As the German Health Ministry drowns in millions of unwanted vaccine doses, Karl Lauterbach begs Germans to please, please line up for their fifth jab
eugyppius: a plague chronicle | November 1, 2023
From the erstwhile vaccine propagandists at Der Spiegel, who I think are also tiring of the insipid autumnal vaccination liturgy and its noxious political enablers:
Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach has again called on people to get a booster vaccination. “Despite the pandemic and awareness campaigns, the importance of the Covid booster is apparently greatly underestimated,” he tells Spiegel. “So far, unfortunately, only a fraction of those for whom it is recommended have had a booster vaccination.” He calls on all at-risk groups and older people to catch up and ideally combine it with a flu vaccination.
According to the vaccine uptake statistics of the Robert Koch Institute, only about 2.5 million people have received three or more boosters. This means that only a fraction of those over 60 are likely to have sufficient protection against Covid …
They let Lauterbach flap his gums a little more about population immunity, Long Covid, secondary infections and how the vaccines can make all this better because reasons, before sticking the knife in him:
Lauterbach urgently needs to boost vaccine uptake. The pharmaceutical contracts concluded under his predecessor Jens Spahn have secured much larger quantities of vaccine than are currently being used. Between September and November, about 14.1 million vaccine doses of monovalent vaccine targeted at XBB 1.5. will be delivered. An additional 10.6 million vaccine doses of Novavax XBB 1.5. vaccines will also become available, as soon as they are approved by the European Commission.
Our dissolute snake oil salesmen – who is either so stupid or so desperate that he actually tweeted a link to this not-so-subtle takedown – is currently sitting on 11.5 million Pfizer/BioNTech doses, trembling at the prospect of Novavax dropping another 10 million on his head, with no hope at all that more than 5 million Germans will ever line up for these worthless products. This is despite the best efforts of the regional press, who have been trying to gaslight their elderly readers into getting yet another jab since September. Today the Main Post published a typical piece, claiming that vaccine demand is starting to creep up now, really it is; while yesterday it was the turn of Münchner Merkur to claim that everyone is talking about the shiny new vaccines and to drag in some pulmonologist to talk about the “predominantly positive reception” they’ve enjoyed.
Dear idiot reporters: The official vaccine dashboards may be down, but the RKI still publish day-by-day uptake statistics. Stop lying.
Fired Unvaccinated New York City Teachers Still Fighting for Reinstatement and Back Pay After Supreme Court Win
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 31, 2023
In a precedent-setting victory last month, a New York State Supreme Court judge ruled that 10 New York City school teachers fired for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds must be reinstated with back pay, benefits, seniority and attorney fees.
But the city immediately appealed the decision, so none of those teachers have returned to their jobs or received any payments.
“These workers absolutely did win reinstatement and back-pay,” Sujata Gibson, the teachers’ attorney told The Defender. “Unfortunately, in New York State courts, the government is entitled to an ‘automatic stay’ of any such relief pending resolution of the appeal.”
Gibson also said:
“CHD [Children’s Health Defense] is supporting us in our fight to defend these wins on appeal, and we are pursuing additional options to try to speed this process up and secure relief for additional plaintiffs. But the fight is not over yet.”
Nearly 7,000 New York City Department of Education (DOE) workers who sought religious accommodation from the COVID-19 vaccine mandate in 2021 were denied based on standards that a federal court later ruled unconstitutional.
Some of the workers, along with Teachers For Choice, sued the city in February, in a lawsuit sponsored in part by CHD and CHD New York.
The suit also sought class-action certification for all DOE workers who were denied religious exemptions. Judge Ralph Porzio denied the motion to grant class status, a ruling the plaintiffs are appealing.
Regardless, Gibson said the decision was “a precedent-setting victory, and a watershed moment in the teachers’ fight.”
Thousands of workers were subjected to the very same processes the judge ruled were “arbitrary and capricious,” and they could sue individually based on that precedent, if it is upheld by the appeals court, Gibson said.
Michael Kane, one of the plaintiffs and a member of Teachers For Choice, told The Defender that after filing the appeal, the city has six months to take the next step in the case — so even though they won with the last ruling, the fired teachers will have to continue to fight for their rights and the relief they are entitled to.
The struggle continues, despite confusion on social media
Last week, a Fox News story from Oct. 25, 2022, “New York Supreme Court reinstates all employees fired for being unvaccinated, orders backpay” was picked up and celebrated on social media by influential figures and their followers. It circulated on X, formerly Twitter, and Instagram, where hundreds of thousands of social media users “liked” the posts, Kane said.
