As the alleged “second wave” of the Coronavirus “pandemic” is reported to be sweeping across Europe in recent weeks, many governments have enthusiastically embraced their totalitarian side and granted themselves sweeping new “emergency powers” alongside new lockdown measures.
The public has been markedly less co-operative this time around. Rebelling against the seemingly arbitrary limitations which are not supported by either science or common sense. Protests have taken place all across the continent.
GERMANY
Thousands of people gathered in Berlin over the last few days, protesting the Merkel government passing a new lockdown law. Police turned water cannons on the crowds, and nearly 200 people were arrested.
According to reliable sources, elements of Antifa rushed to the scene of the Anti-New Normal Totalitarianism protest in Berlin today, hoping to hold the “Corona Deniers” down, so that the cops could hose them real good, but they were just a little too late. pic.twitter.com/RdQ67qYjnN
The mainstream reported “hundreds” of protesters, but as pictures plainly show it was more like tens of thousands:
“Thanks for the picture Majd Abboud, not hundreds, not thousand, but ten’s of thousands protested in Berlin today and it’s only the beginning of something big…” Sonja Van Ende#Covid_19pic.twitter.com/hLxNaTEqYv
After the Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sanchez declared a sixth-month state of emergency in late October, there were days of protests across the country.
Barcelona, already a hot-bed of anti-government feeling due to the brutal repression of the Catalan Independence referendum, saw violent confrontations between riot police and protestors
FRANCE
Emmanuel Macron’s brand new “comprehensive security law”, known by protesters as the “gag law”, would further militarise French police whilst making it a crime to capture or distribute the image of police officer. It has met fervent resistance in the shape of angry marches through cities across the country.
Macron’s government has a history of attacking civil liberties, and in response to his “reforms” the country has seen large-scale protests by the Gilets Jaunes for over a year.
ITALY
The anti-lockdown protests in Italy reached a fever pitch in late October, and were probably the most extensive on the continent. Marches occurred in dozens of cities across the country, including Rome, Naples, Genoa and Bologna.
BOLOGNA, ITALY: The conscience of a country’s population standing against their politicians speaks through this woman who says her life has been destroyed by lockdowns & has nothing to eat or to feed her 3 year old child:pic.twitter.com/84MEBgglkV
The mainstream media went out fo their way to undercut and smear the protests. CNN and Reuters reported only “hundreds” of protesters. Does this photo have “hundreds” of people in it?
Politico went so far as to actually blame the protests on the Mafia.
SLOVAKIA
Bratislava was home to a huge march of protesters on November 17th, marking the national holiday known as Fight for Freedom Day. These marches were illegal under the Slovakian emergency law, notionally designed to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
BRATISLAVA, SLOVAKIA: Anti-Covid restrictions & anti-government protests despite a ban on public gatherings, on the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution of 1989 & the student demonstration against Nazi occupation of 1939: https://t.co/UzfBlhDoKcpic.twitter.com/oWqhlSTfex
The Danish parliament was subject to 9 days of protests right outside its doors, in opposition to the proposed “vaccination law”, which would allow the police to “physically coerce vaccination through detainment”.
DENMARK: 9 days of protests over a new law that “would be able to define groups of people who must be vaccinated. People who refuse the above can be coerced through physical detainment, with police allowed to assist.”pic.twitter.com/LN0SBVKUE8
After nine days of protests, it was reported on social media that the Danish gov’t had dropped the law. However, I could find no official confirmation of that, or reports in the media.
DENMARK: GOOD NEWS! After 9 days of banging pots & pans outside parliament the epidemic law is SCRAPPED. PROTESTING WORKS: DO IT!#WeWillNotComplypic.twitter.com/iFuszio05P
In fact, the media have barely covered the proposed law, and literally not mentioned the protests in Copenhagen at all. A search for “Covid protests Denmark” on google, turns up almost no results relating to that topic.
The reason to cover the Danish protest less than the others is that they apparently worked. and the last thing the establishment wants people to see is that civil disobedience can change anything.
*
It’s good to see the general public’s fraying sense of patience with a Covid narrative that has never made any sense, and a “pandemic response” which is likely to do far more damage than it ever could prevent.
Though civil unrest is undeniably a good and powerful thing, this is also a time to be wary. If the establishment feel they are losing control of the situation or the narrative, they are likely to double down or try something desperate.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/36RCz4j Tyler Durden
Ho Chi Minh, in his eternal abode, will be savoring it with a heavenly smirk. Vietnam was the – virtual – host as the 10 Asean nations, plus China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, on the final day of the 37th Asean Summit.
RCEP, eight years in the making, binds together 30% of the global economy and 2.2 billion people. It’s the first auspicious landmark of the Raging Twenties, which started with an assassination (of Iran’s Gen. Soleimani) followed by a global pandemic and now ominous intimations of a dodgy Great Reset.
RCEP seals East Asia as the undisputed prime hub of geoeconomics. The Asian Century in fact was already in the making way back in the 1990s. Among those Asians as well as Western expats who identified it, in 1997 I published my book 21st: The Asian Century (excerpts here.)
RCEP may force the West to do some homework, and understand that the main story here is not that RCEP “excludes the US” or that it’s “designed by China”. RCEP is an East Asia-wide agreement, initiated by Asean, and debated among equals since 2012, including Japan, which for all practical purposes positions itself as part of the industrialized Global North. It’s the first-ever trade deal that unites Asian powerhouses China, Japan and South Korea.
By now it’s clear, at last in vast swathes of East Asia, that RCEP’s 20 chapters will reduce tariffs across the board; simplify customs, with at least 65% of service sectors fully open, with increased foreign shareholding limits; solidify supply chains by privileging common rules of origin; and codify new e-commerce regulations.
When it comes to the nitty gritty, companies will be saving and be able to export anywhere within the 15-nation spectrum without bothering with extra, separate requirements from each nation. That’s what an integrated market is all about.
When RCEP meets BRI
The same scratched CD will be playing non-stop on how RCEP facilitates China’s “geopolitical ambitions”. That’s not the point. The point is RCEP evolved as a natural companion to China’s role as the main trade partner of virtually every East Asian player.
Which brings us to the key geopolitical and geoeconomic angle: RCEP is a natural companion to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which as a trade/sustainable development strategy spans not only East Asia but delves deeper into Central and West Asia.
The Global Times analysis is correct: the West has not ceased to distort BRI, without acknowledging how “the initiative they have been slandering is actually so popular in the vast majority of countries along the BRI route.”
RCEP will refocus BRI – whose “implementation” stage, according to the official timetable, starts only in 2021. The low-cost financing and special foreign exchange loans offered by the China Development Bank will become much more selective.
There will be a lot of emphasis on the Health Silk Road – especially across Southeast Asia. Strategic projects will be the priority: they revolve around the development of a network of economic corridors, logistic zones, financial centers, 5G networks, key sea ports and, especially short and mid-term, public health-related high-tech.
The discussions that led to the final RCEP draft were focused on a mechanism of integration that can easily bypass the WTO in case Washington persists on sabotaging it, as was the case during the Trump administration.
The next step could be the constitution of an economic bloc even stronger than the EU – not a far-fetched possibility when we have China, Japan, South Korea and the Asean 10 working together. Geopolitically, the top incentive, beyond an array of imperative financial compromises, would be to solidify something like Make Trade, Not War.
RCEP marks the irredeemable failure of the Obama era TPP, which was the “NATO on trade” arm of the “pivot to Asia” dreamed up at the State Department. Trump squashed TPP in 2017. TPP was not about a “counterbalance” to China’s trade primacy in Asia: it was about a free for all encompassing the 600 multinational companies which were involved in its draft. Japan and Malaysia, especially, saw thought it from the start.
RCEP also inevitably marks the irredeemable failure of the decoupling fallacy, as well as all attempts to drive a wedge between China and its East Asian trade partners. All these Asian players will now privilege trade among themselves. Trade with non-Asian nations will be an afterthought. And every Asean economy will give full priority to China.
Still, American multinationals won’t be isolated, as they will be able to profit from RCEP via their subsidiaries within the 15-nation members.
What about Greater Eurasia?
