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Tuesday, July 4, 2023
Monday, July 3, 2023
China Restricts Exports of Two Minerals Used in High-Performance Chips - WSJ
China Restricts Exports of Two Minerals Used in High-Performance Chips - WSJ: Industry executives see Beijing’s export ban on gallium and germanium as retaliation over chip curbs by the U.S. and others.
Saudi Arabia and Russia announce new oil cuts | The Hill
Saudi Arabia and Russia announce new oil cuts | The Hill: Major oil hubs Saudi Arabia and Russia announced oil supply cuts in what Saudi Arabia described as an attempt to “stabilize markets.” Saudi Arabia’s move was announced in the state-run Saudi Press Agency, which said that the kingdom will extend July cuts of 1 million barrels per day into August. For that month, Saudi Arabia…
Special report: Russia buying civilian drones from China for war effort - Nikkei Asia
Special report: Russia buying civilian drones from China for war effort - Nikkei Asia: Russia has for months been importing drones from Chinese companies explicitly for use in its invasion of Ukraine, despite denials from Beijing that su
Das ungarische Parlament will die Aufnahme Schwedens in die NATO bis zum Herbst nicht behandeln – Anti-Spiegel
Das ungarische Parlament will die Aufnahme Schwedens in die NATO bis zum Herbst nicht behandeln – Anti-Spiegel
The Hungarian parliament does not want to deal with Sweden's admission to NATO until autumn
This is from the published agenda for the period from 3rd to 7th. July out
The Hungarian parliament does not plan to deal with Sweden's admission to NATO next week, the last working week before the summer break. This is from the agenda for the period from the 3rd to the 7th. July, which was published on the Parliament's website on Sunday.
According to this, the Hungarian parliament could postpone the ratification of the Swedish NATO accession agreement until the autumn, and the question will not be raised before the North Atlantic Alliance summit on the 11th and 12th. July in Vilnius.
Theoretically, the parliamentary leadership, which abstains from comment, could put the topic on the agenda next week. The meetings are for the 3rd, 4th and 7th. Scheduled for July. MEPs want to deal primarily with the draft budget for 2024.
On the 29th In June, the deputy Agnes Vadai of the opposition party Democratic Coalition reported that the faction of the governing party FIDES-Hungarian Civil Union had decided not to deal with the issue of Sweden's admission to NATO in the last days of the spring meeting. According to her, the topic was postponed to a later date - possibly to the autumn.
The Hungarian parliament has repeatedly postponed the ratification of the agreement on Sweden's accession to the North Atlantic Alliance despite pressure from abroad. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has stated that he is not prepared to deal with the issue because there are serious differences of opinion between Budapest and Stockholm. In his opinion, these should be resolved before Sweden's accession to NATO in order not to create conflicts there. The government and MEPs have expressed their dissatisfaction with the fact that Swedish politicians have accused Hungary of deviating from democracy and demanded that the EU funds owed to the country be blocked.
On the 27th In March, the Hungarian parliament approved the ratification of the Finnish NATO accession agreement, but postponed the consideration of Sweden. The Hungarian government had previously stated that it supported the admission of Sweden to the alliance, but the concerns of the deputies had to be allayed. Finland and Sweden submitted their applications on the 18th. May 2022 and stated that they were prompted to take this step by the developments in Ukraine. Of all NATO countries, Sweden's accession documents have not been ratified by Turkey, which calls for stricter action by Stockholm against Kurdish extremists who have settled in the country.
Translation from the Russian news agency TASS
Why Big Oil loves the renewable energy industry | Salon.com
Why Big Oil loves the renewable energy industry | Salon.com: Wind and solar can only output so much. Fossil fuels often fill a gap better suited for nuclear power
New catamaran line Makarska-Bol-Hvar-Vis-Split starts | Croatia Week
New catamaran line Makarska-Bol-Hvar-Vis-Split starts | Croatia Week: A new catamaran line connecting the islands of Brač, Hvar and Vis with Split and Makarska on the Croatian coast has commenced. On Friday, the Makarska-Bol-Hvar-Vis-Split catamaran service launched. Operated by TP Line, their Kalelarga catamaran is being used for the line. The island of Vis has traditionally not been well connected with other islands
Smog City - Tablet Magazine
Smog City - Tablet Magazine
Summer in LA: wildfires, earthquakes, prickling unease, and memories from only a couple of years ago of the National Guard driving down Robertson Boulevard. Still, none of these things bums Angelenos out like June Gloom. June Gloom is the annual local weather phenomenon during which the sky gets gray, the temperature drops, and seasonal depression rates climb. Giving the ambient murk a cutesy name (along with May Gray before it) is supposed to make it more palatable, but it doesn’t. All the spicy margaritas and superblooms in the world can’t quite make it alright. June Gloom, while calendar-reliable, is somehow annually surprising, maybe because it’s hard for the human brain to process that, after a spring full of bougainvillea, cactus flowers, and ripe loquats, the signs of impending summer are falling temperatures and skies filled with what looks like dirty cotton candy.
