Stop the Idiocracy

Friday, February 18, 2022

President Biden declares he is convinced Putin and Russia are about to invade their neighbors, as Russian separatists allege shelling and sabotage in eastern Ukraine

A shame that a large percentage of nationalist populist Americans - their brains destroyed by cult worship of Donald Trump, and egged on by numerous other far-right provocateurs and propagandists - will be chanting 'Let's Go Brandon' and rooting for the Russian aggressors; all the while cynically waving the American flag and crowing about what greater 'patriots' they are than the rest of the American populace. Prayers for Ukraine, and for sanity and morality to somehow overcome the great odds and prevail. Via the Los Angeles Times -

President Biden said Friday that he is convinced Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to invade Ukraine, capping a day full of ominous turns toward war between Russia and the former Soviet Republic.
“We believe that they will target Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, a city of 2.8 million innocent people,” Biden said in a somber White House address. “We’re calling out Russia’s plans loudly and repeatedly, not because we want a conflict, but because we’re doing everything in our power to remove any reasons that Russia may give to justify invading Ukraine.”
Until Russia attacks, Biden said, “diplomacy is always a possibility,” holding out slight hope that Western powers might avert a bloody, disruptive and economically damaging war.
The comments followed similar admonitions from Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken that Russia’s plan to create a pretext for invading Ukraine “is already in play,” with Russian-backed separatists claiming they were the victims of artillery shelling and sabotage.
The Biden administration has said it will not send troops to defend Ukraine. Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh, however, vowed on Friday that Russia would become a “pariah to the international community” and “isolated from global financial markets,” with punishing sanctions, if it attacks its western neighbor.
American and European leaders, meanwhile, continued a show of unity as Russia, which has 150,000 troops amassed around Ukraine, announced weekend drills that would test the “reliability” of its nuclear weapons, yet another stark reminder of the stakes in the standoff between the Kremlin and NATO. (Read more)

Monday, February 14, 2022

Alberta: RCMP confiscate fire arms from anti-vaxxer truckers and supporters, eleven arrested; ‘large farm tractor and a semi truck attempted to ram a police vehicle’

Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press

Violent extremism is on the rise in America, and it has infected our neighbors to the north. Via the CBC -

Alberta RCMP have arrested at least 11 people after searching three trailers and finding weapons at a protest against pandemic restrictions near the main U.S. border crossing in southern Alberta.
Mounties said in a release Monday that they became aware of a small organized group within the larger protest at Coutts.
They say they had information that the group had access to a cache of firearms and ammunition. Officers seized long guns, handguns, multiple sets of body armour, a machete, a large quantity of ammunition and high-capacity firearm magazines.
"We haven't had many incidents involving violence, but unfortunately an investigation started after a period of time when the initial protesters arrived," Supt. Roberta McKale of the RCMP told media around 2 p.m. on Monday.
McKale said that RCMP began to receive information about potential threats, which took time to investigate, and led to arrests on Sunday night.
"We have since made another arrest involving this, the escalation of violence towards the members, including having someone break one of our checkpoints this afternoon and just about hit one of our members on the road," McKale said.
McKale also added that the different charges and different acts has created a situation where the Mounties are investigating conspiracy to attempt to commit murder. (Read more)

Anti-Semitism on the rise in ‘Murica. Louisville, KY: Jewish mayoral candidate narrowly escapes assassination attempt

Reuters/USA Today Network

Echoes of Nazi Germany are all around us. In Louisville, KY, an unidentified gunman opened fire at the campaign offices of a Jewish mayoral candidate, who was present and managed to evade the bullets. This was just one individual, apparently acting alone (at least as far as is known), but oppression and tyranny is not the exclusive domain of governments and organized institutions. In Nazi Germany, Hitler and company liberated large segments of German society to freely express their various hatreds, and many individuals committed crimes against Jews, gipsys, and other outcasts without direct orders from authorities. We are increasingly seeing the same effect in America in the years since Donald Trump has been a political cult leader. Nobody has been more effective at blowing those various ‘dog whistles’ than Trump, and even as he has been deposed from high office, the fallout is only just beginning in earnest. All Jews in America would be wise to take all precautions, and to alert the world to what is coming. Via Algemeiner -

A Jewish Democratic mayoral candidate in Kentucky was left miraculously unharmed after multiple shots were fired at him in his campaign office on Monday morning.
Craig Greenberg, who is running for the post of mayor in Louisville, Kentucky, was guided to safety along with members of his staff by police officers after an unidentified gunman opened fire at around 10:15 am. None of the shots hit Greenberg, though one bullet did pierce his clothing.
“We consider ourselves very fortunate,” Louisville Metro Police Chief Erika Shields said at a press conference following the attack, the Courier Journal reported.
Shields said that a motive behind the shooting was yet to be established. (Read more)

Donald Trump’s own accounting firm gives up on him, says financial records for the last ten years cannot be trusted

Reuters

Any question now as to why he will not release his taxes? Yet, people will still not repent for supporting this most obvious of conmen, nor is the Republican Party going to change course. The perverse devotion and loyalty this man inspires among so many is simply impossible to break. It is baffling, it is scary, and it is not going to end well. Via the New York Times -

