Exaggerated Risk of Transmission of COVID-19 by Infected Surfaces

thelancet |  A clinically significant risk of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission by fomites (inanimate surfaces or objects) has been assumed on the basis of studies that have little resemblance to real-life scenarios.

The longest survival (6 days) of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) on surfaces was done by placing a very large initial virus titre sample (10⁷ infectious virus particles) on the surface being tested. Another study that claimed survival of 4 days used a similarly large sample (10⁶ infectious virus particles) on the surface.  A report by van Doremalen and colleagues found survival of both SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 of up to 2 days (on surfaces) and 3 days (in aerosols generated in the laboratory), but again with a large inoculum (10⁵–10⁷ infectious virus particles per mL in aerosols, 10⁴ infectious virus particles on surfaces).

Yet another study found long survival (5 days) of human coronavirus 229E on surfaces with what I would still consider a substantially large viral load (10³ plaque-forming units) in a cell lysate. However, using a cell lysate rather than purified or semipurified virus might enable initial viral proliferation or protection from the effects of the sample drying out.

None of these studies present scenarios akin to real-life situations. Although I did not find measurements of coronavirus quantities in aerosol droplets from patients, the amount of influenza virus RNA in aerosols has been measured, with a concentration equivalent to 10–100 viral particles in a droplet, with even fewer infectious influenza virus particles capable of growth in a plaque assay.

By contrast, one study found human coronavirus 229E to survive for only 3 h, and human coronavirus OC43 to survive for 1 h, after drying on various surfaces including aluminum, sterile latex surgical gloves, and sterile sponges. In a study in which the authors tried to mimic actual conditions in which a surface might be contaminated by a patient, no viable SARS-CoV was detected on surfaces.

A 2020 literature review included most of the studies I have cited here (and others), but adds no new research, and in my view, does not critically evaluate previously published studies. I am not disputing the findings of these studies, only the applicability to real life. For example, in the studies that used a sample of 10⁷, 10⁶, and 10⁴ particles of infectious virus on a small surface area,^1, these concentrations are a lot higher than those in droplets in real-life situations, with the amount of virus actually deposited on surfaces likely to be several orders of magnitude smaller.

Hence, a real-life situation is better represented in the work of Dowell and colleagues in which no viable virus was found on fomites.

No Fault, No Attribution Key To The Great Economic Reset

foxnews |  Hours before she boarded an April 28 Cathay Pacific flight to the United States, the respected doctor who specialized in virology and immunology at the Hong Kong School of Public Health had plotted her escape, packing her bag and sneaking past the censors and video cameras on campus.

She had her passport and her purse and was about to leave all of her loved ones behind. If she was caught, she knew she could be thrown in jail -- or, worse, rendered one of the "disappeared."

Yan told Fox News in an exclusive interview that she believes the Chinese government knew about the novel coronavirus well before it claimed it did. She says her supervisors, renowned as some of the top experts in the field, also ignored research she was doing at the onset of the pandemic that she believes could have saved lives.

She adds that they likely had an obligation to tell the world, given their status as a World Health Organization reference laboratory specializing in influenza viruses and pandemics, especially as the virus began spreading in the early days of 2020.

Yan, now in hiding, claims the government in the country where she was born is trying to shred her reputation and accuses government goons of choreographing a cyber-attack against her in hopes of keeping her quiet.

Yan believes her life is in danger. She fears she can never go back to her home and lives with the hard truth that she’ll likely never see her friends or family there again.

Don Lemon In 2013 And Don Lemon In 2020

Black And White Folks Have VERY Different Recollections Of The Same Living Memories...,

unz |  Let’s talk about desegregation bussing.

Once upon a time, American schools were racially segregated. But then segregation ended, and black kids were allowed to start going to the white schools. There was a lot of hope that if the black kids could learn around the white kids at the “good schools” with the “good teachers,” maybe the white people’s good habits would rub off on the black kids. Well, the joke was on them! Once the blacks started going to white schools, white flight kicked in, and within a few years, all the schools de facto segregated again.

So their solution to the problem was desegregation bussing. If whites were going to run from the black kids, well, they were just gonna bring the black kids to them. So they started bussing “underprivileged” black children from the war-torn ghettos out to the lily-white suburbs. In some cities, the opposite also occurred: in addition to bussing black kids to white schools, they also bussed unlucky random white kids out to inner-city schools so they could serve as role models for the black kids there. In some cities this was compulsory, a deeply unpopular practice called “forced bussing.”

In other places, it was voluntary and blacks would apply for this bussing program. This was the case in St. Louis, and they were mostly bussing black kids to white schools. A much smaller number of white kids went in the other direction to magnet schools. St. Louis only got around to ending the bussing program a couple of years ago.

This was supposed to have two effects. The blacks were supposed to pick up good habits from the white kids but they also expected the white kids, upon meeting the black youths, to quickly learn that we weren’t all that different after all and this would totally BTFO racism. Now, I don’t know about any other school. But my school? That. Did. Not. Happen.

