Wednesday, March 11, 2020

COVID-19: Further Evidence that the Virus Originated in the US



China’s Coronavirus: A Shocking Update. Did The Virus Originate in the US?

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China now denies 'Wuhan coronavirus' came from communist nation



The coronavirus originally was dubbed the "Wuhan coronavirus" because it was believed to have orginated in the northeastern Chinese city. Communist Chinese authorities acknowledged that origin, but now, with the outbreak regarded as a global pandemic, they are reversing course.

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Coronavirus: why it’s not like the other fake epidemics

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by Jon Rappoport

March 11, 2020

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As always, I suggest new readers go back and acquaint themselves with all my articles on the coronavirus situation (archive here). I can’t possible recapitulate the full scope of details, evidence, and analysis each time I write a piece.

In today’s episode of virus fakery and population mind control, I examine the one important difference between this phony epidemic and its predecessors—West Nile, SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Ebola, Zika.

Size matters. That’s the difference.

By which I mean, the size of the lie.

In previous incarnations of “raging outbreaks,” the people controlling the operation (CDC, WHO, etc.) were content to let their propaganda fade out after a short time. And as quickly as the false threat was invented, it began to dissolve.

This time, however, the controllers feel sufficiently emboldened to pour fuel on the fire of the lie and build it into an illusion of conflagration.

That’s the long and the short of this story.

In all other respects, the 2020 “epidemic” is identical to the previous duds: farcical announcement of an outbreak; miraculously quick and dubious “discovery” of a virus; deployment of diagnostic tests that don’t work; deceptive inflation of case numbers; ludicrous claim of global spread; where actual illness is occurring, a cover-up of the true reasons, which have nothing to do with a virus.

But since the total tonnage of fear porn propaganda is much larger this time around, mass quarantines are possible. These quarantines, for the dim and uninformed, appear to prove (but don’t) that the virus is highly volatile and dangerous.

In turn, the quarantines, and an accompanying urge for “self-isolation,” torpedo trade and industries and markets.

The world population, one more time, is tuned up to accept any and all medical dictates.

To put it another way, the current coronavirus fantasy could have been floated with the half-hearted intensity of prior epidemic duds. However, for no other reason than the desire to tighten the screws of control, the choice was made to shove more counterfeit chips across the table this time.

For that purpose, China was an ideal starting point. The government wouldn’t hesitate to lock down 100 million citizens—thus ramping up the “seriousness of the matter” from the get-go—kicking off a worldwide dither. China was the model. As I predicted, other nations would pick up the cue and feel comfortable about following suit. A deranged Italian politician has now quarantined a quarter of the country’s population.

On the bright side, the controllers are overplaying their hand. How could they not, given their front men fatuously predicting 40 to 70 percent of the world population will become “infected,” and millions will die. When that doesn’t happen, a good many people will remember those bloated projections. The boy-who-cried-wolf factor will kick in, regardless of how many social media platforms try to erase the past through censorship.

Here is an informal list of current predictions, from various sources. I suggest you keep it, in order to remember what to remind doomsayers of, when the dust clears: containment won’t work; the virus will spread unchecked all over the globe; the rate of transmission of the virus and the death rate will escalate; the virus is actually a devastating bioweapon, against which the human immune system has no defense; the virus’ genetic makeup, containing elements of the deadliest virus ever discovered, HIV, will wreak unprecedented havoc. You can add other world-ending predictions as you find them.

Oh, there is one other difference between this phony epidemic and previous incarnations: the recent gigantic expansion of YouTube and other social media. And given the degree of censorship that now prevails on social media—particularly the lunatic prohibition against “treating tragedies as hoaxes”—billions of tidbits of epidemic fear porn have the upper hand.

It’s almost as if, once social media had their censors firmly in place, the green light, signaling “coast clear to launch the 2020 epidemic fairy tale,” flashed on.


The Matrix Revealed

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Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.



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Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Wikipedia Slashes Spanish Flu Death Rate



We’ve had a couple of people take issue with us regarding the case fatality rate (CFR) of the 1918 Spanish Flu. Citing Wikipedia and the CDC we gave that rate as being between 10-20%. A couple of commenters, however, insisted the actual CFR was 2-3%, and this led us to look further.

