Is It Racist And Right-Wing To Call Out China For The Wuhan Coronavirus?

strategic-culture |   John Birchers are consistent about one thing and that is their abject racism. Just as they condemned UNESCO and the FAO in the 1970s because they had African and Arab directors-general – Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow of Senegal and Edouard Saouma of Lebanon, respectively – they are now condemning the WHO because it has an Ethiopian director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a famed microbiologist from Ethiopia. Trump and his rabid far-right supporters have accused Dr. Tedros of being an agent=of-influence for China as part of the neo-John Birchers overall campaign to assign the cause of the coronavirus pandemic to China. The parents and grandparents of these John Birchers once blamed the “Communists” and the “Soviet Union” for being behind the fluoridation of America’s public water supply.

The Birchers even had a degree of success with the Bill Clinton administration, which withdrew the U.S. from the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the U.N. World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). Clinton’s reason for withdrawal was pure Bircher logic: they “lacked purpose” for the United States.

Today, acting under the auspices of front organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society – both bankrolled by the Charles Koch Foundation and the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation – the neo-John Birchers accuse China of being behind the coronavirus pandemic by intentionally or accidentally releasing the virus as a biological weapon. In lashing out at China, the far-right, including senior members of the Trump administration and Republican senators like Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have also placed Tedros and the “China-influenced” WHO in their gunsights.

The WHO is not the first UN agency to be singled out by the far-right as an instrument of China. The Heritage Foundation, whose white papers are often transformed into Trump administration policy, criticized the election of Qu Dongyu as director-general of FAO in 2019. Heritage blasted the UN for electing Qu as the fourth Chinese national to head a UN specialized agency. Chinese directors-general also lead the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), UNIDO, and the International  Telecommunication Union (ITU).

Four months before the first coronavirus case was reported in Wuhan, China, Heritage and its neo-John Bircher allies had convinced Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a Tea Party founder, to question Chinese influence at the UN. Heritage made several demands to its fellow-travelers in the Trump administration. They included: 1) tasking the U.S. intelligence community to report on Chinese objectives, tactics, and influence in international organizations; 2) Conduct an objective cost-benefit analysis of U.S. participation in each international organization;  3) the U.S. should focus its effort and resources on countering Chinese influence, advancing U.S. policy preferences, and increasing employment of U.S. nationals, particularly in senior positions, in those organizations whose remit affects key U.S. interests; 4) identify and carefully vet highly qualified candidates for leadership positions in international organizations well in advance of elections; 5) Counter Chinese financial and political pressure on foreign governments; 6) Press the UN, the specialized agencies, and UN funds and programs to increase employment of U.S. nationals; and 7) Elevate multilateral affairs and international organizations within the State Department by establishing an Under Secretary for Multilateral Affairs. 8) the U.S. should take all reasonable steps to ensure that an American or national of a like-minded country becomes the next International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director-general.

As can be seen with Heritage’s bulletized attack on the UN, the current Trump administration attack on UN agency directors like Dr. Tedros was already in the planning stages and was part of the old John Birch playbook of either bending the UN and its specialized agencies to U.S. will or withdraw from them or cut off dues payments. Trump carried out his John Bircher-initiated orders by threatening to put a hold on U.S. payments to the WHO, even as the organization has become cash-strapped over its campaign to curb the coronavirus around the world.

Han Elite Rule Epitomizes The Full Neoliberal And Surveillance Capitalist Agenda

strategic-culture |  For decades, we were led to believe that the world-system put in place after WWII provided the U.S. with unrivalled structural power. Now, all that’s left is structural fragility, grotesque inequalities, unpayable Himalayas of debt, and a rolling crisis.

No one is fooled anymore by the Fed’s magic quantitative easing powers, or the acronym salad – TALF, ESF, SPV – built into the Fed/U.S. Treasury exclusive obsession with big banks, corporations and the Goddess of the Market, to the detriment of the average American.

It was only a few months ago that a serious discussion evolved around the $2.5 quadrillion derivatives market imploding and collapsing the global economy, based on the price of oil skyrocketing, in case the Strait of Hormuz – for whatever reason – was shut down.

Now it’s about Great Depression 2.0: the whole system crashing as a result of the shutdown of the global economy. The questions are absolutely legitimate: is the political and social cataclysm of the global economic crisis arguably a larger catastrophe than Covid-19 itself?  And will it provide an opportunity to end neoliberalism and usher in a more equitable system, or something even worse?

 

Wall Street, of course, lives in an alternative universe. In a nutshell, Wall Street turned the Fed into a hedge fund. The Fed is going to own at least two thirds of all U.S. Treasury bills in the market before the end of 2020.

The U.S. Treasury will be buying every security and loan in sight while the Fed will be the banker – financing the whole scheme.

So essentially this is a Fed/Treasury merger. A behemoth dispensing loads of helicopter money.

And the winner is BlackRock—the biggest money manager on the planet, with tentacles everywhere, managing the assets of over 170 pension funds, banks, foundations, insurance companies, in fact a great deal of the money in private equity and hedge funds. BlackRock — promising to be fully  “transparent” — will buy these securities and manage those dodgy SPVs on behalf of the Treasury.

BlackRock, founded in 1988 by Larry Fink, may not be as big as Vanguard, but it’s the top investor in Goldman Sachs, along with Vanguard and State Street, and with $6.5 trillion in assets, bigger than Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank combined.

Now, BlackRock is the new operating system (OS) of the Fed and the Treasury. The world’s biggest shadow bank – and no, it’s not Chinese.

Compared to this high-stakes game, mini-scandals such as the one around Georgia Senator Kelly Loffler are peanuts. Loffler allegedly profited from inside information on Covid-19 by the CDC to make a stock market killing. Loffler is married to Jeffrey Sprecher – who happens to be the chairman of the NYSE, installed by Goldman Sachs.

While corporate media followed this story like headless chickens, post-Covid-19 plans, in Pentagon parlance, “move forward” by stealth.

The price? A meager $1,200 check per person for a month. Anyone knows that, based on median salary income, a typical American family would need $12,000 to survive for two months. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, in an act of supreme effrontry, allows them a mere 10 percent of that. So American taxpayers will be left with a tsunami of debt while selected Wall Street players grab the whole loot, part of an unparalleled transfer of wealth upwards, complete with bankruptcies en masse of small and medium businesses.

Fink’s letter to his shareholders almost gives the game away: “I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance.”

And right on cue, he forecasted that, “in the near future – and sooner than most anticipate – there will be a significant reallocation of capital.”

