Saturday, June 6, 2020

Candace Owens: This Is What’s REALLY Driving the Race Riots in America

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Candace Owens joins Glenn Beck to share her reactions to the George Floyd riots. She sees history repeating itself. It’s like a replay of the riots across Detroit and Chicago during the late 1960s and how they caused white business owners to pack up and leave, which she says is what led to major unemployment in the black communities.

She says, “That’s exactly what’s going to happen now and so I’ve spent this week realizing that we potentially just signed up for another 60 years of black poverty…

“People [could have] been more conscious of the fact that we we are in an election cycle and there are powers that want to make this race rioting happen…You have [them] telling you that they can’t go to work for months, followed by incentivizing looting and rioting.

“Even looking at Bill DeBlasio, his daughter getting arrested for blocking traffic on that main street where the riots were taking place and him saying that he’s proud of her! At the same time, he is disallowing the President to send in the National Guard to help garner control of a situation.

“You have to think that it must just be an attack on America and they’re so short-sighted that all they want to do is defeat Donald Trump in November at the polls and they’re willing to inspire tyranny and anarchy in the process…

“White Privilege is something that was made up by Post-Modernists to divide people…Who does better than white Americans in this country? Asian Americans do and this is why you never hear people talk about Asian Americans, at all. It’s because they completely defeat the idea that there is White Privilege in this country.

“They do better in every single lane than white people do. And you want to know why? Because they make better decisions than white people do and you want to know why white people do better than black people? Because white people make better decisions, as a whole than black people.

“You get out of life what you put into it and unfortunately, people don’t like to talk about that, because it’s too tough of a conversation to have about what black Americans aren’t doing right.

“We have policies like Affirmative Action, which mismatches us and puts us into schools not based on our merit or what we know but based on our skin color and those are things that are actually, with time disadvantaging black Americans, because it’s not allowing us to do the hard work we need to do to get on the level playing field…

“What White Privilege is, it’s an excuse for black Americans not to apply themselves and that’s why I reject the narrative.

“Now, if you told me that two people, one black, one white, born into the same economic circumstances – you think Malia Obama or Sasha Obama is suffering because of the color of her skin? No. Why? Because they had parents that became President of the United States. They have privileges that most white people will never know in this country and that is not because of the color of their skin. It’s because of decisions that their parents made.

“Me, my mother didn’t graduate high school. My father was an alcoholic, so the circumstances of where I started in life was not because of the color of my skin but because of decisions that were made before I came into this world. And those are the discussions that we need to have about how we fix the fabric of Black America and those decisions that we are making.

“There was no white person that told my mother that she wasn’t allowed to graduate high school and she had to have her first child at 17. It becomes too easy of an excuse and we have to stop handing my community excuses. We have to stop handing my community catchy phrases, like ‘White Privilege’.

“It’s hard work. It’s not easy. It sucks. And Shelby Steele does a great job of talking about how sometimes, the hardest thing in the world is being handed freedom after years of oppression, which is what black Americans went through.

“Because suddenly, you realize that they were saying that you were not equal and suddenly, you have to contend with the fact that they’re right. That they’re better than you at math and science and reading and writing, because you’ve had years of oppression.

“But the only way to actually get ahead and to no longer lie is to do the hard work and we’ve not been able to do the hard work, because everybody keeps giving us excuses.

“So I’ll have to tell you, ‘No, Glenn, there is no such thing as White Privilege.’ I have to deny that, because I want black America to get ahead.”

Alexandra Bruce

Contributed by Alexandra Bruce

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A Conspiracy Theorist Confesses



I am what the general population, politicians and the mainstream media (MSM) would call a conspiracy theorist. While I don’t agree with their definition of the term, there’s not much point in me denying it. It is applied to me, and millions like me, whether we like it or not.

ORIGINAL LINK

Friday, June 5, 2020

Lisa Page is new national security and legal analyst at NBC News

ORIGINAL LINK

lisa_page.jpg

(DAILY CALLER) Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page is the new national security and legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, the network announced Friday.

“We’re very happy to welcome to our network Lisa Page, former FBI lawyer who worked as special counsel for Robert Mueller’s legal team,” Nicolle Wallace said. “She worked on the Russian government disinformation probe and on the Hillary Clinton email investigation.”

Page was discovered in 2017 to be having an affair with former FBI agent Peter Strzok, who worked on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation before he was removed for showing bias against President Donald Trump in text messages exchanged with Page.

Read the full story ›

The post Lisa Page is new national security and legal analyst at NBC News appeared first on WND.



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"Unreported Truths" - This Is The COVID-19 Book That Amazon 'Quarantined'

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"Unreported Truths" - This Is The COVID-19 Book That Amazon 'Quarantined' Tyler Durden Fri, 06/05/2020 - 23:20

Via RealClearInvestigations.com,

Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson has developed a wide following on Twitter for detailed posts that challenge some mainstream reporting and government declarations about COVID-19. 

THEY CENSORED IT! It is based entirely on published government data and scientific papers. It doesn’t say coronavirus isn’t real or doesn’t kill people (in fact, the worst-case death toll is likely to be striking to people). And Amazon won’t run it.

— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) June 4, 2020

Read the full thread here.

Thursday morning he tweeted that Amazon had refused to offer for sale his self-published book, “Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns Part 1: Introduction and Death Counts and Estimates.”

Among those responding in outrage over what they called blatant censorship were SpaceX CEO Elon Musk ("This is insane @JeffBezos") and journalist Glenn Greenwald. And late Thursday Berenson reported that Amazon had backed off and is now offering the book for sale on Kindle.

Before Amazon reversed itself (calling its earlier move an "error," according to Fox News), RealClearInvestigations asked the award-winning novelist to elaborate on his experience. Here’s his response, followed by an excerpt from the book: 

By Alex Berenson
June 4, 2020

The booklet was the first in a series of coronavirus pamphlets I plan to put out covering various aspects of the crisis. Readers of my Twitter feed encouraged me to compile information in a more comprehensive and easier-to-read format, and when I polled people on Twitter to ask if they would be willing to pay a nominal fee for such a pamphlet, the response was strong.

Originally I only planned to write one, but I had so much information I realized that the booklet would be an awkward length - longer than a magazine article but shorter than a book.  Also, doing so would take too long, and I wanted to put it out quickly. So I decided to split the booklet into pieces. Part 1 included an introduction and a discussion of death coding, death counts, and who is really dying from COVID, as well as a worst-case estimate of deaths with no mitigation efforts.

It is about 6,500 words, and I planned to sell it for $2.99 as an ebook or $5.99 for a paperback. It is called "Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns: Part 1, Introduction and Death Counts and Estimates."

I created covers for both and uploaded the book. I had published Kindle Singles (Amazon's curated program for short Kindle pieces, which now focuses more on fiction from established writers), so I was relatively familiar with the drill. I briefly considered censorship but assumed I wouldn't have a problem because of my background, because anyone who reads the booklet will realize it is impeccably sourced, nary a conspiracy theory to be found, and frankly because Amazon shouldn't be censoring anything that doesn't explicitly help people commit criminal behavior. (Books intended to help adults groom children for sexual relationships, for example, should be off-limits - though about 10 years ago Amazon did not agree and only backed down from selling a how-to guide for pedophiles in the face of public outrage.) 