If you were trying to create a government program for the specific purpose of turning white kids racist, I don’t think you could come up with a much better idea than desegregation bussing. If they had sat all us white kids down and forced us to watch an hour of Jared Taylor videos every day, I don’t think we would have ended up as racist as we actually did.

Now, the blacks in St. Louis are particularly vicious and dysfunctional, even by black standards. Everyone in St. Louis is at least somewhat redpilled on blacks. That’s not to say everyone in St. Louis is “based” or “racist.” But everyone in St. Louis knows that there are certain parts of town you don’t go to, because if you do, there is a very good chance you will be killed. By blacks. No one is under any illusions about that. People joke about it. Particularly East St. Louis. Ice Cube once wrote a song about the blacks in St. Louis.

Granted, everyone probably thinks that about their blacks. I’m sure plenty of people will read the paragraph above and think “Oh, you think the blacks in St. Louis are bad? You should come to Detroit/New Orleans/Baltimore/Little Rock/Dallas. The blacks we have here are really fucked up!”

Even black people themselves do this. I mean, what were the 1990s coastal rap wars if not a bunch of blacks from New York and a bunch of blacks from Los Angeles arguing with each other about who was more violent, criminal, and nihilistic than who?

Was Ghislaine Maxwell A Major Redditor?

Pimp-Procuress Tried To Create Global "Community" (Male-Bonding Via Two Piece And A Biscuit Snacks?)

influencewatch  |  The Project’s mission was to raise awareness for ocean conservation efforts. Maxwell spoke at a 2014 Council on Foreign Relations event about the issue. ^[8] She also spoke at events at the United Nations in 2013 and 2014. ^[9][10] She also gave a TED Talk. ^[11][12]

These high-profile events dovetailed with Maxwell’s and the Project’s high-profile partnerships. The Project’s effort to hold the United Nations to sustainable promises made regarding the ocean were praised and backed by the Clinton Global Initiative. ^[13][14]

Maxwell authored a 2015 op-ed for the Project’s newsletter, “The Daily Catch,” which theorized the moment the oceans “failed” due to environmental harm. ^[15] Archives of The Daily Catch were live as of August 17, 2019. TerraMar Project’s director of development Brian Yurasitis’ LinkedIn profile shows that the Project had several projects as part of its mission. ^[16] One project was the “How I sea” campaign, which collected stories from environmentalists and others who took photos of the ocean around the world. ^[17]

The #NoMoreButts initiative was the Project’s effort to create more opportunities for smokers to dispose of cigarette butts in an environmentally friendly fashion. ^[18]

Ghislaine Maxwell

Maxwell is the daughter of controversial British media magnate Robert Maxwell, who was implicated in mishandling the pension fund of the Daily Mirror after his death in 1991. ^[19]

After Ghislaine Maxwell moved to New York following her father’s death, she became widely known for her high-end social connections with U.S. Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, ex-boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein, British royalty, and others. ^[20][21] She attended Chelsea Clinton’s wedding. ^[22]

Despite decades in the public eye, she became a very private person in 2016. That year, she sold her $15 million home and largely disappeared from the public. ^[23]

After Epstein’s death, Maxwell became a notable figure amid allegations that she was involved in Epstein’s alleged sex-trafficking scheme. A federal court ordered the release of 2,000 pages of documents related to a 2015 lawsuit filed by one of Epstein’s accusers; the woman alleged that Maxwell had solicited her to perform sex acts for Epstein as a 16-year-old. Maxwell denied the allegations and has not been criminally charged for these alleged acts as of early July 2020. ^[24] Maxwell reportedly has settled lawsuits with two women who claimed she was involved in Epstein’s exploitation without admitting guilt. ^[25][26]

Maxwell has been involved in many public projects and efforts. She co-hosted a launch party for the publishing platform Ideapod in 2013. ^[27][28]

In July 2020, federal prosecutors secured an indictment of Maxwell on charges related to conspiracy in Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of underage girls; she was arrested and faced trial as of early July.^[29]

Aside From Being Kryptonite For BeeDee - What Is Boasian Anti-Racism?

policytensor |  The core idea of Boasian antiracism is the negation of the core idea of high racialism, the hegemonic ideology of the Western world, and beyond, from the turn of the century to the anti-systemic turn after 1968. In order to understand the contours of Boasian antiracism, we must therefore begin with high racialism. The core belief of high racialism was that the world was composed of discrete anthropological races that sat in a natural hierarchy of ability, and it was these biological differences between races that explained why some nations were rich and strong and others poor and weak. As I explained last year,

What made racial taxonomy so compelling was what it was mobilized to explain: the astonishing scale of global polarization. As Westerners contemplated the human condition at the turn of the century, the dominant fact that cried out for explanation was the highly uneven distribution of wealth and power on earth. It did really look like fate had thrust the responsibility of the world on Anglo-Saxon shoulders; that Europe and its offshoots were vastly more advanced, civilized and powerful that the rest of the world; that Oriental or Russian armies simply couldn’t put up a fight with a European great power; that six thousand Englishmen could rule over hundreds of millions of Indians without fear of getting their throats cut. The most compelling explanation was the most straightforward one. To the sharpest knives in the turn of the century drawer, what explained the polarization of the world was the natural hierarchy of the races.

