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The Dark Side of Washington – Money Before Country

I cannot express how dirty things have gotten in DC over the years. The Biden/Hunter Ukraine scam was blocked from investigation when Ukraine is known as the MOST corrupt nation-state in the world.

Ukraine remains the most corrupt government in the world, and they are selling the Ukrainian people for personal wealth and greed with ZERO remorse for their nation or their people. Ukrainian politicians topped all other countries for corruption. Even in the Pandora Papers, 38 Ukrainian politicians have to hide cash offshore – the largest number of corrupt politicians in any other country. Zelenskyy’s office tried to justify his use of offshore companies for himself as protecting him against pro-Russian forces, following leaked revelations in the Pandora Papers.

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Nine in Ten ‘Wildfires’ Started by Human Hands, French Government Admits

The French government has revealed that an estimated ninety per cent of so-called wildfires are the result of human activity, undermining the persistent media narrative that climate change is driving spontaneous fires ravaging the countryside.

On Tuesday, French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said that 184 people have been arrested in connection with wildfires since the beginning of the summer. Those arrested are a combination of arsonists, criminals, and careless individuals, he said.

According to the French Forest Observatory, around one in three (30 per cent) of wildfires are believed to have been set maliciously, Le Figaro reported.

In total, the Ministry of the Interior estimated that nine in ten wildfires in France were started by humans. The Place Beauvau said that since June, five people have been imprisoned and a further 15 have been placed in detention pending a trial.

A conviction for starting a fire can come with serious consequences, particularly if the fire resulted in deaths. Following a strengthening of the laws surrounding the issue in 2004 in the wake of a deadly heatwave.

People found to have been negligent can face up to two years in prison, while those who deliberately set fires face up to ten years in prison, though a life sentence is possible if the fires kill.

The wildfires in France have forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate their homes, with over 115,000 hectares of forest destroyed by the flames.

Yet, rather than addressing the persistent issue of arson and negligent accidents, the Western legacy media has heavily focussed on climate change driving blazes, with direct human action downplayed.

This is despite European governments having long recognised that so-called wildfires across the continent are typically the result of human activity.

Indeed, during the summer of 2023, when Greece faced hundreds of fires, Athens’ Climate Change Minister Vassilis Kikilias acknowledged that the majority of the fires “were caused by human hand” and that the people behind them were guilty of “arson either by criminal negligence or by intention”.

That same summer, the regional president of the Spanish Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, admitted that wildfires that forced over thousands of tourists to evacuate had been a result of arson.

In response to the prevalence of pyromaniacs, some governments have been forced to get creative with their attempts to stop arson, including the use of police drones in Italy to patrol the countryside for prospective arsonists.

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Clinical Trial Results Were Clear: Pfizer’s COVID Vaccine Delivered More Risk Than Benefit

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent decision to terminate the COVID-19 emergency use authorization (EUA) declarations invites reconsideration of the evidence that launched this extraordinary regulatory chapter.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) first EUA for a COVID-19 vaccine rested on its determination that the known and potential benefits of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine outweighed its known and potential risks. Yet the pivotal trial report did not bring those benefits and risks together within a common quantitative framework.

Better late than never: more than five years later, I did — and what I found was startling.

At first glance, the famous 95% efficacy against protocol-defined, laboratory-confirmed symptomatic COVID-19 — based on eight versus 162 cases in a trial that randomized 43,548 participants — seems highly promising.

But when this finding is considered alongside the broader set of participant-relevant outcomes (dispersed across the trial publication, its Supplementary Appendix, and the contemporaneous FDA review materials), the overall clinical picture looks markedly different.

Depending on the counting period used, the vaccine group had 2-8 fewer cases of severe COVID-19, whereas the safety data showed numerical excesses of 4-101 participants across clinically consequential adverse-event categories. These categories are not directly comparable, and some may overlap.

Even so, the evidence did not establish that the vaccine’s clinically consequential benefits outweighed its potential harms. Nor did the trial establish that vaccination reduced the overall burden of COVID-19-like symptoms, let alone that it reduced person-to-person transmission.

Crucially, this conclusion does not rest on hindsight: the relevant evidence was already before the FDA when it issued the EUA.

The full basis for this conclusion is presented in my comprehensive reassessment of the evidence, currently available as a preprint. That reassessment is necessarily detailed because the relevant data are complex, scattered across multiple documents and subject to important methodological and interpretive qualifications.

The present column is not intended to replace that analysis, but to distill several of its central findings and implications for a broader readership.