I didn't hear anything until this morning, when I found the note I posted to Twitter in my inbox (shown below).

Note that it does not offer any route to appeal. I have no idea if the decision was made by a person, an automated system, or a combination (i.e. the system flags anything with COVID-19 or coronavirus in the title and then a person decides on the content). I am considering my options, including making the booklet available on my Website and asking people to pay on an honor system, but that will not solve the problem of Amazon's censorship. Amazon dominates both the electronic and physical book markets, and if it denies its readers a chance to see my work, I will lose the chance to reach the people who most need to learn the truth - those who don't already know it.

Here are the first 1,000 words of Chapter 1:

Maybe the most important questions of all:

How lethal is SARS-COV-2?

Whom does it kill?

Are the death counts accurate – and, if not, are they over- or understated?

Estimates for the lethality of the coronavirus have varied widely since January. Early Chinese data suggested the virus might have an “infection fatality rate” as high as 1.4 – 2 percent.

A death rate in that range could mean the coronavirus might kill more than 6 million Americans, although even under the worst-case scenarios some people would not be exposed, and others might have natural immunity that would prevent them from being infected at all.

As we have learned more about the virus, estimates of its lethality have fallen. Calculating fatality rates is complex, because despite all of our testing for COVID, we still don’t know how many people have been infected.

Some people who are infected may have no or mild symptoms. Even those with more severe symptoms may resist going to the hospital, then recover on their own. We have a clear view of the top of the iceberg – the serious infections that require hospitalization – but at least in the early stages of the epidemic we have to guess at the mild, hidden infections.

But to calculate the true fatality rate, we need to know the true infection rate. If 10,000 people die out of 100,000 infections, that means the virus kills 10 percent of all the people it infects – making it very, very dangerous. But if 10,000 people die from 10 million infections, the death rate is actually 0.1 percent – similar to the flu.

Unfortunately, figuring out the real infection rate is very difficult. Probably the best way is through antibody tests, which measure how many people have already been infected and recovered – even if they never were hospitalized or even had symptoms. Studies in which many people in a city, state, or even country are tested at random to see if they are currently infected can also help. Believe it or not, so can tests of municipal sewage. (I’ll say more about all this later, in the section on transmission rates and lockdowns.)

For now, the crucial point is this: randomized antibody tests from all over the world have repeatedly shown many more people have been infected with coronavirus than is revealed by tests for active infection. Many people who are infected with SARS-COV-2 don’t even know it.

So the hidden part of the iceberg is huge. And in turn, scientists have repeatedly reduced their estimates for how dangerous the coronavirus might be.

The most important estimate came on May 20, when the Centers for Disease Control reported its best estimate was that the virus would kill 0.26 percent of people it infected, or about 1 in 400 people. (The virus would kill 0.4 percent of those who developed symptoms. But about one out of three people would have no symptoms at all, the CDC said.) (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html#box.)

Similarly, a German study in April reported a fatality rate of 0.37 percent (https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/04/09/999015/blood-tests-show-15-of-people-are-now-immune-to-covid-19-in-one-town-in-germany/). A large study in April in Los Angeles predicted a death rate in the range of 0.15 to 0.3 percent.

Some estimates have been even lower. Others have been somewhat higher – especially in regions that experienced periods of severe stress on their health care systems. In New York City, for example, the death rates appear somewhat higher, possibly above 0.5 percent – though New York may be an outlier, both because it has counted deaths aggressively (more on this later) and because its hospitals seem to have used ventilators particularly aggressively.

Thus the CDC’s estimate for deaths is probably the best place to begin. Using that figure along with several other papers and studies suggests the coronavirus has an infection fatality rate in the range of 0.15 percent to 0.4 percent.

In other words, SARS-COV-2 likely kills between 1 in 250 and 1 in 650 of the people whom it infects. Again, though, not everyone who is exposed will become infected. Some people do not contract the virus, perhaps because their T-cells – which help the immune system destroy invading viruses and bacteria – have already been primed by exposure to other coronaviruses. [Several other coronaviruses exist; the most common versions usually cause minor colds in the people they infect.] An early May paper in the journal Cell suggests that as many as 60 percent of people may have some preexisting immune response, though not all will necessarily be immune. (https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)30610-3.pdf).

The experience of outbreaks on large ships such as aircraft carriers and cruise liners also show that some people do not become infected. The best estimates are that the virus probably can infect somewhere between 50 to 70 percent of people. For example, on one French aircraft carrier, 60 percent of sailors were infected (none died and only two out of 1,074 infected sailors required intensive care). https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2020/05/covid-19-aboard-french-aircraft-carrier-98-of-the-crew-now-cured/

Thus – in a worst-case scenario – if we took no steps to mitigate its spread or protect vulnerable people, a completely unchecked coronavirus might kill between 0.075 and 0.28 percent of the United States population – between 1 in 360 and 1 in 1,300 Americans.

This is higher than the seasonal flu in most years. Influenza is usually said to have a fatality rate among symptomatic cases of 1 in 1,000 and an overall fatality rate of around 1 in 2,000. However, influenza mutates rapidly, and its dangerousness varies year by year. The coronavirus appears far less dangerous than the Spanish flu a century ago, which was commonly said to kill 1 in 50 of the people it infected.

It appears more comparable in terms of overall mortality to the influenza epidemics of 1957 and 1968, or the British flu epidemics of the late 1990s. (Of course, the United States and United Kingdom did not only not shut down for any of those epidemics, they received little attention outside the health-care system.)



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For as long as our love shall last: How the soulmate myth makes marriage less stable and less happy

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Marriage has become more joyful, more loving, and more satisfying for many couples than ever before in history.”

So says Stephanie Coontz, the doyenne of feminist family history, who—as a progressive—is confident the arc of history ultimately bends upwards, towards better and happier families. But there is a price to progress in matrimony, as Coontz tells it: “At the same time [marriage] has become optional and more brittle. These two strands of change cannot be disentangled.”

Coontz’s view here—that more of us are living our best marriages today, in part, because we’ve adapted a more contingent ethic of marital commitment—is common among progressive academics. Take Betsey Stevenson, an economist who served on the Council of Economic Advisors in the Obama administration. She believes in a “hedonic” vision of wedlock, where “marriage is about love and companionship” between partners who can largely concentrate on doing things they like together. Raising children, running a household, establishing a measure of financial security, and giving support to one’s spouse and kin (and receiving it) are not necessarily central to Stevenson’s consumption-centered vision of marriage, where adult desire is the focus (unless you and your spouse find pleasure in one of these activities). 

