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Commentary Economy Education Elections History Links from other news sources. Opinion Politics Reprints from others.

My new European Hero. Meloni pulling Italy out of Belt and Road pact with China.

Since profiling her in February – and the atrocious way she’s been treated by the elitist cabal that runs the EU – Giorgia Meloni, Prime Minister of Italy has done nothing but move her country forward.

Isn’t that delightful?

In fact, there are a lot of things looking rosy about Italy that can’t be said for the powerhouses of the E.U. and they still treat Meloni as if she had shown up to their ball uninvited and in a tracksuit (That would be Zelensky’s uniform, but everyone in the EU has a man-crush on that guy.)

Besides negotiating new oil deals to free her country from EU Green entanglements as far as energy goes, Meloni has also been considering detangling some of her former office holders’ deals. One of which was not only baffling, but – as she calls it – “atrocious.”

In 2019, Italy, under the then Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, had signed a memorandum of understanding supporting China’s multi-trillion Belt and Road Initiative. Beijing represented an opportunity to export made-in-Italy products.

As the two countries began to finalise the deal, warnings came on many fronts. Both American and European leaders cautioned Rome against signing a bilateral agreement with Beijing. PM Conte, on the other hand, reassured the public that the agreement was purely a commercial one, that favoured Italian national interests.

Conte was lured by China’s huge market potential. Highlighting both America’s role as Italy’s main strategic partner and China’s growing global footprint, Conte envisioned a role for Rome and Brussels to act as a potential bridge between Washington and Beijing.

That was all before the horrific Hong Kong crackdown and China’s human rights abuses became international fodder and cast even more unflattering light on just how the Chinese do business. The Italian parliament began looking for ways to reconsider the deal itself and asking the government to push back against Chinese influence. As Italy was the only major Western country to sign on with the Chinese, it also had the effect of making the Italians something of a pariah at meetings.

The next administration, of Prime Minister Mario Draghi, began the process of discussions, but China’s enormous economic punch always lent an element of danger to any talk of withdrawing completely from the BRI agreement.

 

It’s been Meloni’s administration who has actually been speaking the words.

The U.S. was deeply critical of Italy’s decision in 2019 to become the only major Western economy to sign on to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The BRI, as it’s known, is an unprecedented global infrastructure project that critics see as Beijing’s attempt to gain influence abroad and make smaller countries financially dependent on Chinese investment.

But this week Italy gave its strongest signal yet that it planned to pull out of the project.

Signing the deal four years ago was “an improvised and atrocious act,” Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto told the Corriere della Sera newspaper on Sunday. “We exported a load of oranges to China, they tripled exports to Italy in three years.”

Crosetto added a more measured coda: “The issue today is, how to walk back without damaging relations? Because it is true that while China is a competitor, it is also a partner.”

These remarks followed months of reports that Italy planned to quit the BRI. Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s far-right prime minister, said her government would make a decision by December, when the pact between Rome and Beijing is due to renew.

It’s goin to be a delicate tap-dance for Ms. Meloni, for, while she’s made it clear she’d very much like to remain on congenial terms with the Chinese, her pivot to the West is a full buy-in to the emerging NATO Asian-Pacific expansion that Britain and France are already working with.

…The discussion was part of NATO’s efforts to “de-risk” – that is, reduce – economic activity with Beijing.

Meloni let it be known she was working to cancel Italy’s participation in China’s so-called Belt and Road Initiative, the trade and infrastructure partnerships that Rome joined four years ago. Meloni indicated Rome could somehow maintain “good relations with China” even as it dropped Belt and Road.

…Meloni, for example, expressed hopes that benign post-Belt and Road relations with Beijing will continue. But she also steered clear of touting Italy’s other China policy feature: entry into the anti-China arms race. Italy joined the United Kingdom in a partnership with Japan to develop new fighter jets.

There’s much more upside to working with United States, Japan, Korea and the Philippines, et al, in concert with other EU nations, as opposed to being owned belt, road, hook, line, and sinker by the Chinese.

 

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Economy Links from other news sources. Opinion Reprints from others. Work Place

Biden out on the lying tour.

Biden out on the lying tour. Joey boy is at it again. Going out telling more lies about Bidenomics. But it seems as if Reuter has some bad news based on the latest poll.

Americans have soured on Bidenomics, concluding that the U.S. economy is worse now than it was five years ago under former President Donald Trump’s leadership, a recent Reuters/Ipsos survey found.

