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Stunning: All Major Western Media Outlets take ‘Private Dinners’, ‘Sponsored Trips’ from Chinese Communist Propaganda Front

A host of corporate media outlets including CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and MSNBC have participated in private dinners and sponsored trips with the China-United States Exchange Foundation, a Chinese Communist Party-funded group seeking to garner “favorable coverage” and “disseminate positive messages” regarding China, The National Pulse can reveal.

Other outlets involved in the propaganda operation include Forbes, the Financial Times, Newsweek, Bloomberg, Reuters, ABC News, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, AFP, TIME magazine, LA Times, The Hill, BBC, and The Atlantic.

The relationship is revealed in the Department of Justice’s Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) filings, which reveal a relationship spanning over a decade between establishment media outlets and the China–United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF).

‘Neutralize Opposition’

CUSEF is a Chinese Communist Party-funded initiative founded by Tung Chee Hwa. The group also targets American universities with offers to fund policy research, high-level dialogues, and exchange programs.

Tung also serves as Vice-Chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), identified by the U.S.-China Security and Economic Review Commission as a key component of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Work Front.

The effort, according to the U.S. government report, aims to “to co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party.”

“The United Front strategy uses a range of methods to influence overseas Chinese communities, foreign governments, and other actors to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies,” it continues.

This strategy appears to have been deployed in conjunction with outlets such as CNN, New York Times, and the Washington Post.

Targeting Reporters, Journalism Students

A 2011 FARA filing highlighted by Axios detailed CUSEF’s agreement with American lobbying firm BLJ. It outlines how CUSEF set out to “effectively disseminate positive messages to the media, key influencers and opinion leaders, and the general public” regarding China.

To do so, CUSEF targeted working journalists and journalist students:

‘In order to develop favorable coverage in key national media, BLJ will continue to organize and staff “familiarization trips” to China. This includes recruiting top journalists to travel to China, selected for effectiveness and opportunities for favorable coverage.’

In 2009 alone, CUSEF generated 28 media placements as a result of its four journalist visits and BLJ secured “the publication of 26 opinion articles and quotes within 103 separate articles” on behalf of CUSEF.

Outlets included Newsweek, the National Journal, the Nation, Congressional Quarterly, U.S. News, World Report, The Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Note.

“BLJ directly contributed to or influenced” an average of three articles “per week.”

Guilty

While universities, including the University of Texas at Austin, have divested from CUSEF in light of its Chinese Communist Party ties, the same cannot be said for dozens of Western media outlets.

FARA filings from CUSEF’s American lobbying firm BLJ reveal American media organization participating in “private dinners at BLJ’s CEO’s home on behalf of CUSEF,” trips to China, and meetings with CUSEF officials.

A filing dated January 1st, 2012, show outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, CNN, and more participating in “private dinners” at the home of CUSEF’s American lobbying firm’s CEO.

The same filing reveals that outlets including National Public Radio (NPR), The Atlantic, MSNBC, and Reuters had journalists visit China to meet with CUSEF officials.

Since then, filings continue to reveal a host of Western outlets attending private dinners and visiting China. Most outlets are included more than once.

In 2013, The Washington Post joined a China-bound journalism delegation, in 2014 Harvard Business Review also joined a delegation, and in 2015, the Los Angeles Times and The Huffington Post also visited the communist country.

A 2014 filing reveals that lobbying firm BLJ “arranged private dinners in New York and Washington DC on behalf of CUSEF” with over 20 attendees including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Reuters, Associated Press, BBC, and more.

Images in CUSEF brochures shed light on the entities visited by journalists.

Between 2011 and 2013 images reveal journalist touring Huawei – a telecommunications firm labeled a “national security threat” and military collaborator by the U.S. government – along with Chinese military bases.

Results

Following the ongoing pressure campaigns, CUSEF has escaped significant criticism in the corporate press. There have only been a few mentions in broader pieces concerning Chinese Communist Party influence operations on American college campuses.

Such behavior from news outlets implies a conflict of interest, or worse: that the ostensible news outlets have been bought off.

Even when CUSEF is criticized, such as in The Washington Post article “China’s reach into U.S. campuses,” CUSEF’s Executive Director Alan Wong was offered a rebuttal: something that even Americans on the political right fail to obtain from outlets such as the Post.

Vox, another outlet participating in CUSEF’s journalism trips, prefaced an article on President Trump and North Korea by noting author Yochi Dreazen “wrote it while on a trip to China sponsored by the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF)”.

‘The author of this article wrote it while on a trip to China sponsored by the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), a privately funded nonprofit organization based in Hong Kong that is dedicated to “facilitating open and constructive exchange among policy-makers, business leaders, academics, think-tanks, cultural figures, and educators from the United States and China.” Vox.com’s reporting, as always, is independent.’

The article, which featured quotes from Chinese Communist Party officials, appeared to regurgitate the party line, noting “Beijing won big.”

As Foreign Policy magazine noted, to its credit, CUSEF is scarcely a privately funded non profit but rather is “a registered foreign agent bankrolled by a high-ranking Chinese government official with close ties to a sprawling Chinese Communist Party apparatus that handles influence operations abroad.”

Header: This photo taken on November 30, 2020 shows a meat vendor at a market in Chengdu, the capital of China’s Sichuan province. China is pushing a years-long effort to boost domestic consumption to bring balance to an economy traditionally over-reliant on manufacturing and government investment, with e-commerce as a central pillar. (Photo by NOEL CELIS / AFP) / TO GO WITH China-science-social-health-virus-technology,FOCUS by Helen Roxburgh and Qian Ye

Source: Natalie Winters – The National Pulse

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Gaia and Ctonia – Giorgio Agamben

I.

In classical Greek, the earth has two names, which correspond to two distinct if not opposite realities: ge (or gaia) and chthon. Contrary to a theory widespread today, men do not only inhabit gay, but first of all have to do with chthon, who in some mythical narratives takes the form of a goddess, whose name is Chthonìe, Ctonia. Thus the theology of Pherecides of Syrus lists three divinities at the beginning: Zeus, Chronos and Chtonìe and adds that “Chtonìe was given the name of Ge, after Zeus gave her the earth (gen) as a gift”. Even if the identity of the goddess remains undefined, Ge is here an accessory figure with respect to it, almost a further name of Chtonìe. No less significant is that in Homer men are defined with the adjective epichtonioi (ctonii, which are on chthon), while the adjective epigaios or epigeios refers only to plants and animals.

