China Vows Retaliation if US Continues Meddling in Its Hong Kong Policy

The island enjoys a certain degree of autonomy in terms of its economy and laws, but recently Beijing decided to introduce stricter penalties for treason and sedition in light of the protests that rocked Hong Kong in 2019 and which led to casualties as well as numerous accounts of vandalism.

China's Foreign Ministry has harshly criticised Washington's recent attempts to meddle in its policies towards Hong Kong, vowing to use "every necessary measure" to stop the US from doing so in the future if necessary. The ministry's spokesman Zhao Lijian argued that Washington had "no right to criticise and interfere" in how Beijing regulates its semi-autonomous territory.

"What laws, how, and when Hong Kong SAR [Special Administrative Region] should legislate are entirely within the scope of China’s sovereignty. If the US insists on hurting China’s interests, China will have to take every necessary measure to counter and oppose this", Zhao Lijian stated.

US Interference in Hong Kong Affairs

While Hong Kong does have its own legal system, Beijing has a say in the laws that are applied there. Namely, the Chinese government recently introduced a bill that is yet to be voted on that would make treason and sedition laws stricter, banning activities that could potentially subvert the government or "split the country".

The move was criticised by US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, who threatened that Washington would strip the island of its preferential trading status if Beijing doesn't backtrack on the bill. O’Brien argued that by introducing the new law, Beijing was violating its own promise to grant the island significant autonomy.

The new piece of legislation came after Hong Kong was rocked by a series of public protests back in 2019. The protesters demanded the withdrawal of another bill that would have legitimised extraditions to mainland China, but continued their riots even after it was scrapped. The demonstrations often turned violent, resulting in numerous acts of vandalism and injuries to local police officers.

https://sputniknews.com/asia/202005251079414568-china-vows-retaliation-if-us-continues-meddling-in-its-hong-kong-policy/

Bernie Sanders bares his SHEEPDOG teeth to keep own delegates in line for Biden – which was his role all along

Bernie Sanders has warned his delegates against speaking ill of Joe Biden, the embodiment of the Democratic party’s corporate core. Beneath the progressive exterior, herding the voters to the establishment is his real function.

In the spring of 2015, when the “independent” Bernie Sanders announced that he was running for United States presidency as a Democrat, the late left Green Party activist Bruce Dixon aptly described Sanders as a “sheepdog”working in service to the corporate and imperial Democratic Party. The role of “democratic socialist” Sanders, Dixon said, would be to shepherd left-leaning voters into the fold, helping give the Wall Street Democrats a progressive, populist, and working-class veneer in the 2016 election. A related function was to help the Democrats seem to have selected a Big Business candidate – Hillary Clinton, as everyone already knew even in early 2015 – not by corporate coronation but through an open debate in which the progressive, social-democratic policies ostensibly advocated by Sanders were fairly and democratically defeated.

Faithful despite the abuse

Sanders did his best to carry out his ‘sheepdog’ (or “Judas Goat”) task in 2016, consistent with his advance promise to support the eventual Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, in that general election. So what if the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) worked hand-in-glove with each other and the corporate media to demean and smear Sanders and his supporters and to rig the primary race and nomination process against the not-so-independent Senator from Vermont? So what if Clinton ran a shockingly vapid campaign, remarkably devoid of serious policy proposals, and based on little more than the awful character of Donald Trump? And so what if the Clintons and their allies and surrogates treated Sanders with open contempt?

Bernie played his ‘sheepdog’ role like a good company/party man. Even after all the abuse he received from the Clintons and the DNC during the primary race, he hit the general election campaign trail for “the lying neoliberal warmonger” Hillary. Claiming to have won the “most progressive Democratic Party [policy] platform in history,” he beseeched his backers to join him in lining up behind the party’s deeply flawed establishment candidate.

