Farmer Brown Gives No Kind Of Phuks About Bringing On Mass Psychosis

washingtonmonthly  |  A new study has documented a remarkable rise in Americans’ use of marijuana. Over the last 30 years, the number of people who report using the drug in the past month has risen fivefold from 8 million to 42 million. Through the mid-1990s, only about one-in-six or one-in-eight of those users consumed the drug daily or near daily, similar to alcohol’s roughly one-in-ten. Now, more than 40 percent of marijuana users consume daily or near daily. The increased use is important to recognize as President Joe Biden plans to reschedule marijuana from a Class I to a Class III drug.

At the nadir of modern marijuana use, in 1992, just 0.9 million Americans reported using marijuana daily or near daily. That number had grown twenty-fold to 17.7 million by the most recent survey in 2022. For the first time, more Americans report using marijuana daily or near daily than they do drinking that often (17.7 million vs. 14.7 million).

Legalization and commercialization have produced a spectacular rise in the potency of cannabis products. Until the end of the 20^th century, the average potency of seized cannabis never exceeded 5 percent THC, its active intoxicant. Now, the labeled potency of “flower” sold in state-licensed stores averages 20-25 percent THC. Extract-based products like vape oils and dabs routinely exceed 60 percent. Back in the 1990s, a person averaging two 0.5-gram joints of 4 percent THC weed per week was consuming about 5 milligrams of THC per day on average. Today’s daily users average more than 1.5 grams of material that is 20-25 percent THC, which is more than 300 milligrams per day. That is far more THC than is consumed in typical medical studies of its health effects.

This spike in marijuana usage and THC consumption might seem unimportant in an era when fentanyl and other synthetic drugs are killing over 80,000 Americans per year, but describing a drug as less dangerous than fentanyl is damning with faint praise. There are exceptions, of course, but on the whole, daily marijuana use is neither health-promoting nor performance-enhancing for the typical daily user.

On the positive side, the kids are mostly all right. Just 2 percent of 12-17 year-old marijuana users consume daily or near daily. As a result, youth account for just 3 percent of the 8.3 billion annual days of self-reported marijuana use in the country. Adult (18+) daily and near-daily users account for three-quarters of those days of use—and a considerably greater share of consumption because they use more per day than weekend-only users.

Indeed, marijuana is becoming something of an old person’s drug. As a group, 35-49-year-olds consume more than 26-34-year-olds, who account for a larger share of the market than 18-25-year-olds. The 50-and-over demographic accounts for slightly more days of use than those 25 and younger.

Still, it is worth asking what the population effects are of so many people consuming high-strength cannabis regularly. Science has struggled to keep up with the new world of cannabis, but potentially concerning signs include increases in emergency room visits for both psychotic episodes and cannabis-induced cyclical vomiting, increased risk of cardiovascular disease, and higher rates of automotive crashes involving impaired drivers. And gram for gram, smoking cannabis creates about as many carcinogens, tars, and other lung-damaging chemicals as tobacco—although grams consumed per day is only about one-tenth as great. For others, the effects might be the opposite of a cognitive enhancer, with intoxication adversely affecting short-term memory, concentration, and motivation, resulting in lost opportunities in schools and the workplace.

The biggest long-term medical health risk may concern serious and lifelong psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia. Early hopes—not to say hype—that cannabis would prove an effective medication for mental health disorders have been challenged as studies repeatedly find that use concurrent with conditions like depression and PTSD often predicts a worse course of illness.

Farming The Poor: The Homeless Industrial Complex

hotair |  This story is duplicated countless times and in countless ways and tells you everything you need to know about how corrupt our welfare state actually is. We often focus on the occasional incidences of welfare fraud committed by recipients, but those incidents pale in comparison to the amount of money that is simply skimmed off the top by the people who run the programs.

It’s not the poor people who are benefiting, but the people who are claiming to help them. Those people are getting rich, cushy government jobs with great pay and benefits, and in many cases kickbacks.

Here in Minnesota, we have an enormous scandal centered on an Ilhan Omar-associated group that stole hundreds of millions of pandemic relief money that was supposed to be spent on providing a substitute for the school lunch program during the school closures. A nonprofit that was essentially a Somali gang set up fake feeding centers that served almost nobody but collected hundreds of millions from the Minnesota government.

The government officials did almost nothing. It took the FBI to shut the scam down. Our Department of Education knew of the graft but was concerned with appearing racist and ticking off our Congresswoman.

This is how the government-to-nonprofit complex works. Politically connected people conspire to use the suffering of others as an excuse to fleece the taxpayers of what is collectively billions of dollars. It is estimated that total fraud from pandemic relief funds alone amounts to hundreds of billions to over a trillion dollars in just 3 years.

And that doesn’t include the billions in yearly payments to nonprofits that accomplish little to nothing.

I call this process “farming the poor,” where poor people are the soil used to grow the billions of dollars that pop out of the ground every time you appeal to people’s compassion or desire for a better quality of life.

Poverty is an industry, not run by or for the poor people themselves, but for the benefit of those whose job it is to solve the problems.

 

 

Spike Protein: Weapon Of Mass Destruction?

thesenecaeffect  | Nevertheless, there could be creative possibilities for a "soft" elimination of large numbers of consenting people. One way could be not letting them know that they are being killed. Alternatively, they could be convinced to kill themselves in ways that they don't recognize as "suicide." Both methods require deception, but that's not a problem: deception is part and parcel of the very concept of "Propaganda."

We all know the story of people quietly walking into gassing chambers after having been told that they were going to have a shower. It is an example of the strategy of deception used in Nazi Germany to eliminate that fraction of the population defined as "Lebensunwertes Leben," ''life unworthy of life.'' It included not only Jews and other ethnic minorities, but also "Aryan" German citizens affected by malformations or just considered a burden for the state. 

In Germany, regular medical doctors used barbiturates to kill children and gas chambers to get rid of adults. Neither the victims nor their families were told of what was being done. Officially, the victims were hospitalized to receive medical treatment, and, later on, families received notice that, unfortunately, their relatives had not survived the attempt to cure them. The number of ethnic Germans killed in this way is estimated as around 300,000. Much smaller than that of the Jews and other ethnic groups exterminated, but still not negligible. 

