Is Full Social Maturity Inconsistent With The Expectations Of Google Senior Managers?

 BI |  Hi everyone,

The last two weeks have been difficult for many, many people, and have surfaced large, important issues. Many in the Black+ and other communities have trusted us to make good on promises regarding racial equity, respect and inclusion. I can understand how the handling of Dr. Gebru's departure has made some question our commitment to that. These are areas I care deeply about as well, both personally and professionally. You can and absolutely should raise concerns over our culture and lack of representation. We need to do more to make Google Research more inclusive and representative. I, along with our Research leadership team and the DEI Council, will be focusing intensely on this in 2021. We know we have work to do to improve our internal org culture and leadership accountability is essential to that culture.

At the same time, researchers might hesitate to pursue crucial work on bias in AI and related issues, and have raised concerns about our org culture and ability to pursue this research. This deeply saddens me, and I want to reiterate how important it is that we do work in this area to highlight risks and larger societal issues that can arise in uses of AI (indeed, much our of AI Principles highlight the importance of this). So, I want to assure you all that yes, we need to double down on research that ensures AI and other technologies have a positive and equitable impact. We have over 200 people on multiple teams across the company working on responsible AI, and we're going to continue and expand that work. We'll also sharped up our publication goals and processes going into 20201 to ensure that all researchers feel confident that their work is supported.

We've heard the important questions many of you have raised – thank you for your time and energy. We had intended to gather at our All Hands next week to celebrate the year and to preview our 2021 strategy, but while there's lots to be proud of as an org and what we've accomplished, a celebration doesn't seem appropriate at this time. So we won't hold that meeting next week, and will look at getting together as a whole org after the holidays. Instead, to make sure we have opportunities to come together and discuss these important issues, I'll be setting aside time next week, along with my direct reports and other leads within Research, to hold a series of smaller group conversations. If you'd like to participate in these, please fill out this form (the number of people interested and topics shared will help us figure out the most effective format and number of these sessions). In addition to the formal review underway that Sundar shared, many of you have shared useful suggestions on how we can improve our culture. If you have more thoughts, please feel free to share (this one can be anonymous, or you can add your idap) and know that I'll be reading every idea and reflecting on how we can do better.

I'm sorry for how challenging this has been. Please take some time over the next week as you see fit; if you prefer to continue your work, that's fine, but I want everyone to know you can take the time you need. The top priority for me is all fo you – your well-being and our ability to pursue great research together.

You can expect to hear a clear follow up from me and my leads on this in January.

Thanks,

- Jeff

Johns Hopkins - A Closer Look At U.S. Deaths

retractionwatch |  A student newspaper at Johns Hopkins has retracted an article claiming that COVID-19 has had “relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.”

The article, “A closer look at U.S. deaths due to COVID-19” (link from the Wayback Machine) was published on November 22 and relied on a presentation by Genevieve Briand, assistant program director of the Applied Economics master’s degree program at Hopkins. 

From the article:

These data analyses suggest that in contrast to most people’s assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.

Not surprisingly, the article was promoted on social media by COVID-19 skeptics. And yesterday, The News-Letter made the article disappear, tweeting:

As is typical in such cases, that earned the article another round of tweets, this time with cries of censorship.

We learned about the deletion this morning, and contacted the editors, along with Briand, for explanations. First, Briand explained the disappearance by saying that as a student newspaper, The News-Letter 

simply rotates the articles it features on a weekly basis so as to showcase as many JHU students articles as possible.

Having cut some of our teeth as student newspaper editors, that didn’t quite wash. The News-Letter’s editors, Rudy Malcom and Katy Wilner, sent us a link to a just-published retraction notice that provides a lot more detail:

After The News-Letter published this article on Nov. 22, it was brought to our attention that our coverage of Genevieve Briand’s presentation “COVID-19 Deaths: A Look at U.S. Data” has been used to support dangerous inaccuracies that minimize the impact of the pandemic.

We decided on Nov. 26 to retract this article to stop the spread of misinformation, as we explained on social media. However, it is our responsibility as journalists to provide a historical record. We have chosen to take down the article from our website, but it is available here as a PDF.

In accordance with our standards for transparency, we are sharing with our readers how we came to this decision. The News-Letter is an editorially and financially independent, student-run publication. Our articles and content are not endorsed by the University or the School of Medicine, and our decision to retract this article was made independently.

Briand’s study should not be used exclusively in understanding the impact of COVID-19, but should be taken in context with the countless other data published by Hopkins, the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

As assistant director for the Master’s in Applied Economics program at Hopkins, Briand is neither a medical professional nor a disease researcher. At her talk, she herself stated that more research and data are needed to understand the effects of COVID-19 in the U.S.

