Jul 252021
 
 July 25, 2021  Posted by at 9:22 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  45 Responses »


Claude Monet Water lilies 1904

 

Lab Alert: Changes to CDC RT-PCR for SARS-CoV-2 Testing
Adverse Reactions To The Covid-19 Vaccines Suffered By Infants (DE)
CNN: Segregate Unvaccinated, Make Them Pay For Tests Every Day (SN)
Who Watches The Watchmen? – Fauci’s ‘Noble Lie,’ Exposed (Rixey)
Big Protests Mark Global Anger At Covid Restrictions (F24)
Sydney Police Fine 100s Of Protesters For ‘Filthy, Risky Behaviour’ (G.)
Australian Leaders Blast Protesters, ‘Strike Force’ To Track Them Down (RT)
Protesters Slam Italian PM Draghi For Introducing Covid Health Pass (RT)
London Anti-vax Speaker Threatens Doctors With ‘Nuremberg Trials’ (RT)
FBI Using the Same Fear Tactic From the First War on Terror (Greenwald)
Space Returns Unwanted Amazon Delivery (BBee)

 

 

 

 

McCullough on long covid

 

 

The lower the vaccination rates, the lower the new infections.

 

 

Dalhousie: If a Professor of Infectious Diseases claims she’s been “immunized”, what hope is there for others?

 

 

 

 

Served its purpose?

Lab Alert: Changes to CDC RT-PCR for SARS-CoV-2 Testing

Level: Laboratory Alert

After December 31, 2021, CDC will withdraw the request to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel, the assay first introduced in February 2020 for detection of SARS-CoV-2 only. CDC is providing this advance notice for clinical laboratories to have adequate time to select and implement one of the many FDA-authorized alternatives.

In preparation for this change, CDC recommends clinical laboratories and testing sites that have been using the CDC 2019-nCoV RT-PCR assay select and begin their transition to another FDA-authorized COVID-19 test. CDC encourages laboratories to consider adoption of a multiplexed method that can facilitate detection and differentiation of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses. Such assays can facilitate continued testing for both influenza and SARS-CoV-2 and can save both time and resources as we head into influenza season. Laboratories and testing sites should validate and verify their selected assay within their facility before beginning clinical testing.

Read more …

“These vulnerable children will be used as part of a real-world experiment to determine whether the Covid-19 vaccine should be offered to all children, they are being treated in essence as sacrificial lambs.”

Adverse Reactions To The Covid-19 Vaccines Suffered By Infants (DE)

They’re coming for the children. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has issued advice to Sajid Javid’s Department of Health and Social Care, stating that children with disabilities should be offered a Covid-19 vaccine, despite the fact real world data shows that children as young as two-months-old in the USA have suffered paralysis, cardiac arrest and death after being given one of the experimental jabs. The JCVI said in a statement issued on the 19th July 2021 that “children aged 12 to 15 with severe neuro-disabilities, Down’s syndrome, immunosuppression and multiple or severe learning disabilities, should be offered the Pfizer / BioNTech mRNA Covid vaccine.

They have also recommended that “children and young people aged 12 to 17 who live with an immunosuppressed person should be offered the vaccine”. The reason the JCVI give for this is that “immunosuppressed household contacts, who are at higher risk of serious disease from COVID-19 may not generate a full immune response to vaccination.” therefore in their opinion this will indirectly protect them. Perhaps the JCVI aren’t aware that the Covid-19 vaccines have not been proven to prevent infection or transmission? But they are aware that real-world data on the safety of COVID-19 vaccines in children is limited, and they are also aware that the Pfizer vaccine and Moderna vaccine are causing myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of the membrane around the heart) in younger adults; they say as such in their statement.


They’re also aware that all children and young people are at very low risk from Covid-19. Symptoms, and they know that fewer than 30 children have died because of Covid-19 in the UK since March 2020, all of them having severe underlying conditions which were the probably cause of death rather than the alleged Covid-19. So why are the JCVI recommending the Pfizer Covid-19 jab is given to children with disabilities and learning difficulties when they are fully aware of the above? These vulnerable children will be used as part of a real-world experiment to determine whether the Covid-19 vaccine should be offered to all children, they are being treated in essence as sacrificial lambs. That is evident from the fact that the JCVI recommend children with learning difficulties should be offered the jab.

Read more …

They finally found a target that is not Trump. Same MO. Clickbait wars.

CNN: Segregate Unvaccinated, Make Them Pay For Tests Every Day (SN)

CNN continued its wall to wall broadcasts calling for unvaccinated people to be punished, with analysts again calling for those who haven’t gotten the COVID shots to be segregated from society and forced to pay for tests every single day. First up was CNN’s resident medical health “expert” Dr. Leana Wen who called for vaccine passports and forever masking. “I think it depends on the circumstance,” Wen said, explaining “So if you’re going to the grocery store, and the grocery store doesn’t have the capacity to enforce some kind of proof of vaccination, then they have to say that indoor masking needs to apply, because we don’t know who’s vaccinated and who’s not.” “The same thing for schools,” Wen continued, adding “Schools, you can’t expect the teacher in every school to be asking ‘well you’re not wearing a mask so are you vaccinated or not?’

And so that’s the case, everyone should be wearing masks.” “But I can imagine there are already concert venues or workplaces that are saying ‘if you are not vaccinated, you can’t come, or you have to get a negative test.’ And that’s what’s needed in order to really incentivize vaccines at this point,” Wen further stated. Wen previously suggested that life should be made as difficult as possible for those who are still opting not to take the shots, and that Americans should be banned from engaging in social events and forced to undergo PCR tests twice a week if they want to stay unvaccinated. She also previously advocated directly linking the amount of freedom Americans should be allowed to their vaccination status.

Next up on CNN, which should probably be renamed VNN, was Former White House senior COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt who proclaimed that the Biden administration should become “very aggressive” and force unvaccinated workers and students to take daily tests and to cover the costs themselves. “We should be really seriously considering whether schools, workplaces, government agencies ought to be saying, ‘Hey, if you’re coming here, you need to be vaccinated. If you’re not, you need to show you have a negative test every single day,” Slavitt declared.

He continued, “Look, if people say they don’t want to be vaccinated, which some people might say, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to say that’s fine. We want you to show up every morning an hour before work and get a negative test. Maybe even at your own expense. Until the point where people will say, you know what? It makes more sense to actually get vaccinated. If you give people that option, I think you’re going to see more and more people take the option to get vaccinated.” “Option.” Right.

Read more …

Amazing deep dive. Primarily on Fauci.

Who Watches The Watchmen? – Fauci’s ‘Noble Lie,’ Exposed (Rixey)

Six months ago, I began my first article on scientific censorship during COVID-19 by introducing Dr. Fauci as a surprise character that had emerged unexpectedly while digging through what was then 83,000 FOIA emails, published by US Right-to-Know over the course of the last year: [see files related to Ralph Baric, Linda Saif, Rita Colwell, Colorado State/Rocky Mountain National Laboratory & the NCBI; other FOIA releases from Judicial Watch, Buzzfeed & the Washington Post include NIH funding of the WIV & Dr. Fauci’s emails]

I’ve been trying for quite some time to get people to understand the full scope of the Dr. Fauci ‘situation,’ but it’s clear that segments of our national leadership are preventing an honest and open inquiry into his actions because they fear the backlash/collateral damage that will result from the tarnishing of their sacred cow. It’s time Americans were told the truth – that the grant money sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology [WIV] is merely a footnote in this narrative. After all, Dr. Fauci controls nearly $4 billion of annual grant funding for the NIAID, the institute within the NIH he has directed since 1984; over 37 years, more than 50,000 research projects have been supported with more than $50 billion [conservatively] of taxpayer funds have been doled out to them.

It’s reasonable to hold him accountable for the results of his organization’s efforts, but the direct funding received by the WIV for Gain-of-Function (GOF) research represents only a tiny fraction of Fauci’s involvement in enabling risky research – the 2017 repeal of the GOF ban was decided without the consultation of the Trump administration, even though news coverage during the pandemic blamed him for the decision. Neither Fauci nor his boss Francis Collins [the NIH director] bothered to clarify the record, which looks especially disgusting in the wake of persistent rejections of Senator Rand Paul’s assertions [with accompanying evidence] that the NIH ever financially supported such research.

Read more …

The crowds are still too small, and protesting on a weekend day doesn’t truly count.