Ashley Montagu was the first to question the existence of biological races in 1942. But since before the turn of the century, Franz Boas, a physical anthropologist at Columbia, had been questioning self-satisfied perceptions of innate biological differences between the races. In the mid-1930s, his students at Columbia Anthropology, above all, Ashley Montagu, Margret Mead and Ruth Benedict, argued forcefully against Nazi racism—this was the first time the word “racism” appeared in public; ‘race prejudice’ was used before that.

There are two important facts to note about high racialism. First, there was hardly any daylight between the German and Anglo-Saxon understanding of race. Both were, in the final analysis, anchored in the scientific discourse of physical anthropology—no one, including the Nazis, was free to reject the main claims of ‘the science of race’.

Second, high racialism did not die after Auschwitz. A lot of scholars have made claims to the contrary.

The 1950 UNESCO Statement on Race looms large in the historical study of “race” in the 20th century. Historians, sociologists, anthropologists and others point to the 1950 Statement on Race as the key moment in which science was harnessed in the political battle to combat racism and overturn the philosophical underpinnings of European colonialism and Jim Crow. These scholars recognize how the UNESCO Statement was doubly significant because the newly formed United Nations called for such an effort along with its 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and because the Statement apparently signaled the triumph of anti‐racist anthropology over the science that had defined social Darwinism, eugenics, and the Holocaust (Baker 1998; Banton 2002; Barkan 1992; Graves 2001; Kohn 1995; Patterson 2001; Shipman 2002; Tucker 1994; Zack 2002).

These scholars are mistaken. Not a single physical anthropologist contributed to the 1950 UNESCO Statement on Race, which was authored by a small coterie of Boasian antiracists led by Ashley Montagu. It is fair bet that the vast majority of physical anthropologists disagreed with it. The dominant figure in the scientific understanding of race at midcentury was Carlton Coon. Coon’s magnum opus, The Origin of Races was published in 1962. He posited H. erectus and H. sapiens as stages of hominin development. He argued that some continental races achieved sapiens status later than others, and mobilized their differential time-depth to explain global polarization. The monograph, with its obvious racist implications, was seized on by southern racists, including Coon’s cousin Putnam, to contest school desegregation. It was also immediately contested by Boasian antiracists.

7/19/16 REDUX: The Real Ones Murdered "Witness-Victims"" That Epstein Let Live

reddit |  "Marc Dutroux (born 6 November 1956) is a Belgian serial killer and child molester, convicted of having kidnapped, tortured and sexually abused six girls from 1995 to 1996, ranging in age from 8 to 19, four of whom he murdered. He was also convicted of having killed a suspected former accomplice, Bernard Weinstein, later proved insane. He was arrested in 1996, four years after the disappearance of his victims had begun, and has been in prison ever since, though he briefly escaped in April 1998.

Dutroux's widely publicised trial took place in 2004. A number of shortcomings in the Dutroux investigation caused widespread discontent in Belgium with the country's criminal justice system, and the ensuing scandal was one of the reasons for the reorganisation of Belgium's law enforcement agencies."

There were many many extremely disturbing things about his trial;

"On the witness stand, Jean-Marc Connerotte (fr), the original judge of the case, broke down in tears when he described "the bullet-proof vehicles and armed guards needed to protect him against the shadowy figures determined to stop the full truth coming out. Never before in Belgium has an investigating judge at the service of the king been subjected to such pressure. We were told by police that [murder] contracts had been taken out against the magistrates." Connerotte testified that the investigation was seriously hampered by protection of suspects by people in the government. "Rarely has so much energy been spent opposing an inquiry," he said. He believed that the Mafia had taken control of the case."

Dutroux himself claimed that;

"There is a well-grounded [paedophile] ring," he said. "I maintained regular contact with people in this ring. However, the law does not want to investigate this lead."

Recently in my home country(The United Kingdom) there has been a lot of news surrounding underground paedophile rings.;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10942375/Launch-formal-investigation-into-the-lost-paedophile-dossier-says-former-DPP.html

Quite a few MPs(conveniently deceased) as well as one MI5 agent have been indicated as involved.

wikileaks forum |  WikiLeaks in 2009 published a File called "Dutroux dossier summary, written down in 1235 pages, from the year 2005"

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Belgium:_Dutroux_dossier_summary,_1235_pages,_2005

We started to translate this File into english (it is written down in French),
to get the most possible impact into this children trafficing ring and the people behind the case.

You will find soon here the first sites that hass been tanslated and we will release every page, one by one, until this document is fully public.

Available to everyone in the world and every one visits the Wikileaks Forum.