These deaths were not suicides, but there was a certain element of voluntary acceptance of the procedure and it is hard to think that people would not at least suspect what was going on. The human mind is pliant, and probably everyone, including the victims, was doing their best to believe that it was all done for the sake of their health. Hence, they offered no resistance and even collaborated with their exterminators. 

 

In our times, we have methods to get rid of people with their consent that were not available in Nazi Germany. In terms of "substance abuse," we have a wide choice of substances that shorten one's life expectancy and that are willingly ingested by people. In some cases, they are forbidden, although obtainable illegally (heroin, cocaine, and others). Some are marketed but advertised with severe limitations (alcohol and tobacco). In other cases, they are heavily advertised and widely available (junk food). We need also to mention that some medical treatments are widely recommended as good for your health, but nobody really knows if they really are (4) and in some cases, it is discovered only later that they are very bad. Maybe you remember the case of Thalidomide, but there are many more in the history of medicine. Surely, there will be more cases in the future.

Although effective, these substances are slow and messy ways to get rid of people and they may generate negative side effects, for instance criminality and handicapped people that are expensive to care for. For instance, cocaine taken every day will shorten a person's life by about 10 years, too slow to be interesting for would-be exterminators. It is at least unlikely that the diffusion of heavy drugs in our society is the result of an evil plan of extermination, although some agencies of the deep state may well have a role in their supply and distribution. 

At this point, the question is whether the stress on our society could accumulate to a level in which we would start doing the things that were done in Germany during the Nazi period, that is to exterminate people singled out for some physical factor, religious belief, or ideology. And there is no doubt that our society is heavily stressed although, probably not so heavily as Germany was in 1945 (not yet, at least). 

Of course, the reaction to this hypothesis normally comes with the sentence "It can't happen here" and clearly, we are not seeing our governments distributing cyanide capsules to the population. Nor we have evidence that doctors are willingly killing their patients. But a basic rule in history is that if something happened once, it may happen again.

Farmer Brown Fitna Play You With A Centralized Myth And Localized ___________________?

thehill |  President Biden promised to unify a fractured country. At the same time, his administration pledged to usher in a new era of transparency. Following the release of a highly anticipated government report on UFOs, Biden has a rare opportunity to live up to both commitments.

The UFO report prompted a flurry of bipartisan calls for a robust, open-minded investigation into these perplexing phenomena. If members of Congress can set aside seemingly intractable differences to take this issue seriously, the Biden administration – and the American public – should take note.

Beyond acknowledging that intelligence analysts are thoroughly stumped by mysterious objects – some of which appear to exhibit remarkable technology in restricted airspace – the report marks an extraordinary shift in how the government perceives UFOs. After seven decades of deflection, ridicule and brushing aside such encounters, the Pentagon is following in Congress’s footsteps and taking such phenomena seriously. Very seriously.

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Moreover, by demanding the report, Congress stumbled upon an issue that can unite Americans of all political stripes. Indeed, if strong, bipartisan statements on these encounters are any indicator, the UFO mystery could ultimately transcend the deep polarization of the post-Trump era.

America, after all, is at its best when it is united by curiosity about the unknown.

To that end, the Biden administration should declassify some basic, non-sensitive information, focusing on objects that seem to exhibit remarkable technology.

Of 143 unexplained encounters, 18 involved “unusual” “movement patterns or flight characteristics.” According to the report, analysts are attempting to determine if these objects demonstrated “breakthrough technologies.” This aligns with reporting by the New York Times that some of these craft accelerated, changed direction and submerged in seemingly extraordinary ways.

The report’s equivocation on these perplexing encounters stands in stark contrast to former director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe’s unambiguous comments that “there are technologies that we don’t have and frankly that we are not capable of defending against.

According to Ratcliffe, intelligence analysts “ruled out” weather incidents, visual disturbances, foreign adversaries or ultra-secret U.S. technology as possible explanations for the most exotic phenomena.

If Ratcliffe’s statements are accurate, this is an extraordinary development. More to the point, the Biden administration has a rare opportunity to live up to its pledges to restore transparency and national unity. It can begin by releasing a numbered list of the report’s 18 “unusual” encounters alongside the intelligence community’s preliminary confidence levels (low, medium or high) that each object exhibited some sort of “breakthrough technology.”

Davos Elites Have Their Sights Set On Global Food Control

ipsnews  |  Producers and consumers seem helpless as food all over the world comes under fast growing corporate control. Such changes have also been worsening environmental collapse, social dislocation and the human condition. 

Longer term perspective

The recent joint report – by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and the ETC Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration – is ominous, to say the least.

A Long Food Movement, principally authored by Pat Mooney with a team including IPES-Food Director Nick Jacobs, analyses how food systems are likely to evolve over the next quarter century with technological and other changes.

The report notes that ‘hi-tech’, data processing and asset management corporations have joined established agribusinesses in reshaping world food supply chains.

If current trends continue, the food system will be increasingly controlled by large transnational corporations (TNCs) at the expense of billions of farmers and consumers.

Big Ag weds Big Data
The Davos World Economic Forum’s (WEF) much touted ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (IR4.0), promoting digitisation, is transforming food systems, accelerating concentration in corporate hands.

New apps enable better tracking across supply chains, while ‘precision farming’ now includes using drones to spray pesticides on targeted crops, reducing inputs and, potentially, farming costs. Agriculture is now second only to the military in drone use.

Digital giants are working with other TNCs to extend enabling ‘cloud computing’ infrastructure. Spreading as quickly as the infrastructure allows, new ‘digital ag’ technologies have been displacing farm labour.

Meanwhile, food data have become more commercially valuable, e.g., to meet consumer demand, Big Ag profits have also grown by creating ‘new needs’. Big data are already being used to manipulate consumer preferences.

With the pandemic, e-retail and food delivery services have grown even faster. Thus, e-commerce platforms have quickly become the world’s top retailers.

