Jts5665

The CDC seems to have been systematically swapping in Covid as the Underlying Cause of Death on death certificates listing a different condition as the UCoD. 

To briefly recap what we’ve covered in previous articles, the CDC applies medical diagnostic codes from the ICD-10 database for all conditions listed as a CoD on death certificates.

The thesis explores how the CDC has been systematically misclassifying covid as the UCoD on death certificates that clearly list a different condition as the Underlying Cause of Death, or where covid was obviously not the UCoD even if it was technically listed in the position of the UCoD by the coroner or ME who filled out the death certificate. The CDC does this by entering the ICD code for covid - U07.1 - as the UCoD even though the death certificate itself lists a different condition as the UCoD.

To be clear, this isn't meant to capture coroners adding covid as a CoD where covid clearly was clinically irrelevant. Rather, what I am highlighting is a subset of "covid" deaths where the CDC swapped in covid as the UCoD even though it wasn't documented as the UCoD on the death certificate by the coroner/ME.

In other words, potentially an enterprise of systemic out-and-out fraud by the CDC to falsely portray deaths that at best covid 'helped' hasten the demise of the decedent as deaths where the death was primarily instigated by covid.

(Note: there are some instances where UCoD swapping is technically justified because of clear mistakes involving the manner and order of the CoD's on the death certificate. However, this cuts both ways, and the CDC doesn't seem to have subjected UCoD's listing covid to the same degree of scrutiny or standard. This is something that we will hopefully explore in greater detail in future articles.)

Massachusetts

There were 18,074 deaths in Massachusetts through Q1 2023 that list U07.1 - covid - as the UCoD.

Of these 18,074 death certificates, 5,721 list a condition other than covid as the UCoD.

The following is a list of all of the different text descriptions of conditions listed as the UCoD where the CDC assigned the ICD 10 UCoD as covid, and the number of death certificates where this UCoD was coded as U07.1 (covid) by the CDC (listed in order from most frequent to least frequent):

Minnesota

There are 12,068 deaths in Minnesota through Q1 2023 that the CDC assigned U07.1 – covid – as the UCoD.

Of these, 2,758 identify a condition other than covid as the UCoD:

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Ohio School District Spent $24,000 Instructing Educators on How to Hide Kids’ ‘Gender Transitions’ From Parents.

“RULE OF LAW:” Whistleblowers: The FBI ignoring Doughty’s injunction on censorship.

A lawless regime has no legitimacy and rules — or falls — by force. That seems to be where they want to go. But you know, being accountable to the citizenry probably counts as “white supremacy” or something nowadays.

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE: In Newly Released Docs, Scientists Seemingly Admit Covid Origins Paper Was Meant to Cover for China, Play Politics. “The report also claims that former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci initiated an effort to suppress the theory that the origins of COVID-19 could be traced to a laboratory in Wuhan, China. Fauci reportedly pushed researchers to write a paper to ‘disprove’ the lab leak theory on multiple occasions.”

SOCIALISM IN 24 SECONDS:

This is so surreal. The socialist Spanish minister uses a private jet to attend a climate conference. 100 metres before the venue she gets out off the limo and takes a bicycle. The security cars follow her. pic.twitter.com/NkSF3hJrOH

— David Vance (@DVATW) July 11, 2023

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Zoo asks visitors to stop showing phone videos to gorillas.

This is an amazing Freudian slip right here.

MARK JUDGE: Oppo the Justices: The Stasi Left is Using the Avenatti Playbook.

It’s 2023 now, and leftists are indeed using the exact same tactics they used against Kavanaugh and me to assail the Supreme Court itself. I’ve hammered home again and again how they were going to deploy it. Many of the same conservatives who kept telling me to move on are now expressing shock about what’s happening. Welcome to the party, guys.

As was the case with us, the left’s plan has just four steps for crushing constitutionalist justices and hijacking the Court:

• Do opposition research. Dig up some apparent dirt on the justices, even if it is not convincing or relevant.
• Feed it to the media, who will shout it through a bullhorn.
• Call for subpoenas — even of the Chief Justice himself, if he won’t play ball. Haul them up and humiliate them in the (Democrat-run) Senate.
• Impeach the conservative justice, or pack the court with new, compliant members.

Yes, they are really trying this. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just gave a speech demanding that Congress subpoena Justice John Roberts.

