Sunday, May 31, 2020

From Soft to Hard Fascism: “Get In Your House Right Now!”

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There can no longer be any doubt—America is now a full-blown fascist state. In the past, authoritarian fascism was kept reserved in the shadows, largely out of the public eye, but in a remarkably short period of time it has emerged from the darkness to show its fangs and snarl menacingly at the people, many of them cowed and dutifully following irrational orders from on high. 

As the following video demonstrates, state violence is not directed exclusively at rioters and Antifa goons pretending to be anarchists (most would be unable to define the term) as they loot, burn, and attack the media and innocent bystanders. Violence is used to frighten and intimidate the real enemies of the state—the American people, or those who casually and defy the COVID lockdown and others peacefully protesting murder at the hand of a psychopathic cop.

Minneapolis under curfew pic.twitter.com/rYQYug6M5f

— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) May 31, 2020

Fortunately, the woman in the video was not seriously injured. She wasn’t looting Target or burning down Walmart. The woman made the mistake of venturing out on the porch of her home, her private property, and for this crime, she was shot with a paintball by a member of a “state militia” (now federalized). 

The social fabric is coming apart at the seams. First mandatory lockdowns, state-imposed impoverishment, followed by an unfolding Greatest Depression as a result of a shutdown economy, and now social unrest, violence, theft, and arson in two dozen large cities across the country. 

If this degree of violence and destruction is possible centered around the death of a single man, imagine what will happen when millions of people are in desperate straits, unemployed, many evicted, and homeless. It will not be simply police stations that go up in flames. It will be statehouses.   

However, the American people have demonstrated repeatedly they are gullible and easily steered into dead-end diversions pumped up and hyped 24/7 by a corporate propaganda media. The Trump hatefest and political polarization—worse than any in recent memory—will no doubt go by the wayside as millions of Americans face the “new normal” envisioned by their masters—a standard of living in rapid freefall, soon to crash on the rocks. None of this is happenstance or coincidental. 

Most Americans may not have protested the endless wars and criminal economic scams of the ruling elite (mostly due to decades of incessant propaganda), but they will raise their voices and fists when they are unemployed for months on end, evicted from homes and apartments, have their cars repossessed, and are confronted with hunger, want, and homelessness.

In order to enforce the latest manifestation of psychopathic neoliberalism and predatory crony capitalism, the state will depend on steroid-headed soldiers and cops to frighten and intimidate the people. 

It may be paintballs today, but tomorrow it might be live ammo. 

creatdive commons by-sa_RGB-350x122

 



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“It’s all Bullsh*t” – 3 Leaks that Sink the Covid Narrative



The science of the coronavirus is not disputed. It is well documented and openly admitted: This is borne out by the numerous serological studies which show, again and again, that the infection fatality ratio is on par with flu.

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Trump Designates Antifa "A Terrorist Organization"



In what should not come as a surprise to many (especially those with open minds and open eyes), President Trump has tweeted that he is designating Antifa a terrorist organization. The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization.

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Hundreds of California churches openly disregard COVID-19 rules

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golden-gate-bridge-san-francisco-califor

(NBC NEWS) -- Hundreds of clergy throughout California, including several in Riverside County, announced plans to openly disregard Gov. Gavin Newsom's recommended cap on in-person worship services Sunday, welcoming as many parishioners as they desire into houses of worship as part of a declaration of religious liberty.

“Restaurants have no stated occupancy limitation but simply require that guests at tables be separated by six feet,” said Robert Tyler, attorney and president of Murrieta-based Advocates for Faith & Freedom. “Additionally, large stores continue operating without being limited in their occupancy from their normal levels.”

“While many churches will have no problem complying with the 100-person limit, some of our clients have churches that seat 2,500 people and more,” he said. “Limiting places of worship to 100 people is arbitrary, unreasonable and unconstitutional. Our clients will continue to make plans to hold services ... and many will not limit themselves to 100 persons.”

Read the full story ›

The post Hundreds of California churches openly disregard COVID-19 rules appeared first on WND.



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Many US Journalists Arrested After New York Times Falsely Claims That Doesn’t Happen In America

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In a shockingly brazen display of authoritarianism, police arrested a CNN reporter named Omar Jimenez the other day while he was live on air covering the protest of George Floyd’s murder by police in Minneapolis.

The arrest was preceded by hours of sycophantic police-worshipping CNN coverage and followed by days of self-righteous preening by the entire corporate media machine about the crucial role of journalism in a free society, with one Washington Post article going so far as to compare the CNN crew to George Floyd himself. Unlike Floyd, Jimenez was back on camera an hour later giving glowing reviews to the police who’d just inexcusably arrested him.

Inadvertently revealing interview with the reporter arrested live on air by police in Minnesota for doing his job. We saw them behave like fascists, but he's desperate not to criticise the police in case he loses his *access*. That's what a 'free press' in the US is all about https://t.co/Sy6lV9Y5R2

 — @Jonathan_K_Cook

In its report on Jimenez’s arrest, The New York Times made a claim that was truly shocking in its inaccuracy and naivety.

“It is common in autocratic countries for journalists to be swept up in arrests during protests and riots, but rare in the United States, where news gathering is protected by the First Amendment,” claimed the article’s authors Michael Grynbaum and Marc Santora.

Independent reporters were quick to point out the absurdity of the claim.

“I’ve been reporting on protests for a few years now and I can say for sure that journalists being ‘swept up in arrests during protests and riots’ isn’t anywhere near ‘rare’,” tweeted independent journalist Ashoka Jegroo in response.

“The New York Times falsely and bizarrely stated today that journalists are rarely arrested at protests in the United States,” responded journalist Ford Fischer, who consistently covers US protests of all sorts.

“That’s news to me…….. because I was arrested multiple times at protests,” tweeted We Are Change’s Luke Rudkowski.

“As an independent journalist who was arrested during the Eric Garner and Mike Brown protests in NYC, I’ll say this: Omar Jimenez’s experience is a common and understood risk independent journalists take (especially POC journos) in the US,” tweeted Andrew J Padilla. “Power to Omar Jimenez but sadly this is not a shock.”

lol I've been reporting on protests for a few years now & I can say for sure that journalists being "swept up in arrests during protests and riots" isn't anywhere near "rare." https://t.co/0PsIdNYk2Q

 — @AshAgony

Indeed, only an insulated corporate media writer who is entirely unacquainted with protests in the United States would ever believe such a thing is rare. It may be rare for well-paid reporters on a major platform to be arrested live on national television, but you’ll find many reports of many journalists being routinelyswept up” in any major protest anywhere in America in recent years.