New ‘digital ag’ technologies are also undermining diverse, ecologically more appropriate food agriculture in favour of unsustainable monocropping. The threat is great as family farms still feed more than two-thirds of the world’s population.

IR4.0 not benign
Meanwhile, hi-tech and asset management firms have acquired significant shareholdings in food giants. Powerful conglomerates are integrating different business lines, increasing concentration while invoking competition and ‘creative disruption’.

The IPES-ETC study highlights new threats to farming and food security as IR4.0 proponents exert increasing influence. The report warns that giving Big Ag the ‘keys of the food system’ worsens food insecurity and other existential threats.

Powerful corporations will increase control of most world food supplies. Big Ag controlled supply chains will also be more vulnerable as great power rivalry and competition continue to displace multilateral cooperation.

 

 

You Think Bill Gates Is Buying Up All This Farmland For Africa?

NYPost |  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently launched a new division known as Gates Ag One. It aims to help poor farmers, especially in Africa and South Asia, get the “tools, technologies, and resources they need to lift themselves out of poverty.” If each acre can produce more food, that’s good news for farmers. But it also means we can devote less of the planet’s surface to farmland, which is good news for forests and ecosystems. 

Meanwhile, American agriculture today is being transformed as farmers employ new technologies and Big Data to help them manage their crops. That can mean better yields with decreased use of fertilizers and pesticides. Which in turn means less impact on the environment. 

Farms also have a role in fighting climate change. With proper techniques, the carbon from decaying plant matter can be kept safely in the soil, rather than entering the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide. 

A new coalition of farmland owners, operators and environmental groups is working to come up with verifiable standards for sustainable farming. The group is called Leading Harvest, and the Gates-linked Cottonwood Ag is one of its founding members. 

Leading Harvest envisions a kind of sustainability seal of approval certifying that a given farm meets environmental standards. The program could be an economic boon for farmers. 

“In the future, farmers will be paid for sustainability,” says Sherrick, who sits on the group’s board. There will be incentives for things like using less water, fewer chemicals, and storing more carbon. 

The group’s founding members are expected to spearhead the rollout of the new standards on their own lands. 

Whether or not Gates personally directed Cottonwood Ag to get involved in the Leading Harvest project, the move makes both environmental and business sense. 

“The new green economy will mean new opportunities for land owners,” O’Keefe believes. 

“Farming is all of a sudden part of the solution and not just part of the problem,” Sherrick adds. He sees Gates’ involvement — even if indirect — as crucial in encouraging the industry to embrace the new sustainability standard. 

If the nation’s largest farmland owner can show that farming can be both sustainable and profitable, that will make a big difference. 

“People are going to pay attention to what Bill is doing,” Sherrick says.

Bill Gates Is NOT Your Benefactor Or Your Friend...,

thegrayzone  |  President Donald Trump’s announcement this July of a U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) set into motion a process that will have a dramatic impact on the future of global public health policy – and on the fortunes of one of the world’s richest people.

The US abandonment of the WHO means that the organization’s second-largest financial contributor, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is soon to become its top donor, giving the non-governmental international empire unparalleled influence over one the world’s most important multilateral organizations.

Bill Gates has achieved a hero-like status during the pandemic. The Washington Post has called him a “champion of science-backed solutions,” while the New York Times recently hailed him as “the most interesting man in the world.” Gates is also the star of a hit Netflix docu-series, “Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak,” which was released just weeks before coronavirus hit the U.S., and was produced by a New York Times correspondent, Sheri Fink, who previously worked at three Gates-funded organizations (Pro Publica, the New America Foundation, and the International Medical Corps). 

The tidal wave of mainstream media praise for Gates during the Covid-19 era has meant that scrutiny of the billionaire and his machinations is increasingly prevalent on the far–right of the political spectrum, where it can be dismissed by progressives as the conspiratorial ravings of Trumpists and Q-Anon quacks. 

But beyond the public relations bonanza about Gates lies a disturbing history that should raise concerns about whether his foundation’s plans for resolving the pandemic will benefit the global public as much as it expands and entrenches its power over international institutions. 

The Gates Foundation has already effectively privatized the international body charged with creating health policy, transforming it into a vehicle for corporate dominance. It has facilitated the dumping of toxic products onto the people of the Global South, and even used the world’s poor as guinea pigs for drug experiments.

The Gates Foundation’s influence over public health policy is practically contingent on ensuring that safety regulations and other government functions are weak enough to be circumvented. It therefore operates against the independence of nation states and as a vehicle for Western capital.

“Because of the Gates Foundation, I have watched government after government fall in its sovereignty,” Dr. Vandana Shiva, a scholar and founder of the India-based Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, told The Grayzone.

Saving the world?

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest private foundation on Earth, reporting over $51 billion in assets at the end of 2019. Bill Gates says his foundation spends a majority of its resources “reducing deaths from infectious diseases,” and through this philanthropy, he seems to have bought a name for himself as an infectious disease expert.

Corporate media networks rolled out the red carpet for Gates as he advised the world on how to handle the Covid-19 outbreak. In just the month of April, while the virus was severely impacting the U.S., he was hosted by CNN, CNBC, Fox, PBS, BBC, CBS, MSNBC, The Daily Show and The Ellen Show. On the BBC, Gates described himself as a “health expert,” despite his lack of a college degree in medicine or any other field.

The billionaire’s media appearances are shot through with a single, undeniable theme: If global leaders listened to Gates, the world would be better equipped to fight the pandemic. As the fashion magazine Vogue asked, “Why Isn’t Bill Gates Running the Coronavirus Task Force?”

So what does a Gates-led COVID response look like?

AGRA Africa - Gates Foundation Project To Destroy Sustainable African Agriculture

iatp |  Fourteen years ago, the Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller foundations launched the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) with the goal of bringing Africa its own Green Revolution in agricultural productivity. Armed with high-yield commercial seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, AGRA eventually set the goal to double productivity and incomes by 2020 for 30 million small-scale farming households while reducing food insecurity by half in 20 countries.