And then there’s the proverbial Indian mess. The official spin from New Delhi is that RCEP would “affect the livelihoods” of vulnerable Indians. That’s code for an extra invasion of cheap and efficient Chinese products.
India was part of the RCEP negotiations from the start. Pulling out – with a “we may join later” conditional – is once again a spectacular case of stabbing themselves in the back. The fact is the Hindutva fanatics behind Modi-ism bet on the wrong horse: the US-fostered Quad partnership cum Indo-Pacific strategy, which spells out as containment of China and thus preclude closer trade ties.
No “Make in India” will compensate for the geoeconomic, and diplomatic, blunder – which crucially implies India distancing itself from the Asean 10. RCEP solidifies China, not India, as the undisputed engine of East Asian growth amid the re-positioning of supply chains post-Covid.
A very interesting geoeconomic follow-up is what will Russia do. For the moment, Moscow’s priority involves a Sisyphean struggle: manage the turbulent relationship with Germany, Russia’s largest import partner.
But then there’s the Russia-China strategic partnership –which should be enhanced economically. Moscow’s concept of Greater Eurasia involves deeper involvement both East and West, including the expansion of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), which, for instance, has free trade deals with Asean nations such as Vietnam.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is not a geoeconomics mechanism. But it’s intriguing to see what President Xi Jinping said at his keynote speech at the Council of Heads of State of the SCO last week.
This is Xi’s key quote:
“We must firmly support relevant countries in smoothly advancing major domestic political agendas in accordance with law; maintaining political security & social stability, and resolutely oppose external forces interfering in internal affairs of member states under any pretext.”
Apparently this has nothing to do with RCEP. But there are quite a few intersections. No interference of “external forces”. Beijing taking into consideration the Covid-19 vaccine needs of SCO members – and this could be extended to RCEP. The SCO – as well as RCEP – as a multilateral platform for member states to mediate disputes.
All of the above points to the inter-sectionality of BRI, EAEU, SCO, RCEP, BRICS+ and AIIB, which translates as closer Asia – and Eurasia – integration, geoeconomically and geopolitically. While the dogs of dystopia bark, the Asian – and Eurasian – caravan – keeps marching on.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2IQKsin Tyler Durden
Argentina Approves “Confiscatory” Wealth Tax On Millionaires Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/19/2020 – 23:20
In an early glimpse of what wealth redistribution will look among developed nations in coming years, on Wednesday the lower house of Argentina’s Congress approved a bill seeking to raise 300 billion pesos ($3.75 billion) through a tax on the ultra rich to finance programs aimed at helping families hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a vote that passed 133 to 115 with two abstentions, people with more than $2.5 million in net worth – over 10,000 individuals – will make an “Extraordinary Solidarity Payment,” paying a one-off 2% flat tax. The tax would increase progressively as equity increases, under the proposal.
“The level of concentration of wealth, in a few hands, is so strong that this contribution falls on less than 0.02 percent of the population,” said government deputy Fernanda Vallejos during debate. “About half of what is collected will be contributed by only 252 people, those who are at the top of the pyramid.”
Government supporters took to the streets on Tuesday to show their support for the bill, with militant Peronist groups leading caravans of vehicles and marches on foot to Congress.
The so-called “wealth tax” or “millionaire’s tax” bill – which the opposition slammed as “confiscatory” – may face a tougher time in the Senate, which will likely consider it before the end of the month, with the Frente de Todos coalition needing allies to support it.
The one-time (for now) tax will apply to individuals whose declared assets exceed 200 million pesos (US$2.35 million), with a progressive rate of up to 3.5% for assets in Argentina and up to 5.25% on goods outside the country. According to AFP, between 9,000 and 12,000 people fall into that bracket in Argentina, a country with 40.9% of its 44 million inhabitants currently living in poverty. Unemployment stands at just over 10%, with the economy still yet to overcome a recession that began in 2018. Things have only worsened after the coronavirus pandemic, and the IMF estimates GDP will contract by 11% this year.
The bill lays out that the “extraordinary contribution” will be a one-time measure and it indicates where the funds will be sent and what they will be used for. For example, it names development and production programmes for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), education projects and student scholarships, as well as the purchase of medical equipment.
It establishes that 20 percent of what is raised from the levy will be used for medical supplies to attend the Covid-19 health emergency, with another 20 percent designated for SMEs, 15 percent for social development programmes, 20 percent for student scholarships and 25 percent for development programmes related to natural gas.
President Alberto Fernández, who took office in December amid a recession that has been exacerbated by the pandemic, has sharply increased public spending to protect hard-hit families over recent months. More than 36,106 Argentines have died of COVID-19 so far, according to official data.
The government hopes that the levy on large fortunes will help strengthen its fiscal outlook. Over the past eight months, the Fernández administration has allocated millions of dollars in aid to the private sector to alleviate the economic impact of the lockdown imposed to tackle the advance of the coronavirus, while raising social support payments for workers in the informal economy.
The law provides for higher rates for assets located abroad, but offers relief for those who decide to repatriate them in whole or in part.
Meanwhile, the opposition Juntos por el Cambio says it rejects the initiative, describing the idea as “confiscatory.” As debate got underway on Tuesday, deputies from the opposition coalition called on their peers to vote it down.
“Argentina already has many taxes and very high tax evasion. Instead of creating new taxes, what must be done is the efficient collection for those that exist,” said opposition lawmaker Álvaro González.
“The opposition is looking for arguments that go against the objective of this bill,” countered Peronist deputy José Luis Ramón. “They say that it is a tax but it is an extraordinary contribution and only this one time, due to the pandemic.”
The business sector is also divided against the law. Generally, chamber groups and large firms reject the initiative, while small- and medium-sized businesses are more likely to back it.
“The bill will end up decapitalising companies that invest, produce and sustain employment in a health emergency context,” complained the powerful Argentine Industrial Union. The contribution is for individuals with large fortunes and will not be imposed on companies.
Argentina is hardly the first country to impose mandatory wealth taxes, with at least three European countries already levying a net wealth tax: Norway, Spain, and Switzerland. Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands levy wealth taxes on selected assets, but not on an individual’s net wealth per se according to the Tax Foundation.
Norway levies a net wealth tax of 0.85 percent on wealth stocks exceeding NOK1.5 million (€150,000 or US $164,000), with 0.7 percent going to municipalities and 0.15 percent to the central government. Norway’s net wealth tax constitutes around 1.1 percent of its total tax revenues and dates to 1892.
Spain’s net wealth tax is a progressive tax ranging from 0.2 percent to 2.5 percent on wealth stocks above €700,000 ($775,000), with rates varying substantially across Spain’s autonomous regions (Madrid offers a 100 percent relief). Spanish residents are subject to the tax on a worldwide basis while non-residents pay the tax only on assets located in Spain. The net wealth tax makes up only 0.5 percent of total tax revenues.
Switzerland levies its net wealth tax at the cantonal level and covers worldwide assets (except real estate and permanent establishments located abroad). The tax rates and allowances vary significantly across cantons. First implemented in 1840, the tax now constitutes around 3.6 percent of total tax revenue.
Yet the success of wealth taxes is mixed at best, and as the next chart below shows, government revenue raised from wealth taxes is a tiny fraction of other tax revenues.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/36PKa3v Tyler Durden
The Israeli Air Force is once again bombing targets in Syria amid growing turbulence in the Greater Middle East.
Early on November 18, the Israeli Air Force conducted a series of strikes on targets in Syria. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) claimed that the strikes hit “warehouses, command posts and military complexes, and batteries of surface-to-air missiles” belonging to the Syrian Army and the Iranian Quds Force. In total, the strikes reportedly hit 8 targets including the following:
an alleged Iranian military complex near Damascus International Airport;
some mysterious secret military barracks which act as a housing complex for senior Iranian officials as well as visiting delegations;
a command post for Division 7 of the Syrian Army which allegedly cooperates with the Quds Force;
surface-to-air missile launchers which had fired in the direction of the Israeli jets during the strikes.
The Israeli side claimed that the strikes came in response to the placement of explosive charges near the contact line between the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights and Syrian-controlled territory. According to IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Hidai Zilberman, the anti-personnel mines discovered on November 17th were actually planted several weeks before “by local Syrians under the command of Iranian Quds Force.”