Read the whole thing.

OLD AND BUSTED: Defund the Police.

The New Hotness? Disable the security cameras!

As the debate rages in the United States over parental notification and authority in cases involving transgender children, the United Kingdom is embroiled in a controversy over a law that would not only limit parental authority in such cases but affirmatively require parents to pay for such transitioning.  Under the interpretation put forward by police, parents who refuse to use the alternative pronouns for their children or refuse to pay for their transitioning could be criminally prosecuted.

According to the UK’s Code for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), abusive conduct now includes “withholding money for transitioning [and] refusing to use their preferred name or pronoun.”  So a parent with familial or religious objections to the transitioning of a child would be required under the law to fund operations or treatments.

According to the guidance material, this is not even “an exhausted list,” but some of the first “examples” of potentially criminal conduct that comes to mind.

The guideline would suggest that parents with deep-seated religious convictions against transgender status would either have to fund an operation that they consider immoral or face arrest for failing to do so.

To potentially prosecute a parent for refusing to use an adopted pronoun of their child is chilling and wrong. Nevertheless, a CPS spokesperson doubled down with a comment to Fox News that “domestic abuse is a severe crime and leaves victims with a lasting impact . . . This assists prosecutors to ensure that any victim, regardless of who they are, can get justice for the abuse they have faced.”

This follows the erosion of free speech and religious rights in Britain, including English courts upholding the criminalization “toxic ideologies.”

It was Sir Edward Coke in The Institutes of the Laws of England, 1628 who declared “For a man’s house is his castle, et domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium [and each man’s home is his safest refuge].” William Pitt, the first Earl of Chatham later added:

“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. It may be frail – its roof may shake – the wind may blow through it – the storm may enter – the rain may enter – but the King of England cannot enter.”

That no longer appears the case when misusing pronouns or failing to write a check for a child’s transitioning, which will now be treated as the same as physical child abuse.  As the definition of abuse is broadened, the state derives greater control and direction over family affairs and relations. Moreover, leaving enforcement to the discretion of police in this “nonexhaustive” list only further undermines this long-standing protection over internal family matters. The question is what the limiting principle will be as the state defines a wider array of conduct to be child abuse. The default assumption of Pitt appears to have flipped in the United Kingdom.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE: Lancet Study on Covid Vaccine Autopsies Finds 74% Were Caused by Vaccine – Study is Removed Within 24 Hours. 

Just Stop Oil and Labour Party major donor Dale Vince's 'green' energy companies have received £110m in subsidies from the taxpayer over the last 20 years, it has been revealed.

The post Just Stop Oil Donor Received £110 Million in Green Subsidies from Taxpayer appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has delivered a body blow to free speech as well as academic freedom in a ruling against a statistics professor at North Carolina State University.  Professor Stephen Porter objected to what he considered the lower standards used by his school to hire minority faculty. The school declared such views as insufficiently “collegial” and retaliated against him. Now a divided panel has ruled that such views are not protected by the First Amendment — potentially opening up even greater retaliation against conservative, libertarian, and dissenting faculty. Rather than punish them for failing to echo the views of the schools, they can now be fired for their lack of collegiality in speaking against such policies and hires.

Just when you thought things could not get worse for the dwindling number of dissenting faculty, the Fourth Circuit just found a way. If this decision stands, “uncollegiality” will become the new code for retaliating against dissenters on faculties. Indeed, likability and collegiality were long denounced as excuses for rejecting (or poorly evaluating) female and minority candidates.

Judge Stephanie Thacker (right) wrote the opinion with Judge Andrew Wynn over the dissent of Judge Julius Richardson.

Thacker’s ruling in Porter v. Board of Trustees of North Carolina State University would effectively gut both free speech and academic freedom protections for dissenting faculty. It is not just chilling, it is glacial in its implications for higher education.

Porter is a tenured statistics professor in the college of education. It is an area that has been the focus of much controversy in recent years, including columns on this blog. We previously discussed how academics like University of Rhode Island Professor and Director of Graduate Studies of History Erik Loomis denounce statistics and science as “inherently racist.” Others have agreed with that view, including denouncing math as racist or a “tool of whiteness.” There are also calls for the “decolonization” of math as a field. Some like Luis Leyva, associate professor of mathematics education at Vanderbilt University has declared all math to be racist and that universities need to “reimagine” and structurally “disrupt” math departments.