The fact is that chton and ge name two aspects of the earth as it were geologically antithetical: chton is the outer face of the underworld, the earth from the surface downwards, ge is the earth from the surface upwards, the face that the earth turns towards the sky. This stratigraphic diversity corresponds to the discrepancy of practices and functions: chthon cannot be cultivated nor can it be nourished, it escapes the opposition city / countryside and is not a good that can be owned; ge, conversely, as the eponymous Homeric hymn emphatically recalls, “nourishes all that is on chthon” (epi chthoni) and produces the crops and goods that enrich men: for those whom he honors with his benevolence, ” the furrows of the gleba that give life are laden with fruit, in the fields the cattle thrive and the house is filled with riches and they govern with just laws the cities of beautiful women “(v.9-11).

Ferecide’s theogony contains the earliest evidence of the relationship between Ge and Chthon, between Gaia and Ctonia. A fragment preserved by Clement of Alexandria defines the nature of their bond by specifying that Zeus is married to Chthonìe, and, when, according to the wedding rite of the anakalypteria, the bride takes off her veil and appears naked to the groom, Zeus covers her with «A large and beautiful mantle», in which «he embroidered Ge and Ogeno (Ocean) with various colors». Chthon, the underworld, is therefore something abysmal, which cannot show itself in its nakedness and the garment with which the god covers it is none other than Gaia, the supernal earth. A passage from Porphyry’s Cave of the Nymphs informs us that Ferecides characterized the chthonic dimension as depth, “speaking of recesses (mychous), ditches (bothrous), caverns (antra)”, conceived as doors (thyras, pylas) that souls cross in birth and death. The earth is a double reality: Ctonìa is the shapeless and hidden ground that Gaia covers with its variegated embroidery of hills, flowery countryside, villages, woods and flocks.

Even in Hesiod’s Theogony the earth has two faces. Gaia, “firm base of all things”, is the first creature of Chaos, but the chthonic element is evoked immediately afterwards and, as in Ferecide, defined by the term mychos: “the dark Tartarus in the depths of the earth with wide (mychoi chthonos eyryodeies) “. Where the stratigraphic difference between the two aspects of the earth appears most clearly is in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Already at the beginning, when the poet describes the scene of the abduction of Persephone while picking flowers, Gaia is evoked twice, in both cases as the flowery surface that the earth turns towards the sky: “the roses, the crocuses, the beautiful violets in a tender meadow and the irises, hyacinths and daffodils that Gaia makes grow according to the will of the god »…« at the perfume of the flower all the sky above and the earth smiled ». But just in that instant, “chthon from the vast paths opened up (chane) in the plain of Nisio and the lord of the many guests came out (orousen) with his immortal horses”. That it is a movement from the bottom towards the surface is underlined by the verb ornymi, which means “rise, rise”, as if from the chthonic depth of the earth the god emerged on Gaia, the face of the earth that looks towards the sky. Later, when it is Persephone herself who tells Demeter about her abduction, the movement is reversed and instead gay (gaia d’enerthe koresen) opens up, so that “the lord with many guests” could drag her underground with his chariot. ‘gold (vv. 429-31). It is as if the earth had two doors or openings, one that opens from the depths towards Gaea and one that leads from Gaea into the abyss of Chtonia.

In reality it is not a question of two doors, but of a single threshold, which belongs entirely to chthon. The verb that the hymn refers to Gaia is not chaino, to open wide, but choreo, which simply means “to make room”. Gaia does not open, but makes room for Proserpina’s transit; the very idea of ​​a passage between the top and the bottom, of a depth (profundus: altus et fundus) is intimately chthonic and, as the Sibyl reminds Aeneas, the door of Dite is first of all turned towards the underworld (facilis descensus Averno…). The Latin term corresponding to chthon is not tellus, which designates a horizontal extension, but humus, which implies a downward direction (cf.humare, to bury), and it is significant that the name for man was taken from it (hominem appellari quia sit humo natus). That man is “human”, that is terrestrial, in the classical world does not imply a link with Gaia, with the surface of the earth that looks at the sky, but above all an intimate connection with the chthonic sphere of depth.

That chthon evokes the idea of ​​an opening and a passage is evident in the adjective that in Homer and Hesiod constantly accompanies the term: eyryodeia, which can be translated “from the broad way” only if one does not forget that odos implies the idea of ​​the transit towards a destination, in this case the world of the dead, a journey that everyone is destined to make (it is possible that Virgil, writing facilis descensus, remembered the Homeric formula).

In Rome, a circular opening called mundus, which according to legend was dug by Romulus when the city was founded, connected the world of the living with the chthonic world of the dead. The opening, closed by a stone called manalis lapis, was opened three times a year, and in those days, in which it was said that mundus patet, the world is open and “the occult and hidden things of the religion of the hands were carried unearthed and revealed ”, almost all public activities were suspended. In an exemplary article, Vendryes showed that the original meaning of our term “world” is not, as has always been claimed, a translation of the Greek kosmos, but derives precisely from the circular threshold that opened the “world” of the dead. The ancient city is founded on the “world” because men dwell in the opening that unites the celestial and underground earth, the world of the living and that of the dead, the present and the past and it is through the relationship between these two worlds that it becomes it is possible for them to guide their actions and find inspiration for the future.

Not only is man linked in his own name to the chthonic sphere, but also his world and the very horizon of his existence border on the recesses of Chthony. Man is, in the literal sense of the term, a being of the depths.

II.

A chthonic culture par excellence is the Etruscan one. Those who walk through the scattered necropolises in the countryside of Tuscia immediately perceive that the Etruscans inhabited Ctonia and not Gaia, not only because of them there is essentially what had to do with the dead, but also and above all because the sites they chose for the their abodes – to call them cities is perhaps improper – if they are apparently on the surface of Gaia, they are in reality epichthonioi, they are at home in the vertical depths of chthon. Hence their taste for caverns and recesses carved into the stone, hence their preference for high gorges and gorges, the steep walls of peperino that fall towards a river or a stream. Anyone who has suddenly found himself in front of Cava Buia near Blera or in the streets buried in the rock at S. Giuliano knows that he is no longer on the surface of Gaia, but certainly ad portam inferi, in one of the passages that penetrate the slopes of Ctonia.

This unmistakably underground character of the Etruscan places, when compared to other districts of Italy, can also be expressed by saying that what we have before our eyes is not really a landscape. The affable, usual landscape that embraces serenely with the gaze and crosses the horizon belongs to Gaia: in the chthonic verticality every landscape disappears, every horizon disappears and gives way to the brutal and never seen face of nature. And here, in the rebellious canals and chasms, we would not know what to do with the landscape, the country is more tenacious and inflexible than any landscape pietas – at the door of Say the god has become so close and gloomy as to no longer require religion.
It is for this unshakable chthonic dedication that the Etruscans built and watched over with such diligence the homes of their dead and not, as one might think, the other way around. They did not love death more than life, but life was inseparable for them from the depths of Ctonia, they could inhabit the valleys of Gaia and cultivate the countryside only if they never forgot their true, vertical home. For this reason, in tombs carved into the rock or in mounds we do not only have to deal with the dead, we not only imagine the bodies lying on the empty sargophages, but we perceive together the movements, gestures and desires of the living who built them. That life is all the more lovable the more tenderly it keeps the memory of Ctonia in itself, that it is possible to build a civilization without ever excluding the sphere of the dead, that there is between the present and the past and between the living and the dead an intense community and uninterrupted continuity – this is the legacy that this people has passed on to humanity.

