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December 27, 2020
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2020-102

Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:

> What certainly has not come over is that Brussels has secreted into the system a complex and interesting treaty, one full of subtleties which is a long way from the basic "skinny treaty" that many of us originally expected.

It is one, also, which keeps the UK closer to the EU globally-based trading system than anyone could possibly have imagined at the outset of negotiations. It is one of considerable depth which creates a framework for a relationship which, if explored by people of far more diligence than Johnson and his cronies, could eventually be turned into a useful working agreement, albeit at savage cost to the UK in the interim.
…
To enable that trade, and much else, requires a working framework, which is set out in the first chapter of the treaty. One of the greatest misnomers of this modern world is the term "free trade". We have managed trade. The greater the degree of state involvement, the more freely goods (and services) flow.

In creating a framework, the first thing of this treaty that must be understood is that it is not the end of a process, but the start – where detailed sectoral negotiations will be conducted over term, to knock the basic agreement into some sort of shape which will enable the UK to re-establish a functioning relationship with the EU.

  • December 21 – Happy Christmas
    Related:
    Christmas in the grip of the Spanish Flu – Daily Mail
    As shops removed blackout curtains for the first time in four years in 1918, war-weary Britons faced the difficult decision over whether to see family during global pandemic that killed 50 million

—
Other issues:

Covid-19: An example for irresponsible reporting:

After nine paragraphs of scare mongering, about a doctor with known food allergies who had an allergic reaction after getting the Moderna mRNA vaccine, there is this:

> With more than 1.1 million injections already delivered to arms across the country, severe allergic reactions remain a rarity, and should not prompt concern in most people, said Dr. Merin Kuruvilla, an allergist and immunologist at Emory University. <

That should have been in the first paragraph. There were so far less than ten severe allergic reactions,no death, with more than 1 million vaccinated. That is 1 in 100,000 cases. About the same rate that allergic reactions to penicillin are reported. Meanwhile the U.S. has seen 100 deaths per 100,000 from Covid-19.

Also:

While I have programmed in about a dozen languages I missed out on programming in RNA. To bad as it looks very interesting:

Updated excess death numbers for different countries:

Use as open thread …

Posted by b on December 27, 2020 at 14:33 UTC | Permalink
Comments

“Russia, Russia, Russia”
Still speaks to the cult-factor in humans.

Posted by: librul | Dec 27 2020 14:37 utc | 1

@Posted by: librul | Dec 27 2020 14:37 utc | 1
I will elaborate.
The biggest shakeup to my world view came with Russiagate.
I had previously believed that intelligence sat at the top of the hierarchy for how people process information and get their belief systems.
Now I know that intelligence is a sub-layer in the hierarchy, and not even second.
Levels:
1) People identify with groups and get their beliefs from that group – herds.
2) People mimic their herd.
3) People apply intelligence to rationalize the beliefs that they already hold.
Trying to deprogram a headline-reader or ingestor of the MSM (aka MIC-mouthpiece)
by interacting with them at level #3 is like “spooning against the tide”. You are not even getting close to level #1.
This is actually reinforcing people’s delusion that they are operating primarily from an intelligence level – a catch-22.
You are telling them that their beliefs originate from intelligently gathered information. That isn’t helping them.
Start paying attention to how often you trigger a mimic’s cliche function.
It can be amusing. Then notice that you yourself were under the delusion that their beliefs originated intelligently.
That is why you are interacting with them in intelligent conversation, isn’t it?
You believe that something that was birthed from intelligence can be untangled with your intelligent argument. Think again.
They have their beliefs that they mimic and then “confirmation bias” cements it,
and cementing it is the function of the endlessly repeated lies of the MIC-mouthpieces.
The repeated lies are kept fresh by putting them into new forms – Russiagate became Ukrainegate became Bountygate became Vaccinegate
(with occasional side trips into such places as MH17-gate, Skripal-gate and Assange-gate, etc).
You can spend your time showing them, for example, that the Skripal false-flag was a clown performance at best – the facts are out there for all to read.
But then, even if successful with that one, “what about this-gate and that-gate” – you haven’t even scratched the surface of their
collective McCarthyism and thus by informing them about Skripal-gate “you are defending Russia”. Good luck with that.
People are mimics that let their herd do their thinking for them. They have various skill levels at rationalizing to themselves the beliefs that they already hold.
p.s.
Put the three-level hierarchy to the test by considering people’s religious beliefs.
People are typically born into those religious groups –
level 1. They will consistently mimic the same cliches, for example, “G-d will curse those that do not support the Jews”,
“Jesus will throw you into a Lake of Fire”, “Have a Blessed Day”.
Do you think they all independently discovered these identical “Truths” on their own, and so, so many more, by their own personal study of the Bible?
They are mimicking – level 2. Now go and approach them at level 3 – the intelligence level – but don’t neglect to carry a barf bag with you.
Maybe you can succeed in reinforcing their delusion that their religious beliefs are intelligence based,
but you will not even nudge them from their identity group – level 1. And you will only get for your trouble an ear full of mimicry.
—
I wrote the above last summer. Since then there have been more “-gates” such as the latest Multiple-US-agencies-Solarwinds-hack-gate. I mentioned Vaccinegate above and I had to stop and think about what that had been about as the public is being hosed with so much crap these days. Vaccinegate – supposedly the Russians had hacked our vaccine research.
—
recommended reading:
https://woodybelangia.com/what-is-mimetic-theory/

Posted by: librul | Dec 27 2020 14:58 utc | 2

“Joe won’t … Joe won’t” … It seems Joe won’t do a lot of things reasonable people want and need the govt to do.
It’s easy … For any and every question just ask what would Wall Street, the big banks, Silicon Valley, the insurance companies, and above all the Mil/Sec would want and that will be Joe’s position. He’s related ably and reliably served power for 50 years; why change now?

Posted by: Caliman | Dec 27 2020 15:36 utc | 3

Wow, the negotiation outcome for Britain is worse than I could have imagined. The devil of trade agreements is in the details and that’s why the dispute resolution mechanism plays a central part. Usually the involved parties agree on some kind of court where disputes are settled in accordance with internationally established legal principles.
Instead in the UK-EU relations there will be a “Partnership Council” and a whole array if committees and “working groups” where disputed are settled in accordance with political principles – that is: the relative negotiation power of the two parties.
The British of course think they are important enough to dictate terms. The reality, however, is reverse.
London should never ever have agreed to this unfair and extremely unfavorable dispute settlement mechanism.
Brussels, on the other hand, has achieved everything it could hope for by turning the British delusion of grandeur against them. Chapeau!

Posted by: m | Dec 27 2020 15:36 utc | 4

Librul @ 2
Excellent post. Makes very clear the reason I have so much trouble discussing things with a couple of my very good friends.

Posted by: arby | Dec 27 2020 15:47 utc | 5

What people in favor of this new vaccines fails to explain, along with authorities and laboratories, is wht the laboratories creating the vaccines have asked fro imminity with respect claims on serious colateral effects.
It is details like this which spread untrust with regards this new techonmology based vaccines, this, and the fact that the same people who have authorized them in FDA and EMA have conflcits of interests, being most part of their budget paid by BigPharma, and as former, and highly likely future, executives or board members of BigPharma involved, like happens with Pfizer, Revolving doors are in place all the way between Big Corporations and official organisms..
Another point which would be great if it would be explained to the population is why the first vaccines were brought into custody by police and military police to the nursing homes where they were to be administered…This has never happened before with any known vaccine..
Another point is why the WHO changed its definition of herd immunity to revolve around being vaccinated around November, just when we started to hear about the vaccines…
https://twitter.com/EstulinDaniel/status/1343206888020856840
Yesterday in a especial program at private TV, it was stated by several representatives of the medical profession all very snobishly dressed, that there have not been other adverse effects so far except headhache, and joints pain..whic his not true, there have been also transverse mielitys, several anaphilactic shocks, and even deaths…
Telated, and with respect Brexit, one wonders how it is that after Brexit comes into effect, and after the EU populations are submitted to harsh restrictions of movements and meeting, especially travelling since March, several whole families of Britons managed to get into our countries carrying the new strain of the virus which is 70% more virulent…How is that UK citizens are more free than nationals, and what the Brexit serves for…
One would say that this new strain came so opportune to be blamed in case of a possible failure of the few experimented vaccines, or, if not, the population will be blamed for no vaccinating themselves enough. This way the governments wash their responsability in the previous misshandling of this pandemic,ingtroduce curtails of freedoms and rights which previously would have been impossible to do without fierce contestations in the streets, and avoid answering why they did not forced the laboratories instead into investigating on drugs that cure the Covid-19 infection, as the one administered to Trump is being investigated right now in the UK…Of course, drugs that cure an infection which anyway could dissapear in a year automathically ends profitting from vaccines.
One watch at all this data and gets the impression that he is being taken for a ride…
All of the above are legitimate questions the cintizenry are making to themselves, in lack of public comparecence of officials and heads of laboratiories implied to public and open questioning. The secrecy of all this highly controbutes to the distrust of the people. the people is being treated as herd, and never better said, illiterates who can not see further their own extende arm, and used a guinea pigs while morevoer left to pay the bill, as the ammount to be spent in these vaccines is an astronomic price which, of course, will never be taken out from the oligarchs.

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 27 2020 15:55 utc | 6

Conflict of interests between major Big Pharma corporations and official drug organisms:

Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine Efficacy? Where is the evidence to prove it? What’s behind all that “fanciful” and encouraging news? And what about the links between state vaccine regulatory agencies and the pharmaceutical industry?Thread.

https://twitter.com/Herbert_Keg/status/1343155319187394561

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 27 2020 16:12 utc | 7

That should have been in the first paragraph. There were so far less than ten severe allergic reactions,no death, with more than 1 million vaccinated. That is 1 in 100,000 cases. About the same rate that allergic reactions to penicillin are reported. Meanwhile the U.S. has seen 100 deaths per 100,000 from Covid-19.