“We have long been prepared for the possibility of terror attacks in the northern sector,” Defense Minister Benny Gantz said commenting on the attack. “The IDF has the capabilities and the determination to respond severely to any incident both on the Lebanese and Syrian fronts… I say clearly: Syria is responsible for what occurs on its territory.”
In their turn, the Syrian state media reported that the Syrian military had activated its air defense forces in response to the Israeli aggression claiming that a number of missiles were intercepted. According to the Syian Ministry of Defense, three service members were killed and another one was injured as a result of the strikes. Sources loyal to Israel and militant groups operating in Syria claim that at least 10 Iranian-backed fighters were killed.
Israel justifies its recent attack on Syria with the need to respond to Iranian-backed ‘terror plots’. A more realistic version would be that Tel Aviv, concerned by the reported loss of Donald Trump in the US presidential election, has been trying to exploit the potential last months of the Trump administration’s unconditional support to deliver as much damage as possible to its regional opponents.
Meanwhile, according to reports in US mainstream media, Mr. Donald Trump, well known for his hardcore pro-Israeli stance, is now even considering a plan of strikes on Iranian nuclear objects before he possibly leaves office.
Trump reportedly requested his top aides to provide him with “options” for attacking Iran’s main nuclear site, Natanz, as Iran continues to increase its stockpile of low-enriched uranium as a part of its gradual withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal, which the Trump administration had itself destroyed by unilaterally withdrawing from it. The main options, according to reports, are, as always, an old-school cruise missile strike or a massive cyber-attack. The Iranian leadership has already promised a ‘crushing response’ to any kind of aggression. And there can be little doubt that Iran, which already has the experience of shooting down US military drones over the Persian Gulf and launching ballistic missiles at US bases in Iraq, would turn its promises into reality.
Especially if Mr. Trump is not able to challenge the outcome of the presidential election successfully in court and is forced to accept his loss, it does not look like the last months of the Trump administration are going to be marked by any kind of calm on the international scene.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/333hX8b Tyler Durden
Port Of Baltimore Officers Intercept 157 Stolen Cars In 2020 Bound For Africa Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/19/2020 – 22:40
Many of the container ships departing from the Port of Baltimore sail to West African countries. Organized crime gangs have found this out long ago, using the port as a convenient place to load their stolen vehicles, bound for places like Liberia and Nigeria.
In recent years, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at the Baltimore Field Office have cracked down on the stolen vehicle trade. For this past fiscal year (Oct. 1, 2019, through Sept. 30, 2020), the Baltimore Field Office, covering the Port of Baltimore and the Port of Wilmington in Delaware, intercepted 157 stolen cars before they were shipped overseas.
Fox45 News says the Baltimore Field Office “ranks second in the number of vehicles intercepted during that time … Only the New York field office recovered more.”
The 157 vehicles represent a total value of $4.8 million. Fox45 News provides more details about where the stolen cars came from and where they were headed.
37 of the vehicles were stolen from Maryland. 16 others were stolen from Virginia. Nationally, the Office of Field Operations recovered 1,082 stolen vehicles, of which 833 were destined overseas.
Most of the vehicles were being shipped to countries in Africa, including Benin, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo.
The most expensive recovered stolen vehicle was a 2019 Land Rover Range Rover, valued at $114,175; it was destined for Guinea.
The oldest vehicles were a 1999 Nissan Frontier destined to Guatemala and a 1999 Lexis RX300 destined to Nigeria. -Fox45 News
Last year, the Baltimore Field Office reported a “new record” in the number of stolen vehicles being shipped from surrounding ports.
As American cities become more violent, amid the socio-economic implosion, expect the stolen vehicle trade from US East Coast to Africa to continue to surge.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/38Zg68n Tyler Durden
Leftists responded to a Twitter thread asking “how do you deprogram 75 million people?” by suggesting Trump supporters should be interned in “re-education camps” and that all conservative talk radio should be banned.
“No seriously…how *do* you deprogram 75 million people? Where do you start? Fox? Facebook?” asked David Atkins (pronouns in bio), a regional director for California Democrats. “We have to start thinking in terms of post-WWII Germany or Japan. Or the failures of Reconstruction in the South,” he added.
This is not your standard partisan policy disagreement. This is a conspiracy theory fueled belligerent death cult against reality & basic decency.
The only actual policy debates of note are happening within the dem coalition between left and center left.
Atkins went on to frame Trump voters as a “conspiracy theory fueled belligerent death cult against reality & basic decency” before issuing a veiled threat by stating, “People are gonna try to figure out how to defend themselves.”
i mean, for chrissakes, conservatives are literally giving themselves COVID just to own the libs. They’re dying in COVID wards insisting they don’t have COVID because it must be a liberal plot.
People are gonna try to figure out how to defend themselves.
While asserting the moral high ground, many of the response in the thread demanded outright tyranny or yet more censorship as a means of ensuring “the good guys” have their way.
“Reeducation camps for those salvageable,” said another. Firing squad for irredeemable malcontents. Round up entire families to ensure the disease doesn’t spread.”
Reeducation camps for those salvageable.
Firing squad for irredeemable malcontents.
Round up entire families to ensure the disease doesn’t spread.
— Sari Not Sari GigaCharlatan Dr. Musk for Prison (@xenomorpher1) November 19, 2020
“Generally speaking, I believe re-education camps are a good thing,” added another.
Generally speaking, I believe re-education camps are a good thing. But we don’t need to send 75 million people there. Maybe we just need a party that represents their material interests so they won’t be so susceptible to future grifts?
Another called for the removal of “radio talk show hosts from airwaves through rigorous application of hate speech laws.”
Steps to deprogramming 70M deluded people:
1) @FCC to revoke @FoxNews broadcast license
2) Remove radio talk show hosts from airwaves through rigorous application of hate speech laws
3) send free newspapers to schools so kids can be exposed to truth
4) Free college tuition …
Another respondent called for “banning Trump flags.”
Start by banning trump flags like we should have done with the confederate flag. One of our many mistakes and why we failed at Reconstruction. We should not allow a hate symbol to be flown with pride in our democracy. Germany got that one right after WWII
In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Also, I urgently need your financial support here.
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Sidney Powell Says Trump Team Will Sue Officials “To Invalidate” Election Results… And An Inside Look Into Smartmatic Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/19/2020 – 22:01
Shortly before the Associated Press announced late on Thursday that Joe Biden had won the state of Georgia after its secretary of state said that Biden had remained ahead after a hand recount of the state’s 5 million presidential votes making him the first Democratic presidential candidate in 28 years to win the state pending any potential litigation by Trump, the president’s attorney Sidney Powell warned that a “flurry of lawsuits” await election officials who certify the results of the election which she believes are fraudulent.
The former federal prosecutor, who is also Michael Flynn’s lead attorney in a case about lying to the FBI, told Fox Business host Lou Dobbs on Thursday that the Trump camp will press forward with legal action, targeting election officials as they certify the 2020 results in several key battleground states that have been called for President-elect Joe Biden. One of them would be Michigan’s Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, who must certify the results by Friday.
Sidney Powell: “The entire election, frankly, in all the swing states should be overturned and the legislatures should make sure that the electors are selected for Trump” pic.twitter.com/gA6aFVhvdt
Dobbs also asked if Trump’s llegal team will pursue legal action against Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic: “Are you pressing forward with legal action against them for those violations?” Dobbs asked.
“Not against the company and the software,” Powell responded. “But the suits will be against the election officials to invalidate the results of the election and force it to the legislatures and the Electoral College and then the Congress if necessary.”
As we reported earlier, Powell asserted that Dominion and Smartmatic are “inexplicably intertwined.” She appeared with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and other members of Trump’s election legal team at a press conference in Washington, D.C., to accuse Democrats of an elaborate plot by his opponents to “rig” voting machines in the presidential.
During that conference, Giulianni said that he “can prove that [Trump] won Pennsylvania by 150,000 votes” and that “the people who did this have committed one of the worst crimes that I’ve ever seen or heard.” The former NYC mayor also said there is a pattern in the voting data that suggests “a plan from a centralized place” to commit voter fraud in Democrat-run cities.
