American Youth Senses The Darkness Just Around That Signpost Up Ahead...,

hks.harvard  | More than half of young Americans feel democracy in the country is under threat, and over a third think they may see a second U.S. civil war within their lifetimes, according to the 42nd Harvard Youth Poll, released by Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics (IOP) on Wednesday. 

The poll also found approval of President Biden has plummeted, and a majority of respondents are unhappy with how the president and Congress are doing their jobs. In addition, many of the respondents feel strongly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and are worried about the threat of climate change. Half of all respondents also said they struggled with feelings of hopelessness and depression. 

The Harvard Youth Poll—which is conducted twice a year, in fall and spring, and has run for over 20 years—captured responses on these topics and others from 2,109 people between the ages of 18 and 29, from across the country. Students from the Harvard Public Opinion Project (HPOP) organized the survey, under the supervision of John Della Volpe, director of polling at the IOP. 

“After turning out in record numbers in 2020, young Americans are sounding the alarm. When they look at the America they will soon inherit, they see a democracy and climate in peril—and Washington as more interested in confrontation than compromise,” Della Volpe said. “Despite this, they seem as determined as ever to fight for the change they seek.”

Jing-Jing Shen, a Harvard College undergraduate and the HPOP student chair, said, “Right now, young Americans are confronting worries on many fronts. Concerns about our collective future—with regard to democracy, climate change, and mental health—also feel very personal.” Shen noted, however, that “young people have come to even more deeply value their communities and connections with others” in this challenging time.

The survey found a striking lack of confidence in U.S. democracy among young Americans. Only 7% view the United States as a “healthy democracy,” and 52% believe that democracy is either “in trouble” or “failing.” This concern is echoed in the fact that 35% of respondents anticipate a second civil war during their lifetimes, and 25% believe that at least one state will secede.

Death Robots Terrorizing Little Kids Don't Play Well On Cable News

theweek |  Our infamous drone war has largely faded from the headlines. Aside from one strike that went horribly wrong during the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan, there has been vanishingly little coverage of what's going on with the signature American tactic of the war on terror: remote-controlled death robots.

So I was rather taken aback to discover President Biden has almost totally halted drone strikes, and airstrikes in general, around the world. It's a remarkable foreign policy reform, but also a remarkable failure of both government communication and media coverage. A hugely significant change in foreign policy has happened — and almost nobody is paying attention.

Not long ago, the drone war was subject to fierce public debate. It started under former President George W. Bush, then became a favored tactic of former President Barack Obama. He'd come to power on the strength of his record opposing the Iraq War but was, at bottom, a devoted imperial chauvinist. Obama wanted to avoid being bogged down in new overseas occupations (except in Afghanistan, where he idiotically boosted troop levels to no positive effect) but never truly questioned U.S. global imperialism or the military-industrial complex.

The drone strike was thus the perfect tool for his presidency: a cheap, high-tech, and supposedly super-accurate method of fighting terrorism (and extending U.S. military hegemony) at no risk to American soldiers. (U.S. airstrikes with human pilots increasingly operate in similar safety, rarely flying over targets with anti-aircraft defenses.) "Turns out I'm really good at killing people," Obama told aides in 2011. "Didn't know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine."

That was only true if "really good" is measured by quantity, not quality, of the strikes. The intelligence used to pick targets was routinely atrocious, and airstrikes blew up weddings, markets, and random civilian houses. A C-130 gunship annihilated a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan in 2015. Many people in drone-ridden areas, especially children, developed chronic PTSD from the constant buzzing whine of a machine that could and quite often did kill them out of nowhere for no reason.

The Jackpot Is Here Right Now, It's Just Not Evenly Distributed

thebulletin  |   Depending on specifications, drones can be cheap—some quite capable models cost no more than $100—and still theoretically useful in a crude attack on critical infrastructure. Of course, would-be terrorists could acquire much more capable and expensive drones, as well. Controlling the sale of popular and useful tools is difficult. What should the US government, or others, do to reign in the threat drone terror could pose to utilities or other critical infrastructure?

Within the United States, only federal authorities can operate counter-drone systems. The Department of Homeland Security’s 2019 Counter Unmanned Systems Technology Guide, a 33-page booklet about drones and ways to detect and disable them, contains four warnings, in case anyone mistakes the guide’s description of the counter-drone systems for permission to build or acquire them. Counter-drone systems create their own risk to surrounding systems. A drone-jammer does not just jam the signal to the drone, but any signal operating on the same frequency. That could include air traffic control radio, and other critical signals.

But a federal monopoly on these important defenses raises questions about how effective they can be in an emergency.

If a critical infrastructure owner or operator has to call the FBI when they fear a drone attack, any response will mean little, unless counter-drone operators are already on site. A racing drone flying over 100 miles per hour will outrun a federal SUV every time, especially when the drone has a significant head-start.

The Department of Homeland Security has legal authority to protect “covered” facilities and assets, though exactly what types of facilities are protected is unclear from open sources. (And realistically, that information should not be publicly available, because it would provide a clear guide for adversaries on what facilities are unprotected.) Unless the department protects every covered facility, there will be vulnerabilities, because correctly anticipating every terrorist target is impossible/

Growing technology may create opportunities to avoid making tough value trade-offs. The same technology that allows drones to operate remotely or autonomously may be applied to counter-drone systems. A network of remotely-operated or autonomous counter-drone systems stationed at critical infrastructure sites would allow federal authorities to maintain control, while also allowing far more rapid response to drone events. Authorities could manage numerous counter-drone systems dispersed over a whole region from a central location.

Critical infrastructure faces growing risks from drone terrorism. As the stories of Aum, ISIS, and other terror groups show, non-state actors have been using and experimenting with drones since the mid-1990s. At least back then, to obtain them they had to do more than a quick search on Amazon.

What Is Systemically Important Critical Infrastructure?

lawfareblog |  The Colonial Pipeline attack was the most recent reminder of a steadily encroaching wave of cyber threats affecting the nation’s critical infrastructure. Although the ransomware attack was considered to be “relatively unsophisticated” in nature, it was powerful enough to shut down America’s largest refined products pipeline for several days. It took Colonial six days to get the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) any notifications that could then be disseminated to other at-risk industry entities—and even then, acting CISA Director Brandon Wales remarked that he did not think Colonial would have reached out to CISA had the FBI not facilitated the interaction. Much of the discussion around the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack has obscured a key point: The U.S. government does not have a reliable method to identify, support and secure the most “critical of critical” infrastructure.