Do you think 1 in 100,000 is acceptable? I don’t think it is, at least for a vaccine that’s intended (I know it won’t, but it would if it could) to for more than 7 billion people, against a disease that has a mortality rate of circa 1.5%.
Notice that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, so far, have only been inoculated on VIPs or healthcare professionals. Those who had grave anaphylactic episodes did so in a secure environment, inside fully equipped hospitals, ready to be saved if needed.
Now imagine a Third World environment, where billions of people would received the vaccine and be ready to go a few minutes later.
Luckily, the Third World will mainly receive the Chinese and Russian vaccines, which cause, as far as we know, no allergic reactions. Now imagine a world where China and Russia didn’t exist, a world where capitalism reigned supreme, and 7 billion had to receive the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. This would make the Holocaust look like a book for children – and I mean that in the literal sense, not invoking Goodwin’s Law (just make the calculations).
Penicillin is a completely different case: it was the only game in town when it came out, and the flu killed a lot more than the antibiotic did. Flu was basically a death sentence to a child before penicillin was discovered, and was a serious threat even to an adult. Besides, Penicillin is a cure, not a vaccine – completely different scenarios, as the person with a flu lives in a different risk-reward system than a person who may or may not ever get COVID-19.
Vaccines that kill one in 100,000 patients do exist (e.g. yellow fever, which is a live virus vaccine) – but they are for exotic and much deadlier diseases, so a much lower number of people are inoculated with it and the risk is well worth it. To release such an expensive and risky vaccine when there are cheaper and safer options is irresponsible on the part of the laboratories, in my opinion.

Posted by: vk | Dec 27 2020 16:25 utc | 8

Interesting news coming out of my homeland of Afghanistan. A large Chinese terror ring has been discovered, I wonder if you guys will cover this news.
Detention of 10 Chinese spies in Afghanistan leaves Beijing red-faced
https://in.news.yahoo.com/detention-10-chinese-spies-afghanistan-040901520.html
Apologise, Afghanistan tells China after busting its espionage cell in Kabul
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/chinese-espionage-ring-in-afghanistan-busted-10-spies-detained/story-qyPsZY1wUoD2flp9UIYMrK.html
Pakistan, China’s espionage operations exposed through presence of Chinese spies in Afghanistan
https://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-pakistan-china-s-espionage-operations-exposed-through-presence-of-chinese-spies-in-afghanistan-2863042

Posted by: Mikey | Dec 27 2020 16:43 utc | 9

@2 librul
No disagreement with any of the dynamics you report, but one qualification: nothing about any of these dynamics is hard-wired. People change, continuously – even if they harden in their ways, that’s simply the path they’re following during that process. But it’s all change, and this applies to all sentient beings, including animals (whom we often consider locked into hard-wired “instincts”).
Everything about people is up for grabs. Everything can be changed. Therefore, never give up on people. If you hit a trigger, perhaps back off a little and figure a different way to approach it.
I have a redneck friend whom I often query on political matters to find out what his circle of mainstream view is currently holding (we’re also friends, and talk for enjoyment). Lots of times I hit knee-jerk responses that are simply inaccurate to the reality under discussion.
But I’m discovering that it is possible to wear people down, and warp them to your view. That’s how they got the views in the first place that they hold already. The difference is that, as you well know, when I change him to my view, the unfolding of subsequent events will parse truly, and he’ll be holding an intelligent view – i.e. one that comes from reality and can adapt as reality changes.
Don’t give up on people. All change is possible – and in the indoctrinators as well as the indoctrinated.

Posted by: Grieved | Dec 27 2020 16:47 utc | 10

Amongst the responses to the above linked thread, one especially awaken:

They are a mafia that moves millions. They are lining up with this and keeping up the pantomime until they make the socioeconomic changes they have prepared.

https://twitter.com/jmvillarroya/status/1343221163959443456
This is what the Great Reset is all about.
In Spain the so called “recovery funds” which were sold as coming with unconditionality, ar not so, and wear inlcuded the request from Germany on public system pension reform, to include in the final calculation of the objectiv e pension resultant, the last 35 years of labor, instead of the last 25 which were agreed by the representatives of the people in th Pacts of Toledo, which translates into lose of severeignty, another disguise for the “men in Black” which were sent ot Greece, and which adds to the initial suspicions on Germany claimming being onto a vaccine at the first months of the pandemic…
What could not be achieved through the outcome of the 2008 crisis because of a huge contestation in the streets which gave place to the 15M movement of indignados, and the birth of a new political force now in the coalition of government, will be achieved through the aftermath of this suspicious pandemic.
Take into account what would happen after resurge of the left through Unidas Podemos, and its scratching of a bit of power, in minority in the coalition of government, if during their tenure what of welfare state remains in Spain is being erased on the alibi of receiving the “recovery funds”. What of the resurge of the left remains will be wiped out from the face of Earth, for ages, as it is highly likely the plan. In fact. conversatrions amongst the people revolve more about how much these new officials are earning, or whether they have left the working class and live already as privileged, than in the so much the old Borbon has robbed along with the far-righ of always in power until few motnhs ago. In the middle of all this, letters to the king by high ranking retired military claiming for taking over have been sent, without any repercusion on their pensions and grades…Also nazi salutes nad chnats were filmed and heard in a known naval military academy without having hearing about any expulsion from the army in an allegedly “European democratic” country…
We did not enter NATO for this, nor have US bases on Spain so that Pompeo goes over there giving away former colonial Spanish territory with its right for self-determionation recognized by the UN to Marocco on reward that satrapy recognizing Israel….
According to Daniel Estulin, Ciudadanos, allegedly a center-right party, but really close to far-right Spanish Falange Española y de la Jons, ultra-right traditionalist catholic, similar in their economic program to Macron´s En Marche, are funded by the German secret service…They were demosntrating in Plaza de Colón, in the middle of the pandemic ( and thus boicotting the government initial efforts to contain it..) along with far-right pro-Trump VOX, and far-right of always, heirs of fascist Franco´s dictatorship who passed as officials into “democratic” system without continuity solution Partido Popular ( the one who drove us into Iraq War based on lies on WMD and a terrorist attack by ISIS conveniently blamed by them on ETA, and famous for their multiple corruption cases on trial right now…)
Thus, between the already self-degraded far-right by their multiple corruption cases, and the continuous undermined efforts by the mild-left governmet to save some part of the population from the depauperization resulting from this pandemic, one is to guess that the only force which will get untouched after all this ends, is a new one which have never governed and which was previously on the verge of dissapearance for its few support amongst the population, as its program differ quite few from the right wing of always, Ciudadanos, the liberal option wished by Brussels, Berlin, and the one in the Elysée…
This is the way TPTB, i. e. the serfs of the corporate world, manage to curve the popular will through shenanigans to place minoritary options in power, as happens in the countries where this is being done through color revolutions…This is done here also into the EU, through more twisted and not so obvious social, and of other kind, engineering…
In fact, with or without pandemic, in the not so distant future, every election will be rigged, as everything will be difgital, managed by the giants of Big Data, and the citizenry will have zer control over the vote counting…or whatever, for that matter…
https://twitter.com/wef/status/1342570826516860932

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 27 2020 16:57 utc | 11

@ Posted by: Mikey | Dec 27 2020 16:43 utc | 9
Espionage is not terrorism.
But yes, there is a dispute between Russia and China for supremacy over Afghanistan, given its obvious geographic importance. That’s why Russia doesn’t mind the USA staying there in a reduced state – adding a third party to board muddles the game in favor of the weaker part (which is Russia).
–//–
@ Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 27 2020 16:57 utc | 11
I don’t think there’s a worldwide conspiracy on the pandemic. Capitalism tends to try to centralize its wealth in order to try to revolutionize the productive forces when in crisis. That’s its inertial tendency.
My guess is the peoples of the First World are tending to degenerate into these kinds of conspiracy theories because, deep down, they still want to believe the West is still in control. They don’t want to accept a future world where, e.g. China is the hegemonic power. They still want to believe they are in the center of the world, that they are still part (albeit a very minor, disposable part) of something greater than themselves. They prefer to live a Western dystopia than in a Chinese paradise. You know, the good ol’ “better rule in Hell than serve in Heaven”.

Posted by: vk | Dec 27 2020 17:05 utc | 12

@Posted by: Mikey | Dec 27 2020 16:43 utc | 9
Such a news, Mikey from Afghanistan ( do not tell me, you were named so by your parents in remebrance of famous venerated ole Afghany saint, San Mikey from Down Bamiyan…)nobody would find strange that there would be Chinese spies in a bordering country buried into instability and mainly took over by heavily armed fanatics, where war lords run the rest, after being invaded by their declared sworn enemies since decades ago, and where a flourishing drug business is currently in place…
One would guess that only out of memories of the Bristish impossed Opium Wars on China, the Chinese will try to collect intelligence on what happens in such dangerously out of control country, unless for the part in control of the US PMC whose usual record we have been able to test after some of them came into focus, with photos and all tha, by Trump´s last presidential pardon…
It would be right on the part of the Chinese to suspect that this unstable country where the alleged government controls but a tiny part of territory, would be used as platform to destabilize bordering parts of China or introduce “freedom fighters”, as happened in Syria, Lybia, Nagorno Karabagh…Every functioning country would be sending in spies, as much as it can…as part of its security strategy…

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 27 2020 17:14 utc | 13

Cuba:
“In a few hours, the operation of the ‘artists’ was deactivated without anyone suffering so much as a scratch. But from this starting point, we’ve seen another rerun of an old movie: the Chargé d’Affaires of the United States Embassy in Havana using his personal auto to transport these ‘artists,’ while high-level functionaries of the State Department call these local employees of the soft-coup apparatus their colleagues. Some of those involved made a display of their liking for Donald Trump, whom they proclaim as their president, and of receiving financing from the U.S., federal government funds intended for the ‘promotion of democracy’.”

Posted by: Maracatu | Dec 27 2020 17:18 utc | 14

To release such an expensive and risky vaccine when there are cheaper and safer options is irresponsible on the part of the laboratories, in my opinion.

@Posted by: vk | Dec 27 2020 16:25 utc | 8
I guess you were trying to mean “irresponsible on the part of the governments”, as responsability and even ethics by Big Pharma has long ago fallen under questioning…
We recall the last Tamuflu-Avian Flu scam…

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 27 2020 17:23 utc | 15

Vk – 1 in 100,000 is incredibly good. Be assured that any vaccine that would potentially be effective against this virus would have at least this level of issue. That we don’t know the complications rate of the Russian or Chinese vaccines does not mean that the rates are zero!
As to your argument, you don’t see the benefit of vaccinating where potentially millions of people could die and the economies be completely wrecked? What the hell?