White Negroes And The Global Negroe Replacement Program 2.0

economist |  Perhaps, though, China is less interested in running the world than in ensuring that other powers cannot or dare not attempt to thwart it. It aims to chip away at the dollar’s status as a reserve currency (see article). And it is working hard to place its diplomats in influential jobs in multilateral bodies, so that they will be in a position to shape the global rules, over human rights, say, or internet governance. One reason Mr Trump’s broadside against the WHO is bad for America is that it makes China appear more worthy of such positions.

China’s rulers combine vast ambitions with a caution born from the huge task they have in governing a country of 1.4bn people. They do not need to create a new rules-based international order from scratch. They might prefer to keep pushing on the wobbly pillars of the order built by America after the second world war, so that a rising China is not constrained.

That is not a comforting prospect. The best way to deal with the pandemic and its economic consequences is globally. So, too, problems like organised crime and climate change. The 1920s showed what happens when great powers turn selfish and rush to take advantage of the troubles of others. The covid-19 outbreak has so far sparked as much jostling for advantage as far-sighted magnanimity. Mr Trump bears a lot of blame for that. For China to reinforce such bleak visions of superpower behaviour would be not a triumph but a tragedy. 

Han Elites Influence American Elites Far More Than The Well Being Of American Citizens

npr |  Six years ago, Bloomberg News killed an investigation into the wealth of Communist Party elites in China, fearful of repercussions by the Chinese government. The company successfully silenced the reporters involved. And it sought to keep the spouse of one of the reporters quiet, too.

"They assumed that because I was the wife of their employee, I was the wife," the author and journalist Leta Hong Fincher tells NPR. "I was just an appendage of their employee. I was not a human being."

Fincher is married to the journalist Mike Forsythe, a former Beijing correspondent for Bloomberg News who now works at The New York Times. In 2012, Forsythe was part of a Bloomberg team behind an award-winning investigation into the accumulation of wealth by China's ruling classes.

The Chinese ambassador warned Bloomberg executives against publishing the investigation. But Bloomberg News published the story anyway. Afterward, Forsythe received what he and Fincher considered death threats relayed through other journalists. He and Fincher moved their family to Hong Kong, believing it to be safer.

Even so, the reporting team pursued the next chapter, focusing on Chinese leaders' ties to the country's richest man, Wang Jianlin. Among those in the reporters' sights: the family of new Chinese President Xi Jinping. The story gained steam throughout 2013.

In emails sent back to Bloomberg's journalists in China seen by Fincher, senior news editors in New York City expressed excitement.

And then: radio silence from headquarters. That story never ran.

"Mike and some of the other reporters and editors who had been working on this story just were asking for answers about ... why was this story killed?" Fincher says.

Wealthy Powerful Americans Catastrophically Wrong About China

NationalReview |  For the last thirty years, the vast majority of powerful institutions in the United States placed a gargantuan bet on the idea that the government in Beijing could be a reliable partner in prosperity and would be a responsible actor on the world stage. Many leading politicians in both parties chose to believe this, many foreign-policy wonks chose to believe this, many academics and university administrators chose to believe this, and obviously, corporate America loved the idea of both using Chinese labor for imported goods and receiving access to the Chinese market. This includes Comcast, Disney, Viacom, AT&T, and Fox Corporation — the parent companies of NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, and Fox News, among other large multinationals that own major U.S. news organizations.

The controversy over the NBA last year was a vivid demonstration that most of these entities were not going to let little things like the Chinese government forcing over one million ethnic minorities into concentration camps or a brutal crackdown in Hong Kong disrupt these extremely profitable relationships. These American companies had gone way too far down the road of partnership with China to turn back now and could do elaborate mental gymnastics to justify why Chinese oppression and brutality was qualitatively different from oppression and brutality anywhere else. This mentality took root at institutions like the World Health Organization, too.

The problem was, the Chinese government was never the stabilizing, reasonable force for order that these Americans wanted to believe it was. We saw the regime’s true nature over three decades of brutal human-rights abuses and censorship and shameless lies to cover that brutality.

When the Chinese government initially declared this new virus could not be spread from person to person, and that the situation in Wuhan was under control, very few people wanted to stand up and say they couldn’t be trusted. We had just seen the Chinese government try to blow up the business plans of the National Basketball Association over a single general manager’s tweet. If you cross the Chinese government, you take your livelihood in your hands, if not your life. On March 4, the state-run Xinhua News Agency declared, “If China retaliates against the United States at this time, in addition to announcing a travel ban on the United States, it also announces the strategic control of medical products and the ban on export to the United States, then the United States will be caught in the sea of new coronavirus.” Every day, the leaders of China tell us and show us exactly who they are and how they see the world. They are perfectly content to watch us die painful deaths if this means greater leverage and power for themselves.

Illinois Governor Slug Pritzker Pretends To Not Understand The Golden Rule

thehill |  Another sudden and unexpected factor will transform this year’s elections. Many states, cities and counties are about to, suddenly, run out of money. Wages won’t be paid. Services won’t be delivered. Institutions will shut down abruptly. Many state colleges may fold. And yet most state and local political and administrative leaders just sit and watch. Voters will not be pleased.

Millions of American workers filed for unemployment insurance during the past two weeks. That is a record and represents a collapse of our local economies. Across the country, in every state, county and city, businesses have been shut down, and many will not return after the coronavirus crisis is over. Tens of millions have lost jobs, homes, savings and retirement incomes that will never return. Owners of rental property will go under when their loan payments come due and renters can’t pay. Across the country, state and local economies are being badly damaged — many of them permanently.

The result is that state and local tax revenues will plummet. States and localities will burn through any reserves they’ve maintained like wildfire. Since most of our politicians and government managers have been raised during a decade of expanding economies, their first instinct will be to wait and then panic and then raise taxes to cover shortfalls — perhaps a special “coronavirus surtax.” Taxpayers across the country have tolerated various forms of high state and local taxes; the politicians would naturally ask, “Why should now be any different?” 

But it is different. The resulting increased tax burden would be a disaster. Businesses that were barely hanging on would go under. Workers and homeowners who were barely surviving would go under. State and local tax bases would collapse even faster. There would be social unrest, possibly requiring martial law. People would migrate from high-tax states toward new jobs, accelerating a downward spiral. These large migrations would make the 2020 census results nonsense.

The only answer for the states, counties and cities that want to survive is to slash budgets now — probably 30 to 50 percent — eliminate all nonessential spending and reduce taxes today. Business leaders know that, in these types of situations, the only way to save a company is to cut costs immediately. There is no other answer, and those who act first and most aggressively are the most successful in saving the company and the greatest number of its employees. In short, “fiscal distancing” — that is, separating politicians from taxpayers’ money by cutting budgets and taxes now — is literally the only useful thing that state and local governments can do to prevent further economic and social catastrophe.