The U.S. government is not completely aware of what is critical—as in which companies’ disruption could have devastating or cascading consequences for the economy, national security, or public health and safety. Since its inception, the term “critical infrastructure” has grown so large that it has lost any meaningful specificity. Ranking Member of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. John Katko, reaffirmed this evaluation in a recent press release noting that because the United States has diluted what qualifies as critical infrastructure, “the federal government has visibility into a shockingly small sliver of significant cyber incidents across the country.” Underlying this dilution is the fact that no sufficiently granular and legally enforceable designation for “critical infrastructure” exists—consequently, there is no bound that keeps the concept from expanding into obscurity. Previous bills that have attempted to confer benefits or burdens on “critical infrastructure” have been vague and have not provided any clarity on what qualifies as such.

Furthermore, a risk-based approach to national security requires that the U.S. must prioritize its resources in areas where it can have the greatest impact to prevent the worst consequences. The U.S. government’s most capable adversaries, including Russia and China, are constantly looking for opportunities to scale their cyber operations and focus on targets that would have the greatest destructive impact. These past cyberattacks have illustrated that the nation’s adversaries have adopted a clear strategy that targets the “critical of critical” nodes that underlie U.S. national security. Therefore, the United States should respond in kind and reshape its approach to identifying and protecting them. The Cyberspace Solarium Commission’s 2020 report addresses just that.

The commission recommended that the United States codify into law the concept of “systemically important critical infrastructure” (SICI). These entities, responsible for the most important critical systems and assets in the U.S., would be granted special assistance from the federal government as well as assuming increased responsibility for additional security and information security requirements that are vital to their unique status and importance. This proposal answers the increasing need for the identification, partnership, and protection of the most “critical of critical” infrastructure.

American Prison Is Purely Punitive and Exploitative - In No Way Rehabilitative

proteanmag  |  his April, the Iowa Department of Corrections issued a ban on charities, family members, and other outside parties donating books to prisoners. Under the state’s new guidelines, incarcerated people can get books only from a handful of “approved vendors.” Used books are prohibited altogether, and any new reading material is subject to a laundry list of restrictions.

The policy is harsh, but far from unique. In fact, it’s only the latest in a wave of similar bans. In 2018, the Michigan prison system introduced an almost identical set of rules, and Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington have all made attempts to block book donations, which were only rolled back after public outcry. Across the United States, the agencies responsible for mass imprisonment are trying to severely limit incarcerated people’s access to the written word—an alarming trend, and one that bears closer examination.

The official narrative is that donated books could contain “contraband which poses a threat to the security, good order, or discipline of the facility”—the language used in Michigan—and should be banned for everyone’s safety. This is a flimsy justification that begins to fall apart under even the lightest scrutiny. While it’s true that contraband is often smuggled into prisons (cell phones, tobacco, and marijuana being some of the most popular items), it’s not originating from nonprofit groups like the Appalachian Prison Book Project or Philadelphia’s Books Through Bars. In fact, twelve of the seventeen incidents used to justify a book ban in Washington didn’t involve books at all. 

Instead, the bulk of the contraband in today’s prisons is smuggled in by guards themselves, who profit handsomely from their illicit sidelines, sometimes making as much as $300 for a single pack of cigarettes. If prison officials’ concerns were genuine, the appropriate move would be to limit the power and impunity of their officers—not snatch books away from those who are already powerless. The old cartoon scenario of a hollow book with a saw or a gun inside just isn’t realistic, and its invocation is a sign that something else is going on.

That “something else,” predictably enough, is profit. With free books banned, prisoners are forced to rely on the small list of “approved vendors” chosen for them by the prison administration. These retailers directly benefit when states introduce restrictions. In Iowa, the approved sources include Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million, some of America’s largest retail chains—and, notably, ones which charge the full MSRP value for each book, quickly draining prisoners’ accounts. An incarcerated person with, say, $20 to spend can now only get one book, as opposed to three or four used ones; in states where prisoners make as little as 25 cents an hour for their labor, many can’t afford even that. 

With e-books, the situation is even worse, as companies like Global Tel Link supply supposedly “free” tablets which actually charge their users by the minute to read. Even public-domain classics, available on Project Gutenberg, are only available at a price under these systems—and prisons, in turn, receive a 5% commission on every charge. All of this amounts to rampant price-gouging and profiteering on an industrial scale. 

The rise of these private vendors has also been mirrored by the systematic dismantling of the prison library system. In the last ten years, budgets for literacy and educational resources have seen dramatic cuts, reducing funding to almost nothing, and incarcerated people have been deprived as a result. In Illinois, for instance, the Department of Corrections spent just $276 on books across the entire state in 2017, down from an already meager $605 the previous year. (This means, incidentally, that each of the state’s roughly 39,000 prisoners was allotted seven-tenths of a cent.) Oklahoma, meanwhile, has no dedicated budget for books at all, requiring prison librarians to purchase them out-of-pocket. Many books in its small stock are “falling apart, dilapidated and may be missing some pages.” These cuts are part of capitalism’s more general push to privatize or eliminate public goods and services—libraries among them—so massive corporations can receive windfalls. In prisons, the method is especially devastating.

Shellenberger Says Progressives Ruin Cities

michaelshellenberger |  In my new book, San Fransicko, I describe why progressives create and defend what European researchers call “open drug scenes,” which are places in cities where drug dealers and buyers meet, and many addicts live in tents. Progressives call these scenes “homeless encampments,” and not only defend them but have encouraged their growth, which is why the homeless population in California grew 31 percent since 2000. This was mostly a West Coast phenomenon until recently. But now, the newly elected progressive mayor of Boston, Michelle Wu, has decided to keep open a drug scene at Mass and Cass avenues, even though it has resulted in several deaths from drug overdoses and homicides.

Progressives defend their approach as compassionate. Not everybody who is homeless is an addict, they say. Many are just down on their luck. Others turn to drugs after living on the street. What they need is our help. We should not ask people living in homeless encampments to go somewhere else. Homeless shelters are often more dangerous than living on the street. We should provide the people living in tents with money, food, clean needles, and whatever else they need to stay alive and comfortable. And we should provide everyone with their own apartment unit if that’s what they want.

But this “harm reduction” approach is obviously failing. Cities already do a good job taking care of temporarily homeless people not addicted to drugs. Drug dealers stab and sometimes murder addicts who don’t pay. Women forced into prostitution to support their addictions are raped. Addicts are dying from overdose and poisoning. The addicts living in the open drug scenes commit many crimes including open drug use, sleeping on sidewalks, and defecating in public. Many steal to maintain their habits. The hands-off approach has meant that addicts do not spend any amount of time in jail or hospital where they can be off of drugs, and seek recovery.

Now, even a growing number of people who have worked or still work within the homeless services sector are speaking out. A longtime San Francisco homeless service provider who read San Fransicko, and said they mostly agreed with it, reached out to me to share their views. At first this person said they wanted to speak on the record. But as the interview went on, and the person criticized their colleagues, they asked to remain anonymous, fearing retribution.

