Friday, September 18, 2020

VA state lawmaker FOIAs Northam over concerns hydroxychloroquine ban is politically motivated

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Virginia House Delegate David LaRock is calling on the commonwealth's health commissioner to lift restrictions on the use of antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 patients and suggesting they may be political in nature.

The Republican, in a letter to State Health Commissioner M. Norman Oliver last week, also made a Freedom of Information Act request for all documents held by the Department of Health and Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam pertaining to hydroxychloroquine.

In March, Oliver issued guidance regarding the treatment of coronavirus cases, which read in part, "Prescriptions for chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, mefloquine and azithromycin should be restricted in the outpatient setting and should require a diagnosis 'consistent with the evidence for its use.'"

Several doctors have gone on record stating that they have experienced success treating COVID-19 patients with a combination of hydroxychloroquine, the antibiotic azithromycin and zinc.

Some observational studies have supported the efficacy of the treatment regimen, but most randomized trials have not.

LaRock argued that given the widespread use of the drug, particularly outside the U.S., doctors and patients should be allowed to use it in Virginia without interference from the government.

"In this case, we have an inexpensive treatment, an early treatment that in other countries that is proving to be helpful by virtue of its affordability is one of the most available treatments," the delegate told The Western Journal.

Virginia Health Commissioner Dr. M. Norman Oliver stresses “health equity” but is denying Virginians, including those with very limited resources, the ability to obtain affordable, safe, and successful COVID-19 treatments readily available elsewhere. More:https://t.co/TIU3Ym5bJw pic.twitter.com/fOiY7VISmt

— Delegate Dave LaRock (@LaRock4Delegate) August 1, 2020

In his letter to Oliver, LaRock pointed to India and Costa Rica as examples of other countries that have found success using the drug.

Costa Rica's 3.24 deaths per 100,000 COVID-19 patients and India's 2.82 are much lower than Virginia's 26 deaths per 100,000.

LaRock is concerned that the Northam administration's resistance to hydroxychloroquine may be political, hence his decision to file a FOIA request.

"Our governor, governors of a few other states have been very aggressive with their shutdowns: California, New York, Michigan to name a few," LaRock said.

"There’s a possibility that they have communicated and if they are partly or completely motivated politically then we’re hoping that would come forward from a FOIA," he added.

LaRock noted that Northam has been in a vulnerable place politically since controversial pictures of the governor surfaced in February 2019 from his medical school days, showing him either in blackface or potentially a Ku Klux Klan custom.

The legislator contended that the governor has been in a rebuilding phase since then and one way to curry favor with Democrats is to help deliver Virginia in November, through both the aggressive shutdown to hurt the state economically and denial of life-saving treatment.

"If he were to be influential in delivering Virginia, the Democrats in some way, that might be one of the few opportunities he’d have," LaRock said.

He noted Northam has already taken an extreme position regarding late-term abortions, saying mothers and their doctors should be able to decide whether babies who survive the procedure should be able to live.

"Taking an action that shows an apparent disregard for human life" is something the governor has shown a willingness to do, LaRock said.

"He is a medical doctor, so he understands that. So to make that decision you have to be pretty cold."

LaRock concluded his letter to Oliver writing, "I have encountered a number of Virginians who have concluded with a sense of outrage that [hydroxychloroquine] is being restricted in Virginia not for medical reasons, but for political reasons."

"Every day this directive is left standing, the likelihood increases that more Virginians will die unnecessarily from COVID-19 for lack of proper early treatment."

The Western Journal reached out to the offices of Gov. Northam and Commissioner Oliver for comment but did not immediately receive responses.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

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Alan Dershowitz sues CNN to halt 'malicious' attacks on innocent people

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Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz

Famed liberal lawyer Alan Dershowitz has filed a $300 million defamation lawsuit against CNN over the way it portrayed his testimony during the Democrats impeachment trial against President Trump.

It's not because he wants the money, he says in a column for the Gatestone Institute, where he is a senior fellow.

He wants "innocent people" to be spared the "malicious" attacks from media.

"I intend to donate funds I receive from CNN to worthy charities, including those that defend the First Amendment. Every American will benefit from a judicial decision that holds giant media accountable for turning truth on its head and for placing partisanship above the public interest," he wrote.

"Freedom of speech is designed to promote the marketplace of ideas. It is not a license for giant media companies to deliberately and maliciously defame citizens, even public figures. So when CNN made a decision to doctor a recording so as to deceive its viewers into believing that I said exactly the opposite of what I actually said, that action was not protected by the First Amendment," he said.

He contends that what CNN did is not protected by the First Amendment:

I was asked to present the Constitutional argument against President Trump's impeachment and removal to the United States Senate this past January. For an hour and seven minutes, I argued that if a president does anything illegal, unlawful, or criminal-like -- if he commits treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors -- he satisfies the criteria for impeachment under the Constitution. But if a president engages in entirely lawful conduct motivated in part by the desire to be reelected, which he believes is in the public interest, that would not constitute grounds for impeachment. Everybody seemed to understand the distinction I was drawing. Some agreed, others disagreed. But the distinction was clear between illegal conduct on the one hand, and lawful conduct on the other hand.

Two days later I returned to the Senate to answer questions put to the lawyers by the senators. The first question to me came from Senator Ted Cruz. He asked whether a quid pro quo constituted an impeachable offense. My response was consistent with my argument two days earlier: I said that what "would make a quid pro quo unlawful is if the quo were in some way illegal." If it was, it could constitute an impeachable offense. But if it wasn't illegal or unlawful, the president's political motives could not turn it into an impeachable offense. That was quite clear. Indeed, the next question from the senators was directed to the Democratic House Manager who was asked to respond to my answer. Congressman Adam Schiff, disagreed with my answer, but understood the distinction between lawful and unlawful. So did CNN. When they first showed my answer, they showed it in full, including my statement that a quid pro quo would not be impeachable so long as it was not "in some way illegal." I then went on to say that if a president was motivated in part by his desire to be reelected, which he believes was in the public interest, that motive would not turn a lawful act into an impeachable offense.

Later, however, he said, CNN "made a decision to doctor and edit my recorded remarks so as to eliminate all references to 'unlawful' or 'illegal' conduct."

"They wanted their viewers to believe that I had told the Senate that a president could do anything -- even commit such crimes as 'bribery' and 'extortion' – as long as he was motivated by a desire to be reelected. That, of course, was precisely the opposite of what I said. And that is precisely the reason by CNN edited and doctored the tape the way they did: namely to deliberately create the false impression that I had said the president could commit any crimes in order to be reelected, without fear of impeachment."