Big Protests Mark Global Anger At Covid Restrictions (F24)

More than 100,000 people protested in Australia, France, Italy and Greece on Saturday, sparking clashes with police as they railed against Covid-19 measures and government sanctions against the unvaccinated aimed at prodding more people into getting jabs. Dozens of protesters were arrested after an unauthorised march in Sydney, with the city’s police minister branding those who took part as “morons”. Organisers had dubbed the protest a “freedom” rally. Attendees carried signs and banners reading “Wake up Australia” and “Drain the Swamp”. In France, where police deployed teargas and water cannon against some protesters, an estimated 160,000 took to the streets in nationwide protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s health pass that will drastically curtail access to restaurants and public spaces for unvaccinated people.

“Freedom, freedom”, chanted demonstrators in France, carrying placards denouncing “Macron, Tyrant”, “Big Pharma shackles freedom” or saying “No to the pass of shame”. The demonstrations highlight the conflict globally between people caught between the advice of the World Health Organization and other public health agencies and the need to earn a living — or simply to return to a pre-pandemic lifestyle. In Indonesia and the UK, governments have pressed ahead with easing of restrictions even in the face of surging. Meanwhile, around 5,000 people demonstrated in Athens, carrying placards touting slogans such as, “Don’t touch our children”, according to an AFP journalist at the scene. And in Italy protesters gathered in Rome to demonstrate against a mandatory “green pass” for indoor dining and entertainment.

Earlier in Sydney, demonstrators pelted officers with pot plants and bottles of water as they defied a month-long stay-at-home order, a day after authorities suggested the restrictions could remain in place until October. New South Wales state Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she was “utterly disgusted” by the protesters whose “selfish actions have compromised the safety of all of us”. Police said they issued nearly 100 fines and arrested 57 people. In Melbourne, meanwhile, six people were arrested. police said. New South Wales Police Minister David Elliott said a team of detectives would be scouring footage to identify and charge as many people as possible in the coming days. “Sydney isn’t immune from morons,” he said.

Read more …

When you address your own citizes like this, you aim to rule and divide.

Sydney Police Fine 100s Of Protesters For ‘Filthy, Risky Behaviour’ (G.)

Hundreds of fines have been issued and dozens charged in Sydney after anti-lockdown protesters marched and clashed with police in what one deputy commissioner called “violent, filthy, risky behaviour”. The New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, said was “utterly disgusted” by the thousands who had breached the region’s coronavirus measures to protest, saying on Sunday that the scenes “broke my heart”. Detectives are now combing social media and footage from CCTV and police-worn body cameras to identify and punish everyone who defied stay-at-home orders, which are now entering their fifth week. Police issued 510 fines on Saturday, with the “vast majority” coming from Saturday’s protest. Two have been charged with allegedly striking a police horse.

State police minister David Elliott was scathing of Saturday’s unrest, saying: “Sydney isn’t immune from morons.” Victorian officials criticised similar protests in the state capital, Melbourne. The state’s Covid-19 testing commander Jeroen Weimar described those who took to the stresses as a “small minority having a self-indulgent tantrum”, with the Victorian premier Daniel Andrews warning that you “cannot vaccinate against selfishness”. The Sydney region is struggling to contain an outbreak of the Delta variant that started in Bondi last month, amid a sluggish vaccination rollout and persistent violation of stay-at-home orders among family groups. A Guardian Australia analysis has found it could take months to recede.

Around half of Australia’s 25 million people are in lockdown across several cities and states, with anger growing at the federal government for a vaccine programme that has fully inoculated less than 13% of the population since it began in February. New South Wales reported another 141 cases on Sunday, and two deaths, including a woman in her 30s who had no pre-existing conditions. “If anybody think this is a disease just affecting older people, please think again,” said Berejiklian. The ugly scenes in Sydney and Melbourne, – as well Adelaide and Brisbane – were also reflected across Europe as people railed against Covid-19 measures and government restrictions aimed at improving uptake of vaccines.

Read more …

Australia is lost.

Australian Leaders Blast Protesters, ‘Strike Force’ To Track Them Down (RT)

Australian police have already issued hundreds of fines in the wake of mass anti-lockdown rallies, and are looking for more info about the violators, as state leaders condemn protesters for endangering other people’s lives. In just 24 hours after Saturday’s mass protest, police in New South Wales issued 510 penalty infringement notices, Deputy Commissioner Gary Worboys said, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. He vowed that the authorities will continue to investigate the acts of “violent, filthy, risky” behavior. “A strike force is set up right at this moment that continues to ask for people to bring forward any video files or telephone footage that they have of that sort of behaviour.”

NSW Police Minister David Elliott earlier announced that at least 22 veteran detectives will be working as part of a special unit to identify and track down people who attended the rallies. State Premier Gladys Berejiklian echoed these sentiments, saying she was “absolutely disgusted” by the mass gatherings, and urging anyone who recognized any of the activists to contact police immediately. “I’m just so utterly disgusted, disappointed and heartbroken that people don’t consider the safety and wellbeing of their fellow citizens. NSW reported two deaths and 141 new cases of Covid-19 on Sunday, which is slightly lower than the day before. Authorities, however, have hinted that as the protest risks turning into a superspreader event, the month-long lockdown in Sydney might be extended even further.

“We don’t want a setback, and yesterday could have been a setback – time will tell,” Berejiklian said. The state’s current lockdown rules bar residents from leaving home except to obtain food and other “essential” goods and services, for medical care, including vaccinations, and for outdoor exercise and “essential” work. The state of Victoria in the meantime recorded only 11 new cases, but Premier Daniel Andrews blasted the protesters for putting “many other people in real danger,” and said that he could not rule out that the state’s own lockdown will also be extended. “We can’t vaccinate against selfishness, and these people should be ashamed, absolutely ashamed, it’s just wrong.”

Since the pandemic began, Australia has repeatedly staved off the spread of Covid-19 with some of the world’s most draconian lockdown measures, in pursuit of driving new cases down to zero even at the expense of civil liberties. Over the course of the pandemic, the country recorded just over 32,700 cases and 916 total deaths. On Saturday, thousands of people sickened by perpetual restrictions and confinement marched through major Australian cities, chanting “Freedom!” and clashing with police who were deployed to disperse these “illegal gatherings.”

Read more …

In the US, it’s the right that clamors for freedom. In Europe, not so much.

Protesters Slam Italian PM Draghi For Introducing Covid Health Pass (RT)

Protests against the Italian government’s plan to introduce health passes were held in more than 80 locations on Saturday, where people denounced the measure as discriminatory. Around 3,000 rallied in Rome and 5,000 in Turin, the capital of the northwestern Piedmont region, while smaller protests were held elsewhere across the country, Italian media said. Overall, demonstrations were reported in more than 80 cities and towns. People took to the streets to denounce the plan of the government led by Prime Minister Mario Draghi to introduce a health pass, known as the ‘Green Pass’. The document serves as proof that a person has received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, has tested negative for Covid-19 in the last 48 hours, or has recovered from the virus.

Starting from August 6, only Green Pass holders will be allowed into cafes, restaurants, gyms, and open-air shows. Protesters view the measure as discriminatory. Some marched with signs that read, ‘Draghi Like Hitler’ and ‘Freedom, No More Dictatorship’, while others carried Italian flags and lit flares. “We say no to the Green Pass because it creates A-class and B-class citizens – those who have rights and those who have no rights,” a protester in Rome told RT’s Ruptly video agency. “This is against Italy’s constitution.” La Stampa newspaper reported that some business owners took part in the protest, fearing that the introduction of the pass will lead to a drop in clientele and endanger their livelihood.

Draghi said the Green Pass is necessary to stop the spread of the disease and restart the economy. Some politicians criticized Saturday’s protests. “Hearing words like ‘slavery’ and ‘Covid scam’ makes me shudder. According to these irresponsible [people], 130,000 deaths were perhaps only imaginary,” Senator Licia Ronzulli from the center-right Forza Italia party said, as quoted by La Stampa.

Read more …

Posted on RT, but sounds like MSNBC.