The main progressive approach for addressing homelessness, not just in San Francisco but in progressive cities around the nation, is “Housing First,” which is the notion that taxpayers should give, no questions asked, apartment units to anyone who says they are homeless, and asks for one. What actually works to reduce the addiction that forces many people onto the streets is making housing contingent on abstinence. But Housing First advocates oppose “contingency management,” as it’s called, because, they say, “Housing is a right,” and it should not be conditioned upon behavior change.

But such a policy is absurdly unrealistic, said the San Francisco homeless expert. “To pretend that this city could build enough permanent supportive housing for every homeless person who needs it is ludicrous,” the person said. “I wish it weren’t. I wish I lived in a land where there was plenty of housing. But now people are dying on our streets and it feels like we’re not doing very much about it.”

The underlying problem with Housing First is that it enables addiction. “The National Academies of Sciences review [which showed that giving people apartments did not improve health or other life outcomes] you cited shows that. San Francisco has more permanent supportive housing units per capita than any other city, and we doubled spending on homelessness, but the homeless population rose 13%, even as it went down in the US. And so we doubled our spending and the problem got worse. But if you say that, you get attacked.”

 

Shellenberger Says Crack Down Hard On Addicts And The Homeless

michaelshellenberger |   Drug decriminalization and “Housing First” advocates say that all we should do to help Diane is to give her a free apartment, needles for shooting and foil for smoking fentanyl, and a place where she can safely use fentanyl. That’s the progressive thing to do, according to San Francisco’s Mayor and Supervisors, who are advocating for a place for addicts to smoke and inject fentanyl. But does that seem like the moral thing to do? Of course it’s not. In fact, it could kill her, in the same way that decriminalization and Housing First policies have contributed to the deaths of 712 people in San Francisco last year. 

 The moral thing to do is to arrest Diane. Does that sound mean to you? If it does, then you don’t understand addiction, or you’re in denial about its hold over people. In the comments on Twitter to Adam’s video, Jacqui Berlinn, the mother of a fentanyl street addict in San Francisco, said, “She deserves love and compassion mental care and counseling — not needles and foil.” Someone responded, “She has to chose to do that herself. Nobody can force her.” It’s true that Diane has to decide whether to quit fentanyl. But by enforcing our laws against public drug use, we can give Diane the choice of rehab or jail.

Why don’t we? In a word, victimology. That’s the three part idea that a) Diane is a victim; b) victimhood is not a stage on the road to heroism but rather a permanent state; and c) everything should be given and nothing required of victims. According to the progressive victimologists who run San Francisco, and other progressive cities, the laws against public drug use, public defecation, and shoplifting, should not be enforced against Diane because she’s an addict. As a victim, Diane is sacred, and the system is sinful. As such, it is better to let her die from fentanyl than to enforce the law. It’s part of the Woke religion. 

It is Woke religion, a.k.a., victimology, which leads progressives to grossly misrepresent Diane’s situation. Progressives insist, against what they say are our lying eyes, that Diane is homeless not because she is addicted to fentanyl but rather because rents in San Francisco are too high. Progressives insist that the homeless on the streets are locals who couldn’t afford the rent, not people who moved to San Francisco because they knew the city would allow them to maintain their addiction at low cost without risk of arrest. And progressives insist that the only moral approach is to help Diane maintain her addiction, and not enforce the laws when she breaks them.

In San Fransicko, I debunk the myths that homelessness is a result of high rents, show that Europe saved lives being lost to addiction by arresting addicts and closing open drug scenes, and explain why victimology leads progressives to maintain what is plainly an immoral situation. The title of the book has two meanings. The sickness I describe is the sickness of untreated mental illness and addiction. But the other sickness, San Fransickness, is the sickness of those in the grip of victimology. It is a sickness unto death, one that leads them to deny the fact that the normalization and liberalization of drugs is killing 100,000 of our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, every year.

 

Omicron or Moronic - They Are OPENLY Laughing At You, No?

mubi | Synopsis -An alien takes over the body of an Earthman in order to learn about the planet so his race can take it over.

Let This Motherfucker Lobotomize Pissants Into Streamlined Consensus Reality - And We're Done For...,

FT  |  From December 1, Facebook Inc’s stock ticker FB will be relegated to the dust of time. The world’s largest social media company will instead officially morph into Meta Platforms, to trade under the official ticker MVRS. The move follows Mark Zuckerberg’s bold decision to tie the company’s future evolution with the development of what is loosely described as the metaverse. In coming years, Zuckerberg hopes, people will transition to seeing his empire as primarily a servicer to this new digital realm. 

That means investors in the near $1tn market capitalisation company — and broader society — will have to get a grip on what exactly is the metaverse. It’s not that easy to describe. Today, it exists on many disjointed planes — from gaming universes to virtual conference call systems. Its first and most famous incarnation was probably the Second Life platform, notorious for being a flop although it still boasts some 200,000 active daily users.

Zuckerberg’s vision will benefit from far superior tech. “The metaverse will feel like a hybrid of today’s online social experiences expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world,” reads the Facebook spiel. But it’s also likely to be an attempt to standardise the metaverse’s consensus reality so that value can be harvested from users in even more creative ways. That may sound alluring to investors, but economists, politicians and activists should take heed. Facebook’s move may also be a jarring acknowledgment that for some tech leaders, the base reality of our world is at risk of losing its investment appeal relative to the metaverse. 

BBC documentary maker Adam Curtis’ once opined that “all of us in the west — not just the politicians and the journalists and the experts, but we ourselves — have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world”. 

The forward march to the metaverse pushes this trend to the extreme. It sends the message that perhaps our true world is so corrupted, so divided and so unfair, that it isn’t worth saving after all. Alternatively, we can photoshop reality to the point we can all pretend everything is as pretty as we experience it in our own heads. Also known as cultivating delusions: don’t worry about your lousy life, come join us in your own dreamworld.

The Elite Anti-Historical Method Is Nearly Identical To The Elite Anti-Scientific Method

WSWS  |  In a highly revealing passage, Silverstein writes that, in “privileging ‘actual fact’ over ‘narrative,’” critics of the 1619 Project “seem to proceed from the premise that history is a fixed thing; that somehow, long ago, the nation’s historians identified the relevant set of facts about our past, and it is the job of subsequent generations to simply protect and disseminate them.” This passage comes after a lengthy discussion of efforts by far-right Republicans who have sought to censor the 1619 Project—efforts which the WSWS opposes. Silverstein’s aim is to conflate scholarly and left-wing criticism of the 1619 Project with the likes of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, who have seized on the 1619 Project’s attack on the American Revolution to posture as defenders of democracy, and with earlier efforts by the Republican Party in the 1990s to eliminate what they derided as “revisionist history” from high school textbooks.