Posted by: Caliman | Dec 27 2020 17:33 utc | 16

@ Mikey | Dec 27 2020 16:43 utc | 9
Theose links probably just go to show the US still has plenty of leverage and baksheesh to spread around inside Afghanistan to control/direct local officials’ actions,
and order the round-up a bunch of random Chinese nationals to them into “The Usual Suspects’, so that the US mockingbird media assets can generate lame attempts at scary attention-grabbing headlines, in line with US’s currently designated ‘Enemy Country du Jour’ foreign policy targets.
Fits the pattern.

Posted by: gm | Dec 27 2020 17:37 utc | 17

Caliman @ 17
No allergic reactions from Sputnik V

Posted by: arby | Dec 27 2020 18:10 utc | 18

thanks b!
i would like to 2nd @10 grieved pov as well…. @ 3 caliman… that sounds about right!

Posted by: james | Dec 27 2020 18:38 utc | 19

RE the Nashville, TN, Exploding RV Terror Attack in which Petula Clark’s Downtown was blaring… Thank you 2020 for keeping it a WTF year until the very end.

Posted by: gottlieb | Dec 27 2020 18:53 utc | 20

@librul #2
I think you overegg your view.
A significant part of the “me too” views these days is “rice bowl religion” – that is, belief maintained because the holder think they have to, in order to continue the economic prosperity.
Another significant part comes from the pervasiveness of mainstream media – both traditional and social media.

Posted by: c1ue | Dec 27 2020 18:53 utc | 21

Mr. M:
The chief goal of Brexit, namely keeping foreigners out of UK has been achieved.
West Indians, organized in viscious violent gangs, the Deobandi and other Sunni extremist sects to which so many Pakistanis belong, the deeply prejudiced Muslim Bengalis, and the job-stealing Poles are all perceived as threats by the native English, Irish, Welsh, and Scotch populations.
Significantly, the most successful minorities have been Hindus, Sikhs, Shia Iranins, and Nigerians. There is prejudice agianst them as well but they have not been a threat to the English Culture.

Posted by: Fyi | Dec 27 2020 18:58 utc | 22

Mr. H Schmatz
In Greece, in Spain, and in Italy the accelerated loss of sovereignty to ECB, a.k.a. Germany, has to do with the absence of mental fortitude among the population.
All 3 should have left the Eurozone in 2008 and started printing drachmas, pesos, and liras on the very hard road to recovery. But the population would have revolted and chosen servantship to EU than mastership in their own country.
Like Stalin said: “Cadres decide everything.”

Posted by: Fyi | Dec 27 2020 19:06 utc | 23

Mr. gm
After Iranians created the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Americans betrayed them and turned Afghanistan into their sandbox for playing at the game of nation-building.
They also brought in their fellow Christians from NATO. I suspect that they thought they could create a NATO fortress in Central Asia against Iran, against China, and against Russia.
They failed, for the most part, due to their own Hubris.
Yes, they still have monetary leverage on their local pederast warlords and the cunning tribal Pakhtoon pesudo-government. But they lack the ability to exercise Legitimate Authority in Afghanistan: how can enemies of Islam rule?

Posted by: Fyi | Dec 27 2020 19:18 utc | 24

Two interesting interviews from Germany.
(1) In this interview with ZDF, Prof. Wolf-Dieter Ludwig, who is the head of the drug commission of physician in Germany, considers the development of Covid vaccines as a positive thing but finds faults with politicians, especially German health minister Spahn, for putting political pressure on the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to accelerate the approval of vaccines, especially the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Prof. Ludwig also belongs to EMA management board. Most importantly, when asked whether he’d take the vaccine, his response was NO. That’s because he feels that we hardly know anything about its long term adverse effects . https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/corona-impfstoff-zulassung-kritik-ludwig-100.html
(2) Toxicologist Prof. Hockertz unequivocally states that for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine there exist hardly any preclinical toxicological and pharmacological data (phases 1 and 2) . He points out that even in cases of orphan drugs, the regulation allows a telescoping of the Phase 3 clinical study, but NEVER of the preclinical studies. In his words, the way Phases 1 and 2 have been skipped is criminal in nature. At the very end of the interview (which is in German), he quotes the response from Pfizer as “No data available” on his request for toxicological and pharmaceutical data from preclinical studies!!
He also notes that recently Swissmedic (national authorization and supervisory authority for drugs and medical products in Switzerland) has concluded that the Pfizer vaccine submission lacks evidence of safety, efficacy and quality! Swissmedic is independent of EMA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=iiTrttV7Q8A&feature=youtu.be
Prof. Hockertz is a past director of institute for experimental toxicology and clinical toxicology at University of Hamburg Eppendorf. And before that he was a member of the directorate of Fraunhofer Institutes for Toxicology and Environmental Medicine in Hannover.
I am not saying that the vaccine is dangerous – I have no data to support that conclusion. But there is no data to support that the vaccine is safe either.

Posted by: Nathan Mulcahy | Dec 27 2020 19:44 utc | 25

@vk
You, as usually, in your apparently well informed kinda Marxist narrative, insert always some of disinfo which makes me suspect about your real golas here.
You are stating that the Pfizer vaccine was admnistered only to a few VIPs…
Which VIPS are those? Do not be you referring to Pence? He could well have been inoculated with phisiologic solution as he is reincident, like that time when he transported empty aid boxes in the past for another photo op. Another example, please?
They are inoculating first super elders, in their last 80s and 90s in the nursing homes, mainly private, young nurses and nursing home employees working there…which points at that thosve employees probably would be fired if they do not agree on being vaccinated
They have taken the caution to not inoculate first the people between 50 and 60 which are those who most could suffer a serious adverse effect, by the possible presence of preconditions, in fact the most prejudiced by Covid-19 infection….
In fact, not even in Russia there are officials vaccinated yet, and that even with the less harmful Russian vaccine….
In the press some are displaying a huge effort naming this event a “estelar moment for humanity”…
The people, over whom all the sticks fall, have not but producing memes due the current histeria displayed on TV and MSM…
https://twitter.com/i/status/1342968855598133250

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 27 2020 20:04 utc | 26

librul @2, Thanks.

Posted by: spudski | Dec 27 2020 20:06 utc | 27

Joke of the day:
How it started: → How it’s going:
Westerners should not open their mouths on subjects they can’t comprehend. That’s the Christmas message for the year.
–//–
@ Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 27 2020 20:04 utc | 27
Yes, I was referring to Pence, Pelosi et caterva. I even saw the videos.
The 90-year-old lady who was vaccinated with a Pfizer was British (to symbolize patient one).
I’m not the one to judge how the Russians will vaccinate themselves. But they’re already being vaccinated, albeit not en masse.
If memory serves me right, China has already vaccinated 50 million people (mostly the ones coming from abroad, I think). That’s not mass vaccination by Chinese standards, of course, but it already equals to some five or six random Western European countries combined.

Posted by: vk | Dec 27 2020 20:11 utc | 28

@Posted by: vk | Dec 27 2020 20:11 utc | 29
And do you tell me you really swallow that both Pence and Pelosi have been really innouclated with an experimental real mRNA vaccine including inactivated SARSCov-2?
Then, you are not Marxist but a charlatán, probably owning a Marxist desk at CIA…

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 27 2020 20:23 utc | 29

@Posted by: Fyi | Dec 27 2020 19:06 utc | 24
And in case we could have abandoned the EU, what we would have done with US bases on our soil?
Ask the US Amercians to leave and witness how they resit like cat tummy up even under continuous enemy fire?
You forget we are not waiting for the Imam of the Well coming, are not fond on martyrdom and have you noticed how Pompeo pee over us all by giving away former colonial Spanish posession with self-determination right recognized by the UN, then his Moroccan satrapa calims Spanish North African outposts of Ceuta and Melilla and we just open the umbrella as if it was raining?
BTW, that the intend of taken over of those North African outposts by Morocco, auspiced by Pompeo, could well have most to do with the fact that Russian ships in their way through the Mediterranean use to stop there for refuelling and resting, as they have done for ages under ancient courtesy of sea…This is an intedn of cutting off sea routes for Russian, Iranian and Chinese ships..

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 27 2020 20:33 utc | 30

Many of you are not scared of what could be planned further down the line.
Eugenics.
Possibly built into the Oxford-AstraZenecka vaccine, (and the Pfizer vaccine is suspected of containing a possible “sterilizing” molecule as well.)
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2020/12/investigative-series/developers-of-oxford-astrazeneca-vaccine-tied-to-uk-eugenics-movement/
It is clear that as one vaccine is only the start of the campaign, and a second is necessary as a booster (for Pfizer and probably for the O-AZeneca), that other injections are planned for later dates. BUT once the first is administered then others can easily contain additional elements that were not part of the primary vaccines – without anyone questioning the constituents.
Note that this article is mainly concerned with the people involved rather than the vaccines themselves. (It fits in with the “reset”, which also contains other elements: Massive cyber-attack, a “major killer” plague which kills off surplus population, technical implants into the survivors brains etc).
A quote or two;
There is also the added fact that a host of safety issues have come to surround the vaccine. Recently, on November 21, a forty-year-old participant in AstraZeneca’s clinical trial who lives in India sent a legal notice to the Serum Institute of India alleging that the vaccine caused him to develop acute neuroencephalopathy, or brain damage. In the notice, the participant said he “must be compensated, in the least, for all the sufferings that he and his family have undergone and are likely to undergo in the future.”
In response, the Serum Institute claimed the participant’s medical complications are unrelated to the vaccine trial and said it would take “legal action” against the brain-damaged participant for maligning the company’s reputation, seeking damages in excess of $13 million. “This is the first time I have ever heard of a sponsor threatening a trial participant,” Amar Jesani, editor of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, said of the incident. The Serum Institute has received at least $18.6 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and has a deal with AstraZeneca to manufacture a billion doses of the vaccine.
Bill Gates has had several dealings (experiments) in African countries and this can explain why Nigeria refused all new “tests” even when offered lots of money. They have had enough bad experiences already.
AstraZeneca is likely to disproportionately affect poor communities, especially communities of color in any country incuding the US and the EU..

Posted by: Stonebird | Dec 27 2020 21:02 utc | 31

librul @ 2
Thanks Librul. Very insightful and accurate framing and description. Caitlin Johnstone also lays out the same perspective but yours stands alone as impressive.
Hope we’re in the same herd! LOL!