III.

In 1979, James E. Lovelock, an English chemist who had actively collaborated on NASA’s programs for space exploration, published Gaia: a New Look at Life on Earth. At the center of the book is a hypothesis that an article written with Lynn Margulis five years earlier in the journal Tellus had anticipated in these terms: «the set of living organisms that make up the biosphere can act as a single entity to regulate the chemical composition, the superficial pH and perhaps also the climate. We call the Gaia hypothesis the conception of the biosphere as an active system of control and adaptation, capable of keeping the earth in homeostasis ». The choice of the term Gaia, which was suggested to Lovelock by William Golding – a writer who had masterfully described the perverse vocation of humanity in the novel Lord of the Flies – is certainly not accidental: as the article specifies, the authors identified the limits. of life in the atmosphere and were interested “only to a lesser extent in the internal limits constituted by the interface between the internal parts of the earth, not subject to the influence of surface processes” (p. 4). No less significant, however, is a fact that the authors do not seem – at least at that time – to consider and, that is, that the devastation and pollution of Gaia reached their maximum level just when the inhabitants of Gaia decided to draw the energy necessary for their new and growing needs from the depths of Chtonia, in the form of that fossil remnant of millions of living beings in the distant past that we call oil.

According to all evidence, the identification of the limits of the biosphere with the surface of the earth and with the atmosphere cannot be maintained: the biosphere cannot exist without the exchange and “interface” with the chthonic thanatosphere, Gaia and Chtonia, the the living and the dead must be thought of together.

What has happened in modernity is, in fact, that men have forgotten and removed their relationship with the chthonic sphere, they no longer inhabit Chthon, but only Gaia. But the more they eliminated the sphere of death from their life, the more their existence became unlivable; the more they lost all familiarity with the depths of Chtonia, reduced like everything else to an object of exploitation, the more the lovely surface of Gaia was progressively poisoned and destroyed. And what we have before our eyes today is the extreme drift of this removal of death: to save their lives from a supposed, confused threat, people renounce everything that makes it worth living. And in the end Gaia, the earth without more depth, which has lost all memory of the underground abode of the dead, is now entirely at the mercy of fear and death. From this fear only those who will find the memory of their double abode will be able to heal, who will remember that human is only that life in which Gaia and Ctonia remain inseparable and united.

December 28, 2020
Giorgio Agamben

Source: QUODLIBET

Header: Hieronymus Bosch – The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hell (1490-1510)

The “Tree-Man” of the right panel, and a pair of human ears brandishing a blade. A cavity in the torso is populated by three naked persons at a table, seated on an animal, and a fully clothed woman pouring drink from a barrel. [details]

Note:

  • This article was translated from Italian

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Israel: Record 152,000 vaccinated in a day, but new cases hit ‘highest rate’ in months

The Health Ministry on Wednesday said 152,000 coronavirus vaccines were administered the day before, even as Israel recorded its highest number of new COVID-19 “cases” since early October, in Israel’s race between virus and vaccine.

Government officials had set a goal of vaccinating 150,000 Israelis per day by the end of the week.

“On the way to a million vaccinated!” Health Minister Yuli Edelstein tweeted. “Close to 650,000 in total.”

Israel has ramped up its vaccination campaign amid a third national lockdown, which took effect on Sunday evening to curb a resurgence in infections.

The Health Ministry said 5,583 new coronavirus “cases’ were confirmed Tuesday, the highest daily increase since early October, during the second lockdown.

Along with another 571 cases since midnight, the number of COVID-19 infections since the pandemic began rose to 414,447.

There were 40,929 active ‘cases”, including 609 people in serious condition, with 154 on ventilators. Another 169 Israelis were in moderate condition and the rest had mild or no symptoms.

The death toll stood at 3,292.

The test positivity rate further climbed, with 5.7 percent of the 97,395 tests performed Wednesday coming back positive.

“It takes 10 days to see what this lockdown does,” Chezy Levy, the director-general of the Health Ministry, told Kan public radio.

Levy acknowledged the lockdown wasn’t as strict as the previous ones, but warned of a sharp rise in morbidity if restrictions are eased.

“At the moment we can’t go back to life before [the lockdown],” he said.

Levy also lamented low vaccination rates among Arab Israelis.

“Five percent of the vaccinated are from the Arab community — we’ll expand the outreach there. In the ultra-Orthodox community the situation is better. We’re focusing our efforts on vaccinating the periphery,” he said, referring to towns in the north and south of the country.

He added that it had become possible to offer vaccinations in places with small populations, a day after hundreds of doses were tossed.

Meanwhile, coronavirus czar Nachman Ash said the lockdown may need to be tightened and warned of a possible slowdown in the pace of the vaccination campaign.

“We’re making a great effort to bring forward the next shipments so no gap is created. If the shipments don’t arrive earlier, this is a possibility and it is worrying,” Ash told the Ynet news site.

However, Sharon Elroy-Preis, acting head of the public health services division, played down concerns about a potential shortage of vaccines.

“We’re in a routine process of receiving airlifts of vaccines from Pfizer to ensure it continues like this,” Elroy-Preis told Kan.

She touted the capacity of hospitals to administer vaccines, after they joined health maintenance organizations (HMOs) this week in inoculating the general public, and said the ministry wants to hand out special documents to those who have been vaccinated.

“We want to open the economy with a green passport so that there will be as many people vaccinated as possible,” Elroy-Preis said.

Israel began its vaccination drive on December 20, focusing on healthcare workers, over 60s and some at-risk groups.

Officials set a goal of reaching 150,000 vaccinations a day in the course of this week, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel is aiming for some 2.25 million Israelis out of a population of 9.2 million to be vaccinated by the end of January.

But despite the success, Channel 13 news quoted Home Front Command sources as saying the campaign had gotten “out of control.”

“It was clear already from Thursday that a large number of vaccines were likely to be thrown away,” one source told the channel, saying that the Health Ministry was pushing the vaccines faster than some municipalities were able to handle.

According to the channel, following the publication of the report, the Health Ministry is now considering closing the specially created vaccination centers and returning to administering vaccines only at health providers’ clinics.

Channel 12 said Monday night that Israel expects to receive a total of 3.8 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine by Thursday — enough to vaccinate 1.9 million people, since the Pfizer vaccine is given in two shots, three weeks apart.