Like Coontz, Stevenson seems fine with casting aside classic ideals of marital commitment. “People should think about how they define [marital] success,” she says. “Is it never divorcing, or 30 years of marriage in which most are pretty good but after 30 years you decide to go in a different direction? I think it’s a hard question, particularly when there’s a lot of longevity.” 

Her idea of “love and companionship” in marriage, I guess, does not necessarily include being there for your husband or wife when dementia, disability, or decline looms on the horizon. After all, to Stevenson, marriage is about “consumption complementarities,” which she describes as “activities that are… more enjoyable when shared with a spouse.” 

So, if you’re not feeling it, you should feel free to go in a “different direction.”

Their approach to marriage is largely consistent with what I call a soulmate model of marriage, one that assumes that marriage is primarily about “an intense romantic or emotional connection that should last only as long as it remains happy, fulfilling, and lifegiving to the self.” 

Three corollaries follow from the kind of thinking promoted by Coontz: 

  1. Our society has succeeded in ushering in a new model of marriage that allows a greater share of husbands and wives to reach unprecedented heights of marital quality. 
  2. To reach these heights, we must sacrifice the older ethic of marital permanence on the altar of marital fulfillment. That’s because one big reason today’s marriages are generally better is that we do not feel the old compulsion to stick with a spouse ’till death do us part. Now that we feel free to leave a difficult marriage—aka, a “bad” marriage—only the best marriages survive. 
  3. Divorce will be more common as more and more of us adapt the new view that marriage is only for so long as our love shall last—where “love” is understood as feeling fulfilled, happy, or self-actualized.  

Well, Coontz is right about one thing. Taking a more contingent approach to marital commitment is indeed linked to a higher risk of divorce. Both historically, and today, we can see that divorce is more common among societies and for individuals who take the view that marriages should only last for as long as matrimony brings happiness, fulfillment, or self actualization. 

As Figure 1indicates, in the 1960s and 1970s, when many Americans abandoned an ethic of marital permanence, the divorce rate more than doubled, from 9.2 divorces in 1960 to 22.6 divorces per 1,000 married people in 1980. And today, one recent survey of California families found that married men and women who endorse the view that “I’m in this marriage so long as our love lasts” are about 50% more likely to think that their marriage may end in divorce, compared to husbands and wives who take the view that “divorce is not an option.” No real surprises here.  

But what about the belief that less commitment and more divorce make forhigher marital quality in the marriages that remain? That making “marriage itself more optional and more contingent” increases the odds of marital bliss for those lucky enough to find and keep a spouse today?

If you look at the historical record right around the divorce revolution, recent survey data, and research following husbands and wives over time, the evidence doesn’t bear out for two Coontz corollaries. 

What happened during the divorce revolution of the 1970s and in its immediate wake is that average marital quality in the United States actually fell from the early ‘70s through the late ‘80s, as Figure 2 indicates. About 67% of husbands and wives were “very happy” about their marriage in the early 1970s, but only about 62% of them were very happy by the late-1980s, according to the General Social Survey. Thus, both husbands and wives saw their odds of being very happy drop by about 5 percentage points in this period.

What is especially striking about this decline in marital quality is that, according to progressive logic, marital quality should have improved in the 1970s as fewer and fewer Americans married and many supposedly subpar marriages were dissolved. Based on this line of thought, the remaining marriages, the cream of the marital crop, should have trended in a markedly happier direction. But instead, reports of marital happiness fell during the “Me Decade” and in its immediate wake.

What proponents of the progressive view did not really anticipate is this: if your parents, best friend, and sister all get divorced, your confidence in your own marriage is likely to take a hit. That’s because how we think about and approach our own union is deeply affected by what we see happening in the marriages of our friends and family members. Worries about the future of your own marriage, in turn, reduce your sense of emotional security, willingness to invest in your relationship, and happiness in your own marriage.1

In other words, the divorce revolution cast a cloud of uncertainty over many marriages in an era when marital stability and marital commitment fell like a rock. And, consequently, marital happiness also fell for ordinary couples, even though fewer were marrying and more were divorcing. This is just the opposite of what Coontz would predict. 

This very same dynamic plays out today among ordinary husbands and wives. When Wendy Wang of the Institute for Family Studies and I looked at married men and women’s attitudes in California, we found that the couples who said that divorce is not an option for them were more likely to say that they were satisfied in their marriages compared to those husbands and wives who said that “I’m in this marriage so long as our love lasts.”

Specifically, as Figure 3 shows, 82% of those who embrace an ethic of marital permanence report being satisfied in their marriages, compared to 77% of those who take the more contingent view. We find a similar pattern in the General Social Survey: those who take a more permissive view of divorce laws are significantly less likely to report that they are very happy in their marriage, compared to those who believe that divorce should be more difficult.2 Obviously, we cannot make strongly causal claims with this data, given that men and women in happier marriages may be more likely to embrace an ethic of marital permanence. 

But research tracking more than a thousand husbands and wives over time by sociologists Paul Amato and Stacy Rogers is more conclusive. In observing them over time, Amato and Rogers found that: 

people who adopted more favorable attitudes toward divorce tended to experience declines in relationship quality, whereas those who adopted less favorable attitudes toward divorce tended to experience improvements in relationship quality or at least a slowdown in the gradual decline in marital happiness and interaction that characterizes many marriages

So we have no evidence to support the idea that adapting a “more contingent” ethic of marital commitment is linked to happier marriages. Quite the contrary. Instead, we see that husbands and wives who embrace a classic ethic of marital commitment are more likely to be more satisfied. 

Why? In most marriages, knowing that you and your spouse are deeply committed to one another, come what may, fosters many other marital goods: more trust, more emotional security, more mutually beneficial investments in one another and the marriage—both financially and emotionally—more fidelity, and a clearer vision for a joint future. All of which translate, for the average couple, into higher levels of marital quality, especially compared to couples who do not share a commitment to marriage ‘til death do us part.3

Being committed for the long-term has a powerful influence on husbands’ and wives’ willingness to serve the best interest of the couple rather than the short-term interest of the self. As the psychologist Scott Stanley has noted, an important benefit of having a long-term view in marriage is that the relationship is evaluated on the basis of a shared past and a shared future, rather than only on the basis of what happens in the here and now. Because few relationships are continuously satisfying, a here-and-now focus puts great pressure on the current exchange of positives and negatives in your marriage as the basis for evaluating the relationship. When you are confident that your marriage will endure, Stanley observes, you are more likely to behave in ways that do not always benefit yourself immediately but enhance the long-term quality of the relationship. That is, you are more likely to approach your marriage in a spirit of generosity and, in so doing, maximize the long-term happiness of your spouse.4

Coontz apparently understands none of this. She’s under the illusion that marriage in recent decades has become both “more fulfilling” and “more effective in fostering the well-being of both adults and children than ever before in history.” This is because, for her, “fulfilling and fragile seem to ‘go together like a horse and carriage’” in marriage, as she wrote in her book, Marriage, a History

Alas, Coontz is wrong on both counts: there is no evidence that ordinary marriages were made more fulfilling by the growing fragility of our unions in the 1970s, or that husbands and wives who take her contingent view of married life are happier today. That’s because, in the real world, it’s actually commitment and contentment that seem to “go together like a horse and carriage” in marriage.

