MSNBC guest compares Trump to Hitler: Outrageous

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This past Wednesday morning, Donny Deutsch, a frequent guest on MSNBC and a former program host, claimed that there was "'no difference' between President Donald Trump's rhetoric and what 'Adolf Hitler preached' in Germany in the 1930s." He added, "And we're here and what is the difference between Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump? I'm not saying there is a Holocaust, but when you look at the tactics, that is where we are right now."

This is as outrageous as it is ignorant, and Deutsch needs to be called on the carpet for his ugly and inflammatory comments. As stated by the National Council of Young Israel, "To in any way liken President Trump to Adolf Hitler, who is arguably the most heinous anti-Semite in world history, is unequivocally repugnant, and trivializing the Holocaust to make a cheap political point on television is a tremendous insult to the victims and their progeny."

Joe Scarborough, who hosted the interview with Deutsch, is also to be faulted for going along with Deutsch rather than stopping him in his tracks. It is also inexcusable that Deutsch, himself Jewish, called out Jews who support Trump.

What was Deutsch's fundamental argument? He said, "But what was going on in the early '30s Germany? Basically you had a destruction of belief in the free press, you had blurring between the executive branch and the Justice Department, you have creating an other, whether it's Muslims, whether it's Mexicans, whether it's congressmen who weren't born in this country, and then you have the destruction of free elections."

But Deutsch is hardly the first to make the Trump-Hitler comparison. In fact, I devoted an entire chapter of my book "Evangelicals at the Crossroads: Will We Pass the Trump Test?" to a major statement by the International Bonhoeffer Society (IBS), which made comparisons between Nazi Germany and America today, mentioning Trump by name but not Hitler. The statement explicitly called for "ending Donald Trump's presidency."

Obviously, I can't duplicate here everything laid out in the book, but let's put aside inflammatory rhetoric and look at the simple facts. Can a valid comparison be made between Trump and Hitler and between America today and pre-World War II Nazi Germany? Absolutely, categorically not.

Trump has been our president for the last four years. During this time he has not imprisoned his political opponents, not overruled the Supreme Court or Congress, not launched aggressive new wars in other parts of the world, and not shut down the dissenting press (although he has certainly sought to expose "fake news").

In stark contrast, within months of Hitler coming into power in 1933, the Dachau concentration camp was opened for political dissenters, Hitler announced some of his conquest and expansion plans, and the first boycott of Jewish businesses was implemented.

As for targeting the Jews, the Yad Vashem website explains, "In September 1935 the 'Nuremberg Laws' were passed, stripping the Jews of their citizenship and forbidding intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews. Jews were banned from universities; Jewish actors were dismissed from theaters; Jewish authors' works were rejected by publishers; and Jewish journalists were hard-pressed to find newspapers that would publish their writings. Famous artists and scientists played an important role in this campaign of dispossession and party labeling of literature, art and science. Some scientists and physicians were involved in the theoretical underpinnings of the racial doctrine."

How do we even contrast that with Trump's pro-Israel actions, including moving our embassy to Jerusalem, seeking to broker a peace plan with the Palestinians that was strongly pro-Israel, and forging historic peace treaties with the UAE and Bahrain? And what of the fact that Ivanka and Jared are practicing Jews, meaning that some of Trump's own grandchildren are Jewish?

When it comes to the treatment of the Christian community, Trump has fought tirelessly to defend religious liberties, both at home and abroad. Again, in stark contrast, already in 1933, Nazi church leaders were calling for all pastors to make a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler while demanding that all baptized Jews be expelled from the churches.

For those who claim that Trump's Christian supporters will follow him no matter what, those same supporters challenged him when he pulled our troops from Syria, with Pat Robertson even issuing a public warning. Can you imagine what would happen if Trump changed his stance on abortion or religious liberty?

Speaking of abortion, rather than starting a campaign to put to death "the least of these" (as Hitler did in 1939, euthanizing the mentally ill and disabled), Trump has been a courageous opponent of abortion, thereby fighting for the life of "the least of these."

As for Trump's alleged racism, the corollary of his purported white nationalism, why is it that he has been steadily growing in popularity in the black community? And why were so many black voices heard at the recent RNC?

As I noted in "Evangelicals at the Crossroads," a March 4, 2020, op-ed piece in the New York Times discussing a major survey of 40,000 black voters (from March-December 2019) indicated that "Trump's favorability rating among black voters overall increased from 7 percent in 2016 to 18 percent in 2019. …"

Think back to the viral video of an Ethiopian immigrant leading in prayer at a 2019 Young Black Leadership Summit at the White House following the president addressing the packed room of young black leaders. Could you imagine a world in which Hitler held a Young Jewish Leadership Summit?

And what of Trump's actions in prison reform, funding of historic black colleges and helping drop the unemployment rates for all Americans, including blacks and other minorities? How can this possibly be compared to the actions of a murderous madman like Hitler?

I have no desire to deny Trump's many flaws or to downplay the divisive nature of his rhetoric. But to compare him to Adolf Hitler, also comparing his followers to Hitler's Nazis, is simply obscene, not to mention a terrible slight on Hitler's victims. Deutsch should be ashamed of himself.

(For all who want to defend Deutsch's words, including Deutsch himself, my phone lines are open. I'd be more than happy to debate this with you on the radio. The light will quickly dispel the darkness. For my relevant video commentary, see here.)