Porter clearly does not agree with that viewpoint. He was opposed to what he viewed as the school elevating a social agenda above good scholarship. He specifically objected to what he viewed as a lowering of standards to hire minority faculty. He stated so freely to his colleagues in emails as well as at meetings. He also wrote a column expressing those concerns.

Thacker and Wynn dismissed his arguments that he was protected in expressing such viewpoints. The opinion is an exercise in willful blindness. The judges simply say that he was not punished for his viewpoint but his lack of collegiality. In doing so, they set aside the column which appears to have triggered many of his colleagues. Instead, they declare that this was speech tied to his job and does not relate to his research and teaching. In that way, the court avoids the necessity of applying the balancing test under Pickering v. Board of Education. Instead, the panel applied the more lenient standard under Garcetti v. Ceballos.

The panel decision runs against the grain of various prior decisions of the Supreme Court. For example, in Rankin v. McPherson, 483 U.S. 378, 387 (1987), the Court declared that a government employee was protected in expressing a highly offensive statement about the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. The Court held that “the inappropriate…character of a statement is irrelevant to the question whether it deals with a matter of public concern.”

Judge Thacker simply ignored elements of the record to support the university’s actions against this dissenting colleague. The dismissal of the impact of the column was the most telling.

Judge Richardson stated in his dissent:

“Porter published his blog post in September. Pasque suggested that he leave his program area at the October faculty meeting, and formally threatened to remove him in her November letter. Finally, she followed through on her threat in July, when she gave Porter his annual evaluation.”

If this decision is not reversed, things are likely to get far worse (if possible) for conservative, libertarian and contrarian faculty members. Rather than investigate, sanction, or fire faculty for their viewpoints, schools will now simply declare them uncollegial in raising such viewpoints.  School or board officials like John Corkins will no longer have to say that dissenting faculty should be “taken to the slaughterhouse” for their anti-diversity views. They can be “culled” on collegiality grounds.

We have already seen a purging of faculties of conservative and libertarian colleagues. We previously discussed how surveys at universities show a virtual purging of conservative and Republican faculty members.  For example, last year, the Harvard Crimson noted that the university had virtually eliminated Republicans from most departments but that the lack of diversity was not a problem.  Now, a new survey conducted by the Harvard Crimson shows that more than three-quarters of Harvard Arts and Sciences and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences faculty respondents identify as “liberal” or “very liberal.” Only 2.5% identified as “conservative,” and only 0.4% as “very conservative.”

Likewise, a study by Georgetown University’s Kevin Tobia and MIT’s Eric Martinez found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools. Notably, a 2017 study found 15 percent of faculties were conservative.

Compare that to a recent Gallup poll stating, “roughly equal proportions of U.S. adults identified as conservative (36%) and moderate (35%) in Gallup polling throughout 2022, while about a quarter identified as liberal (26%).”

Once “uncollegial” conservatives are eliminated, that number could reach a statistical vanishing point for Professor Porter and the dwindling number of dissenters and nonconformists in higher education.

Here is the opinion: Porter v. Board of Trustees of University of North Carolina State University.

GROOMING, STRAIGHT UP: ‘Majority Doesn’t Always Dictate’: Fairfax County School Board Ignores 84% Rejection of Gender Ideology.

HIGHER EDUCATION IN AMERICA: ‘I am a Black woman in America. I am always in the right.’

It was dubbed the 'great retirement', but new analysis shows that half the older people who dropped out of the workforce at the start of the pandemic found themselves struggling financially.

The post Nearly Half Over-50s Who Quit Work During Covid Now Live “In Poverty” appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

The last week’s historic decisions from the Supreme Court led to an array of factual objections from critics. In Justice Neil Gorsuch’s major free speech ruling in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, a man who believes that he is “Stewart” referenced in the case (as asking for a website for a same sex marriage) never made such a contact with the company. In Justice Sotomayor’s dissent to that case, the justice falsely claims that the Pulse mass shooting (“the second-deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history”) was an intended anti-LGBT attack. (The shooter apparently was unaware of what type of nightclub it was). Those mistakes, however, had little impact on the reasoning. That is not the case with a mathematical challenge raised to the dissent of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in the North Carolina affirmative action case.