CNN paid contributor Joe Lockhart then amplified the attack, he said, stating: "This is what you hear from Stalin. This is what you hear from Mussolini, what you hear from authoritarians, from Hitler, from all the authoritarian people who rationalize, in some cases genocide, based what was in the public interest."

Dershowitz said CNN is responsible for its editing of the video and for its commentators.

"I will insist that giant media not abuse their First Amendment rights in the way that CNN did."

Another prominent legal commentator, Jonathan Turley, said Dershowitz has a higher standard to meet in his defamation suit because he is a public figure.

"I have long been a critic of the open bias shown by CNN under Jeff Zucker who admitted that his attacks on Trump were part of a ratings move. In the age of echo-journalism, CNN has sought to attract viewers who only want to hear that Trump is committing clear crimes, will eventually (if not imminently) be jailed and that Trump supporters are knuckl[e]-dragging, gun-toting zombies marching to his tune of white supremacy and authoritarianism," he wrote.

"However, to prevail against a media company, a public figure must meet a higher standard for defamation. … Dershowitz is clearly a full public figure."

In any case, he said, Dershowitz was "widely misrepresented."

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Trump 'Approved' Assange Pardon In Exchange For Source Of DNC Leaks: Court Testimony

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Trump 'Approved' Assange Pardon In Exchange For Source Of DNC Leaks: Court Testimony Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2020 - 21:20

A new bombshell came out of the seventh day of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's extradition hearing in London: President Trump was "aware of and had approved of" a controversial plan that would offer Assange full pardon in exchange for revealing the source of the famous DNC leaks, according to his legal team on Friday.

This contradicts prior claims of then US Congressman Dana Rochbacher who controversially met with Assange in 2017 to discuss the issue of his pardon. It also puts in doubt longtime Democratic claims that the hack was the work of Russian intelligence, and not a Democratic National Committee insider with access to the emails, as many believe.

Defense witness @suigenerisjen #AssangeCase: 'Rohrabacher proposed a 'win-win' situation, Assange can get 'get on with his life' - a pardon in exchange for information about the source' 'Information from Mr Assange about the source of the DNC leaks would be of value to Mr Trump'. pic.twitter.com/6yjSow50XU

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) September 18, 2020

UK journalist Mohamed Elmaazi was present during Friday proceedings and detailed the following:

US President Donald Trump was "aware of and had approved of" US Congressman Dana Rochbacher and Mr Charles Johnson meeting with Julian Assange in order to secure the source of the DNC Leaks, in exchange for some form of "pardon, assurance or agreement" which would "both benefit President Trump politically" and prevent a US indictment against and extradition of Mr Assange, the Old Bailey heard on Friday.

WikiLeaks subsequently tweeted that this was indeed the hugely revelatory assertion presented in open court on behalf of barrister Jennifer Robinson, eyewitness to the alleged Aug.15, 2017 meeting while Assange was still confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy.

"Rohrabacher explained that he wanted to resolve the ongoing speculation about Russian involvement in the Democratic National Committee (DNC) leaks to WikiLeaks," Robinson said.

"He said that he regarded the ongoing speculation as damaging to U.S.-Russian relations, that it was reviving old Cold War politics, and that it would be in the best interests of the U.S. if the matter could be resolved," she said.

However this wasn't the first time Assange's defense team has made the allegation, as Reuters recounts:

Assange’s legal team first said at hearings in February that Rohrabacher had conveyed a pardon offer to Assange. At the time, the White House called the assertion that Trump had tried to reach a deal with Assange “a complete fabrication and a total lie”.

Rohrabacher also emphasized amid the controversy that he was acting on his own and was not sent on behalf of the White House, but merely offered to ask Trump for an Assange pardon.

"#JulianAssange's lawyer @suigenerisjen's statement was read to the court & it shows the political nature of this indictment saying how a representative of #Trump was sent to the Ecuadorian Embassy to offer #Assange a deal of a presidential pardon in exchange for the DNC Source." pic.twitter.com/ujqWMk7VgS

— Don't Extradite Assange (@DEAcampaign) September 18, 2020

Assange's lawyers are offering it as proof to the court that fundamentally the American extradition request is political in nature and not a matter of violating US laws.

If true, Assange obviously didn't go for it, likely in line with the firmly established WikiLeaks policy of never revealing any source no matter the level of pressure the leaks organization comes under. 



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FBI agent who found Hillary's emails on Weiner's laptop rips agency

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(LONDON DAILY MAIL) An FBI agent who found the messages that led to the Hillary Clinton email investigation being reopened days before the 2016 election said the way the bureau handled the case was 'not ethically or morally right'.

John Robertson feared he would be made a 'scapegoat' when he found the new emails less than two months before voting day, in the wake of DailyMai.com's revelation that Anthony Weiner, whose wife Huma Abedin was Clinton's top aide, was sexting an underage girl.

Robertson watched nervously as the bureau did nothing for a month until he went outside the chain of command and spoke with the US Attorney's office overseeing the case.

Read the full story ›

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Parents protecting 4th Amendment rights with letter to schools

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Lawyers from the Rutherford Institute have created a sample letter for parents to send to schools when their children participate in online classes.

It protects the privacy and Fourth Amendment rights of the family against searches "whether by video or otherwise."

Described as a precautionary "opt out" letter, it's a way for families to assert their privacy rights "and guard against intrusive government surveillance posed by remote learning technologies."

Already there have been several instances this year in which school officials have created havoc for parents by spotting an item in the home during online classes to which they object.

In some cases, education bureaucrats even have dispatched police to visit the homes of students. In one instance, a teacher spotted a toy gun in the home.

"Remote learning should not justify the expansion of draconian zero tolerance policies to encompass so-called 'violations' that take place in students’ homes and home environments. Nor should remote learning be used as a backdoor means of allowing government officials to conduct warrantless surveillance into students’ homes and home environments," said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute.

"While COVID-19 has undoubtedly introduced significant challenges for the schools, the protocols adopted for navigating these circumstances demand a heightened degree of caution lest government officials heedlessly, needlessly and unlawfully violate key constitutional safeguards established to protect the citizenry against invasive and warrantless intrusion into the home."

The lawyers also are warning government officials "against leveraging the current public health situation to further erode the privacy of American citizens."

"At a minimum, schools must not use virtual learning platforms to conduct unwarranted surveillance of students' homes nor use observations made from within the home as a basis for alleging a crime has been or is being committed," they explained.

Rutherford said the letter was created after Isaiah Elliott, a seventh grader at Grand Mountain School in Colorado Springs, Colorado, was reported to police by school officials.

