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Monday, January 30, 2023

White House Refuses To Say If Ukraine Will Get Toxic Depleted Uranium Ammo

 The White House refused to say if it will provide Ukraine with Bradley Fighting Vehicles equipped with radioactive depleted uranium rounds, ammunition that is linked to cancer and birth defects.

Depleted uranium is typically created as a byproduct of producing enriched uranium and is extremely dense, making it an effective material to pierce the armor of tanks. Bradleys can be equipped with depleted uranium ammunition, which is why they are known as "tank killers."

When asked on Wednesday if the Bradleys the US is sending to Ukraine will be equipped with depleted uranium, a senior Biden administration official said, "I’m not going to get into the technical specifics."

The official also declined to answer if the M1 Abrams tanks the US is providing Kyiv will be equipped with a depleted uranium cage.

Konstantin Gavrilov, the head of Russia’s delegation in Vienna on arms control, has warned Moscow would view the use of depleted uranium weapons in Ukraine as the use of a "dirty bomb." Gavrilov claimed that Germany’s Leopard 2 tanks could also be equipped with depleted uranium rounds.

"In case such munitions for NATO-made heavy weapons are supplied to Kiev, we will consider that as the use of dirty nuclear bombs against Russia with all the consequences that come with it," he said, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

Cancer and birth defects spiked in Iraq after the Gulf War, during which the US fired an estimated one million depleted uranium rounds.

The US also used toxic ammunition in its 2003 invasion, and studies have found that birth defects are more common in areas where depleted uranium was used. Birth defects are still common today in the city of Fallujah.

https://www.zerohedge.com/military/white-house-refuses-say-if-ukraine-will-get-toxic-depleted-uranium-ammo

Russia warns United States: the end of nuclear arms control may be nigh

 

Russia told the United States on Monday that the last remaining pillar of bilateral nuclear arms control could expire in 2026 without a replacement due to what it said were U.S. efforts to inflict "strategic defeat" on Moscow in Ukraine.

Both Russia and the United States still have vast arsenals of nuclear weapons which are currently partially limited by the 2011 New START Treaty, which in 2021 was extended until 2026.

What comes after Feb. 4, 2026, however, is unclear, though Washington has indicated it wants to reach a follow-on agreement with Russia.

Asked if Moscow could envisage there being no nuclear arms control treaty after 2026, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the RIA state new agency: "This is quite a possible scenario."

Ryabkov, Russia's top arms control diplomat, said the United States had in recent years ignored Russia's interests and dismantled most of the architecture of arms control.

"New START may well fall victim to this," Ryabkov told RIA. "We are ready for such a scenario."

His remarks constitute a warning to Washington that its continued military support for Ukraine could scupper the final major post-Cold War bilateral arms control treaty with Russia.

The United States has supplied more than $27 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia invaded the country on Feb. 24, including over 1,600 Stinger anti-aircraft rocket systems, 8,500 Javelin anti-tank missile systems and over 1 million 155mm artillery rounds.

"The entire situation in the sphere of security, including arms control, has been held hostage by the U.S. line of inflicting strategic defeat on Russia," Ryabkov said.

"We will resist this in the strongest possible way using all the methods and means at our disposal."

NUCLEAR CONTROLS

U.S.-Russia talks on resuming inspections under the New START treaty were called off at the last minute in November 2022. The sides have not agreed on a time frame for new talks.

Russia and the United States, which during the Cold War were constrained by a tangle of arms control agreements, still account together for about 90% of the world's nuclear warheads.

The United States said in its 2022 Nuclear Posture Review that Russia and China were expanding and modernising their nuclear forces, and that Washington would pursue an approach based on arms control to head off costly arms races.

The New START Treaty limited both sides to 1,550 warheads on deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine ballistic missiles and heavy bombers. Both sides met the central limits by 2018.

"Expiration of the Treaty without a follow-on agreement would leave Russia free to expand strategic nuclear forces that are now constrained, as well as novel intercontinental-range and regional systems that are not currently limited by the Treaty," according to the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review.

"Russia is pursuing several novel nuclear-capable systems designed to hold the U.S. homeland or Allies and partners at risk, some of which are also not accountable under New START."

https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/currency/US-DOLLAR-RUSSIAN-ROUBL-2370597/news/Russia-warns-United-States-the-end-of-nuclear-arms-control-may-be-nigh-42843159/

Goldman Sachs restructures Russian business

 

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has restructured its assets in Russia, the RBC daily reported on Monday, citing two investment market sources, a move that could take the U.S. bank closer to a full exit from the country.