Donald J. Trump’s longtime accounting firm cut ties with him and his family business last week amid ongoing criminal and civil investigations into whether Mr. Trump illegally inflated the value of his assets, court documents filed on Monday show.
In a letter to the Trump Organization on Feb. 9, the accounting firm notified the company of its decision and disclosed that it could no longer stand behind annual financial statements it prepared for Mr. Trump. The firm, Mazars USA, compiled the financial statements based on information the former president and his company provided.
The letter instructed the Trump Organization to essentially retract the documents, known as statements of financial condition, from 2011 to 2020. In the letter, Mazars noted that the firm had not “as a whole” found material discrepancies between the information the Trump Organization provided and the actual value of Mr. Trump’s assets. But given what it called “the totality of circumstances,” the letter directed the Trump Organization to notify anyone who received the statements that they should no longer rely on them.
The statements, which Mr. Trump used to secure loans, are at the center of the two law enforcement investigations into whether Mr. Trump exaggerated the value of his properties to defraud his lenders into providing him the best possible loan terms.
The disclosures about Mazars’ work for Mr. Trump appeared in new court documents filed by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who is seeking to question the former president and two of his adult children under oath as part of her civil investigation.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers had asked a judge to prohibit the questioning, and in response, Ms. James’s office argued in court papers last month that the company had engaged in “fraudulent or misleading” practices.
Her filing on Monday — which marked her latest attempt to press ahead with questioning Mr. Trump as well as Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump — included a copy of the Mazars letter, signed by the accounting firm’s general counsel.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office has been conducting a separate criminal investigation, with the assistance of lawyers from Ms. James’s office. (Read more)

Ungrateful, cowardly Afghanis bemoan the Biden Administration redirecting central bank funds to 9/11 victims

Kiana Hayeri/NYT

For twenty long and thankless years, Americans soldiers gave their blood for these ingrates and cowards, and American taxpayers spent unholy amount of money to assist (key word) in the rebuilding of their pathetic wasteland of a country. It is 100% the responsibility of Afghani citizens that the Taliban is ruling over them once again. The Biden Administration’s greatest accomplishment to date is getting our military out of that hellhole, for which they took nothing but grief from nearly all sides. The nerve of any of these people to say America has been ‘cruel’ and has betrayed them. In hindsight, perhaps Afghanistan should have been nuked into oblivion on September 12, 2001. Only half-kidding there. New York Times -

KABUL, Afghanistan — Many Afghans said they were outraged by the Biden administration’s decision to divert billions in frozen assets from the Afghan central bank to American families of 9/11 victims, as Afghanistan hurtles deeper into economic catastrophe.
The move, which would effectively bankrupt the country’s central bank, adds to the growing animosity that many Afghans have felt toward the United States since the troop withdrawal that paved the way for the Taliban’s takeover of the country in August.
“It is a cruel act and a betrayal of the rights of the Afghan people,” Fazl Ahmad, a shopkeeper in Kabul, the capital, said on Saturday. “It is clear that the poor economic situation right now is due to the U.S. economic constraints on Afghanistan.”
After the Taliban seized power, the Biden administration froze the roughly $7 billion in central bank assets that the now-defunct Western-backed government had on deposit at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, amid uncertainty over who — if anyone — now had the legal authority to gain access to the account.
On Friday, the Biden administration began a process aimed at letting relatives of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks who have legal claims against the Taliban pursue $3.5 billion of those assets. The Taliban sheltered Qaeda leaders who planned the Sept. 11 attacks during the Taliban’s previous rule of Afghanistan.
The White House said a roughly equal amount would be steered toward humanitarian aid for Afghanistan, which is facing one of the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophes. In a statement, it said the move was “designed to provide a path for the funds to reach the people of Afghanistan, while keeping them out of the hands of the Taliban and malicious actors.”
But for many Afghans, the decision to put half of the assets into American hands amplified frustrations about the stranglehold that the United States has had on the country’s financial system since it withdrew its troops. (Read more)

Sunday, February 13, 2022

Canadian authorities begin regaining law and order, shutting down trucker protests that closed the Ambassador Bridge border crossing

Robin Buckson/Detroit News

About time law enforcement pushed back against these petulant assholes. Via the Detroit News -

Windsor — Canadian police removed protesters camped nearly a week near the Ambassador Bridge, a critical U.S.-Canadian border crossing, and regained control Sunday.
The bridge had been blocked to traffic in Canada since Monday evening, when a protest at the Capitol in Ottawa spread to other cities across the country. The protesting over COVID-19 restrictions and a trucker vaccine mandate has threatened the economies of both nations, the countries' leaders have said. The bridge remained closed Sunday night as authorities continued to crack down on the remaining scattered protesters.
"Today, our national economic crisis at the Ambassador Bridge came to an end," Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkins said. "Border crossings will reopen when it is safe to do so, and I defer to police and border agencies to make that determination."
Windsor Police Service Chief Pam Mizuno said 25-30 arrests were made during the crackdown and 12 vehicles were seized that were in or near the blockade on Huron Church Road near the bridge. Authorities did not disclose how many police officers were deployed.

