Like NPR's Maher, the totalitarian Brussels Belgium mayor is trying to shut down speech at the National Conservatism Conference as we speak

 What a coincidence these stories break the same day.

The disturbance is being caused by Antifa, not by the people at this catered event.  

Rod Dreher is there, tweeting away:

The West late Saturday finally does the right thing against Russia on the third day of its Ukraine invasion

 

EU, UK, Canada, US pledge to remove selected Russian banks from interbank messaging system SWIFT :

WASHINGTON —The United States, European allies and Canada agreed Saturday to remove key Russian banks from the interbank messaging system, SWIFT, an extraordinary step that will sever the country from much of the global financial system.

“This will ensure that these banks are disconnected from the international financial system and harm their ability to operate globally,” the global powers wrote in a joint statement announcing the significant retaliatory measure.

Moscow’s exclusion from SWIFT, which stands for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, means Russian banks cannot communicate securely with banks beyond its borders. Iran was removed from SWIFT in 2014 following developments to Tehran’s nuclear program.

SWIFT is an independent enterprise based in Belgium that serves as an internal messaging system between more than 11,000 banks and financial institutions in over 200 countries and territories.

Meanwhile in 79% fully vaccinated Spain: Spread of COVID-19 "has raised concerns", lol

European nations are seeing Covid cases explode, with nations bringing in tough new measures and warnings of widespread lockdowns:

While Spain’s vaccination rates are positive – with 79 per cent of the population having both jabs – the Covid rates are rising.

The country has reported 88.6 cases per 100,000 over 14 days, a jump of 67 per cent, according to El Pais.

This is much lower than other badly hit European destinations such as Germany and Belgium, but the spike has raised concerns about the efforts to slow the spread.  

Spain achieved the 79% fully vaccinated threshold on Oct 10. Even that level did not eradicate cases, and now they are rising again.

 

 

 

 

 

The vaccine peddlers like Anthony Fauci insisted multiple times that the 50% level would prevent a surge in cases. Europe is 57% fully vaccinated, yet look at that headline.

Boosters will be the next panacea. And Eric Topol now insists we must have 90-95% vaccinated.

"The science has changed" is simply sanctification of moving the goalposts.

Meanwhile Africa, hardly 7% fully jabbed, is making monkeys of the wizards of smart. 

But no one asks, Why?

Welcome to The Planet of the Apes.

 

LOL, expert Eric Topol: 74% vaccinated isn't enough, gotta get to 90-95%

 In The Grauniad:

Noteworthy is Belgium with 74% fully vaccinated and one of the hardest-hit countries in the world, now at 79/100,000, currently 10th highest caseload globally. That alone tells us 74% isn’t enough, and that prior Covid (without vaccination, what some refer to as “natural immunity”) is unreliable for representing a solid immunity wall against the Delta variant. In fact, it has been projected for Delta that any country needs to achieve 90-95% of its total population fully vaccinated (or with recent Covid) in order to have population-level immunity that covers, providing relative protection, for the others.

Actually what it tells us is that the Pfizer vaccine, which is what Belgium overwhelmingly uses, does not stop the spread. 

The CDC and Anthony Fauci have held since late in 2020 that the reproduction rate for COVID-19 of 2.5 means a 60% vaccination level should stop the pandemic. 

The vaccines haven't done that. 

The United States is 57.6% fully vaccinated to date, plus 13.9% who have survived infection to date, thus 71.5% "immune".

Yet here we are, into the sixth wave:

 It's Eric Topol who is in denial.

The J&J C19 vaccine is still getting banned around the world

 The latest case is Slovenia.

Denmark was the first country to ban it, in early May.

Belgium followed suit shortly thereafter because of a vaccine related death. 

I've just spent an hour trying to find a decent list of all the countries banning J&J but cannot. That's surely by design.

Today is the 77th anniversary of the Normandy invasion by the Western allied powers

My dad served in France and Belgium. He never talked about it much at all, when I was growing up or when I became old enough to understand.

We didn't "celebrate" the day or otherwise mark it in any way. Neither did anyone else.  Same with most of the "war" holidays.

They just wanted to forget the war and move on.

And they did.

They were young and had lives to live.

The war sucked.

Sweden remains among the very worst states for deaths per million of population from COVID-19

Coronavirus data update for Sun Apr 26, 2020

Johns Hopkins reports right now 5,184,635 tests completed in the US with 940,797 confirmed cases of infection.

That's an infection rate of 18.1%, after stay-at-home has been observed more or less nationwide since mid-March. Average flu infection in the US, without stay-at-home, is 8%. So imagine how bad this could have been, and still might be.

Reports of infection rates as high as 31.5% in Chelsea, MA, are problematic. These are antibody tests, and so far have high false positive rates, meaning all the positives could be false, test populations which are much too small, and test populations which are not representative. People on the streets right now and people in grocery stores right now are not representative of the whole population. What's more, the antibodies detected by these tests could well be for non-COVID-19 coronaviruses, which means you've learned nothing about exposure to SARS-CoV-2.