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Norwegian official nominates Trump for Nobel prize, citing Israel-UAE agreement

Trump announced last month that the U.S. was helping to support the full normalization of ties between Israel and UAE, a historic breakthrough in relations in the Middle East and part of the administration's efforts to shore up support against Iran.

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Deutsche Bank Scandal Could Create Greatest Economic Crisis in History

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eutsche Bank, along with several of the world’s biggest commercial banks, are embroiled in a global money laundering scandal that spans over two decades, as documents leaked to BuzzFeed show the movement of $2 Trillion in illicit cash through the Western banking establishment.

The cache of Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) detailing years of potentially illegal banking transactions were shared with 108 news organizations in 88 countries, according to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). These records are a requirement for any financial institution that engages in dollar-denominated transactions anywhere in the world and are filed with the Treasury Department’s intelligence unit, the Financial Crimes and Enforcement Network or FinCEN.

The more than 2,100 SARs released to the press are considered “historical” documents by the implicated banks, who responded with their usual Pontius Pilate routine when reached for comment by the media and washed their hands of the matter by claiming to have fulfilled their legal obligation before the U.S. Treasury “as part of our partnership with regulators and law enforcement to protect the global financial system,” as a Deutsche Bank statement puts it.

The Trump-linked German bank is, by far, the most beset by the suspicious activity records totaling well over half of the $2 Trillion-dollar sum the FinCEN Files trace, with approximately $1.3 Trillion of it moving through the scandal-plagued financial institution. Most of the press coverage in the U.S., so far, has focused on the ties to Russian oligarchs and assorted narratives that are hovering over election-year American political discourse. Deutsche Bank’s central role, nevertheless, betrays a far greater problem as the bank’s potential collapse could send the financial world into a tailspin and result in the greatest economic crisis in history.

1MDB

As European bank stocks tumble amid the revelations, FinCEN condemned the unlawful disclosure of the SARs to the press and warned that it could “impact the national security of the United States.” Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department is in the middle of the largest asset-recovery effort in U.S. history, filing its latest complaint regarding $300 Million the department is attempting to recover for an $11.7 Billion Malaysian sovereign wealth fund called 1MDB, one of the major cases highlighted by ICIJ in its report on the leaked SARs.

Absent from most coverage of the FinCEN leaks, however, is how all of these banks and financial institutions are not only laundering trillions, but are doing so together and in consort with each other, as is plainly demonstrated in the 1MDB fraud case. Most publications point the finger at JP Morgan Chase as the entity that moved more than $1 Billion for Jho Low, one of the 1MDB’s central figures, but they fail to mention the role of Goldman Sachs, which orchestrated a significant part of the scheme that defrauded the Malaysian people and led to criminal charges against 17 of its current and former executives, including Goldman Sachs former vice-chairman and now president of Chinese mega eCommerce platform Alibaba, Michael Evans.

The Malaysian government recently agreed to drop charges against Goldman Sachs after a $2.5 Billion-dollar settlement was reached with the giant investment bank; nearly a fourth of the $10.5 billion-dollar debt hole it created for Malaysia’s ruling coalition, resulting in the cancelation of major infrastructure projects. Deutsche Bank was also involved in the multi-pronged attack of the Western financial vultures on the Malay through the provision of hundreds of millions in stock-buy-back loans through the 1MDB fund for the former prime minister, who was convicted in July of graft.

A Hit Job?

The ostensible purpose of the 1MDB fund was to finance infrastructure projects, like the oil and gas pipeline projects shelved as a result. But, according to a report by Business Insider, the money “veered into lavish spending,” such as art purchases, and, quite fittingly, to the production of the “The Wolf of Wall Street” – a story about the unmitigated fraud and graft that the very same people and institutions ensnared in this scandal carry out day in and day out.

It is reported that former Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, met with the disgraced Malaysian PM and the fugitive businessman, Jho Low, before the fund’s debut in 2009. Another lawsuit brought against Goldman Sachs details the investment bank’s “central role in a long-running effort to corrupt former executives” of An Abu Dhabi wealth fund called International Petroleum Investment Corporation and its subsidiary, Aabar Investments, which partnered with the 1MDB, calling it “a massive, international conspiracy to embezzle billions of dollars.”

Few can argue with that characterization, but as the chickens come home to roost, it is important to keep an eye on who gets exposed and who doesn’t; who gets punished and who doesn’t. The FinCEN Files are meant to draw most of the attention to Deutsche Bank and has all the hallmarks of a premeditated hit on one of the lynchpins of the prevailing financial structure. Much like Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns were sacrificed for the subprime mortgage crisis and opened the door for even greater consolidation among the “too-big-to-fail” banks, a calculated take-down of Deutsch Bank will, no doubt, allow for a similar consolidation to occur at a far larger scale.

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If you don’t want a Biden ‘1619 Commission’, you should oppose Trump’s ‘1776 Commission’

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Last week Americans celebrated Constitution Day, when they honour the moment when the delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed this extraordinary document in Philadelphia in 1787.

Sadly, recent University of Pennsylvania civics surveys reveal that 37 percent of American adults cannot name one right protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, and only 39 percent can name the three branches of government. Additionally, there have been recent concerns about national division and a perceived abandonment of our shared history and underlying philosophy, including debate over the widespread adoption of The New York Times’s flawed 1619 Project in classrooms throughout the country.

It is understandable for us to be concerned about a crisis in civics education. Often, a proposed solution to this concern is to add more force to the mix: Make kids learn about history and government — or else. Use my preferred curriculum, my worldview. The debates that frequently rage in education revolve around whose curriculum, whose worldview should be imposed­ — paid for, of course, by all taxpayers.