Trump Gubmint Cheese Hit Pockets TO-DAYYUM-DAY! These Virtue-Signalling Governors....?

thehill |  The governors of six states in the northeast are working together to create joint recommendations on how they can reopen their economies in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The effort is being led by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and includes Democratic Govs. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, Ned Lamont of Connecticut, Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, John Carney of Delaware and Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island.

Later on Monday, Cuomo's office announced Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker will also join the coalition, making him the lone Republican.

During a conference call Monday, the governors said they will name a public health official, an economic official and their respective chiefs of staff to work on the plan.

The governors emphasized the importance of working together, so one state doesn't end up with policies that would put its neighbors at risk or cause the outbreak to start up again. 

"Study the data, study the research, study the experiences of other countries, and give us guidelines and parameters to go forward. Let's be smart and let's be cooperative and let's learn from one another," Cuomo said.

Echoing comments made by Cuomo earlier Monday, Murphy said the decision about easing restrictions will be a delicate balance.

"If you get that wrong ... if you jam it in too early, you could throw gasoline on the fire and reignite and that's the last thing any of us need right now," Murphy said.

Cuomo said the goal is to have recommendations in a matter of weeks.

Gunsels Turn Out To Protest Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's Partisan Lockdown Idiocy In Michigan

WashingtonTimes |  Thousands of Michiganders protesting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home executive order drove to Lansing, Michigan, for a mass ‘drive-by’ protest on Wednesday.

The Michigan Conservative Coalition organized “Operation Gridlock” featuring protesters circling the Michigan State Capitol in their vehicles and honking their horns to show their opposition to the Democratic governor’s coronavirus-related restrictions. The protesters observed social distancing practices by remaining in their vehicles.

“Our Governor and her allies are infecting ALL of us with their radical, progressive agenda,” the Michigan Conservative Coalition said on its Facebook page organizing the protest. “Dope stores? Open. Abortion clinics? Open. Churches? Shut down. Local businesses? Going broke!”

The group added, “People always say: “Conservatives never protest because they are too busy working.” Well, guess what. You’re not working—so it’s time to PROTEST.”

The Operation Gridlock rally was set to begin at noon but thousands of vehicles arrived beforehand on Wednesday, according to organizers of the protest.

L.A. Sick And Tired Of Mayor's Controlavirus Lockdown Overreach

In front of Mayor Garcetti’s house right now demanding No Rent & No Vacancies with @LATenantsUnion pic.twitter.com/gkAbn7Vjm6

— Abby Martin (@AbbyMartin) April 15, 2020

 

yasha |  Tonite Evgenia and I went went to another “hey, asshole!” honking protest in front of the official mansion residence of Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti — a home that the Getty oil oligarch family gifted to the city for “public” use.

The COVID-19 lockdown has been going on for nearly a month now here in LA. I believe it’s day 29 today. Millions have lost their jobs and millions can’t make rent, but the city has done nothing to help. There are no ideas, no plans, and there is no action. As far as I can tell, politicians here have been hoping things will pass on their own — that the economic and housing crisis will somehow float past them. So they’re refusing to make any difficult decisions — especially because anything they do to positively help people is guaranteed to piss off their donor class. I mean, the city council voted down something as basic and simple as an eviction moratorium. That’s how regressive the politics are in ultra-liberal, progressive LA.

So a small group of activists, mostly from the Los Angeles Tenants Union, have been organizing these honking protests on an ongoing basis in front of the homes of various city politicians to make demands that they stop evictions, cancel rent payments, and house the homeless in empty hotel rooms. The central idea here is to make these politicians uncomfortable — all while observing social distancing rules. It’s clever and smart and Evgenia and I went to a couple of these already in the last couple of weeks, including one that ended with an angry Guy Fawkes neighbor trying to drench us with his garden hose. 

This one didn’t have the same theatrics. 

A convoy of maybe twenty cars showed up at Mayor Garcetti’s mansion and started circling the block, honking, and annoying the hell out of everyone in the neighborhood. As we kept making the loop, some of his neighbors came out to gawk at us from their fancy Hancock Park lawns with disapproval. The cops arrived ten minutes after we started and promptly began warning people that they’d give citations if people kept honking. When I wouldn’t stop, a cop flashed his light in my face. This is how this things play out when you’re protesting by car!

Anyway, it felt great to get out and yell at the window at our shitty politicians. People don’t do this nearly enough. Let me tell you, it’s much more satisfying that trolling people on Twitter or getting into a Facebook flame war. But as good as it felt, the problem is that there is no larger political organization and there is no real economic or political leverage. So the protest is really about venting anger and getting people together in the simplest way possible. But you gotta start somewhere.

20-30 FT Underwater On The Mainstream Timeline - 100-150 FT Underwater - Not So Much....,

visualskies |  The main focus of the programme, the awe inspiring Nan Madol, is an archaeological wonder adjacent to the eastern shore of Pohnpei. Few places in the Pacific, indeed on the planet, are as intriguing and mysterious as Nan Madol. Hardly known outside Micronesia, the lost city of Nan Madol is a hidden gem of Polynesian history and culture and is an awe inspiring sight for modern people lucky enough to visit or work there. The name Nan Madol means ‘within the intervals’ and is a reference to the canals that criss-cross the ruins. The city, constructed in a lagoon, consists of myriad artificial islands linked by this network of canals. The core of the site, with its monumental basalt block walls and coral filled platforms, encompasses an area of over 18 square kilometres and is the only extant ancient city built on top of a coral reef. Nan Madol was the ceremonial and political capital of the Saudeleur Dynasty until the early part of the 17th century; although Nan Madol was the scene of human activity since the 1st or 2nd century AD, the construction of the distinctive basalt block architecture probably began in the 12th century. The colossal scale of the beautiful edifices, their technical sophistication and the extraordinary density of the megalithic structures bear testimony to the complex social and religious organisations of the island society at this time. In the north eastern part of the site lies the breathtaking Nan Doas with walls of impossibly massive basalt blocks, in places over 7 metres tall. These surround a central tomb in an impressive courtyard that was built for the first Saudeleur. These elaborate ruins represent the ceremonial centre of the Saudeleur Dynasty; a vibrant period in Pacific Island culture. According to local legend, the basalt blocks used in the construction of Nan Madol were flown to the site by twin sorcerors Olisihpa and Olosohpa using black magic. Although archaeologists have located several quarry sites for the basalt at the opposite end of Pohnpei, the method of transportation and construction of these incredibly heavy stone blocks has still not been adequately explained. The longer you spend at Nan Madol, the more these legends indeed seem to be a reasonable explanation as to how the place was built.