That the writing of history involves interpretation of evidence is the most elementary proposition of the profession. To suggest that historians such as Gordon Wood and James McPherson have viewed their task to be to “protect and disseminate” facts reveals far more of Silverstein’s own ignorance than it does these historians’ monumental achievements in researching and writing the histories of the American Revolution and the Civil War.

But it is not really interpretation of the archive that Silverstein has in mind. His brief and reckless foray into historical methodology aims to provide a permission slip for the 1619 Project’s disregarding of facts, whenever these contradict the settled-upon “narrative.” Silverstein gives away the game by his placement within cynical quotations marks the word facts, and by his admission that he does not view history to be “a fixed thing.”

But history is “a fixed thing” in at least one sense. The past actually happened. Generations of people lived, worked, created, struggled, loved, fought and died. They did so under conditions not of their own choosing, but those handed down to them from preceding generations. And they did not do so alone. Out of the development of the productive forces, as Marx long ago explained, classes emerged—lord and vassal, master and slave, capitalist and worker—now in hidden, now in open conflict. On top of all of this culture, law, politics, language, nation—and, with apologies to Hannah-Jones—race developed, always reflecting the ideology of the ruling layers, and always interacting dynamically with the class structure.

Negroe History Courtesy Bloomberg Philanthropies: What Could Go Wrong Open Thread

NPR  |  Anyone who's been to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture will speak of its elevator ride through time, which takes visitors from the present day to the 15th century and kicks off the first exhibit, Slavery & Freedom. With the launch of a new virtual platform, visitors can now travel on the elevator down to that exhibit without ever leaving their homes.

The Searchable Museum, launched Thursday, transforms the artifacts, stories, and interactive experiences of the physical exhibit into a digital platform where museumgoers can take it in at their own pace.

Eventually, the museum plans to bring all of its exhibits online. The next exhibit, Making a Way Out of No Way, will go online this spring.

"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived — but if faced with courage, need not be lived again, " echoes Angelou's voice as a video plays, showing images from the past 600 years of Black history.

While nothing quite matches seeing or touching certain artifacts in person, the digital museum will provide an inside look into some previously off-limits areas. Visitors can, for the first time, go inside the Point of Pines Slave Cabin, one of two remaining slave cabins on Edisto Island, South Carolina, with a 3-D virtual tour.

Unlike other Smithsonian museums, the NMAAHC has required timed-entry passes to enter the site almost exclusively since it opened in 2016. Though these timed tickets are still free of charge, they can be snapped up pretty quickly: Many tickets for December have already been claimed. (During the pandemic, plenty of Smithsonians have followed suit, requiring timed entry passes to avoid overcrowding.)

The virtual project has new elements, like videos, podcasts, and behind-the-scenes looks at the research behind the exhibits. One section, called "Lesser-Known Stories," captures stories that have been largely ignored throughout history — like the story of Nathan "Nearest" Green, the first known Black master distiller, who taught Jack Daniel how to make Tennessee whiskey; or the story of the largest known mass suicide of enslaved people, an act of resistance at Igbo Landing.

"This ongoing project provides a chance for Americans to realize our shared past, bringing the unique museum experience to their homes and on their phones," Kevin Young, the museum's director said in a press release. "Allowing the public to virtually revisit the originating struggle for American freedom in the 'Slavery and Freedom' exhibition reminds us of the centrality of the African American journey to the American experience—a story of triumph, resilience and joy over the centuries."

The site will also include links to related content elsewhere online, like a time-lapsed video of more than 31,000 slave ships during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, between 1514 and 1860.

"This is just the start," Young told The Washington Post. "We're looking right now at phase two and stories we can tell next."

 

Armed Black Radicals Epically Failed Because They Targetted Tools Rather Than Sources Of Oppression

plough |  This article is part of “The Beginning of Understanding,” a symposium in response to Ashley Lucas’s report “The End of Rage” in Plough’s Autumn 2021 issue.

In one sense, it was just refreshing to encounter a careful, detailed recounting of a chapter in the Black liberation struggle that is typically redacted from the official civil rights chronology. The stories of the Black radicals who were willing to kill for the cause are indeed full of shady detours and dark dirt roads that many of us would rather avoid. Yet they are part of the legacy and have earned their place in the annals. In “The End of Rage” Lucas gives Shoatz’s story its due. In a world of hot takes and swift rebukes on social media, she tells an unflinching, often unflattering tale of a man whose commitment to liberation conjured the full force of the American justice system. Even more, she brings coherence and clarity to a life that, at a distance and absent context, appears to have been ruled by chaos and compulsion.

While most of us moved on (and up!) from the movement, some of those who put themselves at greatest risk are still wading through the debris.

But after a second read, I also can’t ignore the perception that Lucas’s utmost objective is to tender a requiem – and referendum – for a failed revolutionary whose violent, rage-filled choices shattered dozens of lives, most notably his own. In a piece otherwise beautifully crafted to inspire empathy, Lucas’s tone is strikingly intolerant whenever the matter of armed struggle surfaces.

On the police killings that led to Shoatz’s conviction, she chides: “Apparently, the ethos of this war did not lead this combatant to distinguish between individual officers or take into account the context that one of the victims had been simply sitting at his desk and the other had been helpfully offering directions.”

On the ultimate effect of his tactics, she chafes: “Whatever he believed then or now, Russell’s revolutionary actions as a member of the BLA did not free his people or prevent future harm. Instead, they called forth further violence from state institutions in ways that would brutalize the Shoatz family for decades to come.”

These are the two most glaring examples of Lucas’s contempt for political violence but elsewhere subtle jabs pierce her narrative.

Lucas is within her rights to question whether being a militant revolutionary was worth all it cost Shoatz, his family and the families of those whom he harmed. But to suggest that his choices yielded only suffering, as she does throughout the piece, misses a different role that armed resistance plays in an oppressed minority’s struggle for freedom against an oppressive majority that uses state violence to maintain its grip. In 1965, Malcolm X, who Lucas tells us inspired Shoatz to become an activist, framed the utility of political violence for an audience of militant young activists in Selma. “If the White people realize what the alternative is,” he counseled, “perhaps they will be more willing to hear Dr. King.”

My question for Lucas is this: Is it possible that the revolutionary worldview and radical actions of the BLA made space for more moderate views and appeals? And if that’s true, does that not count as an important, albeit costly, contribution to the freedom cause? Is this not at least part of the reason that Assata Shakur remains a beloved freedom symbol and potent terrorist threat four decades after her escape to Cuba?