  • Forty-nine percent of Americans say that inflation or increasing costs are the most important issues facing the country, 9% cite unemployment and 10% cite economic inequality.
  • Sixty-four percent of Americans say the economy is worse off compared to 2020, while seventy-three percent of Americans say the economy is worse off compared to five years ago. About two in five of Americans say they feel worse off from five years ago generally (38%) and a similar number say they feel worse off compared to 2020 (37%).
  • A majority of Americans say that President Biden and his administration are not doing enough when it comes to investing in the economy (56%) and reducing economic inequality (52%).

 

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Biden Cartel Commentary Government Overreach Links from other news sources. Reprints from others.

Numb to Trump: Data shows drop in scandal interest.

Numb to Trump: Data shows drop in scandal interest.

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Biden Cartel Corruption Government Overreach Links from other news sources. The Courts The Law

Show them all. All the Trump circus shows should be televised.

Show them all. All the Trump circus shows should be televised. Democrats in the House are calling for the trial about the much to do about nothing mostly peaceful gathering be televised.

I say televise them all. Let the American people see what kind of affirmative action judges and DA’S that are out there.

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Biden Pandemic COVID Crime Links from other news sources. Medicine Reprints from others. Science Uncategorized

Just putting this out there. Fauci successor at NIAID peddled dangerous Remdesivir drug as ‘silver bullet’ against Covid-19 Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo tried to use unsafe antiviral IV drug on every covid hospitalized patient at UAB.

Just putting this out there. Fauci successor at NIAID peddled dangerous Remdesivir drug as ‘silver bullet’ against Covid-19 Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo tried to use unsafe antiviral IV drug on every covid hospitalized patient at UAB.

Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, the newly minted successor to Dr Anthony Fauci at the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), was recently one of America’s chief hype women for an antiviral drug that is now unanimously considered an unsafe and catastrophically failed treatment for Covid-19.

Prior to moving to her Government Health post, Marrazzo was the longtime director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).

In partnership with Big Pharma drugmaker Gilead, UAB played a major role in the research and development of Remdesivir. The drug was developed over a decade ago with the hopes to treat Hepatitis C and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), but was suddenly repurposed to “treat” Covid-19 when coronavirus hysteria reached the United States.

Given the UAB-Gilead partnership, one would think that Dr. Marrazzo would refrain from commenting on issues through which she maintained a clear conflict of interest. Or at the very least, she had the duty to disclose her conflict of interest when speaking to the media about the UAB-developed “wonder drug.” She did no such thing.

Even worse, Dr. Marrazzo bashed harmless and low cost alternatives like hydroxychloroquine, while hyping the super expensive Gilead-UAB competitor drug.

“The hope was maybe, if you treat early in the disease, you don’t need a silver bullet” such as remdesivir, she told The Washington Post in a July 2020 piece. “Hospitals are on the razor’s edge,” she added, contributing to the fear and paranoia that was enveloping the nation at the time.

In interview after interview, Dr. Marrazzo had nothing but good things to say about remdesivir, despite the incredible lack of data available to support her outandish claims about the drug.

On social media, Marrazzo lavished endless praise upon Remdesivir, declaring it the best agent against coronavirus disease, and boasting that her hospital tries to use it on every covid-hospitalized patient.

“We don’t have enough remdesivir to treat everybody who’s in the hospital,” she said in a late 2020 news conference about the state of her hospital system. “It’s a really challenging situation.”

Her predecessor at the NIAID, Mr Fauci, infamously paraded Remdesivir as the “standard of care” for Covid-19 treatment, adding that it can “block the virus.”

Unsupported pseudoscientific claims about very expensive drugs (a full course of remdesivir costs the patient thousands of dollars) is nothing new for NIAID officials, who, under Fauci’s leadership, have created an agency that acts as a government marketing department for pharmaceutical companies.

Undoubtedly, Marrazzo’s Remdesivir maximalism had disastrous implications for patients hospitalized at UAB. The so-called silver bullet later took on a morbid nickname, “run, death is near,” because of the severe side effect portfolio associated with the IV drug.

The headlines speak for themselves:

Remdesivir not only failed, but actively harmed hospitalized patients, who were being injected with the antiviral agent following the recommendations of Dr. Marrazzo.

The most exhaustive studies on the Gilead-UAB drug show that there are zero clinical benefits to injecting patients with remdesivir. Many studies show that Remdesivir can severely injure vital organs such as the heart and kidneys.