Republished from the Institute for Family Studies blog with permission. Read the original article, with footnotes.

The post For as long as our love shall last: How the soulmate myth makes marriage less stable and less happy appeared first on MercatorNet.



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Former MI6 Boss Says COVID-19 Manmade, Escaped From Chinese Lab

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Former MI6 Boss Says COVID-19 Manmade, Escaped From Chinese Lab Tyler Durden Thu, 06/04/2020 - 08:46

The former head of Britain's MI6 spy agency believes COVID-19 is a manmade virus that accidentally escaped from a Chinese laboratory, based on forthcoming research, according to The Telegraph.

Entitled "A Reconstructed Historical Aetiology of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike", the new study, seen by The Telegraph, suggests the virus is "remarkably well-adapted virus for human co-existence" and is likely to be the result of a Wuhan lab experiment to produce "chimeric viruses of high potency".

The paper concludes: "Henceforth, those who would maintain that the Covid-19 pandemic arose from zoonotic transfer need to explain precisely why this more parsimonious account is wrong before asserting that their evidence is persuasive, most especially when, as we also show, there are puzzling errors in their use of evidence." -The Telegraph

Perhaps most notable is that the former MI6 boss in question is Sir Richard Dearlove - who helped Obamagate operative Stefan Halper set up a smear campaign against Michael Flynn, and who made a name for himself nearly two decades ago peddling a bogus report that Saddam Hussein had WMDs - which Tony Blair used to justify the UK's involvement the Iraq war. Clearly Dearlove is trying to ruin our street cred.

Dearlove and Flynn shake hands

Indeed, while it was inevitable that the Western establishment would eventually gravitate towards the Wuhan lab theory Zero Hedge presented in late January, Dearlove's endorsement couldn't come from a more suspicious operative.

So, as the establishment continues to adopt the very obvious conclusion supported by a mountain of evidence that the bat-like coronavirus probably escaped from a Chinese laboratory known for modifying bat coronaviruses to infect humans, we suspect Dearlove and the 'perpetual war' crowd are most interested in using the accusation as a political cudgel to wield against China.

Here's the narrative

While we've told you about the Wuhan Institute of Virology and its infamous coronavirus-expert Shi Zhengli (a.k.a. 'bat woman'), we really triggered the muppets in early February when we reported on an Indian research team that found HIV-like "spike proteins" which allow the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus to more easily enter human cells, making it extremely infectious. While the report was retracted, further studies from Nankai University found an "HIV-like mutation" in the virus.

Dearlove, through the Telegraph, is talking up a scientific paper set for imminent release which focuses on the HIV-like "spike proteins" - while separate research from one of the co-authors considers them to be "unique fingerprints" that cannot have evolved naturally. Instead, they are "indicative of purposive manipulation."

Entitled "A Reconstructed Historical Aetiology of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike", the new study, seen by The Telegraph, suggests the virus is "remarkably well-adapted virus for human co-existence" and is likely to be the result of a Wuhan lab experiment to produce "chimeric viruses of high potency".

The paper concludes: "Henceforth, those who would maintain that the Covid-19 pandemic arose from zoonotic transfer need to explain precisely why this more parsimonious account is wrong before asserting that their evidence is persuasive, most especially when, as we also show, there are puzzling errors in their use of evidence." -The Telegraph

The peer-reviewed research was a collaboration between Professor Angust Delgleish of St. George's Hospital at the University of London and Norwegian virologist Birger Sorensen. They claim to have identified "inserted sections placed on the SARS-CoV-2 Spike surface" which explain how it binds itself to human cells - and warns that efforts to develop a vaccine are doomed to fail because the virus is misunderstood. Sorensen, CEO of Norwegian pharmaceutical company Immunor AS, is developing his own vaccine.

Nobody would accept the research until they went easy on China...

Interestingly, the paper was widely circulated after being distributed for peer review - including by intelligence officials, however no legitimate publications would carry it until they toned down their language blaming China for the outbreak.

Correspondence seen by The Telegraph shows that, in April, the initial paper was rejected by leading academic journals including Nature and the Journal of Virology, which deemed the research "unsuitable for publication". 

Much of the paper was watered down to remove explicit accusations against China, and the rewritten study was then judged to be of sufficient scientific merit to be accepted for publication in the Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery, a journal chaired by leading scientists from Stanford University and the University of Dundee.  -The Telegraph

"This [the first] article was submitted to a… journal, which refused it within a week of receiving it, and in the same period accepted for publication two or three Chinese articles that relate to the virus, within 48 hours," Dearlove told The Telegraph. "So I mean, as this debate about the virus develops, I think all this material is going to be in print and is going to embarrass a number of people, I think. Let's suggest that the Chinese maybe have too much say in their journals, in what appears and what doesn't."

Dearlove suggests that Wuhan scientists may have been conducting genetic experiments on bat coronaviruses when COVID-19 accidentally escaped.

"It's a risky business if you make a mistake," said the 75-year-old spook. "Look at the stories... of the attempts by the leadership to lockdown any debate about the origins of the pandemic and the way that people have been arrested or silenced. I mean, we shouldn't really have any doubt any longer about what we're dealing with."

Sir Richard said he did not believe the Chinese had released the virus deliberately, but accused Beijing of subsequently covering up the scale of its spread.

"Of course, the Chinese must have felt, well, if they've got to suffer a pandemic maybe we shouldn't try too hard to stop, as it were, our competitors suffering the same disadvantages we've got," he said.

"Look, the Chinese understand us extremely well. They have made a study of us over the last decade or longer, particularly through attending our universities. We understand the Chinese very poorly. It's an imbalanced relationship in that respect."

Last month, the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, claimed there was "enormous evidence" that the coronavirus outbreak originated in a Chinese laboratory, but did not provide any proof. However, the US National Intelligence Director's office later said it had determined that Covid-19 "was not manmade or genetically modified". -The Telegraph

"We are aware that these findings could have political significance and raise troubling questions," the authors originally wrote before they were forced to remove language critical of Beijing, who also referred to it in a previous draft as the "Wuhan virus," claiming that they had proven "beyond reasonable doubt that the Covid-19 virus is engineered."

 



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Wednesday, June 3, 2020

Military Occupation of America Begins

ORIGINAL LINK

It now seems certain the social lockdown imposed during the COVID scare will be extended with a “second wave” blamed in part on people protesting the police execution of George Floyd. 

Packed crowds protesting George Floyd's death have health officials worried about possible COVID-19 outbreak https://t.co/o2A7njr5vE

— WLWT (@WLWT) June 2, 2020

As it now stands, there is no way the massive protests in America will come to end anytime soon. The yellow vest protests in France went on for months, only to be sidelined by COVID. Make no mistake. Macron and the neoliberals were seriously freaked out by week after week of yellow vest protests and riots. The elite considered it a serious threat to the French state and its corrupt establishment. 