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California Democrats Attempt To Sabotage Voter ID Initiative

In November, California voters will have the opportunity to vote on Proposition 39. The measure, officially the Voter Identification, Citizenship Verification, and Registered Voter List Administration Initiative, would require Californians to show identification when they vote and force state officials to clean up the voter rolls and verify that the people on them are eligible citizens.

All signs suggest it will pass. A poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies found in May that 71% of Californians support requiring proof of citizenship for first-time voter registration, and 54% want it required before every election. However, Attorney General Rob Bonta is trying to make sure it doesn’t pass.

His latest move came on July 21, just months before the November election, when Bonta rewrote the official ballot title for Prop 39, replacing the language he himself approved last year with a new title that proponents say is engineered to make voters reject it.

The original ballot title for the bill, approved by Bonta last year, read:

ESTABLISHES ADDITIONAL VOTER IDENTIFICATION AND CITIZENSHIP VERIFICATION REQUIREMENTS. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. This measure would amend the California Constitution to further require that voters present government-issued identification at the polls or the last four digits of a government-issued identification number when voting by mail; the State provide voter identification cards on request; and elections officials annually report percentage of each county’s voters whose citizenship they have verified.

That language sat on every petition that more than 1.3 million voters signed over a year of circulation to qualify the measure for the ballot.

Bonta’s revised version reads:

PROHIBITS CITIZENS FROM VOTING UNLESS THEY PRESENT GOVERNMENT-ISSUED IDENTIFICATION. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Invalidates mail ballots that do not have last four digits of designated government-issued identification number written on envelope. Prohibits in-person voting without presenting government-issued identification.

Carl DeMaio, the Republican state assemblyman who chairs Reform California and serves as one of Prop 39’s official proponents, called the rewrite a “blatant attempt to rig the November election.”

“California politicians know that a supermajority of California voters support Prop 39’s bipartisan solution for Voter ID – so now they are corruptly trying to rig the election by putting a biased and dishonest title on this common-sense measure,” DeMaio said.

He also pointed out what he called the tell in Bonta’s timing. “When Rob Bonta didn’t think we could get the signatures on Prop 39, he provided a relatively fair ballot title – but now that the citizens have forced Prop 39 on the ballot, he decides at the last minute to corruptly try to rig the election against Prop 39 by changing the ballot title to a biased and dishonest one,” DeMaio said.

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Russia accuses Telegram CEO Pavel Durov of aiding terrorism in its latest digital crackdown

Russian authorities said Wednesday they had charged Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of the popular messaging app Telegram, with aiding terrorism, the latest step by the Kremlin to bring the internet and digital communications under its control.

The charges against the Russian-born Durov, who lives abroad, came as authorities have sought to restrict the use of Telegram as part of a widespread crackdown on online freedom that followed Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The Federal Security Service, or FSB, said in a statement it had accused Telegram’s administration of failing to remove “numerous channels, chats and bots” allegedly used by “Ukrainian intelligence agencies, terrorist and extremist organizations to prepare and coordinate acts of sabotage and terrorism, mass murder, and cyber fraud” in Russia, which resulted in “numerous human casualties.”

The FSB accused Ukrainian security services of using a popular dating chatbot on Telegram to lure and recruit Russians for “sabotage and terrorist activities,” and said 46 users of the chatbot, from 12 to 22 years old, have been detained in Russia over the past year for assaulting law enforcement officers, arson and other acts.

It also said it was adding the name of the 41-year-old billionaire to international wanted lists.

Durov had said earlier this year that Russian authorities opened a criminal investigation against him, and he accused them of fabricating pretexts to restrict access to Telegram as part of an attempt to “suppress the right to privacy and free speech.”

If convicted, he could face up to life in prison in Russia.

Telegram, which boasts of more than 1 billion users worldwide, did not respond to a request for comment. Its official website links to an account on X that on Wednesday posted am image of Durov raising a middle finger to the camera.

Telegram’s website says that the company is based in Dubai and that Durov, who holds dual citizenship in France and the United Arab Emirates, lives there, too.

Russia has sought to censor the internet
Under President Vladimir Putin, Russian authorities have engaged in multipronged efforts to rein in the internet, adopting restrictive laws and banning websites and platforms that don’t comply and focused on improving technology to monitor and manipulate online traffic.

Popular social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and X, have been banned in Russia; YouTube has been throttled; popular messaging apps, such as Signal and Viber, have been blocked, and the most popular ones — WhatsApp and Telegram — have been restricted.