Dr. Marrazzo has never publicly expressed remorse for her longtime promotion of the drug she once described as a “silver bullet” against Covid-19. She last promoted the unsafe drug in December, 2021, long after most hospital systems stopped treating patients with the Gilead-UAB disaster drug.

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Daily Hits. Links from other news sources. Reprints from others.

Stories I’m following this week.

Stories I’m following this week. Thanks to The Morning Brew.

Here’s just a few stories making the headlines.

  • Markets: Stocks brought their Jackie Wilson energy yesterday, climbing higher and higher, with the Dow notching its best day since June and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq both snapping losing streaks as investors wait for inflation data later this week. Berkshire Hathaway soared to a record high after Warren Buffett revealed over the weekend that it had a quarterly profit of more than $10 billion for the first time.
  • Tesla’s CFO stepped down. Tesla’s Chief Financial Officer Zach Kirkhorn unexpectedly resigned after working with Elon Musk at the electric vehicle maker for 13 years, which one asset manager told Bloomberg “is like working 50 years for anyone else.” Kirkhorn, who plans to stay at the company until the end of the year to ensure a smooth transition, has been replaced by Tesla’s chief accounting officer. Still, the unexpected departure spooked investors, raising concerns about volatility in the company’s executive ranks and the succession plan for one day replacing Musk at the top.

     Yellow’s bankruptcy might cost taxpayers. The 99-year-old trucking company made it official on Sunday, filing for bankruptcy and ending the employment of its 30,000 workers following years of financial struggle and a labor battle with the Teamsters. But for most outside the trucking industry, the big question looming now is whether the company’s plan to sell off its assets will enable it to pay back the controversial $700 million pandemic-era loan it got from the government or whether other creditors like Apollo Global Management will get whatever is left from the freight company.

  • LABOR

    City of Angels? More like City of Strikes

    Los AngelesVCG/Getty Images

    Freeway traffic won’t be the only thing grinding to a halt in Los Angeles today. More than 11,000 city workers plan to walk off the job this morning for 24 hours.

    Sanitation and airport workers fed up with a lack of resources and unfilled vacancies will be among those participating, according to the SEIU Local 721, which represents many city workers.

    Hot Strike Summer has already been extra scorching in LA. The city workers will be joining:

    • 170,000 Hollywood actors and 12,500 screenwriters picketing there and in NYC.
    • Thousands of local hotel workers staging rolling strikes (who even tried to get Taylor Swift to postpone her LA tour dates).

    Nationwide, strikes have spiked this summer, putting July among the busiest months for labor action in decades, according to the Washington Post.

    But…unless UPS’s 350,000 workers reject the contract their union secured for them, this year is not on track to have more strikers than 2018 or 2019—which in turn had fewer strikers than many years in the 1950s through 1970s, per Bloomberg columnist Justin Fox. There’s another big strike looming, though: With the auto workers union demanding a 40% raise for 150,000 hourly workers at General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis, Detroit may soon look like LA with less green juice.—AR

  • ENERGY

    Students leave the oil and gas pipeline

    Oil derrick with cobwebs and help wanted sign.Illustration: Francis Scialabba, Photo: Getty Images

    Turns out classics majors and petroleum-engineering students have more in common than we thought: Both their programs are shrinking. College students aren’t interested in entering the oil and gas industry like they used to be, no matter how much money they could make when they graduate, the Wall Street Journal reports.

    The number of undergrads studying petroleum engineering—once a practical, popular major that would make Boomer parents proud—has seen a 75% decline since 2014, Texas Tech professor Lloyd Heinze told the WSJ.

    In the past, enrollment in oil- and gas-related majors followed the market, but despite oil prices popping off between 2016 and 2021, the number grads entering the field still fell, according to the US Dept. of Education. It probably didn’t help that the pandemic highlighted how volatile the oil and gas industry could be as companies laid off over 100,000 employees between March and August 2020.

    It’s not just about business. Petroleum engineers can earn 40% more post-graduation than computer science grads, but Gen Zers are opting for more environmentally conscious companies and positions. Current students are nervous about the fossil fuel industry’s role in climate change and question whether these high-paying jobs will even exist in the future as the country moves toward clean energy.—MM

  • What else is brewing
    • Severe storms swept across the East Coast yesterday, knocking out power to over 1 million households and delaying or canceling thousands of flights.
    • Ukraine says it thwarted a plot to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelensky.
    • The former Minneapolis police officer who held back the crowd during the killing of George Floyd was sentenced to nearly five years in prison.
    • Campbell Soup is buying Sovos Brands, the company behind Rao’s, the fanciest sauce you can plop out of a jar, for $2.3 billion.
    • Elon Musk said he may need surgery before he can fight rival tech CEO Mark Zuckerburg.
    • “Hank the Tank,” a black bear believed to be responsible for 21 home break-ins in California, has been captured (and won’t be harmed).