In a Wall Street Journal column, lawyer Ted Frank objects to what he argues is a “mathematically absurd claim” about black newborns in Jackson’s dissent. Jackson was arguing that affirmative action has been shown to “save lives” by allowing black doctors to give better care for black people than white doctors.

“It saves lives. For marginalized communities in North Carolina, it is critically important that UNC and other area institutions produce highly educated professionals of color. Research shows that Black physicians are more likely to accurately assess Black patients’ pain tolerance and treat them accordingly (including, for example, prescribing them appropriate amounts of pain medication). For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live, and not die.”

Frank objected:

“A moment’s thought should be enough to realize that this claim is wildly implausible. Imagine if 40% of black newborns died—thousands of dead infants every week. But even so, that’s a 60% survival rate, which is mathematically impossible to double. And the actual survival rate is over 99%.”

The claim is based on a 2020 study cited in a footnote, which Justice Jackson appears to have taken from an amicus brief by the Association of American Medical Colleges.  However, Frank again objects that the study is not only “flawed” but does not make that claim:

“The study makes no such claims. It examines mortality rates in Florida newborns between 1992 and 2015 and shows a 0.13% to 0.2% improvement in survival rates for black newborns with black pediatricians (though no statistically significant improvement for black obstetricians).”

Frank says that “the AAMC brief either misunderstood the paper or invented the statistic.” He also notes that the study is flawed by relying on a linear regression given the small differential of 10 newborns a year. Instead, he claims that study did the accepted logistic model analysis in such cases but put the results in an appendix:

“There, the most highly specified model still shows an improvement in black newborn survival. But if you know how to read the numbers—the authors don’t say it—it also shows black doctors with a statistically significant higher mortality rate for white newborns, and a higher mortality rate overall, all else being equal.”

I cannot claim any particular skill at “reading the numbers.” However, this controversy captured my attention because I have always been leery of so-called “Brandeis briefs” before the Supreme Court where amici dump studies into the record.

Before joining the court, Justice Louis Brandeis filed such a brief in his brilliant challenge to work place conditions. It is now a common feature in briefing of cases as groups and associations push studies as determinative or substantial evidence on one side or another. My opposition to the brief is that the justices are in a poor position to judge the veracity or accuracy of such studies. They simply pick and choose between rivaling studies to claim a definitive factual foundation for an opinion.

It is also frustrating that, as a litigator, you fight over every entry into the record at trial. However, when you are before the Supreme Court, everyone is free to just dump statistics and studies into the record and the Court regularly uses such material to determine the outcome. It produces more of a legislative environment for the court as different parties insert data to support their own view of what is a better policy or more serious social problem. There is only a limited ability of parties to challenge such data given limits on time and space in briefing.

The result is that major decisions or dissents can be built on highly contested factual assertions. In this case, critics believe that the Jackson argument literally does not add up.

YOU CAN CHECK OUT ANY TIME YOU LIKE…: Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting Instagram account, Meta says. “Threads, Meta’s Twitter rival, is drawing users at an astounding pace, amassing 10 million signups in just seven hours, according to co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. But the highly-anticipated new service, which requires an Instagram account for onboarding, features an intriguing stipulation: Deleting a Threads account requires deleting the linked Instagram account.”

WHEN THE SUN GOES NOVA, IT’LL BE 100%: 99% of humans about to experience sunlight at same time.

ROBERT BRYCE: The Energy Transition Isn’t.

The numbers from the just-released Statistical Review of World Energy show, once again, that despite rapid growth in wind and solar, those two forms of energy are not even keeping pace with the growth in hydrocarbons. That’s true both globally and in the U.S.
…
In 2004, hydrocarbons provided 86% of global primary energy. The balance came from hydro, nuclear, and biomass. By 2022, hydrocarbons’ share of global primary energy had dropped by four percentage points, to 82%, wind and solar made up 5%, and the balance came from hydro, nuclear, and biomass. But in absolute terms, hydrocarbon consumption grew by 110 exajoules, (EJ), while wind and solar grew by just 32 EJ. Thus, the growth in hydrocarbon use over that time frame was 3.4 times faster than what was seen in wind and solar.

