German Energy Apocalypse Update VII
eugyppius – October 25, 2022
The only published footage of the damage to the Nord Stream pipelines, featured on my Nord Stream Conspiracy Thread, turns out to come from Expressen, a Swedish newspaper. Their reporters hired undersea drone operators and took a boat out to the site of the explosions off the island of Bornholm. There, they found a sizeable crater and 50 metres of missing pipeline. That this is how the images should have made their way to us, rather than through any official path, speaks volumes about the eagerness of Swedish authorities to suppress this story.
Protests against the insane energy policy of the German government are gathering momentum, particularly in the East; sporadic reports are even appearing in major media outlets now. This is surely one reason that the Minister President of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer, continues to stray from official CDU talking points, calling for negotiated peace in Ukraine and likening EU sanctions to a “tsunami” threatening the German economy.
Feared gas shortages are causing chaos as customers rush to change suppliers in search of better prices, or because their current contracts have been cancelled. Several municipal utilities have flatly stopped accepting new customers, but this option is not available to the so-called Grundversorger or “basic suppliers”—the utilities that supply the majority of gas in their region. These are legally bound to take all comers, and many of them are already having difficulty meeting sudden surges in demand.
Their day-to-day solvency may also soon be a problem:
[I]t is not only the procurement prices that have risen sharply, but also the interim financing costs—that is, the sum with which the municipal utilities must bridge the time from the purchase of gas to the onward sale to the customer, and to the increase in customers’ instalment payments, [an Association of Municipal Enterprises] spokesman explained. “Both together increase the liquidity needs of the municipal utilities, and this in turn affects their ability to supply customers with electricity and gas.”
Who knows how all this will play out, and what effect (if any) proposed price limits on electricity and gas will have on the markets, but I have a crazy vision of a near-future dystopia, where a minority of wealthy customers who have maintained wildly expensive contracts with alternate providers can still heat their homes, while everyone else deals with constant outages and ad-hoc rationing schemes.
Zelensky’s economic advisor has announced that he expects the Federal Republic to contribute 500 million dollars every month to Ukraine’s defence. That sounds like a lot, but we must remember that Germany’s antigen testing program, at its height, cost around a billion Euros a month. The government has pissing away money on crazy things for a long time now.
A survey of German companies, the majority of them small businesses, shows that 25% (up from 14% four months ago) are considering whether to lay off employees, and that 90% are planning to raise prices further than they already have. Almost six in ten are delaying planned investments.
“We have been seeing a creeping shift in industrial production for some time now,” says Rainer Kirchdörfer, Chairman of the Family Business Foundation [which conducted the survey]. “We will only recognise the deindustrialisation and loss of prosperity years from now, and by then it will be irreversible.”
The economic chaos has hit the chemical industry especially hard, and among the early shortages are iron and aluminium salts, crucial precipitating agents used in wastewater treatment. Four federal states have already relaxed their rules on water purification. Chemicals necessary for the treatment of drinking water are also increasingly scarce.
Can’t we just increase our production of biogas to end our dependence on Russia and save the climate at the same time, asks the drooling knuckle-dragging morons at Westdeutscher Rundfunk ?
Overall, the share of biomethane in the German gas market could triple, according to a study by the German Biomass Research Centre in Leipzig. The Capital Bioenergy Office says in a statement that biogas plants could offset about 4 percent of Russian natural gas imports in the short term. It also says it is possible for biogas to provide 46% of the electricity from gas-fired power plants.
So, if we put all of our grain into power production, we have the prospect not only of freezing to death, but of starving to death too. I’m glad state media are investigating this promising angle.
Finally, Business Insider has discovered that the real victims of the gas crisis won’t be young children in fragile health or elderly pensioners on fixed incomes, but female professionals. Ordinances requiring offices to set thermostats at 19C, according to some garbage study, will cognitively disadvantage women, while (even worse) advantaging men, who bizarrely are alleged to perform their best at this precise temperature. Happily, though, Tagesschau has consulted Dr. Georg Ertl from University Hospital at Würzburg, who believes this unfortunate sexism, brought upon us by the furtherance of liberal democracy, can be countered by … caps and stockings.
Seize, not freeze: EU outlines plans for Russian assets
Samizdat – October 25, 2022
The EU seeks to outright confiscate Russian assets rather than just freeze them, but the bloc has yet to lay the legal groundwork for doing so, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday.
The official delivered her remarks during a conference devoted to the rebuilding of Ukraine, which was attended by a number of Kiev’s prominent international donors.