He had a toy gun in his room during a virtual class.

"Not only was the 11-year-old suspended for five days for 'bringing' a 'facsimile of a firearm to school,' but he was also traumatized when a police officer showed up at his home to interrogate him," the organization said.

A deputy was given a video of the art class that was recorded without the knowledge or consent of students or their parents and saw the boys playing with the toy gun.

The child was threatened with possible criminal charges in the future.

Rutherford officials have demanded that the student's record be expunged of any offense.

The letter points out the "serious implications" of the online classes and allows the parents to state: "Our child's participation in remote learning pursuant to district policies and practices does not constitute my/our consent to the district or any other government official conducting a search of our property, whether by video surveillance or otherwise."

They also can state: "Our resident does not become school property for purposes of applying district policies or rules by virtue of my/our child's participation in remote learning."

Some teachers have demanded that parents sign an agreement that they will not observe their child's online classes, even if they are playing on a computer in the home.

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'Virtual School' Dangers: The Hazards Of A Police State Education During COVID-19

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'Virtual School' Dangers: The Hazards Of A Police State Education During COVID-19 Tyler Durden Thu, 09/17/2020 - 23:20

Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”

- George Orwell, 1984

Once upon a time in America, parents breathed a sigh of relief when their kids went back to school after a summer’s hiatus, content in the knowledge that for a good portion of the day, their kids would be gainfully occupied, out of harm’s way, and out of trouble.

Back then, if you talked back to a teacher, or played a prank on a classmate, or just failed to do your homework, you might find yourself in detention or doing an extra writing assignment after school or suffering through a parent-teacher conference about your shortcomings.

Of course, that was before school shootings became a part of our national lexicon.

As a result, over the course of the past 30 years, the need to keep the schools “safe” from drugs and weapons has become a thinly disguised, profit-driven campaign to transform them into quasi-prisons, complete with surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, lock downs, drug sniffing dogs, school resource officers, strip searches, and active shooter drills.

Suddenly, under school zero tolerance policies, students were being punished with suspension, expulsion, and even arrest for childish behavior and minor transgressions such as playing cops and robbers on the playground, bringing LEGOs to school, or having a food fight.

Things got even worse once schools started to rely on police (school resource officers) to “deal with minor rule breaking: sagging pants, disrespectful comments, brief physical skirmishes.”

As a result, students are being subjected to police tactics such as handcuffs, leg shackles, tasers and excessive force for “acting up,” in addition to being ticketed, fined and sent to court for behavior perceived as defiant, disruptive or disorderly such as spraying perfume and writing on a desk.

This is what constitutes a police state education these days: lessons in compliance meted out with aggressive, totalitarian tactics.

The COVID-19 pandemic has added yet another troubling layer to the ways in which students (and their families) can run afoul of a police state education now that school (virtual or in-person) is back in session.

Significant numbers of schools within the nation’s 13,000 school districts have opted to hold their classes online, in-person or a hybrid of the two, fearing further outbreaks of the virus. Yet this unprecedented foray into the virtual world carries its own unique risks.

Apart from the technological logistics of ensuring that millions of students across the country have adequate computer and internet access, consider the Fourth Amendment ramifications of having students attend school online via video classes from the privacy of their homes.

Suddenly, you’ve got government officials (in this case, teachers or anyone at the school on the other end of that virtual connection) being allowed carte blanche visual access to the inside of one’s private home without a warrant.

Anything those school officials see—anything they hear—anything they photograph or record—during that virtual visit becomes fair game for scrutiny and investigation not just by school officials but by every interconnected government agency to which that information can be relayed: the police, social services, animal control, the Department of Homeland Security, you name it.

After all, this is the age of overcriminalization, when the federal criminal code is so vast that the average American unknowingly commits about three federal felonies per day, a U.S. Attorney can find a way to charge just about anyone with violating federal law.

It’s a train wreck just waiting to happen.

In fact, we’re already seeing this play out across the country. For instance, a 12-year-old Colorado boy was suspended for flashing a toy gun across his computer screen during an online art class. Without bothering to notify or consult with the boy’s parents, police carried out a welfare check on Isaiah Elliott, who suffers from ADHD and learning disabilities.

An 11-year-old Maryland boy had police descend on his home in search of weapons after school officials spied a BB gun on the boy’s bedroom wall during a Google Meet class on his laptop. School officials reported the sighting to the school resource officer, who then called the police.

And in New York and Massachusettsgrowing numbers of parents are being visited by social services after being reported to the state child neglect and abuse hotline, all because their kids failed to sign in for some of their online classes. Charges of neglect, in some instances, can lead to children being removed from their homes.

You see what this is, don’t you?

This is how a seemingly well-meaning program (virtual classrooms) becomes another means by which the government can intrude into our private lives, further normalizing the idea of constant surveillance and desensitizing us to the dangers of an existence in which we are never safe from the all-seeing eyes of Big Brother.

This is how the police sidestep the Fourth Amendment’s requirement for probable cause and a court-issued warrant in order to spy us on in the privacy of our homes: by putting school officials in a position to serve as spies and snitches via online portals and virtual classrooms, and by establishing open virtual doorways into our homes through which the police can enter uninvited and poke around.

Welfare checks. Police searches for weapons. Reports to Social Services.

It’s only a matter of time before the self-righteous Nanny State uses this COVID-19 pandemic as yet another means by which it can dictate every aspect of our lives.

At the moment, it’s America’s young people who are the guinea pigs for the police state’s experiment in virtual authoritarianism. Already, school administrators are wrestling with how to handle student discipline for in-person classes and online learning in the midst of COVID-19.

Mark my words, this will take school zero tolerance policies—and their associated harsh disciplinary penalties—to a whole new level once you have teachers empowered to act as the Thought Police.

As Kalyn Belsha reports for Chalkbeat, “In Jacksonville, Florida, students who don’t wear a mask repeatedly could be removed from school and made to learn online. In some Texas districts, intentionally coughing on someone can be classified as assault. In Memphis, minor misbehaviors could land students in an online ‘supervised study.’”

Depending on the state and the school district, failing to wear a face mask could constitute a dress code violation. In Utah, not wearing a face mask at school constitutes a criminal misdemeanor. In Texas, it’s considered an assault to intentionally spit, sneeze, or cough on someone else. Anyone removing their mask before spitting or coughing could be given a suspension from school.