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Seattle-area officials poised to order involuntary isolation, quarantine

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Seattle (courtesy Pixabay)

With Seattle-area public-health officials poised to order involuntary isolation and cancel major public events, the Washington State Department of Health has issued a chart with five threat-response levels -- the highest being the kind of drastic action taken by Italy of shutting down the entire nation.

King County, which confirmed its first COVID-19 case less than two weeks ago, is at Level 2, the voluntary isolation of sick people and voluntary quarantines of people who have contacted those who are sick, the Seattle Times reported. But health officials are considering moving to Level 3, the involuntary isolation and the involuntary quarantine of anyone who interacts with people who are infected along with the cancelation of major public events.

Level 5 would be the "cordon sanitaire" Italy has instituted in which officials order a halt to nonemergency travel and instruct people to remain indoors.

In Italy on Tuesday, shops and restaurants were closed, hundreds of flights were canceled and streets were emptied across the European nation, the first day of a nationwide lockdown, Reuters reported.

Italy has registered 9,172 cases of coronavirus and 463 deaths since Feb. 21. Nearly 4,000 deaths have been recorded worldwide amid more than 110,000 confirmed cases. In the United States, 26 people have died and 750 cases have been confirmed. In the Middle East, Iran has been the hardest-hit, with 291 deaths and 8,042 cases.

The Italian government has ordered citizens to avoid all non-essential travel until April 3, the most severe controls on a Western nation since World War II.

"It looks like an apocalypse has struck, there is no one around,” Rome restaurant owner Mario Monfreda told Reuters. "It is a total disaster. This will reduce us to nothing. ... More people are going to die as a result of the economic crisis that this lockdown is going to cause than the virus itself."

In New York, the second most impacted state next to Washington state, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has deploying National Guard troops to a Health Department command post in New Rochelle and set up a satellite testing facility and a one-mile, two-week containment area in the city, NBCNewYork.com reported.

Vice President Mike Pence updates reporters on the White House response to the coronavirus (CNN screenshot)

The troops will will help clean surfaces and deliver food in the containment zone. Public schools there will be closed through March 25.

President Trump, after an emergency meeting with administration staff Tuesday, told reporters he will propose "very substantial" economic measures to Congress, including tax relief and aid for workers in the gig economy who worry about calling in sick.

He said the virus has "blindsided the world."

China 'ascending out of the darkest moment'

Chinese leader Xi Jinping's visit Tuesday to Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, was meant by the communist government to be a sign it believes the threat was diminishing.

State media said Xi spoke with patients at a hospital and encouraged medics to "firm up confidence in defeating the epidemic."

The official Xinhua News Agency said there was only 19 new coronavirus cases reported Tuesday. More than 3,000 people in China have died from the virus since it emerged in Wuhan in December. But officials said nearly three-fourths of the more than 80,000 people infected have recovered.

And 14 makeshift hospitals constructed in Wuhan to care for coronavirus patients have been closed.

Global Times, an English-language Chinese newspaper affiliated with the government, said Xi's visit to Wuhan sent a "strong signal to the entire country and the world that China is ascending out of the darkest moment amid the outbreak."

Recent Global Times opinoin pieces have questioned whether nations with personal freedoms such as Italy are prepared to take the kind of drastic steps necessary to contain the virus.

"As the first country fully mobilized to fight the virus, China has without doubt set an example for the world to follow," wrote Shi Tian in a piece published Tuesday. "China's image as a responsible world power has been further strengthened, not dented."

wnd-donation-graphic-2-2019

The post Seattle-area officials poised to order involuntary isolation, quarantine appeared first on WND.



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Market Turmoil. The US Economy is House of Cards

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Global Research, March 09, 2020

In his book titled “Capitalism and Freedom,” economist Milton Friedman said “only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change.” 

“When a crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”

“(O)ur basic function (is) to develop alternatives to existing policies (ready to roll out when) the impossible becomes politically inevitable.”

Friedman and likeminded ideologues believe that whatever government does, business does better so let it.

There’s nothing fair about their notions of “free market” capitalism.

Shock therapy at times of political, economic, and/or financial turbulence is the economic version of smashing nations militarily to save them.

Its central tenets include mass-privatizations, government deregulation, unrestricted free market access for US-led Western business interests, deep cuts in social spending, and harsh crackdowns on nonbelievers.