Posted by: migueljose | Dec 27 2020 21:04 utc | 32

I insist, in the rarity in this forum on nobody comenting anything on the Nashville strange event…
There are videos circulating showing how the explosion took place on another different point from where the RV was stationed…
Now there is a bomb menace in the Empire State Building…
A new 9/11 could be in the making and you say nothing…unless you are not surprised at all with all those letters advising Trump to stablish martial law and the military to take over and allied networks informing you by other means in advance…

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 27 2020 21:05 utc | 33

The Role of Rhetoric, “China amends national defense law, shows country’s sense of global justice”, is rather prominent in this short announcement of the changes made, which while few in number are far reaching. Consider the verbiage in the opening paragraph:
“After the approval of China’s new amendment to the country’s national defense law, China is expected to make itself heard more on global justice in addition to its own, and will play a unique role in safeguarding world peace at a time when ***evil forces*** are ravaging it, Chinese experts said on Sunday.”
And just who/what comprise those forces? A few paragraphs down page we get an answer:
“With the egoistic hegemonies conspiring and making actions and an increased existence of terrorism, secessionism and nationalism, today’s world is not peaceful and needs China to play a unique role in making sound justice.”
Note the evil forces are plural and are thus the Outlaw US Empire and its vassals, the Empire having recently been deeply involved in promoting the terrorism in Hong Kong along with the UK, plus the secessionism and nationalism in both Hong Kong and Taiwan. An expert elaborates:
“The new amendment puts stress on embodying the sense of justice of China’s national defense, which indicates that China will make itself heard in terms of global justice, particularly in opposing acts of invasion and expansion by regional and global hegemonies, in addition to safeguarding China’s own sovereignty, security and development interests, Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Sunday….
“It has become necessary for China to boost its national defense capabilities, including the capabilities to use them overseas for just causes, Song said, noting that this will enable China to shoulder its necessary responsibility in regional and global security.”
So, China wants to be able to project power overseas, but not in an Imperialistic manner like the Outlaw US Empire but rather to thwart its unjust actions. And this change isn’t just for China’s military but also for its entire society:
“The revised national defense law also embodies the concept that everyone should be involved in national defense, the CMC official said.
“All national organizations, armed forces, political parties [note the plural], civil groups, enterprises, social organizations and other organizations should support and take part in the development of national defense, fulfill national defense duties and carry out national defense missions according to the law, the official said, noting that all citizens should enhance their ideas in national defense and improve their national defense skills.” [My Emphasis Throughout]
Arguably, the anti-epidemic forces now amassed by China are part of the overall national security forces with China’s government wanting its people to think of their participation in that manner since Xi did announce the anti-virus fight as a People’s War. You can bet that joint negotiations between China and Russia occurred over this somewhat radical change (overseas force projection) and that they’re in agreement on their particular roles relative to the defense of their mutual interests. These changes will pose a challenge for Biden as the abilities of the Outlaw US Empire weaken daily.

Posted by: karlof1 | Dec 27 2020 21:21 utc | 34

Here’s what Israel is doing in Palestine !!
It’s graphic. Don’t watch unless you want to face reality
https://www.facebook.com/eyeonpalestine.offical/videos/what-really-happens-in-palestine-must-watch/440401016028647/
The new U.K. masters.
Better than the eu masters ?

Posted by: Mark2 | Dec 27 2020 21:41 utc | 35

Dog’s chosen people.

Posted by: Nathan Mulcahy | Dec 27 2020 21:50 utc | 36

@35 Cont’d–
“China surpassing US in 2028 is faint praise”, or so says a UK-based stink tank. The editorial’s ultimate reply in the final paragraph tells the reader why it’s seen as “faint praise”:
“Let the British think tank play with the prediction that China will overtake the US in terms of its economy in 2028, no matter what its motives are. We should not get lost with meaningless comparisons. We should be firm in every step we take.”
The content between those two paragraphs tells us why:
“No matter whether this tipping point [China’s GDP bests USA’s] comes or not, China has the ability to safeguard its national security, resist US coercion calmly, and will insist on walking its own path. Even when the tipping point arrives, China will be in a strategically passive position for a long time. The US will continue to woo its allies to contain China, and may even heap more pressure on China.
“Especially during the 2020s when China strives to develop its economy, the US is bound to invest a lot of energy into obstructing this process. Jeopardizing China’s development will become an inherent US strategy in the future, which will add to the cost of China’s development.”
Given the way GDP’s determined, IMO China has already surpassed the Outlaw US Empire in terms of genuine total GDP, and that China’s will continue to grow while the Empire’s continues to shrink. Of the editor’s admonishments, besides avoiding a hot war IMO these are the most important:
“We should not easily believe China’s economic growth will be smooth and underestimate the economic risks. China has a tough road ahead to walk if it wants to transform into a quality-centered economy. For instance, it is never easy to make technological breakthroughs. We should have the courage to face setbacks but remain resolute.”
The editor also says,
“As long as China and the US remain peaceful and do not go into a cold war, given China’s development potential, China’s economic development will continue to grow faster than that of the US for a long time in the future. That is what US right-wing elites fear the most.”
Well, all US elites are right-wing, and the Empire’s already behind China regarding genuine total GDP; and we can assess Trump’s attempt to start a Cold War with China as a failure primarily due to geoeconomic realities. And it’s not just China that poses a challenge to the Outlaw US Empire’s overall Geopolitical position. But the really big bugaboo for the Empire’s elites is the need to undo all the damage they’ve caused to the USA’s economic strength, for they are completely blind to that reality which is the genuine cause of the USA’s decline over the past 50 years.

Posted by: karlof1 | Dec 27 2020 21:51 utc | 37

Bernie Sanders pleads with Trump to sign the 5,600 page Bill that includes a page or two to give $600 to every USAian.
Silence when Pelosi was asked to increase it to $2000. No pressure on Pelosi.
Not a squeak on the #forcethevote for Medicare for all – no plea to the squad.
Note what he says: “sign this one today and we can pass more on Tuesday”. REALLY??? Pelosi and Mitch have made a deal to go to $2000? BS.
The D’s are a clown cart, driven by a donkey and the Repugnants are just vile rsoles.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Dec 27 2020 22:02 utc | 38

Mr. H.Schmatz
In regards to your question, those countries ought to have modeled themselves after the Islamic Republic of Iran and gone their own way.
But they do not have the Will to Power; they prefer to remain, literally, servants of the rich Northern Americans and Europeans.
All the while their intellectuals regurgitate the obsolete doctrines of Marx or the anti-clecarism of the Enlightenment.
There are only 2 types of countries, Masters or Servants. Iran and Iranians chose not to be servants; by the Grace of Imam of Age.

Posted by: Fyi | Dec 27 2020 22:02 utc | 39

Posted by: Caliman | Dec 27 2020 15:36 utc | 3
Yup, having the right to vote between a forced choice of corpocratic puppets with different theatrics is really democratic. (sarcasm)
At what time when Yanks’ “Rights and Freedoms” weren’t a hypocritical joke?

Posted by: J W | Dec 27 2020 22:09 utc | 40

Here’s some more info about another small game-changing action that will occur in early 2021–the opening of a rail line from Istanbul through Iran and onto Pakistan. And with the rail line we also have the reentry of the ECO–Economic Cooperation Organization–which was the initial Regional Cooperation for Development formed in 1964 and renamed in 1985. Here’s a map of its members. Do note how it contains CIS, SCO and CSTO members. Yet another sign of Eurasia’s rapid integration. The organization’s primary development guide is ECO Vision 2025, with its primary statement:
“ECO will pave the way to a territory of integrated and sustainable economies as well as free trade area achieved by highly educated societies and improved governance through enhanced cooperation.”
Lofty goals, certainly. I believe this is the only trade organization Turkmenistan is involved with.

Posted by: karlof1 | Dec 27 2020 22:38 utc | 41

@Posted by: Fyi | Dec 27 2020 22:02 utc | 40
Yeah, you are right, but you are almost double of people there, courageous, and moreover proud, you never stopped being Persians.
All in all, you also had to suffer coups d´etat and long years of fascist dictatorship, but, could it be that you counted with the unestimable help of other foreign actors in your islamic revolution?
We, Spanish people, never could count with any foreign help, except that provided by the USSR during Spanish Civil War…Forign powers always have allied to keep us at low level, especially the UK and France, and now Germany…
What you call Imam of Age is Iman Mahdi? During my visit to Iran he was referred by our guide as Imam of the Well…

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 27 2020 22:43 utc | 42

In a day like today, 12/27/1917, the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of all Russias (the highest legislative body of the RSFSR) decrees the nationalization of the banks.
https://twitter.com/ComisionOctubre/status/1343256850406510592
That was when decrees were not for reducing workers wages or pensions or people´s rights…
Felices Fiestas..
https://twitter.com/ComisionOctubre/status/1342117115034263552

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 27 2020 23:15 utc | 43

One of the leading Russian political scientists in his recent article stated that in fact, Russia was parting with any illusions about relations with the West. Well, it is quite a natural outcome of the outgoing year, given the behavior of “Western partners”. Blind hatred, streams of endless lies and slander, frankly clownish amateur stagings like “Navalny’s poisoning”, a non-stop conveyor of illegitimate unilateral discriminatory measures (they call them sanctions), insane and unacceptable rhetoric of Western officials… Well, sooner or later any patience comes to an end.

Posted by: alaff | Dec 27 2020 23:20 utc | 44

@8 You do realize that antibiotics do not work on viruses, which are not bacteria, nor alive? Also, you do realize that 1.5/100 is many orders of magnitude larger than 1/100,000, right?
Let’s maybe do elementary school maths and sciences before opining on these things? There are plenty of nefarious goings on in the world these days, but we can discuss those without making basic math and biology errors.

Posted by: Mataman | Dec 27 2020 23:23 utc | 45

“Estelar moments of humanity” were these…Estlear things happening in Christmas..

December 25-30, 1920-2020: centenary of the XVIII Congress of the SFIO (French Section of the Workers’ International) in which it is decided by a large majority to found the French Communist Party. Protagonist of the resistance to the Nazis, it won the first elections after WWII.
The battle for the ‘Libération’ of Paris begins in August 1944 with a general strike decreed by the French Communist Party.

https://twitter.com/ComisionOctubre/status/1342438041475051520
This is why, immediately, after they won the war, a new war was declared on the working people, and thus on the USSR which acted as lighthouse for all European communists…..