At the same time, Powell said President Trump “won by a landslide,” and that their legal team will prove it.
“American patriots are fed up with the corruption from the local level to the highest level of our government,” she said. “We are not going to be intimidated. We are not going to back down. We are going to clean this mess up now. President Trump won by a landslide. We are going to prove it. And we are going to reclaim the United States of America for the people who vote for freedom.”
Powell alleged a transnational conspiracy involving the “influence of communist money” from countries including Cuba, Venezuela, and “likely China” to overturn the presidential race via election software.
Powell also said that the legal team has testimony from an insider who unearthed provable fraud regarding voting machines and software used in multiple states. The person said they worked with the Venezuelan military, outlining a conspiracy between Smartmatic executives, former socialist Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, and election officials in the country years ago.
The whistleblower said the “software and fundamental design of the electronic electoral system and software of Dominion and other election tabulating companies relies upon software that is a descendant of the Smartmatic Electoral Management System.”
“In short, the Smartmatic software is in the DNA of every vote-tabulating company’s software and system,” the whistleblower said.
Powell alleged that Smartmatic, Dominion, and others used technology on Election Day that was developed under Chavez’s regime years ago to “make sure he never lost an election.”
On Monday, Powell posted some of her evidence on Twitter, which consisted of three screenshots of an affidavit that she said was signed by a former military official from Venezuela about elections there. According to her and excerpts from the affidavit, elections software company Smartmatic helped the Venezuelan government rig its elections by switching votes and leaving no trail. The military official said in the excerpts that the U.S. election was “eerily reminiscent” of what happened in Venezuela’s 2013 presidential election.
“This person saw, by his own experience, exactly what was happening there was happening here,” Ms. Powell explained to Fox News on Monday.
The accusations triggered the New York Times, which dragged by its anti-Trump bias was forced to suggest that Venezuela’s 2017 election was actually quite fair and open…
Previous claims that Smartmatic’s voting machines were rigged in Venezuela have been disputed and are “unsubstantiated,” according to The Associated Press.
… even though it was none other than the New York Times reporting in 2017 that “Venezuela Reported False Election Turnout” citing Smartmatic, whose machines were used in that particular Venezuela election and several previous ones.
Smartmatic has denied any ties to Dominion, while Dominion said that it has “no company ownership relationships with the Pelosi family, Feinstein family, Clinton Global Initiative, Smartmatic, Scytl, or any ties to Venezuela.” Dominion bought assets from a subsidiary of Smartmatic three years after it was sold. Smartmatic wrote on its website that it “does not have any ties to any governments or political parties in any country. It has never been owned, funded or backed by any government.”
Which is odd, considering that Wikileaks has leaked several formerly confidential cables disclosing the murky background of Smartmatic. In fact, we urge everyone to read the July 10, 2006 classified cable titled “Caracas’ View of Smartmatic and its voting machines“ written by Robert Downes, the U.S. Embassy’s political counselor in Caracas at the time. Here is an excerpt:
The Venezuelan-owned Smartmatic Corporation is a riddle both in ownership and operation, complicated by the fact that its machines have overseen several landslide (and contested) victories by President Hugo Chavez and his supporters. The electronic voting company went from a small technology startup to a market player in just a few years, catapulted by its participation in the August 2004 recall referendum. Smartmatic has claimed to be of U.S. origin, but its true owners — probably elite Venezuelans of several political strains — remain hidden behind a web of holding companies in the Netherlands and Barbados. The Smartmatic machines used in Venezuela are widely suspected of, though never proven conclusively to be, susceptible to fraud. The company is thought to be backing out of Venezuelan electoral events, focusing now on other parts of world, including the United States via its subsidiary, Sequoia. End Summary.
——————–
Who Owns Smartmatic?
——————-
2. (C) Smartmatic was founded in the late 90s by three Venezuelans, Antonio Mugica, Alberto Anzola, and Roger Pinate. According to Mugica’s conversations with poloffs in recent years, the three had developed a network capable of handling thousands of simultaneous inputs. An early application was ATMs in Mexico, but the U.S. presidential election in 2000 led the group to consider electronic voting platforms. The company formed the SBC consortium with Venezuelan telecom provider CANTV (at the time 28-percent owned by Verizon) and a software company called Bizta. Mugica said Smartmatic held 51-percent of the consortium, CANTV had 47 percent, and Bizta, 2 percent (ref a). The latter, also owned by the Smartmatic owners, was denounced in June 2004 by the press for having received a US$200,000 equity investment from a Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (BRV) joint venture fund called FONCREI; a Chavez campaign adviser was placed on the board as well. Bizta reimbursed what it called the “loan” when it was made public and shed the Chavista board member.
3. (C) Mugica has told Poloffs on several occasions that Anzola, Pinate, and he are the owners of Smartmatic, though they have a list of about 30 investors who remain anonymous. Jose Antonio Herrera, Anzola’s father-in-law (and first cousin to Venezuelan Ambassador to the United States Bernardo Alvarez), told poloff in 2004 the silent partners were mainly upper class Venezuelans, some of whom were staunch Chavez opponents. There were rumors, however, that Smartmatic’s early profits came from Venezuelan defense contracts supplied by then-Defense Minister Jose Vicente Rangel, whom Chavez later promoted to Vice President. Perhaps coincidentally, the Vice President’s daughter, Gisela Rangel Avalos, was the head of the local corporate registry when Smartmatic was registered, which contributed to allegations of the Vice President’s involvement. These unconfirmed rumors also suggested that one-time Chavez political mentor Luis Miquilena was also a shareholder in the company.
4. (C) Mugica first approached the Embassy in 2004 when the company was bidding at the National Electoral Council (CNE) to provide a completely new electronic voting system. Mugica pitched Smartmatic as a U.S. company registered in Delaware with offices in Boca Raton, Florida. In fact, poloffs had several discussions with Mugica in the course of facilitating his L-1 inter-company transfer visa to work in the United States. Mugica said the company’s corporate offices were in Boca Raton, but most of the research staff of some 70 employees remained in Caracas. Smartmatic essentially purchased its electoral expertise by hiring veteran election observer AMCIT Jorge Tirado and his team of consultants. Tirado served as the interface between Smartmatic and the CNE for several elections.
It only gets better…
In May 2006, Mugica told Poloff Smartmatic’s corporate structure had changed (which had come out in press reports during 2005). Mugica said that Smartmatic was now two different companies under a Dutch holding company. U.S. setup was essentially the same, with Delaware registry and the Boca Raton accounting office overseeing U.S. operations. Smartmatic acquired the U.S voting machine company Sequoia Voting Systems on March 8, 2005, Mugica reported. All U.S. election machinery is assembled in New York, he said. Mugica noted that while their U.S. operations were important, more than half their sales were outside of Venezuela and the United States. The other Smartmatic company was based in Bridgetown, Barbados, where Mugica said the international sales operation was located. Most of the manufacturing for their electoral and other electronic machinery was done in China, Mugica said, with some component work also done in Taiwan. Smartmatic also manufactures some items in Italy through the company Olivetti (which built the original Smartmatic machines for Venezuela). The research and development shop was still located in Caracas, Mugica noted.
And better…
—————–
A Shadow of Fraud
—————–
6. (C) Of course, the Venezuelan opposition is convinced that the Smartmatic machines robbed them of victory in the August 2004 referendum. Since then, there have been at least eight statistical analyses performed on the referendum results. Most of the studies cross-check the results with those of exit polls, the signature drives and previous election results. One study obtained the data log from the CANTV network and supposedly proved that the Smartmatic machines were bi-directional and in fact showed irregularities in how they reported their results to the CNE central server during the referendum. (Note: The most suspicious data point in the Smartmatic system was that the machines contacted the server before printing their results, providing the opportunity, at least, to change the results and defeat the rudimentary checks set up by international observation missions. Since August 2004, the CNE has not repeated this practice.) These somewhat conspiratorial reports perhaps serve to breathe life into a defeated opposition, but have never proved conclusively the fraud (refs b and c).