London Anti-vax Speaker Threatens Doctors With ‘Nuremberg Trials’ (RT)

Anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination activists rallied in multiple British cities against the vaccine passport initiative. In London, one of the speakers triggered a major controversy by likening NHS staff to Nazi doctors. Thousands of people gathered at Trafalgar Square in London on Saturday for the ‘Freedom Rally’, to protest the restrictive measures introduced amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Demonstrators flooded almost the entire square, holding placards and banners reading: “No to forced testing” and “No to forced vaccination.” Many activists went as far as accusing the government of “crimes against humanity,” while banners seen in the crowd ranged from 5G conspiracy theories to flags reading “Trump for 2024.” Though minor scuffles erupted on the sidelines of the event, resulting in several arrests, the rally was otherwise peaceful.


The gathering was attended by controversial media personality Katie Hopkins, who just returned from Australia after her visa was canceled over a quarantine breach. Former TV presenter turned-conspiracy theorist David Icke was also present, as well as Piers Corbyn, the brother of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. One of the speakers, Kate Shemirani, a former nurse turned-anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist, triggered a major controversy, calling the vaccines “Satanic” and describing them as part of a larger surveillance scheme – while urging people to send her the names of doctors and nurses involved in the vaccination campaign. “At the Nuremberg trial the doctors and nurses stood trial, and they hung.” “If you are a doctor or a nurse, now is the time to get off that bus… and stand with us, the people,” she said, claiming that a group of lawyers is helping her collect the information.

Read more …

The whole Whitmer thing stank from the get-go. But that no longer matters in the US. What counts is what words make you feel, not what they actually mean.

FBI Using the Same Fear Tactic From the First War on Terror (Greenwald)

The narrative that domestic anti-government extremism is the greatest threat to U.S. national security — the official position of the U.S. security state and the Biden administration — received its most potent boost in October 2020, less than one month before the 2020 presidential election. That was when the F.B.I. and Michigan state officials announced the arrest of thirteen people on terrorism, conspiracy and weapons charges, with six of them accused of participating in a plot to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who had been a particular target of criticism from President Trump for her advocacy for harsh COVID lockdown measures. The headlines that followed were dramatic and fear-inducing: “F.B.I. Says Michigan Anti-Government Group Plotted to Kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer,” announced The New York Times.

That same night, ABC News began its broadcast this way: “Tonight, we take you into a hidden world, a place authorities say gave birth to a violent domestic terror plot in Michigan — foiled by the FBI.” Democrats and liberal journalists instantly seized on this storyline to spin a pre-election theme that was as extreme as it was predictable. Gov. Whitmer herself blamed Trump, claiming that the plotters “heard the president’s words not as a rebuke but as a rallying cry — as a call to action.” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) claimed that “the president is a deranged lunatic and he’s inspired white supremacists to violence, the latest of which was a plot to kidnap Gov. Whitmer,” adding: “these groups have attempted to KILL many of us in recent years. They are following Trump’s lead.”

[..] Yet from the start, there were ample and potent reasons to distrust the FBI’s version of events. To begin with, FBI press releases are typically filled with lies, yet media outlets — due to some combination of excessive gullibility, an inability to learn lessons, or a desire to be deceived — continue to treat them as Gospel. For another, the majority of “terror plots” the FBI claimed to detect and break up during the first War on Terror were, in fact, plots manufactured, funded and driven by the FBI itself. Indeed, the FBI has previously acknowledged that its own powers and budget depend on keeping Americans in fear of such attacks. Former FBI Assistant Director Thomas Fuentes, in a documentary called “The Newberg Sting” about a 2009 FBI arrest of four men on terrorism charges, uttered this extremely candid admission:

If you’re submitting budget proposals for a law enforcement agency, for an intelligence agency, you’re not going to submit the proposal that “We won the war on terror and everything’s great,” cuz the first thing that’s gonna happen is your budget’s gonna be cut in half. You know, it’s my opposite of Jesse Jackson’s ‘Keep Hope Alive’—it’s ‘Keep Fear Alive.’ Keep it alive. In the Whitmer kidnapping case, the FBI’s own affidavit in support of the charges acknowledged the involvement in the plot of both informants and undercover FBI agents “over several months.” [..] An excellent piece of investigative journalism published by BuzzFeed on Tuesday documents that, far from being passive observers of the plot, FBI informants and agents were the key drivers of it:

An examination of the case by BuzzFeed News also reveals that some of those informants, acting under the direction of the FBI, played a far larger role than has previously been reported. Working in secret, they did more than just passively observe and report on the actions of the suspects. Instead, they had a hand in nearly every aspect of the alleged plot, starting with its inception. The extent of their involvement raises questions as to whether there would have even been a conspiracy without them.

Read more …

“..a giant metal gumdrop with 4 dudes in it..”

Space Returns Unwanted Amazon Delivery (BBee)

Outer space has returned an unwanted Amazon package that was sent to it unsolicited yesterday. According to witnesses, the package floated gently back down to earth after being rejected. Locals have asked Amazon to please “pick this thing up and bring it back to the warehouse” as no one really wants it around or knows what to do with it. If you know who ordered a giant metal gumdrop with 4 dudes in it, please call Amazon immediately.

Read more …

 

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Money
https://twitter.com/i/status/1418940234826399750

 

 

Protests July 24.

 

 

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Jul 222021
 
 July 22, 2021  Posted by at 9:14 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  100 Responses »


Edward Hopper Western Motel 1957

 

Israeli Lab: Some Existing Drugs Could Stop Covid At Almost 100% (JPost)
Mefloquine Inhibits SARS-CoV-2 Infection In Physiologically Relevant Cells (BX)
Israel Reports Sharp Decline In Pfizer Coronavirus Vaccine Efficacy (YNet)
5,522 People Have Died Within 28 Days Of Having A Covid-19 Vaccine In Scotland (DE)
English Care Homes Could Lose 70,000 Staff Over Mandatory Covid Jab (G.)
There Goes The Rest Of The Narrative (Denninger)
When Will Covid-19 Vaccines Be Fully Approved—And Does It Matter? (Sci.Mag)
When Will We FORCE A Stop To The BS? (Denninger)
Whitmer Kidnapping Defendants Claim Entrapment (ZH)
US Women’s Soccer Team To Boycott Scoring Goals Until Racism Is Defeated (BBee)

 

 

 

 

Vaccine covid

 

 

`from a a fected goldmine: CDC posting today: Attack rate for Gamma variant was 0% (0/6) among persons with a previous history of COVID-19 versus attack rate was 60% (15/25) among fully vaccinated [Pfizer] miners and 75% (3/4) among unvaccinated miners without history of infection

 

 

Ron Paul VAERS

 

 

9 in 10 adults in UK regions likely to have covid antibodies. In Scotland, 88.6% estimated to have antibodies, 90.0% for Northern Ireland, 91.9% for England & 92.6% in Wales. Office for National Statistics based on a sample of blood test results for week beginning June 28;

 

 

“Arkin and his team culled through a library of more than 2,800 approved-for-use compounds, identifying 18 drugs they felt could be effective..”

Israeli Lab: Some Existing Drugs Could Stop Covid At Almost 100% (JPost)

Scientists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem say they have identified several drugs that could potentially help treat, if not “cure,” people who develop COVID-19. Prof. Shy Arkin, a biochemist in the Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Science, told The Jerusalem Post that in lab tests in which cells infected with SARS-CoV-2 were placed together with the drugs for two days, “almost 100% of the cells lived despite being infected with the virus.” In contrast, without the preexisting drug compounds, around 50% of the cells died after coming in contact with the virus. Arkin and his team culled through a library of more than 2,800 approved-for-use compounds, identifying 18 drugs they felt could be effective. In unpublished work, the researchers were able to show that several of these compounds “exhibited remarkable potency against the whole virus in in vitro experiments.”

Two of them are Darapladib, used for the treatment of atherosclerosis, and Flumatinib, used for the treatment of certain blood cancers. Arkin said he was hesitant to share the names of any of the drugs, adding that he could not recommend them until they underwent proper clinical trials. The team focused on drug repurposing to potentially expedite any future regulatory steps. Since the drugs are already being used for other indications, their toxicity and side effects, for example, are known and approved. The way the drugs work is by inhibiting two targets in the virus: the E (envelope) protein and the 3a protein. The E protein is the most conserved of all virus proteins. For example, while the spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV-1 (the 2003 virus) are only about 75% identical, their E proteins are roughly 95% alike.