The story itself was vague — it did not cite the actual case that had been ruled on and it gave the impression that all New York City workers fired for refusing vaccination would be returning to work with back pay.
In fact, the story was posted after the state’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of plaintiffs George Garvey and 15 other New York City Department of Sanitation employees who were fired by the city for non-compliance with the mandate.
That historic ruling was applicable not only to the 16 workers who sued but also to all public employees in New York City, including the police and fire department.
But in that case, the city also appealed the ruling and the appeals process is ongoing.
New York City workers, with substantial public support, continue to fight, Kane said.
He added:
“This isn’t just for us, it’s for our kids and our grandkids. This is laying the groundwork. It took over 50 years for Plessy v. Ferguson to be overturned by Brown v. Board of Education. Civil rights battles are long, protracted struggles, and that’s what we’re in. It’s not fun, but that’s what we’re in.”
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
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.
Ukraine Is Set to Make Lobby Push in US for More Weapons and Training
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | November 1, 2023
Ukraine and some European countries are ramping up a lobbying push in the US to get Americans to back more aid to Kiev. Ukrainian officials are seeking new long-range rockets and accelerated training programs. The propaganda push comes after a Time Magazine article portrayed Kiev in disarray and a hotbed for corruption.
According to Politico, “Ukrainian officials and allies in Europe are ramping up their lobbying campaign in the US for new weapons and training.” The authors cite a recent Ukrainian delegation that toured America with a wishlist that included: “US Marine Corps training on conducting ship-to-shore operations; new air defenses to take down the Russian glide bombs that are devastating Ukrainian forces; and the long-range, single-warhead version of the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) the Biden administration secretly shipped to Ukraine last month.”
The representatives of the Ukrainian government are attempting to adapt their message to the current American political landscape. Roman Tychkivskyy, a former Ukrainian marine and current defense official, compared Russians to Hamas.
The White House is attempting to package support for the proxy war against Russia, Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, and the massive military buildup in the Asia Pacific into a massive $105 billion aid bill.
Tychkivskyy went on to dub Russia, North Korea, and Iran an “axis of evil.” Newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson recently referred to Russia, China, and Iran as the new “axis of evil.” However, Representative Johnson is vowing to package aid for Israel in a stand-alone bill, a blow to Kiev that was hoping to get the bulk of the $105 billion aid bill.
Politico additionally reports a European delegation will visit the US to lobby Americans, they will argue that spending billions of dollars on arming Ukraine will create jobs at home. William D. Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, says the notion that weapons spending creates jobs is a myth.
“There are many ways to create more and better jobs without resorting to increased weapons spending,” he explained. “Virtually any other form of government outlay, or even a tax cut, yields greater employment than military spending.”
One item on Kiev’s wishlist is long-range ATACMS rockets with conventional warheads. The White House recently approved sending Ukraine the cluster variant of the missile. The Department of Defense is reluctant to send the unitary warhead because the US lacks surpluses in its stockpiles. However, Washington no longer uses the cluster variant of the weapon.
Additionally, Kiev is seeking to accelerate the F-16 training program for Ukrainian pilots. The soldiers began training on the advanced aircraft this week. The Pentagon said the pilots will take several months to complete the program and did not provide a clear timeline.
An article published by Time earlier this week portrayed Kiev as a dysfunctional government with the Ukrainian military in disarray. A close aide to President Zelensky said that the leader had become dogmatic in his view that Kiev could reconquer all of Ukraine by military force even as failures mounted.
Ukrainian forces reported receiving orders that they lacked the military capabilities to complete. If the West comes through on weapons deliveries, “we don’t have the men to use them,” a Ukrainian official explained.
Still, Tychkivskyy is pushing for training on maneuvers to cross the Dnieper River. Kiev believes a successful operation can be used to set up a campaign to retake Crimea. “Once we are able to cross the river successfully and move the troops to the other side, there’s not many obstacles for us to move fast, closer to Crimea,” he said.
Russia warns Israel about attacks on Syria
RT | October 31, 2023
Spreading conflict to other countries in the Middle East is “unacceptable,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday, while discussing a spate of recent Israeli airstrikes with his Syrian counterpart.
Lavrov brought up the issue of Israeli airstrikes, “which have become more frequent against the backdrop of events around the Gaza Strip,” during a phone call with Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a readout of the call.
Both ministers “emphasized the danger of attempts by external forces to turn the Middle East, in its current explosive situation, into an arena for settling geopolitical scores,” the readout added.