Sanders’ call for unity behind the hopelessly corporatist Clinton was denounced by hundreds of his own delegates on the floor of the 2016 Democratic National Convention. These activists knew that American major party platforms are for show. They knew also that Sanders had squandered any chance of making the Democratic Party more genuinely progressive and social-democratic by promising to back the ultimate Democratic nominee from the start.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/489667-bernie-sanders-democrats-biden/

International Proposals for Warrantless Location Surveillance To Fight COVID-19

Time and again, governments have used crises to expand their power, and often their intrusion into citizens’ lives. The COVID-19 pandemic has seen this pattern play out on a huge scale. From deploying drones or ankle monitors to enforce quarantine orders to proposals to use face recognition or thermal imaging cameras for monitoring public spaces, governments around the world have been adopting intrusive measures in their quest to contain the pandemic.

EFF has fought for years against the often secretive governmental use of cell phone location data. Governments have repeatedly sought to obtain this data without a court order, dodged oversight of how they used and accessed it, misleadingly downplayed its sensitivity, and forced mobile operators to retain it. In the past, these uses were most often justified with arguments of law enforcement or national security necessity. Now, some of the same location surveillance powers are being demanded—or sometimes simply seized—without making a significant contribution to containing COVID-19. Despite the lack of evidence to show the effectiveness of location data to stop the spread of the virus, a number of countries’ governments have used the crisis to introduce completely new surveillance powers or extend old ones to new COVID-related purposes. For example, data retention laws compel telecom companies to continuously collect and store metadata of a whole population for a certain period of time. In Europe, the Court of Justice of the European Union declared such mandates illegal under EU law.

Like other emergency measures, it may be an uphill battle to roll back new location surveillance once the epidemic subsides. And because governments have not shown its effectiveness, there’s no justification for this intrusion on people’s fundamental freedoms in the first place.

Individualized Location Tracking

Mobile carriers happen to know their subscribers’ phone’s locations (usually the same as the locations of the subscribers themselves) from moment to moment because of the way cellular networks work. That knowledge has turned into one of the most extensive data sources for governments—and not infrequently advertisers, stalkers, or spies—interested in tracking people’s movements. But while phone location data is sufficient to show whether someone went to church or the movies, it simply is not accurate enough to show whether two people were close enough together to transmit the virus (commonly characterized as a distance of two meters, or about six feet).

While location surveillance is problematic at any time, the coronavirus crisis has led to a rapid uptick in its use; many measures to facilitate it have been passed by fast-tracked legislative procedures during national state of emergencies. Some governments have even bypassed legislators entirely and relied on executive power to roll out expanded location surveillance—making it even less transparent and democratically legitimate than usual. Governments may use the urgency of the crisis to erode limits on the ways people’s location histories can be used, demand this data be turned over to authorities in bulk, or require companies to stockpile records of where their customers have been.

https://www.blacklistednews.com/article/77061/international-proposals-for-warrantless-location-surveillance-to-fight.html

Taxpayers Are on the Hook for 98 Percent of the Fed’s $6.98 Trillion Balance Sheet

Considering the New York Fed is privately owned by the member banks in its region (as are all of the 12 regional Fed banks) and has run up a $3.9 trillion balance sheet, you’d be forgiven for thinking its share owners would be on the hook for any liabilities. But you’d be wrong.

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens of Wall Street on Parade.

If there has been any positive outcome from the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been that the American people are beginning to take a cold, hard look at how the U.S. economy has been engineered as a vast wealth transfer system for the one percent.

We have peeled back the dark curtain further today on how the Federal Reserve has been structured as an unlimited money spigot to enrich that one percent as it privatizes profits for the criminally-inclined Wall Street titans and socializes the losses to the law-abiding 99 percent of hardworking Americans.

The Federal Reserve Board of Governors consists of seven individuals appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. As of today, only five of those Governor seats have been filled. As of last Wednesday, these five unelected individuals were overseeing a balance sheet of $6.98 trillion at the Federal Reserve, which is 28 percent of the $25.3 trillion federal government debt that is overseen by 100 elected Senators and 435 elected members of the House of Representatives.