Virtual learning presents its own challenges with educators warning dire consequences for students who violate school standards for dress code and work spaces, even while “learning” at home. According to Chalkbeat, “In Shelby County, Tennessee, which includes Memphis, that means no pajamas, hats, or hoods on screen, and students’ shirts must have sleeves. (The district is providing ‘flexibility’ on clothing bottoms and footwear when a student’s full body won’t be seen on video.) Other rules might be even tougher to follow: The district is also requiring students’ work stations to be clear of ‘foreign objects’ and says students shouldn’t eat or drink during virtual classes.”

See how quickly the Nanny State a.k.a. Police State takes over?

All it takes for you to cease being the master of your own home is to have a child engaged in virtual learning. Suddenly, the government gets to have a say in how you order your space and when those in your home can eat and drink and what clothes they wear.

If you think the schools won’t overreact in a virtual forum, you should think again.

These are the same schools that have been plagued by a lack of common sense when it comes to enforcing zero tolerance policies for weapons, violence and drugs.

These are the very same schools that have exposed students to a steady diet of draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior, overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech, school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students, standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking, politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them, and extensive biometric and surveillance systems that, coupled with the rest, acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech or movement.

Zero tolerance policies that were intended to make schools safer by discouraging the use of actual drugs and weapons by students have turned students into suspects to be treated as criminals by school officials and law enforcement alike, while criminalizing childish behavior.

For instance, 9-year-old Patrick Timoney was sent to the principal's office and threatened with suspension after school officials discovered that one of his LEGOs was holding a 2-inch toy gun. David Morales, an 8-year-old Rhode Island student, ran afoul of his school's zero tolerance policies after he wore a hat to school decorated with an American flag and tiny plastic Army figures in honor of American troops. School officials declared the hat out of bounds because the toy soldiers were carrying miniature guns.

A high school sophomore was suspended for violating the school's no-cell-phone policy after he took a call from his father, a master sergeant in the U.S. Army who was serving in Iraq at the time. In Houston, an 8th grader was suspended for wearing rosary beads to school in memory of her grandmother (the school has a zero tolerance policy against the rosary, which the school insists can be interpreted as a sign of gang involvement).

Even imaginary weapons (hand-drawn pictures of guns, pencils twirled in a “threatening” manner, imaginary bows and arrows, even fingers positioned like guns) can also land a student in detention. Equally outrageous was the case in New Jersey where several kindergartners were suspended from school for three days for playing a make-believe game of "cops and robbers" during recess and using their fingers as guns.

With the distinctions between student offenses erased, and all offenses expellable, we now find ourselves in the midst of what Time magazine described as a “national crackdown on Alka-Seltzer.” Students have actually been suspended from school for possession of the fizzy tablets in violation of zero tolerance drug policies. Students have also been penalized for such inane "crimes" as bringing nail clippers to school, using Listerine or Scope, and carrying fold-out combs that resemble switchblades.

A 13-year-old boy in Manassas, Virginia, who accepted a Certs breath mint from a classmate, was actually suspended and required to attend drug-awareness classes, while a 12-year-old boy who said he brought powdered sugar to school for a science project was charged with a felony for possessing a look-alike drug.

Acts of kindness, concern, basic manners or just engaging in childish behavior can also result in suspensions.

One 13-year-old was given detention for exposing the school to “liability” by sharing his lunch with a hungry friend. A third grader was suspended for shaving her head in sympathy for a friend who had lost her hair to chemotherapy. And then there was the high school senior who was suspended for saying “bless you” after a fellow classmate sneezed.

In South Carolina, where it’s against the law to disturb a school, more than a thousand students a year—some as young as 7 years old—“face criminal charges for not following directions, loitering, cursing, or the vague allegation of acting ‘obnoxiously.’ If charged as adults, they can be held in jail for up to 90 days.”

Things get even worse when you add police to the mix.

Thanks to a combination of media hype, political pandering and financial incentives, the use of armed police officers (a.k.a. school resource officers) to patrol school hallways has risen dramatically in the years since the Columbine school shooting (nearly 20,000 by 2003). What this means, notes Mother Jones, is greater police “involvement in routine discipline matters that principals and parents used to address without involvement from law enforcement officers.”

Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, these school resource officers (SROs) have become de facto wardens in the elementary, middle and high schools, doling out their own brand of justice to the so-called “criminals” in their midst with the help of tasers, pepperspray, batons and brute force.

The horror stories are legion.

One SRO is accused of punching a 13-year-old student in the face for cutting in the cafeteria line. That same cop put another student in a chokehold a week later, allegedly knocking the student unconscious and causing a brain injury.

In Pennsylvania, a student was tased after ignoring an order to put his cell phone away.

A 12-year-old New York student was hauled out of school in handcuffs for doodling on her desk with an erasable marker. Another 12-year-old was handcuffed and jailed after he stomped in a puddle, splashing classmates.

On any given day when school is in session, kids who “act up” in class are pinned facedown on the floor, locked in dark closets, tied up with straps, bungee cords and duct tape, handcuffed, leg shackled, tasered or otherwise restrained, immobilized or placed in solitary confinement in order to bring them under “control.”

In almost every case, these undeniably harsh methods are used to punish kids for simply failing to follow directions or throwing tantrums.

Very rarely do the kids pose any credible danger to themselves or others.

For example, a 4-year-old Virginia preschooler was handcuffed, leg shackled and transported to the sheriff’s office after reportedly throwing blocks and climbing on top of the furniture. School officials claim the restraints were necessary to protect the adults from injury.

6-year-old kindergarten student in a Georgia public school was handcuffed, transported to the police station, and charged with simple battery of a schoolteacher and criminal damage to property for throwing a temper tantrum at school.

This is the end product of all those so-called school “safety” policies, which run the gamut from zero tolerance policies that punish all infractions harshly to surveillance cameras, metal detectors, random searches, drug-sniffing dogs, school-wide lockdowns, active-shooter drills and militarized police officers.

Yet these police state tactics did not made the schools any safer.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, police state tactics never make anyone safer so much as they present the illusion of safety and indoctrinate the populace to comply, fear and march in lockstep with the government’s dictates.

Now with virtual learning in the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic, the stakes are even higher.

It won’t be long before you start to see police carrying out knock-and-talk investigations based on whatever speculative information is gleaned from those daily virtual classroom sessions that allow government officials entry to your homes in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

It won’t take much at all for SWAT teams to start crashing through doors based on erroneous assumptions about whatever mistaken “contraband” someone may have glimpsed in the background of a virtual classroom session: a maple leaf that looks like marijuana, a jar of sugar that looks like cocaine, a toy gun, someone playfully shouting for help in the distance.

This may sound far-fetched now, but it’s only a matter of time before this slippery slope becomes yet another mile marker on the one-way road to tyranny.