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Guess Who’s Funding Barricades And Porta-Potties At Madison’s Marxist-Antifa Encampment

Far-left foot soldiers linked with Black Lives Matter and Antifa have established a two-block autonomous zone along Williamson Street in Madison, Wisconsin, following the death of 38-year-old Corey Durrell Ruiz.

Ruiz, who had reportedly been released from prison (read report) shortly before the incident, was approached by police while riding a bicycle after allegedly attempting to enter several vehicles. Far-left activists have since designated the occupied area the Corey Ruiz Autonomous Zone, or CRAZ.

The encampment appears designed to demonstrate control over public space while creating conditions in which any police intervention could be framed as state repression. However, reporting from local media and anti-communist commentator Karlyn Borysenko suggests the local government is accommodating, and potentially enabling, the occupation rather than moving to dismantle it.

“So who’s funding the barricades and the porta-potties in the BLM/Antifa autonomous zone (the CRAZ) in Madison, Wisconsin? You’re not going to believe the answer. And I provide the receipts to prove it,” Borysenko wrote on X.

Borysenko pointed to reporting from local outlet WMTV 15 News that says the municipal government is funding part of the CRAZ.

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The Student Loan Crisis Is Exploding

Student loan defaults have surged to 9.2 million borrowers, representing roughly one in every five people with student debt. What is astonishing is the speed of the deterioration. There were approximately 6 million borrowers in default last August. That figure jumped to 7.7 million by December. By April it had reached 9.2 million. Another 3 million borrowers are reportedly at least 90 days delinquent and appear headed in the same direction.

The government suspended reality for years through payment pauses, forbearance programs, and emergency measures that temporarily masked the problem. Now collections have resumed. Wage garnishment is returning and borrowers are once again being confronted with debts that never disappeared. Politicians celebrated the pause as though the crisis had been solved. All they really did was postpone the reckoning.

What nobody wants to admit is that the student loan system became fundamentally broken the moment the federal government guaranteed virtually unlimited lending. Once colleges realized that students could borrow almost any amount with government backing, tuition exploded. Universities had no incentive to control costs. They built lavish facilities, expanded administrations, hired armies of bureaucrats, and continuously raised tuition. Students were told that any debt was acceptable because a degree would guarantee future prosperity. The numbers tell a different story.

Tuition costs have risen by hundreds of percentage points over the past several decades, vastly outpacing inflation and wage growth. Yet many graduates entered labor markets where earnings never remotely matched the debt burden they accumulated. Entire generations were encouraged to believe that college was the only path to success. Many emerged with degrees carrying little market value but very real financial obligations.

Borrowers are returning to repayment obligations while facing some of the highest living costs in decades. Housing costs remain elevated. Insurance premiums continue rising. Food prices have increased substantially. Many young Americans are already delaying homeownership, marriage, and family formation. Now millions face renewed collection efforts and potential wage garnishment on top of those challenges. The economic pressure is becoming overwhelming.

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Energy Department Issues Emergency Order To Secure Power Grid In 17 US States

The Department of Energy (DOE) has issued an order to tackle an energy emergency situation across 17 U.S. states triggered by hot weather conditions.

The July 26 emergency order was issued by Secretary of Energy Chris Wright to Southwest Power Pool Inc. (SPP), the regional grid operator for the 17 states.

According to the order, SPP is expecting hot weather conditions through Aug. 3. The operator requested the department to allow specific power generation units to run beyond their operating limits in order to ensure grid reliability. It also sought authority to unlock and deploy backup generation resources at data centers and other industrial and commercial customer sites to counter any risk to the bulk power system.

Wright determined that statutory emergency situations exist in certain regions, serviced by the SPP, owing to sudden increases in demand, “a shortage of electric energy, a shortage of facilities for the generation and transmission of electric energy, and other causes,” the order said. Homes and local businesses in the affected areas could lose power, presenting a risk to public safety and health.

The energy secretary allowed SPP to dispatch power-generating units “as needed to maintain reliability,” according to the order. In addition, SPP is authorized to use backup resources to operate as a last resort before issuing an Energy Emergency Alert 3 – the highest level of energy emergency action.

The emergency order applies from July 26 to Aug. 3.

In a July 26 statement, DOE said the order would stabilize the power grid and mitigate blackout risks, highlighting that outages cost American people around $44 billion annually.

“The Trump Administration is tapping into an abundant supply of unused backup generation to maintain affordable, reliable, and secure power for hardworking American families and businesses,” Wright said in the statement.