To commemorate Constitution Day yesterday, President Donald Trump gave an impassioned speech at the National Archives Museum in Washington, DC emphasising a renewed dedication to our country’s founding principles. Yet, in trying to inspire respect for the Constitution, the president may have inadvertently compromised it.

Trump called for a national commitment to “patriotic education” and proclaimed that he would sign an executive order to create the “1776 Commission” that would ensure that this patriotic education gets promulgated in schools throughout the country.

This may sound like a positive initiative — an effort to bring together a fractured country and remind us all of American exceptionalism. But especially on Constitution Day, it’s important to remember that there is no constitutional role for the federal government in education.

If this administration uses the unjust powers of the federal government to push “patriotic education” in schools, then another administration could use these same expanded powers to push “critical theory education” or any other vision of what US schools should be required to teach. This would further weaken local control of schooling and have widespread implications for American education in all its forms.

Emboldening the federal government to execute education policy may seem appealing when your preferred politician or party is in power, but that power remains when leadership inevitably sways to another politician or party. If you wouldn’t support a Biden “1619 Commission,” then you shouldn’t support Trump’s “1776 Commission”. If you wouldn’t support mandatory “critical race theory” taught in your local schools, then you shouldn’t support mandatory “patriotic education” either.

The Founding Fathers understood this. They recognised the tendency in human nature toward controlling others and pushing our will upon them. In framing the Constitution, they intentionally limited the powers of the federal government to certain enumerated functions, while allowing the states more autonomy and discretion.

As James Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers, no. 45:

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”

Education is not mentioned anywhere in the US Constitution and is not one of the enumerated powers of the federal government.

Indeed, the US Department of Education has been unconstitutional since its creation in 1979. It continues to assume more influence in American education, from overseeing the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), to setting expectations for curriculum frameworks, standardized testing, and accountability.

These are responsibilities better left to the states — just as the Constitution says. The Tenth Amendment reminds us that any “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

One of the primary causes of Americans’ increasingly divisive political conflicts is that the federal government has gotten too big. It has amassed more powers than the Constitution allows, and wields unprecedented control over the lives of American citizens. Each national election feels overwhelmingly consequential, because it is. Whoever wins gets to push their agenda and ideology onto the states and the people in the way that the Founders feared.

Imagine where this could lead. If the federal government continues to expand control over state and local education, then national elections could result in a whiplash of policies that are added or removed every four to eight years. Your kindergartener might learn one nationally prescribed worldview that changes entirely by the time she is in middle school.

One could argue that although it shouldn’t be, the federal government is currently entangled in education policy and therefore its attempts to influence teaching and learning are justified. But, a key objective for the federal government should be to minimise its role in education and push policies to the states. For example, Trump was right to reinforce the need for school choice in yesterday’s speech, but these school choice policies should be enacted at the state level, without interference from politicians in Washington, DC.

State-level school choice policies make it possible for families to vote with their feet, choosing states with their preferred public school curriculum or greater access to other education options. That is one of the great virtues of America’s federal structure, as enshrined in the Constitution. On the other hand, a nationwide curriculum or educational approach would trap American families and erode freedom and choice.

If the federal government shrank to its intended size, concentrating only on its constitutionally enumerated powers, national elections wouldn’t be so fraught. The federal government would have no control over education and no authority to create coercive commissions that tell citizens what to believe. Power would be rightfully disbursed to the states, with 50 different approaches to education and other social policies. There would be no federal 1776 Commission and no nationally-imposed “patriotic education,” just as there could be no 1619 Commission and no nationally-imposed “critical theory” education. The Constitution would then be preserved and honored as the Founders intended.

Truly patriotic education can only be achieved in a constitutional, and therefore patriotic, manner.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

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Reminder: CDC Says Facemasks Don’t Stop Covid

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The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has an estimated 15,000 in its workforce; some 88 of them work on Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID), a highly regarded, peer-reviewed journal of epidemiology, published by the CDC.

April 3, 2020 — CDC Face Mask Order 
On April 3, 2020, the CDC announced that everyone should wear face masks, wash their hands, and clean surfaces in order to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

CDC 4/3/20: Wear Masks To Fight Covid 
On April 3, 2020, the CDC advised “Everyone should wear a cloth face cover when they have to go out in public, for example to the grocery store or to pick up other necessities.” Private and governmental policies across the US and internationally were crafted according to this statement.

CDC 4/3/20: Wash Hands To Fight Covid 
On April 3, 2020, the CDC advised “Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds especially after you have been in a public place, or after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing.”

CDC 4/3/20: Clean Surfaces To Fight Covid 
On April 3, 2020, the CDC advised “Clean AND disinfect frequently touched surfaces daily. This includes tables, doorknobs, light switches, countertops, handles, desks, phones, keyboards, toilets, faucets, and sinks.”

May 2020 — Researchers Prove the Opposite 
May 2020, Dr. Jingyi Xiao, an epidemiologist from the University of Hong Kong, and her colleagues, ran a paper entitled “Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures” at Emerging Infectious Diseases, in which they sought to separate myth from reality and to demonstrate what data-driven measures can be helpful in preventing the spread of Covid-19. Xiao’s research showed the opposite of the April 3, 2020, statements from the CDC to be true.