The scheme includes transferring wealth from public to corporate interests and high-net worth individuals — creating ruler/serf societies, enforced by hardline rule.

Inside the bubble is paradise. Outside is dystopian hell — featuring growing poverty, unemployment and underemployment, totalitarian rule, mass surveillance, mass incarceration, and slow-motion elimination of human and civil rights.

Financial crisis conditions in 2008 and early 2009 enabled consolidation of banks and other companies, creating fewer giant players, less competition under a fundamentally unfair system.

Will something similar play out ahead if financial, commodity, and other market turmoil continues?

Though too early to know, is what Paul Craig Roberts earlier called a house of cards US economy beginning to unravel.

“Every aspect of it is fraudulent, and the illusion of recovery is created with fraudulent statistics,” he explained in April 2014, adding:

“All financial markets are rigged. Massive liquidity poured into financial markets by the Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing inflates stock and bond prices and drives interest rates, which are supposed to be a measure of the cost of capital, to zero or negative, with the implication that capital is so abundant that its cost is zero and can be had for free.”

“Large enterprises, such as mega-banks and auto manufacturers, that go bankrupt are not permitted to fail.”

“Instead, public debt and money creation are used to cover private losses and keep corporations ‘too big to fail’ afloat at the expense not of shareholders but of people who do not own the shares of the corporations.”

In early March, economist Nouriel Roubini predicted a financial and political crisis ahead, no “V-shaped recovery” later this year as some analysts predict, adding:

Markets are “completely delusional.” Global economic conditions were weakening before the COVID-19 threat emerged.

No monetary or fiscal response can help with growing numbers of illnesses when a government coordinated medical response is needed.

“(T)he US housing market is experiencing a bubble just like in 2007,” Roubini explained.

“Businesspeople tell me that things in China are much worse than the government is officially reporting. A friend of mine in Shanghai has been locked in his home for weeks now.”

If things get as bad as Roubini believes ahead, Trump “will lose the election,” he believes.

Last week David Stockman said “(t)he past 30 years of false prosperity is over,” adding:

COVID-19 “expose(d) a far more deadly disease…the poisonous brew of easy money, cheap debt, sweeping financialization and unbridled speculation that has been injected into the American economy by the Fed and Washington politicians.”

Wall Street reflects casino capitalism while “Main Street (is) buried under mountainous debt…the (US) economy exceedingly vulnerable to external shocks” like COVID-19 at a time of growing global economic weakness.

Shadowstats economist John Williams said the Fed’s “loss of systemic control was brought to head by the” COVID-19 outbreak, affecting growing numbers of countries worldwide — in numbers far short of epidemic or pandemic levels.

Fed “functionality was severely impaired” by how it mishandled things during and after the 2008-09 financial crisis — created by financialization and the rise of casino capitalism.

For decades, Wall Street manipulators transformed America into an unprecedented money making racket.

Business models prioritize grand theft, money made by stealing it in collusion with supportive government policies.

The late Bob Chapman warned of an eventual house of cards collapse, only its timing uncertain.

It lasted longer than he imagined because of manipulating markets, inflating them with what Stockman called “monetary heroin.”

Fraudulent practices ongoing for years include pump and dump schemes, naked short selling, insider trading, precious metals price suppression, and other dubious practices.

When times get tough, bankers and other corporate favorites get bailed out, ordinary people sold out, what may happen ahead.

In cahoots with government, the Wall Street owned Fed and other powerful private interests create shocks to the system, enabling greater consolidation for greater power by eliminating or buying up weak companies on the cheap.

Financial history has numerous examples of crushing competition, socializing risks, privatizing profits, redistributing wealth upward to a financial oligarchy, creating “tollbooth economies” in debt bondage according to economist Michael Hudson, and overall getting a “free lunch” at the public’s expense.

Orwell might have explained what’s ongoing this way, saying instability is stability.

Creating systemic risk is containing it. Sloping playing fields are level ones.

Extracting maximum profits for privileged interests is sharing the wealth, and what benefits the few helps everyone.

Market analyst Jeremy Grantham long ago explained that all markets eventually revert to their mean values from their highs and lows, stressing “no exceptions ever” in market history, adding:

“We know one principal truth at (his firm) and that is that we live in a mean-reverting world in investing.”