Despite the crackdown, there was no immediate time frame when the bridge would reopen. "We are working as fast as we can to restore traffic flow and reopen the bridge, and as soon as we can make that happen, we will," Mizuno said. (Read more)

Not merely ‘hysteria.’ White House National Security Adviser warns that Russia is going to fabricate a pretext for invading Ukraine

AP/Mikhail Metzel

‘Hysteria’ the Russians say of the global alarm over the Ukraine crisis, knowing full well what they’re about to go in for the kill. The only things the Russians do well in this world are gaslighting, bullying, and murder. They are never to be trusted, and neither are any of their various mouthpieces and fans here in the United States. Take heed of the administration's warning. -

WASHINGTON/KYIV, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Russia could invade Ukraine at any time and might create a surprise pretext for an attack, the United States said on Sunday, as it reaffirmed a pledge to defend "every inch" of NATO territory.
Russia has more than 100,000 troops massed near Ukraine, which is not part of the Atlantic military alliance, and Washington - while keeping open the diplomatic channels that have so far failed to ease the crisis - has repeatedly said an invasion is imminent.
Moscow denies any such plans and has accused the West of "hysteria".
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, on the eve of a trip that takes him to Kyiv on Monday and Moscow for talks with President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, called for Russia to de-escalate and warned of sanctions if Moscow did invade.
A German official said Berlin did not expect "concrete results" but diplomacy was important.
In Washington, President Joe Biden's National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said an invasion could begin "any day now".
"We cannot perfectly predict the day, but we have now been saying for some time that we are in the window," Sullivan told CNN.
U.S. officials said they could not confirm reports that U.S. intelligence indicated Russia planned to invade on Wednesday.
Sullivan said Washington would continue sharing what it learned with the world in order to deny Moscow the chance to stage a surprise "false flag" operation that could be a pretext for an attack.
It would also "defend every inch of NATO territory ... and Russia we think fully understands that message," Sullivan added in a separate CBS interview. (Read more)

Friday, February 11, 2022

The White House puts the screws to weakling Justin Trudeau, demands Canada crackdown on trucker blockades at the border

Cole Burston/Getty Images

Disrupting the lives of ordinary citizens is not a legitimate form of protest. Rather, it is terrorism, and these truckers ought to be treated as terrorists. But pretty boy Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has his thumb up his ass, sitting back and doing nothing. These petulant bullies are already causing great harm to the economies of both Canada and the United States, and they are beginning to inspire copycat protests in the U.S. and around the world. It has to be stopped. -

The Canadian government is coming under increasing pressure from the United States to resolve anti-vaccine mandate protests that are impacting the economy in both countries with border blockades, including a 5-day shutdown of the vital Ambassador Bridge.
The “Freedom Convoy” by Canadian truckers opposing a vaccinate-or-quarantine mandate for cross-border drivers, mirrored by the U.S. government, began with the occupation of the Canadian capital, Ottawa. The truckers then blocked the Ambassador Bridge earlier this week, and shut down two other smaller border crossings.
The closure of the bridge, North America’s busiest international land border crossing and a key supply route for Detroit’s carmakers, has halted some auto output and left officials scrambling to limit economic damage. (Read more)

President Biden warns Americans to leave Ukraine

AFP via Getty Images

If one is an American currently in Ukraine and somehow reading these words, ‘take heed.’ Everybody else, don’t point the finger of blame at the president when Russia invades and Americans remain stuck in Ukraine. He has given fair warning. -

US President Joe Biden has called on all American citizens remaining in Ukraine to leave the country immediately, citing increased threats of Russian military action.
Mr Biden said he would not send troops to rescue Americans if Moscow invades Ukraine.
He warned that "things could go crazy quickly" in the region.
Russia has repeatedly denied any plans to invade Ukraine despite massing more than 100,000 troops near the border.
But it has just begun massive military drills with neighbouring Belarus, and Ukraine has accused Russia of blocking its access to the sea.
The Kremlin says it wants to enforce "red lines" to make sure that its former Soviet neighbour does not join Nato. (Read more)

Thursday, February 10, 2022

Calculated cruelty in the new, post-COVID America. Empathy and compassion not allowed, your very life no longer matters

Chen Mengtong/China News Service via Getty Images

If America was not an evil nation before, it is now. More to the point, the American people are evil. A massive, highly successful gaslighting campaign is ongoing to desensitize Americans to the horror all around them. Borderline eugenics. This is only the beginning of the inhumanity to come. Via Scientific American -

Sometime in the next few weeks, the official death toll for the two-year COVID pandemic in the U.S. will reach one million. Despite being the wealthiest nation on the planet, the U.S. has continued to have the most COVID infections and deaths per country, by far, and it has the highest per capita death rate of any wealthy nation.
This is an unfathomable number of people dead, yet, mass media are downplaying it. This is despite an empathetic New York Times headline in May 2020 of “U.S. Deaths Near 100,000, an Incalculable Loss,” and using its entire front page to print names of some of the deceased. As Luppe B. Luppen noted on Twitter, the newspaper’s more recent headline was the cruel and callous “900,000 Dead, but Many Americans Move On.”
The Times is not alone; several large mainstream publications, in complicity with politicians of both major political parties, have been beating a death knell of a drum for getting “back to normal” for months. The effect is the manufactured consent to normalize mass death and suffering—to subtly suggest to Americans that they want to move on.
News media are helping to shape public opinion in order for business to return to the very circumstances that have created this ongoing crisis. A return to normal will allow profits to be reaped by people working relatively safely from their homes (the target audience of many news organizations’ advertisers) at the expense of people working or studying in person who are more vulnerable.
A few weeks ago, David Leonhardt, the writer of the Times’ newsletter “The Morning,” asked Michael Barbaro, the host of the company’s podcast “The Daily”: “If [COVID] is starting to look like a regular respiratory virus, is it rational [emphasis by the Times] to treat it like something completely different— to disrupt all our lives in all these big and consequential ways[?]”
I was dismayed. That rhetorical move is a familiar one to me: Two white men frame what they think is rational, deeming any questioning of their stand as irrational.
Meanwhile, some 140,000 children in the U.S. have lost a caregiver—about one in every 500 children. That is a big and consequential loss, and those children are probably not among the many who are ready to “move on” (another nearly one million Americans can’t move on because they’re already dead). During this pandemic, Black people have been disproportionately killed by this virus. About 50,000 people have died each month of COVID, meaning several Black children are being orphaned by SARS-CoV-2 this month, as you read this.
So is it rational? To be calling for the end of life-saving mitigation efforts and saying they harm children when so many have been orphaned here and worldwide? (Read more)