Briand was quoted in the article as saying, “All of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers.” This claim is incorrect and does not take into account the spike in raw death count from all causes compared to previous years. According to the CDC, there have been almost 300,000 excess deaths due to COVID-19. Additionally, Briand presented data of total U.S. deaths in comparison to COVID-19-related deaths as a proportion percentage, which trivializes the repercussions of the pandemic. This evidence does not disprove the severity of COVID-19; an increase in excess deaths is not represented in these proportionalities because they are offered as percentages, not raw numbers.

Briand also claimed in her analysis that deaths due to heart diseases, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia may be incorrectly categorized as COVID-19-related deaths. However, COVID-19 disproportionately affects those with preexisting conditions, so those with those underlying conditions are statistically more likely to be severely affected and die from the virus.

Because of these inaccuracies and our failure to provide additional information about the effects of COVID-19, The News-Letter decided to retract this article. It is our duty as a publication to combat the spread of misinformation and to enhance our fact-checking process. We apologize to our readers.

Update, 1200 UTC, 11/28/20: Briand tells us:

The News-Letter is an editorially and financially independent, student-run publication. Their decision to retract the article was their own. Yanni Gu did an excellent at reporting the content of the presentation.

Arbitrary, Unscientific, And Conflicting Lockdown Restrictions Confusing The Carens

theatlantic  |  Two weeks ago, I staged a reluctant intervention via Instagram direct message. The subject was a longtime friend, Josh, who had been sharing photos of himself and his fiancé occasionally dining indoors at restaurants since New York City, where we both live, had reopened them in late September. At first, I hadn’t said anything. Preliminary research suggests that when people congregate indoors, an infected person is almost 20 times more likely to transmit the virus than if they were outside. But restaurants are open legally in New York, and I am not the COVID police. Josh and I had chatted several times in the early months of the pandemic about safety, and I felt sure that he was making an informed decision, even if it wasn’t the one I’d make.

As weeks passed, my confidence began to slip. The number of daily new cases in NYC started to balloon, heightening the risk of transmission in any closed space, but Josh kept going to restaurants. Maybe he was misunderstanding something about the risk. Maybe he’d want to know. The next time he posted about COVID-19, I told him, as gently as I could, that if he was trying to stay safe, it would be a good idea to stop dining indoors.

My suspicions were correct. Because the state and city had reopened restaurants, Josh, who asked to be identified only by his first name to protect his privacy, assumed that local health officials had figured out a patchwork of precautions that would make indoor dining safe. He and his fiancé had even gone one extra step, making a Google Map of places they knew were being particularly strict with temperature checks. They were listening to the people they were told to listen to—New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently released a book about how to control the pandemic—and following all the rules.

Josh was irritated, but not because of me. If indoor dining couldn’t be made safe, he wondered, why were people being encouraged to do it? Why were temperature checks being required if they actually weren’t useful? Why make rules that don’t keep people safe?

Across America, this type of honest confusion abounds. While a misinformation-gorged segment of the population rejects the expert consensus on virus safety outright, so many other people, like Josh, are trying to do everything right, but run afoul of science without realizing it. Often, safety protocols, of all things, are what’s misleading them. In the country’s new devastating wave of infections, a perilous gap exists between the realities of transmission and the rules implemented to prevent it. “When health authorities present one rule after another without clear, science-based substantiation, their advice ends up seeming arbitrary and capricious,” the science journalist Roxanne Khamsi recently wrote in Wired. “That erodes public trust and makes it harder to implement rules that do make sense.” Experts know what has to be done to keep people safe, but confusing policies and tangled messages from some of the country’s most celebrated local leaders are setting people up to die.

The Covid Data Is Now As Tainted As The 2020 Presidential Election Results

Dr. Roger Hodkinson The doctor said that nothing could be done to stop the spread of the virus besides protecting older more vulnerable people and that the whole situation represented “politics playing medicine, and that’s a very dangerous game.”

 

Hodkinson remarked that “social distancing is useless because COVID is spread by aerosols which travel 30 meters or so before landing,” as he called for society to be re-opened immediately to prevent the debilitating damage being caused by lockdowns.

 

Hodkinson also slammed mandatory mask mandates as completely pointless.

“Masks are utterly useless. There is no evidence base for their effectiveness whatsoever,” he said.

 

“Paper masks and fabric masks are simply virtue signalling. They’re not even worn effectively most of the time. It’s utterly ridiculous. Seeing these unfortunate, uneducated people – I’m not saying that in a pejorative sense – seeing these people walking around like lemmings obeying without any knowledge base to put the mask on their face.”

 

Hodkinson’s credentials are beyond question, with the MedMalDoctors website affirming his credibility.