Its research “has shown…that all bubbles…eventually break (and our definition of a bubble is a) 2 standard deviation event – the kind of moves that occur about every 40 years” — the elevated state of things now, bubble markets ripe for bursting.

In its Monday edition, the Wall Street Journal headlined: “Global Markets in Turmoil as Oil Plunges,” saying:

“Markets shuddered Monday in the face of a price war for oil and the economic fallout from the coronavirus outbreak, with frightened investors seeking shelter in the safety of government bonds and propelling yields to unprecedented lows.”

Pre-market opening, Dow futures plunged 5%, the “maximum allowed in a single session.”

Crude oil prices plunged after OPEC countries and Russia failed to agree on reducing daily output to try stabilizing prices.

Bond vigilantes are screaming recession, the yield on Treasuries plunging to record lows.

What’s ahead remains to unfold. Given enormous excesses to markets, the fullness of time will tell if a time of reckoning arrived.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Stephen Lendman, Global Research, 2020


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Monday, March 9, 2020

Vimeo censors my interview, in which Catherine Austin Fitts and I discuss coronavirus and vaccines

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Vimeo also removed another Fitts interview with a distinguished attorney, on the subject of mandated vaccines

They’re meddling with you, and deciding for you

by Jon Rappoport

March 9, 2020

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To boil it down: a video was posted, then it was censored. Removed. Deleted. By Vimeo. On March 4. Bang.

Why? Because you’re not supposed to know what was discussed in the video.

It might give you a wrong idea.

You might infer something you shouldn’t. You can’t handle making up your own mind. You have to feed at the official and approved public trough for truth. Truth is defined for you by those in charge of Knowing. You’re a pawn who must be controlled, for your own good. That’s why Vimeo took down the video.

Vimeo might not understand all that. From what I’m told, programmed robots don’t work from understanding; they just follow orders.

A couple of weeks back, Catherine Austin Fitts and I did one of her wide-ranging Solari Reports. We discussed the coronavirus situation and vaccines. I was ever-polite, as usual. You know me. I avoid stepping on toes at all costs. Before an interview, I always take two Thorazine and meditate on the magnificence of Globalism and Oneness in the everlasting corporatization of planet Earth. Yet somehow, someone at Vimeo took umbrage.

Catherine Austin Fitts, describes her enterprise: “Solari Report is an independent intelligence network whose goal is to support its subscribers and readers in living a free and inspired life.”

Might this be problematic in the eyes of Vimeo? What did she say? Independent? Free and inspired? Hmm. What about conforming? What about saluting the great cheese glob of lowest common denominator?

I asked Catherine for her reaction when she received the notice, on March 4, that the video was taken down. I quote her directly:

“FLABBERGASTED adjective flab• ber• gast• ed | \ˈfla-bÉ™r-ËŒga-stÉ™d \Definition of flabbergasted: feeling or showing intense shock, surprise, or wonder: utterly astonished flabbergast [flab-er-gast] verb (used with object) to overcome with surprise and bewilderment; astound. First Known Use of flabbergasted 1773, in the meaning defined above.”

Actually, on March 4, Vimeo took down two Solari videos. The other one was Catherine’s interview about mandated vaccines, with Mary Holland. Who? “Who is THAT person coming forward and telling us about vaccines, when we haven’t seen her face, at least several times, on the CBS Evening News? Does she at least work for the government?”

“Children’s Health Defense (CHD) is pleased to announce that Mary S. Holland has become its full-time General Counsel. Holland will continue to serve as CHD Vice Chair of the Board of Directors.”

“Holland has fought long and hard in the vaccination choice and safety movement. In the last fifteen years, she has co-written and edited two books, Vaccine Epidemic and The HPV Vaccine on Trial, and co-founded two non-profits, the Elizabeth Birt Center for Autism Law and Advocacy and the Center for Personal Rights. In addition, she has published seminal legal articles on critical dimensions of vaccine law and policy: constitutionality; herd immunity; liability for injury; and the connection between vaccines and autism.”

“On behalf of many organizations, she submitted amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court in Bruesewitz v. Wyeth, a case about manufacturer liability, and to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Cedillo v. HHS about vaccine-induced autism…”

Obviously, Vimeo knows what they’re doing. They must protect you from learning what this Mary Holland (or anyone else) might put in your head. Right? Of course. Vimeo is looking out for your welfare day and night.