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Russian aggression toward Ukraine prompts oil traders to bid up the price of crude oil, leading to the highest U.S. gas prices in eight years

Getty Images

The actions of tyrants have ripple effects beyond their individual domains. Not that most Americans know or care, they’ll just blame President Biden or whoever their favorite political punching bag is. CBS News -

Gasoline prices across the U.S. are surging to the highest level in eight years as the price of crude oil rises, spiked by worries about geopolitical tensions in Eastern Europe.
The average price of a gallon of gas hit $3.47 on Wednesday, according to AAA, a jump of eight cents from the previous week. Gas prices this week are at their highest since October 2014, according to the U.S. Energy Department.
While gasoline prices typically dip in the first months of the year as Americans wait out cold weather indoors, this year has been different. Oil traders, anxious over the ongoing tensions between Russia and Ukraine, have bid up the price of crude oil to more than $90 a barrel.
"This has not been demand-driven, but it has been supply-driven, and recently we've seen crude oil prices move on the basis of geopolitics. A lot of what-if scenarios: what if Russia does invade Ukraine and we have sanctions?" Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis for the Oil Price Information Service, told CBS MoneyWatch.
Russia produced more than one-tenth of the world's oil in 2020 — a sizable portion that would be disrupted with military conflict or threatened sanctions by the U.S. and its allies.
While the price of Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, has fallen from earlier in the week, is was at $91on Wednesday, or 50% higher than it was at the start of last summer.
"Higher oil prices will eventually lead to higher prices at the pump," AAA spokesperson Andrew Gross said. (Read more)

Speaker Pelosi drops opposition, and measure to ban members from trading stocks advances in the U.S. House

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Thoroughly approve of this measure, though it is merely a start toward cleaning up a thoroughly corrupted body. Among many other reforms that need to be made, the most pressing is the need for term limits – no more than two Senate terms, no more than six terms in the House, no more than 12 years of service between the two bodies. If we were really serious about maintaining our constitutional republic, we’d do away with political parties altogether, but both the politicians and the American public will never let go of their beloved partisan affiliations. From CNBC -

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic leaders have greenlighted a plan to craft legislation that would prohibit members of Congress from trading stock, after months of resistance to a ban by Pelosi, CNBC confirmed Wednesday.
At Pelosi’s direction, the House Administration Committee is working on drafting the rules, and the legislation is expected to be put up for a vote this year, likely before the November midterm elections.
In the Senate, several versions of a stock trading ban are under consideration, including one co-authored by progressive Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Montana Republican Sen. Steve Daines.
“When you’re elected, you’re here to serve the people, not the elite, and [a stock trading ban] I think is a step forward, an important step forward, to restore the faith and trust of the American people in this institution,” Daines told CNBC on Wednesday.
Many questions remain about what types of investments would be prohibited, what incoming members would be required to do to comply with a new law, and whether family members of lawmakers would also be banned from trading stocks.
Nevertheless, Pelosi’s support for a stock trading ban in the House, first reported by Punchbowl News, represents an about-face for the speaker, and comes after years of congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle rejecting the idea of limiting what investments members of Congress can hold.
In the past, opponents of a ban on stock trading in Congress have claimed it would hamper efforts to recruit the best candidates to run for office. Meanwhile, many of their own families have grown wealthy by investing in the stock market, including Pelosi’s.
Yet in recent months, Pelosi and her top lieutenants have come under growing pressure from rank-and-file members to take action and pass a stock trading ban.
These increasingly noisy calls for a ban have been spurred in part by growing public support for a prohibition on lawmakers trading stocks. (Read more)

Monday, February 7, 2022

On account of the lockout and a twenty-year agreement expiring, Major League Baseball temporarily halts steroid testing

Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images

Really nothing to see here, just another reminder that it is time for the owners and players to make agreement, and then get back to work. Not terribly optimistic, though, that we are going to have a full, 162-game season. Associated Press -

NEW YORK -- Major League Baseball has stopped testing players for steroids for the first time in nearly 20 years due to the expiration of the sport's drug agreement, two people familiar with the sport's Joint Drug Program told The Associated Press.
The people spoke on condition of anonymity Monday because no public announcement was made.
The halt in testing is a casualty of the sport's lockout that started Dec. 2 and a provision in the joint drug agreement between MLB and the players' association that states "the termination date and time of the program shall be 11:59 p.m. ET on Dec. 1, 2021."
"It should be a major concern to all those who value fair play," Travis Tygart, chief executive officer of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, said Monday.
MLB and the union declined comment on the halt.
Just last month, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were denied election to the Hall of Fame by baseball writers over suspicions of PEDs use. Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez, who both served drug suspensions, fell well short in voting. (Read more)