“He received his general medical degrees from Cambridge University in the UK (M.A., M.B., B. Chir.) where he was a scholar at Corpus Christi College. Following a residency at the University of British Columbia he became a Royal College certified general pathologist (FRCPC) and also a Fellow of the College of American Pathologists (FCAP).”

“He is in good Standing with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, and has been recognized by the Court of Queen’s Bench in Alberta as an expert in pathology.”

 

Defense Strategic Communication Group: Free Society Or Propagandized Society - But Not Both

ottowacitizen |  The Canadian Forces wants to establish a new organization that will use propaganda and other techniques to try to influence the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of Canadians, according to documents obtained by this newspaper.

The plan comes on the heels of the Canadian Forces spending more than $1 million to train public affairs officers on behaviour modification techniques of the same sort used by the parent firm of Cambridge Analytica, as well as a controversial and bizarre propaganda training mission in which the military forged letters from the Nova Scotia government to warn the public that wolves were wandering in the province.

The new Defence Strategic Communication group will advance “national interests by using defence activities to influence the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of audiences,” according to the document dated October 2020. Target audiences for such an initiative would be the Canadian public as well as foreign populations in countries where military forces are sent.

The document is the end result of what Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jon Vance has called the “weaponization” of the military’s public affairs branch. The document is in a draft form, but work is already underway on some aspects of the plan and some techniques have been already tested on the Canadian public.

But the office of Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said Sunday that the plan, at least for now, is not authorized to proceed. Sajjan has raised concerns about some of the activities related to such influence and propaganda operations. “No such plan has been approved, nor will it be,” Floriane Bonneville, Sajjan’s press secretary, said after being asked by this newspaper about the initiative.

But a series of town halls were already conducted last week for a number of military personnel on the strategies contained in the draft plan.

The report quotes Brig.-Gen. Jay Janzen, director general military public affairs, who stated, “The motto ‘who dares, wins’ is as applicable to strategic communication as it is to warfare.”

 

Highly Educated And STILL Fully Enslaved...,

technologyreview |  In July, Joseph Giaime, a physics professor at Louisiana State University and Caltech, gave me a tour of one of the most complex science experiments in the world. He did it via Zoom on his iPad. He showed me a control room of LIGO, a large physics collaboration based in Louisiana and Washington state. In 2015, LIGO was the first project to directly detect gravitational waves, created by the collision of two black holes 1.3 billion light-years away. 

About 30 large monitors displayed various aspects of LIGO’s status. The system monitors tens of thousands of data channels in real time. Video screens portrayed light scattering off optics, and data charts depicted instrument vibrations from seismic activity and human movement.  

I was visiting this complicated operation, on which hundreds of specialists in discrete scientific subfields work together, to try to answer a seemingly simple question: What does it really mean to know anything? How well can we understand the world when so much of our knowledge relies on evidence and argument provided by others? 

The question matters not only to scientists. Many other fields are becoming more complex, and we have access to far more information and informed opinions than ever before. Yet at the same time, increasing political polarization and misinformation are making it hard to know whom or what to trust. Medical advances, political discourse, management practice, and a good deal of daily life all ride on how we evaluate and distribute knowledge.

We overstate enormously the individual’s ability to amass knowledge, and understate society’s role in possessing it. You may know that diesel fuel is bad for gas engines and that plants use photosynthesis, but can you define diesel or explain photosynthesis, let alone prove photosynthesis happens? Knowledge, as I came to recognize while researching this article, depends as much on trust and relationships as it does on textbooks and observations. 

Thirty-five years ago, the philosopher John Hardwig published a paper on what he called “epistemic dependence,” our reliance on others’ knowledge. The paper—well-cited in some academic circles but largely unknown elsewhere—only grows in relevance as society and knowledge become more complex. 

One common definition of knowledge is “justified true belief”—facts you can support with data and logic. As individuals, though, we rarely have the time or skills to justify our own beliefs. So what do we really mean when we say we know something? Hardwig posed a dilemma: Either much of our knowledge can be held only by a collective, not an individual, or individuals can “know” things they don’t really understand. (He chose the second option.) 

Epistemological Crisis...,

Propaganda works: As many democrats believe in Russiagate

Half the country was convinced Trump stole the election with rigged votes by Putin. https://t.co/O3hCbrdCvn

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) November 10, 2020

As Trump supporters believe this election was not conducted fairly...,

If you're wondering whether the president's strategy of alleging fraud and filing lawsuits is working, consider this @YouGov poll. About 80% of his supporters are not confident that the election he lost was "held fairly." pic.twitter.com/OddL8FVp7y

— Brad Heath (@bradheath) November 11, 2020

Represent Constituents?!?!?! Silly Tlaib - We Have A Mandate From Paying Donors!!!

dailycaller |  “Despite an obvious preference by Democratic leadership to focus on the suburbs and former Republican voters rather than working-class communities of color, progressives like Stacey Abrams, Rep. Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib are showing us – through turnout results in their states and cities – where Democrats must invest to build the party,” the memo says.