Superior Methodology 

Xiao’s efforts began with more diligent and rigorous methodology than recent reviewers who came before: “We searched 4 databases (Medline, PubMed, EMBASE, and CENTRAL) for literature in all languages. We aimed to identify randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of each measure for laboratory-confirmed influenza outcomes for each of the measures because RCTs provide the highest quality of evidence.”

Throughout 2020, it has been easy for low-quality Covid research to get published and then circulated through the media, entirely out of context. This has been detrimental in a time when high quality and dependable information would be most useful in the protection of life and livelihood in 2020. Consequently, Xiao does not treat every study the same. Randomized controlled trials with laboratory confirmed outcomes were the standard their review of the literature sought. Rather than cherry-picking the studies with fashionable results, they sought truth and quality over political correctness and assessed the gold standard studies. Not surprisingly, in doing so, Xiao produced the exact opposite results of what you would find from Fox News, the New York Times, Google, or their many clones.

Xiao unsurprisingly reports what researchers of randomized controlled trials with laboratory-confirmed outcomes have long known:

“Although mechanistic studies support the potential effect of hand hygiene or face masks, evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza. We similarly found limited evidence on the effectiveness of improved hygiene and environmental cleaning. We identified several major knowledge gaps requiring further research, most fundamentally an improved characterization of the modes of person-to-person transmission.”

You read that right:
1.) It doesn’t matter if you sanitize surfaces;
2.) It doesn’t matter if you wash your hands;
3.) Masks don’t work.

CDC Journal 5/1/20: Sanitizing Surfaces Doesn’t Protect Against Covid-19

Sanitizing surfaces is effective for the prevention of gastrointestinal illnesses, but it doesn’t protect from Covid: “Although we found no evidence that surface and object cleaning could reduce influenza transmission, this measure does have an established impact on prevention of other infectious diseases.”

CDC Journal 5/1/20: Washing Your Hands Doesn’t Protect Against Covid

Similarly, hand washing is useful for the prevention of gastrointestinal illness, but the laboratory-confirmed, randomized controlled trials show that it is not useful in the prevention of Covid: “Hand hygiene is a widely used intervention and has been shown to effectively reduce the transmission of gastrointestinal infections and respiratory infections. However, in our systematic review, updating the findings of Wong et al., we did not find evidence of a major effect of hand hygiene on laboratory-confirmed influenza virus transmission. Nevertheless, hand hygiene might be included in influenza pandemic plans as part of general hygiene and infection prevention.”

CDC Journal 5/1/20: Masks Don’t Work

Face masks might help prevent the spread of some infections, but there’s no proof that they work with Covid-19 or influenza: “We did not find evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission, either when worn by infected persons (source control) or by persons in the general community to reduce their susceptibility. However, as with hand hygiene, face masks might be able to reduce the transmission of other infections and therefore have value in an influenza pandemic when healthcare resources are stretched.”

CDC Journal 5/1/20: Face Masks Don’t Work When Worn By The Sick Either

Some say face masks should be worn by the infected, not the healthy. In doing so, they can prevent infected people from transmitting the virus to the healthy. Xiao found no such evidence of this. Rather than relying on datasets based on questionnaires such as “Did you suffer from the sniffles last week?” Xiao, in examining this issue, only looked at laboratory-confirmed cases and found no proof that people sick with Covid or influenza should wear masks either:

“There is limited evidence for their effectiveness in preventing influenza virus transmission either when worn by the infected person for source control or when worn by uninfected persons to reduce exposure. Our systematic review found no significant effect of face masks on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.”

CDC Journal 5/1/20: Don’t Wear A Dirty Mask, It Can INCREASE  The Risk Of Covid Transmission

Xiao takes if a step further, saying not only are face mask be unhelpful in stopping the spread of Covid-19, they can actually increase the risk of transmission: “Proper use of face masks is essential because improper use might increase the risk for transmission. Thus, education on the proper use and disposal of used face masks, including hand hygiene, is also needed.”

What Is “Proper Use?”

Xiao cites a World Health Organization (WHO) notice from 2009 entitled “Advice on the use of masks in the community setting in Influenza A (H1N1) outbreaks” that offers some well-established advice for proper mask use. Again Xiao has demonstrated that proper mask has does not stop Covid-19 but to cite the WHO the great risk of the mask is that transmission is increased: “Using a mask incorrectly however, may actually increase the risk of transmission, rather than reduce it.”

The following from WHO is listed as behavior that can increase transmission:

• Touching mouth and nose
• Touching a mask in use
• Touching a clean mask with unwashed hands
• Not washing hands every time after touching a dirty mask
• Wearing a mask that is not new and clean
• Continuing to wear a mask after it has become damp, instead of immediately replacing it
• Re-using a single-use mask
• Not discarding a single-use mask immediately upon removal, as opposed to leaving it in the immediate environment

Have you seen even one person follow that protocol in 2020? Proper mask protocol doesn’t stop there either. Rather than informing the public that such behaviors may actually help spread Covid, the most vocal instead demand that everyone be masked, regardless of the potential negative impact it may have in increasing the transmission of Covid-19.

CDC Journal 5/1/20: Covering Your Mouth Doesn’t Even Seem To Work

Etiquette in many places says you cover your mouth when you sneeze or cough. Xiao went so far as to investigate this also, finding such respiratory etiquette unhelpful in preventing the transmission of Covid, and encouraging others to take up that area of research: “Respiratory etiquette is often listed as a preventive measure for respiratory infections. However, there is a lack of scientific evidence to support this measure. Whether respiratory etiquette is an effective nonpharmaceutical intervention in preventing influenza virus transmission remains questionable, and worthy of further research.”