U.S. banks have cut exposure to Russia since it sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine last year, but foreign lenders require special permission from President Vladimir Putin to sell stakes.

Goldman Sachs, which in March said it was winding down its business in Russia, in November said it had reduced its credit exposure to Russia by 9% to $205 million in the third quarter.

One of RBC's sources said Goldman's asset portfolio, which includes minority stakes in recruitment firm Headhunter and real estate database Cian, had been sold to local management.

Goldman Sachs did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

An Aug. 5 decree, signed by Putin, banned investors from so-called unfriendly countries from selling shares in key energy projects and banks. That decree, now in force until the end of 2023, gave Putin the power to issue special waivers in certain cases for deals to go ahead.

https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/HEADHUNTER-GROUP-PLC-58071862/news/Goldman-Sachs-restructures-Russian-business-RBC-citing-sources-42844284/

Philips sees some improvement in Q; actions to address operational challenges

 Fourth-quarter highlights

  • Group sales amounted to EUR 5.4 billion, with 3% comparable sales growth driven by component supply improvements, while Philips’ supply chain conditions remain challenging
  • Comparable order intake decreased 8%, due to lower demand for COVID-19-related products compared to 2021 and company actions to improve the order book margin profile
  • Income from operations amounted to EUR 171 million, compared to EUR 162 million in Q4 2021
  • Adjusted EBITA of EUR 651 million, or 12.0% of sales, compared to EUR 647 million, or 13.1% of sales, in Q4 2021
  • Operating cash flow was EUR 540 million, compared to EUR 720 million in Q4 2021

Full-year highlights

  • Group sales amounted to EUR 17.8 billion, with a 3% comparable sales decline due to operational and supply challenges, lower sales in China, the consequences of the Respironics field action, and the Russia-Ukraine war
  • Comparable order intake decreased 3% compared to 4% growth in 2021
  • Income from operations amounted to a loss of EUR 1,529 million, largely due to the previously disclosed EUR 1.5 billion non-cash goodwill and R&D impairment charges, compared to income of EUR 553 million in 2021
  • Adjusted EBITA of EUR 1,318 million, or 7.4% of sales, compared to EUR 2,054 million, or 12.0% of sales, in 2021
  • Operating cash outflow of EUR 173 million, compared to an inflow of EUR 1,629 million in 2021
  • Proposed dividend maintained at EUR 0.85 per share, to be distributed in shares

Billions of political text messages were sent last year — little to stop more

 Americans were bombarded with political text messages in the months leading up to the midterm elections last year, even more than they were during the 2020 presidential race, something experts attribute to a Supreme Court decision that eliminated the requirement to obtain consent when sending mass texts.

More than 15 billion political texts were sent in 2022 according to call-blocking service Robokiller — about 50 messages for every phone in the country. Few states have taken action that would curtail this, and congressional efforts have been unsuccessful.

“We are seeing a lot more brazenness in these marketing, SMS and political messages that are not necessarily illegal, but are approaching the volumes that people are getting completely overwhelmed by,” said Giulia Porter, Robokiller’s vice president.

Political texts — messages asking for donations, voting reminders and volunteer opportunities — are an increasingly important part of outreach strategy for campaigns, so much so that Americans received approximately 39 texts for every political call in 2022.

Political texts spiked last fall during the run-up to November’s midterm election. But instead of falling in December, after most races were settled outside of Georgia’s Senate runoff, the number of texts actually increased, peaking at 3.7 billion messages. 

Republican campaigns and groups sent the bulk of political texts sent in 2022, Robokiller’s data shows. GOP campaigns sent nearly 12 billion texts, compared to 3 billion texts for Democratic campaigns and groups.

Most voters don’t have to do anything to wind up on political text lists. Contact information for millions of voters has already been collected into vast databases known as data exchanges, which are managed by brokers that sell access to campaigns. The data itself, according to the brokers, is collected from public records and other sources.

Political parties have long used public records as the foundation of their voter outreach efforts. But as the search for highly refined political data has escalated, campaigns have increasingly relied on national voter databases created by these brokers. 

America’s major political parties have an affiliated political data broker operating outside of the regulated campaign funding environment — Democratic Data Exchange for the Democratic party and Data Trust for the GOP — that collects data from state and local parties. Both Data Trust and Democratic Data Exchange declined requests for comment.