 

Newspapers Will Have You Hating The Oppressed And Loving The Oppressors

greenwald |  It continues to be staggering how media outlets which purport to explain the Rittenhouse case get caught over and over spreading utter falsehoods about the most basic facts of the case, proving they did not watch the trial or learn much about what happened beyond what they heard in passing from like-minded liberals on Twitter. There is simply no way to have paid close attention to this case, let alone have watched the trial, and believe that he carried a gun across state lines, yet this false assertion made it past numerous Post reporters, editors and fact-checkers purporting to "correct the record” about this case. Yet again, we find that the same news outlets which love to accuse others of “disinformation” — and want the internet censored in the name of stopping it — frequently pontificate on topics about which they know nothing, without the slightest concern for whether or not it is true.

"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." Malcolm X. pic.twitter.com/mPboLhg3QQ

— COMMON (@common) November 16, 2020

Those who continue to condemn Rittenhouse as a white supremacist — including the author of The Post op-ed published four days after the paper concluded the accusation was baseless — typically point to his appearance at a bar in January, 2021, for a photo alongside members of the Proud Boys in which he was photographed making the “okay” sign. That once-common gesture, according to USA Today, “has become a symbol used by white supremacists.” Rittenhouse insists that the appearance was arranged by his right-wing attorneys Lin Wood and John Pierce — whom he quickly fired and accused of exploiting him for fund-raising purposes — and that he had no idea that the people with whom he was posing for a photo were Proud Boys members ("I thought they were just a bunch of, like, construction dudes based on how they looked”), nor had he ever heard that the “OK” sign was a symbol of "white power.”

Rittenhouse's denial about this once-benign gesture seems shocking to people who spend all their days drowning in highly politicized Twitter discourse — where such a claim is treated as common knowledge — but is completely believable for the vast majority of Americans who do not. In fact, the whole point of the adolescent 4chan hoax was to convert one of the most common and benign gestures into a symbol of white power so that anyone making it would be suspect. As The New York Times recounted, the gesture has long been “used for several purposes in sign languages, and in yoga as a symbol to demonstrate inner perfection. It figures in an innocuous made-you-look game. Most of all, it has been commonly used for generations to signal 'O.K.,’ or all is well.”

But whatever one chooses to believe about that episode is irrelevant to whether these immediate declarations of Rittenhouse's "white supremacy” were valid. That bar appearance took place in January, 2021 — five months after the Kenosha shootings. Yet Rittenhouse was instantly declared to be a "white supremacist” — and by “instantly,” I mean: within hours of the shooting. “A 17 year old white supremacist domestic terrorist drove across state lines, armed with an AR 15,” was how Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) described Rittenhouse the next day in a mega-viral tweet; her tweet consecrated not only this "white supremacist” accusation which persisted for months, but also affirmed the falsehood that he crossed state lines with an AR-15. It does not require an advanced degree in physics to understand that his posing for a photo in that bar with Proud Boys members, flashing the OK sign, five months later in January, 2021, could not serve as a rational evidentiary basis for Rep. Pressley's accusation the day after the shootings that he was a "white supremacist,” nor could it serve as the justification for five consecutive months of national media outlets accusing him of the same. Unless his accusers had the power to see into the future, they branded him a white supremacist with no basis whatsoever — or, as The Post put it this week, “despite a lack of evidence.”

Left vs. Right Dichotomy Intentionally Confusing When Describing Top vs. Bottom Reality

alt-market |  I have been asking this question of leftists lately and I have yet to receive any concrete or meaningful answer: If you are supposed to be the underdogs and the revolutionaries, then why is it that all of the evil money elites are on your side? Why are the all the people you say you are fighting against giving you billions of dollars and enforcing your political will? Is it possible that corporatists, globalists and you leftists are all part of the same machine? Think about it…

The relationship between the agenda of globalists and the agenda of the political left is growing increasingly obvious and intertwined. The globalists want to dismantle traditional western structures, and so do leftists. Globalists want to dictate economic growth through carbon controls and climate change doom mongering, and so do leftists. Globalists promote a decidedly communistic approach to private property and economy, arguing in favor of the “Sharing Economy”, Universal Basic Income (UBI) and a world in which “we own nothing and are happy.” Leftist are embracing this concept because many of them are self serving and they prefer to take what others have worked for rather than earning it for themselves.

Of course, the money elites will continue to keep their wealth and influence while the rest of us are made “equal” through the equality of poverty, but let’s not dwell on that…

What I see moving forward is that the left is becoming the Cheka, or the political commissars of the globalist “Great Reset.” They have been molded for decades for this role and their purpose is to provide an element of social force and the illusion of consensus. The interesting thing about this strategy is that it seeks to exploit people who feel as if they are “oppressed” by the existing system, or they have been taught to feel oppressed. As with any Marxist takeover, Globalists use the “have-nots” as a shield while they grab more power.

Every time any conservative criticizes the lies and manipulation of the Black Lives Matter movement, for example, we are accused of “racism.” And this is the big trick: We all know that BLM (founded by devout Marxists and funded by globalists) has nothing to do with civil rights or racial justice, it’s just a means to destroy western society and replace it with a dystopian nightmare. That’s what we are criticizing. Black lives are not the issue, globalism and communism are the issue. Social justice and leftists movements are a smokescreen for a bigger agenda, and the leftists love to be used.

Why do they do this? It’s a mistake to assume they are merely “useful idiots.” Yes, some of them are, however, I think the people that fall into the leftist cult are people that are naturally inclined to do so. They are narcissists, psychopaths, degenerates, lazy, spoiled, and weak. They are people that are generally not capable of surviving independently and they know it, so they seek out collectivist frameworks to join and feed off of.

Question: How does a mob of BLM leftists attack Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha and EVERY SINGLE PERSON he shoots or tries to shoot ends up having an extensive and violent criminal record? It is because leftist movements attract such people in droves (look are what a BLM advocate and career criminal just did in Waukesha, Wisconsin). They are not innocent in all of this. They don’t care if they are being exploited by the elites because they think it’s a trade for power and control they would not have otherwise. They are partners with globalism, and globalism breeds and encourages evil.

It is important to understand this dynamic going forward because I see the argument often that the globalists are trying to “divide and conquer” America. In truth, we are ALREADY divided and have been for some time. Trying to talk with and educate moderates on the facts is one thing, but there is very little point in trying to engage in diplomacy with leftists. They have already chosen a side, and it’s not the side of reason or freedom.

A Global Philanthrocapitalist Cartel And Lil'Fauci's Role In It

Unz  |  Focusing on Dr Anthony Fauci as the fulcrum of the biggest story of the 21^st century allows RFK Jr to paint a complex canvas of planned militarization and, especially, monetization of medicine, a toxic process managed by Big Pharma, Big Tech and the military/intel complex – and dutifully promoted by mainstream media.