This means the drugs would likely remain effective even when the virus mutates, Arkin told the Post. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines target the spike protein. In previous studies, E and 3a proteins were shown to be essential for viral infectivity. Arkin’s team was among the first to study the E protein of the first SARS coronavirus in 2004. As part of research that Arkin’s team has been conducting for more than two decades, they identified that the E protein is an ion channel, a type of protein family expressed by virtually all living cells that because of its structure has “served as excellent and frequent targets for pharmaceutical point interventions,” including for cystic fibrosis, epilepsy, arrhythmia, neurodegenerative diseases, hypertension, angina and more, the report said.

It is important that “a large arsenal” of drugs exist to fight SARS-CoV-2, Arkin said. “We should never be in a situation where in our arsenal we only have one firearm,” he said. “If we only have one and we rely solely on it, and then there comes a time that it fails, we will be in a very precarious situation.” Arkin believes his team is set for in vitro and in vivo studies, and he is looking for a pharmaceutical partner to help carry these trials through. Citing the success of Gilead obtaining US Food and Drug Administration approval for Remdesivir in record time at the start of the pandemic, Arkin said he was optimistic that at least some of these compounds could be approved for use against COVID “very quickly with the right partner.”

Read more …

Here’s another candidate,

Mefloquine Inhibits SARS-CoV-2 Infection In Physiologically Relevant Cells (BX)

Antimalarial drugs, such as chloroquine (CQ)/hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and mefloquine have emerged as potential anti-SARS-CoV-2 antivirals. CQ/HCQ entered the Solidarity and RECOVERY clinical trials against COVID-19 and showed lack of efficacy. Importantly, mefloquine is not a 4-aminoquinoline like CQ and HCQ and has been previously repurposed for other respiratory diseases. Unlike the 4-aminoquinolines that accumulate in the high pH of intracellular lysosomes of the lung, the high respiratory tract penetration of mefloquine is driven by its high lipophilicity. While CQ and HCQ exhibit activity in Vero E6 cells, their activity is obviated in TMPRSS2-expressing cells, such as Calu-3 cells, which more accurately recapitulate in vivo entry mechanisms for SARS-CoV-2.


Accordingly, here we report the anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity of mefloquine in Calu-3 type II pneumocytes and primary human monocytes. Mefloquine inhibited SARS-CoV-2 replication, including the gamma variant, in Calu-3 cells with low cytotoxicity and EC50 and EC90 values of 1.2 and 5.3 uM, respectively. In addition, mefloquine reduced up to 68% the SARS-CoV-2 RNA levels in infected monocytes, reducing viral-induced inflammation. Mefloquine blocked early steps of the SARS-CoV-2 replicative cycle and was less prone than CQ to induce drug-associated viral mutations and synergized with RNA polymerase inhibitor. The pharmacological parameters of mefloquine are consistent with its plasma exposure in humans and its tissue-to-plasma predicted coefficient points that this drug may accumulate in the lungs. These data indicate that mefloquine could represent an orally available clinically approved drug option against COVID-19 and should not be neglected on the basis of the failure of CQ and HCQ.

Read more …

The clincher: the one thing left the vaccines were still supposed to do: protection from severe illness has also recorded a sharp drop of up to 60%.

Israel Reports Sharp Decline In Pfizer Coronavirus Vaccine Efficacy (YNet)

Israel on Tuesday reported a sharp decline in the efficacy of Pfizer/BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine after receiving data from a recent analysis. Data from the analysis conducted by the Health Ministry suggest the efficacy of the vaccine declines over time in preventing infection and severe illness. Health officials presented their findings during a meeting of the ministry’s Epidemic Management Team on Monday night, which showed that protection from coronavirus infections among vaccinated people decreased by 42% since the start of the inoculation drive in Israel. In addition, protection from severe illness has also recorded a sharp drop of up to 60% among those who were inoculated in the early stages of the vaccine rollout.


However, most people who had been vaccinated at the early stage of the vaccine drive appear to be over the age of 65 and findings may not reflect the vaccine’s efficacy among those in other age groups. Ministry officials deemed the findings disturbing but claimed those were only preliminary analyses of very raw data. It was not yet clear whether the results were linked to an apparent erosion of the vaccine’s protection against the virus or greater resistance of the Delta variant to the inoculation. [..] Last week, Israel began administering a third shot of the Pfizer/BioNTech inoculation to patients with compromised immune systems, including people who have had heart, lung and kidney transplants.

Read more …

920 per month over 6 months, when Covid deaths were 866 per month. Note: In Dec 2020, far fewer people were jabbed than later, so the 2021 per month number is higher.

5,522 People Have Died Within 28 Days Of Having A Covid-19 Vaccine In Scotland (DE)

Public Health Scotland have revealed that 5,522 people have died within twenty-eight days of having a Covid-19 vaccine within the past 6 months in Scotland alone. Due to dozens of freedom of information requests being made, asking Public Health Scotland (PHS) to provide the current total number of deaths of any individual who has died within 28 days of having a Covid-19 vaccine, PHS decided the best way forward was to publish the information routinely and periodically within their Covid-19 statistical report. The most up to date figures published by PHS and within the report released by on the 23rd June 2021, and they reveal that between the 8th December 2020 and the 11th June 2021 a total number of 5,522 people died within 28 days of having a dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.

According to the spreadsheet provided by Public Health Scotland; which includes the quantity of deaths by type of vaccine and the date they occurred, 1,877 deaths have been due to the Pfizer mRNA jab, 3,643 deaths have been due to the AstraZeneca viral vector jab, and 2 deaths have been due to the Moderna mRNA jab. This equates to an average of 920 deaths occurring every month due to the Covid-19 vaccines in Scotland alone. Outnumbering the average number of people who have died of Covid-19 in Scotland by 866 per month. A freedom of information request made on the 30th January asked the Scottish Government to reveal the total number of people who had died of Covid-19 since March 2020. To which the Scottish Government responded on the 11th March 2021 with – “The answer to your question is 596 deaths involving COVID-19 has been registered where there was no pre-existing medical condition between March 2020 and January 2021 (including).”

Public Health England has so far refused to publish any data on the number of deaths occurring within 28 days of having the vaccine in England, but it is not for the want of people trying. Dozens of freedom of information requests have been made to PHE asking the question but they never fail to respond with the statement that “Public Health England can confirm it does not hold the information that you have requested. However, using the data on the number of deaths due to the Covid-19 vaccines in Scotland we can estimate what the likely number of deaths are due to the jabs in England. Adjusting to the size of the population we estimate the actual number of deaths due to the jabs in England in the past 6 months could be as high as 57,470.

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How many people must lose their jobs before someone says STOP?

English Care Homes Could Lose 70,000 Staff Over Mandatory Covid Jab (G.)

Up to 70,000 care home staff in England could leave the workforce or lose their jobs because the government is insisting they must be vaccinated against Covid, with women and ethnic minorities disproportionately affected, according to an official estimate. In an impact statement from the government, officials believe between 3% and 12% of care home staff may still resist getting a Covid jab by the end of a 16-week grace period. The central estimate was that 40,000 could be left without jobs, but it could be as high as 70,000 or as low as 17,000.

In a separate statement on the public sector equality duty, the government said the policy of mandatory vaccination for care home staff was “likely to have a significant impact on ethnic minorities” as one in five members of the social care workforce are black, Asian or from another ethnic minority, a higher proportion than in the overall population of England. It added: “The evidence suggests that vaccine hesitancy is highest among black people, people of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage, and non-UK/Irish white ethnic groups.” The statement also acknowledged there was a “risk that issues such as lack of trust could be exacerbated by this policy” in relation to social care workers from minority ethnic backgrounds.

A group of Conservative MPs opposed to the policy had been repeatedly pressing the government to release an impact assessment before it called a vote on the issue last week. Boris Johnson managed to get the policy through the House of Commons but there was a sizeable rebellion of more than 30 MPs who joined with Labour and other opposition parties in opposing the policy. Defending the move in the House of Lords, James Bethell, a health minister, said: “We did not take lightly the decision to introduce this legislation. However, the risks that this winter will undoubtedly pose to the most vulnerable in our society make clear the choice that we must make, to do everything in our power to protect them.”

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“..there is no public health benefit to the jabs. These fully vaccinated people not only got the virus, they gave it to others. That, my friends, is what everyone claimed wouldn’t happen — if you got jabbed you protected other people. ”

There Goes The Rest Of The Narrative (Denninger)

There are 67 Democrats in the TX Delegation. I presume not all of them flew to DC; the news says “more than 50”, which is enough to deny the quorum and was the point of the exercise. There are now six confirmed Covid infections among them, and all are fully vaccinated. That’s a failure rate of roughly 10% for symptomatic infections, and not just preventing infection either — they transmitted it to each other as the infections were serial; not all got it on the same day. Since the CDC says somewhere between 6 and 24 (best guess 11) people are entirely asymptomatic and untested for each tested, symptomatic infection this means that more than half of the delegation in fact has the virus and is presumably, under the CDC’s claim of “asymptomatic transmission” spreading it to others.