Kill Off the Old City so New Cities Can Be Born - Tablet Magazine
Kill Off the Old City so New Cities Can Be Born - Tablet Magazine
After decades of self-celebration and relentless media hype, the great “urban renaissance” predicted by the New Urbanists—a vision of cities built by and for the creative class—has come crashing down. Where the smart set once proclaimed that mayors should rule the world or that economic growth would increasingly cluster in a handful of super cities, now even The New York Times bleakly warns of an “urban doom loop.”
The very impressive blocks of skyscrapers that housed many of the world’s leading corporations have gone from harbingers of the future to something resembling the abandoned factory towns of the Industrial Revolution. Transit systems critical to the old urban model are in free fall. In great cities like New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco, criminals and the homeless, many of them mentally disturbed and unstable, lurk on the streets, in the parks, and in the stores.
At the same time, residential neighborhoods in places like New York, Boston, and even much of San Francisco have retained their streetwise vitality. Since the pandemic, Brooklyn has experienced a resurgence of new businesses while Manhattan has seen large declines, particularly in its office-dependent retail sector. Additionally, a new and largely unheralded chapter of urbanity is being written in suburbs and exurbs as these areas, once derided as cultureless wastelands, are increasingly walkable and diverse, in some ways challenging the supremacy of traditional cities by becoming more like them. Even as urban centers struggle, their peripheries are flourishing. This is the emerging shape of today’s American urban landscape.
Part Two: Dr. Jay's Congressional Testimony
Part Two: Dr. Jay's Congressional Testimony
Hello Illusion of Consensus readers,
As a follow-up to our post on Dr. Jay’s congressional testimony, we would like to post the detailed answers he submitted to congressmen Robert Latta in response to his questions on censorship, vaccine distribution, and Big Tech.
We view this work as absolutely vital due to its ability to effectuate real-world change in the way we handle complex public health problems, regulate the flow of information online, and maintain our founding principles.
We hope you come away with Dr. Jay’s careful analysis on these issues with a more clarified, robust perspective on the most pressing matters of our time. We are in this together, after all — and your voice matters.
Table of contents:
Is it dangerous for the government and big tech to censor factual information?
Do you think the suppression of the truth will lead Americans to no longer trust the government for medical information?
Do you believe that big tech mishandled how they dealt with information about AstraZeneca?
What type of impact do you think blocking that information had overall?
Has Section 230 created an environment where Big Tech feels they are able to censor whoever or whatever they want without regard to the principle of free speech?
What does the future look like without Section 230 reform?
Sunday, July 2, 2023
INTERVIEW: John Mearsheimer—Leading International Relations Scholar—On US Power & the Darkness Ahead for Ukraine | SYSTEM UPDATE #109
INTERVIEW: John Mearsheimer—Leading International Relations Scholar—On US Power & the Darkness Ahead for Ukraine | SYSTEM UPDATE #109: INTERVIEW: John Mearsheimer—Leading International Relations Scholar—On US Power & the Darkness Ahead for Ukraine | SYSTEM UPDATE #109
Saturday, July 1, 2023
Le mantra des fissures de guerre non provoquées en Ukraine
Le mantra des fissures de guerre non provoquées en Ukraine
https://www.ledialogue.fr/598/Le-mantra-des-fissures-de-guerre-non-provoquées-en-Ukraine
"The public is expected to accept that this is the first war in history without historical origins or economic motives, a first war entirely based on the psychology of a single man."
The mantra of unprovoked war cracks in Ukraine
Friday 30/June/2023
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine in 2022, the White House and the entire American press have been fighting that this is an "unprovoked war" launched by a single man, Vladimir Putin, on February 24, 2022. The expression "without provocation" appears very frequently in the descriptions of the war in the American media. The Washington Post, the New York Times, and television news, have used the expression hundreds of times.
In an opinion article published last Wednesday, Thomas Friedman, the main stenographer of the CIA intelligence reports of the New York Times, wrote: "Since the beginning of the war, there has been only one place to understand its chronology and direction, and this place is Vladimir Putin's leader... that's where this war comes from". The mantra of the "unprovoked war" in Ukraine played the same role as "weapons of mass destruction" in the war in Iraq or "Remember Maine" in the Spanish-American war.