“Our aim is not only to freeze, but to seize the assets,” she said, although cautioning that establishing a legal base for such a move is “not trivial.”
According to von der Leyen, the EU has created a task force that includes various international experts “not only to map out what has been frozen,” but also to see what the legal preconditions would be for seizing Russian assets and using them for the reconstruction of Ukraine.
“The will is there, but legally it is not trivial, there is still a lot of work to reach that goal,” she reiterated, noting that the EU adheres to the rule of law, and therefore this process has to be “legally sound.”
Responding to von der Leyen’s remarks, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that in reality the EU Commission president wants Russia to “exhaust itself being dragged through courts” while trying to retrieve its funds.
During the conference, von der Leyen stated that the World Bank had estimated the cost of the damage to Ukraine at €350 billion ($345 billion). Meanwhile, after Russia launched its military campaign in Ukraine in late February, a multinational task force froze $30 billion in funds belonging to Russian individuals, as well as $300 billion in assets of Russia’s central bank.
Russia strongly criticized the freezing of the funds, with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov saying that the West had essentially committed theft.
Western officials have repeatedly expressed the desire to confiscate Russian assets to benefit Ukraine. However, in July, during another conference on rebuilding Ukraine, Swiss President Ignazio Cassis opposed such a move, arguing that it would establish a dangerous precedent.
“You have to ensure the citizens are protected against the power of the state. This is what we call liberal democracies,” he said at the time.
Thirty US Democratic Lawmakers U-Turn Within Hours After Urging Biden To Change Tack on Ukraine
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Samizdat – 25.10.2022
On Monday, 30 Democratic lawmakers from the US House of Representatives – led by Pramila Jayapal, chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus – wrote to President Joe Biden urging him to alter his Ukraine strategy and hold direct negotiations with Russia, “redoubling efforts to seek a realistic framework for a ceasefire”.
The group of progressive House Democrats who urged President Joe Biden on Monday to make fundamental changes to US strategy regarding the security crisis in Ukraine by seeking direct negotiations with Russia, made a U-turn within hours of sending their letter to the POTUS.
Under a wave of pressure from other Democrats, the group, led by Congressional Progressive Caucus chairwoman Pramila Jayapal, released a statement confirming their support for the president’s strategy.
“Let me be clear, we are united as Democrats in our unequivocal commitment to supporting Ukraine in their fight for their democracy and freedom,” Jayapal announced, adding that “nothing in the letter advocates change in that support”.
The statement went on to say that although diplomacy is “an important tool that can save lives,” it is “just one tool”.
“As we also made explicitly clear in our letter and will continue to make clear, we support President Biden and his administration’s commitment to nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine,” the group of lawmakers concluded.
Before bowing to pressure and backpedaling, the 30 Democrats had initially stated in their letter that it was in the interests of the Biden administration to revise his strategy for Ukraine to avert a protracted conflict fraught with dangerous possibilities.
“We urge you to pair the military and economic support the United States has provided Ukraine with a proactive diplomatic push, redoubling efforts to seek a realistic framework for a ceasefire,” the group – which includes Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Ro Khanna of California – said.
The Democrats added in the original letter:
“The alternative to diplomacy is protracted war, with both its attendant certainties and catastrophic and unknowable risks.”
The lawmakers had emphasized how the conflict would spill over into ordinary life and how the sanctions policy introduced by the US, the EU and allies against Moscow over its special military operation in Ukraine were self-harming. Food and gas costs have rocketed all over the world, including in the United States, and the soaring prices for wheat, fertilizer, and fuel have exacerbated global food shortages.
“If there is a way to end the war while preserving a free and independent Ukraine, it is America’s responsibility to pursue every diplomatic avenue to support such a solution that is acceptable to the people of Ukraine,” the letter said.
However, the letter’s call for a negotiation process that could include sanctions relief for Russia and security guarantees for Ukraine contents did not go down well with some other Democrats. Representative Ruben Gallego of Arizona tweeted in response to the progressives’ letter that the way to end a conflict is, “Win it quickly”.
Although the US Congress passed a Bill to send $12Bln in new aid to Ukraine in September, with the Biden administration expected to pledge more aid for the Kiev regime in December, if Republicans win control of the House in the November mid-term elections, this strategy of pumping aid into Ukraine may be put to the test.
A number of GOP House lawmakers such as Florida’s Matt Gaetz have been vociferous in calling for aid to Ukraine to be curtailed. These calls have been echoed by other influential voices in the broader conservative movement, highlighting that the Biden administration has been spending too much to prop up the Kiev authorities and possibly prolonging the conflict. After his home state of Florida was lashed by a hurricane, Gaetz went on Twitter to suggest that aid to Ukraine was diverting assistance from his own constituents.