Header: People wait to receive a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, December 29, 2020 (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

Source: TOI

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China drugmaker says its coronavirus vaccine is 79.3% effective in final tests

A Chinese drugmaker said Wednesday its coronavirus vaccine was found to be 79.3% effective at preventing infection in preliminary data from the final round of testing, moving Beijing closer to possibly being able to fulfill its pledge to supply other developing countries.

Sinopharm’s data release is the first official announcement of late-stage trial data from a Chinese company on its vaccine candidates.

Its effectiveness rate is behind Moderna’s vaccine, which was more than 94% effective, and Pfizer’s, which is 95% effective. Scientists have cautioned that COVID-19 vaccines may only be about as effective as the flu vaccine, which generally is 50% effective.

However, the final proof of the vaccine’s effectiveness will depend on publication of scientific data, as the company’s disclosure did not provide additional information.

State-owned Sinopharm is one of at least five Chinese developers that are part of a global race to create vaccines for the disease that has killed 1.8 million people.

More than 1 million health care workers and others in China have received either Sinopharm or another company Sinovac’s vaccines under emergency approval while testing was underway.

Also Wednesday, Sinovac Biotech Ltd., signed an agreement to build a production facility in Beijing for a coronavirus vaccine with planned annual capacity of 1 billion doses, the newspaper Beijing Youth News reported.

Sinopharm, or China National Pharmaceutical Group, has applied for approval of its vaccine following the third and final stage of testing, a unit of the company, Beijing Biological Products Institute Ltd., said on its website.

It would be the second vaccine from a Sinopharm unit, following a separate candidate developed by the company’s Wuhan Institute of Biological Products Ltd.

The Beijing Institute’s vaccine has been approved by regulatory authorities in the United Arab Emirates. Authorities in the UAE previously said the vaccine was 86% effective.

The Sinopharm vaccine relies on two doses, the company said, similar to Western-developed vaccines.

The two-sentence announcement gave no information about side effects, conditions required to transport and use the vaccine, or other details.

Western-developed vaccines must be kept frozen at temperatures as low as minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 Fahrenheit). Chinese developers have said theirs can be stored at 2 to 8 C (36 to 46 F).

While the vaccines are not yet available to the general population, China is in the middle of a huge push to distribute its vaccines to 50 million people in an emergency use program before the Lunar New Year holiday when hundreds of millions will travel to be reunited with their families.

A former Shanghai CDC immunologist and medical professional Tao Lina, said he got the first dose of Beijing Institute’s vaccine on Saturday under the emergency use program.

He had “absolutely no adverse reactions, not even a localized reaction,” he said.

Chinese producers have at least six possible vaccines in the final stage of clinical trials.

They are testing vaccines in more than a dozen countries, including Russia, Egypt and Mexico.

Few details have been released, leaving experts abroad wondering about effectiveness and side effects.

Western companies are distributing newly distributed coronavirus vaccines, but some health experts express concern too little will be available to poorer countries. China’s government says it will ensure Chinese-developed vaccines are affordable for developing countries and has been actively pursuing distribution deals abroad.

Health experts say even if they are successful, the certification process for the United States, Europe, Japan and other developed countries might be too complex for Chinese vaccines to be used there.

Source: AP – Joe McDonald, Huizhong Wu via TOI

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Israeli nurse diagnosed with COVID 3 days after getting vaccine

Arutz Sheva spoke to Levi Levine, a nurse at Shaarei Tzedek Hospital who tested positive for the coronavirus after having received the first dose of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine.

“I’m ok. I’m getting by day by day. This is my third day being positive. I’m feeling a little weak, tired. I have muscle aches. I can barely smell anything. I can barely taste anything. It’s really weird,” Levine said.

“I did get the first dose of the vaccination on Thursday,” Levine described. “I actually also tested negative on Thursday, because we do get tested regularly. If we have some sort of exposure or we’re not feeling well, where I work at Shaarei Tzedek Hospital we get pushed to get tested,” he explained.

“Apparently I was already a carrier of the virus, which was in its asymptomatic stage or there wasn’t enough viral load so it didn’t manifest in the swab. I was feeling fine until two days after I got the first injection. I started feeling a little week and had muscle pain, which can happen after a vaccination,” he said.

“I didn’t feel well and it was really getting worse, and I told my wife that I’m pretty sure I’m gonna be positive for COVID. So I got tested on Sunday and I’m positive for COVID for three days. I’m a little better, but it’s a little annoying. I’m in the house, but I’m with my kids, so I’m most of the time with my mask if I’m next to them. We’re waiting to hear if they are also positive for COVID.”

When asked if there was any reason to think that there is a connection between his diagnosis and the vaccination he received, he said: “Absolutely not.”

“There is absolutely no connection. We don’t even know where I picked up the virus. It could have been at the hospital. It could have been from my neighbor. It could have been from the grocery store. It could have been from anywhere,” he said.

“It’s very important to remember that even if you do get the vaccination – and it’s very important that people do go get vaccinated as fast as they can. Of course, by the rules – the people who have to get it first like the elder people. But whoever could get it and doesn’t have a major allergy or something should get vaccinated. It has nothing to do with it.

“I was just unlucky, and I probably picked up the virus a day or two before I got vaccinated. It takes a little while till the vaccination builds up antibodies, which I did not have yet. So I was carrying it for two or three days before it came out, and then it was already too late,” he said.

Source: Yoni Kempinski – Arutz Sheva

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Director of Soros-funded HRW slammed for accusing Hungary of ‘scoring political points’ with imports of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine

“As the European Union unrolls proven versions of the coronavirus vaccine, Hungary’s PM Orban, apparently to score political points with Putin, imports 6,000 doses of the Sputnik vaccine,” he tweeted on Tuesday, commenting on a Hungary’s receiving the modest shipment of the Russian inoculation for trials earlier this week.

Roth has run the George-Soros funded institution for 27 years, and his Twitter feed suggests his views strongly align with the concerns of his Hungarian-born sponsor.

Hungary is one of about 50 countries that have expressed interest in the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine. Some of them, including Argentina, Venezuela and Belarus, have already received first batches of the drug.

Roth opposing the Russian jab to the “proven” versions adopted by the EU has drawn condemnation from The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal, who accused the long-time HRW executive of running “a disinfo campaign” against the Russian vaccine, that has shown roughly the same efficacy as its western counterparts.

“The vaccines produced by Western Big Pharma are no more “proven” than the Sputnik V. Both demonstrate 90%+ efficacy levels in trials,” he noted.

Mark Ames, the host of the popular War Nerd podcast, accused Roth of “openly subverting trust in Russia’s Covid vaccine.”