Is ten percent failure rare? How about more than fifty percent? That sounds rather more like “worthless” to me. What say you? In addition a White House official also has tested positive after coming into contact with the delegation. Said person is also fully vaccinated and is symptomatic. They, since they are symptomatic, are presumptively contagious despite being “fully vaccinated.” How many White House officials were there? One? Boy, that’s a pretty good breakthrough case percentage isn’t it? Never mind the 10%+ symptomatic failure rate, which strongly implies at least half the delegation actually got infected, among the delegation itself. May I remind you that 80%, according to a study first published last summer, of the population has pre-existing resistance and thus would likely either by asymptomatic or only mildly so even if not vaccinated.

Have we improved anything at all other than, perhaps, individual outcomes with these shots? The data says, within the confidence interval, no. In other words there is no public health benefit to the jabs. These fully vaccinated people not only got the virus, they gave it to others. That, my friends, is what everyone claimed wouldn’t happen — if you got jabbed you protected other people. That claim was never in evidence; the original studies were underpowered to determine that and this was clearly stated in the study itself. The media and politicians, on the other hand, either didn’t read the studies or didn’t give a crap about the truth and talked you into taking a jab not to protect yourself if you are at specific risk but by lying to you that doing so would protect others.

We now know that claim was a lie. It was a lie by lack of knowledge before; now it is a straight-up knowing lie to repeat it. Add this to all the other lies. Why would you take any sort of personal health advice — now that it’s admitted that’s all the jab advocacy is — from the very same people who have been caught lying serially on virtually every topic related to Covid since last spring? You have to be a special brand of stupid to listen to people who get caught lying repeatedly, and then double-down on said lies. You’re only mistaken when you admit to that which is later proved false. As soon as you double-down on it you’re intentionally misleading people.

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People are so willing to ignore established scientific protocols, completely unaware that in doing so they step on the graves of the scientists who wrote them, AND those of the victims whose misery made them necessary.

When Will Covid-19 Vaccines Be Fully Approved—And Does It Matter? (Sci.Mag)

On 16 July, FDA accepted Pfizer’s application “under priority review”—meaning it will move faster than during standard reviews, which typically take at least 10 months; the agency now has until January 2022 to review the materials. That seems like a long time, but last week an FDA official told CNN that the decision is likely to come within 2 months. “The review … has been ongoing, is among the highest priorities of the agency, and the agency intends to complete the review far in advance of the [January] Date,” an FDA press officer confirmed to Science in a statement. FDA has not formally accepted Moderna’s application, possibly because the company has not yet submitted all the required materials.

Full approval could help overcome vaccine hesitancy, Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, wrote in a recent op-ed in The New York Times. “Some people who understand that the ‘E’ in ‘EUA’ stands for ‘emergency’ are waiting for full FDA approval before they receive a shot,” he wrote. “I think it’s fair to say that any number of us who are clinical infectious disease doctors and in public health are frankly a little surprised at how long the process is taking,” says William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “I want [FDA] to be careful. I also want them to move it along,” Schaffner says. “Frankly, I’d like them to work on the weekends. The people who are vaccinating are working on the weekends. The virus is working on the weekends.”

About 30% of unvaccinated people say they were waiting for vaccines to receive full approval, according to a survey of 1888 adults conducted in June by the Kaiser Family Foundation. But the report cautions that for many people, FDA approval is likely “a proxy for general safety concerns.” Not everyone now focused on approval may actually get a vaccine, especially if they perceive the approval process as rushed or politically motivated. “For the people who are really dead set against getting the vaccine at this point, I don’t know that the FDA giving it full approval is going to make a huge difference,” says Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious disease doctor at the Medical University of South Carolina who says many of her patients are wary of COVID-19 shots.

But full approval may sway some people. For example, for members of groups that have been treated poorly by the health care system, signing a consent form to get vaccinated—a requirement for vaccines with an EUA—may be a psychological barrier, Gandhi says: “Signing a consent that says ‘experimental’ and the phrase ‘experimental’ brings up issues of experimentation on Black and brown communities.”

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Some lies are bigger than others.

When Will We FORCE A Stop To The BS? (Denninger)

Ok, enough folks. “I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections. One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late,” she wrote. “A few days later when I call time of death, I hug their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to go get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to do the same.” This sort of lie should cost Ms. LIAR her license and everyone who ran this bull**** should be ruined. Her “hospital” — any agency or entity that allows her to infest their premises should be flat-out destroyed along with every single person who works in any such place and gives her credibility by doing so. Why? This story is from Alabama. Now I want you to look very carefully at this table.

[..] According to that table not one person has died since the end of April in Alabama from Covid-19 according to that graph which goes through 7/20 — yesterday. What is “99% (unvaccinated) of ZERO (all people who died of Covid in Alabama SINCE APRIL)”? ZERO! But yes, Ms. Smiling Crazy Bitch is imploring people to get jabbed for what, she says, will stop becoming part of a wave of death that is happening right now. If someone died today, well, that’s one. Where are all the others? Oh, and the story? It’s not, allegedly, from today. It references a viral Facebook post from the weekend. AGAIN: Where is the pile of bodies in the above graph that Ms. Crazy claims are stacking up? If you look elsewhere you will find that perhaps Statista gave up. Why? Too small to matter.


Let’s put perspective on this, assuming it’s accurate: The 7-day average according to that second site state-wide has been at or under 10 since April. Ok, Alabama has approximately 5 million people in it, or 1.52% of the total of the nation. Roughly 8,200 people die daily in the US of all causes, so in Alabama that would be 124 dead bodies. Do you really think three, four, five on a 7-day average state-wide — with lots of zeros — is material in the whole? How many of those are people who are seriously ill with other things? Most of them, as has always been the case with Covid. And has also always been the case if you’re positive at death or within 30 days of it you count and Biden just extended the hospital toe tag bounties for both admissions and ventilator use. People need to go straight to prison for this bull****.

10 years for Ms. Ex-Preggers tossing her new kid (along with any others she has) in an orphanage should wake her ass up for lying and threatening people that they will surely die in order coerce them to do something they do not otherwise want to do. If the jabs work so well why are both Malta and Israel, two of the highest-vaccinated percentage populations in the world, both taking huge case spikes? In addition explain India which has 6% of their population vaccinated (one of the lowest among the world) and their case rate has collapsed by 90%. How is that possible if the jab is the only way forward and the only way we can defeat this horrible virus? Is it not more likely that the jabs are nearly worthless in terms of infections and the virus is, in fact, following Farr’s Law — as places release lockdowns and strictures the infections which were delayed occur anyway? How many times has Australia breathed an “all clear!” sign of relief and then oops — guess not!

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J. Edgar Hoover must have been a fan of the Keystone Cops. But hey, the J6 people get convicted, so why not these schmucks?

Whitmer Kidnapping Defendants Claim Entrapment (ZH)

At least a dozen FBI informants infiltrated an anti-government group of aspiring extremists, and were involved in virtually every aspect of a plan to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, according to BuzzFeed. “Some of those informants, acting under the direction of the FBI, played a far larger role than has previously been reported,” according to the report. One ‘informant,’ an Iraq war veteran, “became so deeply enmeshed in a Michigan militant group” that he rose to second-in-command – telling members of the group to meet with other potential suspects, and even footing the bill to transport members to meetings. Another FBI ‘informant’ advised the militia group on where they should plant explosives, and offered to procure as many as were needed.