The site is inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger due to a number of threats, notably the silting up of the waterways and the unchecked, rapid growth of the mangroves and other vegetation that undermine and otherwise destabilise the remains. The majority of the megalithic complex at Nan Madol has been rendered almost invisible by the aggressive invasion of the mangrove forest and other vegetation that proliferate in the tropical climate on Pohnpei. As a corollary of this it was impossible to document, digitise and visualise the remains using any traditional survey techniques. There was simply too much vegetation to be able to allow more than a tantalising glimpse of disparate parts of the widescale megalithic structures; so an alternative methodology had to be utilised. To allow the team to literally find the lost city of Nan Madol Visualskies used our drone mounted LiDAR technology to penetrate the vegetation canopy and reveal the remains that, to the naked eye, remain hidden underneath. Working under intense pressure to fly multiple sorties every day, in far from ideal weather conditions, with no power close at hand and then to process and visualise the results in a matter of days, Visualskies pushed the technology, the hardware, the software and the team members to their limits and beyond. For the team from Visualskies, working on Pohnpei was an incredible journey into the past and a unique professional experience on a tropical paradise.

The Rainforests Themselves Are Manmade Agricultural Systems

sciencealert |  There's a small and exclusive list of places where crop cultivation first got started in the ancient world – and it looks as though that list might have another entry, according to new research of curious 'islands' in the Amazon basin.

The savannah of the Llanos de Moxos in northern Bolivia is littered with thousands of patches of forest, rising a few feet above the surrounding wetlands. Many of these forest islands, as researchers call them, are thought to be the remnants of human habitation from the early and mid-Holocene.

Now, thanks to new analysis of the sediment found in some of these islands, researchers have unearthed signs that these spots were used to grow cassava (manioc) and squash a little over 10,000 years ago.

That's impressive, as this timing places them some 8,000 years earlier than scientists had previously found evidence for, indicating that the people who lived in this part of the world - the southwestern corner of the Amazon basin - got a head start on farming practices.

In fact, the findings suggest that southwestern Amazonia can now join China, the Middle East, Mesoamerica, and the Andes as one of the areas where organised plant growing first got going – in the words of the research team, "one of the most important cultural transitions in human history".

"Archaeologists, geographers, and biologists have argued for many years that southwestern Amazonia was a probable centre of early plant domestication because many important cultivars like manioc, squash, peanuts and some varieties of chili pepper and beans are genetically very close to wild plants living here," says earth scientist Umberto Lombardo from the University of Bern in Switzerland.

"However, until this recent study, scientists had neither searched for, nor excavated, old archaeological sites in this region that might document the pre-Columbian domestication of these globally important crops."

Around 10,000 years ago (or more), many of the forest islands would have formed due to how human activity - dumping food waste, for example - changed the quality of the soil as the ice age receded.

"Anthropic forest islands are entirely artificial, and do not take advantage of pre-existing landscape features," the researchers note in the study. "These accumulative middens constituted fertility hotspots amid poor savannah soils."

There are thousands of forest islands in the region, and the researchers used remote sensing data to map 6,643 of them. The team also surveyed 82 of these islands, extracting sediment samples. Further analysis revealed tiny bits of phytolith – structures made of silica that are known to form inside the cells of plants, and get left behind after they decay.

A Sanskrit Pyramid In Cambodia And In Guatamala?

youtube |  Hey guys, today we are going to look at a very strange place called Baksei Chamkrong in the Angkor Wat Complex in Cambodia. This is a very strange site because this is the only stepped pyramid in this temple complex. This pyramid in Cambodia is almost identical to the pyramid found in Mesoamerica. 

There is a pyramid called Tikal. There is a pyramid in a place called Tikal and that pyramid looks not even similar but almost identical. The Tikal Pyramid is in the country of Guatemala, in central America and this is roughly 10,000 miles from the Baksei Chamkrong Pyramid in Cambodia. But when you look at them side by side, it is mind boggling. There is no doubt, they were both built by the same builders. 

Or did these 2 civilizations, separated by 10,000 miles, contacting and communicating with each other using advanced technology, just like what we do today? How else do you explain these similarities? Look at the construction style in both temples. The masonry is the same, Make rectangular blocks of stone, and place them on top of one other. 

Look at the basic design: Not even similar, almost identical. Both of them pyramids, both of them are stepped pyramids, both of them have a staircase laid out in the center. Both of them have a dome like structure built on the top, both have them have a doorway in the center of the dome. It is impossible that all these similarities are a result of mere coincidence. 

Think about this, if these 2 structures were constructed within a 10 mile radius or a 100 mile radius, archeologists and historians would swear they were built by the same builders. However, simply because they are separated by 10,000 miles, experts now swear that this is a pure coincidence, built by 2 completely different civilizations which had no contact with each other.

The Ancient God Of Gold

youtube |  Hey guys, today, let us explore the ancient statues in Colombia. There are statues here which are more than a thousand years old and they have a strange connection with Indian culture. 

For example, take a look at the mysterious SpaceMan at San Agustin Archeological Park in Colombia. This is a remote site in South America, and there are hundreds of statues here, but this one is the eye-catcher. Who is he? The very first impression is that he is some kind of an ancient astronaut because it is clear that he is wearing a helmet or a visor, he has 2 rectangular eyes, a rectangular mouth, and has no nose. Look at the size of his head and the body, it is very disproportionate, his body is too small for that giant head, and he is definitely wearing shoes. But the most important detail is that he is holding a cylinder, a long tool which goes into the earth, look how it goes even below his feet. 

This is a very interesting detail and archeologists and historians have no explanation for it. The tour guides here, also have no idea and claim this is just a flute, a musical instrument. What kind of a flute goes into the ground, how would it even be able to produce music like that? Tell me what this is. So what is this all about? Conversation in Spanish 

While there is no explanation for this mysterious Spaceman in Colombia, in Hinduism, there are 2 Gods which are portrayed remarkably similar to this. The first one is called SwarnaAkarshana Bhairava. He is the god of Gold and it is said he could extract gold from the earth directly using his tools. 

But there is another important deity known as Vaisravana, he is the half-brother of the demon king Ravana. Who is this Vaisravana, what does he do?. He is the God of wealth, especially gold. He is always shown with a tool that goes into the ground. But remember India and Colombia are about 10,000 miles apart, so how could a Hindu god be carved in Colombia? This is a very valid question, and we need to take a look at this logically. 