And better…
The Smartmatic machines suffered a major blow, however, when in a test prior to the December 2005 National Assembly elections an opposition technician was able to defeat the machine’s allegedly random storage protocols and, therefore, the secrecy of the vote. The technician took advantage of the fact that the computerized machines used a Windows operating system. A simple program downloaded from the Internet accessed underlying Windows files created “in order” as the machine processed Smartmatic’s “randomizing” software. Although Smartmatic officials argued convincingly that such controlled results could not be feasibly replicated during a real election (ref d), the opposition parties boycotted. Abstention rates soared to at least 75 percent and confidence in the CNE among opposition voters plummeted. The disastrous results left Chavez with 100-percent control of the National Assembly, an albatross around the neck of a leader trying to appear democratic.
And even better…
——————-
At Least Corruption
——————-
8. (C) If Smartmatic can escape the fraud allegation, there is still a corruption question. Well before Smartmatic, Venezuelan law had dictated that voting ought to be automated to limit fraud — the U.S. company ES&S and Spanish firm Indra had already sold systems to the electoral body. When the new pro-Chavez CNE was named in September 2003, however, it immediately set out to replace all existing systems. Declaring the bid process to be an emergency (though there was as yet no referendum scheduled), the CNE bypassed normal procedures and initiated a closed bid process. Smartmatic won the contract, which totaled at least US$128 million, including the delivery of 20,000 touch-screen voting machines (re-engineered lottery machines) yet to be built. There were immediate questions about how a virtually unknown company with no electoral experience could have landed such a large contract. Mugica asserted to poloff that everything was above board, though he conceded the company may have opened itself up to criticism by hiring a former interior vice minister named Morris Loyo to lobby the government. There were additional allegations of impropriety in October 2005 when the press reported that Smartmatic had paid the bill of CNE President Jorge Rodriguez at an exclusive Boca Raton resort. The company claimed Rodriguez had reimbursed them for the stay, during which Rodriguez reportedly examined an unspecified electoral system Smartmatic was developing. There were subsequent, unconfirmed rumors that Rodriguez was lobbying for Smartmatic in other countries.
Until we get to the startling conclusion:
Smartmatic is a riddle. The company came out of nowhere to snatch a multli-million dollar contract in an electoral process that ultimately reaffirmed Chavez’ mandate and all-but destroyed his political opposition. The perspective we have here, after several discussions with Smartmatic, is that the company is de facto Venezuelan and operated by Venezuelans. The identity of Smartmatic’s true owners remains a mystery. Our best guess is that there are probably several well-known Venezuelan businessmen backing the company who prefer anonymity either because of their political affiliation or, perhaps, because they manage the interests of senior Venezuelan government officials.
This was written in 2006. Since then one can only imagine what fascinating changes have taken place to the org chart of the mysterious “riddle” that is the “de facto Venezuelan” Smartmatic and whose shady operations and/or corruption – according to US state department – may have been the deciding voice in more than one fraudulent election.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/36SKnml Tyler Durden
Liberty. The right to be free from torture, inhumane and ill treatment; the prohibition of servitude; the right to liberty and security of person; the right to a fair trial; freedom of expression; freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; the right to privacy and a family life; freedom of association; freedom from discrimination; and policing by consent are all so pre-Covid-19. The governmental response to the coronavirus pandemic has massacred these fundamental human rights.
Weaselly Covid marshals in hi-vis vests now bark aggressively at me, telling me to “stand back!” and “cover your nose!”. I have stopped resisting or trying to placate them with reason. I have stopped trying to reassure them that I am a doctor. Their brows furrow: a dissident doctor is either not really a doctor, or is the worst kind of scum.
We live in a strange world where minority activists campaign for commercial euthanasia: a world in which a select number of elected and unelected individuals dictate that 100 per cent of us are not allowed the liberty of taking the 0.06 per cent risk of a cost-free, natural death from a respiratory illness (a very common terminal event) at an average age of 82 years old. This is utter insanity while younger, fitter people commit suicide at rising rates under repressive lockdown restrictions, economies collapse, and other debilitating diseases continue to crush, kill and incapacitate the other 99.94 per cent.
Matt Hancock currently champions the right of a small minority of the terminally ill to travel abroad for a Dignitas death, while denying everyone else the right to face the small risk of death by Covid-19 in order to live with dignity and freedom in the UK. How does this make any sense?
Two Elephants in the Room
(1) How did we get here?
(2) How prevent it happening again?
These are the two questions that surviving mainstream investigative journalists and parliament seem unable to address. Our masters have consistently turned focus to a question that has preoccupied us for months: How do we get out? With this emphasis, they made haste to our perpetual imprisonment. How can we be certain that the question being asked in private is not, rather, how can we capitalise on this situation?
How did we get here?
First it is worth asking from where did the virus originate? Evidence from the scientific community supports the hypothesis it may have been genetically engineered in a laboratory. In May 2020 Professor Luc Montagnier, the virologist who won the Nobel prize for discovering the HIV virus, has corroboratedIndian scientists’ concerns from January 2020 that there are four distinct regions of the SARS-CoV-2 genome which appear to have been spliced in from HIV genomes.
Dr Limeng Yan goes further to say that Covid-19 was intentionally developed as a bioweapon. What further intrigues is Dr. Robert Gallo, an Anthony Fauci contemporary at the National Institute of Health (NIH) and another heavyweight from the 1980s race to isolate the HIV virus, appears to have briefly weighed in against Limeng’s previous September 2020 paper on a lab chimaera theory. So, who are we meant to believe in this tangled web?
The technological knowledge of biological weapons and their antidotes is in the select hands of a few private individuals, corporations and military facilities
Did you know that following serious scientific concern, there was a US government moratorium on the NIH conducting dangerous and unethical virus “gain of function” (GOF) research inside the US? However, the US continued to fundcoronavirus research at the Wuhan BSL-4 lab in that moratorium period of 2014 to 2017. GOF research increases the danger of – and weaponises – viruses. Were you aware that funding for this comes from Professor Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Health and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease? Are you aware that the US has funded and supported virological research with inter alia China for over 15 years? Indeed, Sino-American GOF research sponsored by Fauci’s NIH and NIAID, involving Wuhan BSL-4 lab’s “bat-woman”, Zhengli-Li Shi, was allowed to continue during this moratorium.
How prevent it happening again?
To answer the second question ofprevention, one must to again ask how we got to this point of global paralysis where the WHO, a largely unaccountable, undemocratic, sprawling supranational entity under the private influence of the Gates Foundation and Pharma calls the shots, strips us of our human rights and God-given liberty. In this brave new world, the technological knowledge of biological weapons and their antidotes is in the select hands of a few private individuals, corporations and military facilities.
How is it that civilian, state-owned scientific apparatuses to protect the population are either non-existent or wholly inadequate? So much so that our governments must jump into the lap of the profiteering pharma-cartels and their sponsored universities. Why do our chief scientific advisor, chief medical advisor, and chief mathematic remodeller seem to have cartel tattoos on their CVs? Would you trust Big Pharma hitmen to advise and cure you?
Wouldn’t it be better to have independent, accountable state-funded experts who would be less prone to the politicisation and profit motives that are destroying our way of life? Is this not preferable to the collusive, corrupt, and clandestine public-private partnerships such as SAGE? Even the establishment BMJ’s Executive Editor has belatedly come round to express serious concern about the “politicisation, corruption, and suppression of science.” As Michael Gove said (and subsequently retracted), “I think the people are fed up of experts in organisations with acronyms, saying they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong.”
As for pandemic preparedness, the government (presumably in conjunction with the same global non-state actors) is said to have organised for a public health crisis such as the one we currently find ourselves in, yet it seems to want to keep the findings of the Operation Cygnus report under lock and key. Why?
What did Sir Simon Stevens, CEO of NHSE say at a press conference on 5 May 2020? This shifty, career pen-pusher said he was quoting from ICU consultant, Dr Alison Pittard. This, in practice, means he was absolving himself of all accountability and responsibility for the statement. He said he had spoken to her the day before and she had said, “In the here and now we cannot stop cancer developing, in the here and now we can’t immediately prevent heart attacks or strokes … but we can reduce the spread of coronavirus in the community.”