“Everybody down with what’s going on?” an Iraq War veteran in the group demanded to know when they ended their recon mission, well past midnight, at a campsite where they were all staying. “If you’re not down with the thought of kidnapping,” someone else replied, “don’t sit here.” The men planned for all kinds of obstacles, but there was one they didn’t anticipate: The FBI had been listening in all along. For six months, the Iraq War vet had been wearing a wire, gathering hundreds of hours of recordings. He wasn’t the only one. A biker who had traveled from Wisconsin to join the group was another informant. The man who’d advised them on where to put the explosives — and offered to get them as much as the task would require — was an undercover FBI agent. So was a man in one of the other cars who said little and went by the name Mark.” -BuzzFeed

Three weeks later, over a dozen men were arrested by federal and state agents in what one federal prosecutor described as a “deeply disturbing” criminal conspiracy hatched over several months via secret meetings, encrypted chats, and paramilitary-style training exercises. In total, 14 men were charged last year in the alleged plot to kidnap Whitmer. They’ve all pleaded not-guilty, and say the FBI set them up. They claim their talk never rose beyond the level of fantasy, and that they never intended to harm Whitmer or anyone else. The defendants claim there was no conspiracy to kidnap the governor – and instead say they were targeted because of their political views.

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Not everyone likes the woke girls.

US Women’s Soccer Team To Boycott Scoring Goals Until Racism Is Defeated (BBee)

People were stunned after the U.S. women’s soccer team lost to Sweden in the Olympics this week by a score of 3-0—until the team revealed they are boycotting scoring any goals until racism is defeated. “Yeah, we didn’t score any goals against Sweden last night, but that was totally on purpose,” said star player and beloved activist Megan Rapinoe. “This isn’t the time to score goals—when America is still racist. We totally could have beaten Sweden but we decided as a team that no goals will be scored until complete equality has been achieved in America. Also, we demand a hefty raise.”


Onlookers were stunned during the second half of the game when Rapinoe dribbled the ball all the way to Sweden’s unprotected goal and whispered “This is for you, people of color,” before kicking the ball straight into the air and running headfirst into the goalpost. “This may be one of the most powerful performances in the history of sports,” said Teen Vogue’s sportswriter who has never watched sports. The U.S. Women’s team is demanding to remain in the Olympic tournament and promises to continue its streak of zero goals. Inspiring!

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Oct 132020
 


Giotto Legend of St Francis, Exorcism of the Demons at Arezzo c.1297-1299

 

Declassified FBI Spreadsheet Exposes Folly Of Steele Dossier (JTN)
Steele Dossier: Media Reports On FBI Reports Of Media Reports (sundance)
Team Obama Invented The Whole Russiagate Scandal (NYP)
The Truman Show Election: The Public Is Left In The Dark (Turley)
What’s Behind No-Show Joe (Jim Kunstler)
Coup Who? (Hemingway)
Kidnapping Dissent: The Whitmer Plot and the End of Freedom (MPN)
IMF Seizes on Pandemic to Pave Way for Privatization in 81 Countries (MPN)
CDC: 85% of COVID19 Patients Report ‘Always’ Or ‘Often’ Wearing A Mask (JS)
Johnson&Johnson Covid19 Vaccine Study Paused Due To Unexplained Illness (STAT)
Economists Are More Like Storytellers Than Scientists (Benack)

 

 

Imagine if the MSM had refused to report on Watergate. That is what is happening now. And this is starting to feel a whole lot worse than that. Not sure “folly” covers it.

Declassified FBI Spreadsheet Exposes Folly Of Steele Dossier (JTN)

An FBI spreadsheet that evaluated the credibility of Christopher Steele’s dossier found almost no corroborating evidence from official intelligence reporting, leaving analysts to grope after flimsy sources like a Democratic operative, a Russian propaganda news site and U.S. news media story leaks that amounted to circular reporting.In one entry, FBI analysts tried to evaluate one of Steele’s most lurid claims — later debunked — that Trump was videotaped committing lewd sex acts with prostitutes at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Moscow. “There is no confirmation that Trump stayed here,” they found. “There is no ‘Presidential Suite’ currently listed.”

[..]Another entry encapsulated much of the FBI’s assessment of Steele’s reporting: It seemed based on Internet rumors that could never be corroborated.”Other than open source speculation, the only reporting that mentions this is the Steele Reporting from 5 July 2016 and 2 August 2016,” the analysts wrote about a claim in the dossier that the Russian spy agency known as the FSB had a “pervasive and sophisticated” operation focused on Trump. Other entries dinged the Steele dossier for sloppiness like misspellings of key names, or for making claims that were debunked by official travel records like passport entry records.

“There doesn’t appear to be any record of Trump visiting Baku or the presidential palace,” one entry read, knocking down a claim the future president visited the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. Added another: “There is no record of Trump personally organizing a Congressional Delegation (CODEL) visit to Baku.”Likewise, one of the most famous claims of the now-discredited dossier — that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen flew to Prague in summer 2016 to help cover up a Russia-Trump plot — was debunked by analysts. “The CROSSFIRE HURRICANE team has been unable to verify travel by Cohen to the Czech Republic in August 2016,” analysts wrote.

With little formal intelligence reporting to back anything Steele had offered the FBI, analysts often turned to suspect sources, such as biased actors connected to the Democratic National Committee or leaked news media stories that could be traced back to Steele and his boss, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson. “On September 23, 2016 Yahoo News published an article claiming Carter Page was under investigation by the FBI and US intelligence due to his ties with Russia,” analysts wrote, citing that source as the only piece of evidence corroborating former Trump adviser Carter Page’s alleged meeting with a senior Russian official. The FBI later determined the meetings never happened.

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They are hoping to bury it all after the election.

FBI agents getting paid by the press for leaks.

Steele Dossier: Media Reports On FBI Reports Of Media Reports (sundance)

CBS News Catherine Herridge has obtained a 94-page spread sheet showing dates of media reports, dates of Steele reports on the same material, and the FBI effort to verify or validate the circular process. In essence this is evidence of the process we initially shared almost three years ago; only now we know the names. Former SSCI staffer Dan Jones, former Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson, and Simpson’s crew at Fusion-GPS, pitched and planted phony Trump-Russia evidence with the media and simultaneously gave those fake points to Chris Steele to supplement the dossier. Using the same method of Ezra Klein’s “JournOList” replication, Dan Jones and Fusion-GPS paid the journalists to run the stories.

Steele then used the same information from Jones and Fusion in his Dossier and cited the planted media reports; as evidence to substantiate. The Dossier is then provided to the FBI. The journalists then provide *indulgences* to the FBI as part of the collaboration. The FBI, specifically Lisa Page, Peter Strzok and public information office Mike Kortan, then leak the outcomes of the FBI Dossier investigative processes to the same media that have reported on the originating material. It is all a big circle of planting and laundering the same originating false material; aka a “wrap up smear.” Michael Isikoff highlighted the level of how enmeshed media is with the Fusion team in February 2018 when he admitted his reporting was being used by the DOJ and FBI to advance the political objectives of the intelligence community.

Additionally, FBI investigator Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page were shown in their text messages to be leaking stories from the Clinton Investigation, the Trump investigation and the Mueller investigation to journalists at Politico, The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was busted by the Inspector General leaking stories to the media and then lying about it to INSD and IG investigators. FBI Director James Comey admitted to leaking stories to the New York Times, and even hired his friend Andrew Richman (off-the-books), gave him access to FBI and NSA databases, and then leaked information to Richman along with another friend Benjamin Wittes at Lawfare blog.

Lest we forget, the IG report on how the FBI handled the Clinton investigation revealed that dozens of FBI officials were actually taking bribes from the media for information: IG REPORT – “We identified numerous FBI employees, at all levels of the organization and with no official reason to be in contact with the media, who were nevertheless in frequent contact with reporters. Attached to this report as Attachments E and F are two link charts that reflect the volume of communications that we identified between FBI employees and media representatives in April/May and October 2016. We have profound concerns about the volume and extent of unauthorized media contacts by FBI personnel that we have uncovered during our review.”

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” In notes also released last week, Brennan describes telling Obama about the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 28 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to villify [sic] Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.”

Team Obama Invented The Whole Russiagate Scandal (NYP)

In mid-2016, the FBI got word that Russian intelligence believed Hillary Clinton’s campaign was planning to frame Donald Trump as colluding with Russia’s Vladimir Putin to hack her computers. Yet somehow, the crack agents never connected the dots when handed the Steele “dossier” commissioned and paid for by the Clinton campaign that claimed Trump was colluding with Putin. Instead, the Justice Department used that dossier as a pretext to spy on at least Trump aide Carter Page as it investigated the clearly spurious charges. Justice also distorted the facts about Page’s past relations with the CIA to suggest he had a history of working with Russian agents when his actual record involved turning them in. Meanwhile, it buried the fact that Steele’s main source was himself a suspected Russian agent.