According to a new report from a broad-based civil society alliance, based partly on my new background paper, AGRA is “failing on its own terms.” There has been no productivity surge. Many climate-resilient, nutritious crops have been displaced by the expansion in supported crops such as maize. Even where maize production has increased, incomes and food security have scarcely improved for AGRA’s supposed beneficiaries, small-scale farming households. The number of undernourished in AGRA’s 13 focus countries has increased 30% during the organization’s well-funded Green Revolution campaign.

"The results of the study are devastating for AGRA and the prophets of the Green Revolution," says Jan Urhahn, agricultural expert at the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, which funded the research and on July 10 published “False Promises: The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).”

A Record of Failure

As I document in my background paper, “Failing Africa’s Farmers: An Impact Assessment of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa,” AGRA has received nearly $1 billion in contributions, the vast majority from the Gates Foundation but with significant contributions from donor governments, including from the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and other countries. AGRA has made over $500 million in grants to promote its vision of a “modernized” African agriculture freed from its limited technology and low yields. The campaign has been fortified with large financial outlays by African governments, much of it in the form of subsidies to farmers to buy the seeds and fertilizers AGRA promotes. These subsidy programs have been estimated to provide as much as $1 billion per year in direct support for such technology adoption.

AGRA has been controversial from the start. Many farmers’ groups on the continent actively opposed the initiative, pointing to negative environmental and social impacts of the first Green Revolution in Asia and Latin America. Since AGRA’s founding, scientists and world leaders have gained growing awareness of the limitations of input-intensive agricultural systems, particularly to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2019 documented the many ways industrialized agriculture contributes to climate change, calling for profound changes to both mitigate and help farmers adapt to climate disruptions.

Surprisingly, as AGRA reaches its self-declared deadline of 2020, the organization has published no overall evaluation of the impacts of its programs on the number of smallholder households reached, the improvements in their yields and household incomes or their food security, nor does it make reference to its goals or progress in achieving them. Neither has the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has provided two-thirds of AGRA’s funding. This lack of accountability represents a serious oversight problem for a program that has both consumed so much in the way of resources and driven the region’s agricultural development policies with its narrative of technology-driven, input-intensive agricultural development.

Hot Zone In The Heartland

thebulletin | Before 1990, there had been only two BSL-4 labs in the United States: one at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta, and another at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (U.S.A.M.R.I.I.D.), in Fort Detrick, Maryland. In the nineteen-nineties, three were added. In the first seven years after 9/11, the United States opened ten more. In a 2007 report, Keith Rhodes, then the chief technologist in the Government Accountability Office (G.A.O.)—the independent watchdog that conducts research for Congress—observed that there was “a major proliferation of high-containment BSL-3 and BSL-4 labs is taking place in the United States.” Rhodes counted fifteen known American BSL-4 labs (including N.B.A.F.) but suggested that there could be others; the number of BSL-3 labs appeared to have increased even more. “No single federal agency knows how many such labs there are in the United States,” Rhodes wrote, and “no one is responsible for determining the aggregate risks associated with the expansion of these high-containment labs.” In theory, the Federal Select Agent Program keeps tabs, since any lab in possession of a substance on its list has to register; a 2017 report from the G.A.O. counted two hundred and seventy-six high-containment select-agent labs in the United States. But the actual number is almost certainly higher, because not every dangerous pathogen is on the federal list.

In the summer of 2008, at the same time that D.H.S. was choosing a site for N.B.A.F., the F.B.I. announced that it had found the sender of the anthrax letters: Bruce Ivins, a mentally unstable biodefense researcher with high-level security clearances at U.S.A.M.R.I.I.D. Ivins died of an apparent suicide before he could be officially charged; subsequently, journalists have raised questions about some of the evidence against him. All the same, the possibility of Ivins’s involvement raised disturbing questions for those who work in biodefense. “A more ominous threat than terrorists taking up biology,” the epidemiologist Ali Khan wrote, in his 2016 book “The Next Pandemic,” could be “biologists taking up terrorism.”

Manhattan is surrounded by a rolling sea of golden grass—the Flint Hills, North America’s last remaining tallgrass prairie. “No grass anywhere can put weight on cattle more quickly or more economically,” Jim Joy, a historian of ranching, wrote. In the nineteenth century, cattlemen from Texas and elsewhere began driving their herds overland to graze in the Flint Hills. Today, Kansas is at the geographical center of the American beef industry. It is the third-largest cattle-producing state in the country, and its immediate neighbors—Nebraska, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Colorado—are all in the top ten.

During and after the N.B.A.F. site-selection process, many scientists found it baffling that anyone would consider installing a high-containment animal-disease laboratory in the middle of livestock country. “It doesn’t make sense—it’s just insane,” Laura H. Kahn, a physician and research scholar at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, told me. Abigail Conrad, who was a developmental biologist at K-State when D.H.S. was making its choice, said that the decision “defies reason”; her husband, Gary, also a biologist, called it “beyond ludicrous,” “almost criminal,” and “genuinely stupid.”

Once infected with foot-and-mouth, animals with cloven hooves—cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, deer, bison—come down with fevers and painful blisters. A cow’s milk production can decline. Adult animals can lose weight, and young ones can die. An animal that recovers can still transmit the disease to others. According to the authors of a 2013 paper in the journal Preventive Veterinary Medicine, in countries that are officially foot-and-mouth-free but experience occasional outbreaks, “the costs involved in regaining free status have been enormous.” During the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak in England, exclusion zones made travel difficult; tourism from overseas declined by ten per cent. The ultimate cost of containing the outbreak was nearly five billion in today’s dollars. Its source remains undetermined.

In 2007, Britain experienced another, smaller foot-and-mouth outbreak, with only eight confirmed cases. In that instance, investigators were able to trace the infection to the Pirbright Institute, a world-renowned high-containment animal-disease research facility in Surrey. A building at Pirbright had an aging, faulty drainpipe; heavy rains probably washed the live virus from the defective drain out into the open, where truck tires picked it up. According to the G.A.O., one reason to confine foot-and-mouth study to an island is that “there is always some risk of a release from any biocontainment facility.” In fact, for just this reason, foot-and-mouth disease cannot be brought onto the U.S. mainland without the explicit permission of the Secretary of Agriculture.

