May 152022
 


Jacques-Louis David Coronation of Napoleon in 1804 in Nôtre-Dame Cathedral, Paris (10 metres wide, 6 metres tall) 1805-7

 

US-led War On Russia Escalates (WSWS)
US Senate GOP Delegation Meets With Zelensky In Kiev (CNN)
Guy Mettan: Ukraine is the First Battle of the Third World War (G&E)
Ten More European Gas Buyers Open Ruble Accounts For Payments (BBG)
The Real Reason Behind the EU’s Drive to Embargo Russian Oil
NY Times Op-ed Warns Of ‘Fantasies Of Regime Change’ (Fox)
India Bans Wheat Exports, Irks G7 (AFP)
India Reverses Prior Position and Will Now Block Further Wheat Exports (CTH)
Survey Shows Over 500,000 Killed By The Covid Vaccines So Far (Kirsch)
Egypt Considers Issuing Bonds In China’s Yuan (Al-M)
Karine Jean-Pierre Has History Of Accusing Things Of Being Racist (NYP)
Biden Phrase “Ultra MAGA” Came from Six Month Study (CTH)

 

 

 

 

Why Did Lloyd Austin Call Sergei Shoigu?

 

 

 

 

Russia, China at UN on biolabs

 

 

 

 

Dr. Cole about Vanden Bossche’s theory

Urso about Vanden Bossche’s theory

Malone about Vanden Bossche’s theory

 

 

Playing war games on Russia’s border.

US-led War On Russia Escalates (WSWS)

A day after Finland pledged to join NATO “without delay,” Sweden’s ruling social democrats accepted a parliamentary report also calling to join the US-led alliance. NATO is threatening to turn Scandinavia and the entire Baltic Sea into a second front in the war on Russia it has waged since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Finnish and Swedish troops are joining US and Ukrainian forces in NATO “Hedgehog” war games next week in Estonia, whose border with Russia is just 150 kilometers from Saint Petersburg. The exercise, involving 15,000 troops, will simulate war between NATO and Russia in Estonia. This underscores that Finland’s vast,1,300-km border with Russia is becoming a potential war zone.

Asked on Thursday about Finland joining NATO, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov said: “Russia will be forced to take retaliatory steps, both of a military-technical and other nature, in order to stop the threats to its national security that arise in this regard.” Russian officials have said that if Sweden and Finland join NATO, they will try to maintain a regional balance of power by stationing nuclear missiles in Russia’s Baltic port enclave at Kaliningrad. This week, former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev admitted that Europe is rapidly moving towards all-out war. “NATO countries pumping weapons into Ukraine, training troops to use Western equipment, sending in mercenaries and the exercises of Alliance countries near our borders increase the likelihood of a direct and open conflict between NATO and Russia,” he said. “Such a conflict always has the risk of turning into a full-fledged nuclear war.”

Nonetheless, Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson is to schedule a debate on joining NATO tomorrow. With staggering recklessness, the Swedish social democrats are scrapping a two-century policy of non-alignment in foreign wars that Sweden has observed since the Napoleonic wars ended in 1814, as the Finns scrapped the neutrality they observed since World War II. At a press conference last night, Swedish Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist admitted that Sweden’s announcement could provoke war with Russia, but dismissed the danger: “If Sweden chooses to seek NATO membership, there is a risk of a reaction from Russia. … Let me state that, in such a case, we are prepared to deal with any counter-response.”

The Swedish government’s case for joining NATO is a mixture of political lies and self-delusion. By joining NATO, Sweden is not, as Linde argues, deterring Russia from attacking it by making clear Moscow would potentially run the risk of a military clash with NATO. Rather, Sweden is signing up to a NATO war drive against Russia already being led by Washington, London and Berlin. Hultqvist’s statement that the Swedish government is prepared for “any counter-response” from Russia is astonishing. It appears Sweden’s defense minister has forgotten that Russia has over 6,000 nuclear warheads: In case of a major escalation of the NATO-Russia war, Russia’s “counter-response” could obliterate Sweden.

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So brave to travel into a war zone.

US Senate GOP Delegation Meets With Zelensky In Kiev (CNN)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with a congressional delegation led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kyiv Saturday, and called for Russia to officially be recognized as a “terrorist state,” he said Saturday in his nightly address. McConnell said in a statement Saturday evening the delegation “just left” Ukraine and called it an “honor” to meet with Zelensky and his senior advisers. McConnell was joined on the unannounced trip by Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, John Barrasso of Wyoming and John Cornyn of Texas. McConnell and the other senators became the latest US officials to visit Ukraine since Russia invaded the eastern European nation in late February.

The Kentucky Republican said in the statement the delegation “reaffirmed” to Zelensky “that the United States stands squarely behind Ukraine and will sustain our support until Ukraine wins this war. It is also essential that America not stand alone. He continued: “It is squarely in our national interest to help Ukraine achieve victory in this war and to help Ukraine and other countries deter other wars of aggression before they start.” In his nightly address Saturday, Zelensky said he discussed US support for Ukraine and tightening sanctions on Russia with the delegation. “I believe that this visit once again demonstrates the strength of bipartisan support for our state, the strength of ties between the Ukrainian and American nations,” Zelensky said.

CNN previously reported Zelensky has asked President Joe Biden to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism. The Ukrainian president added that he “expressed gratitude for the historic decision to renew the Lend Lease program” during the GOP delegation’s visit. Biden earlier this week signed into law the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act. The new law, which eases some of the requirements for the US to lend or lease military equipment to Ukraine, passed with a bipartisan majority in the US House and Senate. Its sponsors said the legislation gives Biden much broader authority to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia and addresses how the US can get weapons to Ukraine faster.

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Apologies for sound quality.

Guy Mettan: Ukraine is the First Battle of the Third World War (G&E)

Guy Mettan discusses the deep thousand year history of Russophobia which informs the current Ukraine crisis. Europe had divided in two parts along religious lines which can still be seen in Ukraine today. He traces Russophobia from medieval Germany to France to Britain and back again to Germany and today the U.S. and EU. Brzezinski outlined the importance of conquering Ukraine because it’s the pivotal power of Europe. Ukraine is the first battle of the Third World War. It won’t be a total war, it will be a global unlimited war, unlimited in space and time where everybody will be affected. He agrees that there is a neo-totalitarian trend in the West and that democracy is a false flag. He’s pessimistic regarding the future development of our world as the U.S. and EU develop into a totalitarian new empire. But he’s optimistic that the light of the truth can’t be extinguished.

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The EU finds ways to circumvent its own sanctions.

Ten More European Gas Buyers Open Ruble Accounts For Payments (BBG)

Ten more European gas buyers have opened accounts in Gazprombank JSC, doubling the total number of clients preparing to pay in rubles for Russian gas as President Vladimir Putin demanded. A total of twenty European companies have opened accounts, with another 14 clients asking for the paperwork needed to set them up, the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential matters. He declined to identify the companies. European buyers have been struggling for weeks to figure out how they can meet Putin’s order to pay for Russian gas in rubles starting April 1 and not fall afoul of European Union sanctions imposed over Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Under the new mechanism, clients have to open two accounts: one in foreign currency and one in rubles in Gazprombank. After Poland and Bulgaria rejected these terms, Gazprom PJSC halted gas flows to them in late April. As deadlines for payment for April supplies loom later this month for major West European buyers, Russia has moved to address EU concerns that the payment mechanism may violate sanctions. The person close to Gazprom said the current terms mean that the transaction is effectively completed once the buyer pays foreign currency to Gazprombank, since the subsequent conversion to rubles is automatic and doesn’t involve Russia’s central bank, which is subject to EU sanctions.

The bloc so far hasn’t said whether the Russian changes allay its concerns, but Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said Wednesday companies will be able to pay for gas in rubles without breaching the restrictions. “Most of the gas importers have already opened their account in rubles with Gazprom,” he told a press conference. He said that Germany’s top gas importer had already paid in rubles. Like Italy, Germany is a massive consumer of Russian gas. The person close to Gazprom said the number of customers who’ve paid in rubles remains at four, the same as late last month. Payments from other buyers are due later this month, he said.

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“The war by the West against Russia has long been in the planning stages.”

The Real Reason Behind the EU’s Drive to Embargo Russian Oil

The idea that Europe fears a Russian invasion of Poland or even Germany, which necessitates NATO’s expansion to its border in the Donbas, is ludicrous. Russia’s military is not built along these lines nor is its performance in Ukraine evidence it is capable of such an operation. What is unfolding now is a script that was written a long time ago. The war by the West against Russia has long been in the planning stages. The Russians understand this better than many are willing to accept. Their leadership, Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, have articulated this very clearly at every stage of the war to date. They are under no illusions about where the West and Davos are willing to take this conflict, which is why they have made serious threats about striking out at the real “decision centers” who give the Ukrainian Armed Forces their marching orders.

These are warnings not to our politicians, but to us. This is where things lead. They have asked for a parting of the ways, peaceably, between East and West, but that is not part of the agenda. Like classic narcissists with the burning need to control everything, Russia and the rest of Asia will not be allowed to walk away from Davos and their Eurocrat quislings, because they are the righteous saviors of humanity. And we are just, at best, “the help” and at worst an inconvenience. The bigger Davos plan of destroying the old global order to Build it Back Better, where they own everything and you will own nothing and like it or else, is the script.

They are now committed to this plan. It does not matter now whether it will work or not. This is what we have to realize in all of our analyses. Do the Russians and their friends in Asia and across the Global South have the means and the tools to come out on top? Possibly. But the bigger question is whether or not this conflict escalates to the point where winning is an irrelevant concept. When you see a bloc as powerful as the European Union willing to commit acts of domestic vandalism this big—and blaming the victim of their unbridled aggression—it tells you we are far past the point of rational settlement.

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“..the United States and its allies have greatly increased the danger of an even larger conflict..”

NY Times Op-ed Warns Of ‘Fantasies Of Regime Change’ (Fox)

On Wednesday, The New York Times published an op-ed warning that the United States risks war with Russia if it continues to pursue an expansive strategy in Ukraine. “Nuclear weapons are discussed in easy tones, not least on Russian television. The risk of cities being reduced to corium remains low without NATO deployment in Ukraine, but accident and miscalculation cannot be discounted,” wrote Tom Stevenson. The op-ed, titled “America and Its Allies Want to Bleed Russia. They Really Shouldn’t,” cautions that while America’s initial actions to provide support to Ukraine, American leaders’ willingness to speak in increasingly bold terms about regime change in Russia and “draining” the country poses a risk to American security.

“By expanding support to Ukraine across the board and shelving any diplomatic effort to stop the fighting, the United States and its allies have greatly increased the danger of an even larger conflict,” Stevenson wrote. “They are taking a risk far out of step with any realistic strategic gain,” he added. “The early U.S. response to the invasion was simple: Supply the defenders and apply America’s unique financial weaponry to the Russian economy. The new strategy — call it bleed Russia — is quite different. The underlying idea is that the United States and its allies should seek to recover more from the rubble of Kharkiv and Kramatorsk than the survival of Ukraine as a polity or even a symbolic frustration of Russian aggression.” Stevenson notes that Russia discusses nuclear tensions “in easy tones” and warned that “accident and miscalculation cannot be discounted”.

“It is unclear what more there is to gain by weakening Russia, beyond fantasies of regime change,” he said. “The war was dangerous and destructive enough in its initial form. The combination of expanded strategic aims and scotched negotiations has made it more dangerous still. At present, the only message to Russia is: There is no way out.”

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Much less wheat from Ukraine, Russia and now India, the world’s second-largest wheat producer. It adds up.

India Bans Wheat Exports, Irks G7 (AFP)

India banned wheat exports without government approval Saturday after its hottest March on record hit production, in a blow to countries reeling from supply shortages and soaring prices since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The announcement drew sharp criticism from the Group of Seven industrialized nations’ agriculture ministers meeting in Germany, who said that such measures “would worsen the crisis” of rising commodity prices. “If everyone starts to impose export restrictions or to close markets, that would worsen the crisis,” German Agriculture Minister Cem Ozdemir said at a press conference in Stuttgart. Global wheat prices have soared on supply fears following Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine, which previously accounted for 12% of global exports.

The spike in prices, exacerbated by fertilizer shortages and poor harvests, has fueled inflation globally and raised fears of famine and social unrest in poorer countries. It has also led to concerns about growing protectionism following Indonesia’s halting of palm oil exports and India putting the brakes on exports of wheat. India, the world’s second-largest wheat producer, said that factors including lower production and sharply higher global prices meant it worried about the food security of its own 1.4 billion people. Export deals agreed to before the directive issued Friday could still be honored, but future shipments need government approval, it said. But exports could also take place if New Delhi approved requests from other governments “to meet their food security needs”.

“We don’t want wheat to go in an unregulated manner where it may either get hoarded and is not used for the purpose which we are hoping it will be used for –- which is serving the food requirements of vulnerable nations and vulnerable people,” said BVR Subrahmanyam, India’s commerce secretary. On Thursday New Delhi said it was sending delegations to Morocco, Tunisia, Thailand, Vietnam, Turkey, Algeria and Lebanon “for exploring possibilities of boosting wheat exports from India”. [..] India said that it planned to increase wheat exports this financial year, starting April 1, to 10 million tons from seven million tons the year before. While this is a tiny proportion of worldwide production, the assurances provided some support to global prices and soothed fears of major shortages.

Egypt and Turkey recently approved wheat imports from India. But India endured its hottest March on record – blamed on climate change – and has been wilting in a heatwave in recent weeks, with temperatures upwards of 45 degrees Celsius. This has hit farmers hard, and this month the government said that wheat production was expected to fall at least five percent this year from 110 million tons in 2021 — the first fall in six years.

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About the India export ban. Food, energy and politics.