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Nashville officials accused of hiding low coronavirus cases linked to bars and restaurants

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Leaked emails between health department officials and the mayor's office seem to show a lack of transparency with the public

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DeVos to withhold millions in federal funds to Connecticut schools over transgenders on girls teams

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Some students, parents argue biological boys on girls teams has created an uneven playing field

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Study finds no statistical difference between COVID and flu in kids - Will the 'Party of Science' agree?

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Fear has dominated the public conversation about COVID-19 due to its previously unknown nature.

How do you get it? What are the symptoms? How fatal is it?

We have seen governors and local officials around the country implement stay-at-home orders and mandatory mask and social-distancing requirements, as well as shut down in-person learning at public schools.

But since the beginning of the pandemic, studies have graced us with data better defining COVID-19, making it less of a boogeyman.

Cases up because of BIG Testing! Much of our Country is doing very well. Open the Schools!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 3, 2020

A study performed at the Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C., concluded that "there were no statistically significant differences" between children with COVID-19 and children with the seasonal flu when it came to "rates of hospitalization, admission to the intensive care unit, and mechanical ventilator use."

Percentages were compared between two groups: patients diagnosed with COVID-19 (315 total, median age of 8.4 years) and patients diagnosed with seasonal influenza (1,402 total, median age of 3.9 years):

Hospitalization Rate:

  • COVID-19 patients: 17 percent
  • Influenza patients: 21 percent

Intensive Care Unit Admission Rate:

  • COVID-19 patients: 6 percent
  • Influenza patients: 7 percent

Use of Mechanical Ventilators:

  • COVID-19 patients: 3 percent
  • Influenza patients: 2 percent

If anything, the notable difference between the two groups was that "[m]ore patients hospitalized with COVID-19 than with seasonal influenza reported clinical symptoms at the time of diagnosis," according to the study, which was published Sept. 8 in JAMA Network Open.

These symptoms included fever, diarrhea or vomiting, headache, body ache or myalgia, and chest pain. Differences among "the number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19" who reported symptoms such as coughing or shortness of breath were "not statistically significant."

This should ease our fears, as the study appears to suggest that COVID-19 is about as dangerous to children as the season flu.

Are school districts ever shut down for the flu?

Studies like the one performed at the Children's National Hospital -- which included COVID-19 patients diagnosed between March 25 and May 15 of this year and flu patients diagnosed between Oct. 1, 2019, and June 6, 2020 -- are supposed to inform us about the virus, therefore informing our response to it.

If Democratic politicians and other public officials ignore the data and continue to treat COVID-19 with the same degree of caution now as they did in March, then the cure has indeed become worse than the problem.

Democrats, who have largely led the way on lockdowns across the country and have tended to be overly cautious when it comes to reopening schools for in-person learning, claim to be the "party of science."

So will they listen to what the science says -- that COVID-19 appears to generally affect children in much the same way as the flu?

President Donald Trump, for his part, has been adamant since March about making informed decisions in response to the virus rather than reacting out of fear:

WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2020

Corrupt Joe Biden and the Democrats don’t want to open schools in the Fall for political reasons, not for health reasons! They think it will help them in November. Wrong, the people get it!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 6, 2020

We need leaders like Trump who will govern by fact rather than fear and who truly work to protect the welfare of Americans.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

The post Study finds no statistical difference between COVID and flu in kids - Will the 'Party of Science' agree? appeared first on WND.



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Daniel Ellsberg Warns U.S. Press Freedom Under Attack in WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange Extradition Case



Legendary Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg says Julian Assange’s extradition hearing in London could have far-reaching consequences for press freedoms.

ORIGINAL LINK

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

SHOULD YOU WEAR A MASK?

ORIGINAL LINK

Full story on the "new science" https://t.co/PCvOeF4EbP

— Jordan Schachtel (@JordanSchachtel) September 16, 2020



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Subpoenas Authorized For Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Halper And Other ‘Spygate’ Figures

ORIGINAL LINK

Via ZeroHedge

The Senate Homeland Security Committee voted on Wednesday to authorize subpoenas for dozens of Obama-era officials involved in ‘spygate,’ including former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, former DNI James Clapper — and longtime US intelligence operative Stephen Halper, who the Obama administration paid nearly half-a-million dollars to help the FBI spy on the 2016 Trump campaign.

The committee authorized chairman Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) to issue notices for taking depositions, subpoenas, records requests, and testimony related to the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation – along with the DOJ Inspector General’s review of said investigation, as well as the “unmasking” of individuals connected to the Trump campaign, transition team, and administration, according to Fox News.

The committee also authorized subpoenas for Sidney Blumenthal, former Obama chief of staff Denis McDonough, former FBI counsel Lisa Page, former FBI agent Joe Pientka, former ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, former FBI director of counterintelligence Bill Priestap, former White House national security adviser Susan Rice, former FBI agent Peter Strzok, former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith – who pleaded guilty to making a false statement in the first criminal case arising from U.S. Attorney John Durham’s review of the investigation into links between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign – among others.

As part of the authorization, Johnson may subpoena “the production of all records” related to the FBI’s initial Russia probe, as well as unmasking requests for “James Baker, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, DOJ official Bruce Ohr, FBI case agent Steven Somma, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Teftt, former deputy assistant attorney general Tashina Gauhar.”

Halper, meanwhile, is a former government official and longtime spook for the CIA and FBI, who was outed as the FBI informant who infiltrated the Trump campaign after the Washington Post and the New York Times ran reports that corroborated a March report by the Daily Caller detailing Halper’s outreach to several low-level aides to the Trump campaign, including Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.

Halper, 73, cut a colorful figure as he strolled through diplomatic, academic, and espionage circles, having served in the Reagan, Ford, and Nixon administrations. –Daily Mail

These contacts are notable, as Halper’s infiltration of the Trump campaign corresponds with the two of the four targets of the FBI’s Operation Crossfire Hurricane – in which the agency sent counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and others to a London meeting in the Summer of 2016 with former Australian diplomat Alexander Downer – who says Papadopoulos drunkenly admitted to knowing that the Russians had Hillary Clinton’s emails.

The 74-year-old Halper who split his time between his Virginia farm and teaching at Cambridge, approached several Trump campaign aides during the 2016 US election for purposes of espionage – on behalf of the FBI, headed at the time by the recently very quiet James Comey. Halper continued to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page well after the election, and now we find that he was trying to infiltrate the Trump administration.

