The police of the state of Berlin is a very diverse force. Of course, it also offers Turkish citizens professional prospects. And for these people – as for everyone else – freedom of opinion, art and religion applies.
Tolga K. also belongs to this diverse force. He is a police officer with the Central Property Protection. A “German” police officer, mind you. Even if you don’t notice it in his YouTube videos and publications on social networks: he prefers to salute the Turkish flag rather than the German one.
On the one hand, he took an oath on the Basic Law:
“I swear that I will faithfully exercise my office in accordance with the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany and the Constitution of Berlin for the common good and conscientiously fulfil my official duties; so help me God.”
On the other hand, he leaves no doubt as to whose God he expects help from and how he interprets his liberties when he sets rap songs to music with words like:
“Those who obey the infidel will be slaughtered by the Turks. We give our lives for God, for every martyr will be avenged.”
What Jews have to expect from Tolga K. & his fellow comrades-in-arms is put into words by one of his fellow comrades-in-arms in the rap song, which is set up as a duet:
“Muslim, do not abandon al-Quds to the enemy.”
By al-Quds, the holy, is meant Jerusalem, which is to be snatched from the enemy. The enemy is the Jews.
The tasks of the Central Property Protection of the Berlin police include not only the protection of diplomatic missions, but also of synagogues. How their security is affected when Tolga K. stands armed in front of the door is for everyone to judge.
The newspaper “Die Welt” quotes a German member of parliament as saying:
“Whoever works here for the German state and on the other hand is fascinated by Turkish-fascist ideology must not only accept the reproach of being misguided in the police, but also that he is apparently completely misguided in this country.”
UPD: A clinic in Germany has backtracked on its earlier decision to stop treating Russian patients in response to the ongoing military operation in Ukraine
COVID vaccines were developed in record time, one might say at “warp speed,” the name of the operation instituted by President Trump in 2020. We were assured by those in whom we place trust that these vaccines were “safe and effective.”
In August 2021, President Biden told us, “After a strict process, the FDA has reaffirmed its findings that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective, and the FDA has given its full and final approval.”
The CDC said the same, and confirmed just days ago that, “COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective.” Dr. Anthony Fauci received his first dose of the Moderna vaccine a few days before Christmas in 2020, the same time I received my first dose of the same vaccine.
According to ABC News, “The event was shown live on national television as part of an effort to reassure Americans that the vaccine was safe and effective.” Dr. Fauci felt “extreme confidence” in the vaccine science and wanted to get vaccinated publicly as a symbolic gesture for the rest of the country.
Major medical institutions such as Johns Hopkins University echoed Dr Fauci and the CDC saying, “The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are strongly recommended as safe and effective at preventing serious illness or death from COVID-19.”
How are vaccines developed? The College of Physicians of Philadelphia explains, “Vaccine development is a long, complex process, often lasting 10-15 years and involving a combination of public and private involvement.”
Johns Hopkins agrees, “A typical vaccine development timeline takes 5 to 10 years, and sometimes longer, to assess whether the vaccine is safe and efficacious in clinical trials, complete the regulatory approval processes, and manufacture sufficient quantity of vaccine doses for widespread distribution.”
Cases accumulate rapidly to assess vaccine efficacy because of the pandemic
Manufacturing capacity is scaled up during the clinical trials but at financial risk
For COVID, this process was definitely accelerated. It was in March 2020 that COVID went from an interesting news item to a battering ram pounding the entire world. And just 9 months later, not 5 to 10 years later, Dr Fauci, myself, and many others received their first vaccine doses.
The mission of the FDA is to protect public health by, “ensuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, and medical devices,” and vaccines certainly fall into this category. Many bemoan the process when it is slow. How often do patients suffering from currently untreatable or inadequately treatable diseases wish the approval process was faster, hoping they don’t die waiting for the next wonder drug to be approved?
How has this played out with the COVID vaccines? I must add the standard and necessary disclaimer that I am not anti-vaccine, having been personally fully vaccinated. Nor am I offering medical advice, only an analysis of where we are with COVID vaccines now two years into this current pandemic. Any vaccine decisions should be between you and your physician based on a thoughtful analysis of risks and benefits, as is standard for any medical intervention.
