Norfolk Southern Has Track Safety Detection Systems That Are Not Maintained/Not In Use

freightwaves  |   One union of rail workers has questioned declining maintenance standards following the Feb. 3 Norfolk Southern derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which forced the evacuation of the 5,000-person town earlier this month. 

A device that can play a role in preventing derailments is the wayside hot-box detector. It uses infrared sensors to detect bearings, axles or other components of a rail car that are overheating, then uses radio signals to flag rail crews of any overheated components. 

The rail car that initiated the derailment had an overheated wheel bearing, according to a Tuesday report from the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB is still investigating the cause of the derailment and will publish a preliminary report in two weeks. 

Wayside hot-box detectors are typically placed every 25 miles along a railroad, according to a Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) report. Their use has contributed to a 59% decrease in train accidents caused by axle- and bearing-related factors since 1990, according to a 2017 Association of American Railroads study.

Declining head counts have led to these mechanisms receiving less preventative maintenance, according to an official from the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen union. 

The FRA has no regulations requiring the use or maintenance of hot-box detectors.

A hot-box detector in East Palestine notified the crew moments before the train derailed, according to the NTSB’s report. 

It’s unclear if any hot-box detector prior to East Palestine notified crews. A surveillance video shared on Facebook from an industrial facility in Salem, Ohio, about 20 miles from East Palestine, suggests the train’s axle was already on fire. 

Norfolk Southern did not respond to a request for comment, and the FRA declined to comment on the record. 

From 5 ‘electronic leaders’ to zero in derailment region

Specialized signalmen called “electronic leaders” specialize in maintaining devices like hot-box detectors.

As recently as three years ago, Norfolk Southern employed five electronic leaders in the area of its rail network that includes East Palestine. Today, it employs zero, according to Christopher Hand, director of research at the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen.

The area in question is Eastern Region North – Division B, shown in red on the map. It runs east to west from Mansfield, Ohio, to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and north to south from Morgantown, West Virginia, to Astabula, Ohio. It also includes rail track in Pittsburgh, as well as Youngstown, Ohio.

Economics Of The American Prison System

smartasset  |  The American prison system is massive. So massive that its estimated turnover of $74 billion eclipses the GDP of 133 nations. What is perhaps most unsettling about this fun fact is that it is the American taxpayer who foots the bill and is increasingly padding the pockets of publicly traded corporations like Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group. Combined both companies generated over $2.53 billion in revenue in 2012, and represent more than half of the private prison business. So what exactly makes the business of incarcerating Americans so lucrative?

Most of it has to do with the way the American legal system works and how it has changed over the last 40 years. In the 1970’s, lawmakers were dealing with a nationwide rash of drug-use and crime. By declaring a nation-wide war on drugs in 1971, President Richard Nixon set a precedent for hard-line policies towards drug-related crime.

New York governor Nelson Rockefeller followed suit declaring “For drug pushing, life sentence, no parole, no probation.”  His policies once put into action promised 15 years to life in prison for drug users and dealers. His policies catalyzed the growth of a colossal corrections system that currently houses an estimated 2.2 million inmates.

The runaway growth of US corrections did not come overnight, and did not come from the government alone. Since the 1970’s federal and state correction agencies have consistently struggled to meet the increased demands brought on by the US Department of Justice and strict drug laws.

In 1982, three Texas businessmen, Tom Beasley, John Ferguson, and Don Hutto saw an opportunity in the shortcomings of the Texas corrections system’s inability to deal with this influx of incarcerations. They devised and executed a plan to secure the first government contract to design, build, and operate a corrections facility from the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Texas Department of Justice.

Contract in hand, the trio was given 90 days to open a detention center for undocumented aliens. As their January 28 deadline neared, Hutto, Ferguson, and Beasley had no facility, no staff and their experiment seemed doomed to fail.