Biden and Scholz lay down the law to Putin: Nord Stream 2 pipeline will be shut down if Russia invades Ukraine

REUTERS/Leah Millis

All of you constantly complaining about President Biden maybe ought to stop and consider that your hero, Trump, would not have stood in Putin’s way as he threatens to run roughshod over Ukraine. In fact, Putin may pull the trigger just yet, and if he does there is a real possibility the situation could conflagrate into a much larger, possibly global conflict. The choices confronting Americans are these: Do we want our leaders to confront the Russians and stop them dead in their tracks before there is greater calamity? Or, do we tactfully approve and even outright condone Russia’s bullying and terrorism, and will throw (another) collective hissy fit if our government stands against Putin? (Much in the way the American people had a giant hissy-fit during the Afghanistan withdrawal.) Sadly, I believe an increasing number of Americans are enamored with the idea of Eastern European style autocracy, along with a growing affinity among the nationalist populist right for Russia itself. I’ve also sensed an increasing distrust of Western European powers such as Germany and France. Of course, there is the (understandable) fact that nearly all Americans – Russophiles and neo-Fascists, or not - just want nothing more to do with war, but Mr. Putin cares nothing for the wants of most Americans, now does he? As for Germany, they are doing their part and, among nations, leading; even if it is at their own expense to do so. From Reuters -

WASHINGTON, Feb 7 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday warned that if Russia invades Ukraine, there would be no Nord Stream 2, but did not specify how he would go about ensuring the controversial pipeline would not be used.
Speaking at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Biden said, "If Russia invades... again, then there will be longer Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it."
When asked how he would do that, he responded, "I promise you we will be able to do it."
Europe's most divisive energy project, Nord Stream 2 is designed by Russian energy giant Gazprom to double the amount of gas flowing from Russia straight to Germany, bypassing traditional transit nation Ukraine.
The United States and Germany have sought to present a united front against potential Russian military aggression in Ukraine, with Biden declaring the two in "lockstep" despite questions over Berlin's commitment to scuttle the important energy pipeline. (Read more)

Saturday, February 5, 2022

Memo to Canadian PM Justin Trudeau: Stop being a coward, take charge of your country, and crack down on the convoys

Reuters/Mathieu Belanger

Fascists continue to disrupt life in Ottawa and other Canadian cities with almost complete impunity, while nurses who are counter-protesting are being told they cannot wear their scrubs in public, and ordinary citizens are being physically assaulted for wearing masks. Justin Trudeau is a weakling if I ever saw one. Declare Martial Law, send in troops and clear the streets by whatever means necessary. Do you, Mr. Trudeau, want your country to be a right-wing s**thole as America has become in the Trump era? Take it from an American, Canada should not want to emulate us. It’s time to bring a full stop to all this Covidiocy everywhere. From Reuters -

TORONTO/OTTAWA, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Thousands of people demonstrated in Canadian cities, including the financial hub Toronto, on Saturday as mostly peaceful but noisy protests against vaccine mandates spread from Ottawa, the capital.
The "Freedom Convoy" began as a movement against a Canadian vaccine requirement for cross-border truckers, but has turned into a rallying point against public health measures and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government.
“We're all sick and tired of the mandates, of the intimidation, of living in one big prison,” said Robert, a Toronto protester who did not give his last name. "We just want to go back to normal without having to take into our veins the poison which they call vaccines.”
Protesters have shut down downtown Ottawa for the past eight days, with some participants waving Confederate or Nazi flags and some saying they wanted to dissolve Canada's government.
"The protesters in Ottawa have made their point. The entire country heard their point," said Transport Minister Omar Alghabra, who urged protesters to "go home and engage elected officials."
Ottawa police said hate crime charges were laid against four people and they were investigating threats against public figures jointly with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The well-organized blockade, which police say has relied partly on funding from sympathizers in the United States, saw protesters bring in portable saunas on Saturday to combat frigid temperatures.
One man rode through the area on horseback, carrying a Trump flag, social media videos showed. Former U.S. President Donald Trump has spoken out in support of the truckers against "the harsh policies of far-left lunatic Justin Trudeau who has destroyed Canada with insane COVID mandates." (Read more)

Friday, February 4, 2022

Abandon all hope: U.S. COVID death toll surpasses 900,000

AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes

It was only in mid-December that the 800,000 mark was passed, and less than two months later we are at 900,000. To avoid reaching that one million mark would require a miracle, I.e. no more variants emerging, but alas we are all out of luck on that front as BA.2 is coming. I do remember, toward the start of the pandemic, that even some of those who were taking the threat seriously – taking the proper precautions - scoffed at predictions of upwards of 250,000 dead. Now, nearly two years later, we sit at close to four times that number, and it barely seems to phase most anymore. The psychological and societal fallout has been immense in just two years, and we'll be dealing with that fallout for decades to come. America is going to be an extremely dark place to live for decades to come. Abandon all hope; the little Fascists and other assorted misfits all around us destroyed it. From the AP -