“We’re not going to be successful if we’re silencing districts like mine,” Tlaib said, according to Politico. “Me not being able to speak on behalf of many of my neighbors right now, many of which are black neighbors, means me being silenced. I can’t be silent.” 

“We are not interested in unity that asks people to sacrifice their freedom and their rights any longer,” Tlaib continued. “And if we truly want to unify our country, we have to really respect every single voice. We say that so willingly when we talk about Trump supporters, but we don’t say that willingly for my Black and brown neighbors and from LGBTQ neighbors or marginalized people.”

Progressives are pushing for power in the Joe Biden administration, despite the criticism from moderate Democrats. Tlaib reportedly wants to see a public educator and labor advocates in top positions. Progressives and left-wing strategists don’t want Biden to work across the aisle with Republicans, although Biden has expressed his desire to create a sense of unity by doing so.

“If [voters] can walk past blighted homes and school closures and pollution to vote for Biden-Harris, when they feel like they don’t have anything else, they deserve to be heard,” Tlaib said, choking up as she expressed frustration near the end of an interview this week. “I can’t believe that people are asking them to be quiet.”

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is calling for an “unapologetic agenda” that is distinct from the GOP “instead of trying to play to notions of civility,” Politico reported. Specifically, Ocasio-Cortez wants the Democratic Party to establish a cohesive message on racism because “Democrats don’t want to talk about race.”

 

Not Just K Street - Twitter And Facebook Have Embedded Execs In The Biden Campaign And Transition Team

breitbart  |  Breitbart News recently reported on the New York Post’s bombshell story that indicated that Joe Biden may have met with an adviser to the board of Burisma while he was Vice President, arranged by his son Hunter, who was working as a lobbyist for the company at the time. Joe Biden has previously said, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”

But, the leaked emails allegedly show that Hunter introduced his father to a Bursima executive less than a year before Biden, acting as Vice President, pressured the Ukrainian government into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company. Shortly after the story broke, many found themselves having trouble sharing it across social media. This censorship comes just weeks after executives from both Facebook and Twitter joined the Biden transition team.

Breitbart News reported in September that Twitter Public Policy Director Carlos Monje left the social media company to join the transition team for Joe Biden. Monje’s specific role on the team has not been made clear and Biden’s transition team reportedly declined to comment on the situation.

Despite a specific role not being named, Monje will reportedly be serving as co-chair of Biden’s infrastructure policy committee and has already helped to host a fundraiser for Biden this week, according to an invitation sent to Politico.

Monje has worked in the world of presidential transition politics in the past, previously serving as the director of agency review on the team that prepared for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s administration, which failed to take flight. Monje also worked on the Obama administration team’s 2008 national security working group according to his LinkedIn profile.

Monje also acted as deputy policy director during Obama’s first run for office and subsequently served as a senior policy advisor and special assistant to the president on the Domestic Policy Council. Monje’s final years in the administration were spent in the Transporation Department before he departed for Twitter.

In October, Breitbart News further reported that Biden’s transition team had hired top Facebook executive Jessica Hertz to its general counsel to oversee ethical issues. The move reportedly came as the campaign struggles with Facebook to have posts by President Trump censored on the platform. This is the second Big Tech executive to join Biden’s campaign. Hertz will reportedly be responsible for “enforcement, oversight, and compliance” of the ethics plan that Biden’s team unveiled this week.

New York Post op-ed editor Sohrab Ahmari was one of the first to note that Twitter was blocking him from posting a link to the Biden-Ukraine story, claiming that the link was “potentially harmful.”

 

WTF?!?! - The Washington Post Breaking Ranks With The Elite Narrative Consensus?

WaPo  | The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday removed language from its website that said the novel coronavirus spreads via airborne transmission, the latest example of the agency backtracking from its own guidance.

The agency said the guidance, which went up on Friday and largely went without notice until late Sunday, should not have been posted because it was an early draft.

“Unfortunately an early draft of a revision went up without any technical review,” said Jay Butler, the CDC’s deputy director for infectious diseases. “We are returning to the earlier version and revisiting that process. It was a failure of process at CDC.”

Evidence that the virus floats in the air has mounted for months, with an increasingly loud chorus of aerosol biologists pointing to superspreading events in choirs, buses, bars and other poorly ventilated spaces. They cheered when the CDC seemed to join them in agreeing the coronavirus can be airborne.