Other commentators echoed the sentiment, some jokingly appointing Roth a spokesman for rival Moderna and Pfizer jabs.

In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto defended the move to purchase the vaccine, noting that Russian health authorities provided Hungarian doctors and epidemiologists full access to laboratories where the jab is being manufactured, and that the members of the delegation were more satisfied with the tour, speaking about the “state of the art technology” and “the highest level of expertise” by the Russian researchers upon return.

Szijjarto lamented, however, that the opinion of the medical professionals did not placate the nay-sayers, seeking to politicize the issue.

“This is an extremely irresponsible thing,” the minister said, pointing out that Hungary has for decades been taking advantage of Russia-made inoculations.

“The vast majority of Hungarians have been vaccinated with Russian vaccines since childhood, as all our vaccines used to come from there,” he said.

As an EU member, Hungary has to wait for a medicine to be greenlitghted by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), responsible for approving new drugs and vaccines across the bloc before it can put it to use.

The Amsterdam-based body has so far given its seal of approval only to one vaccine, developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.

The watchdog is set to review the US-based Moderna vaccine’s application by January 6, instead of the initial 12 January deadline, after it faced accusations of dragging its feet on the urgent issue.

At the same time, EMA’s executive director Emer Cooke said that if countries believe that “the benefits” of a certain vaccine, not approved by the EU, outweigh the risks then they are “free to allow the temporary use of a product without a license.”

Source: RT

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Watch: Explosions and gunfire in Aden airport

Yemeni government officials came under attack after landing in Aden Wednesday.

Explosions and gunfire were reported at the airport shortly after a plane carrying the new, pro-Saudi government landed.

Three explosions rocked the Aden Airport in southern Yemen on Wednesday as the newly-formed Yemeni government arrived in the temporary capital, according to a government source.

The source, who preferred to remain unnamed, said one of the blasts likely occurred inside the reception hall for VIP guests, coinciding with the landing of a plane carrying members of the new government at the airport.

The source explained that the explosions took place before the members of the government got off the plane, without giving any further details.

So far, no information was yet available about the cause of the explosions, or whether there were any injuries.

Source: Mahmoud Barakat – Anadolu Agency

UPDATE [Dec 30, 2020 at 13:03]:

One or more explosions and gunfire killed at least 13 people at Aden airport on Wednesday as members of the new Yemen government prepared to disembark on arrival.

Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed said he and his cabinet were “fine.”

Information Minister Moammer al-Eryani accused the rebel Houthi movement of carrying out what he called a “cowardly terrorist act”.

The new Saudi-backed Yemen government of technocrats was sworn on Saturday at a ceremony in Riyadh before Yemen’s President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi.

They flew on Wednesday to Yemen’s temporary capital, Aden. The capital Sana’a is held by the Houthi insurgents.

Source: DEBKAfile

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Ordered to quarantine due to contact via WhatsApp?

A few days ago, “A”, who works in a government office, received an official notice that she was required to enter quarantine. The notice was apparently based on contact tracing using data from her cell phone.

“A” appealed several times to the Health Ministry, protesting that she had not been in contact with anyone confirmed as a carrier of coronavirus, but her appeals were rejected.

She decided to seek the advice of a friend who is involved in the ISA’s contact tracing program, and he discovered that her order to enter quarantine had been issued in error, most likely because rather than having been in physical contact with a confirmed coronavirus carrier, she had contacted that person via WhatsApp.

Apparently, “A’s” case is far from the first instance of such an error being made.

“I received an instruction to enter quarantine,” “A” told Arutz Sheva, “and I tried to remember where I’d been recently. I checked my journal and realized that there was no chance that I’d been in contact with anyone confirmed as a coronavirus carrier at the time they mentioned. So I submitted an appeal to the Health Ministry – but they rejected it. I submitted another appeal – and they rejected that too. I tried telling them that I hadn’t been near anyone confirmed as a virus carrier, but there was just no one to talk to.”

She then related that, “By chance, I happened to be talking to someone who works with the ISA’s contact tracing program. I told him that I’d had to enter home isolation and that I thought that the contact tracing had made a mistake in my case. He asked me if I had perhaps chatted with this person on WhatsApp on the date and at the time specified, and when I checked, I realized that he was right – that was what had happened. But we never met up.”

Just last week, the head of the epidemiological department in the Health Ministry, Liora Valinsky, resigned, and one of the reasons she cited for her decision to leave her position was the chaos reigning in the government’s contact tracing program – not the program run by the ISA, but rather the Health Ministry’s own tracing program, now transferred to the authority of the Home Front Command.

“Thousands of people have been ordered to enter quarantine when they should not have been required to do so,” she wrote. “Worse of all is the confusion that prevails everywhere.”

Source: Yehonatan Gottlieb – Arutz Sheva

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For Jews from former USSR, New Year’s Eve always involves a Christmas-style tree

Growing up in metro Detroit, I used to watch my Jewish mother, who immigrated from Riga, Latvia, decorate a tree in our living room each December.

“But we’re Jewish, so why do we have a Christmas tree?” I recall thinking.

While I didn’t understand the tradition at first, I grew to understand it over time. It wasn’t about assimilation, and it wasn’t even a Christmas tree: It was a yolka, a secular symbol connected to Novy God, or the Russian New Year.

Across the former Soviet Union, Novy God was a spectacle that kicked into full swing at the start of December. Families served plates of mandarins and bowls of candy. Children sang songs and held hands and danced together in a circle to traditional music. Statues and ornaments of Snegurochka, a Russian snow maiden popular in fairy tales, and Ded Moroz, or Grandfather Frost, glittered in nearly every home.

Yet above all, the Novy God tradition was anchored by the mighty yolka, a lavishly decorated holiday tree, sometimes complete with a star on top, that was not Christian (nor Jewish).

It symbolized the beginning of a fresh start for the people of the former Soviet Union, a celebration of health and happiness in the new year.

And while nearly 2 million Jews have migrated from the former Soviet Union, in many cases fleeing religious persecution, many families continue the yolka tradition and are passing it down to their children.

It’s a slice of the life they once knew that finds a home in their new lives, where religious freedom takes precedence.

The tree also gained added meaning for Soviet Jews in an era when they were not allowed to openly practice their religion. My father, who immigrated from Lviv, Ukraine, in the mid-1970s to the Detroit area, has told me countless stories of the struggles he faced as a Jew. He was denied access to college, called racial slurs at school and watched his father, my grandfather, smuggle home matzah for Passover in a pillowcase.

It was an attitude that continued well past World War II and caused many Jews to leave behind the only homes they knew in order to have opportunities for higher education, career advancement and a sense of safety in who they were as a people.