Rich Mexicans FUBAR'd Poor Mexicans - All Around The World The Same Song...,

LATimes |  Each winter, some of Mexico’s wealthiest residents flock to the snowy slopes of Colorado to ski, shop and socialize.

This year, at least 14 — and probably many more — came home infected with the coronavirus.

In a country that has not yet been hard hit by the pandemic, the travelers have become a focal point of efforts to prevent the virus from spreading widely.

Several of Mexico’s most prominent business leaders — including a banking executive, the chairman of Mexico’s stock exchange and the chief executive of the company that makes Jose Cuervo tequila — tested positive for the virus after traveling to Vail, a ski resort west of Denver.

Public health authorities are now scrambling to find others who recently returned from the resort, including an estimated 400 people who flew on two charter planes from Colorado to the state of Jalisco. 

“We need these people to understand that they have a very high probability of having acquired the virus and are a potential risk,” Jalisco Gov. Enrique Alfaro said in a video on Facebook in which he implored those who made the trip to contact health authorities. 

“We don’t want this to be the start of a major coronavirus spread,” added Fernando Petersen, Jalisco’s top health official. 

The state’s health department said that it has already contacted 73 passengers on those flights and that roughly 40% of them report coronavirus-like symptoms but have not yet been tested.

Of Jalisco’s 27 confirmed coronavirus patients, 11 had been in Vail in recent weeks, the department said. 

The frantic effort to find the ski trip participants has highlighted an uncomfortable fact: It is people wealthy enough to travel outside the country who have brought the coronavirus back to mostly poor Mexico. Yet if the disease spreads, it is those with the least who will probably suffer the most. 

As of Friday, Mexico had confirmed just one coronavirus death, that of a 41-year-old man who had recently traveled to the United States and — to the dismay of health authorities — later attended a rock concert at a stadium in Mexico City.

Will Controlavirus End Gilet Jaune?

Independent |  France has deployed 100,000 police and set up checkpoints across the country as the country begins a 15-day lockdown to combat the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

The army has also been ordered to assist with efforts, transporting infected patients to alleviate saturated hospitals.

Under the new measures, which went into effect at midday on Tuesday, people are only permitted to leave their homes to buy food or medicine.

Certain workers are also allowed to travel but will need to carry a “sworn statement” detailing their journey and the nature of their work, while exercise is also permitted if done alone.

All “non-essential” public places have also been closed, including shops, restaurants and cafes.

In a televised address on Monday evening, French president Emmanuel Macron said that anyone flouting the regulations would be punished.

“Never before in history has France had to take such exceptional measures in a time of peace,” he said. 

“We are not up against another army or another nation. But the enemy is right there: invisible, elusive, but it is making progress... We are at war.”

Han Elites Poised To Unleash Full Controlavirus On Hong Kong

reuters |  Officers from China’s top internal security force - the People’s Armed Police – joined Hong Kong police on the frontlines to observe anti-government protests that peaked last year, according to a senior foreign diplomat and an opposition politician. 

Hong Kong police took PAP officers to monitor the protesters and their tactics as part of a wider effort by the paramilitary force to deepen its understanding of the Hong Kong situation, they said.

“I’m aware that Hong Kong police officers have taken Chinese security forces to the front during protests, apparently in an observation role,” veteran democratic legislator James To told Reuters.

To said he had reason to believe the Chinese forces included members of locally-based PAP units.

The foreign diplomat, who requested anonymity and declined to be quoted due to sensitivity over commenting on security matters, also said PAP officers accompanied police to the frontlines. 

Responding to questions from Reuters, the Chinese Defence Ministry said the PAP was not stationed in Hong Kong, while a Hong Kong police spokesman said they “stress that there is no such visit or observation by any members of the mainland law enforcement agencies”. 

The State Council Information Office and the Central Government’s Hong Kong Liaison Office did not respond to Reuters’ questions. 

The diplomat and three other foreign envoys, however, estimated that China’s government had ramped up the paramilitary People’s Armed Police (PAP) presence in Hong Kong to as many as 4,000 personnel - far more than previously known estimates. 

Their assessments were based on intense scrutiny of the security forces’ response to the pro-democracy protests, which began last June, but have ebbed this year amid the ongoing coronavirus crisis. 

Reuters had reported in September that an unknown number of PAP were among a surge in Chinese security forces moved quietly into bases across the city last year as Hong Kong’s government struggled to contain the mounting political unrest. 

The rapidly-modernized PAP is the mainland’s core paramilitary and anti-riot force and operates separately from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).  

Under 2018 reforms, both the PAP and PLA are under the ultimate command of Chinese President Xi Jinping, who sits at the apex of the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission.

This About Main Core and Controlavirus - Not PROMIS and L'Affaire Epstein....,

salon |  "It's not just the 'Terrorist Surveillance Program,'" agrees Gregory T. Nojeim from the Center for Democracy and Technology, referring to the Bush administration's misleading name for the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program. "We need a broad investigation on the way all the moving parts fit together. It seems like we're always looking at little chunks and missing the big picture." 

A prime area of inquiry for a sweeping new investigation would be the Bush administration's alleged use of a top-secret database to guide its domestic surveillance. Dating back to the 1980s and known to government insiders as "Main Core," the database reportedly collects and stores -- without warrants or court orders -- the names and detailed data of Americans considered to be threats to national security. 

According to several former U.S. government officials with extensive knowledge of intelligence operations, Main Core in its current incarnation apparently contains a vast amount of personal data on Americans, including NSA intercepts of bank and credit card transactions and the results of surveillance efforts by the FBI, the CIA and other agencies. One former intelligence official described Main Core as "an emergency internal security database system" designed for use by the military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or the imposition of martial law. Its name, he says, is derived from the fact that it contains "copies of the 'main core' or essence of each item of intelligence information on Americans produced by the FBI and the other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community." 

Some of the former U.S. officials interviewed, although they have no direct knowledge of the issue, said they believe that Main Core may have been used by the NSA to determine who to spy on in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Moreover, the NSA's use of the database, they say, may have triggered the now-famous March 2004 confrontation between the White House and the Justice Department that nearly led Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI director William Mueller and other top Justice officials to resign en masse. 