By now everyone knows that the big winners have been Big Finance, Big Pharma, Big Tech and Big Data, with a special niche for Silicon Valley behemoths.

Why Fauci? RFK Jr argues that for five decades, he has been essentially a Big Pharma agent, nurturing “a complex web of financial entanglements among pharmaceutical companies and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and its employees that have transformed NIAID into a seamless subsidiary of the pharmaceutical industry. Fauci unabashedly promotes his sweetheart relationship with Pharma as a ‘public-private partnership.’”

Arguably the full contours of this very convoluted story have never before been examined along these lines, extensively documented and with a wealth of links. Fauci may not be a household name outside of the US and especially across the Global South. And yet it’s this global audience that should be particularly interested in his story.

RFK Jr accuses Fauci of having pursued nefarious strategies since the onset of Covid-19 – from falsifying science to suppressing and sabotaging competitive products that bring lower profit margins.

Kennedy’s verdict is stark: “Tony Fauci does not do public health; he is a businessman, who has used his office to enrich his pharmaceutical partners and expand the reach of influence that has made him the most powerful – and despotic – doctor in human history.” This is a very serious accusation. It’s up to readers to examine the facts of the case and decide whether Fauci is some kind of medical Dr Strangelove.

No Vitamin D?

Pride of place goes to the Fauci-privileged modeling that overestimated Covid deaths by 525%, cooked up by fabricator Neil Ferguson of the Imperial College in London and duly funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This is the model, later debunked, that justified lockdown hysteria all across the planet.

Kennedy attributes to Canadian vaccine researcher Dr Jessica Rose the charge that Fauci was at the frontline of erasing the notion of natural immunity even as throughout 2020 the CDC and the World Health Organization (WHO) admitted that people with healthy immune systems bear minimal risk of dying from Covid.

Dr Pierre Kory, president of Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, was among those who denounced Fauci’s modus operandi of privileging the development of tech vaccines while allowing no space for repurposed medications effective against Covid: “It is absolutely shocking that he recommended no outpatient care, not even Vitamin D.”

Clinical cardiologist Peter McCullough and his team of frontline doctors tested prophylactic protocols using, for instance, ivermectin – “we had terrific data from medical teams in Bangladesh” – and added other medications such as azithromycin, zinc, Vitamin D and IV Vitamin C. And all this while across Asia there was widespread use of saline nasal lavages.

By July 1, 2020, McCullough and his team submitted their first, ground-breaking protocol to the American Journal of Medicine, which was widely downloaded.

McCullough complained last year that Fauci had never, to date, published anything on how to treat a Covid patient. He additionally alleged without corroborating evidence: “Anyone who tries to publish a new treatment protocol will find themselves airtight blocked by the journals that are all under Fauci’s control.”

Eric Topol Interviewed On The Omicron Variant

noahpinion |  Among the key things I learned:

• Delta, though much more transmissible, wasn’t an “escape variant”. The original, unmodified mRNA vaccines worked perfectly well against Delta.

• The same is probably not true of Omicron. Sequencing and some lab studies suggest that Omicron has evolved ways to escape both acquired immunity and vaccine immunity.

• That suggests that vaccine companies will need to make new booster shots against Omicron. In fact, this is easy to do, and they’re already doing this. The key is getting rapid FDA approval and getting the CDC to recommend the boosters.

• The CDC was slow to recommend boosters against Delta in part because of concern over vaccine availability for developing countries, but mostly because the CDC is very parochial and didn’t trust the data on boosters and Delta that was emerging from other countries like Israel.

• Far more effective than variant-specific boosters would be a universal “supervaccine” that works against all possible variants of Covid. Several labs, including Topol’s, have candidates for such a supervaccine.

• Either the U.S. federal government or a group of countries needs to immediately coordinate and fund an effort to create a Covid supervaccine. This would represent our best bet at ending the pandemic once and for all.

• In the meantime, Pfizer’s antiviral drug should be effective against most or all Covid variants, and represents a vital addition to our toolkit against new variants like Omicron.

In other words, science is advancing rapidly, and we really can end this pandemic once and for all. But we cannot — we must not — rest on the laurels of our initial vaccine achievement. We still have lots of work to do, and our public health agencies are still not doing as good a job as they ought to be doing.

Unsurprisingly South Africa Is The Primary Location Within Africa For Covid-19 Clinical Trials

clinicaltrials |  On the topic of immune escape: Gauteng, the province where the Omicron cluster was detected, has just come out of heavy Delta wave. This suggests that the antibodies binding to Delta might not do that much for Omicron.

This is also quite possibly the reason for Omicron being discovered there – researchers encountered
an unexpected and unexplained uptick in Covid numbers, prompting them to look a bit harder. Of course luck favours the prepared – the research teams there are capable, in possession of good sequencing kits and know how to use them.

I would not be surprised if Omicron arose somewhere else completely, and just got detected in Gauteng.
The vast number new of mutations could be explained by an unknown population outside RSA, whether nearby in Zimbabwe or at the other ends of Africa be it in Senegal or Egypt.

This does suggest that blocking flights from RSA might already be too late. This is not to say that quarantining international flyers is a bad thing – if I were in charge that would be the case for any international arival anywhere. Pets have always been quarantined – if your dog has to do it, you should too.

Finally I have a theory why the WHO is so reluctant to ban international air travel: WHO staff are probably among the most frequent of fliers – one day in Geneva at a conference, the next day in Canada to lobby for funding and the next week in the DRC to worry about Ebola. This means that blocking flights is unthinkable for them, even if it is a sensible course of action.