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Biden Cartel Corruption Crime Links from other news sources. Opinion Politics Reprints from others. The Courts

Special Prosecutor Smith will do anything and everything to get a conviction.

By Charles Creitz | Fox News

Special Prosecutor Smith will do anything and everything to get a conviction.

A former federal prosecutor called out a reported filing made by an attorney for former President Donald Trump’s valet – a co-defendant in the Mar-a-Lago special counsel case – and said the allegations amount to “extortion.”

James Trusty, a former chief of the Justice Department’s organized crime unit, said both Trump’s case and the state of allegations against the Biden family from whistleblowers “speak volumes” about the integrity of the current DOJ.

He referenced allegations against Assistant U.S. Attorney for Delaware Lesley Wolf that claim she warned Hunter Biden’s attorneys about potential scrutiny on a storage unit the first son used.

“In my book, that’s basically obstruction of justice,” Trusty said on ‘Life, Liberty & Levin” Sunday.

Walt Nauta plays golf with Trump

Waltine Nauta, left, takes a phone from Former President Donald Trump at a golf event in Virginia. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

But, Trusty added that a recent wrinkle in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into alleged mishandling of classified information at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach may be similarly alarming.

“You had a high-level DOJ official — according to a statement submitted as an officer-to-the-court, to a federal judge — told Stanley Woodward, a defense attorney representing Walt Nauta that it would be a shame, essentially, if he endangered his pending judgeship by not flipping Nauta against President Trump,” Trusty said.

The incident, first reported in the UK Guardian, claimed federal prosecutor Jay Bratt – head of the counterintelligence and export-control section of the DOJ’s National Security Division – brought up the fact that Woodward filed an application to be considered for a federal judge opening.

Nauta and attorney outside Miami court

Waltine Nauta along with defense attorney Stanley Woodward. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

Woodward appeared before prosecutors in Washington in November 2022, according to the Guardian, over a matter they did not want to talk about by phone. The paper characterized the exchange as one in which Bratt suggested Woodward’s endeavor for a judgeship would be viewed in a more positive light if his client cooperated against his boss — the former president.

“Again, it’s extortion,” Trusty told host Mark Levin.

“So the people that we are entrusting in our criminal justice system to fairly and impartially and transparently pursue justice are actually obstructionists because they’re so hellbent on going after one target: President Trump.”

Trusty said the reported incident involving Woodward and Bratt is the latest example of continued suggestions the Biden DOJ has “no compunction about breaking the rules” or flouting rule-of-law for political ends.

Trusty added that there are other “shenanigans” afoot in Smith’s use of a grand jury regarding Trump, characterizing the classified documents case as one that began with a presiding judge in Washington, but continued with an indictment lodged in Miami.

“You don’t do a grand jury investigation for a year only to move it to another district unless there’s more to the story,” he said.

Levin noted that the grand jury in Washington would be witnessing evidence and occurrences that would naturally remain unbeknownst to a Florida grand jury, thereby muddying the case.

“Past people I have talked to that have faced this man, Smith, say that’s exactly what he does,” Levin said.

Jack Smith closeup

US prosecutor John L. “Jack” Smith presides during the presentation of the former Kosovar president Hashim Thaci before a war crimes court in The Hague, Holland. (JERRY LAMPEN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

“He pierces attorney-client privilege by-hook-or-by-crook, gets it in front of the grand jury. It’s used in front of the grand jury. And now in this case, he’s moved it to another grand jury. And so the grand jury in Florida and the judge in Florida don’t know anything about it unless Trump’s lawyers are good enough to raise it with them.”

Trusty, who at one point was part of Trump’s Washington-based legal contingent but withdrew in June, said he hopes the former president’s current counsel does bring the discrepancies before Judges Tanya Chutkan – the Obama appointee in Washington – or Aileen Cannon – the Trump appointee in Miami.

Of the Bratt-Woodward report, Fox News contributor and George Washington University Law Prof. Jonathan Turley also opined, saying in a June “Hill” column the indictment against Nauta, a Guam native, is “clearly designed to concentrate [his] mind on cooperation.”