Caveat: Xiao Did Not Look At N95 And P2 Respirators

Focusing on the most pressing matters that relate to the greatest number of people, Xiao looked at face masks and not respirators. Respirators come with their own warning. They, too, require their own hygiene and fit protocol in order or be effective, protocol seldom followed.

Xiao writes: “We did not consider the use of respirators in the community. Respirators are tight-fitting masks that can protect the wearer from fine particles and should provide better protection against influenza virus exposures when properly worn because of higher filtration efficiency. However, respirators, such as N95 and P2 masks, work best when they are fit-tested, and these masks will be in limited supply during the next pandemic.”

Who Is More Credible — Political Hacks or Gold Standard Scientists?

It would look, on the surface, like the CDC is contradicting itself. One organ of the CDC said one thing in April and another organ said something else in May, which would not be the first confusing message from the CDC. One may feel torn between who to believe. That need not be the case at all.

You have the top brass at the CDC, composed of political hacks saying to wear something, anything, as long as it vaguely resembles a mask. Their statements shift whenever it’s expedient to them. Then, in contrast, you have the peer-reviewed scientists pointing to the well-established, long-established fact that masks don’t work for reducing coronavirus transmission.

I don’t know what the political hacks are trying to pull or why, and I don’t particularly need to know in order to understand why not to trust political hacks. What I know is that what they are saying is predictably inaccurate. This is the case for much of what political hacks say. Just because it comes from the hacks does not make it wrong, but hacks have a bad track record when it comes to science. They just don’t have a primary penchant for truth. If they did, they would not be political hacks.

Face masks don’t work in preventing the spread of Covid. The science on that is well-established.

2020 Has Been A Year Of Superstition, Not Science

Many of the weird, OCD, germophobe, anti-social, hypochondriac maneuvers that have become commonplace in 2020 are rooted in superstition, but not science. While these interventions may be the advice of those reading Fox News marquees or New York Times headlines, they are not data-driven interventions backed by peer-reviewed, laboratory-confirmed, randomized controlled trials. Those trials say something clearly different.

Face mask orders are the territory of the science-denier, the anti-logician, the mob with torches ready to punish Copernicus for applying the scientific method and thinking according to his findings. It’s not me saying that, that’s just the 14 gold standard studies used by Xiao et al.

Knowing This, What Will You Do?

Now I have tremendous regard for those who will take this knowledge and evangelize. I also have tremendous praise for those who will take that knowledge and crash the gates. My method has been to encourage people with exemptions to say the words “I am unable to wear a face mask safely.” Thousands have successfully used this technique. Millions can successfully use it. One free person at a time, these lockdowns come to an end, not when any blue ribbon committee says they end.

If you need help navigating the logistics of your local face mask orders, I’ve got you covered here , here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Conclusion: The Experts Know A Lot Less Than They Have Led Us To Believe

Xiao provides a useful slice of humble pie to the people who suddenly became Covid experts  and tinpot dictators this spring. The aggressive mask-police don’t know as much as they think they do. The “experts” that the aggressive mask police are getting their info from don’t either.

Unfortunately, this sober appraisal doesn’t sell advertising, fund studies, or make careers, so instead of being the most cited study of 2020, Xiao has practically been ignored.

Perhaps in your own circle of friends, you can change this by sharing this article.

And while you’re at it, please also send me your tales from the face mask compliance checkpoint, and help me put an end to this tyranny.

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Is Evidence Masks Don’t Work Being Purged From the Internet?

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The dentistry journal Oral Health Group has removed a research paper from its website which found masks do not work to halt the spread of disease. They claim the paper is “no longer relevant in the current climate”.

The article – “Why Face Masks Don’t Work: A Revealing Review” – has been used as a source before by us before (see here), and was a great collation of all the research studies done on the effectiveness of masks as a disease prevention tool. In general it found the evidence suggested masks have little to no value as infection preventatives.

The author, John Hardie (BDS, MSc, PhD, FRCDC), is a 30-year veteran of dental practice, specialising in infection control. The paper had over 30 references and sources from academic journals and peer-reviewed studies.

It’s hard to say exactly when the article was taken down, but the Wayback Machine shows it to be intact on 25th of June, simply missing from July 2nd-9th, and replaced with the current statement on July 10th.

Fortunately once something is on the internet it is there forever, and you can view an archived version of the article here.

The statement itself is worth reading, not for what it says so much as what it doesn’t say:

If you are looking for “Why Face Masks Don’t Work: A Revealing Review” by John Hardie, BDS, MSc, PhD, FRCDC, it has been removed. The content was published in 2016 and is no longer relevant in our current climate.

Note it doesn’t say the work was “inaccurate” or “factually incorrect”, only that it is “no longer relevant in our current climate”. It also doesn’t say if it was taken down at the author’s request, or that he has formally repudiated his work.

This is not the first time evidence that masks don’t work has been removed from the internet.

Read the Whole Article

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Early data suggests newly reopened schools are avoiding surges in coronavirus cases

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(WASHINGTON EXAMINER) – Preliminary data suggest that coronavirus transmission in schools may not prove as severe as public health experts feared.