India Reverses Prior Position and Will Now Block Further Wheat Exports (CTH)

In April India said it was hoping to expand its wheat exports from 7 million tons to 10 million. However, as precarious winter wheat harvests reflect lower outputs, they are reversing position and will now block any wheat exports in order to ensure their own supply. INDIA – “[…] The announcement drew sharp criticism from the Group of Seven industrialized nations’ agriculture ministers meeting in Germany, who said that such measures “would worsen the crisis” of rising commodity prices. [..] India, the world’s second-largest wheat producer, said that factors including lower production and sharply higher global prices meant it worried about the food security of its own 1.4 billion people. Export deals agreed to before the directive issued Friday could still be honored, but future shipments need government approval, it said.”

Don’t look now, but there’s an ideological alignment in the background of these decisions. Turkey and Egypt will be receiving wheat export from India, both nations are aligned against the western position toward Russian sanctions. Turkey said a few days ago they would not approve of Finland joining NATO (the irony of Turkey in NATO not withstanding). We need to watch carefully, but there are indications in the geopolitical decision making of nationalist-minded countries, that seem to align with the previously discussed energy alliance cleaving. The food alliance per se’, is lining up in similar fashion to the energy sector oil alliance. If this geopolitical and ideological alignment of food imports/exports continues, what we will see is Europe become even more dependent on the U.S. for food exports. That type of reality has the potential to play well for Biden’s pressure and blackmail campaign forcing NATO to stay committed to the war in Ukraine.

Due to sanctions, Western European allies have already become more dependent on the U.S. for energy products including heavy oil, and liquified natural gas (LNG) which is being exported from the U.S. at the highest rate in history; unfortunately, driving up the prices we pay. Now we can overlay food exports as another angle for Biden to keep blackmailing NATO to support his proxy war in Ukraine. Americans are already paying more for energy because we are subsidizing Europe. Now Americans will pay more for food products because we are subsidizing Europe. That, my friends, is a hot mess. This sanctions map starts to take on a new dimension beyond energy. The western team in yellow trading energy and foodstuffs between themselves based on common ideology and outlook. The team in grey trading energy and foodstuff based on common ideology and outlook.

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Time to broaden the survey.

Survey Shows Over 500,000 Killed By The Covid Vaccines So Far (Kirsch)

A simple survey of my readers provided some extremely compelling evidence that 1) the US government has killed over 500,000 previously healthy Americans and 2) that the vaccine actually caused the deaths. It took me around 30 minutes to create the survey and 11 hours to wait for highly statistically significant results. I was able to accomplish something in less than 12 hours that the CDC has been unable to accomplish in 18 months: prove causality. We see both dose dependency and enormous changes in ACM deaths pre- vs. post-vaccine. We satisfy all five Bradford-Hill criteria applicable to vaccines. We used 400 independent observers. I should note that all follow my Substack so they are correlated: all have excellent judgment, high intelligence, and immunity from mass formation effects. So they have the ability to see what is truly going on.

The survey compared the all-cause mortality (ACM) death rates just PRIOR to a vaccine dose to the ACM death rates immediately AFTER the dose. I predicted they would be dramatically higher after the dose and the effect would be dose dependent. It appears I was right. In fact, the survey projects far more deaths than I thought possible. The number of deaths computed from the reports could be as high as 2M Americans, but the 500,000 number seems more credible, so I’m discounting the result by 4X to account for biases and confounders. I don’t think there is any way anyone is going to be able to “explain away” these results once we redo the survey with a better set of controls (the next step). And these results are ONLY counting the all-cause mortality increase for just the one month after each shot. We know you can die a year later from these vaccines.

We found Dose #4 caused only a 1.27X increase compared with 5.5X to 8.3X for doses 1 and 2 respectively and 2.3X for Dose #3. If this were a highly biased population, Dose 4 would have caused a larger discrepancy, but it’s approaching 1:1 as we’d expect. The decreasing ACM increase with later shots makes sense… The vaccine eliminates anyone whose immune system is susceptible to auto-immune attacks on the spike protein. If it hasn’t killed you after 3 shots, it’s less likely to kill you on shot #4. You’re immune due to both survivor bias and the fact that your immune system has recognized the vaccine as an invader and clears it from the system quicker than on shots 1 and 2. This of course says nothing about it’s impact on effectiveness against the virus which is likely pretty minimal at this point which is a story for another day.

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Question is: who will buy them? China?

Egypt Considers Issuing Bonds In China’s Yuan (Al-M)

Egypt may soon sell bonds that are priced in China’s currency the yuan. Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait made the announcement yesterday alongside the People’s Republic’s Ambassador in Cairo Liao Liqiang. The move would help diversify Egypt’s financial resources and target China’s large bond market, the state-owned Al-Ahram reported. Bonds are a type of financial security that represent the holder’s obligation to repay the buyer. Governments issue bonds to help finance their expenses. Egypt has pursued several new bond strategies recently. The country is currently preparing to sell Islamic bonds. An Islamic bond, or sukuk, complies with Islamic law’s prohibition on usury.


In February, Egypt named six banks to manage the future sukuk sale. Last year, Egypt issued bonds in Japan’s currency the yen. The move could threaten the position of the US dollar as the world’s dominant currency. Many countries around the region sell bonds in dollars or their own currency. Doing business in yuan is becoming more appealing to some countries. Saudi Arabia is reportedly considering accepting yuan as payment for oil sales to China Egypt recently secured foreign investment from its Gulf allies to mitigate the economic fallout from the war in Ukraine. The war has wreaked havoc on Egypt’s wheat supply, for example.

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Where does Biden find these women?

Karine Jean-Pierre Has History Of Accusing Things Of Being Racist (NYP)

Newly installed White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has a long history of accusing policies and political enemies of “racism,” a review of her social media and TV news appearances show. The Post looked at Jean-Pierre’s tweets between 2015 and 2020 and found a staggering 57 instances where she accused people, policies, ideas, or words of being “racist.” And Jean-Pierre accused people and ideas she was opposed to as “racist” at least 43 times in TV appearances too, according to video clipping service Grabien, whose available analysis spanned just the first two years of President Trump’s term in office. Her target on both social media and TV was overwhelmingly Trump.

“If it walks like a racist, talks like a racist, acts like a racist, it is a racist and we have a racist president in the White House who really pushes his racism like a peacock,” she told a smirking panel on the MSNBC show “AM Joy” in 2018. “Donald Trump is a RACIST!” she railed in a tweet from Jan 2018, echoing what became a common refrain from her during his presidency. “Donald Trump is the most outwardly racist President that we have seen in generations and African Americans voters aren’t blind to that. He uses his megaphone to divide people, spew racism, and give cover to white supremacists,” she tweeted in 2020. Her new boss, President Biden, got in on the act in during the 2020 presidential campaign, claiming Trump was “one of the most racist presidents’ we’ve ever had.”

Trump was far not alone as an object of her derision — Jean-Pierre also ripped the former president’s staff and confidants as racists too. “Steve Bannon is a white Supremacist. Steve Bannon is a white Nationalist. Steve Bannon is a racist,” she thundered in September 2018, of the president’s former White House counselor. She levied the same accusation on Sebastian Gorka, another Trump White House advisor. Jean-Pierre also blasted former Attorney General Jeff Sessions as “a bigot & a racist,” who “views brown and black people as less than, not even human,” according to a tweet from June 2018. She also called racists Texas Sen. John Cornyn in 2020, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio in 2018, and Former Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie in 2017.

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“..a few days ago White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said the terminology “ultra-MAGA” was an “organic utterance” from Joe Biden. Whoops.”

Biden Phrase “Ultra MAGA” Came from Six Month Study (CTH)

The Washington Post is reporting the shift from the White House to disparage their political opposition with the terms “MAGA”, “Ultra-MAGA” and President Trump as the “Great MAGA King,” came from a six-month poll study led by Anita Dunn, the latest senior advisor in the White House. Keep in mind, a few days ago White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said the terminology “ultra-MAGA” was an “organic utterance” from Joe Biden. Whoops. WASHINGTON DC – […] Biden’s attempt to appropriate the “MAGA” brand as a political attack was hardly accidental. It arose from a six-month research project to find the best way to target Republicans, helmed by Biden adviser Anita Dunn and by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a liberal group.

The polling and focus group research by Hart Research and the Global Strategy Group found that “MAGA” was already viewed negatively by voters — more negatively than other phrases like “Trump Republicans.” In battleground areas, more than twice as many voters said they would be less likely to vote for someone called a “MAGA Republican” than would be more likely. The research also found that the description tapped into the broad agreement among voters that the Republican Party had become more extreme and power-hungry in recent years.” On May 5th the White House announced Anita Dunn would return to the JoeBama administration as senior advisor.

Dunn’s specific expertise is using pressure, blackmail and political leverage to control information distribution by media organizations. Apparently “ultra-MAGA” was Dunn’s first branding effort for the White House. The reappearance of Anita Dunn aligns with the expressed intent of the DHS ‘disinformation’ board. Dunn’s professional political skillset surrounds being a paid media fixer. She has done this for multiple democrat politicians including Obama. It was Anita Dunn who used her position in the Biden campaign to demand that media stop allowing Rudy Guiliani to explain the Biden family ‘pay to play’ financial system of selling influence. Anita Dunn also advised Harvey Weinstein how to remove media stories of his Hollywood rape issues. Dunn reappearing makes sense, as the U.S. government objective to control information is now in full swing.

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Tesla

 

 

 

 

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Apr 032022
 


Pablo Picasso Bathers with ball 1 1928

 

Ukraine War Shows Emerging Post-American World (IC)
Russian Central Bank Eases Capital Controls As Ruble Erases Losses (ZH)
Pentagon: No ‘Offensive’ Bioweapons at US-Linked Ukraine Labs (Antiwar)
Booming Wheat Exports From India To Ease Global Shortage (BBG)
COVID Is Exploding, And Everything Is Fine (CS)
$1 Million Reward For A CDC or FDA Whistleblower (Kirsch)
Tennis World Shocked After Scores Of Players Drop Out Of Miami Open (FWM)
Foo Fighters Drummer Taylor Hawkins Dead At 50 (Kirsch)
Hospital CEOs Are Joining The Great Resignation (BHR)
Hunter Biden Scandal ‘Wasn’t Part Of ‘Left-wing Media’ Narrative’ – Maher (Fox)
Judge Strikes Down Corporate Board Diversity Law In California (JTN)

 

 

 

 

 

 

In trying to isolate Russia, the west isolates itself.

Ukraine War Shows Emerging Post-American World (IC)

In the late 1990s, at a time when U.S. global dominance still looked invincible, Singaporean diplomat and academic Kishore Mahbubani raised questions about whether a rising Asia might thwart American hegemony in the near future. The crux of Mahbubani’s argument — laid out in his provocatively titled 1998 book, “Can Asians Think?” — was that Western elites, then flush with their victory in the Cold War, had become overly comfortable with dictating the bounds of legitimate debate and sound policy to the rest of the world. That imperious relationship, which had existed since the colonial period, was about to come to an end, said Mahbubani. Asians and other non-Westerners had their own ideas about how the world should be run and would soon have the strength to implement them.

A few decades later, the war in Ukraine is revealing how right Mahbubani was. Despite the browbeating of U.S. politicians to take a side in the conflict, a growing number of Asian, African, and Latin American countries have charted a neutral path. China, India, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia, South Africa, and even Mexico have remained aloof, resisting calls to diplomatically isolate Russia or join the campaign to sanction its economy. Asian companies have remained in Russia even as their Western counterparts have departed en masse. At the United Nations, meanwhile, a bevy of African states, largest among them South Africa, have abstained from resolutions aimed at ostracizing Russian President Vladimir Putin for the invasion. The neutral stance of these countries has evidently come as a shock to many Western elites, long accustomed to instructing other nations on what geopolitical positions they must take.

The way the West corralled support as the only superpower during and after the Cold War, in other words, is no longer effective. India offers the best example of just how much this posture of self-interested neutrality has caught U.S. elites unawares. Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, an exemplar of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, denounced India for its neutral stance. Haass, apparently unaware of his patronizing tone, said that India’s refusal to side against Russia proved that the country of 1.2 billion people “remains unprepared to step up to major power responsibilities or be a dependable partner.” President Joe Biden similarly criticized India for being “shaky” in its response to Russia, compared with European Union countries and Japan, which have rallied to the Ukrainian cause.

American leaders have long hoped that India would be willing to serve as a partner in helping the U.S. contain China and uphold the U.S.-backed liberal order. As it turns out, India has its own interests to pursue. It is a major customer of Russian arms and energy, enjoying a long relationship with Moscow going back to the Cold War. Morality aside, there are concrete, material reasons that Indians would not want to sacrifice these ties simply to win praise in Washington.

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Energy pegged to ruble pegged to gold.

Russian Central Bank Eases Capital Controls As Ruble Erases Losses (ZH)

Now that the Russian ruble has erased all of its post-incursion losses….the Russian Central Bank decided on Friday that it would loosen restrictions on the transfer of funds abroad, much to the relief of ordinary Russians (particularly the wealthy, as well as the Middle class, who have increasingly been turning to the UAE, Israel and other locales as havens for their capital and assets). CBR said it would allow Russians and non-residents from countries that don’t support sanctions to transfer up to $10,000, or its equivalent in another currency, each month. Shortly after Russia’s “special military operation” began last month, Russia’s central bank tightened restrictions on money flowing abroad, barring non-Russians from transferring more than $5,000 a month out of the country.

Transfer limits will be determined using the CBR’s official exchange rates for the ruble against other currencies, the bank said. Still, Russia will retain a tight grip on its currency market even with the easing of these capital controls. Russian brokerages still aren’t allowed to let foreign clients sell securities, one of a retinue of policies intended to support the ruble. CBR has also restricted the amount of dollars that Russians can withdraw from bank accounts denominated in foreign currencies. Russian banks have been barred from selling foreign currencies to Russians until early September as the Russian banking system continues to face the repercussions of the seizure by the West of hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of foreign-currency reserves held in accounts abroad.

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Bioweapons confirmation. But what are defensive bioweapons? Isn’t that what Pater Daszak was working on?