Trump has absolutely no viable options. He has threatened to send federal troops into states in violation of what remains of Posse Comitatus. It was mostly destroyed by the national security state logic of the neocon John Yoo and the Bush administration. 

Trump has threatened to use the Insurrection Act to go after rioters and looters. It should be mentioned that police (now embedded with federalized National Guard soldiers) are exploiting the violence to attack peaceful demonstrators, for instance, the following chemical attack in Philadelphia.

Former Portland Police Chief Danielle Outlaw oversaw a police force that violently policed protests. Now she is the Police Commissioner of Philly and her cops are deploying tear gas on protesters during the COVID-19 pandemic. pic.twitter.com/SVTSw2k14q

— nyc law grrrl (@nyclawgrrrl) June 2, 2020

The Chicago Police are notorious for use of over-the-top violence in reaction to dissent in the Windy City. Apparently little if nothing has changed since 1968 and the savage beatdown of protesters, media, and bystanders by Mayor Daley’s police during the Democratic Convention. 

Few deny George Floyd was sadistically executed, but what’s missing here is the fact his murder is part of a far larger issue that is not being addressed. 

The paramilitarization of state and local law enforcement by the federal government has resulted in heavily armed police-soldiers that regard both the guilty and innocent alike as enemy combatants. Since the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the onset of the disastrous war on drugs, the Pentagon has fed a steady stream of hardware designed for war and mass murder into police agencies from sea to shining sea. 

For the last 19 yrs in the guise of fighting terrorism both political parties have funded militarized police forces throughout the country. Billions of dollars for tanks, tactical weapons, tear gas & training has created this bullshit.Are we now the enemy? pic.twitter.com/1MrvlhFCHI

— Tim Robbins (@TimRobbins1) June 2, 2020

This is not incidental. The state has prepared for war in America over a period of several decades. During the Iran-Contra testimony of Col. Oliver North we learned the government planned to rendition and imprison thousands of American dissidents during a war in Central America against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. North was involved in the illegal CIA war against Nicaragua and its support of the Contra mercenaries. 

As I write this, federal military occupations of downtowns, neighborhoods, critical infrastructure, etc., are underway. The severity of the riots has provided cover for a super-charged move to fully implement a military police state. It won’t be realized as such by many if not most Americans. 

The rioters and looters piggybacking on race and police brutality protests are providing a perfect excuse for the state to militarily control the larger blue or liberal metropolitan areas of the United States, possibly for some time to come. 

Take a look at Hollywood Blvd. #LAProtests

We're seeing a #PoliceState turn into a #MilitaryState.pic.twitter.com/HQqIFeJz3q

— Johnny Akzam (@JohnnyAkzam) June 2, 2020

No doubt this “civil war” will run through summer and land square in the lap of both parties during the conventions. Due to the riots and protests, the Democrats have pushed their convention back to August from July, probably in the hope, there will be some kind of resolution that will settle the dust by the end of summer. It’s not going to happen, even though, as of Wednesday, the rioting and violence have ratcheted down a notch or two. 

Likewise and undoubtedly more violently during the RNC convention the following week in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Late note: North Carolina rejected convention taking place in NC, no doubt realizing and dreading the consequences). 

Expect militarized national conventions, unlike anything in the past. 

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After Italian Study, Indian Research Backs Claim Not All Coronavirus Strains are as Lethal

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New Delhi (Sputnik): India on 3 May hit a grim milestone, with coronavirus cases crossing the 200,000 mark, and the death toll climbing to 5,815. Despite the high infection rate, the nation's mortality data stood at 2.8 percent, much lower than the US and most European countries.

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Coronavirus 'no longer clinically exists in Italy', top doctor says

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A study conducted at a hospital in Milan found that the number of viruses present in people who tested positive has decreased. COVID-19 is losing its potency and no longer clinically exists in Italy, a senior Italian doctor has claimed. Dr Alberto Zangrillo, the head of Milan's San Raffaele Hospital in the hard-hit Lombardy region, said the new coronavirus has become much less lethal, with newly infected patients having weaker symptoms than a couple of months ago.

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Tuesday, June 2, 2020

The Senate Should Focus On What The Flynn Transcripts Do Not Contain... Starting With A Crime



Yesterday, the attorney hired by Judge Emmet Sullivan responded on his behalf to defend his controversial orders in the case to invite third parties to argue the merits of the motion to dismiss as well as raising his option to substitute his own criminal charge of perjury against Flynn.

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The Senate Should Focus On What The Flynn Transcripts Do Not Contain... Starting With A Crime

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The Senate Should Focus On What The Flynn Transcripts Do Not Contain... Starting With A Crime Tyler Durden Tue, 06/02/2020 - 22:45

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Yesterday, the attorney hired by Judge Emmet Sullivan responded on his behalf to defend his controversial orders in the case to invite third parties to argue the merits of the motion to dismiss as well as raising his option to substitute his own criminal charge of perjury against Flynn.  The Justice Department responded with a 45-page filing to a three-judge appeals court panel.

The attention will now focus on the appearance tomorrow of former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in the Senate.  For me, the most pertinent question is why this investigation continued past December and seemed to become to a search for a crime rather than the investigation of any crime or collusion with Russia.

“Remember … Ambassador, you’re not talking to a diplomat, you’re talking to a soldier.”

When President Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn, said those words to then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, he also spoke to American intelligence agents listening in on the call. For three years, congressional Democrats have assured us Flynn’s calls to Kislyak were so disturbing that they set off alarms in the closing days of the Obama administration.

They were right. The newly released transcripts of Flynn’s calls are deeply disturbing — not for their evidence of criminality or collusion but for the total absence of such evidence. The transcripts, declassified Friday, strongly support new investigations by both the Justice Department and by Congress, starting with next week’s Senate testimony by former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

It turns out Flynn’s calls are not just predictable but even commendable at points. When the Obama administration hit the Russians with sanctions just before leaving office, the incoming Trump administration sought to avoid a major conflict at the very start of its term. Flynn asked the Russian to focus on “common enemies” in order to seek cooperation in the Middle East. The calls covered a variety of issues, including the sanctions.

What was not discussed was any quid pro quo or anything untoward or unlawful. Flynn stated what was already known to be Trump policy in seeking a new path with Russia. Flynn did not offer to remove sanctions but, rather, encouraged the Russians to respond in a reciprocal, commensurate manner if they felt they had to respond.

The calls, and Flynn’s identity, were leaked by as many as nine officials as the Obama administration left office — a serious federal crime, given their classified status. The most chilling aspect of the transcripts, however, is the lack of anything chilling in the calls themselves. Flynn is direct with Kislyak in trying to tone down the rhetoric and avoid retaliatory moves. He told Kislyak, “l am a very practical guy, and it’s about solutions. It’s about very practical solutions that we’re — that we need to come up with here.” Flynn said he understood the Russians might wish to retaliate for the Obama sanctions but encouraged them not to escalate the conflict just as the Trump administration took office.