The first set of data published in the new National COVID-19 School Response Data Dashboard, launched by researchers at Brown University, showed that only a fraction of students and teachers had been diagnosed with the coronavirus from Aug. 31 to Sept. 13. The tracker shows an average of 230 cases per 100,000 students and 490 cases per 100,000 staff members. The tracker collected data from over 550 schools, about 300 of which were open for in-person classes.

"These numbers will be, for some people, reassuring and suggest that school openings may be less risky than they expected," Emily Oster, an economist at Brown University, told the Washington Post.

Oster, who created Brown's tracker, noted that the school coronavirus rates are "much lower" than those in the surrounding community, suggesting that the virus is not spreading as rapidly as expected inside school buildings.

Read the full story ›

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Former federal prosecutor lays out blueprint for rescuing America

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Editor's note: Following is an exclusive excerpt from the forthcoming book "It Takes A Revolution" by attorney, former federal prosecutor, founder of both Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, and longtime WND columnist Larry Klayman.

As I penned in my autobiography, "Whores: Why and How I Came to Fight the Establishment!" which still can be purchased on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and other booksellers, I founded Judicial Watch, Inc. on July 29, 1994 – twenty-six years ago – because I had come to see government and the legal system as growing increasingly corrupt. As a former federal prosecutor in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, I found many of my colleagues and the judges before whom I appeared to be highly politicized at best, acting and making decisions not on the merits but on their own personal and professional interests.

This offended me greatly, and my experience before a federal judge in Los Angeles, the less-than-Honorable William D. Keller, in the early 1990s, was the final straw that broke this camel's back. I thus conceived and founded Judicial Watch.

In the ten years that followed at Judicial Watch, Inc., and thereafter at Freedom Watch, Inc., which I also founded, I experienced many "successes" fighting dishonesty and outright corruption in government and the legal system. But to be candid, I never scored a knockout punch.

One federal judge in particular, the Honorable Royce C. Lamberth, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the tribunal located in what has become known as "the swamp," had the power, for instance, given the cases I put before him, to relegate Bill and Hillary Clinton – the Bonnie and Clyde of American politics – to multiple years, if not life, in prison, which is where they certainly belong. But even Lamberth, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, shied away from holding them accountable, merely ordering up depositions of persons in and around them to expose their illegalities.

At one point, before Lamberth was the criminal contempt of the Clintons, where they had hidden or destroyed millions of incriminating emails that exposed their criminal acts in a number of the more than forty scandals during their reign of terror in the White House during the 1990s. The judge held an evidentiary hearing on this caper, which lasted weeks. But in the end, years after I left Judicial Watch to run for the U.S. Senate in my home state of Florida, he dismissed the case and took an exit stage left.

Judge Lamberth hailed from Texas and apparently lost interest in truly holding the Clintons accountable after his native son George W. Bush won the presidency in 2000. In retrospect, it would appear that he allowed me to conduct what, for him, must have been mostly a dog and pony show simply to weaken the political standing of the Clintons. But while they were down, they certainly were not out.

In the many years that followed, Bill and Hillary continued their felonious ways, using the Clinton Foundation and other subterfuges as a virtual racketeering enterprise, selling access and favors to the highest bidders – and reaping in hundreds of millions of dirty dollars in cold cash – after President Barack Hussein Obama picked Hillary as his secretary of state. Lamberth had let the Clintons go free, and they sped away from his clutches in a court-sanctioned getaway car, making the original Bonnie and Clyde envious as they lay in their graves.

I am, of course, thankful for the little that this federal jurist did and still does. But unfortunately, Lamberth is simply the best of the worst on the federal bench, which, as our great Founding Father and third American president predicted, would eventually morph into a bench full of despots, particularly since, for some reason, it has become the mistaken norm to believe that they were given life tenure on the bench – there is no such provision in the Constitution – and are not accountable to the electorate.

The Clintons are just one of tens of thousands of examples of how the judicial branch has failed miserably, in the last decades in particular, to protect the American people from the tyranny of the other two branches of government – the executive and legislative branches – and the tyranny within its own judicial branch.

I have regrettably come to the conclusion, after toiling in the bowels of our legal system for going on forty-four years, appearing thousands of times before cowardly and outright corrupt federal judges, that the nation cannot be restored to that shining city on a hill envisioned by former President Ronald Reagan, nor to the faithful city described in the Old Testament Book of Isaiah, through the present-day federal courts.

And thus, I've titled this book, my book, "It Takes A Revolution: Forget the Scandal Industry!" I am sure you will recognize that the title is a cynical play on a book, not coincidentally, written by Hillary Clinton called "It Takes a Village." Yes, Mrs. Clinton, it does take a village, but not in the sense that you wrote about, which promoted a collective leftist and socialist approach to life and our body politic. My book focuses on "Village People" who take it upon themselves to enforce their God-given right to live free of government tyranny, as our Founding Fathers eloquently expressed in the greatest document ever written short of the Bible, the Declaration of Independence.

Federal judges in particular have failed to protect us and have been one of the principal problems, not the solution. Figuratively speaking, it is they who should be first to the guillotines, the subtitle of Chapter Five on the tyranny of the judicial branch.

Read on, fellow patriots, and learn how we need to turn off cable television, and the other purveyors of self-serving deception and profit that milk what has become the scandal industry. Then, if you want to protect and preserve the vision and conception of our great and enlightened Founding Fathers, roll up your sleeves and join me in getting to work. "Live Free or Die!," the battle cry of our first American revolution, rings true again today!

To the barricades, dear fellow Americans, and we will, with great resolve, win the second American revolution without a shot being fired if we peacefully and, without further, potentially terminal delay, act forcefully.