And Republican representative for Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, tweeted while announcing her vote against a spending resolution that included more funding for Ukraine, that she was opposed to “funding America’s 51st state: Ukraine”.
House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, hoping that next month’s mid-terms will make him Speaker of the House, said in a recent interview: “I think people are going to be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine.” He indicated that Republicans would demand tighter oversight of aid to Ukraine if they win the majority.
Earlier, Republican representative for Pennsylvania, Scott Perry, who is chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, reportedly texted members of the group about the potential for investigating the Biden administration over its handling of the Ukraine crisis. Perry suggested, according to screenshots of a text to fellow Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, that the president might not have been honest with the American people about his goals in the conflict.
“If these nitwits in this jackwagon administration are blundering us or intentionally marching us to war with Russia, nuclear or otherwise, we’d better start to preserve the evidence so there can be accountability,” Perry said.
Russia has sent out repeated reminders that channeling military assistance to the Kiev regime will only prolong the conflict and is fraught with the risk of a further dangerous escalation of the crisis.
FLORIDA SURGEON GENERAL ON COVID VAX MANDATE
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | October 20, 2022
Florida Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, minces no words regarding his State’s stance on Covid Vaccine Mandates, after a CDC committee voted unanimously to recommend Covid vaccines for kids older than 6 months.
A Tale of Two Pills: Media bias in reporting Ivermectin and ensitrelvir
By Guy Gin | Making (Covid) Waves in Japan | October 21, 2022
Last month, Japanese pharma company Kowa put out a press release of the results of its 1030-person double-blind randomised control trial (RCT) of Ivermectin conducted at 54 institutions in Japan and 2 in Thailand.
Here’s how the results were reported in The Japan Times.
Not effective, you hear! I mean, look at the photo. You don’t get Ivermectin from a pharmacy; you get it from a farmer. Anyway, on to the trial.
A clinical trial was unable to prove the efficacy of the antiparasitic medicine ivermectin against coronavirus variants, according to Japanese drugmaker Kowa Co., which has indicated that it will no longer seek approval for the drug as a COVID-19 treatment.
So this means that not only has IVM not been widely used in Japan (despite what many people outside Japan think) but probably never will be. So what happened? Did the people who took the anti-vaxers’ favourite veterinary medicine all get sick?
In the trial, 1,030 patients with mild COVID-19 were orally administered the drug daily for three days and then compared to others given a placebo.
Ivermectin was found to be safe and few people given the drug developed severe symptoms, Kowa said. But both the group given the drug and the one administered a placebo saw improvements in symptoms, meaning the trial did not show the drug’s efficacy over the placebo as a COVID-19 treatment.
So the reason Kowa was “unable to prove the efficacy” wasn’t because IVM is “not effective”; it was because almost everyone in the placebo group got better quickly too. According to Kowa’s press release, “Both intervention and placebo arms showed milder symptoms around 4 days after the start of administration” and “There were no deaths and hardly any severe cases.”
Although Kowa hasn’t released the full trial details or results, the 0% mortality rate among the 500+ participants in the placebo arm suggests they were mostly at very low risk of severe disease. So the results don’t show IVM was ineffective; they show no medication was necessary for these participants to prevent symptoms worsening or for them to recover quickly.
This a not a new issue in studies on early treatments. Yale epidemiologist Harvey Risch noted the same thing in RCTs showing non-significant effects for another “controversial” drug, hydroxychloroquine.
The RCT studies proclaimed supposedly as definitively showing no benefit of HCQ use in outpatients have all involved almost entirely low-risk subjects with virtually no hospitalization or mortality events and are uninformative and irrelevant for bearing upon these risks according to HCQ use in high-risk outpatients.
When tested on larger numbers of people for mortality benefit, IVM often performs a bit better.
Next, let’s compare how the JT reported Kowa’s IVM trial press release with how Reuters reported Shionogi’s press release for its 1821-person RCT of its anti-Covid drug ensitrelvir.
Japan’s Shionogi & Co Ltd said on Wednesday its oral treatment for COVID-19 demonstrated a significant reduction in symptoms compared with a placebo in a Phase III trial in Asia.
The drug, a protease inhibitor known as ensitrelvir, met its primary endpoint in a trial conducted among predominantly vaccinated patients with mild to moderate cases of COVID-19, the company said in a statement.