Nor did it connect the dots to another “Russiagate” lead, the third-hand rumors passed along by a Clinton-allied diplomat that supposedly implicated another Trump aide, George Papadopoulos. The news of the 2016 intel comes from Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe’s gradual release of Russiagate records — which show that the true scandal was the investigation itself. Maybe the Russian analysis was mistaken. But the info should have prompted far greater skepticism on all the Clinton-connected “dirt” on Trump, none of which ever panned out, despite years of investigation. From Justice to the CIA, the Obama administration politicized a host of nonpartisan institutions to stain the Trump campaign and then sabotage the Trump administration. And, with selective leaks to major media, the plotters managed to convince much of the country.


The info was credible on its face: US intelligence “obtained insight” into the Russian analysis using highly classified methods (which are redacted in the now-public documents). The Russians had determined that Clinton wanted to blame Trump for the hacking of Democratic National Committee e-mails to distract from the growing scandal over her use of a non-secure home-brew server for official business as secretary of state. The US intel community found it was authentic Russian analysis, though it couldn’t judge the veracity of the claim. And President Barack Obama was briefed on it, per his CIA director, John Brennan. In notes also released last week, Brennan describes telling Obama about the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 28 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to villify [sic] Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.”

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“All of this recent evidence happens to tie in to other earlier facts, from the Clinton campaign lying about funding the dossier to Steele misrepresenting his sources and his conclusions.”

The Truman Show Election: The Public Is Left In The Dark (Turley)

As news emerged that United States Attorney John Durham uncovered some serious and possibly criminal conduct in the Russia investigation, Democrats demanded that he not release his report before the election. Indeed, the federal rules tell prosecutors to avoid timing “investigative steps or criminal charges for the purpose of affecting an election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.” However, major cases often do affect elections, and they are not sealed in amber until the votes are counted. The investigation by Durham is focused on conduct in the election four years ago. His subjects of scrutiny are not candidates on this ballot but rather federal officials involved in the investigation of potential collusion between Russia and the Donald Trump campaign in 2016.

This proved to be unfounded. Ultimately, there was no evidence of collusion, let alone anyone who committed crimes related to collusion. Indeed, disclosed evidence shows the FBI was told early on that the allegations were not only dubious but possibly disinformation from Russia. In recent weeks, we learned that the primary source used by Christopher Steele in his now infamous dossier was believed to be an agent of Russia. Recent declassified material also showed that in 2016, then CIA director John Brennan had briefed President Obama on an alleged plan by Hillary Clinton to tie then candidate Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” The handwritten notes from Brennen would seem extremely serious on their face. Indeed, the allegation was sufficiently serious to brief the president.


It reflected intelligence reports given to the FBI and then director James Comey. When asked last week about the report, Comey simply said it did not “ring a bell.” What rings his bell is precisely what the investigation by Durham could reveal. All of this recent evidence happens to tie in to other earlier facts, from the Clinton campaign lying about funding the dossier to Steele misrepresenting his sources and his conclusions. There are arguments for delaying the release of the report by Durham this close to the election. But there is a lack of assurances that we would ever know the findings after the election. If Democrats control both chambers of Congress, it is unlikely they will have hearings on the report. Democrats on the intelligence committees have said they want the investigations into 2016 to end so we can all “look ahead rather than back.” If Biden becomes the next president, the Justice Department could shut down or curtail the investigation, or even classify its final report as privileged.

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“Criminal liability may even extend into the news media itself — though they may only be named as unindicted co-conspirators.”

What’s Behind No-Show Joe (Jim Kunstler)

Something even stranger and more sinister than the Covid-19 virus is creeping across the USA: Joe Biden’s Flying Dutchman campaign which, like the ghost-ship of legend, plies the vasty electoral seas with a skeleton crew and no hope of ever landing. Late last week, the candidate blew into Yuma, AZ, for a rare, joint appearance with veep pardner Kamala Harris and, guess what, absolutely no civilians (i.e. voters) showed up at the event, though the local TV news had publicized it. Weird, a little bit? Face it: we’re living in the days of fantastic high-tech information mischief. Virtually all of the traditional news media, plus the powerful new social media, plus the news media of foreign lands, and scores of other embeds in the federal bureaucracy, are behind the story that Ol’ White Joe and his understudy, Ms. Harris, are way ahead in the polls.

Do you ask yourself, as I must, whether this is all a gigantic psy-op? And why would it be? All right, I know that many readers are cross-eyed to the point of nausea over the Barr-Durham investigation, especially the failure to deliver indictments before the election. The complete absence of leaks from that outfit has been crazy-making itself for many. But I take that as a sign of the profound seriousness of the investigation. Durham’s crew is methodically making a case for the worst and largest seditious conspiracy in US history. It requires the most extreme care. They are not going to blow it by allowing any suspicion that it is being used as a campaign ploy on behalf of Mr. Trump.

Sometime after the election and before the 20th of January, a great big hammer is going to come down on the people who organized the RussiaGate op and many of its spinoffs. As the late Tom Petty observed, the waiting is the hardest part, and not only for those in the Counter-resistance who have already connected the felonious dots based on publicly available documents, but also for the targets of the Barr-Durham RussiaGate probe, the Resistance itself — the long log of Obama Admin officials, Clinton campaign minions, and even senators who worked to prevent Donald Trump’s election by foul means and then tried to disable and overthrow him when it didn’t work, in order to cover up their criminal culpability.

You understand that the targets of Barr and Durham are almost all lawyers, Democratic Party-connected lawyers, that is. And so, what they are doing in the shadows of Joe Biden’s ghost campaign is attempting to mount a last-ditch lawyers’ assault on their antagonists, who have regained control of a rogue Justice Department. Thus: Lawfare. If RussiaGate was the most dastardly crime of government against itself ever in US history, then the final result will be the most awful roundup and prosecution of disgraced former officials ever seen in the history of the world’s great nations. Criminal liability may even extend into the news media itself — though they may only be named as unindicted co-conspirators.

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“Should you remain silent, you will be complicit in a coup d’état.”

Coup Who? (Hemingway)

In August, two retired military officers published a piece in Defense One which literally encouraged America’s top military leadership to have the 82nd airborne to descend on Washington in the event of a disputed election and escort President Trump out of office. “In the Constitutional crisis described above, your duty is to give unambiguous orders directing U.S. military forces to support the Constitutional transfer of power,” they write. “Should you remain silent, you will be complicit in a coup d’état.” In other words, the military must prevent a coup by staging one of their own. Thankfully, the Pentagon publicly condemned John Nagl’s and Paul Yingling’s musings.

In some regards it is unremarkable in a nation with millions of military veterans that two of them would have some kind of Clockwork Orange-style MSNBC viewing party and put crayon to paper long enough to come up with this violent fantasia. However, the problem isn’t so much that Nagl and Yingling gamed out this scenario – every election that I can remember for the last 30 years has featured fringe voices expressing concern that the current occupant will refuse to leave. The real problem is that, for once, a respectable media outlet went ahead and published it. If anything, the Defense One op-ed was just the most explicit example of the anti-Trump coup pornography that’s become a staple of mainstream media.


And when the media is not baselessly fretting Trump will refuse to leave office, they’re outrageously and falsely characterizing Trump and his administration in ways that justify his violent removal. The Washington Post recently ran an “analysis” in the business section, quoting a bunch of academics warning that Trump was leading America into autocracy. The article ended with this kicker quote from a Swedish political scientist, Staffan I. Lindberg at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg: “‘if Trump wins this election in November, democracy is gone’ in the United States, [Lindberg] says. He gives it about two years. ‘It’s really time to wake up before it’s too late.’”

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“..all of the individuals charged in the plot had been under intense scrutiny by the Federal Bureau of Investigation months prior to the scheme being hatched..”

Kidnapping Dissent: The Whitmer Plot and the End of Freedom (MPN)

Stoked for decades by an extremist capitalist oligarchy which has slowly and methodically disabled the levers of democracy to achieve its interests, the latent racial tensions that haunt America’s collective psyche are being exploited in ways never before possible with the advent of online disinformation mashups, like QAnon, Antifa, BLM and others along the spectrum of modern-day social media constructs. As we near the 2020 presidential election, the skeletons in America’s closet are being dressed in the latest fashion and paraded before a terrified citizenry, whose health and peace of mind is under siege as a result of the pandemic crisis while simultaneously bombarded with apocalyptic scenarios of societal collapse and civil war, like the alleged conspiracy to kidnap and murder Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer as part of a larger plan to storm the Michigan State Capitol with hundreds of armed men.