Atheism was encouraged in the Soviet Union because practicing religion was considered to be “primitive, backward, reactionary and anti-Soviet,” said Zvi Gitelman, a University of Michigan professor who studies the ethnicity and politics of former Soviet countries.

The Christmas tree may have also been viewed by the Soviet regime as a symbol of class that only the aristocracy could afford, which went against the classless ideals that the government strived to install within its new society. After the explosive Russian Revolution in 1917, which brought down a 300-year dynasty, the Christmas tree was another relic of the past that had to go — or at least be reshaped to fit the new world that the Soviet regime aimed to build.

So the strictly secular tradition of the yolka tied to the Russian New Year took hold, and Jews openly embraced it. They were not allowed to celebrate Hanukkah, but they could celebrate Novy God.

“Everybody had a yolka,” recalled Lilly Pane, who now lives just outside of Philadelphia but grew up in the anti-Semitic atmosphere of Lviv in the 1960s and 1970s.

Pane remembers how her grandfather and a group of his friends went to a different house every night to pray during the Jewish High Holidays to avoid being caught by the authorities.

Living together with her parents, uncle and grandparents, decorating the New Year’s tree was a big, warm family affair.

“We used to bring tons and tons of handblown decorations,” she said. “Beautiful antique balls and icicles.”

Pane’s family even baked cookies to string up on the yolka, and she distinctly remembers the smell of the pine mixing with freshly baked goods.

Though some Soviet Jews who resettled in America faced confusion and identity conflicts as they entered a culture where the tree was connected with religion — specifically Christianity and not Judaism — many continued to decorate a yolka year after year, teaching their children and grandchildren about the longstanding Soviet tradition.

For Sabina Gorivodskiy, who emigrated from Kyiv, Ukraine, to the Detroit area in 1990, the yolka symbolized good food and good company. It was a tradition she learned from her grandparents that her family now continues nearly every year in the US. While she observes Hanukkah, she is not very observant.

“One of the things I love about it,” she said about the tree, “[is] that it’s not connected with religion.”

Gorivodskiy’s children, who were born in America, have grown to love and appreciate their annual yolka and Novy God celebrations. They dress up, take pictures with the tree and celebrate in a similar fashion that Soviet Jews have been practicing for decades, with lots of food and family.

“I respect and appreciate my religion,” Gorivodskiy said, “but I really love the New Year’s portion of it. The yolka is not religious and everyone can enjoy it.”

In my own home, as a first-generation American, I’ve incorporated the yolka tradition, too. While my tree is more Americanized to include elements of pop culture I’ve grown up with (see: Harry Potter ornaments), it pays tribute to the sacrifices my parents and other Soviet Jews have made on their journey to religious freedom.

The yolka is a symbol that connects the past with the future, reminding me every December — but especially this year during these challenging times — to celebrate life, family and good fortune. As I decorate it, I’m thankful for the light it brings.

Source: JTA via TOI- Ashley Zatopolsky

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Most people in France unwilling to have COVID-19 vaccine, poll finds

Just four in 10 people in France want to have a vaccination against COVID-19, a poll showed Tuesday, as concern also grows over the slow start to the country’s immunization campaign.

According to the poll by Ipsos Global Advisor in partnership with the World Economic Forum, just 40 percent of French want to take the vaccine.

This puts it behind even other laggards like Russia on 43 percent and South Africa on 53%, let alone those countries where eagerness to take the vaccine is high such as China on 80% and Britain on 77%.

Fear of side effects is the reason most often given for not wanting the vaccine, according to the poll.

In the United States, where a mass vaccination campaign has now begun in earnest, 69% of people now want the vaccine, a rise on October.

France began its vaccination campaign on Sunday along with most of the rest of the EU, targeting residents in care homes first.

However fewer than 100 people were immunized in the first three days in France, a far slower pace than in neighboring Germany, let alone in the US or UK.

Rebuffing criticism on social media, a health ministry official said: “We have not set out for a 100-meter sprint but a marathon.”

“The start is cautious but we will step it up and vaccinate on a very wide scale,” the official said, noting that the authorities face a “very strong skepticism on the part of the French population.”

The official said there was no problem with supplies, with 500,000 vaccine doses now set to arrive in France every week.

The Ipsos Global Advisor poll was carried out in 15 countries online among more than 13,500 adults including some 1,000 in France.

With no let-up in infection rates in France, President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday chaired a meeting of top ministers and health officials to discuss the crisis.

Some regional leaders have pushed for at least local-level lockdowns to halt the spread of the virus but it is not yet clear what strategy the government will adopt after the New Year holidays.

Source: AFP via TOI

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Jonathan Pollard arrives in Israel, 35 years after his arrest for spying

Jonathan Pollard, the former US Navy analyst convicted of spying for Israel, arrived in Israel early Wednesday morning, 35 years after he was first arrested and weeks after his parole ended.

Pollard arrived in Israel with his wife, Esther, according to the Israel Hayom newspaper. He had long expressed a desire to move to Israel, which granted him citizenship in 1995.

The couple met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who gave the pair their new Israeli paperwork.

“Now you can start life anew, with freedom and happiness. Now you are at home,” the prime minister said.

Pollard responded: “We are excited to be home at last. There is no one who is more proud of this country or its leader than we are. We hope to become productive citizens as soon as possible.”

The Pollards flew in a private jet from Newark International Airport in New Jersey to accommodate Esther’s health issues, Israel Hayom reported.

Before landing, Pollard was invited by the plane’s pilots into the cockpit, where air traffic controllers at Ben Gurion International Airport greeted him in Hebrew.

Diaspora Affairs Minister Omer Yankelevich of the Blue and White party welcomed Pollard to Israel, writing on Twitter, “Jonathan, how good it is that you came home.” Finance Minister Yisrael Katz of Likud said, “Welcome home to Israel.”

Gideon Sa’ar, who recently broke from Likud to form the New Hope party and challenge Netanyahu’s rule, said, “Welcome home, Jonathan.”

The Pollards are expected enter quarantine, which is required of all international arrivals, and move to Jerusalem.

Israel Hayom’s chief editor, Boaz Bismuth, broke the news of Pollard’s arrival by posting a photo of the Pollards on the flight shortly before their landing. Israel Hayom is considered to be a proponent of Netanyahu and is owned by Sheldon Adelson, who has had close ties to US President Donald Trump and who in the past pushed for Pollard’s release.

Pollard’s lawyer, Eliot Lauer, told The Times of Israel, “The event speaks for itself. A dream realized after 35 very difficult years.”

Pollard’s parole ended last month. Afterward, he readied to move to Israel with his wife, who was undergoing rounds of chemotherapy treatments for breast cancer, according Lauer.

Pollard, 66, was a US Navy intelligence analyst in the mid-1980s when he made contact with an Israeli colonel in New York and began sending US secrets to Israel in exchange for tens of thousands of dollars.