Over just the past year, those five unelected Fed Governors have grown the Fed’s balance sheet by $3 trillion in order to bail out bad bets on Wall Street.

The $6.98 trillion balance sheet at the Fed is created out of thin air at the electronic push of a button by the 12 regional Fed banks. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York (New York Fed) has been pushing that money-creating-button more than all of the other 11 regional Fed banks combined. As of last Wednesday, the New York Fed’s balance sheet stood at $3.9 trillion or 56 percent of the balance sheet tally for all 12 regional Fed banks.

Why has the New York Fed run up such a monster balance sheet? It’s because the New York Fed is privately-owned by some of the largest, most dangerous banks in America which, since 2008, have been habitually propped up by cheap money from the New York Fed. Those mega banks include JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

If the New York Fed is privately owned by the member banks in its region (as are all of the 12 regional Fed banks) and has run up a $3.9 trillion balance sheet, its share owners should be on the hook for its liabilities, correct?

This is where another of those rarely discussed structural wealth transfer mechanisms for the one percent comes in. If the Fed and its rapidly growing $6.98 trillion balance sheet blows up, the U.S. taxpayer will be on the hook for 98 percent of the losses…

https://riggedgame.blog/2020/05/19/taxpayers-are-on-the-hook-for-98-percent-of-the-feds-6-98-trillion-balance-sheet/

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2020/05/taxpayers-are-on-the-hook-for-98-percent-of-the-feds-6-98-trillion-balance-sheet/

>>9312748

I think that is pretty close to the plan of the cabal. This is what I've also observed:

The US corporation defaulted on it's loans in mid FEB, this appears to be the transition. Then the treasury moved in on the fed. Then after this the pope said he was no longer the vicar of Christ, the frills dropped off the US flag for a week or so. I suspect there has been massive transition of power behind the scenes and the cabal can now only try and bluff the people with their MSM virus BS and use their remaining leaders to try and sow division and chaos WW

WTF?

Coronavirus treatment using umbilical cord cells tested on pneumonia patients

In a world-first, Australian researchers have found a way to treat COVID-19 before it turns deadly with human trials set to begin.

Australian researchers have discovered a way to treat patients with serious forms of coronavirus using blood cells derived from the umbilical cord.

In a world-first, patients at a Melbourne hospital will now be infused with the treatment to check its safety.

Up to 24 patients with moderate to severe pneumonia - which develops in serious cases of COVID-19 - will be recruited to take part in the trial which is expected to be finished before the end of the year.

The treatment would prevent the progression of pneumonia.

“It’s not going to cure coronavirus and it’s not like a vaccine that will prevent it, but it’s particularly designed for patients who progress from the very mild form (of the virus) to the very dangerous form that causes people to have to go to hospital,” study co-leader Professor Graham Jenkin, Monash University, told news.com.au.

Professor Jenkin said UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was a good example of this kind of case.

Mr Johnson had to go to hospital after his condition worsened.

Professor Jenkin said if patients were treated as soon as they arrived at hospital, before their condition progressed to Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), it could prevent deaths.

ARDS develops from cytokine storm syndrome, an over-reaction of the body’s immune system to the virus caused by localised over production of inflammatory factors.

Study co-leader Dr Atul Malhotra, a clinician scientist at Monash Health and Monash University, said when the virus entered the lungs, it triggered the body’s immune response to attack the virus, resulting in localised inflammation.

https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/australia/coronavirus-treatment-using-umbilical-cord-cells-tested-on-pneumonia-patients/news-story/1ea10c542c419800505c3ab4a65ce474

Nunes: GOP Lawmakers Expanding Investigation Into Special Counsel Operation, “We Will Be Making Criminal Referrals of the Mueller Team”

Congressman Devin Nunes (R-CA) said the Republicans are expanding their investigation into Mueller’s team of angry Democrats.

Ranking member of the House Intel Committee, Devin Nunes revealed GOP lawmakers will be making criminal referrals of Mueller’s team as well as officials at the DOJ and FBI that were above Mueller.