 

NY Dept. of Financial Services Fines Duetschebank $150 MIllion For Laundering Epstein Money

nakedcapitalism |  The New York Department of Financial Services, which made its mark under Benjamin Lawsky by embarrassing Federal regulators via its aggressive pursuit of big bank money laundering, and later went after mortgage servicing misconduct, is back in the headlines. It’s dinged Deutsche Bank for $150 million for playing fast and loose with anti-money-laundering requirements on Jeffrey Epstein’s accounts, a bank in Cyprus accused of money laundering and connections to the Russian mob, and Danske Estonia, which conducted what was arguably Europe’s biggest money laundering operation. We’ve embedded the consent order at the end of the post and focus this post on Jeffrey Epstein, although for anyone in the banking business, the entire order is a good read. 

Even though cynics have pointed out that the US likes to come down harder on misbehaving foreign banks than home grown ones, Department of Financial Services has clout over foreign banks because pretty much all of them choose to organize their operations through a New York branch. Long-standing readers may recall that Lawsky caused outrage in the Beltway when he ordered the CEO of serial anti-money-laundering-regulation abuser Standard Chartered to appear in his office and explain why his New York banking license should not be revoked. That was the equivalent of a death threat. No New York banking license means no dollar clearing, which would end Standard Chartered’s international operations.

In the past, Federal regulators embarrassed by the Department of Financial Services’ enforcement actions would either join the DFS effort or launch a parallel one and in either case, collect additional fines. So far, there’s no evidence of that happening with this DFS consent order with Deutsche.

One has to wonder if Deutsche is truly as incompetent and disorganized as it appears in the DFS account, or whether the bank was so caught with its pants down that this was the best defense it could muster. For instance, if you read carefully, you can infer that someone who had been on the Epstein team was able to produce a copy of an e-mail from a co-head of Wealth Management Americas saying the head of anti-money laundering and the General Counsel had said Epstein didn’t represent a reputation risk despite his sex offender warts and he was good to go as long as “nothing further is identified”. Deutsche maintained it had no record of that e-mail and claimed there had been no initial review by the Americas Reputational Risk Committee. 

Similarly, even though Epstein’s accounts were designated high risk, which supposedly called for close supervision, the bank looked past obvious red flags. For instance, Epstein and his minions regularly wired $10,000 or more to three co-conspirators named in the press. His “Butterfly Trust” had these co-conspirators among its beneficiaries, as well as women with “Eastern European surnames” (this after the press had alleged that Epstein had been procuring underaged women from Eastern Europe). The Order makes clear the trust looks a, if not the, payment channel for Esptein’s sex trafficking via over 120 wires for $2.65 million.

The Davos Degenerate Breakaway No Longer Has Any Use For You Left Behinds

Forbes |  NASA is about to begin building its latest spacecraft. Called “Psyche” it will explore a 140 miles/226 kilometers-wide asteroid called “16 Psyche.” Today it’s passed a major milestone. 

Why is NASA going to ‘16 Psyche?’ 

Located in the Solar System’s main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, metal-rich 16 Psyche is thought to be the exposed metallic iron, nickel and gold core of a protoplanet. Most asteroids are rocky or icy. 

The Psyche mission is part of NASA’s Discovery Program of low-cost robotic space missions.

16 Psyche’s core is tantalisingly similar to Earth’s, which means that it could be the heart of a dead planet that lost its rocky outer layers or suffered from violent collisions.  

 The metals that make-up this one-of-a-kind asteroid could, according to some, be worth $10,000 quadrillion. 

 Due to launch from Pad 39A at Cape Canaveral, Florida, in August 2022 on top of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, fly-past Mars in 2023, and begin orbiting the asteroid in January 2026, Psyche has just passed its “critical design review” stage. 

Now the mission moves to actually making the space hardware. 

“It’s one of the most intense reviews a mission goes through in its entire life cycle,” said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, principal investigator for the Psyche mission. “And we passed with flying colors. The challenges are not over, and we’re not at the finish line, but we’re running strong.”

The team now has to build its three science instruments:

• a magnetometer to measure the asteroid’s magnetic field.
• a multispectral imager to capture images of its surface and data, about what its made of, and its geological features.
• spectrometers that analyze the neutrons and gamma rays coming from the surface to reveal what the asteroid is made of.

Assembly and testing of the full robotic spacecraft begins in February 2021, and everything has to be in the clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) by April 2021. 

The main spacecraft chassis is now being built at Maxar Technologies in Palo Alto, California.

Nancy Pelosi: The Dessicated Ambitions And Oxygen Thievery Of An Eighty Year Old Poodle

prospect |  Pelosi rolled back student debt relief in the HEROES Act after learning that it would cost $100 billion more than expected. This was a $3.2 trillion messaging bill not designed to become law, yet an additional 3 percent cost was considered unacceptable. Pelosi also declined to add “automatic stabilizers” that would maintain expanded benefits until economic stress dissipated, blaming a Congressional Budget Office scoring quirk that made the cost appear artificially larger.

So with over 30 million out of work, the important thing to Pelosi was that her pie-in-the-sky, going-nowhere bill was “reasonable,” based on some ineffable standard of reason. It matches the worldview of a Democratic leader who, just two years ago, made a lugubrious elegy on the House floor after the death of Pete Peterson, who bankrolled the deficit hysteria industry for decades and relentlessly targeted Social Security for cuts. (Ball does reveal that Pelosi told Obama during his “grand bargain” talks that she would support his aims, “even if it meant agreeing to entitlement cuts.”)