 Experts who reviewed the CDC’s Friday post had said the language change had the power to shift policy and drive a major rethinking on the need to better ventilate indoor air.

Jose-Luis Jimenez, a chemistry professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder who studies how aerosols spread the virus, told The Washington Post before the CDC reversed its guidance “this is a good thing, if we can reduce transmission because more people understand how it is spreading and know what to do to stop it.”

Although CDC officials maintained Friday’s post was a mistake, Democratic lawmakers were incredulous. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) tweeted Monday afternoon that he would investigate why the language to airborne transmission had been scrubbed.

Anti-Fauci NIH Covert "Troll" Gets Popped Like Q-Map Author Got Popped Last Week...,

thedailybeast |  The managing editor of the prominent conservative website RedState has spent months trashing U.S. officials tasked with combating COVID-19, dubbing White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci a “mask nazi,” and intimating that government officials responsible for the pandemic response should be executed.

But that writer, who goes by the pseudonym “streiff,” isn’t just another political blogger. The Daily Beast has discovered that he actually works in the public affairs shop of the very agency that Fauci leads.

William B. Crews is, by day, a public affairs specialist for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. But for years he has been writing for RedState under the streiff pseudonym. And in that capacity he has been contributing to the very same disinformation campaign that his superiors at the NIAID say is a major challenge to widespread efforts to control a pandemic that has claimed roughly 200,000 U.S. lives.

Under his pseudonym, Crews has derided his own colleagues as part of a left-wing anti-Trump conspiracy and vehemently criticized the man who leads his agency, whom he described as the “attention-grubbing and media-whoring Anthony Fauci.” He has gone after other public health officials at the state and federal levels, as well—“the public health Karenwaffen,'' as he’s called them—over measures such as the closures of businesses and other public establishments and the promotion of social distancing and mask-wearing. Those policies, Crews insists, have no basis in science and are simply surreptitious efforts to usurp Americans’ rights, destroy the U.S. economy, and damage President Donald Trump’s reelection effort.

“I think we’re at the point where it is safe to say that the entire Wuhan virus scare was nothing more or less than a massive fraud perpetrated upon the American people by ‘experts’ who were determined to fundamentally change the way the country lives and is organized and governed,” Crews wrote in a June post on RedState.

“If there were justice,” he added, “we’d send and [sic] few dozen of these fascists to the gallows and gibbet their tarred bodies in chains until they fall apart.”

After The Daily Beast brought those and other quotes from Crews to NIAID’s attention, the agency said in an emailed statement that Crews would “retire” from his position. “NIAID first learned of this matter this morning, and Mr. Crews has informed us of his intention to retire,” the spokesperson, Kathy Stover, wrote. “We have no further comments on this as it is a personnel matter.”

Q-Anon Had A GREAT, BRILLIANT, But Inevitably Doomed Run Against The Hegemons...,

logically |   A Logically investigation identifies a key QAnon figure as New Jersey resident Jason Gelinas. The investigation ties QAnon properties to a company owned by Gelinas, an information technology specialist who has held prominent positions at both Credit Suisse and Citigroup.

Ever since the shadowy figure known as Q made his first appearance on the 4chan imageboard in October of 2017, the author’s identity has remained a mystery. Since then, Q has posted thousands of ‘drops,’ converting legions of followers to the belief that Donald Trump is leading a global fight against a satanic cabal of child trafficking elites, commonly referred to in the QAnon world as the ‘Deep State’.

 
Over the years, Q’s posts would move from the 4chan forum to 8chan, and finally to its later iteration, 8kun. But these forums weren’t where most of Q’s followers would go to access the drops: most would find them neatly compiled on a site called QMap, now the main platform on which Q’s drops are published. For years it was believed that QMap was an endeavour that was independent of both the chan forums and the person or people posting Q’s drops, but recent discoveries concerning an IP address behind QMap raised questions as to whether Jim Watkins, the owner of 8chan and 8kun, an elusive figure in his own right, could also be Q. As some QAnon researchers have pointed out, however, the story of Q’s operations does not end with Jim Watkins.

In the world of QAnon, the site qmap.pub is something of a sacred text. It’s a site designed to collect Q’s posts on other message boards and collate them in a searchable database; over the years, it has grown to include glossaries on themes, profiles on people named across the drops (handily sorted into ‘Evil’, ‘Traitor/Pawn’, and ‘Patriot’), and even a prayer wall.

Most followers of QAnon tend not to visit Q’s posts on 8kun and the ‘chan’ boards where they are initially posted (the vernacular used on those sites is deliberately exclusionary and newcomers are often put off). This makes qmap.pub a crucial port of call for all QAnon information and a major node in how the movement disseminates its lore. The site has been hitting over 10 million monthly users since April of this year.