The Justice Department officials who objected to the legal basis for the surveillance program -- former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey and Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel -- testified before Congress last year about the 2004 showdown with the White House. Although they refused to discuss the highly classified details behind their concerns, the New York Times later reported that they were objecting to a program that "involved computer searches through massive electronic databases" containing "records of the phone calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans." 

According to William Hamilton, a former NSA intelligence officer who left the agency in the 1970s, that description sounded a lot like Main Core, which he first heard about in detail in 1992. Hamilton, who is the president of Inslaw Inc., a computer services firm with many clients in government and the private sector, says there are strong indications that the Bush administration's domestic surveillance operations use Main Core. 

Hamilton's company Inslaw is widely respected in the law enforcement community for creating a program called the Prosecutors' Management Information System, or PROMIS. It keeps track of criminal investigations through a powerful search engine that can quickly access all stored data components of a case, from the name of the initial investigators to the telephone numbers of key suspects. PROMIS, also widely used in the insurance industry, can also sort through other databases fast, with results showing up almost instantly. "It operates just like Google," Hamilton told me in an interview in his Washington office in May. 

Since the late 1980s, Inslaw has been involved in a legal dispute over its claim that Justice Department officials in the Reagan administration appropriated the PROMIS software. Hamilton claims that Reagan officials gave PROMIS to the NSA and the CIA, which then adapted the software -- and its outstanding ability to search other databases -- to manage intelligence operations and track financial transactions. Over the years, Hamilton has employed prominent lawyers to pursue the case, including Elliot Richardson, the former attorney general and secretary of defense who died in 1999, and C. Boyden Gray, the former White House counsel to President George H.W. Bush. The dispute has never been settled. But based on the long-running case, Hamilton says he believes U.S. intelligence uses PROMIS as the primary software for searching the Main Core database.

Want To See a Coincidence Theory? Check the Posting Date on this Job!

CDC Public Health Advisor Quarantine Program Jobs Listings Dated 11/15/19

nature |  Epidemiologists say China’s mammoth response had one glaring flaw: it started too late. In the initial weeks of the outbreak in December and January, Wuhan authorities were slow to report cases of the mysterious infection, which delayed measures to contain it, says Howard Markel, a public-health researcher at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “The delay of China to act is probably responsible for this world event,” says Markel.

A model simulation¹ by Lai Shengjie and Andrew Tatem, emerging-disease researchers at the University of Southampton, UK, shows that if China had implemented its control measures a week earlier, it could have prevented 67% of all cases there. Implementing the measures 3 weeks earlier, from the beginning of January, would have cut the number of infections to 5% of the total.

This Cat's Account Of Our Current Predicament Feels Oddly Correct: Farming Pathogens

Be sure to peep Rob Wallace's Twitter

yasha.substack |  Since the coronavirus started making news here in America, it’s been portrayed as a foreign pathogen. It’s not just Donald Trump and his the MAGA fan club. Starting with the Chinese bat soup meme, all kinds of nativist political theories and racist conspiracies have been oozing out of centrist, rightist, and progressive media and political circles — making it seem like the virus is primarily a foreign problem and quite possibly a foreign conspiracy against the United States. 

Just check out this crazy viral xenophobic theorizing that ties the disruption caused by corona closures to Russia and Putin. It’s pushed by a respected liberal academic — someone who regularly gets space in the New York Times. Americans love their insane nativist conspiracies about foreign plots by shady asiatics. Don’t deny them this basic right!

This stuff is infectious and has already led to sporadic violence against Chinese-Americans and people from Asia in America. But this nativist blaming isn’t just happening here. 

China’s been trying to pin the virus on the American government, and so has Russia. A few weeks back, Russian state news broadcast a segment that tied the virus to an American plot against China. 

Channelling Brass Eye, the host of the news program laid out his logic like this: China is America’s greatest enemy. “Corona” means “crown.” And Donald Trump “crowned” the winners of his Miss Universe pageant. It all added up. Trump unleashed a bioweapon. The clue is in the etymology!

And really, who knows? Maybe the virus is some shadowy American chemical warfare program that backfired. It wouldn’t the first.

I’m sure that xenophobic panics have always followed pandemics and outbreaks of disease, going back to origins of human history. It’s a natural response when faced with a mysterious, deadly calamity. You blame the out-group — a different ethnic or religious or minority group. You blame whoever your official enemy is, or whoever it is most politically useful to blame. It happened during the Spanish Flu that decimated humanity a century ago. And it hasn’t changed today — in our age of supposed rationality. 

And what’s politically useful today about blaming the coronavirus on a specific country? It helps obscure the real origin of the pathogen — which is not national, but international. It’s economic and political.

South Korean Cults, Conservatives, and Coronavirus

FP |  South Korea initially seemed to have the COVID-19 epidemic under control, armed with efficient bureaucracy and state-of-the-art technology. However, since Feb. 18, the number of coronavirus cases in South Korea has exploded to more than 1,700 as of Thursday. The battle plan against the epidemic was derailed by the oldest of problems: religion and politics.

When it came to preparation, it helped that South Korea had one hell of a practice run: the MERS outbreak in 2015 that caused 38 deaths. At the time, the incompetent response by the conservative administration of then President Park Geun-hye put South Korea in the ignominious position of having the greatest number of cases outside of the Middle East. The fallout, which contributed to the public distrust of government that culminated in Park’s impeachment and removal, pushed the South Korean government to significantly revamp its preparation for the next viral event.

South Korea has been preparing for a potential new strain of coronavirus since as early as November 2019. Without knowing what virus would hit the country next, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) devised an ingenious method of testing for any type of coronavirus and eliminating known strains of coronavirus such as SARS or MERS to isolate the new variant of coronavirus.

For the first four weeks of the outbreak, South Korea marshaled high-tech resources to respond aggressively while promoting transparency. The government tracked the movements of travelers arriving from China, for example by tracking the use of credit cards, checking CCTV footage, or mandating they download an app to report their health status every day. For those infected, the government published an extremely detailed list of their whereabouts, down to which seat they sat in at a movie theater.

