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Mon, 27 Sep 2021
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Stop politicizing Covid-19, Russia's Putin & China's Xi tell world, calling for cooperation to beat virus instead

medical workers
© Sputnik / Kirill Braga
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that using the coronavirus to score political points is undermining faith in authorities across the world and worsening the pandemic, in a joint call with Chinese Premier Xi Jinping on Friday.

The two world leaders appeared at the Eastern Economic Forum, held in Russia's Far East capital, Vladivostok. "It is even more important now, in my opinion, to discard politicization and fight together to overcome the pandemic and its consequences. This is vital for all of humanity," Putin said. In addition, he argued, efforts to use the unprecedented crisis to sideline rivals and bolster influence is hurting confidence in public health messages.

Arrow Up

BRICS development bank admits UAE, Bangladesh, Uruguay as new members

BRICS sudáfrica
© REUTERS / Mike Hutchings
The New Development Bank (NDB) set up by the BRICS group of nations said on Thursday it had admitted the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay and Bangladesh as members in its first expansion push.

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - a group of major emerging economies known as BRICS - launched the bank in 2015 and started formal talks with potential new members last year.

"New members will have in NDB a platform to foster their cooperation in infrastructure and sustainable development," said NDB President Marcos Troyjo in a statement.

Comment: Whilst BRICS forges ahead with mutually beneficial deals which would likely improve life for many and that could potentially make the world a safer place, the US just signed off an additional $24 billion in 'defense' spending.

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Russian Flag

Kremlin to Kiev: Drive to join US-led NATO bloc, bring Western forces near Russia presents serious security risks

Ukraine flag Nato flag
© Getty Images / Caspar Benson; (inset); Getty Images / Valentyn Semenov / EyeEm
Ukraine Flag (inset); NATO flag
The Kremlin has warned that the publicly stated aspiration of Ukraine to join the American-led NATO military bloc poses a danger to Russia, which is completely opposed to the build-up of Western armed forces near its borders.

Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed on Thursday that Washington is encouraging Kiev to continue its attempts to join both the Cold War-era analogue to the long-disbanded Warsaw Pact and the European Union - measures which he said would put the two Western organizations directly on Kiev's long border with Russia.

Comment: Ukraine has offered itself up as a pawn in the new Great Game with Russia. Foolish doesn't begin to cover it.


Black Magic

How The National Review sold its soul to Google

national review magazine trump
© AP/TheStreet
And why Jonah Goldberg and David French got thrown out

There were rumors in the summer of 2018 that an audiotape was circulating that would send shockwaves through the think tanks of Washington and the conservative intellectual movement in particular. A top Google executive had been recorded telling his fellow employees that Google generously donated to conservative think tanks and magazines to dampen criticism of their anti-conservative bias. In essence, Google was buying off Conservatism Inc. and the GOP establishment to stay silent while Google monitored, harassed, and excluded Trump supporters. If true, the tape sounded like a smoking gun: incontrovertible evidence of the corruption and double-dealing of Conservatism Inc. that would permanently discredit it with Republican voters.

Dollar

Brilliant new book Woke Inc exposes cynical big-business' tactics, used to shower itself in virtue and to silence woke critics

woke inc
Using disingenuous, profit-driven stands on race, gender and other woke issues, mega-rich corporations are unelected moral guardians of society, flogging virtue to consumers who buy their products to feel good about themselves.

Back in 2019, razor manufacturer Gillette launched a grievously ill-considered advertising campaign addressing toxic masculinity, just as the #Metoo movement was gaining speed, using images portraying sexism, bullying and aggressive male behaviour.

The idea was to twist the company's slogan from "The best a man can get" to the "The best a man can be." It sucked big time and hilariously backfired, causing huge reputational damage to the business, as customers turned their backs on this impossibly woke nonsense.

Having bought Gillette products for years, I have never bought them since and never will again.

It's just the sort of incident that Vivek Ramaswamy explores in his forensically researched Woke Inc: Inside the Social Justice Scam, where paying lip-service to critical theories on race and gender has become a commercial imperative in the 21st century.

And it's not just about consumer products and what they say about us, it's about what we say and where we say it.

Ramaswamy looks at how mega-wealthy tech giants like Facebook, Twitter and Google feel that it is within their scope to not only determine who's entitled to freedom of speech, but also what they should be saying. These are the same guys who banned the then-president of the United States from their social-media platforms.

NPC

CNNBS: DHS fears Taliban takeover could 'inspire' uprising by US insurrectionists & white supremacists

pround boys taliban
© Reuters / Kevin Mohatt; Reuters / Stringer
(L) A member of the Proud Boys gestures during a rally in Denver, Colorado; (R) Taliban fighters stand outside the Interior Ministry in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 16, 2021.
With President Joe Biden declaring the US pullout from Afghanistan complete and the war over, his government is shifting focus to enemies at home, namely "white supremacists" and "extremists" allegedly cheering on the Taliban.

"White supremacist and anti-government extremists have expressed admiration for what the Taliban accomplished, a worrying development for US officials who have been grappling with the threat of domestic violent extremism," CNN reported on Wednesday afternoon.