Mekdad phoned Lavrov to discuss the situation in Gaza, as well as a number of bilateral issues and the progress in ending the war in Syria. While the 2011 attempt at armed “regime change” backed by the West and some regional powers ended in failure, the north and northeast of Syria remain outside the control of the government in Damascus.
Since the Hamas incursion from Gaza on October 7, Israel has bombed Syria at least three times, repeatedly shutting down the airports in Aleppo and Damascus. One of these attacks was acknowledged by the Israeli ambassador to Germany, who said it was intended to disrupt “weapons deliveries from Iran.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once said there had been “hundreds” of strikes on Syria over the past decade. On the rare occasions when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) comments on the attacks, it claims to have acted in pre-emptive self-defense against Iran, accusing Tehran of supplying Hezbollah militants. Damascus has repeatedly insisted that the raids constitute a violation of Syrian sovereignty, but to no avail.
Lavrov and Mekdad agreed on the need for an “immediate end to the bloodshed” in Gaza and a solution to all the humanitarian problems created by the fighting.
Russia has condemned the Hamas attack but called Israel’s response against Gaza an unacceptable form of “collective punishment” against innocent civilians. Moscow has called for a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians through the creation and recognition of an independent Palestinian state.
What the Heck is a ‘Scarborough Shoal’… ?
By Joseph Solis-Mullen | The Libertarian Institute | October 31, 2023
News from Southeast Asia this morning was that the Joe Biden administration was again rattling its saber over incidents between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea. At issue are some spits of sand thousands of miles from the United States. Just as a refresher for those Americans who, rightly, have no idea what or where the Scarborough or Second Thomas Shoal are (so irrelevant are they to American prosperity or security)…
The origins of the dispute between China and the Philippines over these miniscule spits of land in the South China Sea are based on conflicting claims over the territory. Beijing’s are based on ancient maps and documents it believes prove its sovereignty over the area, the so-called nine-dash line; while Manila, for its part, points to treaties and agreements signed during the colonial period when the Philippines was under Spanish and then American rule—among them, the 1898 Treaty of Paris and subsequently formulated Constitution of the Philippines, both of which included the shoals. Apart from being strategically located between China and the Philippines, they are home to rich fisheries and are likely to have significant reserves of oil and gas within their exclusive economic zone. As such, it is understandable why both Beijing and Manila are reluctant to concede their claims, and despite numerous efforts at doing so over the years, no resolution between the two has ever been reached.
Seeking to defend and strengthen its claim with a permanent armed presence, in 1999 Manila ordered the Sierra Madre purposefully run aground on Second Thomas Shoal, leaving the ship and a small contingent of men who are occasionally resupplied. It was actually attempted Chinese interference in such a resupply effort that sparked the most recent confrontation that the Biden administration issued its warning over.
Such incidents have been happening regularly since 2012, when Beijing began sending maritime surveillance vessels and large numbers of Chinese fisherman and members of its merchant marine into the area. When Manila attempted to arrest the Chinese for illegal fishing off Scarborough Shoal, Beijing dispatched more ships to block them, and a standoff ensued that was only brought to an end when the Philippines finally recalled its forces. Manila brought the dispute before the Permanent Court of Arbitration the next year, challenging the validity of China’s nine-dash line claim. And in 2016 the Court ruled in favor of the Philippines.
As one might expect, Beijing ignored this and has continued to assert its territorial claims with ever more vigor in the ensuing years. Incidents from the deployment of water cannons and laser lights to near collisions have been unfortunately frequent in the years since. And whereas under previous administrations Washington had been reluctant to explicitly state that the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and the Philippines applied to the disputed maritime areas in question, the Donald Trump administration sought to make these explicit during a 2019 visit by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. At the time, the skeptical Duterte administration in Manila kept aloof. Unfortunately, the newly elected boss in Manila is Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son of long-time U.S. sock-puppet dictator Ferdinand Marcos. He has shown no such reluctance to go along with Washinton’s preferred policy of all out confrontation with China, going so far as to open new leases to U.S. naval assets in the Cagayan Province, located directly across from Taiwan.
Despite what the cheerleaders at the The Washington Post would have you believe, this is all completely crazy, and not at all defensive. Risk war with China over a couple piles of rock and sand so the Philippines can have some extra gas and oil, and the U.S. Navy can shove more assets in China’s face in preparation for the desired war over a breakaway province of China which Washington already officially acknowledges as part of China?
Come on.
The truth is this standoff between the Philippines and China is part of much larger, ongoing territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas, which involve multiple countries besides China and Philippines; for example, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan. All of them want a taste of the likely natural resource wealth beneath the ocean’s floor, as well as the perceived security that comes from controlling the waters nearby.