“The most dangerous place to be a journalist in America is at a protest,” reported the Columbia Journalism Review back in 2017. “That’s a key early takeaway from the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a nonpartisan website launched in August that documents press freedom incidents around the country. As of mid-September, the database had logged 20 arrests and 21 physical attacks on journalists this year, most of them at public demonstrations.”

It should surprise no one, then, that this image The New York Times paints for us — the image of the United States as a journalism-revering enemy of autocratic oppression — has been turned into a complete joke in a matter of hours by subsequent events.

“My Freedom of the Press colleagues at the US Press Freedom Tracker are investigating over twenty press freedom violations just from the last two days: reporters arrested, pepper sprayed, shot with rubber bullets,” reads a recent tweet from Freedom of the Press Foundation executive director Trevor Timm, who then added, “Did I say twenty? It’s more likely double or triple that — and disturbingly, probably many more by the end of the night.”

Freedom of the Press Foundation is a press freedoms advocacy nonprofit. US Press Freedom Tracker is a site dedicated to documenting press freedom violations in the United States.

Did I say twenty? It's more likely double or triple that -- and disturbingly, probably many more by the end of the night.

 — @trevortimm

To list just a few of the known occurrences in the last 24 hours of this thing which only occurs in autocratic nations:

A WCCO photojournalist named Tom Aviles was arrested covering the protest in Minneapolis while clearly identifying himself as a member of the press, after being struck with a rubber bullet.

A Huffington Post reporter named Christopher Mattias was arrested and jailed covering the protest in New York while clearly wearing his press credentials around his neck.

The Convo Couch’s Fiorella Isabel was arrested, handcuffed and cited while reporting on the protest in Los Angeles. “They didn’t care I was press,” Isabel reported. “They put the cuffs on so tight my hand is super red and they treated everyone like criminals.”

Two photojournalists named Ellen Schmidt and Bridget Bennett were arrested while covering the protest in Las Vegas and had to post a $1000 cash bond to be released.

An NBC journalist named Simon Moya-Smith was pepper sprayed and arrested while covering the Minneapolis protest, despite repeatedly identifying himself as a reporter multiple times.

A CNN commentator and columnist named Keith Boykin was arrested and jailed for six hours covering the protest in New York. “The police locked me in tight zip ties that bruised my wrists. They held me in a van for an hour. Then a hot police bus for an hour. Then they took me to 1 Police Plaza and held me in a jail cell with about 35 others with no social distancing and many of the others unmasked,” Boykin reports.

Mind you these are just arrests from the past day. This isn’t even touching on the many journalists who’ve been shot by police with rubber bullets, pepper balls and pepper spray while identifying themselves as members of the press during these protests.

This is all in the United States, where these things do not happen. Because the United States is not an autocratic country.

I was pepper-sprayed then arrested last night by Minneapolis PD even after identifying myself as a reporter MULTIPLE times: Cop 1: *checks press badge as I'm on the ground* Cop 2: "Roll on your side, Mr. journalist." Cop 3: *loads me in the car, sees my press badge and shrugs*

 — @SimonMoyaSmith

“It is common in autocratic countries for journalists to be swept up in arrests during protests and riots, but rare in the United States, where news gathering is protected by the First Amendment.”

The American supremacist worldview which would prompt someone to write something so idiotic is the same American supremacist worldview a reporter needs to espouse in order to get hired and promoted in a high-profile outlet like The New York Times. It is also the same American supremacist worldview which sees New York Times reporters cheerleading imperialist war after imperialist war, “humanitarian” intervention after “humanitarian” intervention, sanctions regime after sanctions regime, propaganda campaign after propaganda campaign.

The people who are on the ground documenting the important events which are unfolding across America are doing real news reporting, and they are providing an important service to society. The people who write American supremacist spin jobs for The New York Times are not doing real news reporting, and are actually detrimental to society.

But guess who’ll be getting more money and awards?

That’s what’s keeping the people asleep, right there.

Hopefully they are finding a way to wake up.

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The Mysterious Missing Link - Anti-Malaria Drug & Zinc

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The Mysterious Missing Link - Anti-Malaria Drug & Zinc Tyler Durden Sat, 05/30/2020 - 22:30

Authored by Joseph Berry via The Conservative Woman blog,

Mystery surrounds why an anti-malaria drug is not being tested as a Covid-19 treatment in combination with zinc, which doctors say is crucial for efficacy.

As we reported recently, President Trump revealed he was taking hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) alongside zinc after reports that many doctors are doing the same to help ward off Covid-19. 

Criticism of the President rose sharply after a non-randomised study published in the Lancet said that HCQ provided no benefit to hospitalised Covid-19 patients while being linked to increased deaths. 

What the mainstream media did not point out is that the Lancet study failed to test HCQ with zinc. Other experts have found zinc to be vital for efficacy in this context.

Zinc, available as an over-the-counter supplement, has long been seen as an immune-system booster that helps develop immune cells, or antibodies, and can strengthen the body’s response to a virus.

American infectious disease specialist Joseph Rahimian explained that, in relation to Covid-19, zinc ‘does the heavy lifting and is the primary substance attacking the pathogen’. HCQ is said to work as a delivery systemfor zinc in fighting coronavirus.

Ironically, the Lancet study came out at the same time as it was reported that India’s premier health body had expanded use of HCQ as a preventive for key workers following three studies showing positive results. 

Conflicting reports and political axe-grinding have thickened the fog of war on this, but we know a number of things:

  1. HCQ has been around for decades and is a ‘safe’ treatment for malaria and other conditions including lupus and arthritis (as the BBC has acknowledged). 

  2. Many doctors (and India) use HCQ as a preventive measure, as President Trump is now doing. A survey of doctors by a leading American physician staffing firm found that 65 per cent would give HCQ to their own family as a prevention or treatment. The UK is now conducting trials into whether HCQ can help prevent Covid-19. Results are not expected before the end of the year, although there will be results sooner from similar trials in the US.

  3. International experience suggests HCQ can be effective in tackling Covid. Reports from FranceItaly and Spain point to positive results from the use of HCQ, while a number of other countries are seeing success including TurkeyCosta RicaAlgeriaBelgium and Bahrain. This month a Shanghai-based doctor reported that, in China, a combination of zinc, hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin ‘has been able to save coronavirus patients’. 

  4. Many prominent Americans are taking HCQ to treat Covid-19 (and recovering) even as opponents attack President Trump for following the lead of many doctors. Hall of Fame rock star David Bryan, best known as the keyboardist for Bon Jovi, tested positive and was treated with HCQ, among other things. By late April, he was said to have recovered. Former Democratic presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar has now admitted her husband was treated with HCQ after he contracted coronavirus. After his rapid recovery, Senator Klobuchar said (through gritted teeth): ‘I believe he did briefly take that drug.’