Devotion to deficit hawkery in normal times is unwise policy. It’s downright fatal during an economic crisis, where relief could be yanked away from needy families prematurely simply because of an unwillingness to challenge CBO’s scoring model. But here we finally see the contours of Pelosi’s governing framework, not just on the budget, but on everything.

Pelosi believes that the nation’s resources are scarce, and what sadly passes for the modern welfare state must be protected at all costs, rather than raised to greater heights. The goal is, at best, a less bad world than Republicans want. It’s a defensive crouch dating back to Pelosi’s initial entry into Congress under President Reagan, and it has dominated her thinking ever since.

Progressives who dream too big are to be sat in a corner, and anti-government conservatives are to be bargained with and mollified. Official Washington’s approval is craved. Pelosi hosts an annual ideas conference at her own vineyard for a group of elite donors. That’s who gets to scale the fortress she has built around her desiccated ambitions. Her thoughts today on activism date back to something she said during her first campaign: “Someday they will realize just how insignificant they are.”

Pelosi demands total control; you can argue that she never groomed a successor for this purpose, to keep everyone reliant on her. She finds this to be the best method to gain leverage over the legislative process. But to what end is this leverage employed? Pelosi fights intensely to obtain power, but she seems to consider power so fragile and fleeting that it shouldn’t be used for very much.

The Great Reset Presages The Rise Of Organized Global Authoritarianism

wikipedia  |  The International Trade Organization (ITO) was the proposed name for an international institution for the regulation of trade.

Led by the United States in collaboration with allies, the effort to form the organization from 1945 to 1948, with the successful passing of the Havana Charter, eventually failed due to lack of approval by the US Congress. Until the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1994, international trade was managed through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

The Bretton Woods Conference of 1944, which established an international institution for monetary policy, recognized the need for a comparable international institution for trade to complement the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.^[1] Bretton Woods was attended by representatives of finance ministries and not by representatives of trade ministries, the proposed reason why a trade agreement was not negotiated at that time.^[2]

 

In early December 1945, the United States invited its war-time allies to enter into negotiations to conclude a multilateral agreement for the reciprocal reduction of tariffs on trade in goods. In July 1945, the US Congress had granted President Harry S. Truman the authority to negotiate and conclude such an agreement. At the proposal of the United States, the United Nations Economic and Social Committee adopted a resolution, in February 1946, calling for a conference to draft a charter for an International Trade Organization.

A Preparatory Committee was established in February 1946, and met for the first time in London in October 1946 to work on the charter of an international organization for trade; the work was continued from April to November 1947.^[3]

 

That Reset Diagram Is WONDERFUL -So Much Bullshit In So Small A Space - It Might Be A Record.

nakedcapitalism |  That said, the World Economic Forum seems especially worthy of attention, both as a newsworthy event, and as the home ground of “Davos Man,” a phrase coined by Samuel P. Hunting (of all people) in “Dead Souls: The Denationalization of the American Elite” (2004):

The rewards of an increasingly integrated global economy have brought forth a new global elite. Labeled ‘Davos Men’, ‘gold-collar workers’ or . . . ‘cosmocrats’, this emerging class is empowered by new notions of global connectedness. It includes academics, international civil servants and executives in global companies, as well as successful high-technology entrepreneurs. Estimated to number about 20 million in 2000, of whom 40 percent were American, this elite is expected to double in size by 2010. Comprising fewer than 4 percent of the American people, these transnationalists have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations. In the coming years, one corporation executive confidently predicted, “the only people who will care about national boundaries are politicians.” Involvement in transnational institutions, networks and activities not only defines the global elite but also is critical to achieving elite status within nations. Someone whose loyalties, identities and involvements are purely national is less likely to rise to the top in business, academia, the media and the professions than someone who transcends these limits. Outside politics, those who stay home stay behind. Those who move ahead think and act internationally. As sociologist Manuel Castells has said, “Elites are cosmopolitan, people are local.”

“Why don’t they just move?” being the quintessential question of Davos Man, aspirational or no, or has been until recently. Perhaps now Davos Man (or, today, Person) is hearing the faint, far-off sound of blades being sharpened, and is about to display adaptability. Or will, if the WEF has anything to do with it. If so, that’s interesting and something to think about. (FOX is already excited; they seem to think that the WEF is going to bring about socialism. Pas si bête.)

In this post I’m going to take a brief look at the WEF’s upcoming 2021 potlatch, dubbed “The Great Reset,” first at its ideological, and then at its institutional characteristics. As I said, this post will be quite superficial, since I’m not a global elites maven. Indeed, reading the WEF site made me feel like I was trapped in a large and luxurious conference hotel where all the signage was in a language that looked like English, but wasn’t. So I hope readers will chime in. No yarn diagrams, please!

The Linkage Between Davos And L'Affaire Epstein

BusinessInsider |  Former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao says Ghislaine Maxwell was rubbing elbows with Silicon Valley's elites in 2011 — and Pao believes people suspected Maxwell's ties to child trafficking at the time and didn't care.