The idea behind the endless repetition of this story is the thesis that "the bigger the lie, the easier it will be to believe". The public is expected to accept that this is the first war in history without historical origins or economic motives, a first war entirely based on the psychology of a single man.
However, last week, the Washington Post published an interview with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who said that the war in Ukraine "does not begin in 2022. The war began in 2014." Stoltenberg continued: "And since then, NATO has implemented the greatest strengthening of our collective defense since the end of the Cold War... Until 2014, NATO allies were reduced defence budgets. Since 2014, all allies in Europe and Canada have significantly increased their defence spending... it is a huge NATO transformation that began in 2014. ”
The war did not begin in February 2022, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but in 2014, eight years earlier...
According to Stoltenberg, the war did not begin in February 2022, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but in 2014, eight years earlier. This admission confirms two points that the World Socialist Web Site has repeated several times since the outbreak of the war. First, that the conflict has a historical background. Second, that the 2022 invasion was a desperate response to NATO's attempts to integrate Ukraine into its orbit. Stoltenberg says that the war began in 2014, but he does not explain what really happened. The year 2014 began with the U.S.-supported regime change operation in Ukraine, which resulted in overthrowing the government of President Viktor Yanukovych, who had opposed measures to integrate a westernized Ukraine into a political association and trade pact with the EU, and which, in turn, was preparing to join NATO. The coup was financed with "more than $5 billion", according to alleged U.S. Under-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland herself.
The overthrow of the Yanukovych government was led by fiercely anti-Russian and fascist organizations such as the right sector and the Svoboda party. In the following years, Petro Poroshenko's post-coup government carried out acts of violence and repression against the Russian-speaking population of eastern Ukraine, killing nearly 14,000 people between 2014 and 2022. The regime change operation supported by the United States and NATO, as noted by the WWS in 2014, was "intended to provoke a confrontation with Russia". The coup provoked a response from the Kremlin, which understood that it would be a question of handing over the Crimean peninsula, where the Russian Black Sea fleet is actually located, to NATO. This would have allowed the United States to park its own fleet in the port of Sevastopol, giving it military domination of the Black Sea.
In response, Russia annexed Crimea after a referendum in which the overwhelming majority of the population of the enclave supported the departure of Ukraine.
Although they publicly stated that they would support a ceasefire under the "Minsk agreements", NATO powers systematically sent billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine in preparation for a war whose objective was to reconquer eastern Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula.
In 2021, the Ukrainian government approved a strategy for the military reconquest of the Crimean peninsula, which was then de facto integrated into the U.S.-Ukrainian strategic partnership of November 2021. Asking for guarantees before the outbreak of the war that Ukraine would not join NATO, Putin explained that if Ukraine became a member of NATO, the entire alliance would commit to supporting Ukraine in a war to retake Crimea. This would lead, he said, to a nuclear war between NATO and Russia...
A Russian reaction to an American-Western provocation?
The invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was the reaction of the Putin government, as a representative of a faction of the Russian oligarchy, to defend its interests while hoping to reach a kind of agreement with the imperialist powers. The United States and NATO, however, are determined to use war to achieve the objectives that motivated the 2014 coup d'état. In the Washington Post interview, Stoltenberg later said that "all NATO allies agree that Ukraine should become a member of the alliance", thus contradicting the omnipresence of the American media and political elite's claims that the Russian government's concerns about Ukraine's accession to NATO were only pure invention. Stoltenberg's statement is a promise to plunge NATO into a direct conflict with Russia. The lie of the "unprovoked war" was not only accepted and promoted by the political elite and state-controlled media in the United States, but also, shamefully, by the vast majority of academics. Apart from the meetings organized by the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (JEIIS or IYSSE), there was no serious attempt on the American campus to explain the context and underlying causes of the war. The fierce position of the pro-war and pro-imperialist current, adopted by nominally "socialist" organizations, which in fact represent privileged sectors of the upper middle class, is particularly significant. They fully approved the propaganda story.
In other words, in this logic of justification for the war in favor of Ukraine and against Russia, everything happens as if it were the task of the "left" to support the military actions of the American powers and NATO, because the opposite would be to serve as the "instrument of the aggressor": Russia. Stoltenberg's statement ends with a call to "increase arms transfers to Ukraine that will allow it to return to its annexed territories". In all respects, International Viewpoint only echoes Stoltenberg's own statements. All these social forces that defended Washington's story were exposed by the war. Far from taking "defensive" measures to save Ukrainian lives from Russian attacks, the United States is determined to fight to the last Ukrainian to achieve its objectives of reconquering the Crimean peninsula and imposing a strategic defeat on Russia. The more the war continues and spreads, the more its imperialist character is exposed. It is becoming increasingly clear that American imperialism, dissatisfied with the simple dissolution of the USSR, seeks military defeat, dismemberment and the conquest of Russia, as a prelude to an attempt to enslave China. This day has not yet come...