Sadly it doesn’t seem to be the priority of most mainstream journalists, and some in the scientific community, to report the facts on HCQ in a responsible manner. As political commentator Scott Adams recently pointed out, the corporate news (CNN, Fox News etc) has no credibility when it comes to reporting on pharmaceuticals. In this context, this may be partly due to politics, but it is also a result of their financial stake in drug advertising.

With regard to reporting of the Lancet’s finding about increased deaths, Adams asked whether this should be seen as a surprise ‘given that we know the HCQ can have some heart issues with people who already have heart issues. Do [elderly people who are dying from coronavirus] have strong hearts? Probably not’.

He added:

 ‘What they don’t do on CNN is mention that if you don’t test it with the zinc [then] I’m not sure that you’ve really tested the thing that has the most promise. Where is that [test]?’

He has a point. A number of doctors say zinc is essential.

California emergency physician Dr Anthony Cardillo said during a local television interview:

‘[HCQ] really only works in conjunction with zinc. Every patient I have prescribed it to has been very, very ill and within eight to twelve hours they were basically symptom-free and so clinically I am seeing a resolution.’

This frontline experience was backed up by a study by the New York University Grossman School of Medicine published this month. It found that those receiving the triple-drug combination (HCQ, with azithromycin and, crucially, zinc) ‘were 44 per cent less likely to die, compared with the double-drug combination (i.e. without zinc)’.

As the study notes:

‘This study provides the first in vivo evidence that zinc sulfate in combination with hydroxychloroquine may play a role in therapeutic management for Covid-19.’

The above makes the question of why zinc was not used in the Lancet study more baffling. And why don’t the media note that the combination of zinc and HCQ is crucial?

As Scott Adams put it:

When they say the President is taking this drug that is killing people . . . it is not true. It is basically a lie . . . Both Fox News and CNN are doing something is completely illegitimate . . . I don’t know any reason you would do that other than to mislead.’

Sadly, with a Presidential election approaching, it’s doubtful whether the barrage of fake news over this treatment will be replaced by professional reporting. We can only hope that the truth – whatever it may be – will win out in the end.



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Saturday, May 30, 2020

Lab escape theory of SARS-CoV-2 origin gaining scientific support



“We can’t exclude the possibility that this came from a laboratory experiment rather than from an animal” – Prof Nikolai Petrovsky The possibility that SARS-CoV-2 is a human-manipulated virus that escaped from a lab has been flagged up by a whole series of scientists, such as Prof Richard Eb

ORIGINAL LINK

Nothing Is Certain But Death, Taxes, And Police Infiltration Of US Protests

ORIGINAL LINK

A video has been circulating of a white man casually smashing the windows of a Minneapolis shop with a hammer during protests against the police murder of George Floyd. The man is clearly trying to hide his identity by wearing a gas mask, carrying a large umbrella, and wearing full-length black clothing.

Protesters can be seen intervening to stop his destructive behavior in the video.

“Are you a fucking cop?” one asks.

An officer with the Saint Paul Police Department has been publicly named by someone identified as the officer’s ex-wife, who said his voice, walk and gas mask made her “90% sure” it was him. The Saint Paul Police Department has denied this.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but it is a very safe bet that it’s a law enforcement officer of some kind. Disruptive police infiltration of protest movements is a historical constant in America, after all. It is the norm, not the exception.

Protests have spread throughout the United States since that video’s emergence. Journalist Max Blumenthal has uploaded a very interesting video of an encounter he had with an undercover cop posing as a protester in Washington, DC.

Look what I found outside #dcprotest. An obvious cop dressed like a protester getting out of an unmarked car and telling me he's a CNN reporter. Beware of the lying provocateurs out here! https://t.co/f90wYSjbGS

 — @MaxBlumenthal

Blumenthal began following a man he reports he’d spotted coming out of an unmarked vehicle in an area that had been completely sealed off by marked police cars, meaning the police were restricting who came and went from that area. Blumenthal began questioning the man, asking him if he’d been to the protests and if he was a cop. The man said he’d been to the protests but denied he was a cop, saying that he worked with CNN.

Blumenthal then went to the unmarked vehicle the man had come from, where two more men were seated. He asked them if they were cops, which they denied, then asked if they were with CNN, which they also denied, saying they were “just hanging out”. Blumenthal informed them that he’d just caught the fake protester in a lie, at which point they rolled up the car window.

Local outlet KHOU 11 News was told by the Houston police department that protests over George Floyd’s murder would be attended by both “uniformed officers and plain-clothed officers”. This admission cannot be found in KHOU’s reporting any longer, but it has been screenshotted and still shows up on Google searches as of this writing.

In New York, protesters have conclusively worked out that cops posing as demonstrators are currently wearing white armbands to identify each other. Ways of identifying plain-clothes cops are being circulated by protesters on social media.

None of these people are paranoid or irrational. For generations it has been a well-established fact that police will reliably infiltrate protests and political movements, and it remains so to this day.

be careful they puttin undercover cops in the Houston protests

 — @rockonaoki

From J Edgar Hoover’s illicit COINTELPRO infiltration campaign to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise Neutralize” dissident political movements, all the way up to infiltration and espionage targeting Black Lives Matter and Occupy protesters, police infiltration of American protests has been as certain as death and taxes.

A 2012 Truthdig article by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers titled “Infiltration of Political Movements Is the Norm in America” goes into this time-honored tradition at some length. Here’s an excerpt [bold font mine]:

How many agents or infiltrators can we expect to see inside a movement? One of the most notorious “police riots” was at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Independent journalist Yasha Levine writes: “During the 1968 protests of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which drew about 10,000 protesters and was brutally crushed by the police, 1 out of 6 protesters was a federal undercover agent. That’s right, 1/6th of the total protesting population was made up of spooks drawn from various federal agencies. That’s roughly 1,600 people! The stat came from an Army document obtained by CBS News in 1978, a full decade after the protest took place. According to CBS, the infiltrators were not passive observers, monitoring and relaying information to central command, but were involved in violent confrontations with the police.”
Peter Camejo, who ran as a Socialist Workers Party candidate for president in 1976, as a Green Party candidate for governor of California in 2003 and as Ralph Nader’s vice presidential running mate in 2004, often told of infiltration in his mid-’70s presidential campaign. After campaign offices were burglarized, Camejo was able to get the FBI into court by suing it over COINTELPRO activities. The judge asked the FBI special agent in charge how many FBI agents had worked in Camejo’s presidential campaign; the answer was 66. Camejo estimated he had a campaign staff of 400 across the country. Once again that would be an infiltration rate of about one in six. Camejo discovered that among the agents was his campaign co-chair. He also discovered eavesdropping equipment in a campaign office and documents showing the FBI had followed him since he was an 18-year-old student activist.