This is a problematic and fatally misleading statement. Stevens should be ashamed of himself for making a political soundbite out of Dr Pittard’s words; particularly when citing her name for added authenticity and protection.
First of all, if my colleague said this, please understand she operates in a very compartmentalised, specialist ICU cocoon, at the sharpest end of a chronically under-resourced and stymied NHS service. She will be traumatised, sensitised and conditioned by Simon Stevens’ under-funding of her service and the clear excess deaths of March and April.
Second, know that we can prevent cancer developing, and stop heart attacks and strokes. This is called screening, early diagnosis, early intervention and timely surgery; such things were normal daily phenomena before March. Drug companies devoted billions to tell us it was possible. Now, Simon Stevens, Dr Alison Pittard and Pharma tell us it is not possible and squander 2.4 billion pounds daily to a National Covid Service which is six times the daily budget of the entire NHS.
Third, how can an ICU consultant’s well-meaning soundbite be the final word in community medicine? Is lockdown actually an effective way to stop the spread of this disease? That’s debatable, and not absolute. I agree we could suppress it and keep kicking the can down the road, culminating in higher periodic and seasonal spikes. But how and when (if ever) do we exit from her strategy – a snake oil vaccine? Alternatively, we could have been like Sweden and got it over and done with. I doubt the lay fact-checkers will bother analysing Simon Stevens’ parroted wisdom.
A few days later in TheSunday Times, Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, aped mindlessly:
You can’t stop someone having a heart attack or a stroke, but you can control the volume of Covid-19 patients by using lockdowns to reduce the infection rate… the NHS will certainly be arguing that the Government should be very cautious about coming out of lockdown.
Covid-19 and Chicken Pox
Now, imagine if a novel Chicken Pox descended on earth as if from nowhere, for that is how SARS-CoV-2 appears to have arrived. This parallel may help facilitate a common perspective. It could well have been far more damaging and certainly more terrifying than SARS-CoV-2. Imagine: no prior immunity, no prior sharing a lollipop at a pox party with a friend’s child to ensure broad, safe, and natural immunity before adulthood. Young adults, adults and the elderly would be dying en masse of multi-system pathologies. The pox marks would strike psychological terror; there would be no cure, no vaccine. Gradually, we would learn to cope with it, embrace it as a child, a rite of passage that you would rather have.
As for me, I had unknowingly acquired immunity at some point in my life. I discovered this because I required serological proof to work on a hospital paediatric ward in my thirties. So, I am relieved my child has possibly had Covid-19 as probably have I. To see hundreds of schools and their young teachers refuse the low risk of opening shop and returning to work seemed to me a dangerous folly: no immunity, no education, no jobs, no future, no life. We desperately need a reservoir of resilient, naturally immune people to shield the non-immune, vulnerable and elderly. More chance of suppressing the virus this way than with a rushed vaccine. I may as well say it now before it becomes criminal to do so. The world has lost its mind.
Dissident doctors, Thought Crimes & Arbitrary Injustice
Many have asked why more doctors and nurses are not coming forward with an alternative truth, and why they are not openly doing so. First, understand the state apparatus (including the regulatory body for doctors, the GMC) which has set its immovable stall: Catastrophic Pandemic (no such thing), Philanthropic Lockdown, Wonder Vaccine.
Then, take the extraordinary GMC assault on senior consultant surgeon’s right to free speech. Dr. Mohammed Adil was metaphorically lynched; swinging ominously off the GMC entrance from his redundant stethoscope – a gangland warning from the drug cabal to the rest of us. Then, recall what happens to an NHS whistle-blower, in spite of so-called whistle blowing protection laws, by familiarising oneself with the unbelievable scapegoating, cover-up, injustice and judicial “incompetence” doled out to Dr. Chris Day over 6 years and counting.
Now appreciate that in 2016, for the first time since at least 2006 according to cases compiled by the GMC, a doctor, consultant eye surgeon John Brookes walked scot free from his disciplinary tribunal without any sanction at all, even though the tribunal found he was guilty of misconduct. His offence? A 15-month sexual affair with a current patient. Not even a one-month nominal suspension was suitable: he was deemed too “unique” in his surgical talents and too valuable to his patients. The GMC tribunal made an “exceptional circumstance” of his case. The tribunal went further in its sympathies and commented that this was a consensual and mutually supportive sexual affair – that was until the jilted patient tweeted his affront to Brookes’ hospital CEO.
The GMC doesn’t do human rights for all, nor morals, ethics and Hippocrates per se anymore. It does duties. Duties are done for employers. No more egregious example of this was the GMC case of Dr. John Brookes. His case is paradigmatic of the damage, demoralisation and destabilisation of the medical profession. Ten years ago, it is likely he would have been removed from the GMC register for such an offence.
But, what of Dr. Adil, chairman of the World Doctors Alliance? He is a colleague of Dr Heiko Schöning, the German medic arrested at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park on 26 September 2020. What did Adil do to warrant his arrest? After several months of witnessing global and local healthcare go down the chute and members of the public suffer, he courageously (some would say extremely inexpediently) spoke out on YouTube with admirable passion about the global assault on civil liberties, public health, the NHS and his own patients’ health by disproportionate government measures. He referred to the pandemic as a hoax. You may find the video here.
Dr. Heiko Schöning being arrested for speaking at Speakers Corner, Hyde Park, 26 September 2020.
The GMC didn’t like it. It suspended him from his patients and his 30-year-long NHS career for 12 months, pending tribunal. No unique attributes, no “magic fingers”, no “consensual and mutually supportive” sexual relationship with a patient to help him avoid interim suspension nor the charge of exercising his legal right to free speech.
I am not saying I agree with him. “Hoax” may not be the most appropriate word to use in this situation. Dr Limeng Yan uses “fraud”. But how do we know for sure? Perhaps it is a hoax in the sense that in our collective hysteria we are leading ourselves to fatal self-deception? How does the GMC know? It does not. It has blind faith in the state-pharma-media sponsored narrative. Remember, lone voices have spoken out before when Tony Blair asserted to the world that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. History proved those lone, renegade voices to be right. Look at what then became of the middle east, then Europe and now the world. We believed in our politicians and not the experts. Recall the strange, horrid fate that befell principled weapons inspector, Dr. David Kelly.
The GMC seems not to care if Dr. Adil is correct. Might is right. He stepped out of line and spoke his truth. He must be silenced and professionally ruined before another doctor speaks. His was not speech riddled with hate, but by an honest concern that the government’s response to this pandemic is not medically or scientifically sound.
The GMC’s primary concern is its statutory responsibility and overarching objective as set out in the Medical Act 1983 (as amended), in particular the need:
To protect, promote and maintain the health, safety and wellbeing of the public;
To maintain public confidence in the profession;
To promote and maintain proper professional standards and conduct for members of the profession.
A GMC spokesperson said: ‘The interim orders tribunal imposed an interim suspension on Dr Adil’s registration, following our referral, to protect patients and public confidence. This interim suspension remains in place while we consider concerns about Dr Adil’s fitness to practise.’
Well, who says it protects patients and maintains public confidence to see the GMC violate the lawful free speech of a senior doctor? Thousands of the people have turned out to support him. He is only one among a quarter of a million registered doctors. Why is there so much concern over his influence? Let him speak and be heard. Surely, he must have something important to say to risk his life’s calling? However, that is why the GMC is concerned, he speaks with repute and authority, and therefore the GMC must undermine him.
By denying him his democratic right to political, personal and professional expression, the GMC colludes to deny his right to be heard, and the right of the public to hear him. It denies him the right to seek the truth in open, democratic discourse, and the right to scrutinise the government and hold it to account. It denies diversity and equality of opinion. It denies him his livelihood, and needlessly detaches him from his life’s work and patients who rely on him.
Orwell once said, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”. Well, welcome to a very veterinary Animal Farm.
Violation and criminalisation of human rights is becoming quite the corona-craze for official and charitable bodies. The British Academy, the Royal Society, the GMC, the government, the police… who next? Jonathan Sumption in retirement from judicial office is now able to speak with an impunity and candour not afforded to Dr Adil. Like Adil, he is a lone renegade. He pointedly called out the indifference of so-called civil rights organisations such as Liberty – which has a history of intervening for the partisan rights of Remainers – when it comes to defending everyone else’s human rights.