In India, Vaisravana is portrayed like this. This statue is about 1600 years old, He is shown with a potbelly, a symbol of wealth. The most important detail is this rod in his hand, which usually goes into the ground.

Did You Know The "Dead" Language Sanskrit Was The Language Of Ancient Cambodia?

youtube |  Even though we can see these lingams vaguely from outside, the real view can be obtained only if we get underwater and for the very first time and this has never been shot before, I am going to go underwater and show you how it feels. Hey guys, today we are going up a mountain called Phnom Kulen in Cambodia. This place has many ancient lingams constructed underwater. So, let's go take a look and see what this mountain has to offer. We are at this place called Phnom Kulen Mountain; we are not at the ground level. There is a stream here, but there is something spectacular inside this stream. 

Look, do you see what this is? You see a rectangle inside a rectangle, inside a rectangle, inside a rectangle, inside a rectangle. Now you may wonder what this is. This is a lingam. Or at least, there used to be a cylindrical lingam in the center. Now it is gone. But that is not the only remarkable feature. And that is not even the only lingam, look. LOOK. the entire stream is full of lingams. 

You see there are lingams of various sizes, here there are smaller lingams and look over there, there is a huge rectangle there. These are all lingams carved underwater here in Cambodia. And let us go into the water and see how these multiple lingams look. There is a square around another square, and in the center, there is a cylindrical protrusion. There are so many of them. This is a huge lingam, seems like it has some kind of mystical energy to it. 

This huge rectangle once must have had a cylindrical lingam inside, it is great to see how it looks underwater. Look we can even see fish swimming alongside the camera. So even though we call this place Phnom Kulen Today, originally this place was called Sahasralinga, which means one thousand lingas. And this is not a misnomer, and this is not even an exaggeration. This is actually an understatement because we have more than one thousand lingams underwater if you look closely. If you See there, there is one huge rectangle, and you can see here, so many lingams. 

If you look all over the stream, we can see a lot of lingams, going all the way on both directions. The name sahasralinga means one thousand lingas in Sanskrit, which used to be the main language here in Cambodia, more than a thousand years ago.

WaPo Throwing Shade On Shi Zhengli And The Wuhan Virological Institute

WaPo |  Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats. The cables have fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus — even though conclusive proof has yet to emerge.

In January 2018, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing took the unusual step of repeatedly sending U.S. science diplomats to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which had in 2015 become China’s first laboratory to achieve the highest level of international bioresearch safety (known as BSL-4). WIV issued a news release in English about the last of these visits, which occurred on March 27, 2018. The U.S. delegation was led by Jamison Fouss, the consul general in Wuhan, and Rick Switzer, the embassy’s counselor of environment, science, technology and health. Last week, WIV erased that statement from its website, though it remains archived on the Internet.

What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington. The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and proposed more attention and help. The first cable, which I obtained, also warns that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.

“During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” states the Jan. 19, 2018, cable, which was drafted by two officials from the embassy’s environment, science and health sections who met with the WIV scientists. (The State Department declined to comment on this and other details of the story.)

The Chinese researchers at WIV were receiving assistance from the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch and other U.S. organizations, but the Chinese requested additional help. The cables argued that the United States should give the Wuhan lab further support, mainly because its research on bat coronaviruses was important but also dangerous.

As the cable noted, the U.S. visitors met with Shi Zhengli, the head of the research project, who had been publishing studies related to bat coronaviruses for many years. In November 2017, just before the U.S. officials’ visit, Shi’s team had published research showing that horseshoe bats they had collected from a cave in Yunnan province were very likely from the same bat population that spawned the SARS coronavirus in 2003.

Washington Talm'Some Ole Bullshit - Fired Resigned Dept. Sec. Navy Mobly Talm'bout WW-III

SCMP |  Even if Congress is able to return to regular business in the coming months, attention from legislative matters will quickly be pulled away again – this time by election season. In the run-up to November 3, not only will President Trump be seeking re-election, but most members of the House and around a third of the Senate will also be absorbed in fights to stay in office.

“In an election year, really anything after July is not likely to happen,” said Chris Lu, a former House oversight committee lawyer who later served as Barack Obama’s White House cabinet secretary.

“This will be an incredibly short legislating year with the exception of, obviously, continuing to provide relief and possible stimulus [relating to the coronavirus outbreak],” said Lu, who also served as a commissioner on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, an influential advisory panel on human rights issues in the country.

Neither House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – one of Beijing’s most vocal critics – or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell responded to requests for comment on whether they anticipated scheduling floor time for any of the China-related bills that still await votes. One House aide on the Democratic side, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the chance of any non-coronavirus legislation moving ahead was “pretty, pretty limited”.

Yet despite the narrowing window for China-related legislation to reach Trump by January, many lawmakers are pressing ahead, both with intensifying rhetoric and several pieces of legislation about Beijing’s handling of the outbreak.

“Not much of what gets proposed or introduced in the upcoming days [regarding China] will become policy, but everyone wants to message that they’re on it,” said a senior congressional staffer, who requested anonymity to discuss lawmakers’ internal deliberations.

In March alone, lawmakers introduced at least 20 China-related bills, ranging from demands that China pay for the US pandemic costs to calls for an international investigation of Beijing’s coronavirus response.

With criticism intensifying about the US government’s own response, Republicans’ complaints have become ever louder. On Friday, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina proclaimed on Twitter that the Chinese government was “responsible for 16,000 American deaths and 17 million Americans being unemployed”.

U.S.S. Teddy Roosevelt Outbreak PROVED Just How Irresistable Nước Chấm Ever Was....,

thediplomat |  Trust can never be earned; it must be given. This is true in all relationships, including geopolitical ones. Vietnam and the United States are commemorating the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations this year. While sailing has not always been smooth, both countries have worked hard to enhance trust. Late last week, both nations took a big step to catapult mutual trust to a new level – and it had China’s attention.

Vietnam hosted the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt and a ship from its strike group through the weekend at the commercial port of Da Nang. There can be no more powerful symbol of America’s commitment to preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific than the presence of a United States aircraft carrier. The visit comes two years to the day from the historic first post-war aircraft carrier visit to the country. I coordinated the first visit and witnessed how such port calls, if managed correctly, enhance strategic trust.

Hanoi carefully balances its security relations with both Washington and Beijing. The presence of a hundred thousand tons of steel can easily tip the balance and complicate Vietnam’s willingness to welcome future U.S. Navy ship visits. During the March 2018 port call, the U.S. Navy downplayed the ship’s obvious “hard power” capabilities. Instead, we emphasized professional exchanges between cooks and firefighters, and organized band concerts around town and community events at local schools. The visit did nothing to provoke Sino-Vietnamese tensions. Rather, it deepened strategic trust and helped to establish the positive conditions necessary for this year’s event.