One in six. That’s a whole lot.

Big FYI: For years, NYPD have had undercover cops deployed based on a color of the day model. Today it's white, tomorrow could be green. Not always an armband. https://t.co/QIPbn3Qbg1

 — @britrican

This is important for all of us to be aware of, not just the people attending these protests. Any time we are told a protester threw this or rioters set fire that, we must take this information with a very large grain of salt, because we usually won’t be able to know it wasn’t an undercover cop acting as an agent provocateur to shape a narrative and justify more use of force to disperse the crowd. The idiot with the umbrella did it in a very ham-fisted and obvious way, and we can expect other police infiltrators to be more clever about it as well.

This is not to say none of the anger we’ve seen exhibited at these protests is real and grassroots; people have a lot to be angry about, and surely much of the destruction we’re seeing is the organic result of way too many people being pushed way too far by a cruel and abusive system. It’s just to say that we should all be as skeptical as we would be when dealing with any other narratives we know powerful factions have a vested interest in manipulating, and not treat any claim about protester behavior as a certain fact.

The powerful few are afraid of the many. Always have been, always will be. And there’s nothing they and their goon squad won’t do to try and rein in any group which poses a threat to their power if they can get away with it.

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Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics onTwitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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A Bolt in the Dark

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The scene is of the world falling apart:

It is the late spring of 1942. We are in the city of Turin in the north-west of Italy, near the border of Nazi-occupied France. Mussolini’s Blackshirts march through the streets. Every few days the anxiety and senselessness of the moment is cracked by the whine of British bombers, who have made their way from the Allied invasion of North Africa. On occasion, they fly over the city, releasing their cargo as families scramble to their basements, despite the risk of being trapped beneath the rubble of their precarious homes—the fate of so many.

Amid this chaos, along one ordinary street within a quite common home, there is a young Jewish-Italian woman at work. She is tall, probably 30, with dark hair and hawkish features. She is toiling away at her bedroom desk, her eyes fixed on the task before her. She is holding make-shift micro-scalpels that she has ground from sewing needles. To her left, there is a powerful Zeiss microscope and a syringe filled with a dark-silver fluid. To her right, there is what appears to be an incubator, also make-shift, fashioned from bent pieces of wood that is being warmed by a small, portable oven. Inside the incubator lie over a dozen fertilized chick eggs.

Perched over her nest, scalpel in hand, Rita Levi-Montalcini delicately rotates her wrist, carving a small window into one of the eggs. Peering inside, she sees the growing embryo—she estimates it is on its eighth day of development. With imperial attention, RLM uses her scalpel to sever a wing bud of the growing chick, carefully avoiding the entanglement of arteries coiled below the embryo’s translucent skin. RLM then re-covers the little window with the bit of eggshell she had removed and a piece of tape and then tenderly places the egg back into the incubator.

Rita Levi-Montalcini was trying to solve a problem.

Look down at your hands for a moment. Move your fingers slowly and deliberately. Your decision to move your fingers begins on the outermost crust of your brain (cortex). That signal is then sent down through one long nerve (upper motor neuron) until it reaches about halfway down your spinal cord, where that first nerve activates a second long nerve (lower motor neuron) that sends its signal from your spine out through your arm and into your fingers. In other words, just two nerves connect the top of your head to the tips of your fingers. Even more incredibly, your nerves were not initially connected to their correct locations. During your development the nerves grew out from the spine through your body until they reached their correct target. How did your body do this? How did your brain and the spine send their nerves through your body, bringing your limbs under the brain’s command?

A chick that has had its limb transplanted.

To answer this question RLM constructed her “Robinson Crusoe” laboratory in her bedroom. Here, she would destroy a bit of a growing chick’s periphery (a leg or a wing bud) and then allow the chick to grow for several more days. Then, she would cease the development of the chick by injecting it with a dark-silver solution that would fossilize its growing nerves at a single moment of their growth. Gazing at their silvered nervous systems below her microscope, RLM would then compare the development of nerves on the side of the spine with and without the destroyed limb. RLM found that when she destroyed a wing bud, the nerves that would normally innervate that limb withered and died. She also found that if she added a bit of tissue, sewing the severed limb bud to the embryo’s opposite side, the corresponding section of spinal cord—now projecting its nerves towards two limbs—would balloon. Rita Levi-Montalcini theorized that the limbs were releasing plumes of a life-giving chemical that caused the nerves to grow, what she called a “trophic factor.” When the limb was destroyed, so too was the trophic factor, causing the nerves to atrophy. When a second limb was added, additional factor was produced, causing excess growth.

All of this she did with the buzz of planes overhead and the sound of soldiers in the streets.

Consider this story again for a just a moment, not as a movie or some epic from history but actually as something you would do. Imagine the world is falling apart around you. Outside your window there is only chaos. In RLM’s case, the scientists of her own country declared her race to be biologically distinct from the main population. Airplanes begin to drop bombs on your city. And yet, you decide to spend your time dissecting chick embryos so you can explore some esoteric neuro-embryological problem about the effect of peripheral limb tissue on the central nerve growth. And you have no idea if you will make a breakthrough or survive to report it if you do. Can we even sympathize with a person like this? What can Rita Levi-Montalcini possibly be made of? She appears to have stridden across the stage of history and done the impossible.

When the war finally came to an end, RLM was able to prove the existence of her theorized “trophic factor.” She left Italy and moved to the United States, to Washington University in St. Louis. There, she and her biochemist collaborator Stanley Cohen conducted a series of experiments that allowed them to isolate RLM’s mysterious factor in powerful concentration. They called it Nerve Growth Factor (NGF), the first of a broad class of growth factors the body uses to organize during its development. They would win the Nobel Prize in 1986 for their discovery.

I want to insist that, though Rita Levi-Montalcini’s discovery belongs in the annals of history as one of the greatest stories of scientific discovery of all time, her own reflections of her life and work reveal something common about what we are capable of in the midst of crisis.

The first aspect of RLM’s reflection (all from her 1988 autobiography, In Praise of Imperfection) addresses an obvious issue: None of us are sitting on Nobel Prize-winning ideas that we are waiting to hatch with a few months of downtime. Neither was RLM. After RLM was banned from working in the Italian universities in the fall of 1938, she tried to continue her research by traveling to Belgium and then later by working secretly as a doctor in Italy. But the threat of being exposed to the Fascists became too great, and she resigned herself to functional house arrest. There she “took refuge in reading and cultivating relationships with the many friends who scorned the danger of being accused of pietism.” RLM did not know what else to do.