The developer of QMap has been known only as ‘QAPPANON’ since the launch of the site in May of 2018. They have a successful Patreon where they regularly post and update their following on the running of the website. They pull in over 600 patrons and a $3,320 a month income - although there is a $4,000 a month target for ‘running costs’ of the website. In addition to the website, QMap also had an accompanying app on the Google Play Store (for $2.99) until it was removed in May this year as “harmful content”. The user QAPPANON is synonymous with qmap.pub, acting as its sole developer and mouthpiece.

The QAnon community recognizes the importance of QAPPANON and how central QMap is to how the movement functions. In a recent campaign to deplatform QAPPANON from Patreon, QAnon power-influencer Praying Medic leapt to their defence, calling on his nearly 400,000 Twitter followers to help (and funnelling them towards QAPPANON’s Patreon). In addition, Praying Medic linked to the Patreon on his podcast, describing it as the “Qmap Patreon”.
 

MK-Ultra, JFK, Assange, Snowden, Epstein: Hegemonic "Reality" Riddled With Secrets And Lies..,

Time  |  In more than seven dozen interviews conducted in Wisconsin in early September, from the suburbs around Milwaukee to the scarred streets of Kenosha in the aftermath of the Jacob Blake shooting, about 1 in 5 voters volunteered ideas that veered into the realm of conspiracy theory, ranging from QAnon to the notion that COVID-19 is a hoax. Two women in Ozaukee County calmly informed me that an evil cabal operates tunnels under the U.S. in order to rape and torture children and drink their blood. A Joe Biden supporter near a Kenosha church told me votes don’t matter, because “the elites” will decide the outcome of the election anyway. A woman on a Kenosha street corner explained that Democrats were planning to bring in U.N. troops before the election to prevent a Trump win.

It’s hard to know exactly why people believe what they believe. Some had clearly been exposed to QAnon conspiracy theorists online. Others seemed to be repeating false ideas espoused in Plandemic, a pair of conspiracy videos featuring a discredited former medical researcher that went viral, spreading the notion that COVID-19 is a hoax across social media. (COVID-19 is not a hoax.) When asked where they found their information, almost all these voters were cryptic: “Go online,” one woman said. “Dig deep,” added another. They seemed to share a collective disdain for the mainstream media–a skepticism that has only gotten stronger and deeper since 2016. The truth wasn’t reported, they said, and what was reported wasn’t true.

This matters not just because of what these voters believe but also because of what they don’t. The facts that should anchor a sense of shared reality are meaningless to them; the news developments that might ordinarily inform their vote fall on deaf ears. They will not be swayed by data on coronavirus deaths, they won’t be persuaded by job losses or stock market gains, and they won’t care if Trump called America’s fallen soldiers “losers” or “suckers,” as the Atlantic reported, because they won’t believe it. They are impervious to messaging, advertising or data. They aren’t just infected with conspiracy; they appear to be inoculated against reality.

Democracy relies on an informed and engaged public responding in rational ways to the real-life facts and challenges before us. But a growing number of Americans are untethered from that. “They’re not on the same epistemological grounding, they’re not living in the same worlds,” says Whitney Phillips, a professor at Syracuse who studies online disinformation. “You cannot have a functioning democracy when people are not at the very least occupying the same solar system.”

Are Riots Counterproductive?

opendemocracy  |  When some of the recent Black Lives Matter protests against the murder of George Floyd ended in riots, the pushback was immediate and predictable: different visions of Martin Luther King’s legacy were fought over, rival interpretations of the Civil Rights Movement were deployed, and contrasting lessons were identified.

There can be no single interpretation of the turbulent 1960s, but there is much we can learn from historical work on this period. In particular, Omar Wasow’ s recent analysis of the tactics of the Civil Rights Movement makes a provocative argument that “nonviolent” protest helped to shape a national conversation which raised the profile of the civil rights agenda and led to electoral gains for the Democrats in the early 1960s.

By contrast, he argues, rioting in US cities after the assassination of Martin Luther King pushed white Americans towards the rhetoric of ‘law and order,’ causing large shifts among white voters towards the Republican Party and helping Richard Nixon to win the 1968 presidential election shortly thereafter.

This is a controversial argument, even costing political analyst David Shor his job when he recently tweeted about Wasow’s thesis and received an angry response from those who saw it as a “tone-deaf” attack on legitimate protest. At the root of this controversy are important questions about whether framing riots as a ‘tactical choice’ is appropriate, who that framing makes responsible for ongoing racial injustice, and what the fact that we’re having this debate says about people’s views of politics and priorities. As King warned in 1968:

“A riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear?...it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquillity and the status quo than about justice and humanity.”