Many states allow these companies to access voter registration records — including a voter’s name, residence, political party, voting history, phone numbers and dates of birth — either at no cost or for a low fee.

Once the campaigns have your contact info, they don’t need your consent to contact you, as an April 2021 Supreme Court ruling loosened consent requirements for automated calls and texts. In its ruling, the court narrowed the definition of an autodialer, a category of tool used to make automated calls and text messages. In doing so, experts say the ruling exempted the most commonly used mass texting tools from the consent requirements.

“The result of the ruling was that we now have unlimited automated telephone calls and texts,” said Margot Saunders, senior counsel for the National Consumer Law Center, a nonprofit that advocates for the economic well-being of low-income people.

As the number of texts to voters’ phones has skyrocketed, so too have the complaints. 

Data from the Federal Communications Commission shows that unwanted political texts made up the largest single group of text message complaints in 2022.

“I’ve definitely received more texts over calls in the last election cycle,” said Lauren Schneider, a project manager at a startup in State College, Pennsylvania. “My phone does a pretty good job of sending it to spam, but they often get through using a local number. This drives me insane because I think it’s going to be something important, and it’s someone looking to ask me for donations, or to volunteer.” 

Schneider said she wasn’t sure how she ended up on the text message lists. “I didn’t ever knowingly opt into this political barrage.”

The potential for limitless messaging combined with a sophisticated information harvesting capabilities — one where campaigns have access to large amounts of voter contact information— has negative consequences for those on the receiving end.

Porter, from Robokiller, called the sharing of data across campaigns concerning, “You think you’re donating to one party or one campaign or even just one super PAC, and then all of a sudden you’re getting so many other messages,” she said. 

“It has been frustrating for a lot of people who didn’t want this organization to share [their] phone number to a million other places,” she added.

Even if they don’t recall consenting to political texts, voters have limited options for revoking it. Political texts are not subject to the federal Do Not Call registry, which allows consumers to opt  out of telemarketing calls and text messages. Instead, those with the time and inclination may try to have their information removed from individual campaign contact lists.

Since 2019, both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have introduced bills that would have reformed how data brokers request and maintain voter data. But none of these bills have been enacted, so the data broker industry is not currently regulated by any federal law. 

California, Nevada and Vermont have each passed laws since 2018 giving residents the right to opt out of having voter data collected by data brokers, as well as giving residents the ability to request any collected data to be deleted.

https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/15-billion-political-text-messages-sent-2022-rcna64017

The War on Doctors and Patients

 Whenever I republish my newspaper op-eds on this Substack, I tend to introduce them with some comments on “how I really feel,” instead of the more staid language and arguments used in those pieces. In this one, I essentially argued that the new Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government should be ground zero for investigating how the administration is using COVID-19 to wage war on doctors who won’t follow its orthodoxy. 

Although I am not under the delusion that its actions will actually result in meaningful changes in public health policy, I felt I should provide some guidance to them in the support we doctors (and thus patients) really need. I highlighted some of the most harmful actions taken to silence and suppress physicians, which would have been absolutely unthinkable a few years ago but now are becoming the norm, what with Clownifornia’s new bill (which just got slapped with an injunction!) threatening doctors’ livelihoods if their speech does not support the dominant consensus, er, I mean “narrative.” 

I am doing this while every week new data piles up showing the immense toxicity and lethality and negative effectiveness of the latest vaccines. Yet the Biden administration and its allies in media and medicine only push them harder, inventing batshit crazy narratives to explain their shortcomings. Imagine their gratitude learning about this Canadian physician’s discovery of a “stroke season!”

By now we all understand that these profoundly anti-scientific, unethical positions are driven by an unholy and terrifying alliance of government, the pharmaceutical industry, and media. The evidence is damning in how they have co-opted public health institutions to suppress dissent so they can continue raking in astronomical profits. The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), a nonprofit organization that certifies physicians’ medical licenses, is chief among the once-trusted institutions that has bent the knee.

Last year, the ABIM accused myself, Paul Marik, and Peter McCullough of spreading “misinformation” and threatened our ability to practice medicine, ignoring the ever-widening disconnect between the Biden administration’s statements and the reality on the ground. 

A reality which literally amounts to a humanitarian catastrophe with young people dropping dead “unexpectedly” and the best analyses estimating over 500,00 having died directly from the vaccine in the US alone with further millions disabled. And we wonder why restaurants often cannot open or ski mountains can only run half their lifts on even the most bluebird of powder days (of course there are multiple factors leading to this reality, but the vaccine lethality is the only “never mentioned” one).