Here is a brief except from Mary Holland’s Solari Report: “All you have to do is look up a [vaccine] product on the internet. Look up an insert [package] for the polio vaccine or the diphtheria/tetanus/pertussis. There are 50 different [adverse effect] medical conditions, typically including death, that are listed on the product insert. So the propaganda rolls on, ‘Vaccines are safe and effective. Vaccines are safe and effective,’ but when you look for evidence of this, it’s just not true.”

“All you have to do is look at what the manufacturers say to insure that they continue to be liability-free. We should talk about that. They list the things that people report to them are adverse events after vaccination with this vaccine.”

“They [the manufacturers] go to great lengths to say, ‘This [adverse event] isn’t proven,’ and, ‘We never go back and test,’ and, ‘This is a sample size of unknown numbers,’ but these are reported adverse events from this vaccine. I don’t know how you can say that somebody shouldn’t have the right to say, ‘No, I’ll take my risks. I would really rather get the mumps than die’.”

Can you handle reading those words from Mary Holland? Can you make up your mind whether you agree or disagree? If you’re not sure, can you file the information away in a “maybe” compartment? Was there a need to have Vimeo decide to wall you off from what Mary Holland said?

“Yes, but you see, Jon, there are so many suggestible people out there who can’t make up their own minds. They must be protected.”

Really? Protected from exactly what? And by whom? A Central Committee issuing daily rulings? We are now a society in which free speech only exists in the shadow cast by persons who are unable to think?

I’ll tell you this. If I were the CEO of a huge vaccine manufacturer, or a top executive at the CDC (a front for vaccine companies); and if were very worried about what the public might discover re mind-boggling vaccine dangers, I’d award Vimeo a medal for censoring unofficial sources. I’d be pouring out praise for their efforts. And quietly, I’d think, wow, they’re basically operating like a PR agency for me.

As for what I said in my interview with Catherine in our Solari Report conversation, I don’t need to pick out an excerpt. You can access any of my articles on the “coronavirus crisis” (archive here) and find the essence and details of my position. Is there a reason for censorship there? Apparently, many readers don’t think so.

When Vimeo removed the interviews Catherine did with Mary Holland and me, they sent out their usual notice about taking down potentially harmful content, and so on. Then there was a follow-up, to Catherine, on March 5. Here it is:

Jason R. (Vimeo Trust & Safety)

Mar 5, 4:44 PM EST

Hi there,

My name is Jason and I manage Vimeo’s Trust and Safety team.

Your videos were removed for violating Vimeo’s Terms of Service (https://vimeo.com/terms) and Community Guidelines (https://vimeo.com/help/guidelines).

Specifically, Vimeo does not allow videos that falsely claim that mass tragedies are hoaxes, or perpetuate false or misleading claims about vaccine safety.

After looking into your account, it actually looks like there are a number of other violations. You should be sure to review our terms thoroughly and remove any content that does not comply.

Please do not re-upload this content as it may result in full account removal.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Sincerely,
Jason R.
Trust & Safety Manager

I guess they don’t have last names over at Vimeo.

As for “describing mass tragedies as hoaxes,” and “making misleading claims about vaccine safety,” Jason R ought to think about who defines “hoax” and “misleading.” God? Exceptional humans gifted, somehow, with supreme authority? Or little droids following orders from the office upstairs.

Here are links to Mary Holland’s and my Solari Report video excerpts:

“Special Solari Report: Vaccine Mandates with Mary Holland, J.D.”

“Coronavirus, Epidemics, and Vaccine Terrorism with Jon Rappoport”

And remember: censorship is a gift that must be cherished. We’re all in this together. The more we stifle free speech and help destroy the 1st Amendment, the closer we come to the perfect society. Someday, we will all agree on whatever there is to agree on. Which is everything. Let us praise the Vimeo States of America and its thought-police allies from nations all over the world.

And while we’re at it, let us recall Medical Big Brother’s stirring words engraved on the Statue of Liberty: “Give us your huddled masses, yearning to be vaccinated.”

Thank you, Vimeo. Here’s your new cutting edge slogan:

PRESS KEY, DELETE CONTENT.


Exit From the Matrix

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)


Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.