Maxwell was arrested last week and is awaiting trial for four criminal charges related to procuring and transporting minors for illegal sex acts. Prosecutors say Maxwell participated in a sex trafficking operation alongside her partner Jeffrey Epstein.

Pao, a former partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, said Maxwell was at the firm's holiday party in 2011, more than two years after Epstein was first convicted of soliciting sex from a 14 year old. Maxwell was Epstein's long-time girlfriend and associate at the time but did not face any criminal charges prior to her 2020 arrest.

"[Maxwell] was at the Kleiner holiday party in 2011, but I had no desire to meet her much less have a photo taken with her," Pao wrote in a tweet, screenshotted and reposted by reporter Lachlan Markay. "We knew about her supplying underage girls for sex, but I guess that was fine with the 'cool' people who managed the tightly controlled guest list."

Pao set her Twitter account to private Monday morning after sending the tweet. When reached for comment by Business Insider, Pao shared two additional tweets that she subsequently posted clarifying her remarks. In one tweet, Pao linked to a Daily Mail report published in March 2011 in which Epstein's victims accused Maxwell of participating in the abuse.

"To be clear, the press had described her as supplying underage girls for sex, but she had not been charged so I guess it would be more accurate to say we 'suspected' v 'knew,'" Pao wrote.

According to a 2011 Business Insider report, the Kleiner Perkins holiday party that year drew esteemed guests including former Vice President Al Gore, Apple VP of Engineering Mike Abbott, and former HP chairman Ray Lane.

A Kleiner Perkins spokesperson declined to comment.

Ghislaine Claims To Have The Kompromat On Jailbait-Loving Davos Men...,

dailymail |  Ghislaine Maxwell has a secret stash of Jeffrey Epstein's twisted sex tapes and will use the footage as an insurance policy to save herself, a former friend exclusively revealed to DailyMail.com.

Maxwell, 58, was arrested at her hideout in Bradford, New Hampshire last Thursday. She was charged with six federal crimes, including enticement of minors, sex trafficking and perjury.

The British socialite was arguably Epstein's closest friend and she is alleged to have acted as his madam, accused of securing underage girls for the multi-millionaire, who reportedly kept evidence of his perverted sex acts against the minors.

When officials raided Epstein's Manhattan townhouse after his arrest last July, they found thousands of graphic photos that included images of underage girls and a safe filled with compact discs labeled 'nude girls', according to authorities.

Maxwell's former friend explained: 'Ghislaine has always been as cunning as they come. She wasn't going to be with Epstein all those years and not have some insurance.

'The secret stash of sex tapes I believe Ghislaine has squirreled away could end up being her get out of jail card if the authorities are willing to trade. She has copies of everything Epstein had. They could implicate some twisted movers and shakers.'

They added: 'If Ghislaine goes down, she's going to take the whole damn lot of them with her.' 

The former friend continued: 'Not only did Epstein like to capture himself with underage girls on camera – he wanted to make sure he had something to hold over the rich and powerful men who took advantage of his sick largesse.'

'I'll bet anything that once it comes out that Ghislaine has those tapes these men will be quaking in their Italian leather boots.

'Ghislaine made sure that she socked away thumb drives of it all. She knows where all the bodies are buried and she'll use whatever she had to save her own a**.'

World Economic Forum Controlaspecies Mandala

The Hon. Bro. Minister Can't Truss It

The Honorable Minister Farrakhan is spitting truth to power
✊🏾 pic.twitter.com/Fu96ESSfAO

— Tariq Nasheed 🇺🇸 (@tariqnasheed) July 4, 2020

 

jonathanturley |  It is bad enough when you become a political rally cry for the right as a man trying to destroy our economy or instill fear into the nation.  Now, Dr. Anthony Fauci is being called a mass murderer who, with the cabal of Bill and Melinda Gates, are seeking to “depopulate the Earth.” That is hardly the most deranged thing that Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, 87, has uttered, but it may be the most dangerous. Farrakhan is encouraging people to refuse vaccinations, a problem that is already causing world health leaders concerns in Africa.  This is viewed as the new “epicenter” for the pandemic with Africans facing a threat with the need to protect hundreds of millions of Africans. 

Health officials will need their cooperation but they have now heard from Farrakhan who has declared that, if they want to live, “Do not take their medication.”

In this Fourth of July remarks, Farrakhan declared that

“They’re making money now, plotting to give seven billion, five-hundred million people a vaccination. Dr. Fauci, Bill Gates and Melinda — you want to depopulate the Earth. What the hell gave you that right? Who are you to sit down with your billion to talk about who can live, and who should die?

… I say to my brothers and sisters in Africa, if they come up with a vaccine, be careful. Don’t let them vaccinate you with their history of treachery through vaccines, through medication.” 

He added “That’s why your world is coming to an end quickly, because you have sentenced billions to death, but God is now sentencing you to the death that you are sentencing to others.”

Mechanisms Of Covid Spread Still A Complete Mystery

SMH |  "The explanation could only be that these agents don't come or go anywhere. They are always here and something ignites them, maybe human density or environmental conditions, and this is what we should look for."