As an aside, although it is devastating to do so, I think that everyone should read Mark Crispin Miller’s Substack and his daily series entitled “In Memory of Those Who Died Suddenly.” He compiles and presents media reports of human deaths at a frequency and regularity that is difficult to behold (especially for an expert in sudden cardiac death, a subject I studied deeply during my years as an expert in therapeutic hypothermia in post-arrest patients, an event which was distinctly rare in active healthy people outdoors prior to the vaccination campaign). 

I feel responsible to read/witness what he is presenting to the world. I am tired of dueling and conflicting medical papers and agency data, cherry-picked or manipulated to support the dominant delusion that these vaccines are benign. When you read Mark’s Substack, you are faced daily with reading about the untimely and sudden ends to the lives of real people, every day, around the world, amidst this terror of a global vaccination campaign.

They are dying “unexpectedly” at enormous rates and falling ill with cancer at enormous rates. He seems to be the only one who is presenting these data in such a human, highly personal way by compiling individual media stories of the sudden ending of human lives at ever younger ages with an unimaginable regularity. Unfortunately, as per the most visited English language media outlet in the world, doctors don’t know why yet and the vaccines are not even mentioned as a possibility in this clown article published in the Daily Mail.

Unrelenting reports of people in largely perfect health, out in society doing routine or pleasurable activities and then dropping dead or unconscious, often being captured on television studio sets, auditorium stages, subway platforms, street surveillance cameras, playgrounds, sporting events, athletic fields, and even broadcaster desks. To date, I am not aware of a single newspaper report (even from tiny local papers) which openly implicates the vaccine as a even a possible cause let alone an almost certain one. An unimaginably dystopian nightmare all around us… while society seemingly carries on as normal. 

Back to the ABIM: despite its status as a private organization with no statutory authority (insane right?), the ABIM has morphed into an “enforcement” arm of the government, wielding the ability to control certification and the livelihood of doctors, who are subject to career-ending threats for trying to alert the public to all the death and disability resulting from the vaccine campaign. Paul and I are fighting those charges tooth and nail. I am looking forward to soon sharing on this Substack the brilliant response we worked on with our assassin of an FLCCC lawyer, Alan Dumhof. I predict a clown world of a response and will share with you as soon as we get it.

Anyway, here is my Op-Ed: 


Two years of one-party rule in Washington are over, and the new Republican House majority must now restore balance through vigorous oversight. The Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is expected to focus on allegations of collusion between social media companies and the Biden administration.

But it should expand its focus to include the government’s use of COVID to wage war against doctors — which continues to this day. 

The suppression of doctors’ freedom to advise and treat patients began early in the pandemic. Promising alternative courses of treatment, such as generic drugs like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, were shouted down by false news narratives.

Media companies took their cues from public health agencies, which exaggerated concerns over people using medicines to treat COVID in ways that were not intended and against medical advice. Positive clinical data was ignored.

The next major front in the war on doctors opened up with the vaccine rollout. President Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other public officials promised these novel, rushed vaccines would prevent illness and even transmission.

Biden’s declaration that, “If you get vaccinated, you won’t get COVID” has now been exposed as a lie, but it’s crucial to understand how it came to this.

In the past, broad skepticism would have greeted plans to mass distribute a “safe and effective” vaccine that was developed and approved in just 12 months.

And society would have flatly rejected government mandates that pushed people to get vaccinated or risk losing their jobs and becoming social outcasts. Science and medicine, practiced correctly, should challenge the powers that be, not blindly follow them.

But in our ongoing ordeal, no skepticism has been allowed, no discussion, no options. Those who raised questions or suggested different approaches were smeared as “deniers” or even worse, “anti-vaxxers.”

Even as the public learned more about the virus’s actual threat, the vaccines’ disappointing performance, and the tragic reality of vaccine injuries which began occurring at an unprecedented scale, the political imperative from Biden and Fauci never wavered.

They continued to preach a single-minded focus on the experimental vaccines. More and more vaccine products were rushed through Emergency Use Authorizations from the Food and Drug Administration, resulting in astronomical profits for their manufacturers.

This unholy alliance of government, the pharmaceutical industry and media deprived the public of full and fair advice from the medical community. The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), a nonprofit organization that certifies physicians’ medical licenses, has issued letters to me and my colleagues threatening our ability to practice medicine.