We now have the Labour party wishing to criminalise and censor our free speech. This time their leverage is “anti-vaxxers”, but even that term is problematic. I would imagine it is a defamatory slur designed by the corporate mandatory vaccine pushers who wish to smokescreen the fact that most objectors are manifestly not anti-vax. They are simply and reasonably against useless, unsafe, rushed and unproven pharmaceuticals where the profit-centric corporations are given state immunity from civil and criminal prosecution should the pharmaceutical be dangerous.
This is aside from the very serious issues of common assault, treatment without consent, and the violation of patient choice. In the context of what we know about the risks of the virus, none of this is appropriate, nor proportionate. What we now have is a mainstream principal of discretionary free speech at the behest of one ideological blob. If you do not worship at that altar, your god does not necessarily get to be heard, and may as well not exist.
Dr. Adil is not the first nor only doctor to accuse the WHO, Pharma and governments of a hoax pandemic. Did you know we had a relatively dry practice run of the orchestration of the apparatus to inflict terror on the world and fill the coffers of Big Pharma in 2009-2010 with swine flu? A German doctor and politician, Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, accused the WHO of conspiring with Pharma to redefine and lower the threshold of declaring a pandemic.
That brings me to another doctor who might equally be accused of “over-valued ideas” and occupying the other end of the so-called pandemic hoax spectrum. She argues for the embattled corporate propagandists Whitty, Vallance, Ferguson and Johnson. She is Dame Clare Marx, Chair of the GMC. This is what she wrote a week before Lockdown 2.0: [emphases in bold are mine].
A GMC Love Letter
27.10.20
Your wellbeing matters – a message from Dame Clare Marx
Experiences of this pandemic will not be uniform, but for sure, none of us will be left unchanged.
Doctors have found themselvesworking at the edge of their comfort zone. Some of you have confronted harrowing situations. Some have made difficult decisions against a backdrop ofuncertainty and fear. Some have been unable to give the care you wanted to give.
Now, on top of managing rising demand, a weighty backlog of elective work and the second wave of the pandemic, doctors are bracing themselves for the much-anticipated winter storm.
We know that you and your teams are already weary. With barely time to process the events of recent months, many of you are now steeling yourselves for the inevitable challenges to come.
That commitment and resolve requires a huge physical and emotional effort, some would say it’s an act of courage.
We went into medicine to help people and to make things better. But we can’t do that without caring for ourselves too. Your wellbeing matters – to you, your patients and to us as your regulator.
We want to support you so you can keep delivering the best possible care to patients. We’ve compiled helpful resources here to help you survive and thrive over the coming months.
We all know that this will be a marathon, not a sprint.
The nature of being a doctor is to go above and beyond to deliver the care our patients require. But doing that requires doctors to take their own wellbeing seriously.
On behalf of the GMC, and as a doctor myself, I am immensely proud of the profession’s response to this crisis.
Thank you for your continued dedication and professionalism. Please look after yourselves, and each other.
Dame Clare Marx
Chair of the General Medical Council
When I received this call to arms, I had to step back in some amazement. I found it unrepresentative, patronising and inappropriate in many parts. This letter was innuendo and euphemism, wrapped up in a tissue of concern for our well-being. The problem was ill-defined – is doctors’ mental health failing due to an apocalyptic pandemic or due to the government’s lockdown and suspension of the usual NHS? Or is it the huge backlog she at least acknowledges?
Non-dissident Doctors
However, some doctors do seem immune from GMC scrutiny. Have the two doctors (Drs. Martin Landry and Peter Horby) involved in the Oxford Recovery trial been properly held to account for unusually high doses of hydroxychloroquine given to presumably vulnerable hospitalised patients with advanced Covid-19? This may have killed cheap, generic hydroxychloroquine’s early promise as a community prophylactic and early treatment in Covid-19 at low and normal doses, leaving the market wide open for expensive, novel, commercially exploitable vaccines and therapies. In fact, it may well have: watch Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitty reject hydroxychloroquine as a result of Recovery.
It could be argued that Recovery might have hastened the demise of some of its participants. But, still, it is Dr. Adil who remains the GMC’s prime target and public enemy number one of our dysfunctional state.
How did Recovery receive ethical approval to give excessive doses to vulnerable patients in an advanced Covid-19 state with hydroxychloroquine when mainstream media was telling us hydroxychloroquine was dangerous and toxic at normal doses? The Recovery trial gave a massive 2400mg hydroxychloroquine in the first 24 hrs, and 800mg every subsequent 24 hrs for the next 9 days. Who proposed and approved these doses? The normal daily dose is 200-400mg, and it is a general pharmaceutical principle that patients with organ failure are sometimes given lower doses to avoid toxicity.
Something doesn’t add up. It seems as if the Recovery trial result has caused a character assassination on hydroxychloroquine. Are none of my colleagues concerned about this? Surely, there is a case to answer for these doctors.
What would GMC scrutiny make of Drs. Pittard, Whitty, Landry, Horby and Marx? Are they merely GMC-compliant, dutiful doctors; are they ethical and competent professionals; have their actions protected patients and public confidence or caused harm and grossly negligent deaths? What about their “fitness to practise”? These are the complex and challenging questions for the GMC that only a few lone renegades are willing to ask.
What can we do? I would urge the public to make their views known to their MPs and copy in the GMC and the Free Speech Union. Submit FOIA requests to the GMC, hold it to account – it acts for you. Support the Free Speech Union, and protect yourself and others by joining it and donating to it. We live in interesting times, and I fear they are about to become more interesting.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3kGLs5O Tyler Durden
FBI Arrests Ponzi Suspect After Daring Escape On Underwater Scooter Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/19/2020 – 21:20
A fleeing Ponzi scheme suspect is now in custody after a daring escape on a submersible scooter from FBI agents, reported CBS Sacramento.
Court documents, filed with the U.S. Attorney’s office said Matthew Piercey, 44, a suspect in a $35 million Ponzi scheme, used a Yamaha Seascooter to evade FBI agents under the surface of Lake Shasta in Shasta County, California, after a high-speed car chase through the Redding area on Monday.
“Piercey spent some time out of sight underwater where law enforcement could only see bubbles. He remained in the frigid water for approximately 25 minutes. When Piercey finally emerged from the lake, law enforcement discovered that he had a Yamaha 350LI underwater submersible device.
“Law enforcement arrested Piercey at that point, approximately an hour after their initial contact in Redding,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Hales wrote in the filing.
Piercery’s temporary underwater escape was made possible by a Yamaha 350LI Seascooter, able to travel at 130 feet below the surface for 75 minutes with speeds over 3.7 mph.
Piercery’s Yamaha 350LI Seascooter
Piercey has been indicted for operating an alleged $35 million Ponzi scheme through his Family Wealth Legacy and Zolla investment companies. According to Hales, very little investing was being done by the Ponzi suspect:
“Piercey often paid off his lines of credit, credit cards, and personal and business expenses with investor funds, and his companies did not generate revenue sufficient to cover overhead and expenses while still paying investors the returns they were promised or otherwise led to expect. Piercey entered a pattern of paying old investors lulling payments with new investor funds, while making various false and misleading statements, half-truths, and omissions to raise new money and to hide the constant downward financial spiral,” he said.
Piercey has been under the radar of FBI agents for more than a year. Attorney Josh Kons told CBS Sacramento that his clients are victims in the scheme.
“You know, you never know what is going through someone’s mind when they’re being pursued by the FBI,” Kons said. “And we kept investigating, and all of a sudden today, here he is trying to escape into a lake, using a submersible device.”
Court documents revealed, “few if any, liquid assets remain to repay investors.” Piercey faces up to 20 years behind bars for the alleged fraud.
According to CNBC who quoted data from the website Ponzitracker earlier this year, Ponzi schemes in 2019 totaled the highest amount since around the Great Recession. These types of schemes tend to unwind at the end of economic cycles.