But social movements can’t afford to ignore these arguments completely. The idea that violent protests might be risky is not surprising, since in societies that pride themselves on being ‘peaceful,’ riots violate many taken-for-granted liberal values. Wasow’s rigorous, quantitative analysis gives this argument a historical foundation but it also has obvious resonances for today, at a time when President Trump is running for re-election on a ‘law and order’ platform against the background of street protests in cities like Portland and Kenosha.

However, the implications of Wasow’s arguments are not as straightforward as they might appear. One immediate issue concerns his methodology and the size of the effects he estimates. The models reported in Wasow’s paper don’t include any controls for time, which are normally included in statistical analyses to control for general trends affecting society as a whole, trends we assume would have happened anyway.

Han Elite SARS-CoV2 Narrative Blowback

Some #influenza deaths were actually infected with #COVID-19, Robert Redfield from US #CDC admitted at the House of Representatives. US reported 34 million cases of influenza and 20,000 deaths. Please tell us how many are related to COVID-19? @CDCDirector pic.twitter.com/vYNZRFPWo3

— Lijian Zhao 赵立坚 (@zlj517) March 12, 2020

 

winterwatch |  There is something very sketchy about the official cases of coronavirus versus the string of important people who have it.

The U.K.’s health minister caught the virus. Really? What are the odds?

Either the cases are already many, many multiples higher than the 1,200 in the U.S. acknowledged, or there is a big-time psychological operation in play. It’s probably both, as the game is generating panic at this point.

And what better way to trigger a full-blown panic than for Trojan Horse Trumpenstein to call the affliction “just like the regular flu” on Monday, and then Wednesday evening turn around and implement a draconian 30-day ban on all travel from Europe. Talk about suddenly yelling fire in a crowded theater.

Also throwing a match on the kindling was National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Fauci’s warning that “millions” of Americans could contract the virus if Americans are “complacent.”

Axios reports, citing two sources briefing on the meeting, that Congress’ in-house doctor told Capitol Hill staffers at a close-door meeting this week that he expects 75 million to 150 million people in the U.S. — roughly one-third of the country — will contract the coronavirus.

My Feb. 29, 2020, post on COVID-19 was spot on and in nu'merous respects. This should be reread, or read it now if for the first time before you continue.

One of my remarks was this: “Look for a big celebrity who’s active on Twitter to ‘come down’ sick to help trigger a panic among the plebs.”

And now, lo and behold Tom Hanks and his wife have announced they have the coronavirus. Has to be Oprah next?

Then Utah Jazz basketball player Rudy Gobert has also tested positive for coronavirus. Moments after the Gobert announcement, the NBA declared it would suspend the season until further notice. A short time later, it was announced that games would be played in empty arenas. No fans would be allowed to attend. Yes, now they have Joe Sixpack’s full attention.

Is SARS-CoV2 Deadly Or Ain't It Deadly? Somebody Lying....,

endoftheamericandream |  COVID-19 is an extremely deadly virus, and nobody should be trying to downplay the severity of this outbreak.  By now, you have probably heard a lot of people try to convince you that COVID-19 is not that dangerous because the flu has killed far more people this winter.  And that is true.  But what they aren’t telling you is that the death rate from the flu is extremely low.  Tens of thousands of Americans die from the flu each year, but if this coronavirus spreads all over the planet the death toll will be in the tens of millions.  This coronavirus outbreak is likely only in the very early stages, and if it becomes as widespread as the flu, it will become a public health crisis unlike anything we have ever faced in modern times.

After taking a look at the numbers, hopefully you will understand what I am trying to say.

On Tuesday, the World Health Organization announced that the global death rate for COVID-19 is now 3.4 percent…

World health officials said Tuesday the case fatality rate for COVID-19 is 3.4% globally, higher than previous estimates of about 2%.
“Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva. In comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected, he said.

I have a feeling that number will continue to go up, but for the purposes of this article let’s assume that number if accurate.

As for the flu, the CDC says that there will be between 32 million and 45 million illnesses in the United States during this flu season, and somewhere between 18,000 and 46,000 deaths.

What Institutional Composites Are Protecting Prince Andrew From L'Affaire Epstein Consequences?

strategic-culture |  The royal family in the UK is having its very foundations shaken by both the controversial departure of Prince Harry and Meghan and now startling new revelations which compromise Prince Andrew even further, since his “car crash” interview with BBC, over his alleged relationship with a sex-trafficked child prostitute working for Jeffrey Epstein.