For eight whole months RLM resigned herself in defeat. Then a very ordinary experience wrenched her from her stupor. A friend asked RLM what new projects she was working on. She had no response—nothing. Annoyed, her friend told to her to call Santiago Ramón y Cajal to mind, the 19th century Spanish neuroscientist whose fundamental work was done in poverty and isolation. “One doesn’t lose hope in the face of difficulties,” he said. Take up your work. Uncertain but inspired, RLM decided to take a step into the dark.

According to RLM, “the pleasure I was already savoring in anticipation [of my research] was enhanced by the prospect of carrying out the project under the conditions contingent on the prohibitive racial laws (italics mine).” In other words, RLM’s conception of persecution and tragedy was inverted, like a Necker cube, to see her social isolation as opportunity. For RLM, the atmospherics of fascism would no longer choke her work; instead, the very laws mandating her to stop her work would fuel it. It was as though she glimpsed herself in history, grasping what it would mean for her to conduct her work amid the decay of an intellectual and cultural holocaust.

Perhaps such a grand sense of one’s own historical importance is what we would expect from such an epic story. It affirms our common sense of what it must be like to be a genius. Only the real übermensch could create their own agency from the broken shards of their life.

But it would be a mistake to think RLM generally had a vivid sense of purpose. In fact, RLM’s work grew slowly and circuitously. Like the embryonic nerves she studied, RLM’s development as a scientist was proximal: It was guided not towards some ultimate target—she did not know the terminal discovery of her experiments (or if they would yield any discovery at all). Instead, like the growing nerves, she oriented herself towards the nearest source of sustenance, whatever experiment she could use to spend her time meaningfully and deliberately.

Indeed, after deciding she would take up a research project, she still did not even know what she would study. Before the war, RLM had been a young neuroscientist with a blossoming career. But now, she did not have the materials nor the expertise to conduct her experiments alone. So she did something simple. She did not create a new, unprecedented experiment. Instead, she copied another scientist’s experiment, part for part, as a way of checking his conclusions and filling her time.

In other words, RLM’s motivation and decision to start working again preceded her idea for the project itself. She did not know what she would do; she simply made the decision that she would do something. And when she did make the decision to begin a project, she did not begin thinking “outside-the-box.” She was not attempting to do something innovative. Instead, RLM approached how she would fill her time from within her box. She simply started a project she knew she could accomplish. The fact that she studied development was not an accident—eggs were one of the only available sources of food. And indeed, she and her family even used many of her used experimental eggs for sustenance.

Her experience of daily living was also far calmer than in those riveting moments thinking of Cajal after the conversation with her friend. Again in her autobiography, she reflects that her ability to devote herself to “solving this small neuro-embryological problem while German armies were advancing throughout Europe… lies in the desperate and partially unconscious desire of human beings to ignore what is happening in situations where full awareness might lead one to self-destruction.” Perhaps in a moment of fire and waste, when everything is outside your control, the most natural thing is to find a lacuna of quiet, sense, and control.

Here, we do not see the immortal genius. We see someone terrified, someone who does not know what the next day and week will bring.

And yet, in this quiet that she created for herself, RLM was able to stir herself steadily towards a long-term project of deliberate work. Contrary to what appears like an effortless hypothesis that RLM conjured after a graceful experiment, RLM constructed her “neurotrophic hypothesis” not all at once but in fragments over the course of many years. From her Robinson Crusoe laboratory, she was able to make her preliminary conclusions only after months of uninterrupted, ceaseless work.

The primacy of enduring work has been known by historians of great innovators and scientists for many decades. Indeed, the creative process is not solely about novelty and utility. It is also about duration and deliberation. Consider the apocryphal but pervasive stories of the creative genius who is effortlessly struck by a moment of rapturous insight: Archimedes, Newton, Franklin, Darwin, Einstein. I am not suggesting people do not have moments of insight, of course. Instead, I am suggesting that insight is but the punctuation of long periods of thinking and work. To borrow the historical psychologist Howard Gruber’s striking metaphor, moments of insight are akin to the white crest of a wave while the daily trench of work is akin to the greater body of water: The crest of insight is the wave’s most beautiful element, but it is only possible because of a much longer, deeper structure of thought and work that sustains and stabilizes it.

A second metaphor may be helpful for considering the relationship between insight, work, and creativity. Consider the kiln. The burning heat of the kiln (the insight) hardens brick (knowledge), making it durable, and imbues it with a color and meaning. But no building can be constructed in a blaze. The whole laborious process of constructing an edifice of knowledge, scolded by insight, is more properly considered the creative enterprise.

Rita Levi-Montalcini

This point is sharpened by contrasting pervasive motifs of creativity with the view embodied by Rita Levi-Montalcini. Modern motifs of creativity, which draw from our apocryphal stories, are of spontaneity, effortlessness, blossoming association, unlimited connectivity, and frictionless ideation. In this view, creativity is characterized by flashing lightbulbs, bursting Eurekas!, and the euphoria of manic genius. The view embodied by Rita Levi-Montalcini is of almost monkish commitment to one’s craft, of the austerity of daily practice, and of the long and strenuous process of engraving character. Rita Levi-Montalcini’s work resembles the wave and the kiln.

Perhaps the story of Rita Levi-Montalcini still sounds unrelatable. Perhaps she still seems to exist on another plane of existence that doesn’t include everyday people. However unlikely her story is, we can learn from the challenges she faced and the solutions to which she resolved herself.

The chaos of any moment, especially of a moment that requires one to spend a great deal of time alone, is an opportunity to engage with this deliberative way of living. On occasion, like RLM, we may become aware of ourselves and what it means for us to carry out our work in the midst of ensuing crisis. But in the daily trenches of life, while the world outside one’s window spirals, we have the choice to create our own lacunas of quiet, sense, and control, where we can strive to direct our energy toward long-term, meaningful projects that enliven not only ourselves but the world to which we will eventually return.

 

Erik Sheagren is a graduate student studying Cognitive Science in Education at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

This story will be part of a longer chronicle entitled “Improvising Education” that will be published by Routledge/Taylor & Francis in 2021.

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Friday, May 29, 2020

Ominous Convergence

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Clusterfuck Nation
For your reading pleasure Mondays and Fridays

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And so, with the unjust killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the quest for cosmic justice resumes — that is, the justice that settles all the scores of racial grievance for all time, which, of course, is unlikely to be satisfied by any means. Mr. Floyd was killed by police officer Derek Chauvin who knelt on Mr. Floyd’s neck for eight minutes with the full force of his weight while three other officers stupidly stood by watching and failed to intervene until Mr. Floyd was dead.