In short:  

  • The FBI recruited Halper to spy on the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016
  • After forming relationships with two Trump campaign aides, Halper invited one of them, George Papadopoulos, to work on a policy paper in London, where the 73-year-old professor/spy brought up Russian emails
  • Halper approached Trump aide Carter Page during an election-themed conference at Cambridge on July 11, 2016. The two would stay in contact for the next 14 months, frequently meeting and exchanging emails.
  • Then, after the election, Halper reportedly tried to infiltrate the Trump administration, pushing for a job in the State Department, according to Axios.

All the while, Halper had been paid handsomely by the Obama administration through a Department of Defense contract, one of four going back to 2012. The most recent contract had a start date of September 26, 2016 – three days after a September 23 Yahoo! News article by Michael Isikoff about Trump aide Carter Page, which used information fed to Isikoff by “pissgate” dossier creator Christopher Steele. The FBI would use the Yahoo! article along with the unverified “pissgate” dossier as supporting evidence in an FISA warrant application for Page.

It appears Johnson will have plenty of digging to do if Republicans hold onto the Senate in November.



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Virtual School Dangers: The Hazards of a Police State Education During COVID-19

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“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”—George Orwell, 1984

Once upon a time in America, parents breathed a sigh of relief when their kids went back to school after a summer’s hiatus, content in the knowledge that for a good portion of the day, their kids would be gainfully occupied, out of harm’s way, and out of trouble.

Back then, if you talked back to a teacher, or played a prank on a classmate, or just failed to do your homework, you might find yourself in detention or doing an extra writing assignment after school or suffering through a parent-teacher conference about your shortcomings.

Of course, that was before school shootings became a part of our national lexicon.

As a result, over the course of the past 30 years, the need to keep the schools “safe” from drugs and weapons has become a thinly disguised, profit-driven campaign to transform them into quasi-prisons, complete with surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, lock downs, drug sniffing dogs, school resource officers, strip searches, and active shooter drills.

Suddenly, under school zero tolerance policies, students were being punished with suspension, expulsion, and even arrest for childish behavior and minor transgressions such as playing cops and robbers on the playground, bringing LEGOs to school, or having a food fight.

Things got even worse once schools started to rely on police (school resource officers) to “deal with minor rule breaking: sagging pants, disrespectful comments, brief physical skirmishes.”

As a result, students are being subjected to police tactics such as handcuffs, leg shackles, tasers and excessive force for “acting up,” in addition to being ticketed, fined and sent to court for behavior perceived as defiant, disruptive or disorderly such as spraying perfume and writing on a desk.

This is what constitutes a police state education these days: lessons in compliance meted out with aggressive, totalitarian tactics.

The COVID-19 pandemic has added yet another troubling layer to the ways in which students (and their families) can run afoul of a police state education now that school (virtual or in-person) is back in session.

Significant numbers of schools within the nation’s 13,000 school districts have opted to hold their classes online, in-person or a hybrid of the two, fearing further outbreaks of the virus. Yet this unprecedented foray into the virtual world carries its own unique risks.

Apart from the technological logistics of ensuring that millions of students across the country have adequate computer and internet access, consider the Fourth Amendment ramifications of having students attend school online via video classes from the privacy of their homes.

Suddenly, you’ve got government officials (in this case, teachers or anyone at the school on the other end of that virtual connection) being allowed carte blanche visual access to the inside of one’s private home without a warrant.

Anything those school officials see—anything they hear—anything they photograph or record—during that virtual visit becomes fair game for scrutiny and investigation not just by school officials but by every interconnected government agency to which that information can be relayed: the police, social services, animal control, the Department of Homeland Security, you name it.

After all, this is the age of overcriminalization, when the federal criminal code is so vast that the average American unknowingly commits about three federal felonies per day, a U.S. Attorney can find a way to charge just about anyone with violating federal law.

It’s a train wreck just waiting to happen.

In fact, we’re already seeing this play out across the country. For instance, a 12-year-old Colorado boy was suspended for flashing a toy gun across his computer screen during an online art class. Without bothering to notify or consult with the boy’s parents, police carried out a welfare check on Isaiah Elliott, who suffers from ADHD and learning disabilities.

An 11-year-old Maryland boy had police descend on his home in search of weapons after school officials spied a BB gun on the boy’s bedroom wall during a Google Meet class on his laptop. School officials reported the sighting to the school resource officer, who then called the police.

And in New York and Massachusetts, growing numbers of parents are being visited by social services after being reported to the state child neglect and abuse hotline, all because their kids failed to sign in for some of their online classes. Charges of neglect, in some instances, can lead to children being removed from their homes.

You see what this is, don’t you?

This is how a seemingly well-meaning program (virtual classrooms) becomes another means by which the government can intrude into our private lives, further normalizing the idea of constant surveillance and desensitizing us to the dangers of an existence in which we are never safe from the all-seeing eyes of Big Brother.

This is how the police sidestep the Fourth Amendment’s requirement for probable cause and a court-issued warrant in order to spy us on in the privacy of our homes: by putting school officials in a position to serve as spies and snitches via online portals and virtual classrooms, and by establishing open virtual doorways into our homes through which the police can enter uninvited and poke around.

Welfare checks. Police searches for weapons. Reports to Social Services.

It’s only a matter of time before the self-righteous Nanny State uses this COVID-19 pandemic as yet another means by which it can dictate every aspect of our lives.

At the moment, it’s America’s young people who are the guinea pigs for the police state’s experiment in virtual authoritarianism. Already, school administrators are wrestling with how to handle student discipline for in-person classes and online learning in the midst of COVID-19.

Mark my words, this will take school zero tolerance policies—and their associated harsh disciplinary penalties—to a whole new level once you have teachers empowered to act as the Thought Police.

As Kalyn Belsha reports for Chalkbeat, “In Jacksonville, Florida, students who don’t wear a mask repeatedly could be removed from school and made to learn online. In some Texas districts, intentionally coughing on someone can be classified as assault. In Memphis, minor misbehaviors could land students in an online ‘supervised study.’”

Depending on the state and the school district, failing to wear a face mask could constitute a dress code violation. In Utah, not wearing a face mask at school constitutes a criminal misdemeanor. In Texas, it’s considered an assault to intentionally spit, sneeze, or cough on someone else. Anyone removing their mask before spitting or coughing could be given a suspension from school.

Virtual learning presents its own challenges with educators warning dire consequences for students who violate school standards for dress code and work spaces, even while “learning” at home. According to Chalkbeat, “In Shelby County, Tennessee, which includes Memphis, that means no pajamas, hats, or hoods on screen, and students’ shirts must have sleeves. (The district is providing ‘flexibility’ on clothing bottoms and footwear when a student’s full body won’t be seen on video.) Other rules might be even tougher to follow: The district is also requiring students’ work stations to be clear of ‘foreign objects’ and says students shouldn’t eat or drink during virtual classes.”