Propelled in part by the wildly contagious omicron variant, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 hit 900,000 on Friday, less than two months after eclipsing 800,000.
The two-year total, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is greater than the population of Indianapolis, San Francisco, or Charlotte, North Carolina.
The milestone comes more than 13 months into a vaccination drive that has been beset by misinformation and political and legal strife, though the shots have proved safe and highly effective at preventing serious illness and death.
“It is an astronomically high number. If you had told most Americans two years ago as this pandemic was getting going that 900,000 Americans would die over the next few years, I think most people would not have believed it,” said Dr. Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.
He lamented that most of the deaths happened after the vaccine gained authorization.
“We got the medical science right. We failed on the social science. We failed on how to help people get vaccinated, to combat disinformation, to not politicize this,” Jha said. “Those are the places where we have failed as America.”
Just 64% of the population is fully vaccinated, or about 212 million Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nor is COVID-19 finished with the United States: Jha said the U.S. could reach 1 million deaths by April. (Read more)

Thursday, February 3, 2022

Stehen Sie mit der Deutschen Welle: Putin’s war on the freedom of the legitimate news outlets takes an ominous turn, as Germany’s largest news outlet is thrown out of Moscow

Unlike the loud, sensationalistic propaganda organs that comprise nearly the entirety of the news media in basketcase countries like Russia and our own United States, certain European countries still have real news organizations that inform without bells and whistles, and without corporate slant or partisan bias. In my opinion, there is no finer example than Deutsche Welle. I watch their English-language service via YouTube, along with France24 and BBC World News, and the difference between these outlets and the likes of Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, and Russia’s RT is night and day. One informs and enlightens; the others kill brain cells. By and large, Americans today possess little ability to differentiate propaganda from actual journalism; or, if they do, they prefer the noise and confirmation bias. And have Russians – being only thirty years removed from the fall of the Soviet Union – ever known a time when they were fed anything but propaganda and gaslighting from their state-controlled media outlets? Germans learned a very hard lesson in the 1940s and really took it to heart, and therefore one finds they are a more intelligent, moral, and productive people who possess critical thinking skills and humanity. Russians remain the brutes they always were, and the action the Putin regime is taking toward Deutsche Welle is an age-old tactic of tyrants. Free thinking people who value truth and knowledge must stand with DW, and against the likes of Putin, Trump, and all those who would have us live as unquestioning lemmings as they rape their land and people for their own aggrandizement. Chancellor Scholz will be visiting Moscow soon, and how he handles Putin is going to be a major test of his new leadership. He must demand Moscow reverses this decision. Via Deutsche Welle themselves, and thank you to them for their wonderful service -

Russia on Thursday said it was closing the Moscow bureau of German broadcaster Deutsche Welle and revoking its employees' accreditations in the country.
The Russian Foreign Ministry also said in a statement that it would "terminate the satellite and other broadcasting (output) of Deutsche Welle" on Russian territory.
Russia had earlier criticized a German regulator's ban on German-language programming by Russia's state broadcaster RT as an attack on freedom of expression and freedom of the press.
The Russian government said it was planning to initiate a procedure to label DW a foreign media outlet performing the functions of a "foreign agent," a designation that carries additional government scrutiny.
Moscow said it would also ban officials involved in restricting the broadcasting of RT in Germany from entering the Russian Federation. (Read more)

The only good Islamist is a dead Islamist: ISIS leader killed by U.S. special operations forces in Syria

AP/Ghaith Alsayed

A hearty congratulations to the U.S. special operations forces involved, and to President Biden for authorizing the attack. America needed ‘a win’ of some sorts at this moment, not that I expect the ingrates that populate this country are going to give any credit where due. Nor is it likely that the vicious MSM – who twisted reality and turned the public against the president following the (successful, and necessary) withdrawal from Afghanistan – are going to give the president and the military any credit for anything. No matter, good prevailed for once in Syria. Via AP -

ATMEH, Syria (AP) — The leader of the violent Islamic State group was killed Thursday, blowing himself up along with members of his family during an overnight raid carried out by U.S. special operations forces in northwestern Syria, President Joe Biden said.
The raid targeted Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, who took over as head of the militant group on Oct. 31, 2019, just days after leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died during a U.S. raid in the same area. Biden said al-Qurayshi died as al-Baghdadi did, by exploding a bomb that killed himself and members of his family, including women and children, as U.S. forces approached.
The operation came as IS has been trying for a resurgence, with a series of attacks in the region, including an assault late last month to seize a prison in northeast Syria holding at least 3,000 IS detainees, its boldest operation in years.
“Thanks to the bravery of our troops this horrible terrorist leader is no more,” Biden said. He said al-Qurayshi had been responsible for the prison strike, as well as genocide against the Yazidi people in Iraq in 2014.
About 50 U.S. special operations forces landed in helicopters and attacked a house in a rebel-held corner of Syria, clashing for two hours with gunmen, witnesses said. Residents described continuous gunfire and explosions that jolted the town of Atmeh near the Turkish border, an area dotted with camps for internally displaced people from Syria’s civil war.
Biden said he ordered U.S. forces to “take every precaution available to minimize civilian casualties,” the reason they did not conduct an airstrike on the home.
First responders reported that 13 people had been killed, including six children and four women.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said U.S. forces were able to evacuate 10 people from the building: a man, a woman and four children from the first floor and four children from the second floor. He said when al-Qurayshi detonated the bomb, he also killed his wife and two children. Kirby said that U.S. officials were conducting an assessment to determine whether American action resulted in any civilian deaths.
U.S. forces took fingerprints and DNA, which confirmed al-Qurayshi’s death, officials said.
Biden, along with Vice President Kamala Harris and senior national security aides monitored a live-feed of the operation from the White House Situation Room according to an official. The president was kept abreast of the commandos’ long flight out of Syria by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan overnight.
The operation marked a military success for the United States at an important time after setbacks elsewhere — including the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal — had led allies and opponents to conclude U.S. power globally was weakening. (Read more)