On New Year’s Eve, 1983, Beasley decided to get crafty, “Well, we’ll just go to Houston and find a place,” he reportedly told Ferguson. Incredulous, Ferguson replied, “Tom, you’re crazy. There’s no possible way. This is New Year’s Day. There is no possible way we can find a place today.” Beasley simply responded, “We have to.”

The three men immediately got on a plane and began their search. After a litany of rejections they came upon the Olympic Motel at 1am on New Year’s Day and immediately began negotiations that lasted for three days.

After hiring the motel owner’s family and promising to return the motel to its original condition, the group was in business. They then converted all of the motel rooms to secure cells, procured secure transportation and opened shop on January 28, 1983 when 87 inmates were brought in. Hutto, Ferguson and Beasley formed Corrections Corporation of America, the largest prison private prison network in the United States.

With the precedent it set with the first private detention center, CCA changed the face of US corrections for good. The private sector came to be seen as a quick-fix to the problem of overcrowded, understaffed public prisons. Today, privatized prisons make up over 10% of the corrections market—turning over $7.4 billion per year.

 

Was The Covid Treatment Protocol A Medical Industrial "Cash For Death" Scheme?

lewrockwell |  The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a private medical organization founded in 1943, has the story — “Biden’s Bounty on Your Life: Hospitals’ Incentive Payments for COVID-19” (11/17/21), authored by Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D. and Ali Shultz, J.D.

Here are stunning excerpts:

“Upon admission to a once-trusted hospital, American patients with COVID-19 become virtual prisoners, subjected to a rigid treatment protocol…for rationing medical care in those over age 50. They have a shockingly high mortality rate…”

“As exposed in audio recordings, hospital executives in Arizona admitted meeting several times a week to lower standards of care, with coordinated restrictions on visitation rights. Most COVID-19 patients’ families are deliberately kept in the dark about what is really being done to their loved ones.”

“The combination that enables this tragic and avoidable loss of hundreds of thousands of lives includes (1) The CARES Act, which provides hospitals with bonus incentive payments for all things related to COVID-19 (testing, diagnosing, admitting to hospital, use of remdesivir and ventilators, reporting COVID-19 deaths, and vaccinations) and (2) waivers of customary and long-standing patient rights by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).”

“In 2020, the Texas Hospital Association submitted requests for waivers to CMS. According to Texas attorney Jerri Ward, ‘CMS has granted “waivers” of federal law regarding patient rights. Specifically, CMS purports to allow hospitals to violate the rights of patients or their surrogates with regard to medical record access, to have patient visitation, and to be free from seclusion.’…The purported waivers are meant to isolate and gain total control over the patient and to deny patient and patient’s decision-maker the ability to exercise informed consent.”

“Creating a ‘National Pandemic Emergency’ provided justification for such sweeping actions that override individual physician medical decision-making and patients’ rights. The CARES Act provides incentives for hospitals to use treatments dictated solely by the federal government under the auspices of the NIH. These ‘bounties’ must paid back if not ‘earned’ by making the COVID-19 diagnosis and following the COVID-19 protocol.”

“The hospital payments include:

* A ‘free’ required PCR test in the Emergency Room or upon admission for every patient, with government-paid fee to hospital.

* Added bonus payment for each positive COVID-19 diagnosis.

* Another bonus for a COVID-19 admission to the hospital.

* A 20 percent ‘boost’ bonus payment from Medicare on the entire hospital bill for use of remdesivir instead of medicines such as Ivermectin.

* Another and larger bonus payment to the hospital if a COVID-19 patient is mechanically ventilated.

* More money to the hospital if cause of death is listed as COVID-19, even if patient did not die directly of COVID-19.

* A COVID-19 diagnosis also provides extra payments to coroners.”

“CMS implemented ‘value-based’ payment programs that track data such as how many workers at a healthcare facility receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Now we see why many hospitals implemented COVID-19 vaccine mandates. They are paid more.”

“Outside hospitals, physician MIPS [Merit-based Incentive Payment System] quality metrics link doctors’ income to performance-based pay for treating patients with COVID-19 EUA drugs. Failure to report information to CMS can cost the physician 4% of reimbursement.”