Andrew had always denied any link whatsoever with the then named Virginia Roberts who was in just 17 when the main allegation – that Epstein flew her to London in March 2001 for her to have sex with the British royal – was brought against him. Central to that allegation was a photo taken by Ghislaine Maxwell in her London home on the same night in question which Andrew claims is fake.

Roberts claims that she was forced into the act by Epstein and Maxwell and has gone on the record to talk about the intimate details of the incident, but her case have been light on witnesses or those who can corroborate her allegations. Until now.

Her shocking claims are that Maxwell and Epstein were running a high class sex trafficking organisation which targeted powerful, influential individuals, which some might speculate was part of a Mossad run ‘honey trap’ – a blackmail ring which made Epstein hugely powerful and in a position to ask from the same targets favours, or for highly valuable information which could support its agenda.

In just a few days in mid February, Prince Andrew already feeble case which he was clinging on to – that he had no link whatsoever with Roberts – was shattered though, which in itself raises a number of questions over who is protecting the British royal. And at what price?

First off came the accusation by a palace security guard in London who has challenged Andrew’s claim to be in another part of the country (far from the capital) on the night of the alleged sexual incident. According to the security officer, Andrew returned to Buckingham Palace in the early hours and shouted at the top of his voice at the palace gates for them to be opened.

But far more damning is the testimony of a telecoms man who was employed by Epstein on his private Caribbean island who a British tabloid interviewed days later, who identifies both Prince Andrew and Roberts being intimate with one another and how she appeared to be like a child “hiding behind an adult” sometime around 2001 or thereafter.

There is nothing quite so powerful in a legal case which Roberts (now Giuffre) is preparing than eye witnesses who can stand in the witness box. And the emergence of Steve Scully will be seen as a massive blow to Andrew’s claims now. The FBI too will find it hard to ignore Scully’s allegations.

Or will it?

Conspiracy Theorizing Is A Privilege Exclusive to Those Inside The Institutional Class

rutherford |  Emboldened by the citizenry’s inattention and willingness to tolerate its abuses, the government has weaponized one national crisis after another in order to expands its powers.

The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

It doesn’t even matter what the nature of the crisis might be—civil unrest, the national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters”—as long as it allows the government to justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security.

Now we find ourselves on the brink of a possible coronavirus contagion.

I’ll leave the media and the medical community to speculate about the impact the coronavirus will have on the nation’s health, but how will the government’s War on the Coronavirus impact our freedoms?

For a hint of what’s in store, you can look to China—our role model for all things dystopian—where the contagion started.....

....We’re not quite there yet. But that moment of reckoning is getting closer by the minute.

In the meantime, we’ve got an epidemic to survive, so go ahead and wash your hands. Cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze. And stock up on whatever you might need to survive this virus if it spreads to your community.

We are indeed at our most vulnerable right now, but as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, it’s the American Surveillance State—not the coronavirus—that poses the greatest threat to our freedoms.

We Made The Coronavirus Epidemic: NYTimes Called Out Shi Zhengli A Month Ago

NYTimes |  Despite the new virus’s name, though, and as the people who christened it well know, nCoV-2019 isn’t as novel as you might think.

Something very much like it was found several years ago in a cave in Yunnan, a province roughly a thousand miles southwest of Wuhan, by a team of perspicacious researchers, who noted its existence with concern. The fast spread of nCoV-2019 — more than 4,500 confirmed cases, including at least 106 deaths, as of Tuesday morning, and the figures will have risen by the time you read this — is startling but not unforeseeable. That the virus emerged from a nonhuman animal, probably a bat, and possibly after passing through another creature, may seem spooky, yet it is utterly unsurprising to scientists who study these things.

One such scientist is Zheng-Li Shi, of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a senior author of the draft paper (not yet peer reviewed and so far available only in preprint) that gave nCoV-2019 its identity and name. It was Ms. Shi and her collaborators who, back in 2005, showed that the SARS pathogen was a bat virus that had spilled over into people. Ms. Shi and colleagues have been tracing coronaviruses in bats since then, warning that some of them are uniquely suited to cause human pandemics.

In a 2017 paper, they set out how, after nearly five years of collecting fecal samples from bats in the Yunnan cave, they had found coronaviruses in multiple individuals of four different species of bats, including one called the intermediate horseshoe bat, because of the half-oval flap of skin protruding like a saucer around its nostrils. The genome of that virus, Ms. Shi and her colleagues have now announced, is 96 percent identical to the Wuhan virus that has recently been found in humans. And those two constitute a pair distinct from all other known coronaviruses, including the one that causes SARS. In this sense, nCoV-2019 is novel — and possibly even more dangerous to humans than the other coronaviruses.

SARS-CoV2 Timeline: All Kinds of Mad Dot-Connecting in Full Effect