The port call of the Theodore Roosevelt has already helped to deepen bilateral trust. Six thousand sailors visiting a nation adjacent to the epicenter of the ongoing coronavirus health crisis certainly stimulated a debate in both Hanoi and Washington about proceeding with the visit. Both countries have legitimate health concerns. For its part, the United States Pacific Fleet has directed its ships to remain at sea for 14 days following a foreign port call in Asia to identify any spread of the contagion. 

The easiest and safest choice would be to for one side or the other to have postponed this significant event. Mutual willingness to proceed with the visit, however, indicates that the trust between Washington and Hanoi has reached a new level.

Too Soon To Start Issuing "Seine Covid Papieren"

technologyreview |  Imagine, a few weeks or months from now, having a covid-19 test kit sent to your home. It’s small and portable, but pretty easy to figure out. You prick your finger as in a blood sugar test for diabetics, wait maybe 15 minutes, and bam—you now know whether or not you’re immune to coronavirus. 

If you are, you can request government-issued documentation that says so. This is your “immunity passport.” You are now free to leave your home, go back to work, and take part in all facets of normal life—many of which are in the process of being booted back up by “immunes” like yourself. 

Pretty enticing, right? Some countries are taking the idea seriously. German researchers want to send out hundreds of thousands of tests to citizens over the next few weeks to see who is immune to covid-19 and who is not, and certify people as being healthy enough to return to society. The UK, which has stockpiled over 17.5 million home antibody testing kits, has raised the prospect of doing something similar, although this has come under major scrutiny from scientists who have raised concerns that the test may not be accurate enough to be useful. As the pressure builds from a public that has been cooped up for weeks, more countries are looking for a way out of strict social distancing measures that doesn’t require waiting 12 to 18 months for a vaccine (if one even comes).

There are some serious problems with trying to use the tests to determine immunity status. For example, we still know very little about what human immunity to the disease looks like, how long it lasts, whether an immune response prevents reinfection, and whether you might still be contagious even after symptoms have dissipated and you’ve developed IgG antibodies. Immune responses vary greatly between patients, and we still don’t know why. Genetics could play a role.

“We’ve only known about this virus for four months,” says Donald Thea, a professor of global health at Boston University. “There’s a real paucity of data out there.” 

SARS-CoV-1, the virus that causes SARS and whose genome is about 76% similar to that of SARS-CoV-2, seems to elicit an immunity that lasts up to three years. Other coronaviruses that cause the common cold seem to elicit a far shorter immunity, although the data on that is limited—perhaps, says Thea, because there has been far less urgency to study them in such detail. It’s too early to tell right now where SARS-CoV-2 will fall in that time range

Quiet As It's Kept The Kochtopus Is A Reservoir Of Managerial Intellect And Unified Cultural Vision

state.gov |  Last year, I announced that I would give a series of speeches on China, and this is part of that. It’s the context in which state and local government officials ought to think about the way they lead with respect to our relationship. It’s important. China matters.

It’s been part of my mission at the State Department to mobilize all parts of the United States Government. I was out in Silicon Valley a couple weeks ago to talk to America’s leading tech companies about this very set of issues.

And I need your help, too.

What China does in Topeka and Sacramento reverberates in Washington, in Beijing, and far beyond. Competition with China is happening. It’s happening in your state.

In fact, I would be surprised if most of you in the audience have not been lobbied by the Chinese Communist Party directly.

Chinese Communist Party friendship organizations like the one that I referenced earlier are in Richmond; Minneapolis; Portland; Jupiter, Florida; and many other cities around the country.

But sometimes China’s activities aren’t quite that public, and I want to talk about some of that today. 

Let me read you an excerpt of a letter from a Chinese diplomat. It was China’s Consul General in New York sent a letter last month to the speaker of one of your state legislatures.

Here’s what the letter said in part. It said, quote, “As we all know, Taiwan is part of China… avoid engaging in any official contact with Taiwan, including sending congratulatory messages to the electeds, introducing bills and proclamations for the election, sending officials and representatives to attend the inauguration ceremony, and inviting officials in Taiwan to visit the United States.” End of quote from the letter.

Think about that. You had a diplomat from China assigned here to the United States, a representative of the Chinese Communist Party in New York City, sending an official letter urging that an American elected official shouldn’t exercise his right to freedom of speech.

Let that sink in for just a minute.

And this isn’t a one-off event. It’s happening all across the country.

Chinese consulates in New York, in Illinois, in Texas, and two in California, bound by the diplomatic responsibilities and rights of the Vienna Convention, are very politically active at the state level, as is the embassy right here in Washington, D.C.

Maybe some of you have heard about the time when the Chinese consulate paid the UC-San Diego students to protest the Dalai Lama.

Or last August, when former governor Phil Bryant of Mississippi received a letter from a diplomat in the consul’s office in Houston, threatening to cancel a Chinese investment if the governor chose to travel to Taiwan. Phil went anyway.

Little Man: Is Your Governor Being Urged Or Compelled To Tyranny?

mises |  As of April 6, forty-one states have statewide "stay-at-home" decrees in place. These orders vary widely from place to place. In some states, there are long lists of exempted industries including marijuana dispensaries, liquor stores, hardware stores, and of course, grocery stores. In some states with these edicts, public lands, state parks, and beaches remain open. In some states, city parks are more crowded than ever as local residents, with little else to do, attempt to recreate. In other places—such as California—one can be arrested for paddleboarding all alone in the ocean.

Yet in all of these places, the current regime of rule by decree will have—and already has had—a devastating effect on many small and medium-sized businesses and their employees. As governments have created new arbitrary definitions of what constitutes an "essential" business, some businesses find themselves forced to close. Employees have lost these jobs. The owners of these enterprises will likely lose far more as debts mount and business investments are destroyed. As unemployment and poverty increase, the usual pathologies will arise as well: suicides, child abuse, and stress-induced death.

Yet the politicians—mostly state governors, mayors, and unelected bureaucrats—remain popular. In New York State, where the lockdown orders are among the most draconian in the nation, it is now claimed that 87 percent of those polled approve of Governor Andrew Cuomo's handling of the situation. As Donald Trump's administration has recommended ever harsher government limits on the freedom of Americans, his poll numbers have only improved. 

Meanwhile, among critics there appears to be a misconception of these lockdowns (which are very often only partially imposed or enforced) as being imposed over the howls of the local population, which is being silenced and cowed by jackbooted local police.