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 27 2020 23:24 utc | 46

So what happened to change the brevity situation so dramatically? It reminds me of the Democrats suddenly realizing they needed to act and choosing Biden. Did some powerful people start paying attention suddenly or what?

Posted by: Hickory | Dec 27 2020 23:24 utc | 47

Pretty decent update on the Nashville AT&T Communications bombing:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/nashville-bombing-suspect-named-feds-visit-real-estate-office-bomb-squad-investigates-box

The AT&T building on 2nd Avenue suffered significant damage in the blast. That facility includes connection points for regional internet services as well as local wireless, internet and video. In the hours that followed the explosion, our local service remained intact through temporary battery power. Unfortunately, a combination of the explosion and resulting water and fire damage took out a number of backup power generators intended to provide power to the batteries. That led to service disruptions across parts of Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama. More than 48 hours later, some customers are still experiencing outages. We know it is frustrating and we apologize for the inconvenience. We also thank you for your understanding. -AT&T statement

Wake me up when the MSM gives the *explanation* how/why the alleged 63yr old ‘lone bomber’ knew *exactly* the location to park [allegedly] his RV bomb to take out AT&T internet services for big chunks of *4-5* US States…

Posted by: gm | Dec 27 2020 23:27 utc | 48

Last new revelations by Hassan Nasrallah in an interview with Al Mayadeen…
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah reveals to Al Mayadeen: “Bin Salman proposed during his visit to Washington, the matter of assassinating me”

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 27 2020 23:37 utc | 49

gm @49–
A long ago friend worked for AT&T, and for awhile I thought he might be the bomber taking out his decades of frustrations working for that corporation since he sorta fit the profile. Thankfully, it wasn’t him, although I’m certain his frustrations with AT&T were shared by many of its employees. Do you really need BigLie Media to tell you how the dude knew where to place his explosives for maximum effect? IMO, it’s surprising more such revenge attacks don’t happen, especially against executives, not infrastructure.

Posted by: karlof1 | Dec 27 2020 23:40 utc | 50

Estimado Sr. H.Schmatz
Verdade!
Espana he abrazado el hedonismo despues que Franco.
No se puede luchar contra El Norte con hedonismo.

Posted by: Fyi | Dec 27 2020 23:46 utc | 51

Posted by: Mikey | Dec 27 2020 16:43 utc | 9

Interesting news coming out of my homeland of Afghanistan. A large Chinese terror ring has been discovered, I wonder if you guys will cover this news.

Interesting news coming out of your homeland of _India_ more likely, seeing that most of those reports appear in Indian news sources with a less than stellar reputation for accurate reporting.
I’d wait a few weeks for this one to transform into its true shape.
I’ve noticed in the past 24 hours this little drama has already added a Thai national to the cast of characters… Probably for “Diversity”. And the “spy ring” is now mutating into a “terror ring”.

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Dec 28 2020 0:07 utc | 52

Mataman @46
Antibiotics are a necessary part of treatment when a virus attacks the immune system allowing bacterial infection such as pneumonia. Note also that allergic reaction to antibiotics is a contra-indication of safe use of a vaccine. So the distinction is blurred.

Posted by: norecovery | Dec 28 2020 0:08 utc | 53

Mikey@9 Thanks for the links. Do you have any evidence that ‘terror’ rather than simple information gathering was involved?
This is an excellent article about Afghanistan by an Afghan, Mustafa Ariaie :
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2020/12/26/americas-longest-war-an-afghans-perspective/
I didn’t realise how many of those running Afghan for the Empire were actually classmates, chosen by the US, at the American University of Beirut.
H.Schmatz : many members of the international working class, including people from all over Europe and America- some of whom I have met, actually did travel to Spain and fought for the Republic during the Civil War. You are right in saying that the “democracies” in Europe allowed and encouraged the fascist powers to make Franco’s victory inevitable but don’t blame the people of those countries-Spain saw a rallying of anti-fascists around the Republic.
An interesting aspect of Spanish history lay in the failure of the ‘antifascist’ United Nations to turn their attention to Franco, who had sent troops to fight on the Eastern Front. The US feared the popularity of communist parties and saw not only Franco and Salazar but the defeated fascists too as vital allies in the fight against the working class.

Posted by: bevin | Dec 28 2020 0:11 utc | 54

I was surprised in the Nashville incident that I never heard the word terrorist right from the get go.
I guess that is old hat now.

Posted by: arby | Dec 28 2020 0:12 utc | 55

@ karlof1 | Dec 27 2020 23:40 utc | 51
Meh… my BS detector is buzzing loudly at this point.
Smells a LOT like a variant of the Stephen Paddock/Las Vegas 2017 script …
Apparently, according to what the mockingbird MSM has put out thus far, the FBI-fingered, 63 yr old “lone-bomber” was some kind of hikikomori who lived with his parents for many years, and *never* had been employed by at&t, but did contract computer technician work for a real estate agency. Maybe they will soon *adjust* that story(?).
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2021/12/27/heres-what-we-know-about-anthony-warner-quinn-the-person-of-interest-in-the-nashville-bombing/?sh=66bc5ff76d0c
https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending/who-was-anthony-quinn-warner-nashville-bomber-feds-say-died-christmas-morning-blast/YV7DPMIBNRFXJC537VYQFZBNXE/

Posted by: gm | Dec 28 2020 0:22 utc | 56

I found this article interesting as well as the quote at the beginning.
Why Russia Saved the United States

Posted by: arby | Dec 28 2020 0:24 utc | 57

Lavrov tells Santa via the Dialogue for the Future Forum why Western nations should be on the Naughty List. Here’s one of many possible excerpts:
“There are many bodies around the world that function and achieve their goals showing full respect for the UN Charter. Among them are all bodies within the CIS space: the CIS itself, the CSTO, the Eurasian Economic Union and the SCO. It should be remembered that 10 or so years ago, after the 2008 crisis, the G20 began to meet regularly, because the Western G7 realised its inability to rule the world and set the rules in the economy and finance on its own. It used to be the prerogative of the group of seven nations, and everyone else tacitly accepted its primacy. Now with the G20 in place, the G7 is only one of many groups. The second group is BRICS (Russia, Brazil, India, China and South Africa). A number of other G20 members think like the BRICS nations and want the global economic and financial system to become more democratic.
“To put it bluntly, they want it to become democratic, because at the moment it is not democratic at all. Things that are happening with the abuse of the role of the dollar are of concern not only to the countries on which the United States is imposing illegal sanctions, thus distorting its role as an issuer of one of the main currencies, but other countries as well. Not only Russia, China, Iran, and the SCO member states want to switch to mechanisms that will rely on national currencies in trade and investment settlements. Europe is beginning to ponder, especially given the fairly strong position of the euro, moving away from dependence on the dollar.”
On this page, I’ve written that the Outlaw US Empire must change its ways domestically and internationally, and Lavrov’s presentation yet again provides many reasons why it must. Twenty-three days remain until the known War Criminal and manifestly corrupt Joe Biden is made POTUS; so, things are likely to worsen on all fronts. In today’s political cartoon, the masked donkey was selling unmasked elephants T-Shirts emblazoned with RESIST!–an excellent reference to Seuss’s Sneetches.
Closing out today by linking to “The Ever Fonky Low Down’s Libretto, where you’ll immediately be confronted by Mr. Game. Follow his jive to learn why I think this bit of musical construction powerful and educational. I’ll leave the last word for Mr. Game:
“Leave everything up to us and we’ll make sure you never have to do anything except pay. And
while you hate each other and fight against a never-ending ‘them’, we will remain us. Who is
us? Haha, we are you when you get the opportunity to be.” [Emphasis Orihginal]

Posted by: karlof1 | Dec 28 2020 0:36 utc | 58

@Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 27 2020 23:37 utc | 50
Notice that, in the end of the interview, this smart guy, Nasrallah, is stating he will not take the US Covid-19 vaccine…..

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 28 2020 0:46 utc | 59

karlof1 #all on China
The other major element of China’s current success and likely future growth is the element of momentum. While the USA has arrived at this point, its primary manufacturing momentum mostly exhausted one or two decades ago IMO (at least).
The multitude of trade and infrastructure development agreements between China and its partners across the globe is truly astounding, The stark contrast between China relations and UKUSAi relations can be seen in the recent completion of the Gwadar Port to China transport corridor. This alone creates a much faster route between Africa and China and all of Eurasia. Compare with South America – no such USAi investment at any where near the same scale. Who is planning to construct another Panama Canal? China! because the bottleneck is a nuisance to maritime trade efficiencies. The USAi has lost its development imagination due to it being overwhelmed by its military and Empire imagination. The momentum within that sector only leads to death and poverty.
I expect the outlaw USAi empire to openly attempt to destroy the Pakistan Government via its links within the Army who have just been handed operational security over this corridor. I am impressed with the Islamabad to Tehran to Istanbul rail link. The sooner Afghanistan is liberated from the USAi, the better.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Dec 28 2020 0:59 utc | 60

arby #56

was surprised in the Nashville incident that I never heard the word terrorist right from the get go.

I guess the police agencies weren’t so lucky to discover an intact, unblemished Venezuelan or Iranian passport lying in the debris. So it goes. Maybe they will find a Che Guevara T shirt in his closet when they get to search it (in a month or two like Epsteins farm and Island).
My guess is that all future false flag events or even wildcat rogue bombers like this Nashville case will be seeded with a Cuban or Haitian passport as it is easier for Joe Biden to remember that country and there is a remote possibility of a USAi victory (in Haiti) if they choose to invade.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Dec 28 2020 1:09 utc | 61

@Posted by: bevin | Dec 28 2020 0:11 utc | 55
You are right about heroic people from International Brigades who came here to die for our cause, that was when in the USA, Europe and the world still there were Communists Parties, being a Communist had the honor of wearing the badge of having liberated Europe and the wordl fomr the nazi scum, well, what times those…
But, Orwell was not one of them, but an MI6 spy…
The national geography hosts, along with so many resistant buried in mass in the sideroads without any sign to locate them yet, many foreign fighters also buried in it, as it is the case of some Soviet pilots, whose graves locations are kept up to date by the locals through generations…You just have to go to one of those villages, ask for the Russian pilot´s grave, and somebody will take you there…

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 28 2020 1:10 utc | 62

I expect the outlaw USAi empire to openly attempt to destroy the Pakistan Government via its links within the Army who have just been handed operational security over this corridor. I am impressed with the Islamabad to Tehran to Istanbul rail link. The sooner Afghanistan is liberated from the USAi, the better.