Several reports are worthy of analysis regarding the “safe and effective” assertions made by regulatory authorities and leaders. Start with safety.
Last week, as reported by Yahoo! Finance, the FDA released, under orders from a U.S. District Judge, 55,000 pages of clinical trial documents which Pfizer submitted to the FDA as part the approval process. Originally the FDA wanted to suppress this data for 75 years as they had “limited resources” to prepare this data for release, yet they took approximately 75 days to review and analyze this same data before granting approval.
In the appendix is a “List of adverse events of special interest,” noting 1,291 different adverse events post vaccination, running 9 pages. There is always the issue of association versus causation, but the fact that Pfizer submitted this data to the FDA and the FDA fought to prevent its release raises red flags.
Aside from the FDA submission, there is the VAERS database which specially tracks vaccine related adverse effects. As Yahoo! Finance reported:
From mid-December, 2020 through February 18, 2022, the U.S. government’s database, the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), has received 1,134,984 reports of adverse events, including 24,402 deaths, following COVID vaccination. Additionally, there have been 4,021 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis in the U.S. with 2,475 cases associated with Pfizer, 1,364 cases with Moderna and 171 cases with J&J’s COVID vaccine. These include 643 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis in children aged 12 to 17.
The U.S. Department of Defense also reported, “Sharp spikes in miscarriages, myocarditis, cancer diagnoses, Bell’s palsy, female infertility” post-vaccination. Yet this is deemed unnewsworthy and the media’s so-called “fact checkers” are always trying to “add context” rather than encourage further analysis and discussion.
Then there is efficacy. British independent new site, The Expose, reported last week:
The latest data published by the UK Health Security Agency confirms deaths are rising dramatically among the triple vaccinated population whilst declining steadily among the not-vaccinated population in England.
With the most recent figures showing the fully vaccinated accounted for 9 in every 10 Covid-19 deaths over the past month; and the triple vaccinated accounted for 4 in every 5 of them.
The data are from an official government website which reports 70 percent of individuals in England receiving at least one vaccine dose, 65 percent getting two doses, and 50 percent boosted, meaning three doses. They also found vaccine effectiveness for the AstraZeneca vaccine dropping “to almost no effect from 20 weeks after the second dose.” For Pfizer and Moderna, the effectiveness dropped “to around 10% by 25 weeks after the second dose.”
They note that booster efficacy also quickly wanes, “Vaccine effectiveness estimates for the booster dose are very similar, irrespective of the primary course received.”
This is just one bit of data and as the U.K. government points out, “This raw data should not be used to estimate vaccine effectiveness.” But it’s also noteworthy, as are similar reports from other countries. NPR reported last summer, “Highly vaccinated Israel is seeing a dramatic surge in new COVID cases.”
These reports raise questions of both safety and efficacy of the COVID vaccines. This does not require a knee-jerk response of no vaccines for anyone or the opposite of how-dare-you-question the vaccines. Instead, why not a middle ground of asking questions, analyzing, and honestly reporting the data?
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky last admitted that the CDC dropped the ball on honesty saying, the CDC mislead the public about long-term effectiveness with “too little caution and too much optimism.” She went further, “Nobody said ‘waning’ when this vaccine is going to work, oh, maybe it will wear off or not be as potent against the new variant.”
By necessity, we as a society need to have a basic level of trust in our medical and government institutions, regulatory or leadership. We are told one thing repeatedly, and threatened, shamed, or chastised if we ask questions or challenge the narrative. Then when news or data are released that contradicts the narrative, trust in our institutions diminishes.
We have seen this numerous times with COVID, over subjects like natural immunity, off-label therapeutics, lockdowns, mask mandates, and social distancing, where discussion or disagreement is not allowed. Going further, many political issues became verboten to question or discuss, including Trump-Russia collusion, Hunter Biden’s laptop, election integrity, and so on. Those who dared question the establishment narrative were banned from social media and polite society.