IJMS | Free Full-Text | mRNA: Vaccine or Gene Therapy? The Safety Regulatory Issues
IJMS | Free Full-Text | mRNA: Vaccine or Gene Therapy? The Safety Regulatory
Issues
Abstract
COVID-19 vaccines were developed and approved rapidly in response to the urgency created by the pandemic. No specific regulations existed at the time they were marketed. The regulatory agencies therefore adapted them as a matter of urgency. Now that the pandemic emergency has passed, it is time to consider the safety issues associated with this rapid approval. The mode of action of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines should classify them as gene therapy products (GTPs), but they have been excluded by regulatory agencies. Some of the tests they have undergone as vaccines have produced non-compliant results in terms of purity, quality and batch homogeneity. The wide and persistent biodistribution of mRNAs and their protein products, incompletely studied due to their classification as vaccines, raises safety issues. Post-marketing studies have shown that mRNA passes into breast milk and could have adverse effects on breast-fed babies. Long-term expression, integration into the genome, transmission to the germline, passage into sperm, embryo/fetal and perinatal toxicity, genotoxicity and tumorigenicity should be studied in light of the adverse events reported in pharmacovigilance databases. The potential horizontal transmission (i.e., shedding) should also have been assessed. In-depth vaccinovigilance should be carried out. We would expect these controls to be required for future mRNA vaccines developed outside the context of a pandemic.
1. Introduction
The regulation of medicines and vaccines is a little-known but very important subject. Indeed, health products must undergo very strict controls, as a principle, in order to control their efficacy and safety profile.
The anti-COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are the first mRNA vaccines marketed. mRNA vaccines, which represent a new class of vaccine, should be subject to more controls than conventional vaccines because they are based on several new technologies [1]. Although incompletely defined, the mode of action of mRNA vaccines [2] should classify them as gene therapy products (GTP) [3]. But mRNAs as vaccines against an infectious disease have been excluded from GTP regulation by US and EU regulations [4]. No specific regulations existed before the year 2020 for mRNA vaccines. “The current guidelines either do not apply, do not mention RNA therapeutics, or do not have widely accepted definition” [5]. Regulatory agencies therefore had to adopt an emergency procedure to monitor the testing of these products, the rolling review. In rolling reviews, data are submitted and reviewed as they become available before the full data package is available and specific controls for this new platform have been requested [6].
The aim of this study is to compare the controls required by GTP regulations with those actually applied to mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. Some of the controls required for GTPs were not required for mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, probably because of the pandemic emergency that required the rapid development of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. Potential safety issues arising from the absence of these controls will be discussed. This is all the more urgent as manufacturers are planning to replace certain “classic” vaccines with mRNA vaccines [2], starting with influenza vaccines. Indeed, Sanofi is launching a clinical trial of the first mRNA-based seasonal flu vaccine candidate [7] and Moderna has many mRNA vaccines in clinical trials (COVID-19, influenza, human metapneumovirus, parainfluenzas, RSV, HCoV, CMV, EBV, HSV, varicella, herpes, HIV, Zika, Nipah), in particular a phase 3 trial of the flu vaccine [8].
A phase 1 clinical trial is being launched for an mRNA-LNP influenza vaccine [9]. For these flu vaccines, emergency approval should not apply and the requirement for these additional studies should not be exceeded.
In addition, cancer “vaccines” are being announced (e.g., Moderna and Merck are partnering in trials of mRNA-4157/V940, an anti-melanoma “vaccine” combined with Keytruda—a monoclonal antibody directed against the programmed cell death receptor, PD-1) that acts by enhancing the ability of the body’s immune system to detect and fight tumor cells, by blocking the interaction between PD-1 and its ligands, PD-L1 and PD-L2, thereby activating the anti-T cell response, particularly the antitumor response [10]).
We must be very vigilant about the term vaccine associated with therapeutic drugs, particularly with regard to the regulations that apply to them. These therapeutics are not vaccines against infectious diseases and must therefore continue to comply with GTP regulations.
Special report: Russia buying military-use drones from China - Nikkei Asia
Special report: Russia buying military-use drones from China - Nikkei Asia: Russia has for months been importing drones from Chinese companies explicitly for use in its invasion of Ukraine, despite denials from Beijing that su
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