“We’ve also expanded our investigation into the Mueller team and everything that happened with Mueller and the people at DOJ and FBI that were above Mueller. And so, we will be making criminal referrals in the coming weeks against the Mueller team. We’re just now putting that together and, of course, as always, waiting on more documents that we really need to come out,” Nunes told Fox News host Gregg Jarrett Sunday evening.

Nunes argued that Mueller should have immediately shut down his operation because he knew the dossier had been debunked by the FBI and that there was no coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

Nunes specifically called out then-DAG Rod Rosenstein for using Hillary Clinton’s phony Russia dossier in his scope memos authorizing Mueller’s fishing expedition.

The August 2017 scope memo penned by then-DAG Rod Rosenstein to Robert Mueller was released with redactions a few weeks ago.

Rosenstein wrote a total of three scope memos giving Mueller permission to rove around unchecked in a fishing expedition to not only target Trump officials, but to play defense and cover up the Obama administration’s crimes.

The August 2017 scope memo revealed Mueller investigated Mike Flynn, a 3-star General and Trump’s National Security Advisor for the “crime” of “engaging in conversations with Russian government officials” during the Trump transition.

Brandon Van Grack, Rod Rosenstein and Andrew Weissmann should be at the top of Nunes’s list of criminal referrals!

Rep. Nunes previously made 8 criminal referrals to the DOJ alleging ‘potential violations’ of the law related to the Trump-Russia investigation.

US Attorney General Bill Barr then appointed US Attorney from Connecticut John Durham to investigate the origins of Spygate.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/05/nunes-gop-lawmakers-expanding-investigation-special-counsel-operation-will-making-criminal-referrals-mueller-team-video/

China launches another extraordinary attack on Australia with a cartoon depicting Scott Morrison as a 'liar' and America's 'yes man' - as PM prepares to launch counterattack after Beijing's threats to ruin our economy

Chinese state media has launched its latest attack on the Australian government

Cartoon depicted Australia as a donkey riding into battle under order of the U.S.

U.S. has banned trade with 33 Chinese companies with ties to Communist Party

China has warned Australia will face 'pain' if it backs the U.S. in 'new Cold War'

Chinese state media has launched its latest attack on Australia with a cartoon depicting Scott Morrison as America's 'yes man'.

The cartoon, shared on social media by the Communist Party-owned China Daily newspaper on Monday, depicted Australia as a donkey riding into battle under the orders of the United States.

Accompanied by the caption 'yes man to one, liar to all', the cartoon references the 17th century story of Don Quixote.

In the book, Quixote orders his servant Sancho Panza to charge towards a windmill thinking it is his enemy despite it being an imaginary foe.

Cartoonist Luo Jie, who created the cartoon last week, depicts Quixote as the US and Panza as his loyal Australian steed attacking a windmill which represents China.

It comes as Mr Morrison prepares to champion free trade in getting thousands of Australians back to work after the coronavirus crisis amid mounting tensions with China.

While he will not name China - Australia's largest export partner - in Tuesday's speech, he will say Australia needs to search for new markets for its products.

Mr Morrison will insist that the country will continue to be an 'outward-looking', trading nation that 'will not retreat into the downward spiral of protectionism'.

'To the contrary, we will continue to be part of global supply chains that can deliver the prosperity we rely on to create jobs, support incomes and build our businesses,' he will say at the National Press Club in Canberra.

The US meanwhile on Friday announced it would blacklist 33 Chinese companies for helping Beijing spy on its minority Uighur population.

Political leaders in both the US and Australia have also already condemned China's effort to take over national security legislation in Hong Kong.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called it 'a death knell for the high degree of autonomy' that Beijing had promised the territory.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8354139/China-launches-attack-Australia-cartoon-depicting-Scott-Morrison-Americas-yes-man.html

>>9312900

And i think therein you explain why things are moving slowly, trying to transition without it breaking is like a complex egg and spoon race