They accused us of spreading “misinformation” — ignoring the huge disconnect between the government’s statements and the medical reality on the ground. Despite their status as a private organization with no statutory authority, the ABIM has morphed into the “enforcement” arm of the government, wielding the ability to control certification and the livelihood of doctors, who are subject to career-ending threats for veering from the government’s narrow and singular approach.

And this month, California’s new law empowering state agencies to disbar medical professionals who deviate from the party line has taken effect. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently called California the “True Freedom State.” The scores of its residents—and its doctors—fleeing for Florida and Texas know better.

A “one-size-fits-all” approach to vaccines, or to any other health issue, is almost never warranted. Here, proponents of vaccine (and of government and Big-Tech coercion and censorship) flatly refuse to consider patient factors, such as age, medical history, and overall health, to determine who needs what treatment.

By virtue of their professional training, doctors must advise patients on available treatments and known risks of any treatment or procedure. By threatening doctors who might provide information different than their preferred worldview, ABIM is disrupting the doctor-patient relationship.

When allowed to practice their craft freely, physicians can prevent societal disaster by focusing on individual patients, informed by clinical experience.

Groups like the ABIM, and public medical officials like Fauci, should support and encourage evidence-based debate and patient-centered care.

Instead, they have suppressed both that debate and treatment approach by persecuting its proponents. This campaign must be stopped, its origins and evolution must be thoroughly documented, and it must never be allowed to recur. Physician autonomy must be restored lest all patients suffer.

Oversight is a core congressional function, and it’s particularly important when the government is under divided party control.

The new Select Subcommittee has a long to-do list, but the people deserve a thorough accounting of the ongoing war on doctors.

Pierre Kory is a Pulmonary and Critical Care Specialist, Teacher/Researcher. He is also the President and Chief Medical Officer of the non-profit organization Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance whose mission is to develop the most effective, evidence/expertise-based COVID-19 treatment protocols.

https://brownstone.org/articles/war-on-doctors-patients/

How dare you, madam vice-president?

 The high point of Kamala Harris ’s otherwise disastrous vice presidency came in May 2022 when she delivered a fiery speech that rebuked the leaked draft of the Supreme Court decision that would eventually overturn Roe v. Wade.

For a vice president that had sorely lacked positive press up until this point, the virality of her condemnation of the court’s leaked decision — punctuated by her impassioned delivery of the rhetorical question, “how dare they?” — boosted her political stock in the weeks that followed. The moment inspired numerous think pieces in select legacy outlets , which all said essentially the same thing: At long last, the veep had found her voice.

So it was no surprise that Harris attempted to recreate that moment last week on the 50th anniversary of the original Roe decision, a date on the calendar year that has long served as the occasion of the March for Life in Washington D.C. Speaking in front of roughly 1,500 people outside of the Florida statehouse in Tallahassee, Harris once again delivered the successful catchphrase:

"I've said it before, and I'll say it again,” she began. “How dare they? How dare they?"

Somewhere in a picket line in Scandinavia, Greta Thunberg blushed.

Unfortunately for Harris, her speech in Tallahassee again went viral, but not in a good way. In a moment of jaw-dropping cynicism, she somehow managed to issue the following statement with a straight face.

“America is a promise. … It is a promise of freedom and liberty, not just some, but for all. A promise we made in the Declaration of Independence, that we are each endowed with the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness" (emphasis mine).

The comment drew nervous applause from an audience of allies. In a sane world — or at least one that objects to having its intelligence mocked — it would have drawn a barrage of rotten tomatoes.

The omission of the word “life” was impossible to miss. Even the most hyper-progressive, anti-American neo-Maoist in attendance would have noticed its absence. After all, the phrase is perhaps the most well-known and oft-repeated in the Western world. Americans, as well as many non-Americans, have it memorized by the time they’ve learned to tie their shoes. Either Harris is an even less formidable intellect than we’d imagined, or her estimation of the public is so low that she thought she could pull a fast one.

Either way, the moment was a gift for the pro-life movement as it continues to struggle for the hearts and minds of the nation in the post-Roe era. Harris’s omission of the word “life” had the unintended effect of underscoring its necessity. Indeed, without life, there can be no liberty or pursuit of happiness. “Life” is the first right listed in the declaration because it is the most fundamental of the three. Its absence drove the point home splendidly. For this, Harris should be thanked.

But what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Harris attempted (and gloriously failed) to twist one of the most sacred phrases in world history for her own convenience and to further her own political ambition. And so it is only fair that we say in response: How dare you, madam vice president?

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/equality-not-elitism/how-dare-you-madam-vice-president