If only that were true. In most places, it appears clear that a great many residents approve of the lockdowns. We see this support in the form of all the local scolds who complain on Nextdoor.com about neighborhood children who don't properly engage in "social distancing." We see it in the people who call the police to report violators of stay-at-home orders. We see it in those who report local businesses for allowing too many people inside.

Viewed in this way, it may be more likely that state governors and other politicians are afraid of being seen as doing too little, rather than as overstepping their authority to impose public safety measures.

Controlaspecies: Gain Of Function Research And The Blame Game

harvardtothebighouse |  we have Peter Daszak.  His company, EcoHealth Alliance, which is a non-profit that depends largely on multi-million dollar government grants to function, has been partnering with Chinese researcher for years in an attempt to secure funding for more and more research into coronaviruses. At least they’re not really even pretending to be philanthropic.

And in one of the more transparent attempts at blatant PR-spin, Daszak was featured alongside one of the researchers who learned how to create hyper-virulent bat coronaviruses at UNC back in 2015, Zhengli Shi. Their article insists we should take Zhengli at her word when she claims to have not found a match after she checked COVID-19’s genome against everything in her lab. As if someone responsible for releasing the most virulent pathogen to hit humanity in modern history, one that’s already killed thousands and is projected to kill millions and millions more all across the globe, would simply fess-up to it, torpedoing her career and the years of research performed by her and her colleagues? And possibly opening all of them up to legal and other repercussions?

If you still aren’t sure whether the scientists involved with kind of research are being forthright, there’s Dr. Ralph Baric. It was in his lab at UNC that a hyper-virulent bat Franken-virus was created by splicing a new protein-spike on an existing coronavirus, creating a monster so vicious that a virologist with the Louis Pasteur Institute of Paris warned: “If the [new] virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory.” It should also be noted that several years prior to tinkering directly with bat coronavirus spike-proteins, Baric orchestrated research that involved isolating a coronavirus from civets and then passing it through mammalian ACE2 receptor cells that were grown in the lab from kidney and brain samples – serial passage through host cell lines instead of entire hosts, which imparted a strong affinity for ACE2, and presumably created an airborne strain of coronavirus. And if cells derived from kidneys and brains were used for the serial passage development of COVID-19, that might help explain its affinity for attacking the kidneys and brains of its human hosts.

So if he was being honest, you might expect him to warn the public about the lethal potential coronaviruses pose during our current outbreak. However, when he was asked if the public should be worried about COVID-19 he said that people should be more worried about the seasonal flu. Pretty bizarre statement from a scientist who knew full well how dangerous coronaviruses could be, especially given the fact that not only was Zhengli Shi working in his lab on that project in 2015, but Xing-Yi Ge was too. Both of whom returned to Wuhan where they’ve continued their work for years.

Xing-Yi Ge is especially notable since in 2013 he became the very first scientist to isolate a bat coronavirus from nature that uses the ACE2 receptor, which is found in human, tree shrew, and ferret lungs and allows coronaviruses to become airborne. And as you might have learned by now, that’s the exact receptor used by COVID-19 to enter human cells – if anyone would know how to finagle that part of the coronavirus genome, it’d be him. So both Xing-Yi Ge and Zhengli Shi were part of the research team that created this hybridized hyper-virulent bat coronavirus under Baric, who’s actively downplayed the risk posed by COVID-19, and then returned to work in Wuhan, where funding provided in part by Daszak’s company allowed them to continue their work on coronaviruses with plenty of research to cut-and-paste into their work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Disease Engineering Technical Research Center.

And as Dr. Ian Malcolm puts it in Jurassic Park, it is never a good idea to futz around with science and research when you don’t fully understand it, nor its possible implications.

However it wasn’t just Daszak funding their work, Zhengli also secured millions of dollars in grant money from various American institutions including our Department of Defense as well as the U.S. Biological Defense Research Directorate, and millions more from other foreign governments.

So although the Chinese Communist Party deserves its share of the blame for attempting to cover the outbreak up, arresting the heroic scientists trying to warn us and issuing gag-orders and the destruction of evidence, this research likely wouldn’t have occurred at all if the NIH hadn’t lifted the ban on gain-of-function research in the first place. And it was funded directly by American tax dollars, by government officials willing to let others play god at their behest.

But now that the virus is out of the lab, are the private entities responsible for its creation going to bear any of the blame at all? Or will America and China continue to point fingers at each other until the worst happens?

“Mars will accuse Earth of using a bio-weapon. Earth will claim it was Mars. The Belt will blame the other two. It’s a good way to start a war and cover it up.”

One last spoiler warning… okay, so in The Expanse the central plot device pushing things forward is the discovery of a mysterious substance dubbed the protomolecule, which seems to have a mind of its own and seek out radiation as sustenance before then beginning “the Work,” a mysterious intergalactic goal that isn’t revealed until later seasons.

And its not individual nations who first attempt to harness the protomolecule, but their Peter Daszak, the aforementioned scientist and CEO named Jules-Pierre Mao, who attempts to weave it into the genomes of immuno-compromised children to create hybridized super-soldiers. Not for his own private army, but as a game-changing bio-weapon he’ll sell to whichever government is willing to pay the most for it. So in The Expanse, it takes amoral scientists as well as the collusion of officials affiliated with both governments for this research to happen and be hidden, and when these Hybrids are eventually dropped between both armies the carnage is immense.

Luckily, we haven’t gotten that far on earth yet, but the rhetoric between America and China has been heading in that direction – it’s been growing increasingly hostile as each blames the other for starting the pandemic and covering it up, with China even going so far as to threaten to cut off our supply of antibiotics and other life-saving medical goods.  Meanwhile Daszak, Baric, Zhengli, and others sit back counting their lucky stars and their money, since both governments and the public at large seem to have bought their story that there’s no way this virus leaked out of one of their labs, and every government on earth now wants to harness their research to help create vaccines and treatments.

And these researchers have been assisted by scientifically spurious and journalistically vacuous articles which mindlessly regurgitate claims from the Chinese government, and its scientific propaganda arm, the WHO, about how bad the outbreak was in the past and how contained it is now. As the Chinese government arrested whistle-blowers and sent agents out into the street in bio-hazard gear while carrying automatic weapons to detain anyone suspected of breaking quarantine, while literally welding apartments buildings shut, the American media fawned over China’s “decisive and heroic” actions.

Please take a moment to consider the fact that almost everyone reading the news to you on television was selected due to their connections or how photogenic they are, not because of any actual journalistic chops or ability to think critically.