Pollard, who is Jewish, passed thousands of crucial US documents to Israel, straining relations between the two close allies.

He was arrested in 1985 and was sentenced to life in prison two years later, despite pleading guilty in a deal his attorneys expected would result in a more lenient sentence.

He was eventually released in 2015, but was kept in the United States by parole rules and not allowed to travel to Israel where his wife, whom he married after he was jailed, lived.

He remained subject to a curfew, had to wear a wrist monitor, and was prohibited from working for any company that lacked US government monitoring software on its computer systems. In addition, he was restricted from traveling abroad.

Last month, Pollard released photos taken of his wife cutting the electronic monitor bracelet off of his wrist as his five-year parole was terminated. He also issued a statement thanking Esther for standing by his side for three decades.

Lauer told The Times of Israel that the termination of his parole likely required a “wink and a nod” from the highest levels of the White House.

Pollard’s move to Israel comes despite his previous accusations that Israel had not done enough to secure his release.

His capture and his subsequent treatment — by Israel, which threw him out of its Washington embassy and into the arms of waiting FBI agents, and by the United States, which agreed to a plea bargain and then sentenced him with uncommon severity — left him deeply embittered.

Israel’s October 1985 raid on the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Tunis headquarters that killed around 60 people was planned with information from Pollard, according to CIA documents declassified in 2012.

Netanyahu spoke to Pollard by phone last month, telling him, “We’re waiting for you.”

Header: Convicted spy Jonathan Pollard and his wife, Esther, enter federal court in New York on April 7, 2016. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Source: TOI

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To Know the Enemy that has Caused this Tyrannical Carnage, Just Look at the Reflection in the Mirror

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”

  • Soren Kierkegaard

If you wish for freedom, you will never know it—but if you take and protect your freedom, it will be yours. Instead of succumbing to fear, and looking to government for answers, take charge of your own lives, and make all those that would assault you, your mind, your body, or your liberty, know fear.

Fear is just a catalyst used by the ruling class in order to frighten and divide the people so as to gain power and control over them.

This fabricated fear leads to dependence, which leads to indifference; indifference leads to silence, silence leads to oppression, and oppression leads to slavery.

It is better for the people to instill great fear in the minds of any that would choose to rule over them, instead of accepting tyranny from the scourge that is the political class.

All of this boils down to the fact that the citizens themselves are entirely to blame for their current lot in life.

Most of the people in this country are fond of claiming that this is a republic, and that the people rule over the government through their alleged ‘representatives,’ not the other way around.

The irony is that this belief is ridiculous, while also being partially true, because the people are their own worst enemy.

They have voluntarily allowed others to rule over them, and they believe that by voting for their own masters that they have some control over the process, and the policies created therein.

This thinking of course is lunacy, but it is the prevalent attitude of the masses. This asinine notion has been instilled in them since birth, and the bulk of society still believes that they are ‘free.’ The people could be fully in charge in that they have the power to accept or deny rule, but in the case of the majority of people in the United States, they have accepted state domination instead of self-rule. In order to reverse this situation, all that is necessary is for the public at large to remove all consent from any claiming authority.

The solution seems simple enough, but the problem lies in how to achieve it given the weakness, cowardice, and gullibility of the herd.

In order to regain the upper hand in any quest for freedom, all that is necessary is for a fairly large number of people to disobey any government order, and to deny any support whatsoever for the political class.

Disobedience, non-compliance, and self-defense against any aggression by the oligarchic few attempting to gain power and control over you, will end immediately any attempt by the state to acquire that control. So why is this population so seemingly consumed with an attitude of acquiescence?

This society continues to wallow in self-pity and such irrational timidity as to allow for its own servitude at the hands of tyrants when simple rebellion would save the day.

The problem once again lies directly with the people themselves. This is one case where redundancy needs to be expressed. To find the problem and the culprits in this debacle we face today, only requires one look into a mirror by most every American. What should be obvious even to the most obtuse individual is that very few in this country are willing to risk anything that could help them regain and protect their own freedom.

In fact, they want only to depend on others to either fix the problems for them, or tell them what to do.

But even if they are told what is necessary, they have not the backbone to see it through, and instead come up with every manner of questions, and what ifs; and are completely terrified of not fitting in with the crowd.

This attitude is one of pathetic apathy by the bulk of society concerning its own defense of life, love, family, and liberty.

It is horribly upsetting to listen to the comments received from the crowd about the fate of individuals at the hands of the state. At once, they ask for solutions and complain that no one has ‘given’ them any solutions, but this is not true. They have been told the truth, but they “can’t handle the truth!” In other words, they what to be told what to do, but only if all do it at the same time. They need to hide. When the answer is to practice dissent and disobedience, they immediately claim that they are just one, and excuse the solution based on fear of not being a part of the herd.

This is no doubt due to cowardice, but it is also due to the fact that they do not think as individuals, and therefore will not act as individuals. Almost all want total anonymity, and desire to be invisible from any view of scrutiny. What is not understood, is that acting as individuals en masse will bring great power to any effort to protect freedom, but almost none are willing to act alone, even with the knowledge that when many act alone, they become one.

None can ‘give’ them a solution to this madness because the American population is not willing to take any individual risk for the sake of their own protection, or that of their family, their neighbors, or even their own liberty. Until this attitude changes, we are all doomed to a tyrannical existence based on the collective stupidity and disinterest of the majority.

What is going on today is a psychological experiment by ‘governing’ forces meant to accomplish a global takeover referred to often as “The Great Reset.”

This experiment in order to be successful requires that the masses acquiesce to those in power, follow orders, and obey all rules ‘mandated’ by the state. Once this mindset is in place, as is the case now, regulation of every aspect of life becomes evident.

Thought is controlled, as is behavior and movement, and the one test of the psyche of this country’s people used to gauge total compliance has already been achieved. That test is the almost universal wearing of useless and deadly masks. Allowance has replaced all freedom, confusion has replaced clarity, and sacrifice by all is expected.

We are now in a time where the people in the name of condemning any that choose to resist and disobey, are justifying evil.

Government edicts are being protected by the masses due to false fear of ‘virus’ monsters that do not exist. The American people are being used to solidify their own servitude, and are operating in concert with the ruling class to destroy their own liberty. This is only the beginning of a greater hell on earth. Once the economy is completely destroyed, once the biosecurity state is fully in place, once digital money and tracking are complete, and once this terrible and life-changing ‘covid’ vaccine is widely injected, will there be any way out?

Arguments will continue, and blame will be spread wide, but in the end as Pogo so eloquently put it, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Collectivism and collective ‘thinking’ are the ruination of man, and can only lead to communal self-destruction.

“Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it-that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life-that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence.”

  • Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.225, Penguin

Source: Gary D. Barnett – LewRockwell

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Russia charges critic Navalny with ‘fraud’ in new criminal case

Russian state investigators say they have opened a new criminal case against Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny, accusing him of fraudulently spending more than 356 million rubles ($4.8m) of public donations to organisations he controls on his personal needs, including holidays abroad.

The Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said in a statement on Tuesday the money was part of more than 588 million rubles Navalny had raised “exclusively” for his non-profit organisations, including the Anti-Corruption Fund.

“In this way, the funds collected from citizens were stolen,” the committee said, adding it had opened a criminal case into “fraud on an especially large scale”.

The charge Russia’s most prominent opposition figure carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

The move came a day after Russia’s prison service gave Navalny another potential legal headache in the form of a last-minute ultimatum: “Fly back from Germany at once and report early on Tuesday morning, or be jailed if you return after that deadline.”

Navalny was unable to return in time.

The fraud case is likely to be seen as the latest sign that the Kremlin does not want Navalny, who is convalescing in Germany, to return to Russia after what Berlin and other Western nations say was “an attempt in August to murder him with a nerve agent.”

In August, the Kremlin critic fell violently ill during a flight from Siberia to Moscow and was hospitalised in the city of Omsk before being transferred to Berlin by medical aircraft.

Experts in several Western countries concluded the 44-year-old Russian dissident was poisoned with the Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent – a claim that Moscow has repeatedly denied.

Navalny has said the main security agency Federal Security Service (FSB) was behind the poisoning at the direction of President Vladimir Putin

On Tuesday, Navalny described the fresh criminal probe against him as “invented by Putin”. He said he had predicted that the authorities would seek to jail him after failing to kill him.

“Well, I immediately said that they will try to put me in jail because I didn’t die” from the poisoning, he wrote on Twitter.

The Kremlin earlier on Tuesday declined to comment on other potential legal action against Navalny.

Putin has said that media reports that Russian state security agents poisoned Navalny were part of a United States-backed plot to try to discredit him. He said “ was not important enough to be a target.”

Navalny has faced charges of fraud before.

In February 2014, he was charged with fraud and money laundering and spent almost a year under house arrest before receiving a suspended sentence in December that year.

Last year, Europe’s tops right courts ruled that Russia had violated Navalny’s rights with the case.

Header: Navalny is convalescing in Germany after his August poisoning with a nerve agent [File: Handout/Instagram account @navalny/AFP

Source: ALJAZEERA

Notes:

Russia’s prison service has given Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny a last-minute ultimatum: Fly back from Germany immediately and report at a Moscow office early on Tuesday morning, or be jailed if he returns after that deadline.

The Federal Prison Service (FSIN) on Monday accused Navalny of violating the terms of a suspended prison sentence he is still serving out over a conviction dating from 2014, and of evading the supervision of Russia’s criminal inspection authority.

Navalny is serving out a suspended three-and-a-half-year prison term over a theft case he says was politically motivated. His probation period expires on December 30.

The prison service said in a statement late on Monday that it had summoned Navalny to report to the inspection authority and that his suspended sentence could be changed to a real jail term if his suspected violations of the terms of the suspended sentence were proven to be true.

The prison service mentioned no deadline, but Navalny posted a screenshot of a message to his lawyer which said he had until 9am local time (06:00 GMT) on Tuesday to return and show up at a Moscow office.

Kira Yarmysh, his spokeswoman, said on Twitter, it was impossible for Navalny to return in time, that he was still convalescing after his poisoning, and accused the prison service of acting on orders from the Kremlin.

“There’s no way he could appear at the Moscow Criminal Inspectorate tomorrow. But does the FSIN really care about common sense? They were given an order, they are fulfilling it,” she wrote.

The Kremlin has said Navalny is free to return to Russia at any time like any other Russian citizen.

Source: ALJAZEERA

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1 in 132 Israeli ultra-Orthodox adults over 65 has died of COVID-19

In Israel, as in the United States, haredi Orthodox communities have been hard hit by the coronavirus.

Now new data from the Ministry of Health shows that one in 132 haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, adults in Israel over age 65 has died from the coronavirus, compared with one in 475 adults over 65 among the general population, according to Israel Hayom.

That puts the death toll among haredi adults over 65 at 3.6 times that of the general Israeli population of that age group.

Haredi families in Israel often live in cramped quarters, with large families in small apartments, allowing the virus to spread easily among family members. The communal nature of the haredi lifestyle has made their communities particularly susceptible to the virus, as has continued resistance to social distancing measures and lockdowns. Even as Israel has gone through several lockdowns, haredim have continued to come together for large weddings, funerals and other gatherings.

As the Israeli government has struggled to have the haredim comply with social distancing measures, haredi Israelis have flocked to get the vaccine.

“The response has been overwhelming,” a medical official familiar with the haredi sector told Israel Hayom, saying the lines to get the vaccine have been especially long in haredi cities.

In the US, too, there has been strong interest in the coronavirus vaccine in Orthodox communities, even where compliance with pandemic guidelines has been spotty.

ParCare, an Orthodox-owned health clinic with locations in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Orange County, is currently under investigation by New York state’s attorney general for administering vaccines to the general public while the state’s guidance has specified only specific groups are eligible.

Source: JTA via TOI – Shira Hanau

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88-year-old collapses and dies several hours after being vaccinated

An 88-year-old man was evacuated this evening by MDA staff to the emergency department at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem after collapsing in his home.

Resuscitation operations by MDA staff were continued by emergency medicine staff doctors and the internal medicine department, but after prolonged efforts, the doctors were forced to determine his death.

The hospital confirmed that the elderly man was indeed vaccinated this afternoon but stressed that “he suffered from prolonged, complex, and severe background illnesses.”

Source: Arutz Sheva

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Japan’s secret Unit 731 – where biological warfare was conceived

The terrible crimes of Japan’s secret Unit 731 make anyone’s blood run cold.

Thousands of people were used as test subjects for the development of biological weapons.

The subjects were injected with cholera, typhoid, anthrax, bubonic plague, to be later dissected alive.

The unit’s ideologist Shiro Ishii and most of his associates were never punished. They became practising physicians or scientists.

  • Watch the film to find out why.

00:00 – Intro
01:46– Japan’s biological warfare project
09:16 – Unit 731: Human experiments lab
13:14 – “I infected people with plague, shigella, etc”
22:03 – Torture of women and children
27:57 – Hiroshima and Nagasaki: atomic bombs
29:10 – The end of Unit 731
32:30 – Did the U.S. become a safe place for war criminals?
34:35 – The start of the Cold War
36:28 – Testing on humans continued
45:21 – Only 12 members of Unit 731 were tried

Note:

Watch carefully especially from 37:50

Source: RT Documentary