Businesses and lives were ruined by COVID and the resulting restrictions and mandates. Given the world’s collective sacrifice, aren’t we entitled to honesty and transparency from those who create these rules and hold the fates of so many individuals in their hands? Or has everything about COVID been simply a means to an end, replacing freedom and liberty with top-down control?
After Ukraine and Russia, two of the largest grain producers in the world, the Hungarian government has decided to ban grain exports from Hungary.
Because of the rise in grain prices, the Hungarian government on Friday banned the export of grain from Hungary with immediate effect. Hungarian Minister of Agriculture István Nagy stated: “All grain exports are still prohibited by the government today because of the price increase caused by the Russian operation in Ukraine.” The reason for this is the concern expressed by Hungarian cattle breeders.
Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán also commented on the challenges facing agriculture. At a congress of the Hungarian Association of Farmers’ Groups and Cooperatives, he said “the most important thing is that Hungary stays out of this war conflict”. It is about preventing “Hungarians from having to pay the price of the war”.
To this end, he announced that the Hungarian government will significantly increase funding for farm subsidies. This increase must be used to strengthen domestic processing of agricultural products.
While Hungary has agreed to EU sanctions, it has refused to allow arms shipments through its territory from other EU countries to Ukraine. The background is, among other things, a Hungarian minority in western Ukraine, which suffers from the same discriminatory laws as Russian-speaking Ukrainians.
With a ban on grain exports, Hungary is one of the first countries to react to the looming consequences of the Russian military operation and sanctions on the supply situation in Europe. Grain imports from Russia and the Ukraine have been restricted, while the availability of fertilizers is decreasing and energy costs are rising. As a result of these factors, not only prices will increase but also production losses are likely in Europe.
The effects of the Russia-Ukraine conflict may soon endanger the food security of Europeans, because the two nations at war are top exporters of wheat. The military clash between neighboring Black Sea countries will unleash a food crisis that will hit the EU and the whole world with full force. Politically, however, little attention has been paid to the food supply.
The hot war between Russia and Ukraine has already hit international grain prices. The two neighboring countries account for 29 percent of global wheat exports. Together they export 60 million tons of grain annually. In addition, Ukraine is one of the largest exporters of barley, corn and rapeseed and owns a third of the available “black earth”. This is considered to be the best soil in the world. In short: The most productive fields are in the Ukraine, the “granary of Europe”.
Annually in Ukraine more than 60 million tons of grain are produced. More than half is exported. Overall, the agricultural sector plays an important economic role, accounting for 18 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and 42 percent of total exports. In 2021 alone, the country earned 12,3 billion US dollars from grain exports. When it comes to wheat, Ukraine competes directly with Russia for nearby markets such as Egypt and Turkey.
The main channel for international grain shipments from Russia and Ukraine is the Black Sea. The inland sea between Asia Minor and south-eastern Europe with the neighboring states of Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania has already become another theater of war.
It was from here that the Russian Black Sea Fleet bombed the port city of Odessa on February 22, 2022, on the first day of the war. A possible disruption or even interruption of grain exports from the Black Sea region via this main channel, could lead to consequences that would be devastating: In extreme cases, deliveries of up to 16 million tons of wheat from Russia and Ukraine could be affected. Experts already consider supply bottlenecks to be possible in the coming weeks.
Further dramatic increases in wheat prices, which are to be expected, would not only cause food inflation to rise sharply, but would also trigger a food crisis in Europe, the Middle East and the rest of the world.
We are already living in a time in which food insecurity has increased due to the manufactured Corona pandemic with government-imposed measures creating distribution bottlenecks and the associated global supply chain disruptions. Food prices have already risen drastically. If this trend intensifies further, for example if bread prices continue to rise, this, together with the sharp increase in energy prices, would destabilize numerous regions of the world.
The threat is real
A report by the European Journal of Public Health shows that the global economy is under enormous strain as a result of the Corona crisis. This will increase the risk of longer-term food insecurity. This is already widespread in many high-income countries. After the global financial crisis in 2008, an estimated 13,5 million European households were food insecure. However, the current recession is much deeper and is likely to last longer. The entire food supply could come to a standstill, as a representative of the agricultural association adds.