Kislyak later spoke with Flynn again and confirmed that Moscow agreed to tone down the conflict in the practical approach laid out by Flynn. The media has focused on Flynn’s later denial of discussing sanctions; the transcripts confirm he did indeed discuss sanctions. However, the Justice Department has not sought to dismiss criminal charges against him because he told the truth but because his statements did not meet a key element of materiality for the crime and were the result of troubling actions by high-ranking officials.

The real question is why the FBI continued to investigate Flynn in the absence of any crime or evidence of collusion. In December 2016, investigators had found no evidence of any crime by Flynn. They wanted to shut down the investigation; they were overruled by superiors, including FBI special agent Peter Strzok, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Director James Comey. Strzok told the investigators to keep the case alive, and McCabe is described as “cutting off” another high-ranking official who questioned the basis for continuing to investigate Flynn. All three officials were later fired, and all three were later found by career officials to have engaged in serious misconduct as part of the Russia investigation.

Recently disclosed information revealed that Comey and President Obama discussed using the Logan Act as a pretense for a criminal charge. The Logan Act criminalizes private negotiations with foreign governments; it is widely viewed as unconstitutional and has never been used successfully against any U.S. citizen since the earliest days of the Republic. Its use against the incoming national security adviser would have been absurd. Yet, that unconstitutional crime was the only crime Comey could come up with, long before there was a false statement by Flynn regarding his calls.

Not until February 2017 did Comey circumvent long-standing protocols and order an interview with Flynn. Comey later bragged that he “probably wouldn’t have … gotten away with it” in other administrations, but he sent “a couple guys over” to question Flynn, who was settling into his new office as national security adviser. We learned recently that Strzok discussed trying to get Flynn to give false or misleading information in that interview, to enable a criminal charge, and that FBI lawyer Lisa Page suggested agents “just casually slip” in a reference to the criminal provision for lying and then get Flynn to slip up on the details.

Flynn did slip up. While investigators said they were not convinced he intentionally lied, he gave a false statement. Later, special counsel Robert Mueller charged Flynn with that false statement, to pressure him into cooperating; Flynn fought the case into virtual bankruptcy but agreed to plead guilty when Mueller threatened to prosecute his son, too.

The newly released transcripts reveal the lack of a foundation for that charge. Courts have held that the materiality requirement for such a charge requires that misstatements be linked to the particular “subject of the investigation.” The Justice Department found that the false statement in February 2017 was not material “to any viable counterintelligence investigation — or any investigation, for that matter — initiated by the FBI.” In other words, by that time, these FBI officials had no crime under investigation but were, instead, looking for a crime. The question is: Why?

So the transcripts confirm there never was a scintilla of criminal conduct or evidence of collusion against Flynn before or during these calls. Indeed, there was no viable criminal investigation to speak of when Comey sent “a couple guys over” to entrap Flynn; they already had the transcripts and the knowledge that Flynn had done nothing wrong. Nevertheless, facing the release of these transcripts, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) bizarrely maintained that “Flynn posed a severe counterintelligence risk” because he could be blackmailed over his false statement.

Putting aside the lack of prior evidence of criminality, Schiff ignores that there were transcripts to prevent such blackmail. Indeed, in the interview, Flynn indicated he assumed there was a transcript, and leaked media reports indicated that various officials were familiar with the content of the calls. The key to blackmail would have been for the Russians to have information that others did not have.

Ironically, in his calls with Kislyak, Flynn expressly sought a more frank, honest relationship with Russia. He told Kislyak “we have to stop talking past each other on — so that means that we have to understand exactly what it is that we want to try to achieve, okay?” That is a question that should now be directed at the FBI, to understand what it was trying to achieve by continuing an investigation long after it ran out of crimes to investigate.



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How has our understanding of Covid-19 changed?

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Many are walking with a bounce in their step as coronavirus lockdown restrictions ease across the world. To our relief, even the blanket news coverage of the pandemic is looking more like a patchwork quilt these last few weeks.

In places that have been remarkably spared like Australia and New Zealand, we might conclude that the threat of the virus is fading because of our cooperation with government directives and responsibility towards our fellow citizens.

And to be sure, strategies like personal hygiene and social distancing have helped slow the spread of the virus. But the more we learn about Covid-19 and our response to it, the more we might wonder if we overestimated its threat.

Early Australian modelling suggested a global death toll of up to 68 million, or 15 million in a best-case scenario. Lockdowns were put in place to “flatten the curve”—in other words, to spread the caseload out over time so as not to overwhelm our hospital systems.

But as infection rates continue to slow in most countries, it seems possible that we are squashing the curve almost entirely. A total of 380,000 deaths is a terrible tragedy, but it is thankfully just a small fraction of early estimates.

Vigilance remains our great ally as we keep battling against a virus with many unknowns. Infection rates may yet spike as we re-open, and we are still learning about the long-term effects of the virus. For these reasons and more, the great danger to avoid is stating one’s case with too much certainty.

With all this said, however, there is evidence that we might have panicked more than necessary in the early days—and that we can be cautiously optimistic as we return to our normal lives.

So how has our understanding of this pandemic changed since earlier in the year?

Covid-19 is far less deadly than we first thought

The World Health Organisation originally reported that 3.4% of people infected with Covid-19 would succumb to the virus. As with other pandemics, they were confident that this death rate would drop as testing increased.

Just last week, CNN reported that the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now puts the death rate at 0.4%—and that figure is only for those with symptoms. If asymptomatic carriers are included, the death toll could be lower still. (For comparison, the fatality rate of the flu is around 0.1%).

The virus may not easily spread from surfaces

Research released in mid-April found that the novel coronavirus could remain detectable on various surfaces for many hours and even days at a time. This was an important justification for “safer at home” messaging and the shuttering of public facilities and businesses worldwide.

The CDC originally issued guidelines in line with this research, but just over a week ago the institute changed its tone. Based on newer epidemiological data, their website now explains that the virus spreads mainly through person-to-person contact and that it doesn’t easily spread from surfaces.

Lockdowns may actually be ineffective

The debate over extended lockdowns versus reopening the economy has become a heated one, especially in the United States. But a fascinating study comparing various US states showed that, in fact, there is no relationship between Covid-19 deaths and lockdown policies.

Adjusting for variables, the study found that states with strict lockdown policies actually had almost twice as many infections per capita than those without them, and also more deaths per million—the opposite of what might be expected. Wilfred Reilly, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Kentucky State University, writes:

The fact that good-sized regions from Utah to Sweden to much of East Asia have avoided harsh lockdowns without being overrun by Covid-19 is notable. The original response to Covid-19 was driven by an understandable fear of an unknown disease. The epidemiologist Neil Ferguson projected that 2.2 million people could die in the US alone, and few world leaders were willing to risk being the one who would allow such grim reaping to occur … And empirical analyses of national and regional response strategies, including this one, do not necessarily find that costly lockdowns work better against the virus than social distancing.