It is the time, as it was in 1776, to take matters into our own legal hands!

Important note: Larry Klayman's "It Takes A Revolution" officially launches on Oct. 27, but is available for preorder now.

The post Former federal prosecutor lays out blueprint for rescuing America appeared first on WND.

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House GOP demands FBI investigate, explain inaction on Biden allegations

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'The FBI has been aware of some alleged misconduct for years,' Rep. Jim Jordan wrote in letter to Director Christopher Wray.

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"Let Me Explain What Happens Next..." - A Reader Sums It All Up Very Ominously

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"Let Me Explain What Happens Next..." - A Reader Sums It All Up Very Ominously Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2020 - 05:00

Authored by 'Austrian Peter' via The Burning Platform,

A reader recently wrote me a long letter on how he feels about all this ‘Plandemic’ stuff.  I thought it would be good to share it as there is so much in it which rings bells of truth for me...

[emphasis ours]

I’ve just woken up after reading ZeroHedge late into the night. I awoke with the conviction that Covid is being used to roll out a police state:

They know it’s not deadly, it’s no longer spreading and Lockdown is killing off the few small businesses which remain viable. Yet Boris now insists upon banning the assembly of more than 6 people. He has recalled some petty bureaucrats to act as street enforcers and requested people become snitches who report on their neighbours for any breaches of these guidelines. This automatically means we must now all fear our neighbours, or strangers who take our car number. How better to destroy the mutual trust upon which society is built?

Just think if one were to refuse to bend the knee.  In Australia and Spain the police have been caught using excessive force against those not wearing masks. Intimidating isn’t it? I’m thinking I may have to start using one. Yet the science is clear – masks offer no protection.

So we know these new restrictions are not being driven by the authority’s concern for our health. And what is the difference between where we are now and making it normal for the police to come to your door and arrest you for a breach of their protocols? What is the difference between where we are now and an oppressive police state?

There is only one difference between now and full-on state oppression:  A change in the Zeitgeist.

They need an event that will change the mood of the people – an event or a series of events that make us afraid of ‘them’. A psychological shock that will give the police the conviction that things are so bad ‘a little force is necessary’ to ensure things don’t get out of control. And then, magically, the current ‘temporary restrictions’ become state oppression. What could that game changer be?

Imagine this November: The US has 100 cities descending into what looks like the start of civil war as patriots turn out to stop Antifa burning down Middle America. Kamala Harris is calling for the army to ‘evict’ Trump because he refuses to leave the White House on the grounds that he won the popular vote while the mail-in ballots were fraudulent.

For the Brits, Brexit has caused problems at the ports – among other things some foodstuffs are not getting through. Germany’s economy has cratered after the EU stopped them exporting cars to the UK (Trumps already tariffed them), and the EU’s bank has insisted Germany let the 500 non-viable, medium sized biz (currently kept alive with emergency funding) go bankrupt.

Deutsche Bank collapses and this initiates a global banking crisis. Europe has no way of saving its banks as all the European economies are so damaged and 20% of workers have already been laid off.  It’s a Greek style banking crisis on steroids. People are pulling out cash in the expectation of daily cash limits. Physical gold will have already disappeared from the market place. So any biz with money in the bank is frantically buying bitcoin in an attempt to avoid their working capital being ‘bailed in’.

The banks will have already pulled the plug on their most vulnerable customers – the airlines – so virtually no planes are flying. Dover is jammed up with lorries lining the approach roads. So no one can leave Blighty.  And if you did, the emergency measures intended to pre-empt Covid’s Second Wave require you to be kept in quarantine at your destination. Locked down in a hotel, under military guard (as in NZ), for 4 weeks at your own expense and with frequent testing to ensure you are not a carrier. With full bio-metric data being collected and filed on an EU wide register. In practice this means that travel becomes so fraught that escape from your homeland is just about impossible.

You get the gist?  November could be the end of world as we know it’ (TEOTWAWKI).  But my point is this: Why are we looking at such a catastrophe if their goal is not a police state? No one destroys the globe’s economy and creates the conditions for a 10 year Greater Depression by accident. This has to be a planned, intentional destruction of much of global civilization.

The evidence is overwhelming. This civilization has been purposefully destroyed. Right now we’re in an unreal time (like the beautiful summer just before WW1’s carnage).  It’s like Wiley E Coyote who has gone over the cliff, is still running but not yet started to fall. But when we fall, how will people react as they realize that they will never work again, never pay off the mortgage, never collect their pensions?  If we have state oppression and economic chaos by Christmas then what will be the next stage of their takeover?

The world’s economy is already doomed. The already broken supply chains ensure it can only get worse.  Once the derivative market goes, and banks can no longer fund the credit lines crucial for importers and exporters, then trade will collapse and thus food supplies cease.

It would seem to be inevitable that America is going to see more conflict as the Dems & Soros show no signs of wishing to abort their colour revolution. Maybe in 2021, maybe a year or two later, but there will come a time when a credit shortage leads to deflation. So the banks will print more and then rain down helicopter money which will lead to inflation. And then the currencies will start collapsing. Many people understand that this is inevitable. But what happens when people come to accept that money isn’t go to be worth the paper it’s printed on?  And thus keeping a job may not be worth the danger of leaving your house or of leaving safety.