There are two interrelated threats to food security: On the one hand, there is a food shortage, which, as already shown, triggers price increases. And on the other hand, an unfair distribution of the available food. A warning sign of this is the increasing number of people turning to emergency rations.
Due to the shortage of agricultural raw materials, European farmers are already complaining about the high prices of staple foods such as wheat and rice, which are used to make bread, pasta and other products. Price increases have been up by 17 percent since the beginning of 2020. Not only do these increase consumer prices, they also hit those people who are already struggling to make ends meet even harder.
In addition to the fear of a further escalation of the war, there is also the fear of a comprehensive food crisis that is taking place right on our own doorstep. The conflict is also having a dramatic impact on the European and especially the German energy sector.
Although it is repeatedly emphasized that the EU’s gas supply is secure, this is a fallacy. For example, the chief economist at VP Bank, Thomas Gitzel, is more honest, admitting that Europe is dependent on Russian gas. The EU gets almost half of what it needs from Russia and these gas deliveries cannot be fully offset.
A few hours ago rival soccer teams in Mexico fought in the stands and later on the field, 17 people were reported dead. Teams should refuse to play here forever. pic.twitter.com/TffU3RB6UK
The buildings of Rue de Rival from the right bank of the Ariège – Association Sites et Monuments – https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/societe/ariege-un-projet-de-renovation-urbaine-a-foix-suscite-la-colere-des-defenseurs-du-patrimoine-1646318695
Urban regeneration project in Foix on the banks of the Ariège meets with disapproval from heritage associations – Sites et Monuments de Franc – https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/societe/ariege-un-projet-de-renovation-urbaine-a-foix-suscite-la-colere-des-defenseurs-du-patrimoine-1646318695
The issue is causing a stir. In Foix in the département of Ariège, a demolition project for six old buildings has aroused the ire of heritage conservationists. As France Bleu reported on Sunday March 6, the buildings are to be demolished to make way for the construction of social housing. To achieve this, the municipality issued a regulation of hazard. This plan outrages several associations, including “Sites et Monuments”, who see it as “a serious attack on the picturesque fabric of these old buildings from the twelfth and eighteenth centuries”.
According to the city council’s decree submitted in March 2020, an architect of the French buildings would have “pointed out the habitability of the houses” on the street side and not on the shore side and clarified that the buildings had no “structural defects”. However, the Regional Directorate for Cultural Affairs has given its approval for the redevelopment of the town centre. The associations for the protection of cultural heritage denounced the “stubbornness of the city administration” and regretted that this urban renewal project “destroys the historic urban setting of Foix”. Currently, the new flats are scheduled to be handed over in the first half of 2024. In order to make one last attempt, the Sites et Monuments association has sent a letter to the Ministry of Culture, hoping that they can “have the works suspended for a year in order to design an alternative project”.
A gruesome accusation against a 27-year-old man from Afghanistan: He allegedly abused a girl who had been drugged by knockout drops.
The background: A Turk (then 18) had a fling with a 15-year-old girl. At a party 4.5 years ago in the Mostviertel district, a Syrian (16) allegedly administered a drink with knockout drops to the girl.
According to the indictment, the 18-year-old, the 16-year-old Syrian, a 14-year-old Austrian, a 15-year-old Romanian and a 27-year-old Afghan then laid the unconscious, naked girl on a mattress and each of the defendants raped the victim, sometimes several times. Two of the boys even filmed it. It was not until the next day that the then 15-year-old girl became conscious and had to watch the video.
The 27-year-old was initially only a witness, then was given a partial conditional sentence for narcotics, was granted asylum in France and moved to France in 2019. In the course of the investigations in the addictive drug milieu, the abuse case finally came to light, the Afghan turned from a witness to a suspect and was caught by international arrest warrant.
In court on Thursday in St. Pölten, the 27-year-old admitted to having abused the 15-year-old girl once: “I was drunk, I didn’t actually rethink.” The sentence: eight years imprisonment for abuse of a defenceless person and false testimony as well as seven months revocation.
In total, more than 8.5 years in prison (final).
The other four defendants were given much lighter sentences because of their age: Between 20 months of probation and 2.5 years of imprisonment.