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Vimeo censors my interview, in which Catherine Austin Fitts and I discuss coronavirus and vaccines



To boil it down: a video was posted, then it was censored. Removed. Deleted. By Vimeo. On March 4. Bang. Why? Because you’re not supposed to know what was discussed in the video.

ORIGINAL LINK

Sunday, March 8, 2020

Panic Purgatory: Oil Crashes To $27; S&P Futures Locked Limit Down, Treasuries Soar Limit Up Amid Historic Liquidation



The Sunday futures fiasco started off on the back foot, with virtually every risk asset that is not nailed down puking with a force unseen since the financial crisis. It has only gotten worse since. While futures initially tumbled as much as 4.

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Zika: Brazil Admits It's Not the Virus



Amidst growing fear-based propaganda warning of the threat of Zika virus comes a quiet admission from health officials in Brazil: Zika alone may not be responsible for the rise in birth defects that plagued parts of the country.

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As Top Historians Ring Alarm Bells About NYT’s 1619 Project, Defiant Public Schools Refuse To Answer Questions

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Shelby Talcott –

“On August 19 of last year I listened in stunned silence as Nikole Hannah-Jones, a reporter for the New York Times, repeated an idea that I had vigorously argued against,” reads the first sentence of Friday’s essay by Leslie Harris, a history professor at Northwestern University.

Harris is just the latest in a string of academics to levy criticism on Hannah-Jones and the 1619 Project. She is the first, however, who actually took part in the project as a fact-checker. During the publication process for 1619, Harris “vigorously disputed” the idea that the American Revolution was actually about preserving slavery. Nonetheless, there it was in print come August 2019.

While Harris cautions that some conservatives are too quick to call the whole project a wash, she is among a handful of American History academics ringing alarm bells that the project should issue corrections. These calls also come as several public school systems signal their intent to add 1619 to their curriculums.

Written by journalists and opinion writers, the project attempts “to reframe the country’s history” by suggesting America’s “true founding” was when the first slaves arrived in 1619.

Within days of its launch, multiple top historians pointed out glaring factual inaccuracies. Their concerns, however, went largely ignored, save for one response from NYT editor Josh Silverstein essentially dismissing a letter sent by five such historians.

The historians persisted, turning to op-eds and the World Socialist Web Site to urge the publication to take a second look at some of its reporting. Historian Gordon Wood, a professor at Brown University, even sent a follow-up letter to Silverstein, giving the editor-in-chief permission to publish.

“In the long run the Project will lose its credibility, standing, and persuasiveness with the nation as a whole,” Wood wrote in the letter, which urged the publication to issue corrections. This letter, previously obtained by the Daily Caller, was never published by the NYT.

Princeton’s distinguished liberal historian Sean Wilentz absolutely pile-drives Jake Silverstein, Nikole Hannah-Jones, & the 1619 project: “No effort to educate the public…to advance social justice can afford to dispense with a respect for basic facts.” https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/1619-project-new-york-times-wilentz/605152/ 

In the meantime, the “1619 Project” had quickly begun to infiltrate American public schools, spreading from New York to California – complete with all of the inaccuracies the historians spent months pointing out.

“The schools can say they’re not responsible, and they can turn to the parents and say you’re not responsible,” Bob Woodson, founder of The Woodson Center and the “1776” initiative, which is aimed at rebutting the NYT 1619 Project, told the Daily Caller. “None of us are responsible for their failures. As long as they can keep attention riveted in some unseen forces resulting from institutional racism … then, they don’t have to answer the question: Why are black children failing in systems run by their own people?”

Woodson has been a leader in the black community for decades, working to help communities improve and thrive.

Currently, the 1619 project has been implemented by Chicago Public Schools, who repeatedly refused to respond to any questions from the Daily Caller. Buffalo Public Schools also implemented the “1619 Project,” telling the Daily Caller that it was added into the curriculum in part because “slavery is taught in a factually inaccurate, and devaluing manner.”

“It’s obvious from the response you’re getting that the public schools are just embracing this curriculum coming from ‘1619’ and allegedly it’s being done to assist in improving the learning of students,” according to Woodson.

“I think the fact is that all of the attention of 1619 is on external causes of black dysfunction, and rather than inspiring students to achieve, it’s providing the school system with another excuse for their failure. If they can convince parents and students that the reason that they’re underachieving has to do with some distant problem 250 years ago, then it exempts anybody from any responsibility to solving the problem.”