And here’s the key point: hydrocarbons are prevailing despite staggering amounts of spending on wind and solar. According to a January report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, some $6.7 trillion was spent on alt-energy globally between 2004 and 2022, with the vast majority of that, some $4.8 trillion spent on renewables. And the vast majority of that $4.8 trillion — about $4.1 trillion — was spent on wind and solar.

Yes, but all the right people got their cut of the $4.1 trillion.

A Lancet review of 325 autopsies after Covid vaccination found that 74% of the deaths were caused by the vaccine – but the study was removed within 24 hours. Read it here.

The post Lancet Study on Covid Vaccine Autopsies Finds 74% Were Caused by Vaccine – Study is Removed Within 24 Hours appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

As a long-standing free speech advocate, the last few years have been alarming and, frankly, depressing. The censorship efforts of the government are, unfortunately, not new.  However, what is new is the support of the media and the Democratic Party in such censorship. That was on display on various channels after the recent opinion finding that the Biden Administration had violated the First Amendment in “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” However, the New York Times immediately warned that the outbreak of free speech could “curtail efforts to combat disinformation.” Yet, no one expressed more simply and chillingly than CNN Chief White House Correspondent Phil Mattingly who stated that it “makes sense” for tech companies to go along with government censorship demands.

Mattingly admitted that social media platforms “more often than not” gave in to the censorship demands by the Biden administration. However, he insisted that it “makes sense,” and is “probably what we should do on public health grounds.”

“[T]he Biden administration would regularly reach out to Twitter and Facebook and other companies in kind of the early stages of their COVID response and say, this person is spreading lies about vaccines, this account is spreading misinformation that is inhibiting — not just our efforts, the administration’s efforts to address COVID — but also public health, do something about it. And often, I think more often than not, the companies would respond and say, okay. And there are emails that came out during the course of this case that that was something that I think — when it was explained to me at the time, I thought, alright, that makes sense, that’s probably what we should do on public health grounds.”

What is striking is not just the blind acceptance that the government should be protecting us from harmful thoughts. It is also the failure to recognize that the government was wrong on many of these points while experts were being banned and blacklisted.

Many people were routinely censored on Twitter and other platforms for daring to challenge the official position on masks.

The Centers for Disease and Control Prevention (CDC) initially rejected the use of a mask mandate. However, the issue became a political weapon as politicians and the press claimed that questioning masks was anti-science and even unhinged. In April 2020, the CDC reversed its position and called for the masking of the entire population, including children as young as 2 years old.  The mask mandate and other pandemic measures like the closing of schools are now cited as fueling emotional and developmental problems in children.

The closing of schools and businesses was also challenged by some critics as unnecessary. Many of those critics were also censored. It now appears that they may have been right. Many countries did not close schools and did not experience increases in Covid. However, we are now facing alarming drops in testing scores and alarming rises in medical illness among the young.

Masks became a major social and political dividing line in politics and the media. Maskless people were chased from stores and denounced in Congress. Then-CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said during a Senate hearing that “face masks are the most important powerful health tool we have.”

However, there are now ample studies stating that “a new scientific review suggests that widespread masking may have done little to nothing to curb the transmission of COVID.” It added that “wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness/COVID-like illness (nine studies; 276,917 people); and probably makes little or no difference in how many people have flu/COVID confirmed by a laboratory test (six studies; 13,919 people).”

It also found little evidence of a difference from wearing better masks and that “wearing N95/P2 respirators probably makes little to no difference in how many people have confirmed flu (five studies; 8407 people); and may make little to no difference in how many people catch a flu-like illness (five studies; 8407 people), or respiratory illness (three studies; 7799 people).”

Again, I expect that these studies will be debated for years. That is a good thing. There are questions raised over the types of studies used and whether randomized studies are sufficient. The point is only that there were countervailing indicators on mask efficacy and a basis to question the mandates. Yet, there was no real debate because of the censorship supported by many Democratic leaders in social media. To question such mandates was declared a public health threat.

The head of the World Health Organization even supported censorship to combat what he called an “infodemic.”

Scientists previously objected to the suspension of Dr. Clare Craig after she raised concerns about Pfizer trial documents. Those doctors were the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdown as well as the real value of masks or the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination.  Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a year ago. Some found themselves censored on social media for challenging claims of Dr. Fauci and others.