A significant reduction in symptoms! So how many people were kept out of the ICU? Well, the Reuters article didn’t clarify what the main result was, so here it is from Shionogi’s press release.
the median time to resolution of the five COVID-19 symptoms [stuffy or runny nose, sore throat, cough, feeling hot or feverish, and low energy or tiredness] was significantly reduced in those treated with the low dose of ensitrelvir (the dose level submitted for approval in Japan) compared to placebo: 167.9 hours versus 192.2 hours, a statistically significant difference of 24 hours (p=0.04).
Yep, ensitrelvir cleared runny noses 1 day quicker than a placebo. So the media reporting of Shionogi’s results wasn’t dishonest, but it wasn’t exactly candid.
Similar to in Kowa’s IVM trial, no deaths were reported among the 900+ placebo recipients in Shionogi’s trial, which again suggests they were very low risk. So these results give us no idea about whether ensitrelvir will prevent the progression to severe disease in high-risk immunocompromised people, which is what actually matters.
Shionogi also reported that no serious adverse events occurred in the intervention arm. But one problem with not trialing a medication on the type of high-risk people who will actually need it is that the trial probably won’t pick up major safety signals that become clear later.
But as El Gato Malo has said, pharma doesn’t make mistakes in trial design; it makes choices.
Odysee blocks French versions of Russia Today after legal demand
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | October 24, 2022
US-based online video sharing platform Odysee has blocked the French versions of Russian state-run news outlets Sputnik and RT after a legal order out of France.
“If we want to do business in another country we have to abide by their laws or they shut us down. RT FR and its affiliates are illegal in France. If you want to still watch them from France, use VPN, Odysee tweeted.
Several months ago, the European Union (EU) imposed sanctions on Russia, including banning RT and Sputnik from being broadcast in member countries. The two news outlets were accused of spreading Russian propaganda about the invasion of Ukraine.
The channels are not allowed on television or online in EU countries. However, they have been circumventing the sanctions through online platforms that are not based in the EU.
A week ago, France’s President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged that France is struggling with completely banning Sputnik and RT.
The platform is still broadcasting the English versions of both channels.
Safety Reporting of COVID-19 Vaccine Induced Myocarditis Just Seeing the Tip of the Iceberg
By Dr. Peter McCullough & John Leake | Courageous Discourse | October 18, 2022
In 2021 the US CDC and FDA warned America and the world that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines could result in heart inflammation or myocarditis.[i] This is a medical problem that has occurred in the past not related to vaccines but at a low rate ~4 per million population per year as reported by Arola, et al, from Finland. In general, ~90% of cases occur in men and ~10% in women.[ii]
The principles of management include stopping all forms of exercise since that can be a driver of the development of heart failure and a trigger for sudden death. In cases where there is a progression to heart failure, cardiac biopsy is commonly performed to establish or rule out a diagnosis of giant cell myocarditis which has a markedly worse prognosis than the other forms (parvovirus, etc).
COVID-19 vaccination has been thrust on the world with such vehemence that there has been a hesitancy among physicians and hospitals to spontaneously report cases to the regulatory agencies. The vast majority of physicians took COVID-19 vaccines themselves and may be having trouble coming to personal grips with the threat of heart damage and other risks of vaccination. In 2021 as spontaneous reports came into agencies that predominately young men were developing myocarditis with COVID-19 vaccination, a pattern emerged: 1) highest risk group was males age 18-24 with a skewed distribution and a long tail that extended to men in their seventies, 2) ~90% of required hospitalization, 3) risk was explosive after the second injection, 4) death directly due to myocarditis was confirmed by autopsy.
In the biological licensing agreement letters to Pfizer and Moderna, the US FDA requested prospective cohort studies of myocarditis which call for measurement of blood tests, ECG, and cardiac imaging before injections and at timepoints afterwards to detect the real rate of heart damage and to ascertain how much of the problem could be asymptomatic and potentially present a future risk of sudden death in an unsuspecting patient. Both companies were not forthcoming, so the answer came from Mansanguan et al, from the Bhumibol Adulyadej Hospital, Bangkok, Thailand.[iii] Adolescents age 13-18 were studied in a prospective cohort manner just after the second injection of the Pfizer vaccine and 7/301 (23,256/million) developed myocarditis using a clinical definition based on blood tests, ECG, and cardiac imaging.
Data from multiple sources suggest the condition can be subclinical in about half, meaning neither the patient nor the parents bring it to clinical attention. Patone et al have recently reported on 100 fatal cases of vaccine-induced myocarditis in the UK, and such papers are expected to continue with larger numbers as the medical community begins to fully recognize cause and effect.[iv] Thus spontaneous reporting to agencies represents the tip of a very large iceberg.