Dr Jefferson believes that the virus may be transmitted through the sewerage system or shared toilets, not just through droplets expelled by talking, coughing and sneezing.

Jefferson and Professor Carl Heneghan, director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, have called for an in-depth investigation similar to that carried out by John Snow in 1854, which showed cholera was spreading in London from an infected well in Soho.

Exploring why so many outbreaks happen at food factories and meat-packing plants could uncover major new transmission routes, they believe. It may be shared toilets coupled with cool conditions that allow the virus to thrive.

The Tonnies slaughterhouse in Germany was the centre of a major outbreak last month, and in May, Melbourne's Cedar Meats also recorded a cluster of cases.

"We're doing a living review, extracting environmental conditions, the ecology of these viruses which has been grossly understudied," said Dr Jefferson.

"There is quite a lot of evidence of huge amounts of the virus in sewage all over the place, and an increasing amount of evidence there is faecal transmission. There is a high concentration where sewage is four degrees, which is the ideal temperature for it to be stabled and presumably activated. And meat-packing plants are often at four degrees.

"These meat-packing clusters and isolated outbreaks don't fit with respiratory theory, they fit with people who haven't washed their hands properly.

9/3/15 REDUX: School Choice A Funded Vestige Of Integration Avoidance

politico |  In May 1969, a group of African-American parents in Holmes County, Mississippi, sued the Treasury Department to prevent three new whites-only K-12 private academies from securing full tax-exempt status, arguing that their discriminatory policies prevented them from being considered “charitable” institutions. The schools had been founded in the mid-1960s in response to the desegregation of public schools set in motion by the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. In 1969, the first year of desegregation, the number of white students enrolled in public schools in Holmes County dropped from 771 to 28; the following year, that number fell to zero. 

In  Green v. Kennedy (David Kennedy was secretary of the treasury at the time), decided in January 1970, the plaintiffs won a preliminary injunction, which denied the “segregation academies” tax-exempt status until further review. In the meantime, the government was solidifying its position on such schools. Later that year, President Richard Nixon ordered the Internal Revenue Service to enact a new policy denying tax exemptions to all segregated schools in the United States. Under the provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which forbade racial segregation and discrimination, discriminatory schools were not—by definition—“charitable” educational organizations, and therefore they had no claims to tax-exempt status; similarly, donations to such organizations would no longer qualify as tax-deductible contributions.

Paul Weyrich, the late religious conservative political activist and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, saw his opening. 

In the decades following World War II, evangelicals, especially white evangelicals in the North, had drifted toward the Republican Party—inclined in that direction by general Cold War anxieties, vestigial suspicions of Catholicism and well-known evangelist Billy Graham’s very public friendship with Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. Despite these predilections, though, evangelicals had largely stayed out of the political arena, at least in any organized way. If he could change that, Weyrich reasoned, their large numbers would constitute a formidable voting bloc—one that he could easily marshal behind conservative causes. 

“The new political philosophy must be defined by us [conservatives] in moral terms, packaged in non-religious language, and propagated throughout the country by our new coalition,” Weyrich wrote in the mid-1970s. “When political power is achieved, the moral majority will have the opportunity to re-create this great nation.” Weyrich believed that the political possibilities of such a coalition were unlimited. “The leadership, moral philosophy, and workable vehicle are at hand just waiting to be blended and activated,” he wrote. “If the moral majority acts, results could well exceed our wildest dreams.” 

But this hypothetical “moral majority” needed a catalyst—a standard around which to rally. For nearly two decades, Weyrich, by his own account, had been trying out different issues, hoping one might pique evangelical interest: pornography, prayer in schools, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, even abortion. “I was trying to get these people interested in those issues and I utterly failed,” Weyrich recalled at a conference in 1990. 

The  Green v. Connally ruling provided a necessary first step: It captured the attention of evangelical leaders , especially as the IRS began sending questionnaires to church-related “segregation academies,” including Falwell’s own Lynchburg Christian School, inquiring about their racial policies. Falwell was furious. “In some states,” he famously complained, “It’s easier to open a massage parlor than a Christian school.” 

One such school, Bob Jones University—a fundamentalist college in Greenville, South Carolina—was especially obdurate. The IRS had sent its first letter to Bob Jones University in November 1970 to ascertain whether or not it discriminated on the basis of race. The school responded defiantly: It did not admit African Americans. 

Although Bob Jones Jr., the school’s founder, argued that racial segregation was mandated by the Bible, Falwell and Weyrich quickly sought to shift the grounds of the debate, framing their opposition in terms of religious freedom rather than in defense of racial segregation. For decades, evangelical leaders had boasted that because their educational institutions accepted no federal money (except for, of course, not having to pay taxes) the government could not tell them how to run their shops—whom to hire or not, whom to admit or reject. The Civil Rights Act, however, changed that calculus. 