Pentagon: No ‘Offensive’ Bioweapons at US-Linked Ukraine Labs (Antiwar)

A Pentagon official told Congress on Friday that there are no “offensive” biological weapons in any of the dozens of US-linked labs in Ukraine. “I can say to you unequivocally there are no offensive biologic weapons in the Ukraine laboratories that the United States has been involved with,” Deborah Rosenbaum, the assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs, told the House Armed Services subcommittee. The Pentagon funds labs in Ukraine through its Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). According to a Pentagon fact sheet released last month, since 2005, the US has “invested” $200 million in “supporting 46 Ukrainian laboratories, health facilities, and diagnostic sites.”

Moscow has accused Ukraine of conducting an emergency clean-up of a secret Pentagon-funded biological weapons program when Russia invaded. The World Health Organization said it advised Ukraine to destroy “high-threat pathogens” around the time of the invasion. For their part, the US maintains that the program in Ukraine and other former Soviet states is meant to reduce the threat of biological weapons left over from the Soviet Union. While downplaying the threat of the labs, Pentagon officials have also warned that they could still contain Soviet-era bioweapons.

Robert Pope, the director of the DTRA’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, told the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in February that the labs might contain Soviet bioweapons and warned that the fighting in Ukraine could lead to the release of a dangerous pathogen. The Biden administration has tried to portray any concerns about the labs as “Russian propaganda.” When the issue gained more media attention, Biden officials started accusing Moscow of plotting to use chemical or biological weapons, but the US hasn’t presented any evidence to back up its claims.

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Good for North Africa and the Middle East.

Booming Wheat Exports From India To Ease Global Shortage (BBG)

In a world where people are worrying more than ever about food shortages and rising inflation, India’s warehouses are brimming over with grain and the country’s farmers are gearing up for yet another record harvest. The country is the top global producer of wheat after China and has the potential to ship 12 million tons to the world market in the 2022-23 year, the most on record, according to the median of five estimates in a Bloomberg survey of traders, millers and analysts. That compares with shipments of 8.5 million tons in 2021-22, U.S. Department of Agriculture data show. Prices of farm commodities were already on a tear before the Russian invasion of Ukraine as drought shriveled global harvests and demand increased, helping send world food costs to the highest on record.

The war made matters even worse because it has choked shipments from one of the planet’s top producing regions, cutting off more than a quarter of the world’s wheat supplies. “Indian wheat exports help the market in a tight world supply situation,” said Vijay Iyengar, chair and managing director of Singapore-based Agrocorp International. “It helps to keep a lid on global prices as well. If India wasn’t exporting wheat in large quantities, prices would have probably escalated further.” Benchmark wheat prices in Chicago surged to an all-time high of $13.635 a bushel last month after the Russian invasion, compared with an average of only around $5.50 a bushel in the five years through the day preceding the attack.

Tightening supply and rising prices for grain from major exporting countries have made Indian wheat competitive for the first time in years. With ballooning inventories after five straight record crops, India has a huge exportable surplus. That will be crucial for importers in North Africa and the Middle East where soaring food prices sparked violent uprisings more than a decade ago. While India has tended to ship wheat mostly to neighboring countries such as Bangladesh and to some Middle Eastern markets, exporters are now likely to find buyers across Africa and in other areas of the Middle Eastern region.

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Mass psychosis.

COVID Is Exploding, And Everything Is Fine (CS)

New wastewater data collected by the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine shows that COVID-19 is on the rise again — but it’s not clear it’s making much of an impact. According to Cumming School of Medicine microbiologist Dr. Dan Gregson, “The wastewater testing has shown, especially in Calgary, that the number of cases is going up and the positivity rate in the people we are testing has gone up as well.” He further says that he believes hospitalization numbers could rise throughout April due to a brand new variant called the BA.2 variant — I guess they’ve dropped the Greek alphabet branding. Based on the wastewater data released on March 28, 2022, SARS CoV-2 RNA has risen to levels above the spike seen on September 19, 2021 — around the same time Premier Jason Kenney locked Alberta down, implemented a vaccine passport, and issued an apology for letting Albertans be free for the summer.


However, despite COVID being more prevalent in wastewater, hospitalizations remain significantly lower. At the time of writing, Alberta is only reporting 964 hospitalizations, with 47 currently in the ICU. However, on September 17, 2021, there were nearly 20,000 active cases, and the province needed to use surge beds as ICUs would have been at 155 per cent capacity. Regardless, Gregson says Albertans should be concerned, get more vaccines, avoid contact with others, and return to masking indoors only a month after Kenney dropped the mask mandate. “Get your vaccines up to date. If you are at risk of severe disease, try and limit your contacts, use a mask in most indoor settings and limit your contacts with people who may be infectious.” Despite this recommendation, he concedes that contracting the new variant for most who’ve had COVID or received the vaccine will be like a “mild to moderate infection similar to a bad flu.”

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Full anonymity. It’s like WikiLeaks.

$1 Million Reward For A CDC or FDA Whistleblower (Kirsch)

I wrote an article earlier on how the safety signals in VAERS were flashing red back in January 2021. Yet nobody at the CDC or FDA said anything even though they were watching VAERS like a hawk (as the FDA’s Steven A. Anderson admitted on video). It’s simply impossible not to see the safety signals if they aren’t corrupt or incompetent. Since everyone in authority says these organizations are competent, then there is only one alternative left: they are corrupt. I am willing to pay up to $1M for information that I can give to the DOJ and state attorney generals to bring criminal charges against these people. You don’t have to reveal your identity. All you need to do is supply information that we can authenticate that shows the corruption for how all the safety signals were ignored.

You can keep your job at the CDC or FDA. Nobody has to know. You can contact me at [email protected] and put WHISTLEBLOWER in caps in the subject line of your message and put in the body what evidence you have, why the evidence is credible, and we can go from there. Armed with this information, we’ll also see whether any members of Congress call for an investigation. This will allow us to identify corrupt members of Congress. Note to members of DHS: By seeking this information, I am not a “domestic terrorist” since my goal is to expose corruption to restore faith in government institutions. Here is a complete list of members of Congress who agree that the CDC must be either incompetent or corrupt:

< this space intentionally left blank>

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15 very fit individuals in 1 tournament.

Tennis World Shocked After Scores Of Players Drop Out Of Miami Open (FWM)

The tennis world reacted with shock after favorites Paula Badosa and Jannik Sinner had to retire during the quarterfinals of the Miami Open. Badosa, soon to be the number three in the world, became unwell during her match against Jessica Pegula and left the court in tears. Badosa, who was comforted by her American opponent, decided to stop after consultation with her physiotherapist. Pegula reached the semifinals of the Miami tennis tournament for the first time in her career after Badosa’s resignation, reported Yahoo Sports. In the men’s tournament, the Italian phenomenon Jannik Sinner was forced to withdraw.


He gave up after 22 minutes in the game against Francisco Cerundolo, the number 103 in the world ranking. “When I served at 3-1 and 30-0, I saw him bend over. It was very strange,” Cerundolo said during an interview. “I hope he’s okay, he’s a great player.” The 23-year-old Argentinian surprisingly reached the semifinals with his first participation in the master tournament in Miami. It was the second game in a row that ended prematurely for the tennis fans. Fans reacted with shock to the bizarre tennis day. “What is going on?” someone asked.”

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I stay away from celebrity stories, but what struck me earlier about this was that there was a full toxicology report, which included at least 10 substances, many of which were hard to trace and/or just old, within 24 hours. In Colombia! Ever seen such a report that fast in the US?

Foo Fighters Drummer Taylor Hawkins Dead At 50 (Kirsch)

Here is a summary of the evidence I’ve pieced together from both public and private sources (who knew him personally). You can draw your own conclusions. The evidence is consistent with the primary cause being vaccine-induced myocarditis. It fits the facts like a glove. No other hypothesis I’m aware of can explain the evidence. His drug use, which as far as I have been able to determine was limited to smoking weed, played only a minor role. [..] I find it interesting to note that the cardiologists I talked to ranged from “Normal size 350g. It’s vax myocarditis strikes again” to “it is impossible to rule out the vaccine as the proximate cause of death” [..]

He was found dead in his hotel room on March 25, 2022 after complaining about chest pains. Press reported he died of cardiac arrest. That is really important. The vaccine causes death by cardiac arrest. Marijuana and heroin and the other drugs aren’t consistent with the symptoms observed before he died. He appeared to be perfectly normal other than chest pains. Taylor Hawkins was all about the music and his fans. Those were his passions. He was not in it for the money or any other reason. He was just a great guy. [inside source] He was married for 17 years and had three kids: Shane, Annabelle, and Everleigh. He had everything to live for.

Toxicology reports from the Columbian authorities claim there were 10 substances found in his body including opioids, benzodiazepines, marijuana and antidepressants but there was no mention of the amount of each substance. People have mentioned that drug reports from Columbian sources can be unreliable. An autopsy also found Hawkins’ heart weighed at least 600 grams, as reported by Colombian publication, Semana. This is about double the size of a normal heart for a man of his age. We know that the COVID vaccine can cause a heart to double in size and then kill you. This can happen in as little as 5 days after injection. One of the most public examples of this is the death of the son of Ernest Ramirez. His son died just 5 days after his first dose of Pfizer and his heart was double in size at the time of his death.

I checked with one of the world’s top cardiologists (Peter McCullough) who confirmed that yes, your heart can double in size in just 5 days. McCullough looked at the medical records for Ernest’s son and concluded his death was due to the COVID vaccine. FEMA offered Ernest Ramirez a lot of money to change his story and say that the death was caused by COVID. Ramirez refused. Hawkins had a history of drug use, and a 2001 heroin overdose left him in a coma, according to the Los Angeles Times. However, he “made clear he learned his lesson in 2001, and had lived a solid family life with perhaps occasional drug use here and there.” So it seems unlikely that he just decided on a spontaneous heroin/benzo/cocaine bender right before a show, called for help, then died of an overdose. He still smoked weed. This was well known. This probably elevated his risk, but he’d been smoking weed for decades.

[..] My best guess is: He likely got vaccinated around May 2021 with his first two doses after pressure from Grohl and the band manager. His medical exam done after his first vaccination(s) showed he had an enlarged heart for the first time. This was our first clue of vaccine injury. But clearly the doctor wasn’t that concerned since he didn’t tell Hawkins he was at any risk at all. The booster on Feb 26, 2022 took 30 days to damage his heart for the final time. As I noted early, it took only one dose and 5 days to kill Ernest Ramierez’s son who was completely normal until he died. For Hawkins, it just took longer. Unfortunately, I don’t think there will ever be an autopsy by a competent pathologist who knows how to spot vaccine injury (or embalming by a vaccine aware embalmer), so we’ll never know for sure, but all of the evidence is consistent with the vaccine hypothesis. It fits all the facts like a glove.

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CEOs are strong, independent people. But no independent thought is allowed with Covid.

Hospital CEOs Are Joining The Great Resignation (BHR)

The number of departing hospital CEOs is on the rise as C-level executives are grappling with challenges tied to the COVID-19 pandemic. Twelve hospital CEOs exited their roles in January, double the number who stepped down from their positions in the same month a year earlier, according to a report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an executive outplacement and coaching firm. While some hospital and health system CEOs are retiring, others are stepping down from their posts into C-level roles at other organizations. At least eight hospital and health system CEOs have stepped down from their positions since mid-February.


The increase in CEO departures isn’t unique to healthcare. More than 100 CEOs of U.S.-based companies left their posts in January, up from 89 in the same month a year earlier, according to the Challenger, Gray & Christmas report. The uptick in executive exits shouldn’t be surprising given the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, experts told NBC News. CEOs and other executives aren’t immune to the pressures that are prompting people to leave their jobs. “It’s many factors — the burnout, the pandemic, the school closures, the need to take stock of life,” Julia Pollack, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, told NBC News in January. “It’s a whole wide range of shocks.”

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“He got, I think $4.8, yes, million from Chinese energy companies to sit on the board and consult. Yeah, that was his passion in life..”

Hunter Biden Scandal ‘Wasn’t Part Of ‘Left-wing Media’ Narrative’ – Maher (Fox)

“Real Time” host Bill Maher blasted the “left-wing media” for failing to report on the Hunter Biden scandal during the 2020 presidential election. During his panel discussion on Friday night, Maher offered a history lesson about how in the “John Adams day” the country had “different newspapers for different parties” and what “brought it home to me” was how The Washington Post as well as The New York Times authenticated the laptop the New York Post first reported on nearly two years ago. “I remember reading about this a couple of years ago, the New York Post came across… Hunter Biden’s computer, which he apparently left at a computer repair store. I didn’t even know they existed. And if anyone should not leave his computer with other people, it would be Hunter Biden just for the personal stuff,” Maher said.

“But it also had stuff about how, you know, c’mon, he’s a ne’er-do-well. I’m sorry, Hunter Biden, but you are… You made a living being ne’er-do-well who was taking money just because you were the vice president’s son and you had influence.” “He got, I think $4.8, yes, million from Chinese energy companies to sit on the board and consult. Yeah, that was his passion in life,” Maher quipped. His exploration, hooker exploration, was his passion.” Maher continued, “So the New York Post got a hold of what was in the computer. And, you know, because the New York Post is a Republican paper, and The New York Times and The Washington Post are the Democratic paper[s]… And the Republican paper, Twitter… canceled their account! They can’t even report on this story. And now two years later, The New York Times and The Washington Post have come around and say, ‘Okay, there was something there.'”

The HBO star conceded that the laptop story should have been taken with a “giant thing of salt” since the New York Post retrieved it from Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon, but “not two years.” “It looks like the left-wing media just buried the story because it wasn’t part of their narrative and that’s why people don’t trust the media,” Maher said. Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang agreed, pointing to polling that showed trust in media “falls very sharply along party lines” where 69% of Democrats say they still trust the media while just 15% of Republicans and 36% of independents say the same. “This is part of the erosion of institutional trust, where one side feels like the media is on their side,” Yang said. “And it does seem like this Hunter Biden laptop story did get buried because of the timing. I mean, it was coming out during the height of the election in 2020. And they did not want that out in the mainstream.”

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Building backlash.