The info was also presented (with names removed) in an interactive website that allows the public to trace the movement of every single individual with coronavirus. To be sure, there were real privacy concerns—as when one unfortunate patient in Daejeon had news of their visit to a risqué lingerie store blasted to every smartphone in their city. Yet on balance, these disclosures did much to calm the nerves and prevent unnecessary panic in the population. By Feb. 17, South Korea’s tally of COVID-19 patients stood at 30, with zero deaths. Ten patients were fully cured and discharged, with some of the discharged patients declaring the disease was “not something as serious as one might think.” The government seemed ready to declare victory.

That all came to a crashing halt last week thanks to the 31st case. Patient No. 31, discovered on Feb. 18, was a member of a quasi-Christian cult called Shincheonji, one of the many new religious movements in the country. Founded in 1984, Shincheonji (whose official name is Shincheonji, Church of Jesus, the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony) means “new heaven and earth,” a reference to the Book of Revelation. Its founder Lee Man-hee claims to be the second coming of Jesus who is to establish the “new spiritual Israel” at the end of days. The cult is estimated to have approximately 240,000 followers, and claims to have outposts in 29 countries in addition to South Korea.

Shincheonji’s bad theology makes for worse public health. Shincheonji teaches illness is a sin, encouraging its followers to suffer through diseases to attend services in which they sit closely together, breathing in spittle as they repeatedly amen in unison. If they were off on their own, that might be one thing—but according to Shin Hyeon-uk, a pastor who formerly belonged to the cult, Shincheonji believes in “deceptive proselytizing,” approaching potential converts without disclosing their denomination. Shincheonji convinces its members to cover their tracks, providing a prearranged set of answers to give when anyone asks if they belong to the cult. Often, even family members are in the dark about whether someone is a Shincheonji follower. The net effect is that Shincheonji followers infect each other easily, then go onto infect the community at large.

It is not yet clear exactly how Shincheonji cultists were infected with COVID-19 in the first instance. (KCDC said Patient No. 31 is likely not the first Shincheonji follower to be infected, given the timeline of her symptoms.) Although investigations are still pending, South Korean authorities have been focusing on the funeral of the brother of Shincheonji’s founder held in early February. Shincheonji has 19 churches in China, including in Wuhan, and it may be possible that followers from around the world attended the funeral.

N-1: Apocalyptic Bibtard Numbskulls Concentrated, Incubated, and Superspread Coronavirus

youtube |  Barely more than a week ago, South Korea’s coronavirus outbreak appeared to be contained as the number of confirmed infections stabilized at 30. Sensing a turning tide, many Seoul residents took off their surgical masks and resumed riding the subways and shopping at malls. 

Then, on Feb. 17, a 31st case surfaced at a health clinic in Daegu, a city about 150 miles south of the capital where the vast majority of known infections were located. An unidentified 61-year-old woman, who lived there and occasionally commuted to Seoul, tested positive for the novel coronavirus. It seemed like a standard case until public health authorities started tracing the patient’s tracks. 

What they learned shocked them: the woman had, during the previous 10 days, attended two worship services with at least 1,000 other members of her secretive religious sect whose leader says the end of days is coming. Within 24 hours, the nation’s number of confirmed cases started multiplying exponentially. The tally rose by 20 during that period, doubled the following day and then doubled again on the third day. 

By Wednesday, the count skyrocketed past 1,000 -- a more than 30-fold increase in a week that prompted the government to raise its health alert to the highest level. At least half of the new cases are linked to the sect called the Shincheonji -- which translates to “new heaven and land” and whose members worship side-by-side in cramped spaces. “What made this case so much worse was that this person spent a considerable amount of time in a very crowded area,” said Kim Chang-yup, a professor for health policy at Seoul National University. “There’s growing fear and resentment among the people right now.” South Korea’s health ministry said Wednesday it was launching a manhunt for more than 212,000 members whose names were provided by the sect. Korea’s Centers for Disease Control & Prevention already is screening 9,300 sect members, in addition to those who attended the two services. On Wednesday, it expects to conclude tests of 1,300 sect members showing symptoms.

Shincheonji

Reuters |  An So-young had a gut feeling that the 31st person in South Korea to test positive for the coronavirus might be a member of the controversial religious sect she quit four years ago. 

The person, dubbed “Patient 31,” was the first of an explosive wave of cases that made South Korea’s outbreak the largest outside of China. What caught An’s attention was how health authorities were struggling to track the woman’s movements before she was tested. 

“That’s their culture, they have to hide their movements, and that’s why I guessed she was with Shincheonji,” An, 27, said in an interview, referring to the Shincheonji Church of Jesus. 

Patient 31 attended services at the church’s branch in the southeastern city of Daegu this month, staying for two hours each time, before testing positive on Feb. 18. 

The South Korean disease control chief Jeong Eun-kyeong said the church’s services, where thousands of people sit on the floor, shoulder-to-shoulder, for hours, could have contributed to the surges. 

“You would be 5 centimeters away from the person who sits next to you, and have to say ‘Amen’ after every sentence the pastor speaks - it’s the best environment for the virus to spread,” said An, who is now a theology student. 

In a media interview, Patient 31 said she did not refuse to be tested. But health authorities said she sought care at a traditional medicine hospital in Daegu after a minor car accident, where a medical worker who treated her later tested positive for the virus. While running a fever, she went to a buffet at a hotel and the church services. 

Shincheonji is in the biggest crisis in its 36-year history, as hundreds of members have tested positive for the virus, SARS-CoV-2. All of its 210,000 known followers are being tested amid unprecedented scrutiny from authorities and the public. 

After initial resistance, the church released the addresses of 1,100 facilities around the country - 82 churches and 1,018 “affiliates,” - and asked the public to avoid making “groundless criticism.” It was the “biggest victim of the virus,” it said. 

Calls by Reuters to the church’s headquarters seeking comment went unanswered. 

During a visit to the Daegu branch on Friday, a man who identified himself as a member said he was the only one there and told Reuters that “all of our 9,000 members are taking self-quarantine measures in compliance with the government instruction.” He said the building was disinfected twice last week. 