There have been 54,001 deaths according to Johns Hopkins data right now, for a mortality rate of 5.74%.

Flu mortality averages 0.1%.

Therefore we are dealing with something at least 2.3 times more infectious than flu, and 57 times more deadly.

Global data indicates as of 0730 hours a mortality rate of 6.98%. Test data is too uneven globally to draw firm general conclusions. Mortality data from places like Iran at 6.31%, China at 5.53% and Russia at 0.92% just looks like lies in comparison to open, free societies, as follows.

The European big five, Spain, Italy, France, Germany and the UK have an average mortality rate of 11%, 1.9 times worse than for the US. Germany remains a standout with mortality of only 3.75%, however, which is 35% lower than in the US. Belgium has the most liberal counts of deaths, and so a very high mortality rate of 15.38%.

Norway is at 2.68%, Sweden 12.06% (oops, they followed herd immunity, and are now paying the price), Finland 4.15%, and Denmark 4.84%.

Switzerland 5.56% and Austria 3.56% really stand out relative to Hungary at 10.88%.

Canada reports in at 5.6% with Mexico at 9.43%.

Japan and South Korea come in at 2.72% and 2.26% respectively.

It's obvious to me right now that if America wants to return to some sense of normalcy after this debacle has been allowed to reach the stage that it has, the only plausible way forward is to ramp up testing for the disease massively, and provide masks to the general population which protect it while in public. Instead our president and lawmakers have been busy with other things, like bailing out businesses. They are not serious people, anymore than the people they represent, a minority of which is clamoring for herd immunity, and therefore massive casualties.

The pro-life anti-abortion party is infected with a pro-death coronavirus party. The real division in the Republican Party between the actual conservatives and the libertarian ideologues has been laid bare by SARS-CoV-2. The former want to save you, as do many liberals. The latter believe only in survival of the fittest.  

The idea that immunity will be built up for this disease in the US population so that this will be over once and for all strikes me as completely speculative at this point.

America has to prepare to live with this disease indefinitely.  

Climate Scientists Write To UN: There Is No Climate Emergency:

Professor Guus Berkhout
The Hague
guus.berkhout@clintel.org

23 September 2019

Sr. António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations,
United Nations Headquarters,
New York, NY 10017, United States of America.

Ms. Patricia Espinosa Cantellano, Executive Secretary,
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,
UNFCCC Secretariat, UN Campus, Platz der Vereinten Nationen 1,
53113 Bonn, Germany

Your Excellencies,

There is no climate emergency.

A global network of more than 500 knowledgeable and experienced scientists and professionals in climate and related fields have the honor to address to Your Excellencies the attached European Climate Declaration, for which the signatories to this letter are the national ambassadors.

The general-circulation models of climate on which international policy is at present founded are unfit for their purpose. Therefore, it is cruel as well as imprudent to advocate the squandering of trillions on the basis of results from such immature models. Current climate policies pointlessly, grievously undermine the economic system, putting lives at risk in countries denied access to affordable, continuous electrical power.

We urge you to follow a climate policy based on sound science, realistic economics and genuine concern for those harmed by costly but unnecessary attempts at mitigation.

We ask you to place the Declaration on the agenda of your imminent New York session.

We also invite you to organize with us a constructive high-level meeting between world-class scientists on both sides of the climate debate early in 2020. The meeting will give effect to the sound and ancient principle no less of sound science than of natural justice that both sides should be fully and fairly heard. Audiatur et altera pars!

Please let us know your thoughts about such a joint meeting.

Yours sincerely, ambassadors of the European Climate Declaration,

Professor Guus Berkhout                               The Netherlands
Professor Richard Lindzen                             USA
Professor Reynald Du Berger                         French Canada
Professor Ingemar Nordin                              Sweden
Terry Dunleavy                                               New Zealand
Jim O’Brien                                                     Rep. of Ireland
Viv Forbes                                                       Australia
Professor Alberto Prestininzi                          Italy
Professor Jeffrey Foss                                     English Canada
Professor Benoît Rittaud                                 France
Morten Jødal                                                   Norway
Professor Fritz Vahrenholt                              Germany
Rob Lemeire                                                    Belgium
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley            UK

There is no climate emergency
A global network of 500 scientists and professionals has prepared this urgent message. Climate science should be less political, while climate polities should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address the uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real benefits as well as the imagined costs of adaptation to global warming, and the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of mitigation.

Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming
The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age ended as recently as 1850. Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming.

Warming is far slower than predicted
The world has warmed at less than half the originally-predicted rate, and at less than half the rate to be expected on the basis of net anthropogenic forcing and radiative imbalance. It tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.

Climate policy relies on inadequate models
Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools. Moreover, they most likely exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases such as CO2. In addition, they ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.

CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth
CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. Photosynthesis is a blessing. More CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth: additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yields of crop worldwide.