Row	Saved	Status	Study Title	Conditions	Interventions	Locations
1		Recruiting	COVID-19 Vaccination Using a 2nd Generation (E1/E2B/E3-Deleted) Adenoviral Platform in Healthy South African Adults	Covid19	Biological: hAd5-S-Fusion+N-ETSD vaccine	Khayelitsha Clinical Research Site Khayelitsha, South Africa
2		Active, not recruiting	BCG Vaccination for Healthcare Workers in COVID-19 Pandemic	COVID-19 Sars-CoV2	Biological: Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) Other: Placebo Comparator	TASK Foundation Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
3		Recruiting	A First Time in Human Phase 1 Open-Label Study of the COVIDITY Vaccine Administered by Needle-free Injection	COVID-19	Biological: COVIDITY administered via needle-free injection (PharmaJet Tropis®; intradermal injection). Biological: COVIDITY administered via needle-free injection (PharmaJet Stratis®; intramuscular injection).	University of Cape Town Lung Institute, Centre for TB Research Innovation Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
4		Not yet recruiting	A Study of Safety and Immunogenicity of Adjuvanted SARS-CoV-2 (SCB-2019) Vaccine in Adults With Chronic Immune-Mediated Diseases	COVID-19	Biological: CpG 1018/Alum-adjuvanted SCB-2019 vaccine Biological: Havrix Other: Placebo; 0.9% saline	Brandwag, Bloemfontein Brandwag, Bloemfontein, South Africa Cape Town Cape Town, South Africa Kyiv Kyiv, Ukraine Kyiv Kyiv, Ukraine
5		Recruiting	Efficacy, Immunogenicity and Safety of COVID-19 Vaccine , Inactivated in Children and Adolescents	COVID-19	Biological: Inactivated COVID-19 Vaccine Biological: Controlled vaccine	Hospital de Puerto Montt Puerto Montt, Los Lagos, Chile Clínica Alemana Valdivia Valdivia, Los Ríos, Chile Hospital Universidad Clinico de Antofagasta Antofagasta, Metropolitana, Chile (and 37 more...)
6		Not yet recruiting	A Controlled Phase 2/3 Study of Adjuvanted Recombinant SARS-CoV-2 Trimeric S-protein Vaccine (SCB-2019) for the Prevention of COVID-19	COVID-19	Biological: CpG 1018/Alum-adjuvanted SCB-2019 vaccine Biological: Placebo; 0.9% saline	Anima Alken, Belgium Universitair Ziekenhuis Gent Gent, Belgium Private Practice RESPISOM Namur Namur, Belgium (and 45 more...)
7		Recruiting	Study to Describe the Safety, Tolerability, Immunogenicity, and Efficacy of RNA Vaccine Candidates Against COVID-19 in Healthy Individuals	SARS-CoV-2 Infection COVID-19	Biological: BNT162b1 Biological: BNT162b2 Other: Placebo Biological: BNT162b2SA	North Alabama Research Center, LLC Athens, Alabama, United States Birmingham Clinical Research Unit Birmingham, Alabama, United States Medical Affiliated Research Center Huntsville, Alabama, United States (and 163 more...)
8		Active, not recruiting	A Study of Ad26.COV2.S for the Prevention of SARS-CoV-2-Mediated COVID-19 in Adult Participants	Participants With or Without Stable Co-morbidities Associated With Progression to Severe COVID-19 at Different Stages of the Protocol	Biological: Ad26.COV2.S Other: Placebo	Synexus Clinical Research US, Inc Birmingham, Alabama, United States University of Alabama Birmingham Birmingham, Alabama, United States Alabama Vaccine Research Clinic at UAB Birmingham, Alabama, United States (and 216 more...)
9		Recruiting	A Study Looking at the Effectiveness and Safety of a COVID-19 Vaccine in South African Adults	SARS-CoV-2 Infection COVID-19	Biological: SARS-CoV-2 rS/Matrix-M1 Adjuvant Other: Placebo	ZA018 Bloemfontein, Free State Of South Africa, South Africa ZA003 Hillbrow, Gauteng, South Africa Site ZA001 Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa (and 11 more...)
10		Active, not recruiting	Study to Evaluate the Safety, Tolerability, and Immunogenicity of SARS CoV-2 RNA Vaccine Candidate (BNT162b2) Against COVID-19 in Healthy Pregnant Women 18 Years of Age and Older	SARS-CoV-2 Infection COVID-19 Maternal Immunization	Biological: BNT162b2 Other: Placebo	Children's of Alabama Birmingham, Alabama, United States University of Alabama at Birmingham Women & Infant Center Birmingham, Alabama, United States University of Alabama at Birmingham/Center for Women's Reproductive Health Birmingham, Alabama, United States (and 79 more...)

Devils Calling Tigrayans A "Terrorist Group" For Defending Themselves Against An Attempted Genocide...,

medium |  The West’s Horn of Africa experts have been meeting with a TPLF leader and TPLF/OLF supporters in secret, even as its governments claim to be impartial — TPLF’s Berhane Gebre-Christos speaks as TPLF member, proposed head of “transitional government” (limo/Uber drivers) and Washington-based Ethio-American diaspora.

Donald Yamamoto, recently the U.S. Ambassador to Somalia who just retired this year, to TPLF official Berhane Gebre-Christos:

“Abiy is not listening… Obasanjo has not been extraordinary helpful or very active, and so are there any other opportunities that you see?”

Vicki Huddleston, former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs and US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa to Berhane Gebre-Christos:

“I couldn’t agree more that you know, Abiy should step down, there should be an all-inclusive transition government.”

Former ambassadors and current diplomats for the United States, Britain and EU had a Zoom meeting this past Sunday with an official for the TPLF in what amounts to a green light from the West for the terrorist group’s attempts to overthrow the democratically elected Ethiopian government. And there’s evidence to prove it: a phone-cam video of the two-hour meeting.

“I hope that you’ll have military success fairly soon, because it seems as if the situation is only becoming more drastic,” said Vicki Huddleston, who was Chargé d’Affairs ad interim in Ethiopia during years the TPLF were in power.

France’s retired diplomat and writer Stéphane Gompertz openly speculated on the potential for Abiy to be forced from power. “Even if Abiy sticks to his guns, which unfortunately he seems to be doing, you either hope that people around him either in government or in the military realize that this is going nowhere and might force him to, well, accept the cessation of hostilities or force him to step down?”

The Western powers — Britain, the EU and especially the United States — have been posturing for months that they have not taken sides in the conflict and are pushing negotiations only in the interests of peace. But the Zoom talk rips away the façade, revealing a chummy circle of foreign policy elite, both retired and still active who mostly know each other and are in sympathy with TPLF objectives. They include Donald Yamamoto, one of the U.S. government’s most senior Africa experts who just retired this year as the American ambassador to Somalia, and Spain’s diplomat Carmen de la Peña.

Former EU ambassador to Ethiopia Tim Clarke admitted that all of the attendants “maintain contacts with our former employees. Just the other day I was talking to the existing EU ambassador to Ethiopia.”

The Tigrayans Are The Most Formidable People On The African Continent

NC |  There’s a simple lesson here: Tigrayans are the bulk of combat power in the Highlands of the Horn. You’d think that would lead to the conclusion that you shouldn’t mess with Tigray unless you’re ready to get in a long, nasty war, even when the conventional military wisdom is that the Tigrayans don’t have a chance. They weren’t supposed to have a chance against the Europeans in 1896, either–or the Ethiopian Derg in the 1980s. If you’re running a war-nerd bookmaking business, put a sign on the window: “No bets on wars in Tigray.”