So as two superpowers are pushed closer and closer to conflict, the research that’s almost certainly the source of COVID-19 not only continues unabated, but if anything talk of more funding to stop this sort of supposedly natural pandemic from happening again is pouring into the pockets of the people who, if they weren’t directly responsible, should certainly have been at the forefront of warning the world about the risks posed by lab-altered coronaviruses, and been disclosing the existence of this sort of research in the first place.

Oddly, each and everyone one of them is pretending that viral dual-use gain-of-function research has never occurred at all. Or not so oddly, when you stop and think about how much they have to lose if their role in this pandemic is revealed.

“The hardest part of this game is figuring out who the enemy really is.”

Other than the fact it doesn’t bear the direct marks of genetic tampering, just like the engineered hyper-virulent H5N1 Bird Flu, there’s literally nothing natural about COVID-19’s behavior or clinical presentation. And hauntingly, peer-reviewed research has noted that a crucial region of its genome “may provide a gain-of-function… for efficient spreading in the human population.”

Not only is it so distant from any other coronavirus that it forms its own clade, but there isn’t even a natural path for it to have emerged through – assertions about pangolins have always been dubious at best, but were even further debunked when analysis of COVID-19’s genome at the regions that most accurately show heritage made it “very unlikely” that pangolins had ever been involved at all.

Beyond that is the fact that its affinity for the ACE2 receptor is somewhere between 10 and 20 times higher than SARS, and it also creates viral loads thousands of times higher than SARS. These two characteristics point towards COVID-19 using antibody-dependent enhancement, or ADE, to enter human cells. This is when the virus is able to hijack white blood cells to more easily enter into the rest of our body’s cells, allowing it to seep deep into its hosts’ nervous systems, creating permanent neurological damage in the hosts it doesn’t kill outright. ADE could also explain why between 5% and 10% of once “recovered” patients in Wuhan have been showing up with fresh infections, since that phenomenon allows a virus to hijack the antibodies created by a previous infection to re-attack an old host. And curiously Zhengli Shi, of UNC and Wuhan fame, co-authored a 2019 paper which used inert viral shells to figure out exactly how SARS, with its affinity to the ACE2 receptor just like COVID-19, was able to harness ADE to hijack white blood cells for enhanced cell entry. A gain-of-function extension of this research would be exactly the kind of experiment that could’ve given birth to COVID-19, especially considering that 2019 paper managed to fine-tune the exact concentration of antibodies that would best facilitate ADE.

Both HIV and Dengue Fever use antibody-dependent enhancement to boost their virulence, however its generally a phenomenon that takes a long time to occur when it happens in nature. However COVID-19 looks like it may have had its ADE jacked into hyper-drive as it was passed between a series of animal hosts, since it has the aforementioned much stronger ability to bind to host cells and creates viral loads orders of magnitude higher, and also appears to immediately to be able to enter its hosts nervous systems, killing many of its victims by attacking the region of the brain that controls breathing, drastically lowering white blood cell counts early on in infections, and apparently re-infecting individuals who had already appeared to clear their infection.

Further increasing the possibility that COVID-19’s unique clinical presentation may be due to its ADE being juiced by laboratory engineering are the observations from an ER doctor who’s stated that I have seen things that I have never seen before… I have witnessed medical phenomenon that just don’t make sense in the context of treating a disease that is supposed to be viral pneumonia. In an interview with Medscape, Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell went on to say that the closest thing to the symptoms he was witnessing in his emergency room.

Can You Build An Architecture Of Oppression Without A Totally Debased Political Class?

medium |  This isn’t the first time Gillum has been accused of poor behavior as a public official; I recall him being subjected to an ethics inquiry after he accepted tickets to the Broadway show Hamilton from an undercover FBI agent. Granted, there’s a hell of a gap between free tickets and whatever this shit with the drugs and escorts is (allegedly), but a pattern emerges: Even when Gillum has a good thing going for him, he may do something that could jeopardy his ambition — ambition he no longer shares just with himself, but with so many others.

That’s why I continue to struggle. Andrew Gillum already knew what it was like to have a target on his back. He knew that his professional prospects, as well as the people in his life — his wife, his children — could all be jeopardized by something like this. I just don’t understand the carelessness — down to the type of people he allegedly was associating with that night.

As bad as I feel bad for him, Black men also need to hold a mirror up to each other when need be. Not to induce shame; not to make them feel lower as we feign being better; simply to say, you need to look at yourself and how you move. You need to see how that shit impacts you.

Yes, as Black men there are a lot of people against us. Yes, there is a conservative media complex designed to take out politicians like you, and the mainstream media has enough suckers in it to magnify whatever those crazy folks on the right dredge up — but why give them material?

People have their secrets; some just keep them better than others. That’s not an endorsement of lying — merely speaking to the point that Andrew Gillum has long been a man of great promise who, like many men of great promise, fell short out of ego. This man was moving like someone who had nothing to lose. I don’t hate this man the way they do. I just hope this man becomes a better one because this has brought pain to people. I understand the factors why, but patterns must be broken. We all should do our part.

Gillum says he has voluntarily entered rehab for what he described as “alcohol abuse” and “depression.” Additionally, he “will be stepping down from all public facing roles for the foreseeable future.”

Edward Snowden: PanicDemic Building The Architecture Of Oppression

vice |   Smith: Why does it seem like we're so ill-prepared?

Snowden: There is nothing more foreseeable as a public health crisis in a world where we are just living on top of each other in crowded and polluted cities, than a pandemic. And every academic, every researcher who's looked at this knew this was coming. And in fact, even intelligence agencies, I can tell you firsthand, because they used to read the reports had been planning for pandemics.
 

Are autocratic regimes better at dealing with things like this than democratic ones?I don't think so. I mean, there are arguments being made that China can do things that the United States can't. That doesn't mean that what these autocratic countries are doing is actually more effective.

 If you're looking at countries like China, where cases seem to have leveled off, how much can we trust that those numbers are actually true?

 

I don't think we can. Particularly, we see the Chinese government recently working to expel Western journalists at precisely this moment where we need credible independent warnings in this region.

It seems that [coronavirus] may be the greatest question of the modern era around civil liberties, around the right to privacy. Yet no one's asking this question.

As authoritarianism spreads, as emergency laws proliferate, as we sacrifice our rights, we also sacrifice our capability to arrest the slide into a less liberal and less free world. Do you truly believe that when the first wave, this second wave, the 16th wave of the coronavirus is a long-forgotten memory, that these capabilities will not be kept? That these datasets will not be kept? No matter how it is being used, what’ is being built is the architecture of oppression.