The department estimated the total nationwide unused power generation to be at over 35 gigawatts.

The emergency order comes as the National Weather Service (NWS) predicted in a July 28 post on X that “dangerous and extreme” heat would remain across portions of the central United States this week.

In a July 28 forecast, the Weather Prediction Center said the southern United States is expected to see above-normal temperatures for the next few days, with afternoon highs reaching upper 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

High heat combined with high humidity can result in widespread “Major to Extreme HeatRisk levels,” with people lacking adequate cooling or hydration at risk of heat-related illnesses, according to the center. By the end of this week, the “dangerous heat” is forecast to expand into the Southwest and Intermountain West, the center said.

Strengthening Power Grid

Amid high heat conditions, other major power grid operators have also issued operational alerts.

On July 28, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, which serves 15 states, released a hot weather alert update as temperatures in the region are expected to hit 103 degrees Fahrenheit. The alert is effective till the end of this month.

On July 15, PJM Interconnection, the nation’s largest electric grid operator that serves 13 states, had declared a hot weather alert that remained in effect through July 17. Such an alert is issued to prepare power generation facilities and personnel to meet a jump in electricity demand.

Meanwhile, earlier this year, the DOE announced $1.9 billion in funding opportunities to strengthen the U.S. power grid, with the funds coming from a five-year grid resilience program.

The funding will prioritize projects that expand grid capacity, replace existing power lines with higher-capacity conductors, improve overall system security and reliability, and lower prices for consumers.

According to Katie Jereza, assistant secretary at the DOE’s Office of Electricity, the funding will stabilize and optimize America’s grid operations, strengthening it for rapid growth.

Wright said in the statement that for too long, “important grid modernization and energy addition efforts were not prioritized by past leaders.”

“Thanks to President [Donald] Trump, we are doing the important work of modernizing our grid so electricity costs will be lowered for American families and businesses,” Wright said.

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Sen. Ron Johnson Unloads Devastating Safety Data on Fauci — Says COVID Shot Logged Nearly 7,000 Death Reports Per Year While FDA Ignored Warning Signs and Pushed Remdesivir

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) dropped another bombshell during Wednesday’s explosive Senate hearing with Dr. Anthony Fauci, confronting the former COVID czar with adverse event data that he argued should have triggered urgent scrutiny years ago—but instead was ignored while federal health agencies relentlessly promoted COVID vaccines and Remdesivir.

Johnson’s latest exchange came after he previously confronted Fauci with stacks of studies on ivermectin and questioned why federal officials dismissed evidence supporting alternative treatments before Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during the hearing.

The Wisconsin senator displayed comparative adverse-event figures during the hearing, arguing they represented safety signals that federal regulators refused to adequately investigate.

“These are averages. Again, it doesn’t prove causation, but there’s correlation. It’s there. It’s there for a safety signal,” Johnson said.

The chart, titled “Drug Adverse Event Comparison” and labeled “FDA and CDC Data: Worldwide,” compared adverse event reports, total reported deaths, and average deaths per year across multiple products.

According to the chart presented by Johnson:

  • Ivermectin (30 years, 1996–2026): 5,127 adverse events, 518 deaths, averaging 17 deaths per year.
  • Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) (38 years, 1988–2026): 37,270 adverse events, 5,404 deaths, averaging 142 deaths per year.
  • Flu vaccines (36 years, 1990–2026): 243,335 adverse events, 2,770 deaths, averaging 77 deaths per year.
  • Dexamethasone (57 years, 1969–2026): 143,017 adverse events, 25,589 deaths, averaging 448 deaths per year.
  • Tylenol (57 years, 1969–2026): 184,186 adverse events, 42,627 deaths, averaging 747 deaths per year.
  • Remdesivir (69 months): 10,657 adverse events, 2,751 deaths, averaging 546 deaths per year.
  • COVID-19 vaccines (68 months): 1,677,227 adverse events, 39,182 deaths, averaging 6,922 deaths per year.

The chart also highlighted that 9,342 reported deaths occurred on days 0, 1, or 2 following COVID-19 vaccination.

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China Brings Back Masking for Vulnerable People as Summer Coronavirus Spike Sweeps South

The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began encouraging vulnerable residents – such as the elderly, pregnant women, and those with chronic diseases – to seek out Wuhan coronavirus vaccine products and use sanitary masks as the rate of coronavirus infections skyrocketed in July.