This time, there was no ambiguity in the killing, unlike the 2014 shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, that sparked a season of riots. Video from a bystander’s phone shows Officer Chauvin stupidly killing Mr. Floyd. The four policemen have reportedly been fired (NBC News), but no one has been charged yet. Two days of protests and nighttime riots have commenced in that city and are now spreading to cities around the country. With Memorial Day in the rearview mirror, you might say, as the old song goes, that summer’s here and the time is right for fighting in the streets.

It appears that the Progressive Left is all for letting it rip. Their chief signaling device, The New York Times, ran this headline today: “National Guard Called as Minneapolis Erupts in Solidarity for George Floyd.”

That sounds to me a bit like a stamp-of-approval for a lawlessly violent response to an act of official stupidity. Is The Times in solidarity with the mayhem? Which raises some questions: how much rioting, looting, and arson will be enough to satisfy that sense of solidarity in the quest for justice? Three nights? Three weeks? Three months? Will it cease if and when Officer Chauvin is charged with murder or manslaughter? How much rioting, looting, and arson will the authorities in other cities allow to rip before they move to forcefully stop it? Does all this disorder amplify itself in a feedback loop as it plays out?

Those would be tough questions in ordinary times, but we’re in an extraordinary convergence of crises that includes an unresolved Covid-19 pandemic, an unprecedented economic collapse, and the furious after-effects of a failed political coup that steeped the nation in delusion, institutional breakdown, and factional enmity. Black America is not the only group in the land that has an axe to grind.

For instance, with over 30-million suddenly unemployed, facing bankruptcy one way or another, maybe even eviction and hunger, and tens of thousands of small businesses failing, what will be the public mood if the stock markets keep shooting up and up and up, as they’ve been doing for a month? Those rising share values, which enrich a tiny percentage of the public, are a direct result of the Federal Reserve inflating the national debt by “printing” money-from-thin-air. It comes in the form of bonds, the interest on which ultimately has to be paid by taxpayers. Many will not fail to notice that it smells like a scam. Will the economically floundering public revolt against it? Will they take to the streets and start burning down things other than police stations and AutoZones?

Could all that intersect with black street violence in cities across the land? A hint was suggested in cable TV video of rioters on the streets in Minneapolis hoisting a sign that said “kill all white people!” The Progressive Left has indulged and excused sentiments like that for years. (Remember New York Times editorial board hire, Sarah Jeong, tweeting “#CancelWhitePeople” and “dumbass fucking white people”?) What if those maledictions are acted out? Does the Left, including the Democratic Party, want to ignite a race war in America on top of a second great depression in a plague year?

Once cycles of violence are set in motion, they are very difficult to stop. The animosities between different groups in the USA are not so different in character from what’s been seen in other places around the world in recent times: the strife in Northern Ireland, the breakup of Yugoslavia, the civil war in Lebanon, the factional fighting in Libya, Syria, Iraq. All of them grew out of quests for cosmic justice, and all of those conflicts produced lasting damage to the societies they inflamed.

Donald Trump may appear poorly suited to presiding over such a national crackup. Many will accuse him of instigating it. Whatever he does is liable to be construed as wrong by half the nation, whether he acts decisively to put down actual insurrection, or dithers inconclusively while cities burn. His Democratic rival, Joe Biden, appears even less credibly capable of managing a crisis. He is, in fact, a Potemkin candidate for president, a stalking horse for forces and persons mysteriously awaiting emergence in Milwaukee around mid-August. It looks like some people will have to start deciding some things.


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A Too-Big-To-Fail Bankster
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High velocity drama!


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gallery US Has Killed More Than 20 Million People in 37 “Victim Nations” Since World War II



This carefully researched article by James A. Lucas  documents the more than 20 million lives lost resulting from US led wars, military coups and intelligence ops carried out in the wake of what is euphemistically called the “post-war era” (1945- ).

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Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship



By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1.  Policy.  Free speech is the bedrock of American democracy.

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Internet Suspects Cops Provoking Riots as Shadowy Man in Black Caught Smashing Up Autozone



Minneapolis, MN — Dozens of businesses and other buildings in Minneapolis, near the police department’s third precinct, were hit hard with vandalism this week, with some of them being completely burned to the ground. There was undoubtedly some organic intent behind this destruction.

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Netflix docuseries softpedals Clinton ties to Jeffrey Epstein



Netflix’s Democratic ties run deep, from its litany of left-leaning content to its highest profile board member, former Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice. That doesn’t count the streaming platform’s megadeal with Barack and Michelle Obama.

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READ: President Trump's Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship

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After widespread complaints about what many see as partisan censorship tactics deployed by Facebook, Twitter, Google, President Trump today signed the following executive order: Read the order on the White House site here. By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is […]

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The Tests: The Achilles Heel of the COVID-19 House of Cards

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Looking for more truth and getting closer to the truth is the best antidote to fear.

Global Research, May 28, 2020

“The tool is not the problem, it’s what we do with it.”

– Tests which are not reliable!
–  False negatives (real patients not detected).
– False positives (patients who are not positive)
– Tests that detect fragments of the virus and not the virus itself!
– Tests that don’t quantify the viral load, the most important thing…
– Test kits infected with the virus itself: you could catch it by getting tested!

So, you’ve been tested? Negative? Positive?

Maybe you’re like most people, eager to find out if you’ve got it or better yet, prove that you’re immune to the VID thing.

With this article, I don’t want to add a layer of fear to the pandemic of panic spread by our dear media in recent months.

Nevertheless, even if some people don’t want to “know anything” and will do whatever they are told to do [1]:

E.g. Wear a mask everywhere all the time, stay away from your family and friends, don’t dare to go out or take public transport without your “armour and visor”, don’t dare to touch anything without wearing gloves stuck to the skin as a result of sweating…  Etc.

I think that looking for more truth and getting closer to the truth is the best antidote to fear.

So, these tests! what are they

Introduction: Diagnosing COVID-19 disease

People confuse the disease with the agent accused of causing it.

COVID-19 refers to the disease characterized by “airway involvement” with a wide variety of symptom patterns (see below).

It is caused by a virus, SARS-CoV-2, of the coronavirus family [2], SARS for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.

Another coronavirus of this type, SARS-CoV-1, had already occurred in 2003, less contagious but more dangerous (in terms of mortality).

FIRST, On the one hand, you have a disease marked by the existence of signs or symptoms [3]. [No be confused with the causative virus]

The diagnosis is clinical!

Major signs/symptoms :

1.  Cough
2.  Dyspnea (difficulty breathing)
3.  Chest pain
4. Anosmia (loss of sense of smell)
5. Dysgeusia (taste abnormality) with no other apparent cause.

Minor signs/symptoms :

1. Fever
2. Muscle aches and pains
3. Fatigue
4. Rhinitis (cold)
5.  Sore throat
6.  Headaches
7. Anorexia (loss of appetite and weight loss)
8. Acute confusion
9. Acute confusion
10. Sudden fall without apparent cause

As you can see, it’s a bit of everything and anything.