Judge Strikes Down Corporate Board Diversity Law In California (JTN)

A judge has ruled that California’s mandate for corporate boards to diversify with members from certain racial, ethnic or LGBT groups violates the constitution. The ruling Friday was a major win for the conservative legal group Judicial Watch, which challenge the law on the grounds that are violated the equal protection clause. “This historic California court decision declared unconstitutional one of the most blatant and significant attacks in the modern era on constitutional prohibitions against discrimination,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said.


“In its ruling today, the court upheld the core American value of equal protection under the law. Judicial Watch’s taxpayer clients are heroes for standing up for civil rights against the Left’s pernicious efforts to undo anti-discrimination protections.” The brief ruling granted summary judgment blocking the legislation that had been signed into law last year. The Legislature had wanted to require corporate boards of publicly traded companies to have a member from an “underrepresented community,” including LGBT, Black, Latino, Asian, Native American or Pacific Islander.

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Mar 082022
 
 March 8, 2022  Posted by at 9:22 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  53 Responses »


Jean-François Millet The Gleaners 1857

 

The Biggest Global Food Crisis That Any Of Us Have Ever Seen (Snyder)
The American Empire Self-Destructs (Michael Hudson)
Pity the Nation (Scott Ritter)
A Proposed Solution to the Ukraine War (Mello)
US Secretary Of Defense Orders 500 Additional Us Troops Deploy To Europe (CNN)
Ukraine Fighter-jet Deal Appears Doomed (Axios)
Blinken Invokes Putin’s Dead Brother (ABC)
Ukraine’s Top Negotiator Says Kiev Open to ‘Non-NATO Models’ (Antiwar)
Nowhere Left to Hide (Kunstler)
Australia Targets Hardcore Putin Extremists Spreading Hate About Ukraine (DM)
Florida Department of Health to Advise Against COVID Vax for Healthy Kids (NW)
Leaders Who Got Covid Wrong Must Admit It And Apologize (NYP)
From Sore Arms To Sudden Death (Eugyp)
Los Angeles Suing Monsanto For Chemicals In Waterways (Y!)

 

 

“And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.”
– George Orwell, 1984

 

 

 

 

Biden 1997

 

 


Nickel price


Spain electricity prices

 

 

India

 

 

Famines loom.

The Biggest Global Food Crisis That Any Of Us Have Ever Seen (Snyder)

By the end of 2022, we are going to witness very serious shortages of food in many parts of the globe. In fact, World Bank President David Malpass is openly admitting that we are now facing “a huge supply shock” as a result of the war in Ukraine. Of course we were already moving into a global food crisis even before the war erupted. According to the UN, worldwide food prices in February 2022 were 20.7 percent higher than they were in February 2021, fertilizer prices have gone absolutely nuts, crop production is down all over the planet due to crazy weather patterns, and supply chain problems caused by the pandemic continue to create ongoing headaches. But now World War 3 has erupted, and that is going to push this rapidly growing global food crisis to a level that none of us have ever seen before.

Under normal conditions, Ukraine exports tremendous amounts of food and is considered to be one of the most important “breadbaskets” on the entire planet. Unfortunately, everything has changed now, and this has pushed the global price of wheat up 55 percent since a week before the invasion happened… “Ukrainian farmers have been forced to neglect their fields as millions flee, fight or try to stay alive. Ports are shut down that send wheat and other food staples worldwide to be made into bread, noodles and animal feed. And there are worries Russia, another agricultural powerhouse, could have its grain exports upended by Western sanctions. While there have not yet been global disruptions to wheat supplies, prices have surged 55% since a week before the invasion amid concerns about what could happen next. If the war is prolonged, countries that rely on affordable wheat exports from Ukraine could face shortages starting in July, International Grains Council director Arnaud Petit told The Associated Press.”

I really don’t like that “shortages starting in July” part. That definitely sounds rather ominous. Right now, the global price of food is the highest that it has ever been, and Russia and Ukraine normally account for “nearly a third of the world’s wheat and barley exports”. Now that exports from Russia will be greatly reduced and exports from Ukraine will be virtually non-existent, some countries will almost immediately be facing extreme stress. [..] Things are going to be very challenging in Europe as well, because Ukraine normally provides almost 60 percent of the corn that Europeans use… “Ukraine supplies the EU with just under 60% of its corn and nearly half of a key component in the grains needed to feed livestock.” Meanwhile, crops all over the world are in surprisingly poor shape because weather conditions have been so strange.

Earlier today, I was stunned to learn that it is being projected that China’s winter wheat crop could be “the worst in history”… “The condition of China’s winter wheat crop could be the “worst in history”, the agriculture minister said on Saturday, raising concerns about grain supplies in the world’s biggest wheat consumer.” And the USDA is reporting that a whopping 71 percent of all winter wheat in the United States has been affected by drought… “A limited supply of soft white wheat, the primary type of wheat grown in the Inland Northwest, has helped lead to a six-year low for wheat exports from the United States. That’s according to the USDA wheat report for February. The report also states that 71 percent of U.S. winter wheat is being hit by drought in 2022.”

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“But nobody thought that it would happen this fast.”

The American Empire Self-Destructs (Michael Hudson)

Empires often follow the course of a Greek tragedy, bringing about precisely the fate that they sought to avoid. That certainly is the case with the American Empire as it dismantles itself in not-so-slow motion. The basic assumption of economic and diplomatic forecasting is that every country will act in its own self-interest. Such reasoning is of no help in today’s world. Observers across the political spectrum are using phrases like “shooting themselves in their own foot” to describe U.S. diplomatic confrontation with Russia and allies alike. For more than a generation the most prominent U.S. diplomats have warned about what they thought would represent the ultimate external threat: an alliance of Russia and China dominating Eurasia. America’s economic sanctions and military confrontation has driven them together, and is driving other countries into their emerging Eurasian orbit.

American economic and financial power was expected to avert this fate. During the half-century since the United States went off gold in 1971, the world’s central banks have operated on the Dollar Standard, holding their international monetary reserves in the form of U.S. Treasury securities, U.S. bank deposits and U.S. stocks and bonds. The resulting Treasury-bill Standard has enabled America to finance its foreign military spending and investment takeover of other countries simply by creating dollar IOUs. U.S. balance-of-payments deficits end up in the central banks of payments-surplus countries as their reserves, while Global South debtors need dollars to pay their bondholders and conduct their foreign trade. This monetary privilege – dollar seignorage – has enabled U.S. diplomacy to impose neoliberal policies on the rest of the world, without having to use much military force of its own except to grab Near Eastern oil.

The recent escalation U.S. sanctions blocking Europe, Asia and other countries from trade and investment with Russia, Iran and China has imposed enormous opportunity costs – the cost of lost opportunities – on U.S. allies. And the recent confiscation of the gold and foreign reserves of Venezuela, Afghanistan and now Russia, along the targeted grabbing of bank accounts of wealthy foreigners (hoping to win their hearts and minds, along with recovery of their sequestered accounts), has ended the idea that dollar holdings or those in its sterling and euro NATO satellites are a safe investment haven when world economic conditions become shaky. So I am somewhat chagrined as I watch the speed at which this U.S.-centered financialized system has de-dollarized over the span of just a year or two.

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“..the soul of a nation that once was defined by the life and works of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gorky, Lenin, Stalin, Sakharov, and Gorbachev was distilled into a shallow caricature of one man — Putin..”

Pity the Nation (Scott Ritter)

In the past few months, the United States has undergone a kind of transformation that one only reads about in history books — from a nation which imperfectly, yet stolidly, embraced the promise, if not principle, of freedom, especially when it came to that most basic of rights — the freedom of expression. Democracies live and die on the ability of an informed citizenry to engage in open debate, dialogue and discussion about difficult issues. Freedom of speech is one of the touch-stone tenets of American democracy — the idea that, no matter how out of step with mainstream society one’s beliefs might be, the retained right to freely express opinions thus derived without fear of censorship or repression existed. No more.

In the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russophobia which had taken grip in the United States since Russia’s first post-Cold War president, Boris Yeltsin, handed the reins of power over to his hand-picked successor, Vladimir Putin, has emerged much like the putrid core of an over-ripe boil. That this anti-Russian trend existed in the United States was, in and of itself, no secret. Indeed, the United States had, since 2000, pushed aside classic Russian area studies in the pursuit of a new school espousing the doctrine of “Putinism,” centered on the flawed notion that everything in Russia revolved around the singular person of Vladimir Putin.

The more the United States struggled with the reality of a Russian nation unwilling to allow itself to be once again constrained by the yoke of carpetbagger economics disguised as “democracy” that had been prevalent during the Yeltsin era, the more the dogma of “Putinism” took hold in the very establishments where intellectual examination of complex problems was ostensibly transpiring — the halls of academia which in turn produced the minds that guided policy formulation and implementation. Outliers like Jack Matlock, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Cohen were cashiered in favor of a new breed of erstwhile Russian expert, led by the likes of Michael McFaul, Fiona Hill and Anne Applebaum. Genuine Russian area studies was supplanted by a new field of authoritarian studies, where the soul of a nation that once was defined by the life and works of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gorky, Lenin, Stalin, Sakharov, and Gorbachev was distilled into a shallow caricature of one man — Putin.

[..] As a former chief weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991-1998, I was uniquely positioned to comment on the veracity of the claims made by the United States that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction capability in violation of its obligation to be disarmed of such. When my stance was deemed convenient to a narrative attacking a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, I was readily embraced. However, when my fact-based narrative ran afoul of the regime-change policies of Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, I was cast aside as a pariah.

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Greg Mello is the executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group.

A Proposed Solution to the Ukraine War (Mello)

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, what was a regional conflict has become a global hybrid war with ever-greater stakes, not least the risk of nuclear war. Perhaps the greatest danger lies in the difference of motives between parties, which is also the fundamental cause of this war: Russia seeks security, while the U.S. and its NATO allies have been using Ukraine to deny that security — to “break Russia,” in Henry Kissinger’s 2015 phrase. The U.S. does not want peace, unless it be the peace of a conquered Russia. That is why there is no obvious end to the escalations and counter-escalations. The U.S. and NATO see opportunity in the war they have been trying so hard to provoke.

The tragedy is that few people seem to understand that at the root of the Ukraine crisis is a specific strategy known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine, named after Paul Wolfowitz who, as under secretary of defense in the administration of George H. W. Bush, was one of the authors of a 1992 document that laid out a neo-conservative manifesto aimed at ensuring American dominance of world affairs following the collapse of the Soviet Union. “Our first objective,” stated the document, “is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival [to the United States], either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere. … This is a dominant consideration underlying [a] regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”

The Wolfowitz Doctrine triggered the post-Cold War use of NATO as an instrument of bloody aggression against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. It declared, in effect, that diplomacy was dead and that American power ruled by violence if necessary. A resurgent Russia led by Vladimir Putin was next, and on the horizon, a risen China. The 2014 Washington-engineered coup in Ukraine that removed an elected leader who sought to reinforce his country’s relationship with neighboring Russia, was a product of the 1992 Doctrine and the extremism it represented. Victoria Nuland, a neo-conservative ideologue and President Barack Obama’s “point person” in Ukraine, has played the same role in President Joe Biden’s State Department.

The 1992 Doctrine is elaborated in an infamous RAND study on how to overextend and, in Kissinger’s words, “break Russia.” This is U.S. foreign policy today: a fact well understood by the Russian leadership who regard their country as effectively under siege by the United States. The potential of American missiles pointed at Moscow from former Soviet satellite countries, together with NATO troop deployments, is the reality they see. A militarized and virulently anti-Russian Ukraine being used as a tool by the U.S., with an expressed wish for nuclear weapons, on the brink of invading Russian-sympathizing provinces on the Russian border — all that was too much for Russia. What, do you suppose, the U.S. would do if such a situation arose in Mexico or Canada?

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Enablers.

US Secretary Of Defense Orders 500 Additional US Troops Deploy To Europe (CNN)

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered additional troops and US military assets to be deployed to different parts of Europe amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine to further support the US’s NATO allies, a senior US defense official told reporters on Monday. The Defense Department will send a total of 500 troops in this new deployment, the official said. The deployment will include sending KC-135 refueling aircraft to Greece, but the official could not say how many aircrafts would be sent or where in the US they will be coming from. An air support operation center will be deployed to Poland and Romania, and an ordinance company and a maintenance company will be sent to Germany, the official said.

The ordinance and maintenance companies will provide “additional logistic support to the first armored brigade combat team, third infantry division” in Germany which is already deployed there, the official said. “It’s only 500, small units, enablers, we said at the get-go of deploying forces that we would not rule out additional forces to include enablers, and these units are very much in support of forces that were already sent forward,” the official said. With these additional deployments, the US now has about 100,000 US military personnel either on rotational or permanent orders stationed in Europe right now, the official said. The decision to send these troops and military assets were “based on conversations that the secretary had with the chairman and with Gen. (Tod) Wolters,” the commander of US European command, “that these additional enablers would be useful for the forces that are already” in Europe, the official said.

The additional deployment “were already kind of queued up to go, and again fully in support of our efforts to help defend NATO airspace if needed,” the official added.

CIA in Ukraine – Douglas Valentine

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“..the U.S. would be in “no way opposed” to Poland’s “sovereign decision” to transfer its planes..”

Ukraine Fighter-jet Deal Appears Doomed (Axios)

Efforts to push the Biden administration into supporting the transfer of Russian-made fighter jets to Ukraine appear doomed for both technical and geopolitical reasons. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pleaded for the jets on Saturday during a Zoom call with more than 300 members of Congress, saying they were badly needed if NATO wouldn’t establish a “no-fly” zone. Those jets would likely be Soviet-era MiG-29s possessed by Poland, which Ukrainian pilots are capable of operating. The U.S. would, in turn, backfill Poland’s fleet with American-made F-16s. White House press secretary Jen Psaki reiterated Monday the U.S. would be in “no way opposed” to Poland’s “sovereign decision” to transfer its planes but stressed there are a number of logistical hurdles.