The Chinese state newspaper Global Times first announced in English the CDC warning of a spike in Wuhan coronavirus cases on July 26, insisting that the virus appears to be spreading much faster in southern China than in the north and that it does not appear to be causing severe infections in most people. Experts suggested that hot temperatures driving people indoors to air conditioning has created similar conditions to winter, when many do not go outside because of the cold and the limited air circulation facilitates infections.

Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post identified the culprit of the latest outbreak as the “Omicron NB.1.8.1 variant,” which is reportedly spreading at a “moderate” level but mostly a threat to the elderly or those with other health complications.

The Chinese CDC warned last week that it was documenting more cases of coronavirus than influenza this month, suggesting accelerating rates of infection. The vast majority of those diagnosed with the disease were reportedly between the ages of 15 to 59, suggesting that children and the elderly did not represent the majority of cases.

“The [Wuhan coronavirus] test positivity rate stood at 16.3 percent, up 4.3 percentage points from the previous week, while the influenza positivity rate was 12.6 percent, down 0.9 percentage points week on week,” the Global Times detailed.

The Global Times added that the Chinese government was now encouraging the elderly and those with health complications to “preventive measures, such as wearing masks in crowded places or on public transportation.” All were encouraged to update their vaccine product dosages, particularly pregnant women.

The state outlet China Daily reported an update on Wednesday from Beijing’s CDC discouraging residents from concern, stating that the rate of transmission in the capital city was “within normal cyclical fluctuations” and not straining medical facilities. Overcrowding in Chinese hospitals is a recurring problem during waves of respiratory infections, particularly those targeting children, as many parents choose to take their children to be hospitalized for intravenous treatment rather than attempting to treat respiratory symptoms at home. During past waves of respiratory infections citizens have documented chaotic scenes in city hospitals as emergency rooms failed to offer proper services to the large crowds of people flooding their waiting rooms and ran out of seats of IV fluid treatment.

“The [Beijing health] center said visits to fever clinics remain low across the city, hospitals have sufficient medicine supplies, and the latest increase in cases has not placed noticeable pressure on the healthcare system,” according to China Daily.

The current transmission data available from China indicates that the situation in southern China is more precarious. The U.S.-based Epoch Times, which conducted much of the early reporting exposing the calamity in Wuhan, China, as the coronavirus first began spreading in 2020, noted in its reporting on Wednesday that the gap between cases in the north and south had “widened significantly” and that one potentially complicating factor could be widespread floods in the region that have killed and displaced large numbers of people. The newspaper, citing biomedical science professor Xiaoxu Sean Lin, cited that flooding could potentially cause situations such as “population displacement, centralized sheltering, poor ventilation, overcrowded medical facilities, and compromised nutrition and rest,” all of which help spread respiratory illness.

Lin described the current reports out of the Chinese communist regime as “only the tip of the iceberg,” as many Chinese do not report symptoms consistent with a coronavirus infection, particularly when caused by a variant that only prompts mild symptoms to occur. The outbreak causing a rise in cases has been identified as “Omicron NB.1.8.1.” The South China Morning Post listed common symptoms as “fever and a sore throat.”

Citing Peng Jie, deputy director of the infectious diseases department at Southern Medical University’s Nanfang Hospital, the Morning Post noted that some experts are concerned about an “increasingly unpredictable” trend of coronavirus infections in the summer. While the Chinese CDC typically documents an increase in cases of all major respiratory diseases in the winter, state reports have explicitly noted that they have not documented a similar increase this summer of cases of influenza or respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which also tend to spread more severely among children and the elderly.

Speaking to the Epoch Times, Taiwanese infectious disease specialist Cheng Yuan-yu posited the air conditioner theory for why coronavirus appears to be spreading at a faster rate.

“High outdoor temperatures drive people flocking to air-conditioned environments, which leads to spending extended periods in enclosed indoor spaces and has increased risk of indoor airborne transmission,” Cheng reportedly said. If this factor is driving infections, Cheng continued, that would mean situations such as “people going to work while sick, the confined environments of commuting, waning immunity, biases in testing and health care-seeking behavior” would result in more cases of people aged 15 to 59 being diagnosed with coronavirus, rather than children or the elderly.

The Wuhan coronavirus was originally identified in the eponymous central Chinese city of Wuhan as a novel pathogen in early 2020, though reports indicated that the first diagnosed case could have surfaced as early as November 2019. As a result of the Chinese Communist Party violently silencing those identifying a new virus, allowing “super-spreader” events to take place to obscure the spread of the disease, then engaging in human rights atrocities to imprison people in the city, the virus went on to infect millions of people around the world, killing over 7 million people.

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