spent the past week doggedly promoting his latest idea to save Western civilization. “From a military perspective,” Ellwood explained during a recent speaking engagement, it’s never been more urgent to impose a “humanitarian sea corridor” off the coast of Ukraine. This would involve an outright naval intervention by NATO in the Black Sea — with the objective being to prevent Russia from seizing control of the strategically important city of Odesa. Perhaps upon commencement of this mission, Ellwood suggested, listless denizens of “The West” will finally come to appreciate the existential stakes of the conflict now before us, and “accept that we are actually in a 1938 period, but actually worse.” The double “actually” was presumably included for maximum emphasis.

Notably, Ellwood is not some random crank. He is “actually” a Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom, and the chairman of the impressively-titled Defence Select Committee. In that latter capacity, he seeks to exert influence over the Defence policy of Her Majesty’s Government, which is currently led by his Conservative Party colleague Boris Johnson. During the private event, hosted by a Think Tank which unilaterally and hilariously decreed his comments “off the record,” Ellwood described the plan he envisaged for how this new phase of military intervention in Ukraine would unfold. It should be up to the UK to “create a coalition of the willing,” he declared — borrowing the terminology once used for countries that participated in the US invasion of Iraq, which memorably included the UK. Ellwood evidently detected no ignominy at all in this historical association.

On the subject of Ukraine, Ellwood’s view is that the UK and Europe must stop waiting around for the US to get its act together, and instead proactively initiate the kind of muscular, unapologetic military action that is currently needed against Russia. The lesson of last year’s Afghanistan withdrawal, Ellwood charged — as well as Joe Biden’s purported Ukraine-related dithering — has been to “expose America to be very, very hesitant indeed.” He explained: “I see the United States almost catching up with where, from a military perspective, a vanguard may actually go.” Note that Ellwood’s plan certainly does not assume that the US would somehow just sit out whatever forthcoming war the UK may instigate. With the US as the real firepower behind NATO, that’s obviously not feasible.

Instead, his idea would simply be for the UK to place itself at the “vanguard” of precipitating the new military action, after which the US would inevitably be engulfed as well. Time is of the essence, Ellwood contends, because China has ominously joined with Russia to set about “dismantling the liberal world order” — a development Ellwood believes will elevate the conflict to a magnitude on par with the Peloponnesian War of Greek antiquity. “China will exploit the war in Ukraine to hasten America’s inevitable decline,” he warned. Out of these ashes, at least according to Ellwood’s apparent calculus, will rise the UK: “If we want Putin to fail,” Ellwood declared, “then we need to conclude this in months. We need to vow to press forward.” He added, “I underline how critical it is: if Odesa falls, then I’m afraid it’s going to be very, very difficult for us to turn this around.” (Note his use of the pronoun “us,” as though it should be understood that the UK is already an official combatant.)

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We know.

From Mosul to Raqqa to Mariupol, Killing Civilians is a Crime (CP)

Americans have been shocked by the death and destruction of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, filling our screens with bombed buildings and dead bodies lying in the street. But the United States and its allies have waged war in country after country for decades, carving swathes of destruction through cities, towns and villages on a far greater scale than has so far disfigured Ukraine. As we recently reported, the U.S. and its allies have dropped over 337,000 bombs and missiles, or 46 per day, on nine countries since 2001 alone. Senior U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency officers told Newsweek that the first 24 days of Russia’s bombing of Ukraine was less destructive than the first day of U.S. bombing in Iraq in 2003. The U.S.-led campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria bombarded those countries with over 120,000 bombs and missiles, the heaviest bombing anywhere in decades.

U.S. military officers told Amnesty International that the U.S. assault on Raqqa in Syria was also the heaviest artillery bombardment since the Vietnam War. Mosul in Iraq was the largest city that the United States and its allies reduced to rubble in that campaign, with a pre-assault population of 1.5 million. About 138,000 houses were damaged or destroyed by bombing and artillery, and an Iraqi Kurdish intelligence report counted at least 40,000 civilians killed. Raqqa, which had a population of 300,000, was gutted even more. A UN assessment mission reported that 70-80% of buildings were destroyed or damaged. Syrian and Kurdish forces in Raqqa reported counting 4,118 civilian bodies. Many more deaths remain uncounted in the rubble of Mosul and Raqqa. Without comprehensive mortality surveys, we may never know what fraction of the actual death toll these numbers represent.