Those include how the planes would actually enter Ukraine’s heavily contested airspace, as well as how to accelerate the years-long U.S. procurement process for “serious weapon systems” like the F-16. The Russians have also been bombing Ukraine’s airports, raising the specter of the planes having to be based in Poland or other NATO territory — increasing the risk of a Russian attack on soil that would have to be defended by the alliance. Zelensky’s appeal produced an immediate and bipartisan groundswell of support. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) sent a letter on Monday calling on the Biden administration to “do everything we can to compensate countries that heed Ukraine’s desperate call for fighter jets to defend their homeland.” His Republican counterpart, Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), tweeted: “There is absolutely no reason we can’t supply airplanes to Zelensky and the Ukrainians. Our allies are willing and able to provide them, the admin needs to get out of the way.”

Macgregor
https://twitter.com/i/status/1501024225854902273

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This will now define any further communications.

Blinken Invokes Putin’s Dead Brother (ABC)

As Russian forces continue to advance across Ukraine, the U.S. is accusing the Kremlin of “starving” besieged Ukrainian cities, in the words of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who on Monday appealed directly to Russian leader Vladimir Putin to “end the war, end it now.” Blinken even appealed to Putin’s family history, comparing the Kremlin’s siege of Ukrainian cities to Nazi Germany’s siege of Russian cities during World War II, which killed Putin’s one-year-old brother Viktor. But amid calls like his, the Ukrainian government, led by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is urging U.S. and Western leaders to do more — beyond condemnations and the historic amount of defensive aid and provide warplanes, missile defense systems, and a no-fly zone. U.S. allies in the Baltics are increasingly nervous about Putin’s advances in Ukraine, with Lithuania’s president warning Monday that the strongman leader “will not stop.”


[..] These sieges echoed Nazi Germany’s siege of Leningrad, Blinken said, where Nazi forces “systematically starved and intentionally destroyed” the city, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, Blinken said. “That siege affected millions of Russian families, including President Putin’s, whose one-year-old brother was one of the many victims. Now, Russia is starving out cities like Mariupol. It is shameful. The world is saying to Russia stop these attacks immediately. Let the food and medicine in. Let the people out safely, and end this war of choice against Ukraine,” he said. Putin’s older brother Viktor died of diphtheria during the siege of Leningrad before Putin was born.

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But NATO is not.

Ukraine’s Top Negotiator Says Kiev Open to ‘Non-NATO Models’ (Antiwar)

In an early sign of compromise following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine late last month, a senior member on Kiev’s negotiation team said his country is open to remaining outside of the NATO military bloc – a key security concern raised by Moscow time and again. Speaking to Fox News’s Nana Sajaia about the progress of the talks on Saturday, Ukraine’s chief negotiator David Arakhamia said little had been accomplished so far. With another meeting set for Monday, however, he outlined certain tradeoffs Kiev is willing to make, including its membership in the North Atlantic alliance. “We are ready to discuss some non-NATO models. For example, there could be direct guarantees by different countries like the US, China, UK, maybe Germany and France,” Arakhamia said. “We are open to discuss such things in a broader circle, not only in bilateral discussions with Russia, but also with other partners.”


The negotiator went on to state that, currently, the bloc’s leading members are “not ready to even discuss having us in NATO, not for the closest period of five or 10 years,” despite repeated assurances that Ukraine would be admitted – a promise first made in 2008 but reiterated as recently as last summer. While closing the door on Ukrainian NATO membership could be a step in the right direction and signal flexibility ahead of the next round of talks, it is unlikely to satisfy all of Russia’s demands. In addition to concerns over NATO expansion, Russian President Vladimir Putin has insisted that Kiev cede its claims to the Crimean Peninsula and the breakaway Donbass region, where separatist forces have been under siege by the Ukrainian military for eight years. “I don’t think that we have a choice now to even discuss some models where we would recognize those territories [as independent],” he said. “Our position is firm. We are ready to discuss any other dynamic options, but not recognition of those territories.“

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“..cutting off your leg to punish yourself for walking into harm’s way..”

Nowhere Left to Hide (Kunstler)

Time, they say, is nature’s way of making sure that everything doesn’t happen at once. If that’s so, then maybe time has stopped because all of a sudden everything seems to be happening at once. Three things, actually: 1) a Russian military operation in Ukraine that a lot of people in America want to turn into World War Three; 2) an epic crack-up of the world financial system; and 3) the breakdown of the fishy Covid-19 affair and especially the story behind its holy avatar: the mRNA vaccine. In a sane society, that might be enough to trip the institutional reality-test apparatus, but we are not a sane society these days, so we plunge ever-deeper into a hurly-burly of wrongful endeavor vectoring toward self-destruction. The immediate problem is a nation (us) that is powerfully bamboozled, led by a figurehead nobody believes in, backed by a hidden coterie of actors who appear to hate our country enough to try to sink it.

Forgive me for re-stating the premise of the Ukraine situation but one must counter the propaganda emitted like poison gas by a perfidious news media: Russia objected to the expansion of NATO to its very border, based on long-standing prior agreements about it. “Joe Biden” had every chance to formally recognize that reality and stupidly demurred. The Ukrainian government, ditto. Our side (the USA) had already created enough mischief there in mounting the 2014 coup against a government friendly with Russia, and then arming its replacement to harass Ukraine’s own citizens in its easternmost provinces, Donetsk and Luhansk. Two weeks ago, Russia moved in to forcefully correct all that. After all, Ukraine had been a part of Russia since they wrested it from the Ottoman (Turkish) empire in the 1700s, and in any other sense Ukraine is within Russia’s sphere-of-influence, as such things are defined in geopolitical history.

The US-led response to the Russian op was an attempt to dismantle the complex interbank payment systems of the global economy in order to punish one region (Russia) of the global economy — that is, cutting off your leg to punish yourself for walking into harm’s way. The result of that now is mayhem in the financial markets and in currencies, with global commodities like grain, oil, and ores acting as hostages. This hostage-taking has far-reaching effects because the nations of the world can’t operate without food, energy, and stuff to make products out of. Interfere with the rational distribution of them and you’ll get chaos and death.

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How to embarrass your entire country.

Australia Targets Hardcore Putin Extremists Spreading Hate About Ukraine (DM)

Australia will impose a fresh round of sanctions against Russia, targeting people who disseminate propaganda and disinformation about the invasion of Ukraine. Ten Putin supporters will be sanctioned for encouraging hostility towards Ukraine and driving false claims that a genocide was taking place against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. The men targeted are journalists, authors or Putin’s press officers. In addition, Foreign Minister Marise Payne said financial sanctions will be imposed on Russia’s armed forces, as well as six senior military commanders responsible for attacks on Ukraine. ‘Together with partners, we will drive Russia out of our economies, supply chains and airwaves,’ she said in a statement released on Tuesday.


The invasion of Ukraine has been accompanied by a widespread disinformation campaign within Russia. Putin has claimed he invaded to ‘de-nazify’ the country, which the West rejects as a false justification. ‘Tragically for Russia, President Putin has shut down independent voices and locked everyday Russians into a world characterised by lies and disinformation,’ Senator Payne said. ‘The addition of sanctions on those responsible for this insidious tactic recognises the powerful impact that disinformation and propaganda can have in conflict.’ The foreign minister said Australia was working alongside major social media companies to help remove propaganda from their platforms. ‘The assertion that there is a genocidal action happening in Ukraine against Russia, that there is a ‘denazification’ required in Ukraine, is an obscene suggestion,’ Senator Payne told Sky News.

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But Newsweek picks the CDC.

Florida Department of Health to Advise Against COVID Vax for Healthy Kids (NW)

The Florida Department of Health will now tell parents not to give their children the COVID-19 vaccine if they are healthy. Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo made the announcement Monday during a roundtable discussing “failures” of the COVID-19 response in the state. The announcement goes directly against the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which strongly recommends vaccination in children ages 5 and older. The CDC claims that since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the virus has become “one of the top 10 causes of death” for young unvaccinated children. The move, which will be the first taken in any state in the country, has not been officially announced by the Florida Department of Health. However, Ladapo was confident in its future.

“The Florida Department of Health is going to be the first state to officially recommend against the COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children,” he said. “We’re kind of scraping at the bottom of the barrel, particularly with healthy kids, in terms of actually being able to quantify with any accuracy and any confidence the even potential of benefit.” More than 12 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported in children since the beginning of the pandemic, accounting for 19 percent of all U.S. infections, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. The week ending on February 24 saw children make up 26.2 percent of COVID-19 infections in the country. However, health experts have begun pushing back against the potential recommendation.

When asked by Newsweek for comment, the CDC reiterated how children need to be vaccinated against COVID-19, citing its previous research. It is not only the CDC affirming the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines currently on the market, but Florida-based healthcare professionals, as well. “The data [is] clear,” UF Health professor Dr. Sonja Rasmussen, who studies epidemiology and pediatrics, told Newsweek in an email, “the benefits of COVID-19 vaccine in children outweigh the very small risks associated with it.”

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Is there anyone left who thinks that would be enough?

Leaders Who Got Covid Wrong Must Admit It And Apologize (NYP)

You, Rochelle Walensky at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, allowed Weingarten to craft absurd, unscientific policies that kept kids out of school. You let her block the schoolhouse door because you were on the same political team. You broke the trust Americans had in their health agencies and we will all suffer the repercussions of that for a long time. Apologize to the children whose lives you’ve stunted and who may never recover from the educational loss. Apologize to the kids who received speech therapy through masks because you refused to acknowledge that masking had been pointless in stopping COVID-19 spread. You may have permanently damaged these children because you refused to admit that you had been wrong for so long. Apologize.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, you fell in love with your own image and could not stay off the TV even as it caused us all harm. In November 2021, you said that people who were criticizing you were “really criticizing science, because I represent science. That’s dangerous.” What’s dangerous is if you really believe that. You frequently got things wrong on TV or reversed your previous comments with no explanations. The science hadn’t changed, you made political calculations to support the diktats of the Biden administration. You actually argued for the passage of the stimulus bill as if you were some kind of lobbyist and not the director of one of our national health agencies. Worst of all, you shut down dissenting opinions from other scientists because you knew yours could not withstand scrutiny. You have been a disaster for this country in leading us through the pandemic. Apologize. Then exit stage left and let us never hear from you again.

You fearful, quiet politicians who let extended lockdowns destroy businesses, fray the fabric of our cities and cost us all so much: We saw you maskless, at concerts and parties, while our 2-year-olds stay masked to this day. We know that you didn’t actually think masking was important like you implored us it was. You loved your power and nothing else mattered. Apologize. And you, compliant media, the disaster of the last two years is at your feet. You created heroes out of people like Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose nursing home directive cost thousands of lives, while demonizing Gov. Ron DeSantis, who used all of his political capital to correctly force schools open, a decision everyone now pretends was easy but certainly was not. You ran stories about high case numbers in Florida “as schools open” to project that schools were somehow unsafe. You were incurious and did not ever challenge the corrupt health care agencies. You let us down.

Don’t apologize, we don’t believe you anyway.

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“Rough calculations from VAERS data suggest that they’re at least several hundred times more dangerous than flu shots.”

From Sore Arms To Sudden Death (Eugyp)

It is undeniable: The Corona vaccines cause a wide array of adverse events, not all of them understood. Right now it’s hard to assess their population-wide impact, but it is no longer reasonable to doubt that they’re substantially more dangerous than ordinary vaccines. Rough calculations from VAERS data suggest that they’re at least several hundred times more dangerous than flu shots. In addition to acute vaccine reactions – fever, myalgia, swollen lymph nodes and injection site soreness in the days following vaccination – many of you also discussed an array of more disturbing symptoms, including serious tinnitus, heightened blood pressure, chest pains, irregular menstrual bleeding and shortness of breath.

I also had many letters describing shingles and Bell’s Palsy following vaccination; and of more puzzling and potentially more serious neurological problems, from vertigo to muscular tremors to seizures. For the most part, milder acute symptoms disappeared in days, but some you report sore arms and tinnitus lasting many months. Among the severe reactions, myocarditis and stroke have a prominent place in your reports; I had fewer reports of miscarriages, but they were also present. Consistent with internet discussion elsewhere, some of you also report the sudden development or resurgence of cancer following Corona vaccination. Broadly speaking, dose 3 seems to have been worse than dose 2, and dose 2 worse than dose 1. Many, many of the vaccinated among you caught Corona following vaccination.

There are the preponderance of infections in the week following the first and third doses, which we already knew about, but these are but a fraction of post-vaccine infections overall. Probably a big thing that has stalled the political momentum driving mass vaccination, is the prevalence of bad booster reactions followed by breakthrough infection. Another point that emerged from your letters, is the generally high threshold for obtaining an exemption from further vaccination following an adverse reaction. It was disturbing to read several stories of people who were essentially vaccinated to death – dying after dose 3, following a rough reaction to dose 1 and a near-miss with dose 2.

Finally, almost all of you were vaccinated under duress. Some of you accepted vaccination simply to end the medical surveillance or to win back some freedom of movement. That was surprisingly uncommon, though; those who gave in to the petty harassments of the vaccinators generally said they didn’t appreciate the risk of the vaccines, or the outrageousness of the legal regime surrounding them, until later. Most often, people gave in to keep their jobs or to appease insistent family members. Some parents accepted vaccination so that they could attend school events involving their children; other people wanted to see elderly relatives in hospital or care homes.

It looks like death
https://twitter.com/i/status/1500633804830121984

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“.. the company knew as early as the 1950s that PCBs were harmful to humans, ordering staff not to eat near the chemicals.”

Los Angeles Suing Monsanto For Chemicals In Waterways (Y!)

Chemical company Monsanto found itself in the horns of yet another lawsuit Monday, as Los Angeles sued the firm for allegedly knowingly polluting waterways in one of the biggest cities in the United States. The suit — filed last week against three companies including Bayer, the German agro giant that now owns Monsanto Company — comes after a raft of legal action over weedkiller Roundup. The latest legal filing claims Monsanto polluted waterways in Los Angeles with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) up until 1979. PCBs — a toxic chemical that does not break down easily — were used in paint, ink, paper products, fireproofing products, hydraulic fluids and industrial equipment. “It’s time for Monsanto to clean up and pay up,” said Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer.