I summarise one of last night’s articles:

“the beasts of burden don’t rebel, they just no longer show up. Not showing up can take a number of forms: early retirement, sick leave, a demand to work halftime, a workers’ compensation stress leave, and of course, resignation and quitting as in: “take this job and shove it”.  They slip noiselessly into the cracks and crevasses and once they’re gone, there’s nobody left to replace them.”

“As the Vital Few 4% realize the system no longer works for them and opt out, this will have an out-sized effect on the 64%, most likely urban dwellers, highly dependent on increasingly brittle, fragile services that depend on the Vital Few for their functionality. Think of London’s tube train drivers phoning in sick – ideology won’t matter.

Those dropping out may be Conservative or Progressive or they may have lost interest entirely in politics and all the other circuses that serve to distract the populace from the crises dissolving the glue that held the system together. “So I won’t get rich, that dream died a long time ago.”  What I’m interested in now is getting my life back and getting the heck out of Dodge as things fall apart.”

The rich will escape to their holiday cottages. The poor will riot – but what then?  As the social facade cracks, and the economic system breaks, there is neither a society nor an economy to fall back on. By Christmas it will be obvious that normality has gone for ever.

So what will ‘they’ do with millions of unemployed, frightened people?  If  ‘they’ leave the internet on then the people will start to organize – first politically – but when that doesn’t work, riots and then finally revolution. Turn it off and they will riot without being organized. Turn off phones and all hell will break out. Don’t turn them off and the kids will organize against the state – trash cars or burn down the local police station.  Have you noticed how some police stations look like forts?

My point is that it’s very hard not to see ‘events’ hitting the fan this November. And once they do it’s very hard to see life ever going back to stability, let alone ‘normality’. Rather, there will be an overwhelming need to control {oppress} the population before they take over the state. But what do you do with millions of unemployed in a failed economy who are doomed to losing their currency, long term poverty and probably food shortages. There is only one thing ‘they’ can do. Kill them.

Ideally, for the elite, Covid’s Second Wave will have a higher morbidity rate. Enough to steadily reduce the population but not so fast they can’t be buried in plague pits. It would have to be bad enough to justify a harsh Lockdown but it’s difficult to see that being feasible without giving the people electricity, internet & food and the money to pay for it. And even then it’s only a temporary fix as Lockdown can’t last for ever. Permanent Lockdown would soon destroy the currency which will mean no electricity or food.

Maybe Covid-19 v1.0 was supposed to kill off more people but it failed. Or maybe it worked as intended – they didn’t want to risk killing off too many in case the Lockdown failed and we revolted. But I don’t see they have much choice now. ‘The Fourth Turning’ will be turbulent until 2025 and things won’t really be resolved until 2030. How are they going to manage us for another 10 years? How will they control us? Feed us?

They can start a war but no one is going to turn up. Fight a war for the elite? Use a gun to kill people you don’t know?  That’s not going to happen. And they need to preserve the professional soldiers to ‘maintain the peace’ in the cities. So what options do they have but to release a more potent bio-weapon – nuclear war perhaps?

One of the scary things about working through ‘their’ options is that they don’t have many. Things have gone too far – they’ve destroyed the world’s economy. The system is stuffed. What are ‘they’ going to do with 2bn unemployed people. Even if there is enough food but the US has a developing dust bowl, Africa’s suffered huge locust devastation, and China’s preparing for food shortages. How do unemployed people pay for it?  Who can give them money without destroying the currency or if the currency is already destroyed?

A simple thing like the current fall in the number of sunspots is indicating an immediate future of colder weather and lower crop yields. Add into that, fuel shortages for agricultural machinery, lack of fertilizer – Nitrogen is made by burning lots of oil, lack of supply lines, and loss of credit lines. With people in Lockdown ‘they’ would be relying on a planned economy (not a free market) which is going to be inefficient. A planned economy is completely incapable of ensuring a stable food supply when there are shortages and the world is chaotic.

It’s not even feeding our cities that will be prime problem. It will be feeding the cities in Mexico and North Africa. They can’t cope with food price inflation. But they won’t starve – they’ll flood into the USA or cross the Mediterranean – lucky us!  And what will Erdogan in Turkey do to feed his people – nothing good!  If there are real food shortages then note that there are huge Muslim populations in France & Sweden, Turks and refugees in Germany, Pakistani ghettos in UK and plenty more where they all came from.

I’m feeling concerned. The problem is I can’t see Brexit solving our problems. Sure, it may not exacerbate them as much as I fear. November’s events may not trigger us into a state of oppression. But do you see my point?  Things have got so bad, they can only get worse. November is bound to see some changes and they may well trigger a change in the Zeitgeist, though how significant depends on ‘events, dear boy, events’.

But whatever happens I think it’s virtually guaranteed that both the economy and society will keep on deteriorating.

Do you think I’m right?

Will November be the tipping point?

Is there any way back?

Will there be anything to go ‘back’ to?

Or else, is it a case of:  “we’re doomed, I tell ya, doomed”.  And what happens when more people work out that the elites have created a situation where their only option is to rapidly reduce the population! Famine will lead to uncontrollable social conflict, perhaps with Muslims massacring whites in general or the local Jewish populations in particular. I think that much conflict could see ‘them‘ lose control.

Thus it’s hard to see any other viable method than a bio-weapon. Agenda 21 could be implemented on schedule. And if not, the solution will need to be applied within a few years, certainly before 2025.  Timing may depend on vaccine production as there will have to be at least enough vaccine for essential workers, the police, the military and the management class if the elite are to retain control.

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