The Pentagon promised to review its policies on civilian casualties in the wake of these massacres, and commissioned the Rand Corporation to conduct a study titled, “Understanding Civilian Harm in Raqqa and Its Implications For Future Conflicts,” which has now been made public. Even as the world recoils from the shocking violence in Ukraine, the premise of the Rand Corp study is that U.S. forces will continue to wage wars that involve devastating bombardments of cities and populated areas, and that they must therefore try to understand how they can do so without killing quite so many civilians. The study runs over 100 pages, but it never comes to grips with the central problem, which is the inevitably devastating and deadly impacts of firing explosive weapons into inhabited urban areas like Mosul in Iraq, Raqqa in Syria, Mariupol in Ukraine, Sanaa in Yemen or Gaza in Palestine.

Tedros

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Do the French -again- bail out Société Générale?

Russia’s Richest Oligarch Bails Out Société Générale In “Fantastic Deal” (F.)

Personal sanctions have hit the pocketbooks and portfolios of many Russian oligarchs, as the U.S., the EU and the U.K. go after their palatial homes, private jets and audacious yachts. One person who has not yet been sanctioned by those powers (but was sanctioned by Canada last week) is Vladimir Potanin, a metals tycoon and one of Russia’s original oligarchs. His company, MMC Norilsk Nickel PJSC (also known as “Nornickel”), the world’s biggest producer of refined nickel and palladium, is benefitting from soaring commodities prices amid the wartime supply crunch. Now, amid the upheaval of war, Potanin is moving to expand his business empire. The French bank Société Générale announced yesterday it was selling Rosbank, a Russia-based banking group, back to Interros, Potanin’s investment conglomerate.

Société Générale paid an estimated $4.3 billion to Interros between 2006 and 2014 to amass a near 100% stake in the Russian bank and its subsidiaries. Transaction terms were not disclosed, but Société Générale said that Interros would pay off the Russian unit’s outstanding loans and that the French bank would write off $3.3 billion. A spokesperson for Société Générale told Forbes over email: “With this agreement, concluded after several weeks of intensive work, the Group would exit in an effective and orderly manner from Russia, taking into account its employees and clients. Interros Capital is one of the largest private investment companies in Russia and is familiar with the bank, which would facilitate business continuity.”

Based on the available information so far, the deal was a “fantastic” one for Potanin, says Jerome Legras, head of research at Paris-based investment firm Axiom Alternative Investments, and former deputy head of structure capital finance at Société Générale. “The business is going to be disrupted of course because of the economy crashing and everything, but he’s getting a bank for close to zero, so of course it’s a good deal for him,” says Legras. “From the amount of the writedown they [Société Générale] say they took, and from the amount of capital in the company and what was said about the subordinated debt, it’s pretty clear this was a nominal price.” “In terms of pure equity, I think the price was pretty much zero,” adds Legras.

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Pretty weak graph, and a far too long article.

Masks Fail Their Latest Test (Kirsch)

The CDC just decided to continue the transportation mask mandate for another two weeks. Dr. Bob Wachter, Chair of the Department of Medicine at UCSF, concurs with the CDC decision. Both are unable to differentiate real science from a sloppy study. There have been only two randomized trials to test whether public policy using masks to mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2 can reduce the spread. The first one, in Denmark, showed that masks don’t work. But the second one, in Bangladesh, claimed that they did. Nature called it a “rigorous study” and Stanford and Yale promoted it as definitive in a press release. But was it really? We challenged Yale Professor Jason Abaluck, the first author of that study, to defend their study.


To his credit (and our utter amazement), he agreed but with one condition: we were only allowed one person to challenge him (because that’s how science works of course). We instantly agreed. The discussion happened on April 3, 2022. The result: Abaluck failed. Badly. Very badly. One of our experts who viewed the interview said that it was worse than just sloppy work. He wrote, “This is bordering on fraud.” In short, the study actually failed to prove that masks work at all. For example, here’s the graph for purple cloth masks. If masks worked, it would be highly unlikely for these curves to be on top of each other. For some strange reason, graphs such as these were omitted from the paper. Can you guess why??? Yes, it’s because the study was designed to fit the narrative. Data that goes against the narrative is not highlighted.