Along with Chicago Public Schools and Buffalo Public Schools districts, the Daily Caller reached out to multiple individual schools within the district. Not a single school responded.

Schools that ignored requests for comment included Chicago-based Belding Elementary, Acero Schools – of which there are fifteen, Back Of The Yards High School, Englewood STEM High School, Christian Fenger Academy High School, Infinity Math Science & Technology High School, Instituto Justice and Leadership Academy, Horizon Science Academy Southwest, Chicago Hope Academy, Whitney M. Young Magnet High School and Hyde Park Academy High School.

“We can certainly see a need for teaching students from multiple perspectives and the 1619 provides for our students with a diversity of thought on the topic and a curriculum of inclusion,” Buffalo Public Schools’ associate superintendent Fatima Morrell told the Daily Caller.

“As we teach about the existing impact of status quo inequalities today, the 1619 Project provides a great addition to the standing curriculum.”

Buffalo Public Schools began its implementation with “an initial roll-out with all 11th and 12th graders in the District receiving a copy of the magazine and engaging in activities from the podcast on ‘The Idea of America’ and lessons from the Pulitzer Center,” Morrell said.

Lesson plans are already underway within the district, and teachers will be trained “at various points throughout the rest of this year.”

“Principals, teachers, and students have expressed strong interest in the readings as the legacy of enslavement, and an accurate depiction of the atrocities of the institution of slavery have never been taught before,” according to Morrell. “There is a lot of interest, especially among students.”

Buffalo Public Schools dodged the Daily Caller’s requests for responses to the concerns the historians raised. Buffalo Public Schools chose instead to focus on Silverstein’s public response to the historian’s letter, published in the NYT Dec 2019.

“The very premise of the 1619 Project, in fact, is that many of the inequalities that continue to afflict the nation are a direct result of the unhealed wound created by 250 years of slavery and an additional century of second-class citizenship and white-supremacist terrorism inflicted on black people,” Silverstein wrote.

“The rampant discrimination that black people continue to face across nearly every aspect of American life suggests that neither the framework of the Constitution nor the strenuous efforts of political leaders in the past and the present, both white and black, has yet been able to achieve the democratic ideals of the founding for all Americans,” he concluded.

Woodson said that the implementation of the NYT project among high schools around the country is “the most disastrous thing” he has “seen in the last four decades.”

“It can have devastating impact,” Woodson said. “They’re already underperforming, and now rather than introducing into this population a set of ideas that will inspire them, to say to them that ‘you can achieve regardless of the circumstances into which you were born.’ What they’re doing is just the opposite – they’re saying to them, ‘you’re not responsible for any unfortunate or negative outcomes because you live in a racist society that does not like you and is hostile to your interests.’”

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Buffalo Public Schools added that they “want our students to know the basis for these racial inequalities we experience today.” The school district decided to add the project “as another perspective on the legacy of enslavement, and as a missing enzyme in the current mandated curriculum,” the superintendent said.

“We believe that students will do better academically if they know the true history of enslavement and will be able to appreciate the historical brilliance of black people who overcame so much oppression and dehumanization under the institution of chattel slavery, we see it as an emancipation curriculum for all students,” Morrell told the Daily Caller.

“This is a story that is not told from the perspective of people of color in our curriculum, so the NYT has provided for us an alternate, and more accurate perspective.”

The school district declined to directly address the concerns of critical historians. The superintendent noted that the new curriculum “raises the voices of the historically marginalized and disenfranchised.” Morrell said that Buffalo Public Schools is a district “that is approximately 80% of color,” making the addition important.

“It did not replace traditional eurocentric history lessons we currently teach, we added this alongside it as another perspective from experts in the field,” according to Morrell, who did not mention that the project is written by opinion writers and journalists, not historians.

James M. McPherson, a professor at Princeton University and one of the historians who wrote the concerned letter to the NYT, told the Daily Caller that they have all been “frustrated” by the publication’s response. He added that he is “concerned” that public schools are now teaching future generations history based off the “1619 Project.”