Comment: The hidden logic: if you support the pullout of American troops from Afghanistan (regardless of what you think of the Taliban), you are probably a white supremacist or anti-govt extremist.



Only one official is mentioned by name, however - John Cohen of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security. His concern came from a teleconference call with law enforcement on Friday, which CNN says it obtained, when Cohen said these groups were "framing the activities of the Taliban as a success."


Comment: If that is what the chatter is saying, these chatterers are objectively correct: the Taliban successfully took control of the country and got the Americans to leave.


Another source for the story is SITE Intelligence Group, an NGO run by professional "extremist tracker" Rita Katz. Their August 26 weekly bulletin contains a single quote by an anonymous person on a Telegram channel praising "farmers and minimally trained men" who fought to "take back their nation back from globohomo."

Eye 1

Black Mirror: Flying 'medical' drone to 'automatically' check Italy beachgoers' temperatures in case of Covid

police drone
© PHOTOPQR/L'EST REPUBLICAIN/MAXPPP
Italian officials want a drone to fly around and measure the temperatures of people relaxing on a beach near Rome in order to track Covid-19 and prevent health emergencies.

The 'medical' drone was scheduled to patrol the beaches of Ostia, a suburb of Rome, on Saturday and Sunday, but the experiment was postponed due to a bad weather forecast.

According to local health officials, the drone would "automatically" measure temperatures while hovering at least 25m above the water and staying at least 30m away from people. Test flights were planned to last for five hours, between 11am and 4pm.

Comment: There will be no escape from the surveillance. All in the name of keeping everyone "safe". China pioneered the technique, which was then adopted around the world:


Rocket

North Korea rejects offer of almost three million Covid-19 jabs

Kim Jong-un
© Reuters
North Korea has cast doubt over the efficacy of Chinese-made vaccines
North Korea has asked that almost three million Covid-19 jabs offered to it be redirected elsewhere, the UN says.

A spokesperson said the country had asked that the shots be relocated to harder hit nations in view of global vaccine shortages.

Chinese-made Sinovac shots were offered under the Covax programme which aims to help poorer nations obtain vaccines.

Comment: It looks like the Rocketman is smarter and braver than most of the "democratic" world leaders. He knows what is going on in the world, and he won't allow the PTB's Corona circus to have a show in his country.

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Shoe

Russian foreign minister warns that US could try to kidnap athletes it deems a 'threat' under new anti-doping act opposed by WADA

lavrov olympic athletes
© Kirby Lee / USA Today Sports via Reuters | Pavel Golovkin / Reuters
Sergei Lavrov has voiced concerns over the treatment of athletes by the USA.
A new US law aimed at prosecuting doping offenders at international sporting events could be used to kidnap athletes and take them to the US illegally, Russia's foreign minister has warned.

Former US president Donald Trump signed the 'Rodchenkov Act' last December, allowing his country to impose criminal sanctions on athletes involved in doping at international events which involve American athletes, sponsors or broadcasters.

The law, which empowers officials to pursue fines of up to $1 million, jail terms of up to 10 years and restitution to victims, was described by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) as "unilaterally exerting US criminal jurisdiction over all global doping activity".

Comment: Once again, the US is attempting to install itself as the world police with planetary jurisdiction. How they think other countries will stand for this is mind boggling.

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Syringe

Engdahl: Scandal behind the FDA fake approval of Pfizer jab

US Government regulator for drugs
The US Government regulator for drugs, the Food and Drug Administration, has just announced that it has voted full approval for the mRNA genetic vaccine of Pfizer and BioNTech, or did they? This supposed new status is being used by the Biden Administration and many states and companies to impose mandatory vaccinations. The notoriously conflicted Biden covid adviser, Tony Fauci of the NIAID, using that ruling, is calling for national mandatory vaccination for the country. What is not being revealed is the cesspool of corruption and conflicts of interest between the FDA and the major drug companies, including Pfizer, that stand behind the rushed approval. And it's not full approval for Pfizer's jab, only for BioNTech's legally different vaccine.

"...final stamp of approval"?

On August 23 as the FDA announced full approval for the Pfizer mRNA gene-edited substance. Or not quite, when the full papers of FDA are studied. Fauci, whose NIAID has financial interest in the vaccine, referred to the FDA decision as the "final stamp of approval." It is however anything but final or an impartial, scientific rigorous medical evaluation. Rather it is a politically-motivated decision by an FDA that is corrupt beyond the imagination of most people.

Backtracking on its statement in 2020 that it would hold normal FDA advisory committee hearings with independent experts to discuss the Pfizer application for full approval, now the FDA told the British Medical Journal that they did not believe a meeting was necessary ahead of granting full approval of what is the most controversial vaccine in modern history. The BMJ quotes Kim Witczak, a drug safety advocate who serves as a consumer representative on the FDA's Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee, "These [FDA] public meetings are imperative in building trust and confidence especially when the vaccines came to market at lightning speed under emergency use authorization."