You can see the entire 2-hour discussion yourself and make your own judgment. In this article, we include an analysis by one of our statisticians who viewed the video. We also include a link to an interview with statistician Mike Deskevich on his interpretation of the discussion. Initially, Professor Abaluck was so self-confident he thought he could run circles around us. He was wrong. The truth won. So now Abaluck has changed his tune. He now says he won’t talk to us anymore or answer any more questions. The bottom line is this: there is no rock on Earth that is large enough for the authors of that study to hide under. The use of masks to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2 has been debunked.

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“As Anthony Fauci is now branded as “false information” by Facebook, in relation to clip that has resurfaced from the past in which he discusses the flu vaccine, we ask, is this really about protecting the world from disinformation?”

Fauci on Shanghai: “Use Lockdowns to Get People Vaccinated” (TNA)

As tens of millions of Shanghai residents are being put into the most ferocious lockdown to date, being locked in their apartments and reportedly starving, America’s Covid Czar Dr. Anthony Fauci signaled that such policies might be quite effective in curbing the spread of Covid if the government gets detained people vaccinated. During an MSNBC “Reports” interview on Wednesday, the host, Andrea Mitchell, asked Fauci whether the government was concerned about the Covid outbreak in China. For some reason, Mitchell seemed uninterested in the fact that 24.89 million people in China’s most populous urban area — the most populous city proper in the world — are being detained against their will. Fauci replied that by imposing strict lockdowns early in the pandemic, China was “doing better than anyone else” in terms of containing the virus. He said,

“China has a number of problems, two of which are that their complete lockdown, which was their approach, the strictest lockdown that you’d never be able to implement in the United States. Although that prevents the spread of infection, I remember early on they were saying, and I think accurately, they were doing better than almost anybody else.” Fauci continued by saying that while imposing the lockdown, the authorities must act to “get people vaccinated”: “But lockdown has its consequences. You use lockdowns to get people vaccinated so that when you open up, you won’t have a surge of infections.” Fauci did not specify how he saw a concrete way of getting people injected with the vaccine while they were not allowed to leave their homes. Presumably, the government could send medical personnel to each and every unvaccinated person.

Disregarding the concept of natural immunity, Fauci went on to explain that vaccination would be needed “Because you’re dealing with an immunologically naive population to the virus because they’ve not really been exposed because of the lockdown.” That claim goes against his own admission in 2004 that the “best vaccine is to get infected yourself.” Back then, Fauci said that if a person contracted the flu, she “definitely” did not need to get vaccinated because she was “as protected as anybody else.” Fauci continued by bashing Chinese vaccines for not being effective enough: “The problem is, that the vaccines that they’ve been using are not nearly as effective as the vaccines that are used in the United States, the UK, [the] EU, and other places. So, they don’t have the degree of protection that’s optimal.”

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“Why does the CDC trust the peri/myocarditis data in VAERS but not the data on deaths?”

6 Double Standards Public Health Officials Used to Justify COVID Vaccines (CHD)

1. COVID deaths are ‘presumed,’ but vaccine deaths must be ‘proven’ As of April 8, VAERS included 26,699 reports of deaths following COVID vaccines. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officially acknowledges only nine of these. In order to establish causality, the CDC requires autopsies to rule out any possible etiology of death before the agency will place culpability on the vaccine. But the CDC uses a very different standard when it comes to identifying people who died from COVID. The 986,000 COVID deaths reported by the CDC here are, as footnote [1] indicates, “Deaths with confirmed or presumed [emphasis added] COVID-19.”

If a person dies with a positive PCR test or is presumed to have COVID, the CDC will count that as COVID-19 death. Note that in the CDC’s definition, a COVID fatality does not mean the person died from the disease, only with the disease. Why is an autopsy required to establish a COVID vaccine death but not to establish a COVID death? Conversely, why is recent exposure to SARS-CoV-2 prior to a death sufficient to establish causality — but recent exposure to a vaccine considered coincidental?

2. CDC uses VAERS data to investigate myocarditis yet claims VAERS data on vaccine deaths is unreliable On June 23, 2021, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices met to assess the risk of peri/myocarditis following COVID vaccination, especially in young males. This was the key slide in this presentation:

The observed risk of myocarditis is 219 in about 4.3 million second doses of COVID vaccine in males 18 to 24 years old. The CDC is fine with using VAERS data to assess risk of myocarditis following vaccination — yet the agency rejects all but nine of the 26,699 reports of deaths following the vaccines. Why does the CDC trust the peri/myocarditis data in VAERS but not the data on deaths? One reason may be because the onset of myocarditis symptoms is closely tied to the time of vaccination. In other words, because this condition closely follows inoculation the two events are highly correlated and suggestive of causation. For example, here is another slide from the same presentation:

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I had no idea what my company was doing!