“My colleagues and I have been frustrated by the main theme in the NYTimes’ response to our critique that our differences with the points made by the authors (particularly in the introductory essay) of the 1619 project concerned matters of interpretation, not facts, while most of our objections to the project concerned factual matters,” McPherson told the Daily Caller, “not interpretations concerning the positions of the leaders of the American Revolution on slavery, the important role of white abolitionists and civil rights activists in campaigns for freedom and civil rights, and the evolving actions of Lincoln and congressional Republicans against slavery during the Civil War.”

The historian also said that he hopes the critiques addressed numerous times will “have alerted teachers” to the issues. (RELATED: ‘It’s Embarrassing That The New York Times Is Doing This’: Conservatives React To The NYT ‘1619 Project’)

“I’m concerned, but I hope that our critiques might have alerted teachers who use the material to provide balance in their own critical use of it and to point out errors of fact as well as possible biases in interpretation,” McPherson said.

 

Source: As Top Historians Ring Alarm Bells About NYT’s 1619 Project, Defiant Public Schools Refuse To Answer Questions | The Daily Caller



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Forbidden Parenting

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Forbidden Parenting

Authored by John Stossel via Townhall.com,

South Carolina mom Debra Harrell worked at McDonald's.

She couldn't afford day care for Regina, her 9-year-old daughter, so she took her to work.

But Regina was bored at McDonald's.

One day, she asked if she could just play in the neighborhood park instead.

"I felt safe there," tells me in my new video, "because I was with my friends and their parents."

"She had her cellphone, a pocketbook with money in it," says Debra.

"She had everything she needed."

Regina was happy. Debra was happy.

But one parent asked Regina where her mom was, and then called the police. Officers went to McDonald's and arrested Debra.

In jail, they berated her.

"You can't leave a child who is 9 years old in the park by herself!" said one officer. "What if some sex offender came by?"

People interviewed by the media were also outraged.

"What if a man came and just snatched her?" asked one.

"This day and time, you never know who's around!" said another.

But what are they talking about?

Crime in America is way down, half what it was in the '90s. Reports of missing children are also down.

If kids are kidnapped or molested, it's almost always by a relative or an acquaintance, not by a stranger in a park.

Nevertheless, prosecutors charged Debra Harrell with "willful abandonment of a child," a crime that carries up to a 10-year sentence.

They also took Regina away from her mom -- for two weeks.

"I would cry as night because I was really scared," Regina told me. "I didn't know where I was, or what was going on."

Fortunately, attorney Robert Phillips took Debra's case for free. He didn't like the way police and media portrayed her.

"Here was this black female that society gives a hard time. 'Welfare queens, living at home, not getting a job!' Well, that's what she was doing," he said.

"She was out working, trying the best she could to take care of her child. And now we're beating her up because we didn't like the way she took care of her child."

The cops said that Harrell should have sent her daughter to day care. But even if she could have afforded it, it's not clear that day care is safer.

"We found 42 incidents of sexual molestations, rapes in day cares," said Phillips.

"We couldn't find (in South Carolina in the last 20 years) a single abduction in a park."

Philips blames people in my business for scaring people about the wrong things.

"The media has brought up this 'stranger danger' to where, if you're not under the protective wings of mom and dad 24/7, then you're exposing your child to some unknown danger."

That has frightened police and child welfare workers into taking absurd steps when parents leave children alone.

In Maryland, police accused parents of child neglect for letting their kids roam around their neighborhood.

In Kentucky, after police reported a mom who left her kids in the car while she dashed into a store, child welfare workers strip-searched the kids to make sure they weren't being abused.

This doesn't protect kids. It mostly scares parents into depriving their kids of chances to learn.

"When you don't let them spread their wings, that's when they get in trouble!" says Debra.

She was fortunate that her case got enough attention that even Nikki Haley, then South Carolina's governor, asked that Regina be given back to her mom.

Prosecutors finally dropped the child abandonment charge.

It's just not right that when stranger kidnappings are increasingly rare, police and child welfare workers are more eager to punish parents who let kids play on their own.

"A Utah law guarantees that giving kids some reasonable independence isn't 'neglect,'" says Lenore Skenazy, of the nonprofit Let Grow, "More states need this!"

Of course, some parents are so neglectful that government should intervene.

But as lawyer Phillips put it, they should intervene "only if you are subjecting your child to a real harm. We should not have unreasonable intrusions by the government telling us every little detail how to raise our children."

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/07/2020 - 22:40

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