There is probably going to be some amount of conflict.
The United States should not get involved.
‘Israel’s strikes on Jabalia killed 7 hostages’
Palestine Information Center – November 1, 2023
GAZA – Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said that seven hostages were killed in Tuesday’s Israeli airstrikes on the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza City.
“Seven civilian hostages were killed in the Jabalia massacre, including three foreign passport holders,” al-Qassam Brigades stated on Wednesday.
Israeli warplanes dropped six highly destructive US-made bombs, each of them weighing one ton, on an entire neighborhood in Jabalia refugee camp, killing and injuring hundreds of civilians, mostly women and children.
In this regard, senior Hamas official Ghazi Hammad said that the Israeli occupation army “does not care about the safety of the captives in Gaza regardless of their nationalities.”
Hammad added that his Movement already expressed its willingness to release the foreign prisoners, but the Israeli occupation government obstructed any effort in this regard.
However, he stressed the need now for curbing Israel’s aggression and massacres in Gaza.
UNRWA chief says 70% of Gaza victims are children, women
Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) holds press conference in Jerusalem on October 27, 2023
MEMO | November 1, 2023
Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Organisation for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said 70 per cent of the Palestinian martyrs who have been killed by the ongoing Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip since 7 October are children and women, warning that there is no safe place in Gaza.
He pointed out that churches, mosques, hospitals and civilian facilities housing displaced people have been targeted, describing the Israeli attacks as collective punishment for Palestinians living under siege.
For her part, Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Catherine Russell, explained that the Israeli aggression resulted in the killing of more than 3,400 children and the injury of at least 6,300.
She added that this toll indicates that 420 children were killed or injured every day, stressing “these numbers should shock us to the core.”
She indicated that the Israeli raids resulted in the complete or partial destruction of at least 221 schools and more than 177,000 homes.
Israel pressures Egypt to accept Gaza refugees for foreign debt relief
The Cradle | November 1, 2023
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to pressure Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to take in refugees from the Gaza Strip and has offered that the World Bank write off Egypt’s large foreign debt in return, Israel’s Yediot Ahronoth reported on 31 October.
Recently, Israel also turned to international leaders and asked them to try to convince Egyptian President Sisi to accept refugees in Egypt’s Sinai. Sisi refused the idea, saying that Sinai would become a base for Palestinian resistance groups to attack Israel, creating security problems for Cairo.
Egypt is vulnerable to Israeli pressure as it has suffered from record inflation and foreign currency shortages in recent years, making it difficult for the North African country to repay its external debts and pay for crucial imports, including wheat.
“What is happening now in Gaza is an attempt to force citizens to take shelter and immigrate to Egypt – and we will not accept that,” Sisi emphasized.
Sisi said that if Israel wants to keep Palestinians in Gaza safe from an expected large-scale Israeli ground assault, they should be allowed to evacuate to Israel’s southern Negev desert region and then return after Hamas is defeated.
He added: “Egypt opposes any attempt to resolve the Palestinian issue through military means or through the forced displacement of Palestinians from their land – whatever will be at the expense of the countries of the region.” Sisi said that if his citizens were called upon to do so, millions of them would take to the streets and demonstrate against the passage of Gazans to Sinai.
About 2.4 million Palestinians live in the Gaza Strip. At the beginning of the war, many of them flocked towards the Rafah crossing, which was closed.
Netanyahu’s offer to Sisi comes after the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence recommended on 13 October that Israel use the war with Hamas to forcibly transfer Gaza’s 2.3 million residents to Egypt’s Sinai as refugees and prevent them from ever returning, in a repeat of the 1948 Nakba.
The plan was leaked by activists from the Likud party to gauge Israeli and international opinion over such a plan. The Ministry of Intelligence is headed by Gila Gamliel of Likud.
IN 2010, Gamliel and Netanyahu asked then Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to implement the same plan. Mubarak rejected the idea and was deposed in January 2011 following street protests organized and supported by Egyptian activists working in concert with the US State Department.
Netanyahu made a similar request to Mubarak’s successor, Mohammad Morsi, in 2012, which Morsi also rejected.
Sisi then deposed Morsi in 2013. In 2014, Netanyahu made a similar proposal to Sisi in which Israel would annex settlements in the West Bank and Palestinians would receive part of northern Sinai.
Israel’s settlement movement has sought to reconquer Gaza and re-establish the Gush Katif settlement there ever since then prime minister Ariel Sharon ordered the evacuation of Jewish settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel has maintained a suffocating economic and military siege on Gaza since that time.