Former Monsanto CEO Files Protective Order to Avoid Testifying (CHD)

Former Monsanto Co. Chairman and CEO Hugh Grant is appealing a judge’s order that would allow lawyers for a cancer patient to question him on the stand in a trial scheduled to start next month in Kansas City. Lawyers for the former Monsanto executive filed a flurry of documents with the Missouri Court of Appeals Western District last week seeking to quash a subpoena compelling Grant to testify in person in the case of Allan Shelton v Monsanto. The trial of the civil suit is set to begin May 2 in Kansas City, Missouri. Shelton suffers from non-Hodgkin lymphoma and is one of more than 100,000 people around the United States who have alleged in lawsuits that exposure to Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer, and other company herbicide brands made with a chemical called glyphosate, caused them to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Shelton’s lawyers have argued that Grant was an active participant and decision-maker in the company’s Roundup business and should be made to testify at the trial, but Grant’s lawyers argue that Jackson County Circuit Court Judge Charles McKenzie’s approval of a subpoena for Grant to testify at trial was “in excess” of the judge’s authority and “an abuse of discretion.” Grant’s lawyers want the appeals court to issue a “writ of prohibition” and order the judge to take no further action other than to grant a protective order for Grant in the case.Grant claims in the filings that the effort to put him on the stand in front of a jury is “wholly unnecessary and serves only to harass and burden” him.

He notes in the filings that he left Monsanto in 2018 (when the company was sold to the German company Bayer AG), and that he already has given a “comprehensive videotaped deposition” in the nationwide Roundup litigation that can be presented at this trial. Grant’s testimony “would be of little value” because he is not a toxicologist, an epidemiologist, or a regulatory expert and “did not work in the areas of toxicology or epidemiology while employed by Monsanto,” the court filings state. Grant does not have “any expertise in the studies and tests that have been done related to Roundup generally, including those related to Roundup safety,” his lawyers argue.

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Rolling Stone turns on Jan 6 Committee?

FBI Documents Expose Bureau‘s Big Jan. 6 ‘Lie‘ (RS)

In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, the FBI told Congress and the American people that the agency had failed to prevent or fully prepare for the worst attack on the U.S. Capitol in more than 200 years in part because it lacked the authority and capabilities to more aggressively monitor social media, where much of the planning for the insurrection took place. As FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress last summer, the FBI had circulated intelligence materials and other resources before Jan. 6, but the agency had limits in what it could and couldn’t gather from social media. “When we have an authorized purpose and proper predication, there are a lot of things that we do at social media and we do do,” Wray said, “but [what] we cannot do on social media is, without proper predication and authorized purpose, just monitor just in case on social media.”

Wray added, “Now, if the policies should be changed to reflect that, that might be one of the important lessons learned coming out of this whole experience. But that’s not something that currently the FBI has either the authority or certainly the resources, frankly, to do.” Since Wray’s testimony, the bureau has sought to ramp up its online surveillance capabilities, including by entering into one of the largest social-media monitoring contracts of any federal agency. Yet internal FBI records obtained by Rolling Stone show that, well before Jan. 6, the bureau already engaged in ongoing and widespread tracking of Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, and other social-media platforms. The new documents suggest the agency has all the authority it needs to monitor the social-media platforms in the name of public safety — and, in fact, the bureau had done just that during the nationwide wave of racial justice protests in 2020.

Critics of the FBI say that the bureau’s desire for more authority and surveillance tools is part of a decades-long expansion of the vast security apparatus inside the federal government. The documents refer to teams of employees engaged in what law-enforcement agencies call “social-media exploitation,” or SOMEX. According to the documents, SOMEX teams gather reams of data from social media and distribute that information to special agents and other law-enforcement representatives. The documents show SOMEX data included in situation reports, or “sitreps,” distributed within the bureau.

The documents were first obtained by Property of the People, a government-transparency nonprofit group. “The documents bring into relief three consistent truths about the FBI,” says Ryan Shapiro, executive director of Property of the People. “One: At its core, the FBI is a political police force that primarily targets the left while ignoring or outright enabling the far-right. Two: FBI spokespersons lie like they breathe. Three: The Bureau shamelessly exploits national crises to expand the already dystopian reach of its surveillance.”

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Spying on Veritas

 

 

 

 

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