Lockdowns may lead to global famine

It’s widely acknowledged that locking down would have had a devastating impact on the world economy. What the debate in Western countries has largely missed, however, is how lockdowns here will affect food supply chains elsewhere.

Many families in developing nations rely heavily on international tourism for survival. Others depend on family members in the West—who are now out of work—sending regular financial support.

All of this has led David Beasley, director of the United Nations World Food Program, to warn that the world could face “multiple famines of biblical proportions within a short few months.” In his assessment, there is “a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic impact of Covid-19 than from the virus itself.”

Lockdowns have prompted a spike in suicides

Another story only now beginning to make the news is the adverse affects of lockdowns on mental health and suicide. Following Boris Johnson’s announcement of a lockdown, numbers of people in the UK reporting significant depression and anxiety more than doubled.

Studies in the US reveal similar trends there, even suggesting that more lives will ultimately be lost than were saved through lockdowns. Here in Australia, modelling conducted at Sydney University warns that an additional 1,500 suicides may result from the impact of the coronavirus restrictions.

Doctors in California report seeing more deaths from suicide than coronavirus since the lockdowns began. Similar stories are emerging from countries as diverse as India, the UK and Thailand.

Reactions to the virus may be causing a wider health crisis

There may also be a broader health crisis developing. About 600 American physicians recently sent a letter to the White House warning of patients avoiding routine medical tests and emergency care due to excessive fear of the virus. The cancelling of elective and routine procedures has likewise contributed to their concerns.

“These include 150,000 Americans per month who would have had a new cancer detected through a routine screening that hasn’t happened, millions who have missed routine dental care to fix problems strongly linked to heart disease/death, and preventable cases of stroke, heart attack, and child abuse,” the letter says.

Where to from here?

There is no doubt that we are still facing a global health emergency. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives to Covid-19. And while many Western nations are experiencing a reprieve, our attention shifts to countries like Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico whose death rates continue to rise.

Without the intervention of governments, this pandemic could have been much more dire. And we must be careful not to expect perfect foresight from our leaders, or judge them using data that is only now emerging.

But as we learn more about Covid-19 and our responses to it, we can only hope that national leaders learn from newly emerging data, from the wide-ranging effects of their decisions, and from one another.

The post How has our understanding of Covid-19 changed? appeared first on MercatorNet.



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Monday, June 1, 2020

Agent Provocateurs: Police at Protests All Over the Country Caught Destroying Property

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The United States is on fire. Since the police killing of George Floyd on May 26, millions have taken to the streets in protest, clashing with police. At least 11 people have died, and thousands have been arrested. 15 states (plus Washington, D.C.) have called in the National Guard to quash protests raging in over 100 cities. Violence has been widespread, particularly in the epicenter Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed, with buildings engulfed in flames, stores looted and vehicles destroyed.

While protestors are undoubtedly responsible for some share of the destruction, the country’s law enforcement officials have also been caught multiple times sabotaging and destroying property as well, presumably in an attempt to escalate the situation or to defame the protests.

In Seattle, police were caught on camera smashing through the door of a local Target, seemingly far away from any conflict or commotion.

WHY IS SEATTLE POLICE DESTROYING PROPERTY PLEASE EMAIL TO SPD pic.twitter.com/VYUdt4CwRV

— madison (@macaronimadi) May 31, 2020

In Boston, video circulated appears to show multiple police officers destroying their own car.

Boston police caught smashing their own car. #bostonprotest pic.twitter.com/6EOakRP5yB

— david 🌹🌻 #GreenEnter (@realDavidOnline) June 1, 2020

In San Bernardino, CA, protestors claim they held four hours of peaceful demonstrations until the police arrived, at which point the area was engulfed in flames.

we spent close to four hours peacefully protesting and the minute the police showed up, shit starts burning. something’s rotten in the city of san bernardino. https://t.co/SZMGk4CVvL

— 𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚝𝚕𝚎𝚍𝚞𝚌𝚔 ☽ (@itsablurrsir) June 1, 2020

In Chicago, images show a group of police swarm a car, hitting it with clubs. Eyewitnesses say they were looking for looters but they attacked the wrong vehicle anyway.

Chicago Police smash car windows of suspected store looters. An eye witness says police got the wrong car pic.twitter.com/CeKPjJYM6U

— Kollege Kidd (@KollegeKidd) May 31, 2020

Earlier this week there was also the suspicious case of the Minnesota vandal dubbed “Umbrella Man.” Video shows the oddly dressed individual methodically smashing the windows of an Autozone store. Umbrella Man was immediately identified as Jacob Pederson of the Minneapolis Police Department by online sleuths and real-life acquaintances, something the police have denied.

What is beyond doubt, however, is that police all over the world commonly use agent provocateurs to undermine protests. During the 2009 G20 protests in the United Kingdom, authorities used undercover agents to blend into crowds, spying on them. Police also regularly pose as members of the masked anarchist group Black Bloc, attempting to incite riots. At a 2016 anti-austerity demonstration in Montreal, officers were exposed and fled the protest.

 

Escalating Violence

While the level to which police themselves are destroying property is debatable, what is not is that they have escalated violence at many protests. In Houston, a mounted police officer trampled a female bystander looking the other way at an otherwise passive protest. In New York, videos of multiple cars driving through and over scores of protestors went viral.

Wtf!!! #BlacklivesMaters #brooklynprotest pic.twitter.com/S1oet8JC0x

— Pierre G. (@pgarapon) May 31, 2020

An NYPD officer also attacked a retreating young woman, shouting that she was a “fucking bitch” as he threw her to the ground. She ended up in the hospital with her injuries.

Update: Got her permission with a fuck yeah. The cop pushed her so hard at Barclays & she flung back. She is tiny. Now she’s in the ER after a serious seizure. I’m waiting for updates but have to wait outside because of COVID-19. Please keep my protest sister in your thoughts. pic.twitter.com/MqV0QJ0D8h

— Whitney Hu 胡安行 (@whitney_hu) May 30, 2020

Law enforcement in Erie, PA, were caught on camera kicking a young girl lying in the street in the face. The reason she was lying in the street covering her face, according to protestors, was that she was incapacitated due to tear gas.

Erie, PA cop viciously kicks a woman while she sits on the floor covering her face, this is insane pic.twitter.com/UoZPgw8mMo

— Denis (@Gramatik) May 31, 2020

The police also appear to be making a point of attacking journalists. Denver police threw a reporter into a burning fire for getting too close to them. Minneapolis cops shot freelance reporter Linda Tirado in the face, leaving her permanently blind in one eye. Minnesota police also shot a Reuters crew on Saturday with rubber bullets, one being hit in the face, the other in the arm, and the back of the neck. Los Angeles Times reporter Molly Hennessey-Fiske also reported that police attacked her and a group of other journalists, firing tear gas at point-blank range at her. A CBS News crew, totally alone in a quiet parking lot was set upon by armed officers firing rubber bullets at them, hitting their sound engineer.