But, considering the fact that all of the individuals charged in the plot had been under intense scrutiny by the Federal Bureau of Investigation months prior to the scheme being hatched, it is not surprising that suspicions of entrapment by the FBI have begun to swirl around the high profile case, which was filed before the U.S. District Court of Western Michigan last Tuesday.

[..] Prior to the 2018 midterm victory that put her in the governor’s mansion, Whitmer had served in the Michigan state Senate from 2006 until 2014. More recently, she had assumed the role of interim Ingham County prosecutor in 2016 after the serving prosecutor had to resign over a lurid sex scandal. Whitmer beat Republican Bill Schuette to take the governorship and after just one year in office, she came into the national spotlight for the first time when she was selected to deliver the Democrats’ response to the Trump’s last State of the Union address in February, which also coincided with the start of the FBI’s investigation into her would-be kidnappers.

In August, Whitmer again garnered national attention amid speculation that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden was going to choose her as his running mate. By then, the FBI had compiled hours of conversations between the ragtag crew of convicted criminals and U.S. Marines, who in June, allegedly targeted Governor Whitmer as part of a grand plan to storm the Michigan State Capitol with 200 men and take hostages before the upcoming presidential election. The group’s motivation is said to come from Whitmer’s “unilateral” lockdown policies, extending the state’s coronavirus emergency measures beyond the original April 30 cut-off date through executive order.

The move elicited an immediate reaction from conservatives in the state and the very influential Koch-funded Mackinac Center, which filed an injunction against the governor’s executive action in May. After challenges to the governor’s orders were struck down in lower courts, the Republican-majority Michigan Supreme Court last week added fuel to the fire by ruling Whitmer’s executive orders to be unconstitutional and setting off a firestorm of controversy on the same day FBI agents murdered Eric Mark-Matthew Allport in Detroit and just before the FBI decided to submit their affidavit against the Whitmer plotters.

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Never let a good crisis go to waste.

IMF Seizes on Pandemic to Pave Way for Privatization in 81 Countries (MPN)

The enormous economic dislocation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic offers a unique opportunity to fundamentally alter the structure of society, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) if using the crisis to implement near-permanent austerity measures across the world.76 of the 91 loans it has negotiated with 81 nations since the beginning of the worldwide pandemic in March have come attached with demands that countries adopt measures such as deep cuts to public services and pensions — measures that will undoubtedly entail privatization, wage freezes or cuts, or the firing of public sector workers like doctors, nurses, teachers and firefighters.

The principal cheerleader for neoliberal austerity measures across the globe for decades, the IMF has recently (quietly) begun admitting that these policies have not worked and generally make problems like poverty, uneven development, and inequality even worse. Furthermore, they have also failed even to bring the promised economic growth that was meant to counteract these negative effects. In 2016, it described its own policies as “oversold” and earlier summed up its experiments in Latin America as “all pain, no gain.” Thus, its own reports explicitly state its policies do not work.


“The IMF has sounded the alarm about a massive spike in inequality in the wake of the pandemic. Yet it is steering countries to pay for pandemic spending by making austerity cuts that will fuel poverty and inequality,” Chema Vera, Interim Executive Director of Oxfam International, said today. “These measures could leave millions of people without access to healthcare or income support while they search for work, and could thwart any hope of sustainable recovery. In taking this approach, the IMF is doing an injustice to its own research. Its head needs to start speaking to its hands.”

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Wouldn’t many say that so they look like good citizens?

CDC: 85% of COVID19 Patients Report ‘Always’ Or ‘Often’ Wearing A Mask (JS)

An underreported, recently-published CDC study adds to the pile of evidence that cloth masks or other forms of mandated face coverings only contribute negatives to our COVID-19 problem. The study also displays — despite the constant accusations of widespread misbehavior from public health officials — that Americans are adhering to mask wearing, but mask wearing is not doing us any good. The CDC study, which surveyed symptomatic COVID-19 patients, has found that 70.6% of respondents reported “always” wearing a mask, while an additional 14.4% say they “often” wear a mask. That means a whopping 85% of infected COVID-19 patients reported habitual mask wearing. Only 3.9% of those infected said they “never” wear a face covering.


The study offers insight into the reality that tens of thousands of Americans are acquiring COVID-19 on a daily basis despite overwhelming adherence to mask wearing. Masks simply aren’t working to “slow the spread” or “stop the spread.” The study also dismisses “public health experts’” claims from individuals such as Dr. Anthony Fauci and others that Americans are not following the guidance being disseminated by the CDC and other disease control agencies. Americans are following the CDC guidance. It’s just not working.

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These trials all have problems.

Johnson&Johnson Covid19 Vaccine Study Paused Due To Unexplained Illness (STAT)

The study of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine has been paused due to an unexplained illness in a study participant. A document sent to outside researchers running the 60,000-patient clinical trial states that a “pausing rule” has been met, that the online system used to enroll patients in the study has been closed, and that the data and safety monitoring board — an independent committee that watches over the safety of patients in the clinical trial — would be convened. The document was obtained by STAT. Contacted by STAT, J&J confirmed the study pause, saying it was due to “an unexplained illness in a study participant.” The company declined to provide further details.

“We must respect this participant’s privacy. We’re also learning more about this participant’s illness, and it’s important to have all the facts before we share additional information,” the company said in a statement. J&J emphasized that so-called adverse events — illnesses, accidents, and other bad medical outcomes — are an expected part of a clinical study, and also emphasized the difference between a study pause and a clinical hold, which is a formal regulatory action that can last much longer. The vaccine study is not currently under a clinical hold. J&J said that while it normally communicates clinical holds to the public, it does not usually inform the public of study pauses. The data and safety monitoring board, or DSMB, convened late Monday to review the case.


J&J said that in cases like this “it is not always immediately apparent” whether the participant who experienced an adverse event received a study treatment or a placebo. Though clinical trial pauses are not uncommon — and in some cases last only a few days — they are generating outsized attention in the race to test vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. Given the size of Johnson & Johnson’s trial, it’s not surprising that study pauses could occur, and another could happen if this one resolves, a source familiar with the study said. “If we do a study of 60,000 people, that is a small village,” the source said. “In a small village there are a lot of medical events that happen.”

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Fairy tales.

Economists Are More Like Storytellers Than Scientists (Benack)

When you listen to an economist, chances are you’ll hear a lot of statistics. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s speech at the National Association for Business Economics on Oct. 6 is a case in point. In the first two minutes alone he referred to a dizzying range of economic indicators: growth, unemployment rate, personal consumption expenditures inflation, labor force participation, productivity gains, real wage gains and so on. But if you watch the speech, you may notice that he rarely cites the actual numbers. That’s because Powell, and economists generally, tend to be more interested in the direction in which the numbers are going rather than the numbers themselves. Is unemployment high or low? Is the Dow up or down? Is GDP growth trending upward or downward?

In other words, Powell is telling you a story. And although economists have historically wanted their field to be associated with the so-called hard sciences – a conjuring act exemplified by the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences – I’ve come to see it as having a lot more in common with literature, especially novels, than physics or chemistry. As a literary scholar researching economics and its history, I have found that being aware of the similarities between economists and novelists helps us to better evaluate the claims they make. Both are telling stories. Understanding that empowers us to judge the credibility of what they’re saying for ourselves. The notion that economics shares a lot with fiction may seem counterintuitive. That feeling is not incidental.

Ever since the inception of economics in the late 1800s, economists have sought to associate their discipline with the very opposite of fiction: the natural sciences. Unlike economics, which deals with human relationships, the hard sciences study phenomena in the natural world. As such, a claim by a natural scientist reflects a different kind of truth than one by an economist. For example, the law of gravity describes an immutable physical fact; the law of supply and demand describes a relationship between people. What we know as mainstream economics today began with the concept of marginal utility, which posits that individuals make purchases by considering how much happiness they will derive from each additional unit of a good or service.

What attracted many economists to the concept was that it provided a way to make economics more mathematical. The concept of marginal utility allowed economists to turn sensations into quantities. Happiness was imagined as a pile of many little units of pleasure, which some economists actually believed could be physically measured. Francis Y. Edgeworth even conceived of a “psychophysical machine” to do precisely that in his beautifully titled book “Mathematical Psychics.” This is to say that, in the 19th century, the resemblance of economics to the natural sciences fooled even some of its own practitioners.

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