@Posted by: uncle tungsten | Dec 28 2020 0:59 utc | 61
IMO the weakest link of that rail corridor in in the Istanbul end..Notice that is his interview with Al Mayadeen, Nasrallah is including Turkey as ally of the Axis of Evil, anyway, as if that was a secret for anbyody paying attention…
Of course, traitors in Pakistan there could be…

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 28 2020 1:18 utc | 63

URGENT News about the Covid-19 Vaccine
Dr Vernon Coleman
20 Dec 2020
Excerpt from transcript of 3:47 min video:

I have just seen a report from `ACIP Covid-19 Vaccine Work Group at CDC’ in the US. (ACIP stands for Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices.)
This is a report on anaphylaxis following m-RNA covid-19 vaccine receipt, and the report includes a table headed: ‘V-Safe Active Surveillance for Covid-19 Vaccine’.
The table lists the number of registrants with a recorded first dose by December 18th as 112,807 and the number of Health Impact Events as 3,150.
Health Impact Events are defined as individuals, `unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, required care from doctor or health professional’.
That is 2.79%, and it is within days of receiving the vaccine.
If 60 million people in the UK have the vaccine we can, therefore, expect 1.67 million people to be unable to work, perform normal daily activities and to require care from a doctor or health professional.
If six billion people worldwide have the vaccine, we can expect 167 million people to be `unable to work, perform normal daily activities, require care from doctor or heath professional’.
And that is just the short-term effect of the vaccine. We obviously don’t know what will happen in the months and years ahead.

ACIP COVID-19 Vaccines Work Group
Anaphylaxis Following m-RNA COVID-19
Vaccine Receipt
Thomas Clark, MD, MPH
December 19, 2020
[Slide 6]
V-safe Active Surveillance for COVID-19 Vaccines
I have just seen a report from `ACIP Covid-19 Vaccine Work Group at CDC’ in the US. (ACIP stands for Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices.)
This is a report on anaphylaxis following m-RNA covid-19 vaccine receipt, and the report includes a table headed: ‘V-Safe Active Surveillance for Covid-19 Vaccine’.
The table lists the number of registrants with a recorded first dose by December 18th as 112,807 and the number of Health Impact Events as 3,150.
Health Impact Events are defined as individuals, `unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, required care from doctor or health professional’.
That is 2.79%, and it is within days of receiving the vaccine.
If 60 million people in the UK have the vaccine we can, therefore, expect 1.67 million people to be unable to work, perform normal daily activities and to require care from a doctor or health professional.
If six billion people worldwide have the vaccine, we can expect 167 million people to be `unable to work, perform normal daily activities, require care from doctor or heath professional’.
And that is just the short-term effect of the vaccine. We obviously don’t know what will happen in the months and years ahead.
The link to the report is on my website. Just look for `Urgent Information about Covid-19 Vaccine’. (It has already been viewed by many thousands of visitors to this website. If the report disappears then I’m afraid that it has been `removed’ by forces outside my control.)

Posted by: pogohere | Dec 28 2020 1:23 utc | 64

Re: “I was surprised in the Nashville incident that I never heard the word terrorist right from the get go.
I guess that is old hat now.”
-arby | Dec 28 2020 0:12 utc | 56
‘Covid is the new Terrorist.’

Posted by: gm | Dec 28 2020 1:27 utc | 65

@Posted by: pogohere | Dec 28 2020 1:23 utc | 65
Thus, as the health systems are not currently overwhelmed by Covid-19 cases, these side effecte will come to overwhelm them instead..

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 28 2020 1:31 utc | 66

65 cont’d
The transcript of the video: Urgent News about the Covid-19 Vaccine’
from vid: URGENT News about the Covid-19 Vaccine
3:47 min
ACIP COVID-19 Vaccines Work Group
Anaphylaxis Following m-RNA COVID-19
Vaccine Receipt
Thomas Clark, MD, MPH
December 19, 2020
scroll down to Slide 6

Posted by: pogohere | Dec 28 2020 1:31 utc | 67

Mr. Bevin:
The link that you had posted on Afghanistan is quite accurate.
The author, almost certainly, is a Persian-speaking Shia Muslim.
In my opinion, Pakhtuns cannot rule Afghanistan any longer no matter how much US and Pakistan help them.
The current government of Afghanistan, still trying to create an “Afghan Nation” out of Pakhtuns (just like the late Mohammad Davoud Khan) lacks Islamic legitimacy and has alienated other ethnic groups.
The successor Talib government will also try to impose Pakhtun rule, without success as Iranians, Russians, and Chinese will oppose them (they also hate the Shia…)
The best course forward would be partition: Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan covering Pakhtun & Nuristan areas, and Islamic Republic of Khorasan for others.

Posted by: fyi | Dec 28 2020 1:34 utc | 68

@Posted by: uncle tungsten | Dec 28 2020 0:59 utc | 61
As you recall the construction of the Panama Canal, just past 20th December was the anniversary of the start of the works by the US…

12/20/1989. First notice of what the world would be like after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The US invades Panama. At least 4,000 dead, murdered in the street and in bombings of popular neighborhoods, at the hands of US criminals.

https://twitter.com/ComisionOctubre/status/1340650983353888768

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 28 2020 1:35 utc | 69

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 27 2020 21:05 utc | 34
Why no media circus over bombing in Nashville?
If you follow this sort of thing here, a regular occurrence, then this one comes off as domestic, likely a nut; and lacking any government/political attempts to exploit it, nobody is going to pay much attention unless they are affected directly.

Posted by: Bemildred | Dec 28 2020 1:39 utc | 70

I just read at ZH that Trump signed the legislation but told Congress to take out the pork and give individuals more money.
The quote
”
“I am signing this bill to restore unemployment benefits, stop evictions, provide rental assistance, add money for PPP, return our airline workers back to work, add substantially more money for vaccine distribution, and much more,” Trump said in a Sunday night statement.
”

Posted by: psychohistorian | Dec 28 2020 1:54 utc | 71

@ Posted by: arby | Dec 28 2020 0:12 utc | 56
Read somewhere the primary suspect is an anti-5G wacko who died in the explosion.

Posted by: vk | Dec 28 2020 1:54 utc | 72

“Kevin Gosztola discusses the abominable record of some of Joe Biden’s key transition team officials, people who are likely to become high-level members of Biden’s eventual cabinet. This list includes the usual war hawks and D.C. insiders, who are sure to return the country to the bipartisan foreign policy consensus of the last few decades, including increased sanctions on Iran and Russia, regime change in Venezuela and Syria, and increased troop levels in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Gosztola fears that the new cold war with Russia will become even more intense under a Biden administration, as the Democratic Party continues to conveniently blame Russia for all of America’s problems.”
Source (podcast + webarticles):
https://libertarianinstitute.org/scotthortonshow/11-18-20-kevin-gosztola-on-the-profiteers-and-war-hawks-of-the-biden-transition-team/
Discussed on the show:
•“Biden’s transition team is filled with war profiteers, Beltway chickenhawks, and corporate consultants”.
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/11/14/bidens-transition-team-war-profiteers-chickenhawks-corporate-consultants/
•“Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call”.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
•“‘We Think the Price Is Worth It’”
https://fair.org/extra/we-think-the-price-is-worth-it/
•The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump
https://www.amazon.com/Management-Savagery-Americas-National-Security/dp/1788732294
(Kevin Gosztola is managing editor of Shadowproof. He also produces and co-hosts the weekly podcast, “Unauthorized Disclosure.” Follow him on Twitter @kgosztola.)

Posted by: Willy2 | Dec 28 2020 1:58 utc | 73

Some interesting facts and figures by distinguished former Australian diplomat and public servant John Menadue:
https://johnmenadue.com/our-aggressive-and-violent-ally-an-updated-repost-part-1-of-2/
I can’t wait for part 2.

Posted by: Paul | Dec 28 2020 2:04 utc | 74

@65 & 68 pogohere
Thank you. I’m not sure we’re seeing what we think we’re seeing here.
In the CDC report, page 4 says 6 cases of anaphylaxis were discovered by 2300 hours, EST on December 18.
Page 6 cites the number of Health Impact Events as 3,150, and this at an earlier time, 1730 hours, EST on December 18.
After studying this, I conclude that they are not claiming 3,150 cases of anaphylaxis in the data tabulated from earlier that night.
I currently assume that page 6 is referring to surveillance measures taken rather than cases found – the slide is titled “V-safe Active Surveillance for COVID-19 Vaccines”. So, this would mean that they had monitored those patients for anaphylaxis as of 1730 hours, but in the data finalized as of 5.5 hours later they were only reporting 6 cases.
I actually hope this is the case, although I’m not a fan of the Pfizer vaccine. If I’m wrong, and Dr. Coleman’s take is correct, then the world just blew up – but I would think we’d hear more about this. Anaphylaxis is serious and mandates medical attention. This is the UK, at the very start of a rapid rollout, so I have to think that a major occurrence would spill into broad alarm that we’d hear.
The CDC report is here.

Posted by: Grieved | Dec 28 2020 3:24 utc | 75

One of the greatest misnomers of this modern world is the term “free trade”. We have managed trade. Ok.
The greater the degree of state involvement, the more freely goods (and services) flow. uhhh!
PR China is still a Least Developed Country (LDC) at the WTO, with all its privileges!! http://ptadb.wto.org/ptaTradeInfo.aspx
Also PR China has full official one party involvement in its executive, legislative, judicial, media, intelligence, military etc. branches.

Posted by: Antonym | Dec 28 2020 3:48 utc | 76

@ Mikey | Dec 27 2020 16:43 utc | 9
Your link: https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/chinese-espionage-ring-in-afghanistan-busted-10-spies-detained/story-qyPsZY1wUoD2flp9UIYMrK.html
Afghanistan has busted a 10-member Chinese module operating a terror cell in the capital city of Kabul, according to diplomats and security officials in the West Asian country. The crackdown has come as a huge embarrassment for Beijing, which has been trying to persuade the Ashraf Ghani government to hush up the case, people familiar with the matter in Kabul and New Delhi said.
@ : karlof1 | Dec 27 2020 21:21 utc | 35
Your link: https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1211127.shtml
So, China wants to be able to project power overseas, but not in an Imperialistic manner like the Outlaw US Empire but rather to thwart its unjust actions.
CCP Santa gives away lots of cheap presents, therefore he is real & nice….