If the estimate Mansanguan study is confirmed or anywhere close to ~25,000/million, that means a million young Americans could have sustained heart damage from COVID-19 vaccination and some of them will be at risk for cardiac arrest and future heart failure. These data suggest we should not be surprised by rising rates of sudden death in young persons with sports and during daily life including sleep.
There can be no more urgent need to halt vaccination and commit a substantial research effort into screening, detection, prognosis, and management of COVID-19 vaccine induced myocarditis. The stakes are high—an entire generation is at risk.
COVID Vaccines and Organ Transplants: Are Healthcare Providers Ignoring Safety Signals?
The Defender | October 24, 2022
Since its experimental beginnings in the mid-1950s, organ transplantation has evolved into what the medical community now casually refers to as a “standard-of-care” procedure, albeit one with still substantial failure rates.
For example, though kidneys top the list of transplanted organs, 14% to 21% of kidney transplants fail within five years, and 15% of kidney transplant candidates are awaiting a repeat procedure.
Recent studies identified a new concern related to the failure of transplanted kidneys and other organs: COVID-19 vaccination.
In one study, published in September in Transplant Infectious Disease, researchers cataloged acute organ rejection within a week or two of COVID-19 vaccination in five individuals who had received kidney, liver or heart transplants six to 18 months earlier.
In August, Japanese researchers reported rejection of corneal grafts in COVID-19 vaccine recipients, occurring from one day to six weeks post-vaccination.
The events caught the Japanese authors’ attention because corneal grafts ordinarily have a high success rate due to the cornea’s status as an organ with immune privilege.
Noting literature that documents transplant rejection in association with other vaccines such as influenza, hepatitis B, tetanus and yellow fever, the Japanese authors expressed worry about what “the projected societal shift towards a more frequent vaccination schedule” portends for transplant recipients.
Concerns about the impact of COVID-19 jabs on people with existing transplants are important, but another pressing-yet-unaddressed question lurks in the shadows: What happens if an unvaccinated person receives a transplanted organ from someone who got one or more COVID-19 jabs?
A record year
Although transplantation experienced a brief lull in the early days of the pandemic, by 2021, the U.S. saw a record-setting number of transplants performed — more than 40,000 kidneys, hearts, livers and other organs.
Although supply is never adequate to meet demand, transplant centers were able to achieve their 2021 milestone in part because of a 10% increase over 2020 in the number of “deceased organ donors” (as opposed to living donors), with 45 of 57 organ procurement organizations setting “all-time records for donors recovered in a single year.”
The surge in organ donation from deceased donors represents a decade-long trend, with “the rising number of deaths of young people due to the ongoing opioid epidemic” hypothesized to be a contributing factor prior to 2021. Still, in prior years, the increase averaged only 5%.
Thrilled with the increased availability of organs, transplant organizations have displayed no curiosity about whether fatalities linked to the rollout of experimental COVID-19 vaccines may be eclipsing or even replacing organs sourced from opioid-related deaths — even though there was a 30% increase (over 2020) in organ donation from individuals who died of cardiorespiratory failure, and a 15% increase in organs from deceased 50- to 64-year-olds.
The COVID-19 vaccine rollout has been linked to 2021’s explosive rise in all-cause mortality in the working-age population, including unprecedented heart-related fatalities in younger adult COVID-19 vaccine recipients.
Traffic fatalities are a key pipeline for organ donation, so transplant centers also benefited from the 16-year high in traffic-related deaths in 2021.
Some observers believe these could be linked to COVID-19-vaccine-related loss of consciousness behind the wheel.
Damaged organs?
According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), transplant rejection “is when the organ recipient’s immune system recognizes the donor organ as foreign and attempts to eliminate it.”
Rejection begins as an acute phenomenon but may proceed to the gradual loss of organ function defined as chronic rejection.
UNOS says, “Some degree of rejection occurs with every transplant,” which is why immunosuppressive medications, often for life, are a sine qua non following transplantation.
In August, the independent group of doctors and scientists known as Doctors for COVID Ethics outlined disturbing evidence from autopsies of persons deceased after COVID-19 vaccination about what is happening to the organs of mRNA vaccine recipients — organs potentially being offered to transplant recipients.
They noted that mRNA vaccines “travel throughout the body and accumulate in various organs” where they “induce long-lasting expression of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein” that in turn induces autoimmune-like inflammation — and the vaccine-induced inflammation “can cause grave organ damage, especially in vessels, sometimes with deadly outcome.”