A little fever and a troubled sense of smell (which can be caused by a zinc deficiency) and hop, you’re clinically suspect of COVID-19.

SECOND, On the other hand, you are diagnosed as having the “causative virus”, SARS-CoV-2, linked to this clinical picture with possibly (severe forms) a severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) that can lead to hospitalization or even admission to the intensive care unit.

The main technique used around the world, in hospitals as well as by general practitioners and/or mobile screening centres, to detect the presence of the virus is called RT-PCR. This technique confirms the presence of SARS-CoV-2 (a fragment actually), not the disease!

Tests for the diagnosis of the presence of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus

1- RT-PCR

For Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction, invented in 1985 by the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1993) Kary Mullis.

It is a machine capable of detecting the smallest amount of DNA or RNA (nucleic acids) present in the cell being studied. It detects and then amplifies the detected material, much like a photocopier-enhancer.

The material detected is RNA in the case of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.

The primers specific to the genetic material of the virus under study, in this case SARS-CoV-2, are all that is needed to detect the slightest trace of it in the cells collected.

A few definitions before going any further:

–  The sensitivity of the test is the ease with which the test identifies the target.
–  The specificity of the test is the ability of the test to identify the target and not another one.

The ideal test is both highly sensitive (100%) and highly specific (100%).

Is RT-PCR highly sensitive and highly specific? It depends.

– False negatives: RT-PCR comes back negative for SARS-CoV-2 even though the patient is infected. The less sensitive the test is, the more false negatives will occur.
–  False positive: RT-PCR comes back positive for SARS-CoV-2 when the patient is NOT infected. The less specific the test is, the more false positives will occur.

Can you imagine the possible dramatic consequences of such errors, in terms of contagion, contamination, improper containment or epidemiological evaluation?

In the literature [4], the PCR technique is called “rapid, sensitive and reproducible”.

For the WHO, our health institutes, most of the media, everything is fine.

However, it’s not all that idyllic!

The first disappointment is that RT-PCR does not detect the virus, but a genetic trace (RNA) of the virus, which is not the same thing.

A positive RT-PCR test does not necessarily indicate the presence of a complete virus. It is the complete, intact virus that is the transmissible actor of COVID-19.

As the FDA [based on CDC] admits [5], the detection of viral RNA by RT-PCR does not necessarily indicate an active viral infection (with clinical syndrome)!

A second disappointment is that RT-PCR cannot quantify the viral load since it artificially amplifies (multiplies) the detected genetic material. It only says whether the virus is present or not, and again, only traces of the virus, not the whole virus.

Third disappointment, the technique is complex and has many limitations! Even more so in detecting RNA viruses as in the case of SARS-CoV-2.

“The interpretation of PCR results is difficult. Any PCR must be performed on a good quality sample and adapted to the indication. For some viral infections, a positive PCR is not synonymous with disease… The dialogue between the clinician and the microbiologist is essential for a good diagnosis. “(RMS, 2007, Vol 3).

In most cases, the cells studied come from the upper respiratory tract, and are collected using a long cotton swab inserted into the nasal cavity at a relatively deep level [6]. It is said that to be effective, the procedure must be painful for the person being tested.

If the cells contain the smallest nucleic fragment (RNA) of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, the theory is that it will be detected by RT-PCR. But not that the patient is necessarily sick with COVID-19!

In this article from the Swiss Medical Journal of 2005 [7], we read that :

“For some infections, PCR tests are considered as a reference method while for others, they are only an aid to diagnosis. Contact with the laboratory performing the analysis is important in order to interpret the PCR results correctly.”

For respiratory infections,

“Serology (blood test – see below) remains the definitive proof of an infection that has caused an immune response and is therefore still considered…as a reference test.”

For coronaviruses, culture is difficult and detection by RT-PCR is the technique of choice.

But many steps are required to prime and amplify the specific genetic material and it is a complex and very sophisticated process with many opportunities for misinterpretation or misrepresentation [8] :

Mishandling, miscalibrated or contaminated equipment (from the person being tested, the laboratory technician or the environment), misstorage or misdirection and the whole result can be compromised.

PCR tests can be falsified when the sample is contaminated with other strains, especially bacterial strains.

There is a significant risk of false negatives, as reported on the Alternative Well-Being website [9] :

1- The test is badly done

2- The virus is elsewhere (not in the site where the sample is taken)

3- The tests have not been approved

4- The virus is already mutating

There is an even higher risk of false positives, as pointed out by the independent journalist Pryska Ducoeurjoly [10], based on the Swiss Medical Journal (8 April 2020) and the French journal Prescrire [11].

2- Rapid antigenic test

A variant of PCR, the results of which may take 24 to 48 hours to be known, is a faster antigenic test (results in 15 minutes), certified by the Federal Agency for Medicines and Health Products in Belgium [12]. It allows the detection of antigens (viral proteins), again from a nasopharyngeal swab.

However, it is much less specific!

In one study, only 50% of patients confirmed positive by RT-PCR were detected by this antigenic test.

This test is not recommended by the WHO for the detection of COVID-19 disease.

That says it all.

Tests for confirmation of viral infection and its follow-up

1- Serological tests

These tests are based on a blood test followed by an analysis in a specialized laboratory.

We look for the presence of antibodies developed by the patient. This is used to find out whether the person has actually been in contact with SARS-CoV-2 (IgM) and whether they have become immune to it (IgG).

This is the test that many Belgians are eagerly awaiting and which will be reserved in priority for care personnel.

2- ELISA tests

These special serological tests (dozens of samples processed at one time) are carried out in university laboratories to monitor the evolution of antibodies over time and to assess the type and duration of immunity induced by SARS-CoV-2 infection.

What is the cost of these tests in Belgium?

1. For the molecular detection test (PCR), the RIZIV reimburses 46.81 EUR.
2. For the antigen detection test, the RIZIV reimburses 16.72 EUR.
3. For the antibody detection test (serological test), the RIZIV reimburses 9,60 EUR.

These amounts include all costs related to the test: sampling material, equipment, reagents, investment costs, quality monitoring, personnel costs, supervision, protective material, transport costs, etc.

There is no patient co-payment (no co-payment) [13].

Infected specimen collection kits!

As if that were not enough, we learn that batches of detection kits are infected with SARS-CoV-2!

Notably in the USA [14], Quebec [15], UK [16], Africa (Tanzania) [17]…

“As the new coronavirus began to spread across the country, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sent contaminated test kits to the states in early February, according to a federal investigation.”