Wednesday, February 2, 2022

The share of Americans killed by COVID-19 found to be 63% higher than any other wealthy, developed nation

Steven Senne/AP

The COVID pandemic continues to expose, for all the world to see, the decay of a falling empire. And so many of these deaths were preventable, were not it for belligerence, conspiracism, and grave mistrust of all institutions. These are dark days. U.S. has far higher COVID death rate than other wealthy countries -

Two years into the pandemic, the coronavirus is killing Americans at far higher rates than people in other wealthy nations, a sobering distinction to bear as the country charts a course through the next stages of the pandemic.
The ballooning death toll has defied the hopes of many Americans that the less severe omicron variant would spare the United States the pain of past waves. Deaths have now surpassed the worst days of the autumn surge of the delta variant, and are more than two-thirds as high as the record tolls of last winter, when vaccines were largely unavailable.
With American lawmakers desperate to turn the page on the pandemic, as some European leaders have already begun to, the number of dead has clouded a sense of optimism, even as omicron cases recede. And it has laid bare weaknesses in the country’s response, scientists said.
“Death rates are so high in the States — eye-wateringly high,” said Devi Sridhar, head of the global public health program at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, who has supported loosening coronavirus rules in parts of Britain. “The United States is lagging.”
Some of the reasons for America’s difficulties are well known. Despite having one of the world’s most powerful arsenals of vaccines, the country has failed to vaccinate as many people as other large, wealthy nations. Crucially, vaccination rates in older people also lag behind certain European nations.
The United States has fallen even further behind in administering booster shots, leaving large numbers of vulnerable people with fading protection as omicron sweeps across the country.
The resulting American death toll has set the country apart — and by wider margins than has been broadly recognized. Since Dec. 1, when health officials announced the first omicron case in the United States, the share of Americans who have been killed by the coronavirus is at least 63% higher than in any of these other large, wealthy nations, according to a New York Times analysis of mortality figures. (Read more)

President Biden orders 2,000 additional troops to European bases, and 8,500 more on alert, as the world waits on edge for Putin to make his move on Ukraine

Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik/AFP/Getty Images

Many Americans bemoan that we are ‘the policeman of the world,’ but if that were not so, Vladimir Putin would have taken over Ukraine years ago. Putin’s end game is restoring the Soviet Union, but that monster must never be allowed to reemerge. Via AP -

BRUSSELS —President Joe Biden is sending about 2,000 troops from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to Poland and Germany this week and shifting roughly 1,000 Germany-based soldiers to Romania, a senior administration official said Wednesday.
Biden has said he will not put American troops in Ukraine to fight any Russian incursion, although the United States is supplying Ukraine with weapons to defend itself.
The military moves come amid stalled talks with Russia over its military buildup at Ukraine’s borders. And they underscore growing fears across Europe that Russian President Vladimir Putin is poised to invade Ukraine. Smaller NATO countries on the alliance's eastern flank worry they could be next, although Russia has said it has no intention of initiating conflict and is willing to continue diplomatic efforts.
The administration official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military moves not yet announced.
Biden had said recently that he intended to provide additional U.S. forces to NATO allies in Eastern Europe as reassurance of an American commitment as treaty allies.
The Pentagon also has put about 8,500 U.S.-based troops on higher alert for possible deployment to Europe as additional reassurance to allies, and officials have indicated the possibility that additional units could be placed on higher alert soon. The U.S. already has between 75,000 and 80,000 troops in Europe as permanently stationed forces and as part of regular rotations in place such as Poland. (Read more)

Trump's madness knows no boundaries, as he calls for his own VP to be investigated for the crime of following the law

AFP/Getty Images

Trump knows it is a lie – the Big Lie. ‘Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth,’ as Joseph Goebbels is reputed to have said, and absolutely put into practice in Nazi Germany. Trump knew Vice-President Pence did not have the constitutional authority to overturn the results of a presidential election, but will go to any lengths to keep the Big Lie going and rally the people to his cause. His cause being declared President for Life. How much further is this going to be allowed to go before this would-be dictator is locked up? The White House better have a damn good plan in place to contain the certain revolt of Trump’s most dangerous supporters when/if justice is finally served. Know this much: America – if it even survives, a big 'if’ - will be severely divided for at least a generation or two to come, in large part because of one power-hungry cult leader and the madness he has inflicted upon a country that really was not doing so great before he came along. The American people and their media overlords have only made it too easy for this evil man to take over. Trump now says he wants Mike Pence investigated for not sending back votes -

President Donald Trump on Tuesday resumed his criticism of former Vice President Mike Pence for failing to 'overturn' the election results – and is now saying his former VP should be probed for failing to 'send back' votes in states where Trump was claiming fraud.
Trump fired off comment in a statement from his Save America PAC – a day after a stunning statement where Trump wrote that Pence 'did have the right to change the outcome' and added 'he could have overturned the Election!'
Now, a day after it was revealed that Pence's former chief of staff Marc Short testified before the House Jan. 6th Committee, Trump is calling for an investigation of Pence as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who accuses of failing to protect the Capitol.
'So pathetic to watch the Unselect Committee of political hacks, liars, and traitors work so feverishly to alter the Electoral College Act so that a Vice President cannot ensure the honest results of the election, when just one year ago they said that “the Vice President has absolutely no right to ensure the true outcome or results of an election,” wrote Trump. He was referencing the Electoral Count Act, the subject of election reform negotiations. (Read more)