Citing evidence from Pfizer’s animal experiments, they also underscored the particularly rapid accumulation of mRNA vaccine in the liver, and concluded that blood vessels, at the very least, “will be exposed and affected in every organ and in every tissue.”
Other researchers have highlighted “the possibility of subclinical organ dysfunction in vaccinated recipients.”
No transplant for you
Ironically, transplant programs commonly recommend that would-be organ recipients get “up-to-date” on a slew of vaccines — “typically hepatitis A and B, tetanus [diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus], pneumococcus, measles, human papillomavirus, influenza, and others dependent on geography and age.”
Given the manufacturer-documented potential for vaccines to cause organ-damaging adverse events, this advice was already questionable — but then many transplant centers made matters worse by adding stringent requirements for COVID-19 vaccination.
Even though researchers very quickly established that the immunosuppressive drugs taken by transplant recipients guarantee a “significantly blunt[ed]” COVID-19 vaccine response, prominent healthcare systems like Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Colorado’s UCHealth did not hesitate to coldly remove the unvaccinated from their transplant waiting lists.
The American Society of Transplant Surgeons’ COVID-19 Strike Force recommends COVID-19 vaccination not just for all transplant candidates but also for recipients, their family members and live donors.
They virtuously claim that decisions to deny transplants to the unvaccinated are based on a desire to “avoid futile transplants and wasting organs that could benefit other candidates.”
A University of Chicago physician who asserted a “legal right to discriminate against candidates who refuse the COVID-19 vaccine” nevertheless squeamishly labeled the discrimination “too severe,” asking, “one must ask how far the [transplant] community will go” and wondering, “will they mandate multiple boosters”?
Big bucks
Although organ transplantation is shrouded in noble lifesaving verbiage, it is also a major profit center for modern medicine.
Global projections for 2021-2028 suggest the combined organ and tissue transplantation market will double in size, going from $7.24 billion to $14.67 billion — and those figures do not take into account a thriving black market for trafficked organs.
Market analysts expect the growth to be fueled both by demand factors — such as the growing incidence of chronic diseases that cause “catastrophic damage to tissue and organs” — and increased supply — including a rise in celebrity-driven organ donation pledges.
Because access to organs remains the key barrier to transplantation, there has also been a push in recent years to allow donation from “suboptimal” or “extended criteria” donors — for example, the elderly, individuals with fatty liver disease, donors with malignancies or viral hepatitis or donations “after cardiac death.”
Will COVID-19-vaccine-contaminated organs become just another category of “suboptimal” donation?
Recent studies of COVID-19 vaccine recipients’ blood suggest that worries about a contaminated blood supply likely also extend to the organ supply and could place transplant recipients’ lives at risk.
Unfortunately, when problems arise, they will probably be chalked up to ordinary transplant rejection, with no one the wiser about the insidious role of newfangled COVID-19 or future mRNA vaccines.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
“We are not QR codes” New Alberta Premier Danielle Smith apologizes for vaccine passports
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | October 24, 2022
During the United Conservative party’s annual general meeting, Alberta’s new Premier Danielle Smith is seeking legal advice on pardoning those that got arrested or fined for violating COVID-19 rules such as not having a vaccine passport.
“We are human beings,” said Smith. “We are not QR codes,” she said, adding that she wanted to “purge” the QR database.
“I believe that Alberta Health Services is the source of a lot of the problems that we’ve had,” she said.
“They signed some kind of partnership with the World Economic Forum right in the middle of the pandemic; we’ve gotta address that. Why in the world do we have anything to do with the World Economic Forum? That’s got to end.”
“The things that come to top of mind for me are people who got arrested as pastors (and) people given fines for not wearing masks,” Smith said. “These are not things that are normal to get fines and get prosecuted for. I’m going to look into the range of outstanding fines and get some legal advice on which ones we are able to cancel and provide amnesty for.”
Smith also doubled down on her promise to amend the Human Rights Act to ban discrimination based on Covid vaccination status. She said the amendment would focus on Covid vaccines because the issue is not medical, it is political.
“Since it was a very specific reaction to a very specific vaccine mandate, we’re going to be very precise when we write the legislation,” she said.
“We have to get back to an attitude of ‘you take a vaccine to protect yourself.’
“[But] we have to get away from this attitude that you demonize those who make a different choice.”
Smith is a vocal opponent of vaccine passports and mandates, especially the Alberta Health Services (AHS) for not allowing people to work if they are not vaccinated against Covid. According to the premier, people not vaccinated against Covid are the most discriminated against she has seen in her life.