Regardless, it is doubtful whether there will be any legal consequences for the police involved in these situations as law enforcement operates under a culture of immunity from prosecution or even censure. Derek Chauvin – Floyd’s killer – for example, was protected by successive state prosecutors in Minnesota, despite multiple times shooting, and in one case, killing civilians while in uniform. If police can often get away with murder, property damage will likely be no big deal.

Feature photo | A policeman walks in front of a burning vehicle as protesters demonstrate, May 30, 2020, in Salt Lake City. Rick Bowmer | AP

Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in ReportingThe GuardianSalonThe GrayzoneJacobin MagazineCommon Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary

The post Agent Provocateurs: Police at Protests All Over the Country Caught Destroying Property appeared first on MintPress News.



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Susan Rice Goes Full Conspiracy Rant On CNN: 'Russians Behind Race Protest Mayhem!'



"This is Infowars-level junk. Should Twitter put a 'False' label on this? Or maybe a hammer and sickle emoji?" he added.

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Two 'Unusual' COVID-19 Features Convincing Scientists It Was Man-Made



Two unique features of SARS-CoV-2 are convincing a growing number of scientists that it was man-made, and not the result of natural evolution, according to the Daily Telegraph. First, the virus binds more strongly to human ACE2 enzymes than any other species, including bats.

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“It’s A Setup”: Mysterious Brick Piles Appear Throughout Major Protest Cities



Mysterious pallets of bricks have been filmed throughout major riot hotspots across the country, in what appears to be more evidence that organized groups are using the George Floyd protests to incite chaos and terrorism throughout the US. “Yo, we got bricks.

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STUDIES SHOW CELL PHONE TOWERS INFLICT SIGNIFICANT DAMAGE TO TREES AND HUMAN HEALTH



Wireless radiation is ubiquitous in the world today but had only gained widespread use several decades ago. With the quickness in which it has been rolled out and utilized, many people have started to question its long-term impact, both on the environment and our health.

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"Most of the world's leaders use it as a prophylaxis" - President of El Salvador on hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus

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President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele has announced that he is taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventative measure against the coronavirus. Bukele told reporters on Tuesday that "most world leaders" are doing the same and has questioned why world leaders are being advised to use it while the public is not. "I use it as a prophylaxis, President Trump uses it as a prophylaxis, most of the world's leaders use it as a prophylaxis," said Bukele. President Donald Trump has been a proponent of the drug, which is normally used to treat malaria, and recently announced that he had been taking it.

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The Question Of Evidence When Governments Push Political Narratives



In the last 30 years, there have been many big events which have been questioned. Iraq is the classic example of where a relative few questioning the pretext of that invasion (Weapons of Mass Destruction – WMDs) were insulted and smeared but later vindicated.

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We're Living the Founding Fathers' Nightmare: America Is Corrupt to the Core

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Our ruling elites, devoid of leadership, are little more than the scum of self-interested, greedy grifters who rose to the top of America's foul-smelling stew of corruption.
The Founding Fathers were wary of institutional threats to liberty and the citizenry's sovereignty, which included centralized concentrations of power (monarchy, central banks, federal agencies, etc.) and the tyranny of corruption unleashed by small-minded, self-interested, greedy grifters who saw all elected offices and positions of government influence as nothing more than a means to increase their own private wealth.
The Founders feared the dominance of self-interested, greedy grifters because they had no concept of the public good: to the greedy grifters, the government existed solely to serve their petty private interests and the interests of their fellow grifters.
The Founders understood that a republic required disinterested leadership capable of looking past petty self-interest to the common good of the people and their nation. They feared the election of self-interested, greedy grifters because once no one served the common good, the republic would fall into a fatal disunity.
We are living the Founders' nightmare, for America is corrupt to the core. While everyone gorging at the public trough bleats about the "common good," their single-minded focus is on aggrandizing as much power and private wealth as possible, and feeding their corrupt crew of insiders, lobbyists, "business interests," bankers and assorted other legalized looters.
America has plenty of law enforcement, prosecutors and prison cells for those who loot a Whole Foods, but none for those who loot the public treasury, commit stock market swindles or financial fraud on a monumental scale. Not only did no one go to prison for the rampant institutionalized fraud of the 2008 looting, a.k.a. the Global Financial Meltdown--the looters were bailed out by the Federal Reserve and Treasury.
More recently, no one was even questioned when a biotech company issued a press release about a Covid-19 vaccine trial that boosted the stock's price just long enough for insiders to dump millions of dollars of shares on a credulous public and also sell new shares in the company at a premium: a classic looting strategy known as pump and dump.
Members of Congress were caught red-handed in what amounted to insider trading, selling millions of dollars in their stock portfolios based on their secret briefings of the coming pandemic, while they reassured the public Covid-19 was no biggie. The farcical "investigation" found no wrong-doing.
Corruption in our political parties is so endemic nobody even bothers listing it except as a parlor game of pondering which party is more corrupt.
Our ruling elites, devoid of leadership, are little more than the scum of self-interested, greedy grifters who rose to the top of America's foul-smelling stew of corruption. As for the nation's infinitely greedy billionaires, if there was any justice left in America, Apple CEO Tim Cook would be rotting in a cell on Devil's Island for buying back billions of dollars of Apple stock--buybacks were illegal not that long ago.
The cells next to his would be crowded with Big Pharma CEOs who advertised their products directly to consumers--also illegal not so long ago.
America is now a pay-to-play paradise of greed and corruption. The "public good" is a PR cover for legalized looting, much of which now depends on the Federal Reserve's free money for financiers, parasites and predators.
If you think this is far too harsh on our current crop of greedy grifters and looters, please read historian Gordon Wood's epic account Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815, which details the many critical debates between founders with fundamentally different views of what structures and safeguards were essential for the Republic's survival.
When we look back at the genius of Hamilton, Madison, et al., and Washington's obsession with ethics and promoting national unity, we are forced to weep for the pathetic, venal scum that passes for "leadership" in America today. The feedback loops the Founders designed to restrain the tyranny of corruption have all failed, as the biggest looters serve their interests under the guise of legality.
The Founders' weren't saints; they were flawed as are all humans, and like all humans, they were products of their era. But they did have a keen, abiding sense of the public good, and when they clashed over ideas about banking, the power of the presidency, etc., it was not for personal gain but for their vision of the common good.
If any of America's "leadership" over the past 30 years had an ounce of concern for the common good, why did they enable financialization and globalization to hollow out the nation's economy and social order? Why did they enable the frauds, skims, scams, cartels and monopolies that are the foundation of virtually every American billionaire's "we pay no taxes" empires of greed?
The tyranny of corruption thrives in an amoral cesspool of anything goes and winners take all.
In today's America, the tyranny of corruption has been so normalized that America's polarized populaces are blind to the profound corruption of their parties and institutions. As in the last days of the Western Roman Empire, the masses are made complicit with bread and circuses, mimicking their "leaders" debasement of the public good to feeding at the public trough.
These are the troubled years that came before the deluge (Jackson Browne), for as Mr. Dylan put it, a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
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