Interactive graphic about the spread of coronavirus inside South Korea: here

If You Go To The Trouble Of Creating A Weapon, Sooner Or Later You're Going To Use It

LewRockwell |  Those that prevent disease and expose virus creation are heroic, but those that create and purposely spread disease and virus are inhuman. Given the history of the United States government and its military industrial complex concerning biological and germ warfare, the use of these agents against large populations, and the desire to create agents that are race specific strains, these powerful entities have become compassionless purveyors of death to the innocent. Manmade viruses meant for warfare, whether for economic destruction, starvation, or mass death, are the workings of the truly evil among us. Predation at this level is relegated to those in power; a president for example, could give the order to wipe out millions due to his inability to control a problem he caused and perpetuated, and then lay blame on the victims.

Who would ever have believed that modern warfare could be more brutal, more torturous, more painful, and more harmful to innocents, especially children, than past atrocities committed in war. Memories of millions sent to their deaths fighting in trenches, cities obliterated by atomic bombs, entire countries destroyed, and millions purposely left to starve in order to appease some tyrant or elected “leader.” I once thought that nuclear war would signal the end of life as we know it, but considering modern warfare and technology, I now think that uncontrolled and deadly viruses may consume the world population, as one after another poisons are released as acts of hidden war. There can be no end to this madness, as any retaliation in kind will result in the spread of worldwide disease; all created by man.

The new Coronavirus, (2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) one in a line of many that were not just likely but most certainly produced by man in laboratories, is affecting almost exclusively the Chinese at this point. This has seemingly opened the floodgates to speculation as to its exact origin. This virus has unique characteristics that have happened before with SARS and MERS, and has genetic material that has never been identified, and is not tied to any animal or human known virus. This should be troubling to all, because if this is manmade, it was manufactured as a weapon of war. So who is responsible for its release in China? It is possible that this virus was created in China and was “accidentally” released into the population, but that does not sound credible at any level. Do any think that the Chinese government would create a Chinese race specific virus and release it in their country?

Interestingly, in the past, U.S. universities and NGOs went to China specifically to do illegal biological experimentation, and this was so egregious to Chinese officials, that forcible removal of these people was the result. Harvard University, one of the major players in this scandal, stole the DNA samples of hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens, left China with those samples, and continued illegal bio-research in the U.S. It is thought that the U.S. military, which puts a completely different spin on the conversation, had commissioned the research in China at the time. This is more than suspicious.

“Insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders.” Larry Summers

theburningplatform |  Let’s take this one right to the hoop: The Epstein saga may be the biggest, most broadly based scandal in US history. Of course, it has some serious competition, but to use the logic of Peter Dale Scott, the Berkeley professor who cut his teeth studying drug cartels, once in a while you get fleeting images of what lurks in the political pipes down in the basement. Peter called it “deep politics” in 1996, what is now called the deep state or, according to Wikipedia,¹ a Conspiracy of the Loons. Previous peeks into the basement include the collapse of BCCI,² the Panama papers,³ Fast and Furious,⁴ the Iran-Contra scandal,⁵ and, for the nostalgic, a spate of assassinations.⁶ You couldn’t miss the Epstein saga (unless, of course, you are still chained in the basement by one of his friends), but our wokeness is highly variable and, by definition, poorly developed. The Tetris pieces fall slowly at first but quickly by the end. Amazon is already filling up with treatises by those who can type 300 words per minute. My sources are a combination of random news reports, daily searches of the keyword “Epstein” on Twitter, and a few particularly persistent sleuths including Michael Krieger (@Libertyblitz),⁷ Witney Webb (@_whitneywebb),⁸ and articles flying across Zerohedge (@zerohedge). While reading this chapter let’s play Jeopardy—“Alex: I’ll take ‘WTF?’ for $500”—or maybe even Bizarro Bingo wherein you place a ‘✓’ every time something just got really weird.

Jeff had humble roots. After working summers as a farmhand choking the chickens, he was hired to teach math at an elite private girls school in New York City…despite not having a college degree. His new employer was Donald Barr, the father of Bill Barr, our current Attorney General (✓). Soon thereafter, they both moved on to higher callings.¹³ (Bill Barr’s law firm also defended Jeff in a previous brush with the law, forcing Bill to recuse himself from the forthcoming execution prosecution; ✓)¹⁴ Jeff’s job as a high school teacher naturally catapulted him to a few non-descript jobs on Wall Street, allowing him to accrue an estimated billion-dollar nest egg without anybody on Wall Street actually knowing who he was (✓). Leslie Wexner, founder of Victoria’s Secret, is said to be his only client and appears to have given Epstein power of attorney and handed over his $100 million NYC condo to Jeff (✓).¹⁵ In a pay-it-forward moment, Jeff was a seminal investor in the Clinton Global Initiative (last ✓; you are on your own from here.)¹⁶ Harvard and MIT also got millions.¹⁷ A 2003 story in the Harvard Crimson painted Jeff as a mysterious billionaire with a not-for-profit foundation: “Epstein is also well acquainted with University President Lawrence H. Summers.¹⁸ The two serve together on the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, two elite international relations organizations.” The Trilateral Commission? That’s real?

Epstein’s Black Book including over a thousand names published by Gawker in 2015¹⁹ has now been scrutinized.²⁰ Cronies of special note included billionaire Wexner, Lynn Forester de Rothschild, Woody Allen, the Duke of York Prince Andrew, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, Bill Gates, Larry Summers, Andrew Cuomo, former Prime Minister of Israel and current Silicon Valley entrepreneur Ehud Barak, George Stephanopoulos, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Charlie Rose (who used Epstein as a talent scout for his interns),²¹ financier Ron Perelman, modeling mogul Jean Luc Brunel, ex-labor minister Peter Mandelson, Adnan Khashoggi (arms dealer and brother of the New York Times reporter Jamal Khashoggi who got fed to the camels by the Saudis last year),²² Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (suspected to be the “prime minister” alluded to in released court transcripts),²³ and Mr. Rogers. (Just ✓-ing to see if you are still awake.)