See how quickly the Nanny State a.k.a. Police State takes over?

All it takes for you to cease being the master of your own home is to have a child engaged in virtual learning. Suddenly, the government gets to have a say in how you order your space and when those in your home can eat and drink and what clothes they wear.

If you think the schools won’t overreact in a virtual forum, you should think again.

These are the same schools that have been plagued by a lack of common sense when it comes to enforcing zero tolerance policies for weapons, violence and drugs.

These are the very same schools that have exposed students to a steady diet of draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior, overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech, school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students, standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking, politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them, and extensive biometric and surveillance systems that, coupled with the rest, acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech or movement.

Zero tolerance policies that were intended to make schools safer by discouraging the use of actual drugs and weapons by students have turned students into suspects to be treated as criminals by school officials and law enforcement alike, while criminalizing childish behavior.

For instance, 9-year-old Patrick Timoney was sent to the principal’s office and threatened with suspension after school officials discovered that one of his LEGOs was holding a 2-inch toy gun. David Morales, an 8-year-old Rhode Island student, ran afoul of his school’s zero tolerance policies after he wore a hat to school decorated with an American flag and tiny plastic Army figures in honor of American troops. School officials declared the hat out of bounds because the toy soldiers were carrying miniature guns.

A high school sophomore was suspended for violating the school’s no-cell-phone policy after he took a call from his father, a master sergeant in the U.S. Army who was serving in Iraq at the time. In Houston, an 8th grader was suspended for wearing rosary beads to school in memory of her grandmother (the school has a zero tolerance policy against the rosary, which the school insists can be interpreted as a sign of gang involvement).

Even imaginary weapons (hand-drawn pictures of guns, pencils twirled in a “threatening” manner, imaginary bows and arrows, even fingers positioned like guns) can also land a student in detention. Equally outrageous was the case in New Jersey where several kindergartners were suspended from school for three days for playing a make-believe game of “cops and robbers” during recess and using their fingers as guns.

With the distinctions between student offenses erased, and all offenses expellable, we now find ourselves in the midst of what Time magazine described as a “national crackdown on Alka-Seltzer.” Students have actually been suspended from school for possession of the fizzy tablets in violation of zero tolerance drug policies. Students have also been penalized for such inane “crimes” as bringing nail clippers to school, using Listerine or Scope, and carrying fold-out combs that resemble switchblades.

A 13-year-old boy in Manassas, Virginia, who accepted a Certs breath mint from a classmate, was actually suspended and required to attend drug-awareness classes, while a 12-year-old boy who said he brought powdered sugar to school for a science project was charged with a felony for possessing a look-alike drug.

Acts of kindness, concern, basic manners or just engaging in childish behavior can also result in suspensions.

One 13-year-old was given detention for exposing the school to “liability” by sharing his lunch with a hungry friend. A third grader was suspended for shaving her head in sympathy for a friend who had lost her hair to chemotherapy. And then there was the high school senior who was suspended for saying “bless you” after a fellow classmate sneezed.

In South Carolina, where it’s against the law to disturb a school, more than a thousand students a year—some as young as 7 years old—“face criminal charges for not following directions, loitering, cursing, or the vague allegation of acting ‘obnoxiously.’ If charged as adults, they can be held in jail for up to 90 days.”

Things get even worse when you add police to the mix.

Thanks to a combination of media hype, political pandering and financial incentives, the use of armed police officers (a.k.a. school resource officers) to patrol school hallways has risen dramatically in the years since the Columbine school shooting (nearly 20,000 by 2003). What this means, notes Mother Jones, is greater police “involvement in routine discipline matters that principals and parents used to address without involvement from law enforcement officers.”

Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, these school resource officers (SROs) have become de facto wardens in the elementary, middle and high schools, doling out their own brand of justice to the so-called “criminals” in their midst with the help of tasers, pepperspray, batons and brute force.

The horror stories are legion.

One SRO is accused of punching a 13-year-old student in the face for cutting in the cafeteria line. That same cop put another student in a chokehold a week later, allegedly knocking the student unconscious and causing a brain injury.

In Pennsylvania, a student was tased after ignoring an order to put his cell phone away.

A 12-year-old New York student was hauled out of school in handcuffs for doodling on her desk with an erasable marker. Another 12-year-old was handcuffed and jailed after he stomped in a puddle, splashing classmates.

On any given day when school is in session, kids who “act up” in class are pinned facedown on the floor, locked in dark closets, tied up with straps, bungee cords and duct tape, handcuffed, leg shackled, tasered or otherwise restrained, immobilized or placed in solitary confinement in order to bring them under “control.”

In almost every case, these undeniably harsh methods are used to punish kids for simply failing to follow directions or throwing tantrums.

Very rarely do the kids pose any credible danger to themselves or others.

For example, a 4-year-old Virginia preschooler was handcuffed, leg shackled and transported to the sheriff’s office after reportedly throwing blocks and climbing on top of the furniture. School officials claim the restraints were necessary to protect the adults from injury.

6-year-old kindergarten student in a Georgia public school was handcuffed, transported to the police station, and charged with simple battery of a schoolteacher and criminal damage to property for throwing a temper tantrum at school.

This is the end product of all those so-called school “safety” policies, which run the gamut from zero tolerance policies that punish all infractions harshly to surveillance cameras, metal detectors, random searches, drug-sniffing dogs, school-wide lockdowns, active-shooter drills and militarized police officers.

Yet these police state tactics did not made the schools any safer.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, police state tactics never make anyone safer so much as they present the illusion of safety and indoctrinate the populace to comply, fear and march in lockstep with the government’s dictates.

Now with virtual learning in the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic, the stakes are even higher.

It won’t be long before you start to see police carrying out knock-and-talk investigations based on whatever speculative information is gleaned from those daily virtual classroom sessions that allow government officials entry to your homes in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

It won’t take much at all for SWAT teams to start crashing through doors based on erroneous assumptions about whatever mistaken “contraband” someone may have glimpsed in the background of a virtual classroom session: a maple leaf that looks like marijuana, a jar of sugar that looks like cocaine, a toy gun, someone playfully shouting for help in the distance.

This may sound far-fetched now, but it’s only a matter of time before this slippery slope becomes yet another mile marker on the one-way road to tyranny.

The post Virtual School Dangers: The Hazards of a Police State Education During COVID-19 appeared first on LewRockwell.