Bob Jones University did, in fact, try to placate the IRS—in its own way. Following initial inquiries into the school’s racial policies, Bob Jones admitted one African-American, a worker in its radio station, as a part-time student; he dropped out a month later. In 1975, again in an attempt to forestall IRS action, the school admitted blacks to the student body, but, out of fears of miscegenation, refused to admit  unmarried African-Americans. The school also stipulated that any students who engaged in interracial dating, or who were even associated with organizations that advocated interracial dating, would be expelled.

The IRS was not placated. On January 19, 1976, after years of warnings—integrate or pay taxes—the agency rescinded the school’s tax exemption. 

For many evangelical leaders, who had been following the issue since  Green v. Connally, Bob Jones University was the final straw. As Elmer L. Rumminger, longtime administrator at Bob Jones University, told me in an interview, the IRS actions against his school “alerted the Christian school community about what could happen with government interference” in the affairs of evangelical institutions. “That was really the major issue that got us all involved.”

5/11/16 REDUX: Public School Choice Tied To Neighborhood You Can Afford (Hidden Structure)

WaPo |  "We always think, well, we’re never going to have integrated schools as long as we have such highly segregated neighborhoods," she says. "I want to point out maybe we’ll never have integrated neighborhoods if we have segregated schools."

If we found ways to integrate schools — as former District Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) controversially proposed two years ago — that might take some of the exclusivity out of certain neighborhoods. School quality is capitalized into housing prices, making those neighborhoods unaffordable to many families. Imagine, for instance, if all the public schools in the District or the Washington region were integrated and of comparable quality. Families might pay more to live in Northwest to be near Rock Creek Park. But you'd see fewer home-bidding wars there just to access scarce school quality. More to the point, homes families already paid handsomely to buy might lose some of their value.

Politically, the two topics that most enrage voters are threats to property values and local schools.  So either of these ideas — wielding housing policy to affect schools, or school policy to affect housing — would be tough sells. Especially to anyone who has secured both the desirable address and a seat in the best kindergarten in town. Parents in Upper Northwest, for instance, deeply opposed the idea of ending neighborhood schools in Washington. And Gray's proposal never came to pass.

But, Owens says, "I feel more hopeful in studying these issues today than I did five years ago." At least, she says, we are all now talking more about inequality and segregation.

9/12/13 REDUX: Killing Public School Integration Reset And Cloaked The Structure Of American Racism

NYTimes | In many northern cities, the 1974 United States Supreme Court decision Milliken v. Bradley killed any hopes of integrating the public schools. That ruling, involving Detroit and its suburbs, said that a mandatory plan to achieve integration by busing black children from Detroit across district lines to mainly white suburbs was unconstitutional. The result accelerated white flight to the suburbs, leaving the schools in urban centers even more segregated than they had been. 

Most famously, this happened in Boston, where court-ordered integration resulted in a busing plan that wound up mainly moving children of color around the city. 

But busing had greater success in some places, particularly those where the plans were carried out countywide, reducing the chances of white flight. They included Louisville-Jefferson County, Raleigh-Wake County and Charlotte-Mecklenburg County. 

This week’s Retro Report video, “The Battle for Busing,” follows the story of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district, which became a national model for racial integration for 30 years only to resegregate about a decade ago, after a court ruling lifted the mandatory integration plan.

When the Charlotte busing plan began in 1971, there were whites who threatened to go to jail before they would let their children attend schools with blacks. The open racism voiced by whites in the Retro Report’s archival footage is vicious and ugly; students were injured when fistfights broke out between whites and blacks. 

But by 1974, the district was being singled out in the news media as a national model, particularly West Charlotte High, which had previously been all black. The impact of integration was visible almost immediately at the school. When whites arrived, the facilities were upgraded, said a former chairman of the school board, Arthur Griffin. A gravel parking lot was paved, and the football stadium and the gymnasium were renovated. 

Over the years, researchers like Prof. Roslyn Mickelson at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, conducted studies concluding that children of any race who attended diverse schools were more likely to succeed, in areas like graduating, avoiding crime and attending college. 

But in the end, the same federal courts that had ushered in integration helped kill it. In the late 1990s, Judge Robert D. Potter of Federal District Court essentially said that the Charlotte district had met its constitutional duty by successfully creating a single school system serving all children regardless of race and that no more need be done.

In a few years’ time, West Charlotte High, which had been roughly 40 percent black and 60 percent white in the 1970s, became 88 percent black and 1 percent white. And it wasn’t just Charlotte. Today, nearly two-thirds of the school districts that had been ordered to desegregate are no longer required to do so, including Seminole County, Fla. (2006); Little Rock, Ark. (2007); and Galveston County, Tex. (2009). 

The New York City system is more segregated than it was in the 1980s: half the schools are more than 90 percent black and Hispanic. For more about the nation’s “steady and massive resegregation,” see this Reporter’s Notebook from Retro Report. 

This week’s Retro Report is the 10th in our documentary project, which was started with a grant from Christopher Buck. Retro Report has a staff of 12 journalists and 6 contributors led by Kyra Darnton. It is a nonprofit video news organization that aims to provide a thoughtful counterweight to today’s 24/7 news cycle. The videos are typically 10 to 12 minutes long.