The media has quietly acknowledged the science questioning mask efficacy and school closures without addressing its own role in attacking those who raised these objections. Even raising the lab theory on the origin of Covid 19 (a theory now treated as plausible) was denounced as a conspiracy theory. The science and health reporter for the New York Times, Apoorva Mandavilli,  even denounced the theory as “racist.”

Yet, Mattingly and others are defending censorship by repeating a tautology: the government must seek the censorship of ideas because some ideas must be censored.  Governments have always claimed that censorship of critics and dissenters is for the public’s best interest. They have always defined certain views as harmful or false.

Now, however, major media figures are shrugging off free speech concerns and supporting censorship as what former CNN media host CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter called a “harm reduction model.” While once fiercely opposed to censorship and government-supported blacklists, many in the media are echoing Mattingly’s view that the natural default should be to obey the government and its directions on permitted speech. After all, this is all for our own protection. Censorship just “makes sense.”

‘TOLERANT’ LEFT AIMS DEATH THREAT BARRAGE AT LORIE SMITH: She’s the determined website designer who stood up for her right not to be be forced to speak ideas with which she disagrees. The Supreme Court’s 303 Creative v. Elenis decision upheld her right and that of every American.

So now, Smith tells The Epoch Times, her reward is a sudden surge in the intensity of the steady flow of harassment she has received for the seven years that led to the June 30 victory for the First Amendment. The surge includes death threats to Smith and members of her family.

“ANIMAL RIGHTS” IS TWADDLE: Nature, Toothless and Declawed: Martha Nussbaum’s dubious case for animals as liberal subjects. Bah. You never hear this kind of sentiment from, say, farmers, or others who spend a lot of time around animals that aren’t basically pets.

I have some related thoughts here.

And so does Arthur Allen Leff.

Plus:

This last argument goes back at least as far as Benjamin Franklin. Animal rights partisans will tell you that it’s old and long-since refuted, but it’s actually just old.

SPACE: Scientists Find the Remains of a Catastrophe on Mars Scattered Across the Planet.

REVIEW: ‘Sound of Freedom’ Shines a Light on the Issue of Human Trafficking.

The wind industry has written to the Government threatening to abandon the U.K. unless subsidies are hugely ramped up, in a move that gives the lie to years of propaganda claiming falling costs.

The post Wind Industry Blackmails U.K. Demanding Huge Ramp-Up of Subsidies appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

LIVING HISTORY: China is in default on a trillion dollars in debt to US bondholders. Will the US force repayment?

Before 1949, the government of the Republic of China (ROC) issued a large volume of long-term sovereign gold-denominated bonds, secured by Chinese tax revenues, to private investors and governments for the construction of infrastructure and financing of governmental activities. Put simply, the China we know today would not have been possible absent these bond offerings.

In 1938, during its conflict with Japan, the ROC defaulted on its sovereign debt. After the military victory of the communists, the ROC government fled to Taiwan. The People’s Republic of China was eventually recognized internationally as the successor government of China. Under well-established international law, the “successor government” doctrine holds that the current government of China, led by the Chinese Communist Party, is responsible for repayment of the defaulted bonds.

A private group of American citizens holds a large quantity of these gold-denominated bonds. This citizen-led group, the American Bondholders Foundation (ABF), serves as trustee with power of attorney for some 20,000 bondholders, whose bonds are valued at well more than $1 trillion.

Then-U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s tough negotiation stance on the return of Hong Kong to China led to a British settlement agreement on these same Chinese bonds in 1987. Thatcher said that for China to have access to U.K. capital markets, it had to honor the defaulted Chinese sovereign debt held by British subjects. Faced with that stark choice, China agreed.

Unfortunately, the U.S. failed to take such a common-sense stance. To this day, China has had access to U.S. capital markets while openly rejecting its sovereign debt obligations to American bondholders.

Beijing always knows who to pay off in Washington.

YES, INDEED:  ALITO and THOMAS: Government resorting “to racial or ethnic classifications to ration medical treatment … would be a very strong case for prompt review by this Court”.

In countries across Europe the number of people dying in the past year is far higher than the number who died during the 'once in a century' pandemic years of 2020 and 2021. But now, no one seems to care.

The post Across Europe Deaths Are Far Higher Now Than They Were in the ‘Pandemic Years’ of 2020 and 2021 appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.