Today’s virus-induced recession will likely result in even more Ponzi schemes unwinding.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2UW9KOV Tyler Durden
The Trump era has engendered numerous fractures, one might say realignments, in the political order. Long-time ideological allies are now adversaries, and long-time political enemies are now in full-fledged coalitions. These shifts are not temporary or Trump-dependent but enduring, because they are grounded in shared core beliefs about the defining debates shaping our new politics and how to consolidate real power: call it the Lincoln Project Syndrome.
One major reason for this transformation is a fundamental difference in how to understand Trump: is he the primary author of America’s pathologies or merely a symptom of pathologies which long pre-dated him? Relatedly: is removing Trump from power a vital step in returning the U.S. to its previous status as a benevolent and law-abiding republic, or is isolating him as the principal cause of the nation’s woes a cynical propaganda tactic for whitewashing the sins of those who are actually responsible so that they can rebuild their reputations and again assume power? Were Trump’s policies some radical, unprecedented aberration from U.S. political tradition or, stylistic quirks aside, a standard continuation of it?
How one answers those questions — along with whether one believed that the Kremlin had infiltrated the White House and assumed command of the levers of U.S. power through elaborate blackmail schemes or whether one recognized that this was a CIA-fabricated propaganda fraud excavated from crusty Cold War scripts — determined where one fell on many of the most contentious political debates over the last four years (my answer to all of the questions is the latter choice).
That’s why the millions of Americans who, due to fear of Trump, began paying close attention to politics and consuming news products only in 2016 were such easy marks for peddling fear-mongering narratives and revisionism: because they lacked the crucial historical context in which to place Trump and understand his ascension to the presidency.
Cover of TIME Magazine, May 18, 2017; Cover of The New Yorker, Feb. 24, 2017
But there is another critical debate, one that has rarely been conducted explicitly, that is also a key determinant of where one falls in this new alignment: what are the real power centers in the U.S., the ones most responsible for its worst acts and greatest dangers?
There are many places where that answer resides. One can find it right now in the ongoing effort to denounce the Trump White House for attempting to remove troops from Afghanistan, where the U.S. has been fighting and shooting and bombing in a war now about to enter its 20th year. Take a look at who is demanding that those troops remain, and there you will find the real axis of power — all of its component parts — in the United States.
This is not the first time the Trump administration has been condemned after unveiling its plans to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. In July, pro-war Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee, led by their Lockheed-and-Raytheon-funded Chairman Adam Smith, partnered with Congresswoman Liz Cheneyand her pro-war GOP allies to block the use of funds for removing troops (not only from Afghanistan but also Germany), as part of a massive increase in military spending. The oppositional left-right coalition of anti-war Democrats such as Ro Khanna and Tulsi Gabbard and America-First Trump supporters such as Matt Gaetz were no match for the bipartisan pro-war coalition which attempted to block any end to the war.
American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops — amid the peace talks to end the long-running war there, according to officials briefed on the matter.
Repeatedly citing this New York Times story, based on the claims of anonymous “intelligence officials,” the bipartisan pro-war wing of the Committee insisted that to leave Afghanistan now would be particularly inappropriate and dangerous in light of this dastardly Russian interference. (Top military officials and the commander in Afghanistan later admitted the bounty program “had not been corroborated by intelligence agencies and that they do not believe any attacks in Afghanistan that resulted in American casualties can be directly tied to it,” but by then, the job was done).
And thus did this union of pro-war Democrats, Cheney-led neocons, the intelligence community and their chosen mainstream media outlets succeed in providing the perfectly crafted tool at the most opportune moment to justify blocking an end to America’s longest war. That is precisely the same coalition that drowned U.S. politics for more than three years in the sustained, monomaniacal disinformation campaign about Putin’s takeover of the U.S.
As Trump again signals that he intends in the lame-duck session to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, this same united coalition is working desperately to block it. First, Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois angrily condemned the withdrawal plan with deranged reasoning: that Generals are against withdrawal (as though we have no civilian control of the military); troops will come home “in body bags” not by staying in Afghanistan but by leaving it; and that withdrawing U.S. forces after a mere nineteen years of fighting will endanger “our national security.”
The new ruling coalition then stepped forward to fortify Duckworth’s demand that troops remain. Obama’s former National Security Advisor Susan Rice — reportedly slated to become Biden’s Secretary of State — pointed to the pronouncement by Brett McGurk, an early ruler of post-invasion Iraq and key advocate of the Bush/Cheney “surge” who now works (of course) for NBC News, denouncing Trump’s withdrawal plan as “diplomatic malpractice” that “erodes trust and confidence in the United States.” Playing the role of Liz Cheney in this debate was GOP Congressman Dan Crenshaw of Texas, who supported Rice and Duckworth by attacking independent Congressman Justin Amash for advocating troop withdrawal.
From there, Bill Kristol — a key neocon ally of McGurk during the Bush/Cheney years who is also now a beloved MSNBC pundit — not only denounced the efforts to withdraw troops from Afghanistan but in general warned of the dangers of Trump’s attempt to remove troops from other parts of the world. As they usually do, Kristol’s pro-imperialism tweets went massively viral due to the large social media following he has amassed from MSNBC appearances and his liberal fan base:
I’m told DOD has been ordered to plan further troop withdrawals, from Somalia, South Korea and Germany. Trump is doing his best to weaken America, our friends, and allies on his way out the door.
Here we see the new coalition of power that has formed during the Trump era: hawkish and corporatist Democrats, united when necessary with pro-war/neocon Republicans, Bush/Cheney operatives, the national security state and large corporate media outlets outside of Fox News.
Democratic national security luminaries have spent the last four years formally uniting with Bush/Cheney neocons to prepare to take power in a new Democratic administration (though it must be remembered that neocons, as this 2014 New York Times Op-Ed by Jacob Heilbrunn explained, saw the writing on the wall long before Trump that the growing anti-war strain in the GOP (as evidenced by the success of Ron Paul’s candidacy) meant that their best hope for a posture of Endless War resided in re-migrating back to what they thought at the time would be the Hillary-run Democratic Party).
The other key components of this coalition are Silicon Valley giants and Wall Street, both of which overwhelmingly donated to the Biden/Harris campaign and the Democratic Party generally. The primary weapon tech companies offer is not just huge sums of money — though that of course is welcomed and useful — but information control: I continue to regard the decision of Twitter and Facebook to block and suppress the ability to disseminate The New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s laptop as one of the most shocking and alarming events of the last four years: political censorship cheered by most of the pro-Biden press.
But that jarring pre-election internet censorship on behalf of this Democratic-led coalition is just the tip of the iceberg of what is to come. And the key players in that internet censorship campaign — the propagandists who will lay the groundwork for it — are the corporate U.S. media outlets who have long been and still are a key part of this ruling coalition.
When Silicon Valley giants began to see the massive potential of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, and even earlier when Google assumed dominance of search engines, they had no intention to censor content. Indeed, they wanted to renounce any responsibility to regulate discourse: not because they are noble (though many did have a libertarian belief in the value of a free internet) but because they wanted to assume the far more profitable and less burdensome model of AT&T: we are not a publishing company that decides what can and cannot be heard, but rather just a content-neutral platform for anyone to communicate (if Alex Jones calls Milo Yiannopoulos to plan a rally, nobody expects AT&T to terminate their call or service: that’s the hands-off model Silicon Valley giants envisioned).
These companies began censoring the internet because that responsibility was foisted on them — principally by corporate media outlets that ginned up anger over the content they were allowing on their platforms, and then by Democratic Party politicians who blamed Facebook and Twitter (but not themselves) for their 2016 defeat.
Numerous media outlets — NBC News, CNN, The New York Times — now employ stables of reporters whose primary function seems to be to act as hall monitor tattletales over the internet, flagging whatever person or group think they deserves to be censored from social media and then petulantly whining that Facebook and Twitter are failing in their sacred duties to regulate discourse.
Part of the motive is arrogant self-interest: ever since the emergence of Bush-era blogs, they have despised any ability of uncredentialed serfs to disseminate information outside of their benevolent control. Watch here as Vox writer Dave Roberts announces on a show this week that the public cannot possibly be trusted to communicate freely without “gatekeepers” — meaning people like him and his friends — deciding what can and cannot be heard:
In the world of social media with no gatekeepers, @drvox says “misinformation wins”.