Posted by: Antonym | Dec 28 2020 4:01 utc | 77

pogoishere and grieved… keep me posted… this sounds scary.. i hope grieved is correct..

Posted by: james | Dec 28 2020 4:08 utc | 78

Excuse me if this is a dumb question, but I’m not certain what has been signed on the monstrous supposedly-stimulus bill and what has not. Could someone please explain the ‘redlining’ and ‘recision’ request that Trump made to Congress. In none of the news reports could I find whether or not the huge amounts of foreign aid are therefore to go forward. In the search I have done those items seem to be totally absent from any msm report. Most were far too busy blaming somebody or other for whatever it was that was not being done. ( I would hope they all got coal in their stockings except that coal is a no-no as far as keeping the home fires burning is concerned.)
Given that the stressful now you see it now you don’t has ruined many Christmases, hard enough spent by many folk to whom those checks would be helpful, there ought to be some huge amount of compound interest going back to earlier in the year, to be added to whatever finally survives the birthing process. After all, they slap it onto everything else. Where would that come from? I hear someone ask. Just extract it from all that largess that was in the 5,000 plus pages presumably now coated with red ink.

Posted by: juliania | Dec 28 2020 4:39 utc | 79

Posted by: Antonym | Dec 28 2020 4:01 utc | 78
Oh look, the resident hindu nationalist propaganda operative has predictably shown up to amplify the new hindu nationalist propaganda operative’s attempt to seed the forum with anti Chinese propaganda …
The story is bunk on its face. It bears the same clumsy manufacturing marks of all hindu nationalist propaganda.

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Dec 28 2020 5:09 utc | 80

Gwadar: Why is Pakistan fencing China’s Belt and Road port?
Belt and Road not colonial? Ask the Baloch who live there.

Posted by: Antonym | Dec 28 2020 5:19 utc | 81

@ Archie Bunker Dec 28 2020 5:09 utc | 81
Anglo Deep state is hell, we agree. CCP deep state is Heaven – we disagree.

Posted by: Antonym | Dec 28 2020 5:25 utc | 82

@uncle tungsten 62

I guess the police agencies weren’t so lucky to discover an intact, unblemished Venezuelan or Iranian passport lying in the debris. So it goes. Maybe they will find a Che Guevara T shirt in his closet when they get to search it (in a month or two like Epsteins farm and Island).

Enough with these idiotic conspiracy theories; it’s quite clear the AT&T building was destroyed by directed energy beams from orbit.

Posted by: jim | Dec 28 2020 6:38 utc | 83

james | Dec 28 2020 4:08 utc | 79
I suggest you follow the link below and read the petition sponsored by “America’s Front Line Doctors.” It is an excellent summary of the history of mRNA vaccines and the risks of similar experimental vaccines. Do not let the 31 page length discourage you. It is a very readable, articulate document written with attention to detail and sources.
STOP MEDICAL DISCRIMINATION
The Petition To Stop Forced Experimental Vaccines

Posted by: pogohere | Dec 28 2020 7:06 utc | 84

Antonym #77

The greater the degree of state involvement, the more freely goods (and services) flow. uhhh!

Yes Antonym, that is how it works. If you leave it to the private sector they will go for maximum economic advantage. Meaning they will either monopolise services, create barriers to competitors and connive to maintain high prices and fees and charges.
If you have not yet seen evidence of how the State intervenes to crush this tendency of the private sector then keep looking.
Fencing Gwadar port?? Of course it needs to be fenced. It is a key piece of infrastructure and its operations are entirely leased by the Chinese freight management companies. Almost every port in the world is secure to prevent illegal immigration, destructive terrorism from people like the CIA, MI6 etc. To prevent Baluchis from destructive acts as they are unpleasant separatists and saboteurs. To eliminate smuggling and pilfering.
The extraordinary feat of the China -Pakistan joint development of this old port into a mighty hub has put the India equivalent ports to shame. I take it THAT is your beef if I can respectfully use that term. By the way the Gwadar port has diminished the smuggling caper out of the north west coastal ports of India and has severely upset the criminal cartels there.
I am sure some good regulation by the Modi administration wouldn’t go astray to break up the Indian cartels and thieving turds at those ports. Unlikely given Modi’s love of the occasional campaign contribution.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Dec 28 2020 7:07 utc | 85

jim #84

it’s quite clear the AT&T building was destroyed by directed energy beams from orbit.

Of course, it was those clever Chinese who launched a moon rock onto Nashville from the hold of their returning Chang’e 5 explorer. I bet it had a Huawei 5g GPS guidance system glued onto the rock. I dig their choice of music as it collided.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Dec 28 2020 7:15 utc | 86

Which nation has its army defending a local port from the locals in favor or another country? Not PR China!
In PR China the word “private” has little meaning. The State is everywhere, a real 1984 paradise, you’ll love it.

Posted by: Antonym | Dec 28 2020 7:20 utc | 87

The India farmers strike continues and strengthens as the Modi morons spin more and more BS

The farmers fear the government will stop buying grain at minimum guaranteed prices and corporations will then push prices down. The government says it is willing to pledge that guaranteed prices will continue.
With nearly 60 percent of the Indian population depending on agriculture for their livelihoods, the growing farmer rebellion has rattled Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration and its allies.
Modi’s government insists the reforms will benefit farmers. It says they will allow farmers to market their produce and boost production through private investment.

Modi and his oligarch minders think people are silly enough to believe that crap. Indian farmers are far smarter than the Modi gang of low caste thieves.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Dec 28 2020 7:40 utc | 88

Indian Punchline Indian Punchline has a penetrating look at the high risk lunacy that the Biden team represents

Putin stressed that the very existence of Russia’s hypersonic missile systems influences the global situation and has changed it. He singled out the advanced RS-28 Sarmat silo-based system with a heavy liquid-propellant intercontinental ballistic missile with a throw weight of 10 tonnes, Poseidon unmanned underwater vehicle, the Kinzhal and the Peresvet laser weapons, the Avangard hypersonic missile system whose speed exceeds Mach 20 and the Tsirkon long-range hypersonic anti-ship cruise missile flying at over eight times the speed of sound.
Putin noted, “Moreover, it (Tsirkon) can be placed both on stationary carriers and on surface and subsurface ships. Where can it be placed? In neutral waters. So, you can calculate the range and the speed and everything will become clear. Does this change and influence the (global) situation somehow? Of course, it changes and influences it.”

It seems to me that Biden could well invest considerable effort to reverse the idiot Trumps dumping of key strategic arms agreements, reduce tensions and cancel all moronic NATO aggravations and provocations. That way could give all a more secure and prosperous world. That of course is a remote possibility as the goofy USAi president elect appears to have installed a cabinet of losers, grubs and war mongers.
Its all that the Dems are capable of.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Dec 28 2020 8:06 utc | 89

Jimmy Dore mangles the media hack that is so full of Dimratss BS that it is laughable.
Medicare for all debate trundles on and still there is no information on where each member of the squad stands. Hopefully the status of each squaddie will emerge through this week or next.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Dec 28 2020 8:50 utc | 90

@ juliania @ 80:
“Could someone please explain the ‘redlining’ and ‘recision’ request that Trump made to Congress. In none of the news reports could I find whether or not the huge amounts of foreign aid are therefore to go forward.”
What I have learned, based on several different articles, is as follows: The omnibus spending bill and the Covid relief bill were merged into one package, but are really two disparate things. The funding for one does not affect funding for the other. Trump’s objections – his “red-lined” items – are all in the omnibus part. So, the first thing to know is that his formal rescission request is only about some things in the omnibus budget bill and does not affect any items in the Covid relief part. (Ironically, the stuff that he voiced objections to are things he himself requested be included when he submitted his proposed budget months ago, but he seems blissfully unaware that he is objecting to his own budget ideas. I haven’t seen the final list of his red-line items, but am basing this on his remarks from a couple of days ago. If he has objections to anything in the Covid part of the bill, it is not being reported. Yes, he wants $2000 instead of $600 for people, but is asking Congress to write a new stand-alone bill for the increase, and is not issuing a rescission request for that.)
He has signed the bill, which means that both parts are now law. He has added a “rescission request” with his signature. What happens with rescission is that he is asking Congress to go back and repeal some of the items in the signed bill. Congress has 45 days to do this. During the 45 days during which Congress considers repealing or reversing these items, the money for these specific red-lined items is frozen. Everything else goes into effect immediately. If after the 45-day period, Congress has done nothing about the red-lined items, they automatically go into effect as well.
So Congress can just ignore his request and after 45 days the money is released and these items are fully funded anyway. They’ll probably just ignore him and not bother to cut out any of the pork. Why should they? He signed the bill, and he’ll be out of office before the 45 days is up, at which point his request is moot anyway. Besides, Congress has less objection to spending a shit-ton of money on foreign governments than they do on spending for the American people.
So everyone gets the paltry $600 and the House will probably pass a stand-alone bill to add another $1400 to that, but the Senate won’t agree to it. So it’ll be 600 and done. You’re on your own – which is what they’ve made clear is the intention all along any how. And some people in some other countries get funding for their own pet projects, which is how Congress spends a significant portion of our tax dollars all the time.
My personal theory about this whole stand-off created by Trump is that it wasn’t about the skimpy Covid stimulus or about over-spending in the first place. I think he believed that if he could shut the government down, Congress would not meet on the 6th to confirm the electoral college vote and he would, ipso facto, remain in office. Someone must have informed him that it doesn’t work that way. (Congress still meets even when during a shut down; they just don’t have their aides and office staff working with them.) If he had really cared about “helping Americans during this stressful time”, he would have been talking about more direct stimulus way before now. And he sure never objected to busting the budget before either. With Trump, it’s always a safe bet that his reasoning is based entirely on self-interest and it is very simple and stupid. He’s not playing some secret chess game. He just thought shutting the government down would be a positive thing for himself. He does not give a shit about us or how tax-payer money is spent.

Posted by: teri | Dec 28 2020 8:59 utc | 91

Greyzone interviews retired US ambassador Chas Freeman on China and its relationship with the world and the USAi belligerence.

Chas Freeman. Veteran U.S. diplomat and public servant who has served in many senior positions, including as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Director for Chinese Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, and as the principal US interpreter during President Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972.