“Thousands of swabs ordered by Quebec City to test for COVID-19 were found to be potentially contaminated... Fungal contamination was found on several swabs. According to Nicolas Vigneault, spokesperson for the Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux, the swabs came from a shipment received from China.”

“One batch of coronavirus tests, out of the millions expected by the UK, has been contaminated by the virus itself. The British government had ordered batches of tests for coronavirus from a laboratory. But one of these was infected by … Covid-19 itself,” the Telegraph explains, without giving any explanation as to why this unfortunate contamination occurred. The delivery of these tests was immediately cancelled.”

“The Tanzanian President believes that the coronavirus epidemic is not yet on the scale of the official figures. According to him, the data on Covid-19 are being doctored by alarmist authorities, he denounced in his speech… He claims to have himself secretly tested a goat, a quail and a papaya, but to his astonishment the results were positive. He therefore questions the reliability of the tests. These positive results on animals and even plants are, for him, proof that people declared positive for the virus might not actually be carriers. This would mean that the real situation is not as alarming in Tanzania.”

That’s a lot of mistakes, all over the world, don’t you think?

Strange, the lack of coverage in major Western media.

It’s very serious though, and it calls into question the whole campaign of massive screening for this coronavirus.

The opinion of an international expert

John P. A. Ioannidis is not just anyone on the international medical scene.

“John P. A. Ioannidis is a professor of medicine and a researcher at Stanford University’s School of Medicine and School of Humanity and Science. Director of the Stanford Prevention Research Center, he is co-director, with Steven N. Ioannidis, of the Stanford Prevention Research Center. Goodman, the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford. “[18].

He is one of the most recognized specialists in health epistemology.

He is adamant:

“As the coronavirus pandemic unfolds, we’re making decisions without reliable data.” [19]

It confirms that the PCR tests used in the COVID-19 crisis are not as reliable as that, despite the efforts of the media and our health institutes (Sciensano in Belgium) to make us believe so.

See his interview : Perspectives on the Pandemic | Dr. John Ioannidis Update: 4.17.20, at minute 27 for his comments on PCR testing in the context of COVID-19.

In summary

What a fiasco.

The diagnostic tests represented above all by RT-PCR, a gene amplification technique, are far from having the expected reliability, which is crucial in a crisis such as the one we are going through.

Even if positive, the RT-PCR test only reveals an RNA fragment of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, not the COVID-19 disease itself. In order to say that, we need a corresponding clinical picture! All other pathologies of the patient must be considered and if the patient dies, they must be taken into account before attributing death to COVID-19!

This is frightening when you imagine the possible unjustified consequences of decisions made on the basis of these tests!

– Confinement/quarantine
– Unprecedented freedom-destroying measures
–  Hospital and health centre upheavals
–  Serious diagnoses may be wrongly given to terrorized people who are actually in good health.
– Social distancing with heavy consequences on human relations
– Major economic and social impact, the real scope of which is currently unknown
–  Suspension of all social activities (schools, restaurants, leisure activities)
– Whole population tracking and policing projects

I think that in the face of so much self-sustained insanity, despite the widespread virus of fear, the best antidote is to stay calm.

Come to your senses.

Reassess the true extent of this disease (mortality below 3% [of positive cases] as of May 26, 2020- [20]).

The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus will have to take its rightful place among all other health problems, no more, no less.

And we, may we quickly live again without masks, without social distance and without  laws which threaten civil rights.

And learn from so many mistakes.

                                                                                                                                                                                            

Dr. Pascal Sacré

Translation by Maya from the French original published by Mondialisation.ca

Notes:

[1] Wear a mask everywhere all the time, stay away from your family and friends, don’t dare to go out or take public transport without your armour and visor, don’t dare to touch anything without wearing gloves stuck to the skin by perspiration…

[2] Coronaviruses Coronaviruses (CoVs) are a large family of viruses that cause symptoms ranging from the common cold to more serious illnesses such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). World Health Organization (WHO).

[3] PRISE EN CHARGE D’UN PATIENT POSSIBLE OU CONFIRMÉ DE COVID-19

[4] PCR en microbiologie : de l’amplification de l’ADN à l’interprétation du résultat, Revue Médicale Suisse, RMS 106, 2007, Vol 3

[5] FAQs on Testing for SARS-CoV-2 U.S. Food and Drug Administration FDA

[6] Tutoriel prélèvement nasopharyngé : Un geste technique, essentiel à la fiabilité du test COVID-19

 [7] Détection et quantification des acides nucléiques en infectiologie : utilité, certitudes et limites « Nous présentons ici une revue de l’utilité des techniques PCR pour identifier les pathogènes les plus courants ainsi que des commentaires permettant de guider l’interprétation de ces résultats dans un contexte clinique. », Revue Médicale Suisse, RMS 13, 2005, Vol 1

[8] The Inconsistences of Quantitative Real Time Polymerase Chain Reaction in Diagnostics Microbiology Acta Scientific Microbiology Vol 1 Issue 2 February 2018

[9] 4 explications à l’échec des TESTS du Covid-19 , 9 avril 2020

[10] Tests du covid-19, attention aux faux positifs !, Pryska Ducoeurjoly  5 mai 2020

[11] Valeur prédictive des résultats des tests diagnostiques : l’exemple des tests covid-19 23 avril 2020

[12] COVID-19 : le dépistage Le test a été développé par le Laboratoire Hospitalier Universitaire de Bruxelles, le LHUB – ULB : un des cinq plus grands laboratoires hospitaliers universitaires en Europe, à la pointe en matière de biologie clinique.

[13] Remboursement des tests de détection du Coronavirus pendant la pandémie de Covid-19

[14] Les tests de dépistage fournis par les centres de contrôle aux USA étaient infectés par le Covid-19 

[15] Des milliers d’écouvillons importés de Chine par Québec sont inutilisables. D’autres provinces signalent des tests de dépistage contaminés. 22 avril 2020

[16] Coronavirus. Des tests de dépistage commandés par le Royaume-Uni contaminés par le Covid-19 

[17] Tanzanie, Coronavirus : le Président John Magufuli dénonce des « statistiques trafiquées et revues à la hausse » 4 mai 2020

[18] John P. A. Ioannidis

[19] Un fiasco en devenir? Alors que la pandémie de coronavirus s’installe, nous prenons des décisions sans données fiables Nous manquons de preuves fiables sur le nombre de personnes infectées par le SRAS-CoV-2 ou qui continuent de l’être.

[20] Le coronavirus (COVID-19) – Faits et chiffres, 26 mai 2020

 

 

The original source for this article is Globalization.ca
Copyright © Dr. Pascal Sacré, Mondialisation.ca, 2020

The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Dr. Pascal Sacré, Global Research, 2020


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