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Lawn-sign virtue signaling and the death of politics

ORIGINAL LINK

california-fires-driving-vid-600.png

This week, America's West Coast found itself on fire. Millions of acres have burned across California, Oregon and Washington. The smoke clouds have been so immense that they have blotted out the sun in certain areas; air quality has been so poor that hundreds of thousands of people have been forced indoors.

There are several key reasons for the extent of these wildfires. Federal and state policies have been geared around stifling wildfires for decades, rather than allowing controlled burns to prevent accretion of flammable vegetation. As ProPublica reports, California alone saw the burning of 4.4 million to 11 million acres per year prehistorically; between 1999 and 2017, that number dropped to only 13,000 acres per year; in February 2020, Nature Sustainability concluded that California would need to burn some 20 million acres to restabilize in terms of fire. Meanwhile, even those who pursue controlled burns must jump through extraordinarily regulatory hoops to do so: The Clean Air Act treats smoke from controlled burns as a pollutant, for example.

Even California Gov. Gavin Newsom admitted to President Donald Trump that the state had botched its fire policy: "We have not done justice for our forest management." But that admission was the mere precursor to a more important point for Newsom: that climate change is truly to blame for the wildfires. "The science is in … that climate change is real," Newsom lectured Trump.

In reality, climate change may have had some effect on the California wildfires, but that effect is entirely secondary in scope to the effect of bad policy. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the temperature in Southern California has increased approximately 3 degrees F. over the past century. Since 1980, the temperature in California has increased less than 2 degrees F. Does climate change exacerbate dryness and heat? Of course. But fire policy was the chief failure here.

What's more, no matter what Trump believes on climate change, the science is clear: Nothing Trump could have done would have made a measurable impact on the climate between 2017 and 2020. In fact, if the entire United States were to cease carbon emissions today, the climate would be just 0.17 degrees C. less hot by 2100.

Yet the media and Democrats suggested that the true story of the wildfires was indeed climate change. This theme was trumpeted by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden first and foremost: Biden emerged from his basement long enough to stand before a field of waving grass and explain that Trump's unwillingness to signal proper concern about climate change would kill Americans. "We have four more years of Trump's climate denial," Biden gravely intoned. "How many suburbs will be burned in wildfires?"

The answer: exactly as many as would be burned with four years of Biden governance. But the point here isn't shaping public policy; it's shaping perception. Politics has become about the art of the lawn sign.

In California, there's one lawn sign that has become quite popular. It reads, "IN THIS HOUSE, WE BELIEVE: BLACK LIVES MATTER; WOMEN'S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS; NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL; SCIENCE IS REAL; LOVE IS LOVE; KINDNESS IS EVERYTHING." The sign is generally plunked in the front yard of a nice suburban home, where it acts as a sort of unearned symbol of virtue. The semantically overloaded tautologies are designed to act as a dissociation tactic from supposedly benighted fellow Americans who apparently don't believe "SCIENCE IS REAL" or that "KINDNESS IS EVERYTHING."

But, of course, the sign conveys nothing beyond a self-congratulatory insistence that the sign owner is a better human than other humans. By phrases like "SCIENCE IS REAL," the sign owner conveys that if you attribute California wildfires to anything beyond Trumpian evil and climate change, you deny science. Which is anti-scientific, of course.

But it's effective. That's why New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo tweeted, "Science knows" (cynics might point out that science suggests shipping COVID-19-positive seniors into nursing homes is idiotic). That's why Dr. Jill Biden tweeted, "#VoteForScience" (cynics might ask whether she believes a woman can become a man). By portraying your lack of a political program as entirely irrelevant to the broader question of science denial, you can avoid the hard conversations politics was intended to address.

Lawn signs don't solve problems. But they do make us feel good. Which is what politics are supposed to achieve nowadays in the absence of actual solutions. Perhaps at some point we might ask why politics make us feel so rotten these days.

wnd-donation-graphic-2-2019

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Tuesday, September 15, 2020

On C-SPAN, Richard Gage leaves 9/11 Truth in a Time-Warp



blog by Jim Fetzer  [Editor’s note: Lenin observed, “The best way to control the opposition is to lead it”. Richard Gage, the founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, was featured on C-SPAN on 1 August 2014.

ORIGINAL LINK

Twitter Suspends Account Of Chinese Scientist Who Published Paper Alleging Covid Was Created In Wuhan Lab

ORIGINAL LINK
Twitter Suspends Account Of Chinese Scientist Who Published Paper Alleging Covid Was Created In Wuhan Lab Tyler Durden Tue, 09/15/2020 - 14:44

On Sunday afternoon we asked how long before the twitter account of the "rogue" Chinese virologist, Dr. Li-Meng Yan, who yesterday "shocked" the world of establishment scientists and other China sycophants, by publishing a "smoking gun" scientific paper demonstrating that the Covid-19 virus was manmade.

How long before the @LiMengYAN119 account is silenced

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 13, 2020

We now have the answer: it took less than two days. A cursory check of Dr Yan's twitter page reveals that the account has been suspended as of this moment.

The suspension took place shortly after Dr Yan had accumulated roughly 60,000 followers in less than 48 hours. The snapshot below was taken earlier in the day precisely in anticipation of this suspension.

It was not immediately clear what justification Twitter had to suspend the scientist who, to the best of our knowledge, had just 4 tweets as of Tuesday morning none of which violated any stated Twitter policies , with the only relevant tweet being a link to her scientific paper co-written with three other Chinese scientists titled "Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route" which laid out why the Wuhan Institute of Virology had created the covid-19 virus.

While we appreciate that Twitter may have experienced pressure from either China, or the established scientist community, to silence Dr Yan for proposing a theory that flies in the face of everything that has been accepted as undisputed gospel - after all Twitter did just that to us - we are confident that by suspending her account, Jack Dorsey has only added more fuel to the fire of speculations that the covid virus was indeed manmade.

Why not let other scientists respond to the all too valid arguments presented in Dr. Yan's paper? Isn't that what "science" is all about? Because if we have already crossed the tipping point when anyone who proposes an "inconvenient" explanation for an established "truth" has to be immediately censored, then there is little that can be done to salvage the disintegration of a society that once held freedom of speech as paramount.

For those who missed it, here is our post breaking down Dr. Yan's various allegations which twitter saw fit to immediately censor instead of allowing a healthy debate to emerge in the open.

We hope Twitter will provide some explanation for this unprecedented censorship.



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Playing With Fire: Democrats and Their Military Quislings Flirt With Borderline Seditious Military Coup



As the election approaches, more and more ominous evidence is quickly piling up that the U.S. military’s nearly 250-year separation from national politics is eroding. Frightening signs indicate that senior members of the military are open to an anti-Trump coup d’etat.

ORIGINAL LINK