“If he were to flip… Trump would face a potentially insurmountable case,” Turley wrote in the column.

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Biden Cartel Corruption Elections Government Overreach Links from other news sources. Opinion Politics Reprints from others.

Don’t you just love it when a awesome Federal Judge gives Special Prosecutor Smith a royal Bitch Slapping?

Don’t you just love it when a awesome Federal Judge gives Special Prosecutor Smith a royal Bitch Slapping? He’s in over his head and he knows it.

As Politico’s Kyle Cheney reported, Cannon struck down two of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s sealed filings in her ruling today. Cheney said she came out swinging.

Judge Cannon comes out swinging at special counsel this morning, striking two of prosecutors’ sealed filings and demanding an explanation of “the legal propriety of using an out-of-district grand jury proceeding to continue to investigate” the docs case.

The liberal media has claimed that Cannon revealed that an “out-of-district grand jury” is investigating the classified documents case. But Kelly notes it was Jack Smith who did this in a motion filed just last week.

The Gateway Pundit’s Cristina Laila previously reported that this is not the first time Jack Smith has been smacked down by Cannon. She had previously denied motions to keep the government’s motion government’s motion to keep a list of 84 witnesses under wraps.

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Faked news Links from other news sources. Science

The sky is falling, the sky is falling, no just another climate loon ignoring Science.

The sky is falling, the sky is falling, no just another climate loon ignoring Science. No my friends the world isn’t ending and glaciers will continue to break off just as they have since the beginning of time.

According to NewsBusters:

PBS producers ran soundbites of seven souls who claimed the fear of “climate change” had made them anxious about the future, including Mark Ikeda, who said: “Climate anxiety affects my daily life, by the decisions I make about when I want to go someplace or where I want to go or more [inaudible], how I want to travel.”

John Yang interviewed Leslie Davenport, who is a “climate psychology therapist.” She says,” We view distress, upset, sadness, grief, anger about climate change to be a really reasonable, even healthy reaction.” She referred to this field of psychology as “emerging.” One has to ask, is climate change even qualify as science?

 

WATCH:

Video and partial transcription courtesy of NewsBusters

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Corruption Links from other news sources. Medicine Progressive Racism Racism Reprints from others. WOKE Work Place

You make the call. Doctor Coalition Sues California Medical Board for Insisting ‘White Individuals Are Naturally Racist’.

You make the call. Doctor Coalition Sues California Medical Board for Insisting ‘White Individuals Are Naturally Racist’.

Two doctors, one black, and the other an Iranian-American, have sued the Medical Board of California for its requirement forcing a continuation of medical education courses that are focused on “implicit bias.”

Dr. Marilyn Singleton and Dr. Azadeh Khatibi argued that such a requirement violates their constitutional rights of freedom of speech and civil rights.

They said that such a requirement lacks evidence regarding its efficacy in the medical field and that the mandate is considered widely controversial among doctors.

Do No Harm, an organization that fights for individual patients and against identity politics, joined the doctors in opposing California’s mandate.

The lawsuit was filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a freedom-fighting organization, and challenges a mandate from California lawmakers that requires all medical courses to include “implicit bias” training.

“Physicians have free will and act in the best interest of their patients,” said Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, Do No Harm’s chairman.

“The idea of unconscious bias states that one acts on those biases, and there’s no evidence of this happening in the medical community,” he added.

“Medical professionals take the Hippocratic oath to do no harm, and do not need lawmakers or medical organizations to tell them what they should think when providing medical advice to patients,” he continued.

The lawsuit points out that all state-licensed physicians must complete 50 hours of continuing medical education every two years.

It describes “implicit bias” as the “idea that medical professionals unconsciously treat patients differently based on their race or other immutable characteristics,” as reported by The Messenger.

In a Fox News Op-Ed, Singleton blasted the California law for what it truly is.

“While the law doesn’t say it, the accusation is clear: White people are oppressors and Black people are oppressed. Nationwide, implicit-bias trainings for medical professionals routinely discuss systemic racism, White supremacy, and other race-based attacks on classes of people,” she said.

“I don’t care that I’m not the target. This still represents the kind of racist thinking that was starting to fade 50 years ago. I don’t want to be taught this evil, nor do I want to teach it to others,” she added.

Singleton also said that medical professionals should focus on teaching medicine rather than pushing an agenda shared wholly by a political party.