“The health and environmental impacts of PCBs — impacts the city has been working hard to reduce in waters throughout LA — are just jaw dropping.” “We allege Monsanto knew decades ago that PCBs are toxic and inevitably would cause widespread contamination,” he charged. “It’s infuriating that Monsanto continued to manufacture and sell them — and, we allege, deceive the public about them.” The lawsuit says exposure to PCBs can lead to cancer, as well as to damage to the liver, thyroid and eyes. It says the chemical can hamper brain development and impact birth weight. City officials, who are seeking payment from Monsanto to clean up waterways, say the company knew as early as the 1950s that PCBs were harmful to humans, ordering staff not to eat near the chemicals.

The lawsuit names three companies that Monsanto spun off in the 1990s: Monsanto Company, now owned by Bayer; Solutia Inc., now owned by Eastman Chemical Company; and Pharmacia LLC., now owned by Pfizer.

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Marketing genius

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Mar 072022
 


Marcel Duchamp The king and queen surrounded by swift nudes 1912

 

One Glorious Day In Sevastopol 12 Years Ago (Peter Hitchens)
Ukraine is Trying to Goad the US into World War III (Tracey)
Putin’s Last Warning Before Beginning Of The 2nd Phase (Saker)
No, Russia Didn’t Get its Propaganda From John Mearsheimer (IC)
The War on Humanity… (McKinney)
Maria Zakharova’s Full Statement About Russia And Greece (GR)
Foreign Fighters Arrive in Ukraine to Repel Russian Invasion (LI)
Russia’s Yamal-Europe Westbound Gas Pipeline Flows Stopped On Friday (R.)
Russian Showdown and Food Prices (Cortes)
China Ag Minister Says Winter Wheat Condition Could Be Worst In History (R.)
Trojan Horse | The Problem with Gene-based Injections – Part 2 (Remnant)
CDC Warned ‘Criminal’ Fraud Investigation ‘Ready to Go’ After Midterms (BN)

 

 

“The gas price in Europe has more than doubled since February 23: from 88 euros per megawatt hour to a record peak of 212 euros on Friday afternoon. Compared to a year ago (less than 17 euros), that is about a twelvefold increase.”

 

 

 

 

Karen
https://twitter.com/i/status/1500399860335493124

 

 

 

 

A Canadian
https://twitter.com/i/status/1500632350207754240

 

 

“..to give light to them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace..”

One Glorious Day In Sevastopol 12 Years Ago (Peter Hitchens)

In the long-ago summer of 2010, I found myself in the beautiful harbour of Sevastopol, surveying the rival fleets of Russia and Ukraine as they rode at anchor in the lovely Crimean sunshine. One great fortress was adorned with banners proclaiming ‘Glory to the Ukrainian Navy!’ Another frowning bastion across the water bore the words ‘Glory to the Russian Navy!’ In the streets of that elegant city, with its porticoes and statues and monuments to repeated wars, sailors from the two fleets mingled on the pavements. The Russians looked like Russians, with their huge hats and Edwardian uniforms. The Ukrainians looked more like the US Navy on shore leave in San Diego. It was almost funny to see. I hoped at that time that it would work out well. For the Ukrainians had begun to be silly. In a country crammed with Russians, they were trying to make Russian a second-class language.

Russians who had lived there happily for decades were pressured to take Ukrainian citizenship and adopt Ukrainian versions of their Christian names. The schools were promoting a national hero, Stepan Bandera, who Russians strongly disliked and regarded as a terrorist. And they were teaching history which often had an anti-Russian tinge. Quite a few people told me they felt put upon by these policies. Why couldn’t they just be left alone? Until that point, Ukraine had been a reasonably harmonious country in its 20-odd years of existence. After that visit I saw big trouble coming, both in the Crimea and in the Don Basin, where I also travelled that year. Far out among the abandoned slagheaps of the dying coalfields, I found the decaying semi-deserted town of Gorlovka, now in the midst of an unofficial war-zone, where it has been since 2014.

This town had been officially renamed Horlivka by Ukraine in its high-handed way, though hardly anybody I met there called it that. Gorlovka in those days still hosted the rather pleasant Cafe Barnsley, the last echo of the Soviet days when Gorlovka had been twinned with Barnsley in a gesture of Communist solidarity with Arthur Scargill’s miners. I remember, that boiling hot, almost silent afternoon, enjoying a Russian beer there, while listening to music from a Russian station on the radio. I wrote rather vaguely at the time that the people of Crimea and Donbas were hoping for – and expecting – a Russian future. I thought that if Ukraine wanted to be a rigid ethnic nationalist state, then some sort of peaceful deal with its Russian minority was going to be needed. Little did I know what passions I had touched on.

[..] I would like to end with two quotations. The first is from the American Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman who said: ‘I am sick and tired of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.’ The other is from the ‘Benedictus’ in the Church of England’s 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which asks God ‘to give light to them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace’, which I fervently pray, for I am not sure that anything else will now do any good.

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“His nonstop lobbying offensive included a soaring address Friday to what some media outlets ludicrously described as an “anti-war rally”..”

Ukraine is Trying to Goad the US into World War III (Tracey)

The reason we know Ukrainian officials are trying to goad the US into war is because that’s exactly what they say they’re doing. There is no ambiguity here — at this very moment, a furious multi-front lobbying blitz is underway to solicit full-fledged US military intervention in Ukraine, and therefore open warfare against Russia. To put it bluntly, a foreign country’s representatives are doing all they possibly can to instigate the closest thing anyone on Earth has ever experienced to World War III. At the forefront of this campaign is the president, Zelensky, who’s been transformed overnight into an international folk hero. His nonstop lobbying offensive included a soaring address Friday to what some media outlets ludicrously described as an “anti-war rally” in Frankfurt, Germany.

Such a description is ludicrous because the headline takeaway from the rally was Zelensky passionately condemning the alleged cowardice of NATO countries — for, as yet, refusing to launch a war against Russia. “All the people who die from this day forward will also die because of you, because of your weakness,” he inveighed. In his pro-war advocacy, Zelensky uses the same clever euphemism that has now entered heavy circulation: “No Fly Zone.” At this point, everyone with a bare-minimum understanding of what a US-administered “No Fly Zone” would entail has readily acknowledged that it means direct war with Russia — and by extension a radically increased risk of nuclear annihilation. Still, this is what Zelensky is calling for any chance he gets, in his true-to-form showbiz style.

(For those unaware, his professional endeavors prior to assuming the presidency included a stint as “the Ryan Seacrest of Ukraine,” as VICE once put it, not to mention his role playing the character of “President” on a comedy TV show.) During an interview with CNN last week, masterfully choreographed from his underground bunker, Zelensky was asked what he would tell Joe Biden ahead of the State of the Union speech. His answer: impose the No Fly Zone immediately. To dispel any concerns about the dangers of his demand, Zelensky added that it “does not mean dragging NATO into this war.” Well, phew! That’s a relief. “Frankly, you know, everyone is drawn into the war now,” he explained. Unfortunately, if you actually examine the logic that’s operative here, your relief should quickly turn to dread. Zelensky is saying that NATO (or in other words, the US) has already been dragged into the war.

World War III has already commenced, is what he’s saying. In which case, a “No Fly Zone” wouldn’t really be an escalation per se — it would just be a retaliatory strike in a war that’s already ongoing, whether we like it or not. That’s the argument. In an op-ed generously facilitated by the New York Times last week, Zelensky’s chief of staff — also writing from the storied underground bunker, we’re told — laid out the logic even more clearly. He implored: We are calling on the West to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine. We recognize that this would be a serious escalation in the war and that it could bring NATO into direct conflict with Russia. But we firmly believe that Russia won’t stop at just Ukraine, which would potentially drag NATO into this conflict anyway. A no-fly zone would at least give Mr. Putin some pause.

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“The logical solution would be to offer the combatants (and the civilians) corridors to exit the city, but the West can’t have that.”

Putin’s Last Warning Before Beginning Of The 2nd Phase (Saker)

Yesterday Putin had a most interesting conversations with members of what look like members of an flight attendant union. We hope to bring the the whole thing subtitled in English later today, but here is the key sentence made by Putin during that conversation: “If the leadership of Ukraine continues to do what they are doing, it will call into question the future of Ukrainian statehood, and that will be entirely their responsibility”. I think that it is important to understand the context in which Putin made this statement. As a reminder
• The Ukronazi armed forces are down to less than 25% of its original size.
• Almost all the remaining forces are in some type or another of cauldrons.
• Russia has full air supremacy
• The Ukronazi fleet does not exist anymore
• In spite of all the propaganda, no help from abroad will affect the outcome of this war
• It appears that Russia will surround Odessa and eventually take control of the entire Ukrainian Black Sea coast

In other words, what seems to be shaping up is that Russia will soon have control over the entire Ukraine except for the western provinces (west of Vinnitsa and Zhitomir). In other words, the war is over, at least militarily. There will be a meeting between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators tomorrow, and it shall be interesting to see if something, anything, will come out of it. The west is clearly determined to heroically fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian. Russia wants to stop this operation as soon as possible, but only after her double goals of 1) disarmament and 2) denazification are achieved. Right now the big question is Kiev. It’s a big city with plenty of civilians and probably 30-50 thousand combatants of all different kinds (VSU, SBU, Volkssturm, deathsquads, looters, etc.). The logical solution would be to offer the combatants (and the civilians) corridors to exit the city, but the West can’t have that.

Now if the Ukies won’t vacate Kiev, then some rather serious fighting will take place inside the city and clearing the city from the Nazis will demand the involvement of a major Russian force. It appears that these forces are now in their staging areas all around the city (except for the south). Think about it this way: the frontline (line of contact) is now very long and the Ukies don’t have enough forces to even try to hold any frontline in such a context. However, remember the number of Russian forces deployed along the Ukrainian border – about 100’000+ or so soldiers? It appears that there are currently not enough Russia forces to fully exploit the Russian advances over the past ten days. Alternatively, we could say that the Russian force is big enough, but that now it has to sharply increase its use of firepower to further develop its operations.

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I watched the 22 min. opening statement/analysis by Maersheimer. Highly recommended.

No, Russia Didn’t Get its Propaganda From John Mearsheimer (IC)

A minor squall on Twitter this past week may have largely gone unnoticed amid the larger hurricane about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But it’s worth taking a close look at it, because it illustrates something significant about U.S. foreign policy since World War II, and how propaganda works everywhere. It started when Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs — the equivalent to the U.S. State Department — did something unusual: It tweeted out an endorsement of a 2014 article in Foreign Affairs — the publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, probably the most influential American think tank on U.S. foreign policy. The piece was by John Mearsheimer, a professor in the political science department at the University of Chicago and a prominent member of the “realist” school of foreign policy thought. You can understand why the Russian government liked it, because it was called “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault.”

This led to a response from Anne Applebaum, a neoconservative journalist who’s currently a staff writer at The Atlantic. “Now wondering if the Russians didn’t actually get their narrative from Mearshimer et al.,” she wrote. “Moscow needed to say West was responsible for Russian invasions (Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Ukraine), and not their own greed and imperialism. American academics provided the narrative.” The “et al” part is important here. In U.S. political lore NATO was created in 1949 as a defensive military alliance against the Soviet Union and its allies. The reality was somewhat different. But for realists in general, not just Mearsheimer, the Soviet collapse and the end of the Cold War meant that an expansion of NATO could lead to dangerous conflict with Russia.

Fifty American foreign policy leaders, largely realists, wrote to President Bill Clinton in 1997 that pushing NATO’s borders eastward would be “a policy error of historic proportions. We believe that NATO expansion will decrease allied security and unsettle European stability … In Russia, NATO expansion, which continues to be opposed across the entire political spectrum, will strengthen the nondemocratic opposition, undercut those who favor reform and cooperation with the West, bring the Russians to question the entire post-Cold War settlement, and galvanize resistance in the Duma …”

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“We are all Russians now.”

The War on Humanity… (McKinney)

The current situation in Ukraine has once again invigorated the lying Western media and sent them into an anti-Russian frenzy. For the last two years the media has been enthusiastically pushing the genocidal Covid narrative on behalf of the Globalist faction. Whatever doubtful credibility they had prior to Covid they have destroyed with their relentless lies. With an astonishing lack of self-awareness they are now pushing the anti-Russian narrative like the unprincipled mindless hacks that they are. Ignoring both facts and context they are relentlessly promoting war propaganda to justify this hostility to their own beleaguered populations. The unfortunate reality is that despite unprecedented distrust in the media that propaganda works. Anti-Russian sentiment is rising throughout the West.

We have witnessed the same phenomena with the rabid anti-China narrative emanating from Western governments and their client stenographers in the media. The message is clear, unless you are a pliant puppet of the Anglo-American empire, then obviously you are evil and must be destroyed. The truth of course is deeper, the real war the Globalists are fighting is against the citizenry of every country on earth. As the Covid atrocity is being rapidly exposed the repression of the people is the only option open to the New World Order Davos cabal. As has always been the case, a war abroad is the best excuse to impose tyranny at home. The Western Neo-liberal governments of America, Canada, Australia and most of Europe cannot afford to be removed from power. The full anger of the people will be unleashed full power against those who imposed the Genocidal Covid lie upon them.

Trudeau, Macron et al will be held to account (one way or another) for their pivotal roles in this atrocity. They cannot allow that to happen, they have too much to lose. The tragic and unnecessary conflict in the Ukraine can be viewed as the “Great Reset War”. Although targeted towards Russia for media purposes, its real objective is the further subjugation of the peoples of their own countries. The Western Neo-liberal agenda is failing on every front, economically, socially and morally. The Cabal has destroyed the once prosperous and free societies that they governed. The dystopian future that they have planned for the world is now plain for all to see. It has been on display in Canada and Australia, New Zealand and throughout Europe. It is a prospect that should alarm everybody.