One reason we all underestimated Tigray is that no one outside TPLF circles seems to have admitted to themselves how much of the combat power of both Eritrean and Ethiopian forces came from ethnic Tigrayans. Admitting that would be politically unwise, especially in Ethiopia. Officially, Ethiopia is a federal, multi-ethnic state in which all ethnic groups are equal. But that’s a polite fiction. The Ethiopian state is the product of 19th-c. conquests by the “Habesha,” which is what the Highland Orthodox peoples, Tigrayan and Amhara, call themselves. Ethiopia was created by Habesha armies pushing south and east, absorbing Somali, Afar, Oromo, Sidamo, and dozens of other peoples who became Ethiopian citizens, but had very little share in ruling the country.

The real struggle for power was always between the two Habesha peoples, Tigrayan and Amhara. Since Menelik II moved the capital southward to Shewa, the Amhara seemed like the stronger of the two groups. Amhara are a much bigger group, for starters. Tigrayans are only about 6% of the population, Amhara about 26%.

But after the Eritrean/Tigrayan insurgents destroyed the Derg in the late 20th c., it was the Tigrayans of the TPLF who really ruled Ethiopia. Their domination was so clear that the TPLF tried to minimize their power, dutifully talking about their multi-ethnic coalition, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). No one was fooled; it was the TPLF who had the power in Ethiopia.

The TPLF leader Meles Zenawi was the ultimate power in the country all through the first two decades of this century. Zenawi knew that the TPLF was so much better organized than the other members of the EPRDF coalition that he and his fellow Tigrayans could let the EPRDF make a show of ethnic equality while keeping Tigrayan control. Henri IV went through the motions of converting to Catholicism in return for the throne with the line “Paris is worth a mass or two,” and Zenawi seems to have decided “Addis and the whole GDP is worth letting those weaker militias from other ethnic groups share the credit.”

Zenawi’s PR campaign worked so well that Ethiopians forgot the hard truth that it was the Tigrayans who had the real combat power.

The Tigrayans’ only rival in terms of military power was the Eritrean army (EDF.) The “Eritrean” label made people forget that the EDF is also dominated by ethnic Tigrayans. Tigrinya-speakers are the majority in Eritrea, not only the dominant but the biggest ethnic group.

That has never stopped Eritrean Tigrayans from killing other Tigrayans. That shouldn’t be a surprise — when have people of the same ethnic group ever fretted about killing each other? — but it does underline what seems like the dominant fact at the moment: The Tigrayans are the most formidable people in the Horn.

They Done Named It After Me - Go Ahead - Kiss That Ass Goodbye....,

nature |  Researchers in South Africa are racing to track the concerning rise of a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The variant harbours a large number of the mutations found in other variants, including Delta, and it seems to be spreading quickly across South Africa.

A top priority is to follow the variant more closely as it spreads: it was first identified in Botswana earlier this month and has since turned up in a traveller arriving in Hong Kong from South Africa. Scientists are also trying to understand the variant’s properties, such as whether it can evade immune responses triggered by vaccines and whether it causes more or less severe disease than other variants do.

“We’re flying at warp speed,” says Penny Moore, a virologist at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, whose lab is gauging the variant’s potential to dodge immunity from vaccines and previous infections. There are anecdotal reports of reinfections and of cases in vaccinated individuals, but “at this stage it’s too early to tell anything”, Moore adds.

“There’s a lot we don’t understand about this variant,” Richard Lessells, an infectious-diseases physician at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, said at a press briefing organized by South Africa’s health department on 25 November. “The mutation profile gives us concern, but now we need to do the work to understand the significance of this variant and what it means for the response to the pandemic.”

A World Health Organization (WHO) expert group will meet on 26 November, and will probably label the strain — currently known as B.1.1.529 — as a variant of concern or variant of interest, Tulio de Oliveira, a bioinformatician at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said at the briefing. The variant will probably be named Nu — the next available letter in the Greek alphabet naming system for coronavirus variants — if it is flagged by the WHO group.

Researchers also want to measure the variant’s potential to spread globally — possibly sparking new waves of infection or exacerbating ongoing rises being driven by Delta.

Changes to spike

Researchers spotted B.1.1.529 in genome-sequencing data from Botswana. The variant stood out because it contains more than 30 changes to the spike protein — the SARS-CoV-2 protein that recognizes host cells and is the main target of the body’s immune responses. Many of the changes have been found in variants such as Delta and Alpha, and are linked to heightened infectivity and the ability to evade infection-blocking antibodies.

The apparent sharp rise in cases of the variant in South Africa’s Gauteng province — home to Johannesburg — is also setting off alarm bells. Cases increased rapidly in the province in November, particularly in schools and among young people, according to Lessells. Genome sequencing and other genetic analysis from de Oliveira’s team found that the B.1.1.529 variant was responsible for all 77 of the virus samples they analysed from Gauteng, collected between 12 and 20 November. Analysis of hundreds more samples are in the works.

The variant harbours a spike mutation that allows it to be detected by genotyping tests that deliver results much more rapidly than genome sequencing does, Lessells said. Preliminary evidence from these tests suggest that B.1.1.529 has spread considerably further than Gauteng. “It gives us concern that this variant may already be circulating quite widely in the country,” Lessells said.

Vaccine effectiveness

To understand the threat B.1.1.529 poses, researchers will be closely tracking its spread in South Africa and beyond. Researchers in South Africa mobilized efforts to quickly study the Beta variant, identified there in late 2020, and a similar effort is starting to study B.1.1.529.

Moore’s team — which provided some of the first data on Beta’s ability to dodge immunity — has already begun work on B.1.1.529. They plan to test the virus’s ability to evade infection-blocking antibodies, as well as other immune responses. The variant harbours a high number of mutations in regions of the spike protein that antibodies recognize, potentially dampening their potency. “Many mutations we know are problematic, but many more look like they are likely contributing to further evasion,” says Moore. There are even hints from computer modelling that B.1.1.529 could dodge immunity conferred by another component of the immune system called T cells, says Moore. Her team hopes to have its first results in two weeks.

“A burning question is ‘does it reduce vaccine effectiveness, because it has so many changes?’,” says Aris Katzourakis, who studies virus evolution at the University of Oxford, UK. Moore says breakthrough infections have been reported in South Africa among people who have received any of the three kinds of vaccines in use there, from Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer–BioNTech and Oxford–AstraZeneca. Two quarantined travellers in Hong Kong who have tested positive for the variant were vaccinated with the Pfizer jab, according to news reports. One individual had travelled from South Africa; the other was infected during hotel quarantining.

Researchers in South Africa will also study whether B.1.1.529 causes disease that is more severe or milder than that produced by other variants, Lessells said. “The really key question comes around disease severity.”