Forty minutes of in depth discussion with Aaron Mate as host.
This an interesting discussion and well worth watching.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Dec 28 2020 10:31 utc | 92

Posted by: Antonym | Dec 28 2020 7:20 utc | 88
Pot, meet Kettle.
Modhi Ji and his merry band of hindu fanatics are busily working on turning India into an Orwellian dystopia, just with far less technical sophistication than the Chinese.
Your digital “mark of the beast” system comes to mind:

A Failure to “Do No Harm” — India’s Aadhaar biometric ID program and its inability to protect privacy in relation to measures in Europe and the U.S.
It is important that digital biometric identity systems be used by governments with a Do no Harm mandate, and the establishment of regulatory, enforcement and restorative frameworks ensuring data protection and privacy needs to transpire prior to the implementation of technological programs and services. However, when, and where large government bureaucracies are involved, the proper planning and execution of public service programs very often result in ungainly outcomes, and are often qualitatively not guaranteeable. Several important factors, such as the strength of the political and legal systems, may affect such cases as the implementation of a national digital identity system. Digital identity policy development, as well as technical deployment of biometric technologies and enrollment processes, may all differ markedly, and could depend in some part at least, on the overall economic development of the country in question, or political jurisdiction, among other factors. This article focuses on the Republic of India’s national digital biometric identity system, the Aadhaar, for its development, data protection and privacy policies, and impact. Two additional political jurisdictions, the European Union, and the United States are also situationally analyzed as they may be germane to data protection and privacy policies originated to safeguard biometric identities. Since biometrics are foundational elements in modern digital identity systems, expression of data protection policies that orient and direct how biometrics are to be utilized as unique identifiers are the focus of this analysis. As more of the world’s economies create and elaborate capacities, capabilities and functionalities within their respective digital ambits, it is not enough to simply install suitable digital identity technologies; much, much more – is durably required. For example, both vigorous and descriptive means of data protection should be well situated within any jurisdictionally relevant deployment area, prior to in-field deployment of digital identity technologies. Toxic mixes of knowledge insufficiencies, institutional naïveté, political tomfoolery, cloddish logical constructs, and bureaucratic expediency must never overrun fundamental protections for human autonomy, civil liberties, data protection, and privacy.
Introduction
In recent years, governments have acted to build pervasive digital identity ecosystems.Footnote1 Such actions represent the desire by world societies to advance beyond their inefficient paper-based existence, to highly integrated and interoperable digital economies, where at least a form of digital identity has been determined to be essential to such transforms [2]. The installations of such systems, which often include biometric data components, are technical undertakings that intertwine and network data linkages – sometimes across multiple political or economic jurisdictions. In cases of such deployments, networked digital identity systems can correspondingly pass – a single identity for example, across vastly diverse online and offline health, finance, education, and government data systems. The rewards associated with the implementation of such digital identity systems may include greater population access to public and, or commercial services. However, there is also the prospect for the presence of substantial long-term risks in relation to the utilization of digital identity systems; such risks must therefore be addressed, and without fail.
In a widespread distribution of networked digital identity systems, ‘an identity or ID,’ can become pervasive and persistent, as that ID is deliberately conveyed to, and made resident within many connected systems, and can therefore, be used as a potent mechanism of social or political control, or personal surveillance, as a biometric identifier that can uniquely identify an individual and his movements among multiple systems. Historically, pervasive and persistent identity systems have presented risks to individuals, even when identity documents have been in paper forms. A sobering historic case embroils the Republic of Rwanda, where personal identity documents that included ethnicity, were used to aid, and to expedite, genocidal activities [3].Footnote2
Digital forms of identity systems, when fully developed and deployed, are expected to be more powerful and efficient tools of identification than legacy paper systems. The power and efficiency proffered by such tools, both pose and mount a great urgency to identify, and to mitigate modern risks associated with system breach and the compromise of vital information in those identity systems, and to ensure that digital identity systems do not become tools of suppression, oppression, exclusion, or discrimination.
Of the digital biometric identity systems in existence today, the most notable information exploitation case is that of the Republic of India. India’s biometric identity system, called the Aadhaar,Footnote3 has more than one billion enrollees, yet remarkably, the Indian government failed to legislate much needed comprehensive data protection and privacy laws, even though the legislative process had once well advanced,Footnote4 and legislative language sits in waiting.Footnote5 The Aadhaar system, having been deployed rapidly, is less than a decade old and its history, development, and impact has been well documented. As such, India’s Aadhaar provides a unique and prominent case study for how risks that are endemic to identity systems have developed, and have since been welded-in to their digital biometric system.

While we hear rumours of a million (or is it a bazillion?) Uighers in Chinese gulags, the fact of millions of Kashmiris in a giant Indian-run gulag is not a matter of rumour:
“The tranquility of the region has been shattered by the heavy hand of political and military totalitarianism. The region resembles a vast concentration camp, swarming with soldiers. Police or military barriers abound in both urban and rural areas, and intimidation is a rather common occurrence at these checkpoints. The Valley seethes with a repressed anger generated by the humiliating brutality inflicted by Indian troops. The history of Kashmir is replete with egregious errors. As one scholar, Vincent H. Smith (1928: 176), wrote, “Few regions in the world can have had worse luck than Kashmir in the matter of government.”
Source:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/23/kashmir-decentralize-power-and-revive-regional-political-institutions/
I wouldn’t want to be a Kashmiri or a dalit or a farmer in India. Though I could definitely make a happy living in Shenzen hacking tech before I ever got on the wrong side of the CCP.

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Dec 28 2020 10:42 utc | 93

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Dec 28 2020 10:31 utc | 93
I think this one is worth watching too:
Peter Ford interviewed on Syria

Posted by: Paco | Dec 28 2020 11:08 utc | 94

I read many post on the USA-China rivalry and how it is an US made issue. That’s far from true. Remove the US from the equation and you are left with India, Vietnam, Japan and South Korea that don’t need US to be hostile to China.
Next when you add up populations, these two blocks are on even par but given chinese aging population and stagering debt (330% gdp), the futur is not that bright. After that you add up US, Australia to make the alliance of anti chinese interest. Some of them territorials (india-vietnam) political japan, south korea(think chinese support to north Korea) and economic (US/Australia)
The south china sea grasp and himalaya are a major blunders.

Posted by: murgen23 | Dec 28 2020 11:34 utc | 95

A possible reason why the USA has suddenly tried to revive the Tibet separatist question:
Playing the ‘Tibet card’ reflects Washington’s anxiety about China

In terms of the successor to the Dalai Lama, it is clear that Washington harbors a political intent. The reincarnation of the Dalai Lama is not a personal decision. It follows certain religious traditions and rituals and must be approved by the Chinese central government since the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). But now Washington labels it as “interference.”
Xin said that some anti-China hawks are considering how to play the “Tibet card.” If the selection of the Dalai Lama’s successor abides by religious convention and traditional rules, they cannot make big waves on the Tibet question any longer. Even though the “Tibetan government-in-exile” may play some tricks, their influence and appeal are far from those comparable to the Dalai Lama. This signals the anxiety of these US anti-China forces.

–//–
US tricks with ‘Tibet card’ lose effect in face of social, economic progress
This is what the West calls “atrocities by the CCP in Tibet”. Indeed, the Westerners abhor progress and eradication of poverty.
–//–
This is what makes the COVID-19 crisis different from the 2008 Wall Street meltdown: weakening of the USD:
GT Voice: Yuan continues to edge up in value, posing little risk to economy
The will be no “Obama recovery” this time. Biden’s reign will be brutal.
–//–
Who said racism is incompatible with capitalism? Not only it is, but it was invented by capitalism itself:
Dark side of the U.S.: Even skin color is priced
–//–
In its deathbed, Hong Kong hallucinates with a burning fever:
As Asia embraces a zero-carbon future, Hong Kong must make a niche as a green finance hub
If somebody here knows what this “green finance” means, please tell me.

Posted by: vk | Dec 28 2020 12:08 utc | 96

An impressive weekly review.
Thank you MOA, our many informative posters and the 12 links I will start exploring.
A prosperous New Year to you all.

Posted by: OhOh | Dec 28 2020 12:21 utc | 97

vk | Dec 28 2020 1:54 utc | 73
Read somewhere the primary suspect is an anti-5G wacko who died in the explosion.
just curious as to why you used the label anti-5g wacko. Are you of the opinion that 5G is a wonderful, needed, and perfectly harmless technology?
if you wish, please enlighten me.

Posted by: dan of steele | Dec 28 2020 12:56 utc | 98

@ Posted by: dan of steele | Dec 28 2020 12:56 utc | 100
It is not yet confirmed the terrorist blew himself up because he was a 5G conspiracy theorist. I read a local journalist state on his Twitter account that the FBI was investigating his internet history and he had some anti-5G past. The target also corresponds to this motivation, as it seems there was a big antenna or something like that in the building that exploded.
It is also not known if the terrorist intended to bomb himself or if he blew himself up by accident, while setting up the explosives. In other words, we don’t know if the terrorist was or wasn’t a suicide bomber.
The terrorist’s remains were identified through DNA. His identity is certain (unless there’s a huge governmental cover up involving the FBI itself, which is possible but improbable). The only doubt is if there are other terrorists involved or if he acted alone.
I think there wasn’t much MSM fuss about it, nor Trumpist hysteria, because the episode is embarrassing for the image of the Empire. It’s not good for the image of the country to propagandize about one of its citizens believing in a crazy, anti-progress, anti-science conspiracy theory and accidentally blowing himself up because of pure ineptitude and lack of intellect.
5G, if properly regulated, is 100% safe. It doesn’t have nowhere near the energy necessary to penetrate even the first layer of your skin. Your daily wi-fi and smartphone radio waves also don’t harm your brain or your testicles, nor cause cancer.

Posted by: vk | Dec 28 2020 13:18 utc | 99

vk @101: “[5G] doesn’t have nowhere near the energy necessary to penetrate…”
In fact, this is one of the major weaknesses of 5G tech: the signals are easily blocked even by such things as wet leaves on trees. In fact, 5G frequency bands are getting relatively close to infrared… two orders of magnitude off, but that is still rather close as the EM spectrum goes. Does anyone freak out about the possibility of far infrared scrambling their DNA? Of course not.
Still, that gives me a get-rich-quick idea: Metalized mylar suits! Better than a tinfoil hat, and guaranteed to block 5G signals! This could really be something…

Posted by: William Gruff | Dec 28 2020 14:39 utc | 100

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