“The Great Reset” is the Cabal’s way of ensuring that the same Globalists who plunged the world into chaos are still in charge after the coming inevitable collapse. The Green agenda and the 4th industrial revolution are about de-industrialising the world and destroying successful industrial competitors such as Russia and China. Not surprisingly, neither Russia or China, along with India and Iran are going along with this insidious plan. They are not alone, many countries from Africa, South America and Asia are also gravitating more towards the Russian/Chinese orbit. All have good reasons to be distrustful and angry at the Empire. The Cabal is weak and failing, it has created powerful enemies who are formidable obstacles to the New World Order and the Great reset. Expect this to embolden other countries to resist the Empire’s plans.

Anne-Laure Bonnel

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Greece was for a long time perceived as being closer to Russia than other nations, both at home and abroad. That is why Zakharova addresses the current situation.

Maria Zakharova’s Full Statement About Russia And Greece (GR)

“We noticed the unprecedented campaign launched in Greece to defame Russia’s policy. Senior officials in Athens allow themselves to make crude accusations against our country and its leadership, they are literally competing with their like-minded people. They hypocritically speak of an “unprovoked attack” against Ukraine, for the first time since World War II, a “mass invasion” and so on. It should be recalled that with the efforts, first of all, of the US and its satellites, wars and conflicts have shaken the world for the last decades – the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the operations in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan. No one has taken responsibility for the enormous sacrifices and suffering of the peoples of these countries. Today, the crimes of the Kiev regime, which came to power as a result of the bloody coup of 2014, remain in the shadow of the new wave of anti-Russian criticism.

The fact that Crimea and Sevastopol paid for their free reunification with Russia with total blockade and Western sanctions is silenced. In the besieged Donbas, as a result of the neo-Nazi Ukrainian clearing operations, more than 14,000 civilians have been killed in the past eight years, and the Russians have been offered to leave Ukraine. The meaning of the daily shootings can be explained, among others, by the Greek expatriates who live in the territories of the Luhansk People’s Republic and the Donetsk People’s Republic. The European Union has chosen to silently watch the extermination of the Donbass civilian population, becoming an accomplice in the long-standing genocide of the people of southeastern Ukraine. Now Europe, including Greece, is fully integrated into the ranks of the Kiev regime’s advocates, while the anti-Russia hysteria cultivated by the authorities has reached a boiling point.

On this basis, profoundly wrong, criminal decisions are made, including the shipment of weapons to Ukraine. Eventually, weapons will be turned against civilians, including Greeks, by Ukrainian nationalist battalions that use them as human shields and who have already fallen victim to this inhumane tactic. In the name of collective Western plans – to do harm to Russia at all costs – common sense has been sacrificed. Bilateral ties are being deliberately damaged, and Russian-Greek relations, unfortunately, are no exception. Athens actively supports the EU sanctions regime. They accuse us of so-called “energy blackmail”, proclaiming the goal of rapid independence from Russian gas, the uninterrupted supply of which for decades has been a stabilizing factor for the national energy sector. With the collective directive of Brussels, the Greek sky closed for the Russian airlines.

The order was given for the suspension of any cooperation in the field of culture, for the interruption of the Common Dedicated Years. There are calls for a complete cessation of any cooperation. Essentially, for the sake of vague and dubious goals, the Greek leadership was to nullify our own common historical heritage, which only yesterday it characterized as its natural advantage in cooperating with Russia. “Time will put everything in its place, will show who was right and who – the critical one – showed a lack of insight, made the wrong choice. We believe that the eternal ties that unite the peoples of Russia and Greece will withstand these trials as well.“

Read more …

Hemingway romanticism?

Foreign Fighters Arrive in Ukraine to Repel Russian Invasion (LI)

At least 16,000 foreign nationals have volunteered to join an “international legion” created to resist Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed, after Kiev lifted visa requirements for anyone willing to fight. “Every friend of Ukraine who wants to join Ukraine in defending the country, please come over,” Zelensky pleaded at a recent press conference, adding “We will give you weapons.” Though the president offered no details on the international fighting force, including the origin of the volunteers, the request comes as Kiev appears to grow more desperate for help in pushing back Russian troops – having already declared martial law and a “general mobilization” of its populace. Those policies include conscription for men aged 18-60 and the commandeering of civilian vehicles and structures, while Ukrainian convicts with military experience are being released from prison to back up the war effort.

Despite the lack of specifics from officials, however, media reports suggest that foreigners from a long list of nations are lining up to enlist. Around 400 Swedes have signed up for the legion, according to the country’s TT News Agency, which cited the group’s coordinator Philip Brannval. The first flight departed Thursday for Poland – thought to be a logistics hub for arms and aid deliveries – and from there the volunteers will enter Ukraine by land, Brannval said. Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, meanwhile, announced on Thursday that the government would not punish those seeking to join up with Ukrainian forces, as the country typically prohibits citizens from serving in foreign armies. Up to 300 Czechs have reportedly vowed to ship out. Prague, unlike non-aligned Stockholm, is among NATO’s 30 member states.

The Czech government is also now moving to criminalize speech supporting Russian President Vladimir Putin or the Russian invasion. Czech police report that they are already investigating hundreds of people for alleged support for Moscow, with criminal proceedings in nine cases. A small handful of American, Canadian and German special forces veterans are also set to join the fight, according to interviews by BuzzFeed News. The outlet noted the group – numbering just 10 people in total – is “NATO-trained and experienced in close combat and counterterrorism.” A pair of retired American infantry officers will also fly over to provide “leadership” for the squad, while several other US and Canadian citizens also told Reuters they intend to answer Zelensky’s call.

Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly told reporters over the weekend that Ottawa would leave the decision to fight up to individual citizens. The US State Department, however, continues to urge Americans to avoid travel to Ukraine amid the hostilities.

Read more …

“Since December, however, it has been operating in reverse and driving European gas prices higher.”

Russia’s Yamal-Europe Westbound Gas Pipeline Flows Stopped On Friday (R.)

Westbound natural gas flows through the Yamal-Europe pipeline stopped on Friday while Gazprom’s bids for additional transit capacity via Ukraine stand at high levels, data from pipeline operators shows. Flows to Germany via the Mallnow metering point stood at about 101,119 kilowatt hours per hour (kWh/h) earlier on Friday morning and were about 13.5 million kilowatt hours per hour overnight. Russian energy company Gazprom on Thursday resumed westbound natural gas supplies via the Yamal-Europe pipeline to Germany from Poland and booked 7.8 million kilowatt-hours per hour of gas transit capacity via the pipeline for Friday morning until Saturday morning.


The pipeline between Poland and Germany usually accounts for about 15% of Russia’s westbound supply of gas to Europe and Turkey. Since December, however, it has been operating in reverse and driving European gas prices higher. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia would continue to supply gas to world markets, though the United States and its European allies have been strengthening sanctions against Moscow after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Read more …

“Washington’s insistence on hugely escalating the economic war with Russia incites enormous risks, including for our food.”

Russian Showdown and Food Prices (Cortes)

Since the invention of synthetic ammonia-based fertilizers roughly a century ago, yields on crops have rocketed higher, meaning far more output from every acre that is planted. During that same time, the global population went from 1.7 billion to 7.7 billion people, yet agriculture kept pace, feeding a more crowded and prosperous world, largely because of advances in fertilizers. Dependable and affordable foodstuffs became almost a given, especially for America, a land blessed with “amber waves of grain.” Now, much of that progress is put at risk. A Midwestern farmer explains the economics of the situation. Ben Riensche farms 16,000 acres in Iowa and warns Americans: “You think they squawk about having gas go from three to four dollars a gallon? Wait until the grocery bill is $1,000 a month.”


There are two main causes for this massive input price appreciation. The first is the overall explosion in inflation caused by the misbegotten policies of the Biden administration, including his eco-radical war on energy, a critical component of fertilizer production. But the second, new issue is Russia. The US has declared an unprecedent economic war against Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine. While the offense against Ukraine’s sovereignty is inexcusable, Washington’s insistence on hugely escalating the economic war with Russia incites enormous risks, including for our food. Cutting off Russia equates to havoc for farming, right into planting season. Bloomberg’s fertilizer analyst Alexis Maxwell describes Russia’s importance: “No other nation has the same breadth of readily exportable fertilizer supply.” Not surprisingly, the price of fertilizer storms higher. This chart depicts the St. Louis Fed’s Fertilizer Index which combines synthetic ammonia, nitric acid, and urea.

Read more …

China is buying up all the world’s food.

China Ag Minister Says Winter Wheat Condition Could Be Worst In History (R.)

The condition of China’s winter wheat crop could be the “worst in history”, the agriculture minister said on Saturday, raising concerns about grain supplies in the world’s biggest wheat consumer. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the country’s annual parliament meeting, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Tang Renjian said that rare heavy rainfall last year delayed the planting of about one-third of the normal wheat acreage. read more A survey of the winter wheat crop taken before the start of winter found that the amount of first- and second-grade crop was down by more than 20 percentage points, Tang said. “Not long ago we went to the grassroots to do a survey and many farming experts and technicians told us that crop conditions this year could be the worst in history,” he said. “This year’s grain production indeed faces huge difficulties.”

The minister’s comments underscore concerns about China’s grain supply at the same time as the war between Russia and Ukraine, which together account for about 29% of global wheat exports, has disrupted supplies causing wheat prices to surge to 14-year highs. However, Tang is confident China can ensure a bumper harvest of summer grain thanks to strong policy and technical support and the improving crop condition for the grain. Fuelled by the Ukraine crisis, wheat prices in China soared to a record this week on existing domestic supply worries. Tang’s comments also come as Beijing has refocused on food security, a long-standing priority for the central leadership that has become increasingly prominent in policy since the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020.

China’s state planner said in its own report at the parliament meeting that grain supply remains tight, despite consecutive good harvests in recent years. To address the issue, the National Development and Reform Commission’s (NDRC) report said China will ensure that grain acreage for the year stays above 117.33 million hectares (289.93 million acres). China will also increase the production of soybeans and other oilseed crops, the NDRC said, reiterating top policy priorities in the farm sector. The country will also build up momentum to increase corn output, it said. China’s corn imports surged to a record last year, amid soaring domestic prices and low inventories. China will guarantee the supply-demand balance of grain, edible oil, cotton, sugar and fertilisers through the effective use of reserves and imports, the NDRC said.

Read more …

“Before your cells fused with LNPs, they were healthy..”

Trojan Horse | The Problem with Gene-based Injections – Part 2 (Remnant)

Here is a summary of the argument that these injections induce an autoimmune response against the cells which fuse with the lipid nanoparticles (LNP) that carry the mRNA transcript encoding the Spike protein.

  1. Spike-protein encoding genes are wrapped in lipid nanoparticles (LNP)
  2. LNPs are injected into a human
  3. LNPs enter the bloodstream
  4. Bloodstream spreads LNPs throughout the body
  5. Cells fuse with LNP & make the Spike protein – the antigen
  6. Cells then present the antigen via MHC I í! Train killer T-cells
  7. Killer T-cells circulate around the body and destroy any cell that is presenting the Spike protein antigen


This is the critical final step:
• Before your cells fused with LNPs, they were healthy
• After vaccination, killer T-cells now perceive those healthy cells as infected – requiring destruction

This is the definition of an autoimmune response – the host immune system turns on its own healthy cells. Unfortunately for us, this is just one of the consequences of these injections… [..] the aforementioned injections contain an RNA sequence which encodes the SARS-CoV-2 chimeric Spike protein. This RNA sequence is modified, and encased by lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) – fancy talk for nanometer-sized bubbles of lipids. One of the most significant obstacles in gene-therapy is a delivery system. You cannot just rub genes on a person’s skin, or give them a pill to swallow, and hope the genes makes it inside the target cells without degradation.

Lipid-based delivery systems have proven to be an effective mechanism in delivering chemicals, proteins, and gene-sequences to cells & tissue. LNPs serve two functions:
• Protect the payload while it reaches the target tissue
• Seamless fusion of LNPs with cell walls (also lipid bi-layers) to deliver the payload
However, the challenges do not end there. These LNPs have their own weaknesses which ultimately affects their degradation by the host cells. Thus, several other modifications have been developed over the years to compensate for this, including adding charges to the LNP (positive or cationic) and PEGylation (attaching a modified Polyethylene Glycol).


The relationship between RNA, cationic Lipids, and neutral lipids – Ge et al, 2021

Pay careful attention to the above image. As this gene-containing particle enters the cell (cytoplasm), the cationic (positively-charged) lipids allow it to form a lipid bi-layer that stabilizes the payload from the destructive forces inside the cell. The manufacturers will tell you that this is merely to protect the RNA, so it can get to the ribosomes and be transcribed into proteins. But, the cell is far more dynamic and complex. It will not just do what we want it to do.

Read more …

“If you think about it, the underlying thesis is, ‘well, the CDC didn’t say that, so therefore you’re spreading medical misinformation.’ But now we learn who’s really been spreading medical misinformation is the CDC.“

CDC Warned ‘Criminal’ Fraud Investigation ‘Ready to Go’ After Midterms (BN)

Dr. Robert Malone, a noted mRNA vaccine researcher, and Dr. Peter McCullough, one of the most-published medical doctors in the world, gave a joint statement to The New American on Friday where they accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of perpetrating “criminal” fraud. “In my opinion, withholding scientific data constitutes fraud,” Dr. Malone argued. “This is scientific fraud. In my opinion, if I was to publish a study in which I had a large body of epidemiologic data, and I decided to only public publish part of it because I wanted to advance some agenda, I would be guilty of scientific fraud. The paper would be withdrawn. I would be kicked out of my academic institution. I would be guilty of scientific fraud. That’s what this is.”

“And the CDC has, I’ve watched it over the years, become more and more and more a political arm and not serving its its function,” he continued. “This is the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. They are the archive of information which physicians have relied on for decades through the MMWR publication. They are the ones that are responsible for providing us the frontline data about what’s going on and where it’s happening and they have stopped performing that function.” “They no longer release that detailed information through MMWR,” Dr. Malone went on. “They have become purely a political organization and arm of the executive branch. And what they have done is in my opinion, obscene. And it is part of what’s underlied the attacks that Peter and I have sustained from the press. If you think about it, the underlying thesis is, ‘well, the CDC didn’t say that, so therefore you’re spreading medical misinformation.’ But now we learn who’s really been spreading medical misinformation is the CDC.”