Smith vowed to reorganize the AHS governance system and fire the entire board.
“The system, my friends, is broken,” she said. “Most of those managing AHS today are holdovers from the NDP years. They have had their chance to fix this bloated system and they have largely failed on almost all accounts. Failure is no longer an option.”
Smith failed to address the comments she made during a virtual interview with Western Standard about the World Economic Forum (WEF). During the interview, she said she would end the AHS data sharing deal with other health providers, including Mayo Clinic, under a program overseen by the WEF.
Moscow Slams US for Not Issuing Visas to Russian Delegation to IAEA Conference
Samizdat – 24.10.2022
MOSCOW – Moscow considers unacceptable the fact that the United States had not issued visas to the Russian delegation to the IAEA international ministerial conference on nuclear energy in the 21st century, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
The conference will be held in Washington from October 26-28. The Russian delegation comprising representatives of state corporation Rosatom and technical watchdog Rostekhnadzor planned to take part in it.
“The United States never issued visas to the Russian delegates, despite the fact that the relevant applications were submitted by them in advance in accordance with the established procedure. Thus, Russia’s participation in an important international event under the auspices of the IAEA was blocked in an absolutely unacceptable way and without any reason,” Zakharova said in a statement.
The refusal of the United States to issue visas to the Russian delegation to the IAEA conference grossly violates the norms in the agreement between the IAEA and the state hosting the event, this gives reason to think about the advisability of holding international forums in the United States, Zakharova said.
This is another example of how the United States “implements its short-sighted policy of ignoring international law and replacing it with a perverted postulate of some kind of ‘rules-based order’ that Washington itself invents and adjusts for itself,” she noted.
“This is another reason to think about whether it is worth trusting the holding of large international forums to a country that is not able to organize them properly,” Zakharova added.
The EU’s energy security now rests in Turkey’s hands
Europe has sought to bypass Russian gas with disastrous results. Turkey is set to reap the benefits.
By Karin Kneissl | The Cradle | October 24 2022
“Geography is the constant of history,” is a quote attributed to the German statesman Otto von Bismarck. Today, those words ring true as we witness geography altering global politics, finance, and alliances.
The geostrategic importance of Turkey has rarely been as clear to European politicians as it has been in recent months, as the continent grapples with a burgeoning energy crisis this coming winter.
Whether it is grain exports from the Black Sea region or the flow of energy supplies from the eastern producing countries, the Bosphorus and the links to Eurasia are once again playing a decisive geopolitical role, as they so often have throughout history. The fact is, Turkey is now crucial for the security of Europe.
Pipeline politics
On the occasion of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Sochi at the beginning of August 2022, the focus was mainly on bilateral cooperation in energy matters.
Putin told journalists after the tete-a-tete that Europeans should be grateful to Ankara for its gas supplies due to the reliability of the TurkStream pipeline.
Last year, Russian natural gas accounted for around 45 percent of European gas imports. But that share has fallen to less than 10 percent after supplies were halted via the eastbound Yamal-Europe pipeline and suspected US-backed operatives blew up Nord Stream, which also curtailed exports via Ukraine.
The Russian-Turkish TurkStream gas pipeline project was announced in December 2014 after Moscow realized that the long-planned SouthStream project – meant to deliver Russian natural gas via the Black Sea directly to European Union (EU) member state Bulgaria – was not feasible.
Russian energy giant Gazprom and the Italian energy company ENI were the main partners in the consortium. However, following the Crimean crisis in March 2014, the EU Commission blocked this major infrastructure project, citing competition rules.
As far as Moscow was concerned, this arrangement had already been completed in the form of terminals and pipeline routes. Thousands of work contracts had been issued between Bulgaria and Hungary at the time.
Construction was scheduled to begin in June 2014, but Brussels alluded to apparent violations of competition rules in the awarding of contracts by the Bulgarian authorities and brought everything to a halt.
Turkey as a Russian energy hub
Nine months later, during a joint press conference with Erdogan in Ankara, Putin remarked that “If Europe does not want to carry it out, then it will not be carried out.” Putin then announced the TurkStream project, which was formally launched in early 2020.
One pandemic and a war later, the world has experienced and continues to experience rising natural gas prices, while Russian-Turkish energy cooperation is intensifying. On 19 October, Erdogan said he had agreed with Putin to set up a comprehensive hub for Russian natural gas built in Turkey from where Europe could meet its energy needs.
“If Turkey and our potential buyers are interested, we could consider building another gas pipeline and creating a gas hub in Turkey for sale to third countries, especially in Europe,” Putin proposed. In addition, a gas exchange could also be created in Turkey to determine prices, he added.