Global warming has not increased natural disasters
There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent. However, CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly. For instance, wind turbines kill birds and bats, and palm-oil plantations destroy the biodiversity of the rainforests.

Policy must respect scientific and economic realities
There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. If better approaches emerge, and they certainly will, we have ample time to reflect and adapt. The aim of international policy should be to provide reliable and affordable energy at all times, and throughout the world.

Read full story here…

Rush Limbaugh, expert in European history: "Belgium has never been a real country"

Here.

Belgium seceded from the Netherlands in 1830 and has been an independent country ever since. My father helped liberate it from the Germans in 1944. Idiot.

German Bunds make history, yields fall below 1%, poor GDP blamed on MILD winter!

Germany now joins Japan and Switzerland in the below 1% yield club. The rush into the safety of government bonds driving down yields is a sign everywhere of lousy productivity.

Meanwhile yields below 2% exist in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Sweden, The Netherlands, Ireland, France, Finland, Denmark, The Czech Republic, Belgium, and Austria. Finland is the lowest of these presently at 1.14%.

CNBC reports here:

"Following disappointing growth data for the euro zone, 10-year yields finally broke through the 1 percent handle on Thursday—a first—dipping to an intraday low of 0.998 percent.  Yields then fell below 1 percent again on Friday, on reports that Ukrainian troops had attacked armed Russian military, which had crossed into the country near the border of Izvaryne. U.S. yields also declined, hitting a low of 2.333 percent, while the euro and European stocks turned negative."

German GDP fell in the second quarter from the first, at -0.6% annualized, which was, believe it or not, blamed on a mild winter there after poor GDP Stateside was blamed on an unusually harsh one.

The Wall Street Journal reported with a straight face here:

"Germany's economy, long Europe's growth engine, shrank for the first time in more than a year, a development economists largely attributed to a mild winter that boosted activity in the first quarter at the expense of the second. The bigger concerns, they say, are France and Italy, where respectable rates of growth aren't even in sight."

Oh well, at least they wrote "shrank".

Greater Europe Has 8 of 10 Highest Taxed Incomes

Showing highest marginal income tax rate and income level at which it begins:

10. Ireland, 48.0 percent + social security 4 percent, $43,900

09. Finland, 49.2 percent, $91,000

08. England, 50.0 percent + social security 12 percent, $231,000

07. Japan, 40.0 percent + 10 percent municipal + 5 percent social security, $217,000

06. Belgium, 50.0 percent + social security 13 percent + municipal 11 percent, $46,900

05. Austria, 50.0 percent + social security 18 percent, $80,000

04. Netherlands, 52.0 percent, $74,500

03. Denmark, 55.4 percent, $76,000

02. Sweden, 56.6 percent + social security 7 percent, $81,000

01. Aruba (Netherlands), 58.95 percent, $165,000 

The slideshow and commentary at CNBC.com is viewable here.

Norway: A Bulwark of Global Anti-Semitism

"There are more than 1,000 Jews in Oslo, but you never see them. Not one. Jews in Norway make upjust 0.003% of the total population, but the country is a bulwark of global anti-Semitism. Elsewhere, due to security reasons, Jews are fleeing the Swedish city of Malmo and Antwerp in Belgium, a town once proudly called 'the Northern Jerusalem.'

To quote psychiatrist Zvi Rex: 'Europe will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.' Europe doesn’t want to live under the psychological burden of Auschwitz forever. The Jews are living reminders of the moral failure of Europe. This leads to the projection of guilt on Israel and the remaining European Jews.

Indeed, it’s a tragic but unavoidable process: the New Europe will be a Jews-free continent."

-- Giulio Meotti, quoted here

Top Ten Countries with Direct Banking Exposure to PIIGS

Since May 2010, banks of eight countries with assets directly exposed to the PIIGS group of countries have made considerable progress in reducing that exposure, based on the figures reported here, now and previously:

IRELAND ........ down 65 percent to $  31.7 billion

Netherlands ........ down 38 percent to $150.5 billion

Belgium ............... down 34 percent to $  78.2 billion

PORTUGAL ........ down 30 percent to $  45.2 billion

France ....... down 29 percent to $646.5 billion

Germany ..... down 24 percent to $532.7 billion

U.K. ............. down 17 percent to $347.2 billion

SPAIN............ down 15 percent to $126.8 billion.

Two additional countries, Austria ($36.8 billion exposed) and Switzerland ($56.4 billion exposed), join these eight in the top ten ranked by seriousness of exposure to PIIGS as a percentage of their bank assets. These are, in descending order:

UK, France, Portugal, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Spain, Switzerland and Ireland.

PIIGS ranked by the most owed to the banks of these ten countries are as follows:

Italy       $780.3 billion

Spain     $594.5 billion

Ireland   $357.4 billion

Portugal $189.5 billion

Greece   $130.0 billion.

Total owed by PIIGS to the banks of just these 10 countries:  $2.052 trillion.