[..] “There are going to be legal consequences, and I believe they have a choice,” Dr. Malone said. “These government employees that have been participating in hiding this data, they can either be defendants or they can be witnesses. It is time for them to step up and speak out. And if they want do a whistleblower action, speak to Senator Ron Johnson, his office is in business looking for this.” “And when the midterms are done and he’s reelected and the Republicans take the Senate, he’s going to be in charge of the Senate subcommittee on investigations,” Malone added. “And I can tell you that he is ready to go.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Jul 172016
 
 July 17, 2016  Posted by at 4:08 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  7 Responses »


Ben Shahn Daughter of Virgil Thaxton, farmer, near Mechanicsburg, Ohio 1938

Recently, I posted a two-tear old article on facebook.com/TheAutomaticEarth that was shared so many times it seems to make sense to use it for an Automatic Earth article as well. The article asks how toxic the wheat we eat is – or Americans, more specifically-, and why that is.

But first I would like to touch on a closely connected issue, which is Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s ‘war’ on GMOs. Taleb, of Black Swans fame, has been at it for a while, but he’s stepped up his efforts off late.

In 2014, with co-authors Rupert Read, Raphael Douady, Joseph Norman and Yaneer Bar-Yam, he published The Precautionary Principle (with Application to the Genetic Modification of Organisms), an attempt to look at GMOs through a ‘solidly scientific’ prism of probability and complex systems. From the abstract:

The precautionary principle (PP) states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing severe harm to the public domain (affecting general health or the environment globally), the action should not be taken in the absence of scientific near-certainty about its safety. Under these conditions, the burden of proof about absence of harm falls on those proposing an action, not those opposing it. PP is intended to deal with uncertainty and risk in cases where the absence of evidence and the incompleteness of scientific knowledge carries profound implications and in the presence of risks of “black swans”, unforeseen and unforeseable events of extreme consequence.

[..] We believe that the PP should be evoked only in extreme situations: when the potential harm is systemic (rather than localized) and the consequences can involve total irreversible ruin, such as the extinction of human beings or all life on the planet. The aim of this paper is to place the concept of precaution within a formal statistical and risk-analysis structure, grounding it in probability theory and the properties of complex systems. Our aim is to allow decision makers to discern which circumstances require the use of the PP and in which cases evoking the PP is inappropriate.

This puts into perspective the claims made by Monsanto et al that since no harm has ever been proven to arise from the use of GMOs, they should therefore be considered safe. Which is the approach largely taken over by American politics, and increasingly also in Europe and other parts of the world. In their paper, Taleb et al say the approach does not meet proper scientific standards.

This is very close to my personal opinion, expressed in many articles in the past, that GMOs pose such risks on such a wide scale to the food supply of every human being on earth -as well as a much wider selection of organisms- that they should not be legalized before perhaps 100 years of tests have been done by large and independent teams of specialists.

Note that if you, as an individual farmer, as a community or even as a nation, want to ban GMOs but your neighbors do not, you will in the case of many crops not stand a chance of keeping your plants GMO free. For which you can subsequently be sued by the ‘owner’ of the genetically altered plants and seeds.

Also, I think it is irresponsibly dangerous to give a handful of companies (Monsanto, Bayer, DuPont, Syngenta), who all happen to be chemical giants dating back to the 20th century interbellum, and all with questionable pasts, a quasi-monopoly over the -future of- world’s food. Because that is where things will go unless proper principles are applied, both scientific and legal.

One of the main arguments proponents of GMOs use is that through thousand of years mankind has altered crops through selection ‘anyway’, so talking about anything ‘pure’ or ‘natural’ in this regard is not relevant. Taleb put the difference between altering a staple through this ‘generational’ selection on the one hand and the modifying of genes in a lab into a sketch:

The sketch was later annotated by Rahul Goswami, approved and shared by Taleb:

I think it is obvious that ‘generational’ selection through breeding is localized, can be rejected by nature. Genetic modification is something completely different, it takes a much bigger step (a giant leap) and forces itself -as a more or less alien body- onto a much larger eco-system.

It’s not about trying to figure out what works, but about forcing itself upon the world and its inhabitants regardless of the consequences. The precautionary principle is missing where it is most needed.

A few examples of Taleb’s tweets on the topic in the past few days make his stance abundantly clear.

“GMO issue is ignorance of the properties of complex systems/fattails (Monsanto’s 107 Nobels, 80 y.o. are 50 y behind)”

“Anyone pro-GMOs on “scientific” grounds is 50 years behind, ignorant of complexity, or just stupid”

“Monsanto pulled no stop trying to discredit me: 1000 mails to Univ (!),>1000 shill posts. Nada. F***you money works.”

Then, on to the article I started talking about above. As I said, it was written some two years ago by Sarah at the Healthy Home Economist. From the reactions to my posting it on Facebook -a huge number of shares- I surmise that many people A) had no idea that what Sarah describes is common practice, and B) have a profound interest in the topic.

Note: while a fair number of people said they had never heard of this, and/or doubted it was true at all, quite a few confirmed it as common where they live, and not just stateside, but in Scotland, Argentina etc.

Let’s see how we get through this. I don’t want to just post the whole thing, but I’ll need large portions of it.

The Real Reason Wheat is Toxic

The stories became far too frequent to ignore. Emails from folks with allergic or digestive issues to wheat in the United States experienced no symptoms whatsoever when they tried eating pasta on vacation in Italy. Confused parents wondering why wheat consumption sometimes triggered autoimmune reactions in their children but not at other times.

In my own home, I’ve long pondered why my husband can eat the wheat I prepare at home, but he experiences negative digestive effects eating even a single roll in a restaurant. There is clearly something going on with wheat that is not well known by the general public. It goes far and beyond organic versus nonorganic, gluten or hybridization because even conventional wheat triggers no symptoms for some who eat wheat in other parts of the world.

What indeed is going on with wheat? For quite some time, I secretly harbored the notion that wheat in the United States must, in fact, be genetically modified. GMO wheat secretly invading the North American food supply seemed the only thing that made sense and could account for the varied experiences I was hearing about. I reasoned that it couldn’t be the gluten or wheat hybridization. Gluten and wheat hybrids have been consumed for thousands of years.

It just didn’t make sense that this could be the reason for so many people suddenly having problems with wheat and gluten in general in the past 5-10 years.

Finally, the answer came over dinner a couple of months ago with a friend who was well versed in the wheat production process. I started researching the issue for myself, and was, quite frankly, horrified at what I discovered. The good news is that the reason wheat has become so toxic in the United States is not because it is secretly GMO as I had feared (thank goodness!).

The bad news is that the problem lies with the manner in which wheat is grown and harvested by conventional wheat farmers. You’re going to want to sit down for this one. I’ve had some folks burst into tears in horror when I passed along this information before.

Common wheat harvest protocol in the United States is to drench the wheat fields with Roundup several days before the combine harvesters work through the fields as the practice allows for an earlier, easier and bigger harvest

Pre-harvest application of the herbicide Roundup or other herbicides containing the deadly active ingredient glyphosate to wheat and barley as a desiccant was suggested as early as 1980. It has since become routine over the past 15 years and is used as a drying agent 7-10 days before harvest within the conventional farming community.USDA pesticides applied to wheat.

According to Dr. Stephanie Seneff of MIT who has studied the issue in depth and who I recently saw present on the subject at a nutritional Conference in Indianapolis, desiccating non-organic wheat crops with glyphosate just before harvest came into vogue late in the 1990’s with the result that most of the non-organic wheat in the United States is now contaminated with it.

Seneff explains that when you expose wheat to a toxic chemical like glyphosate, it actually releases more seeds resulting in a slightly greater yield: “It ‘goes to seed’ as it dies. At its last gasp, it releases the seed” says Dr. Seneff. According to the US Department of Agriculture, as of 2012, 99% of durum wheat, 97% of spring wheat, and 61% of winter wheat has been treated with herbicides. This is an increase from 88% for durum wheat, 91% for spring wheat and 47% for winter wheat since 1998.

Wheat farmer Keith Lewis: “I have been a wheat farmer for 50 yrs and one wheat production practice that is very common is applying the herbicide Roundup (glyphosate) just prior to harvest. Roundup is licensed for preharvest weed control. Monsanto, the manufacturer of Roundup claims that application to plants at over 30% kernel moisture result in roundup uptake by the plant into the kernels. Farmers like this practice because Roundup kills the wheat plant allowing an earlier harvest.

A wheat field often ripens unevenly, thus applying Roundup preharvest evens up the greener parts of the field with the more mature. The result is on the less mature areas Roundup is translocated into the kernels and eventually harvested as such. This practice is not licensed. Farmers mistakenly call it “dessication.”

Consumers eating products made from wheat flour are undoubtedly consuming minute amounts of Roundup. An interesting aside, malt barley which is made into beer is not acceptable in the marketplace if it has been sprayed with preharvest Roundup. Lentils and peas are not accepted in the market place if it was sprayed with preharvest roundup….. but wheat is ok.. This farming practice greatly concerns me and it should further concern consumers of wheat products.”

This practice is not just widespread in the United States either. The Food Standards Agency in the United Kingdom reports that use of Roundup as a wheat desiccant results in glyphosate residues regularly showing up in bread samples. Other European countries are waking up to to the danger, however. In the Netherlands, use of Roundup is completely banned with France likely soon to follow.

Using Roundup on wheat crops throughout the entire growing season and even as a desiccant just prior to harvest may save the farmer money and increase profits, but it is devastating to the health of the consumer who ultimately consumes the glyphosate residue laden wheat kernels.

The chart below of skyrocketing applications of glyphosate to US wheat crops since 1990 and the incidence of celiac disease is from a December 2013 study published in the Journal Interdisciplinary Toxicology examining glyphosate pathways to autoimmune disease. Remember that wheat is not currently GMO or “Roundup Ready” meaning it is not resistant to its withering effects like GMO corn or GMO soy, so application of glyphosate to wheat would actually kill it.

While the herbicide industry maintains that glyphosate is minimally toxic to humans, research published in the Journal Entropy strongly argues otherwise by shedding light on exactly how glyphosate disrupts mammalian physiology. Authored by Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff of MIT, the paper investigates glyphosate’s inhibition of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes, an overlooked component of lethal toxicity to mammals.

The currently accepted view is that glyphosate is not harmful to humans or any mammals. This flawed view is so pervasive in the conventional farming community that Roundup salesmen have been known to foolishly drink it during presentations! However, just because Roundup doesn’t kill you immediately doesn’t make it nontoxic. In fact, the active ingredient in Roundup lethally disrupts the all important shikimate pathway found in beneficial gut microbes which is responsible for synthesis of critical amino acids.

Friendly gut bacteria, also called probiotics, play a critical role in human health. Gut bacteria aid digestion, prevent permeability of the gastrointestinal tract (which discourages the development of autoimmune disease), synthesize vitamins and provide the foundation for robust immunity. In essence:

Roundup significantly disrupts the functioning of beneficial bacteria in the gut and contributes to permeability of the intestinal wall and consequent expression of autoimmune disease symptoms

In synergy with disruption of the biosynthesis of important amino acids via the shikimate pathway, glyphosate inhibits the cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes produced by the gut microbiome. CYP enzymes are critical to human biology because they detoxify the multitude of foreign chemical compounds, xenobiotics, that we are exposed to in our modern environment today.

As a result, humans exposed to glyphosate through use of Roundup in their community or through ingestion of its residues on industrialized food products become even more vulnerable to the damaging effects of other chemicals and environmental toxins they encounter! What’s worse is that the negative impact of glyphosate exposure is slow and insidious over months and years as inflammation gradually gains a foothold in the cellular systems of the body.

The consequences of this systemic inflammation are most of the diseases and conditions associated with the Western lifestyle: Gastrointestinal disorders, Obesity ,Diabetes, Heart Disease, Depression, Autism, Infertility, Cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, etc.

In a nutshell, Dr. Seneff’s study of Roundup’s ghastly glyphosate which the wheat crop in the United States is doused with uncovers the manner in which this lethal toxin harms the human body by decimating beneficial gut microbes with the tragic end result of disease, degeneration, and widespread suffering

[..] The bottom line is that avoidance of conventional wheat in the United States is absolutely imperative even if you don’t currently have a gluten allergy or wheat sensitivity. The increase in the amount of glyphosate applied to wheat closely correlates with the rise of celiac disease and gluten intolerance.

Dr. Seneff points out that the increases in these diseases are not just genetic in nature, but also have an environmental cause as not all patient symptoms are alleviated by eliminating gluten from the diet. The effects of deadly glyphosate on your biology are so insidious that lack of symptoms today means literally nothing. If you don’t have problems with wheat now, you will in the future if you keep eating conventionally produced, toxic wheat!

I guess we can leave it at that for now. Do go to the original article for more. Whether you look at it from a scientific viewpoint, as Taleb et al do, or from a common sense one, as Sarah does, the common thread seems obvious: Monsanto and other rich chemical giants seek to be the sole providers -even owners- of the world’s food, handed to us for free by nature and generations of our ancestors.

And to achieve that magnitude of power -and riches- they are more than willing to literally drive over sick and dead bodies. Once again, Taleb:

The precautionary principle (PP) states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing severe harm to the public domain (affecting general health or the environment globally), the action should not be taken in the absence of scientific near-certainty about its safety. Under these conditions, the burden of proof about absence of harm falls on those proposing an action, not those opposing it.

That is not what’s happening, and there’s not much time left to start applying it before it’s too late. Because GMOs, once they’ve been introduced in a large enough environment, are near impossible to get rid of.

To end on a somewhat happier note, Taleb thinks that Monsanto is doing quite poorly these days, financially. Then again, that’s why Bayer wants to buy them, and that would only mean a continuation or even increase of the present practices.

What we need is decision makers who understand the science of complex systems, probability and the precautionary principle. And I don’t know about you, but when I look at who’s vying to be the leaders of the US, UK and many other nations, I think we’re a long way away from that.

Only Putin seems to get it. His stated goal is to make Russia the largest producer of organic food in the world. So maybe there is still hope.