Tuesday, February 1, 2022

A nation ‘susceptible to a narrative of national humiliation by enemies both internal and external.’ Trump and his cronies in the GOP must be stopped, starting yesterday

David McNew/Getty Images

Be alarmed, be vigilant, speak out. Or else everything we have will be taken from us, including all of you laymen marks who have been supporting this nationalist populist agenda. Trump's supporters are nothing but pawns who will be stabbed in the back in the end, but until then they can always be reliably counted on to support any campaign against designated political and racial enemies. Via Jason Stanley, Yale University professor -

The contemporary American fascist movement is led by oligarchical interests for whom the public good is an impediment, such as those in the hydrocarbon business, as well as a social, political, and religious movement with roots in the Confederacy. As in all fascist movements, these forces have found a popular leader unconstrained by the rules of democracy, this time in the figure of Donald Trump.
My father, raised in Berlin under the Nazis, saw in European fascism a course that any country could take. He knew that US democracy was not exceptional in its capacity to resist the forces that shattered his family and devastated his youth. My mother, a court stenographer in US criminal courts for 44 years, saw in the anti-Black racism of the American legal system parallels to the vicious antisemitism she experienced in her youth in Poland, attitudes which enabled eastern European complicity with fascism. And my grandmother, Ilse Stanley, wrote a memoir, published in 1957, of her experiences in 1930s Berlin, later appearing on the US television show This is Your Life to discuss it. It is a memoir of the normalization years of German fascism, well before world war and genocide. In it, she recounts experiences with Nazi officers who assured her that in nazism’s vilification of Jews, they certainly did not mean her.
Philosophers have always been at the forefront in the analysis of fascist ideology and movements. In keeping with a tradition that includes the philosophers Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adorno, I have been writing for a decade on the way politicians and movement leaders employ propaganda, centrally including fascist propaganda, to win elections and gain power.
Often, those who employ fascist tactics do so cynically – they do not really believe the enemies they target are so malign, or so powerful, as their rhetoric suggests. Nevertheless, there comes a tipping point, where rhetoric becomes policy. Donald Trump and the party that is now in thrall to him have long been exploiting fascist propaganda. They are now inscribing it into fascist policy.
Fascist propaganda takes place in the US in already fertile ground – decades of racial strife has led to the United States having by far the highest incarceration rate in the world. A police militarized to address the wounds of racial inequities by violence, and a recent history of unsuccessful imperial wars have made us susceptible to a narrative of national humiliation by enemies both internal and external. As WEB Du Bois showed in his 1935 masterwork Black Reconstruction, there is a long history of business elites backing racism and fascism out of self-interest, to divide the working class and thereby destroy the labor movement.
The novel development is that a ruthless would-be autocrat has marshalled these fascist forces and shaped them into a cult, with him as its leader. We are now well into the repercussions of this latter process – where fascist lies, for example, the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen, have begun to restructure institutions, notably electoral infrastructure and law. As this process unfolds, slowly and deliberately, the media’s normalization of these processes evokes Morrison’s tenth and final step: “Maintain, at all costs, silence.” (Read more)

The United States passes an ominous milestone: Gross national debt now exceeds $30 trillion, years earlier than expected

Andrew Mangum/NYT

Never will it be possible to pay this debt back in cash. Which means the debt will eventually be collected on by creditors using other means. Your children and grandchildren will either be speaking Mandarin Chinese, or living in caves and eating grass as nobody will be able to afford a home or anything else. Until then, I would suggest not listening to either of our political parties about how their opponents have been spending recklessly and they’re the responsible ones. Democrat or Republican, blood is on all of their grimy hands. Via the New York Times -

WASHINGTON — America’s gross national debt topped $30 trillion for the first time on Tuesday, an ominous fiscal milestone that underscores the fragile nature of the country’s long-term economic health as it grapples with soaring prices and the prospect of higher interest rates.
The breach of that threshold, which was revealed in new Treasury Department figures, arrived years earlier than previously projected as a result of trillions in federal spending that the United States has deployed to combat the pandemic. That $5 trillion, which funded expanded jobless benefits, financial support for small businesses and stimulus payments, was financed with borrowed money.
The borrowing binge, which many economists viewed as necessary to help the United States recover from the pandemic, has left the nation with a debt burden larger than the entire economy, surpassing levels of red ink not seen since World War II.
Some economists contend that the nation’s large debt load is not unhealthy given that the economy is growing, interest rates are low and investors are still willing to buy U.S. Treasury securities, which gives them safe assets to help manage their financial risk. Those securities allow the government to borrow money relatively cheaply and use it to invest in the economy.
Yet the figures come amid renewed concerns in Washington over the nation’s fiscal trajectory and its ballooning budget deficit, which is the gap between what the nation spends and the revenue it brings in. Those worries helped stall negotiations over President Biden’s $2 trillion safety net and climate spending proposal, with Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia citing “staggering debt” as a reason he could not support the legislation.
The lingering pandemic has slowed the momentum of the economic recovery, fueling inflation rates unseen since the early 1980s and raising the prospect of higher interest rates, which could add to America’s fiscal burden. (Read more)