Neither the EU nor the US have welcomed these developments or, in some cases, faits accomplis. Turkey makes no secret of the fact that it wants to expand its status in the China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and will probably soon become the tenth member of this important regional organization.
It should be noted that the SCO’s statutes stipulate energy and security – especially the fight against terrorism – as its essential agenda. The EU, it must be said, is only just discovering the importance of these issues.
Attempts to bypass Russian gas
In the recent past, governments and energy companies have looked to Turkey as an alternative to the existing transit routes for oil and gas between the east and west. In 2005, the 1750 km long Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline was opened, transporting Caspian oil across the Caucasus to the Turkish Mediterranean port.
Crucially, this route had the backing of Washington, reinforcing the close connection between politics and the oil business. As per an apt saying from the early 20th century US oil industry: “The oil business is too important to leave it to the oil people.”
The Nabucco pipeline project, intended to reduce Europe’s reliance on Russia’s gas, consisted of a consortium of six corporations based on the initiative of the Austrian partly state-owned OMV. The project was supported politically and financially by the European Commission, with the premise being that natural gas would be supplied from the Caspian region via Turkey to Central Europe to the Baumgarten hub in Austria.
Billions were spent on marketing this project between 2002 and 2014. However contractual agreements surrounding the deal never materialized. Though inconceivable now, Iran was also initially planned as an alternative supplier, yet these efforts failed from 2005 onwards due to UN Security Council sanctions on Iran from 2008 until the present.
Additionally, supply contracts with Iraq and Turkmenistan were targeted in vain, although these arguably had a lot to do with complete mismanagement. In the case of Turkmenistan, countless advisory opinions were commissioned on the status of the Caspian Sea under international law, sea, or lake, and the possible transit pipelines for landlocked Turkmenistan.
A failed strategy
After many years of mere marketing and a lot of hot air between Brussels and Vienna around the Nabucco project, OMV’s partners finally backed out in 2014. It was clear that there was no natural gas available.
In my book “Der Energiepoker” (The Energy Poker) I wrote in 2006: “If the managers had not gone to the State Opera to see Verdi’s Nabucco, but had seen the operetta by Johann Strauss “Wiener Blut” (Viennese Blood), then this natural gas pipeline would have been given a more appropriate name.
Now, in view of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline boycotted by the EU, OMV is facing further setbacks, as the contracts with take-or-pay clauses were drafted in such a way that payment would have to be made for the Russian natural gas, even if there was no physical delivery. These conditions apparently apply until 2040.
EU will buy Russian energy indirectly
While the EU wants to bypass Russian energy sources for political reasons, Turkey, India, and China, among others, will gladly fill in the consumer void. As described, Turkey already benefited in 2014 from the SouthStream project, which became TurkStream. The EU ultimately lost out, while Ankara stood to gain, with the EU presently buying Russian natural gas via Turkey.
This energy route is set to expand even further once the Russian natural gas hub in Turkey is established. Turkey thus becomes the safeguard of the EU’s energy security. While this was the case a few years ago with non-Russian natural gas and oil, it now looks as if Russia is merely adapting its role for the European market on a regional basis.
For some years, Ankara aligned its prospective role as a hub for BTC and the Nabucco project with its EU accession ambitions. Now it seems that Turkey will become a member of the SCO much faster, and despite its NATO membership, part of the security cooperation with Russia and China.
The EU is more dependent than ever on the goodwill of those it once created obstacles for, and Turkey and Russia are no exception. The coming months will show with all their force just how irresponsibly the EU governments handled the continent’s energy security needs.
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Precedents for Pizzagate
Marc Dutroux, Belgian pedophile, sadist, and serial killer with friends in high places
By Aedon Cassiel | Counter – Currents | December 23, 2016
To reiterate a point that should be clear to the more astute reader, my goal in this series (part 1, part 2) has not been to defend “Pizzagate” as such. My goal has been to defend the people who want to investigate it against specific accusations levied against them by people who think Pizzagate has revealed no intriguing information at all—for a specific reason, which I will be honing in and focusing on much more directly in this closing entry.
Whereas the mainstream critics of Pizzagate would have you believe that the dividing line is between paranoid conspiracy theorist followers of “fake news” and level-headed people who follow trustworthy news sources and rely on cold, hard reason to determine the truth, my goal has been to show that—whatever is or is not happening with Pizzagate itself—this framing of the issue is arrogant, insulting, and the product of extremely narrow tunnel vision. … continue
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