“Because of obfuscation with medical coding and legal jargon, we cannot be certain of the actual amount each hospital receives per COVID-19 patient. But Attorney Thomas Renz and CMS whistleblowers have calculated a total payment of at least $100,000 per patient.”   Fist tap Big Don.

One Unadvertised Scheme - AMONG MANY - For Shaking Down "Middle-Class" Peasants

@seangotcher #housing ♬ San Tropez - Illect Recordings

msn |  In a video that’s garnered more than 2.4 million views on TikTok, Nevada real-estate agent Sean Gotcher criticizes the “iBuying” business model, in which companies buy and sell homes for a profit. In the video, he proposes that a nameless company has a website where many people search for homes “when they’re bored,” and he says that same company “uses that information to go into that ZIP code and start purchasing houses.”

In other words, he’s suggesting that companies such as Zillow are using the data they glean from people’s perusal of home listings on their sites to make decisions about which houses to buy as iBuyers.

Gotcher later argues that the company will buy 30 homes at one price, and then purchase a 31st home at a higher price. “What that just did is create a new comp,” Gotcher says, referring to comparable prices on nearby properties, which appraisers use to determine the value of a home for sale. He then says the company can turn around and sell the other homes at that new, higher price.

In subsequent videos, Gotcher takes on Zillow and Redfin more directly, criticizing their respective business practices.

“I’m happy to see the conversation that’s occurring at every printer in every real estate office about data storage, mixed with buying power and recognizable marketing is finally happening outside our office doors so more can participate in the discussion,” Gotcher, who works for Level Up Real Estate in Henderson, Nev., told MarketWatch in an email.

The video subsequently garnered even more attention on Twitter when a person with the username Gladvillain shared it after learning that the user’s mother had sold her home to Zillow. Many users claimed that Zillow was purchasing “all of the homes,” and said they planned to boycott the platform.

Both Zillow and Redfin contradicted the video’s claims. “The internet has empowered millions of consumers with more information, transparency and tools in real estate to help them make smarter real estate decisions, many provided by Zillow for more than a decade,” a Zillow spokesperson told MarketWatch in an email. “Unfortunately, the internet can also sometimes be a source of misinformation and falsehoods — as is this case.”

A Redfin spokesperson added that the company doesn’t “have the share to manipulate the market nor do we have any desire to, because intentionally overpaying for homes would be a terrible business model.”

Real-estate experts debunked many of the points made in the viral video, and argued that other forces are to blame for the country’s competitive, pricey housing market.

“If you could rig the residential housing market that easily, the Realtors would have done it long ago,” said Gilles Duranton, a real-estate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

 

 

Billionaires Were Undistracted And Undeterred By The Controlavirus Shenanigans...,

ips |  U.S. billionaires have seen their wealth surge $1.8 trillion during the pandemic, their collective fortune skyrocketing by nearly two-thirds (62 percent) from just short of $3 trillion at the start of the COVID crisis on March 18, 2020, to $4.8 trillion on August 17, 2021, according to a report from Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and the Institute for Policy Studies Program on Inequality (IPS). A table of the top 15 billionaires is below and the full data set is here.

Elon Musk has seen his wealth increase by an eye-popping $150 billion during the pandemic, a gain of over 600 percent.

America’s billionaire bonanza demonstrates the flaws in our current economic and tax systems President Biden and Democrats in Congress are trying to remedy by advancing a $3.5 trillion budget package, which has already passed the U.S. Senate and is being considered in the U.S. House today. If it becomes law through the budget reconciliation process this fall, it will aid communities and working families by making healthcare, eldercare, childcare, housing and education more affordable, investing in clean energy, expanding the Child Tax Credit and providing 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave. It will be paid for by making the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share of taxes, and it will not raise taxes on anyone making under $400,000 a year.

Not only did the wealth of billionaires grow, but so did their numbers: in March of last year, there were 614 Americans with 10-figure bank accounts; this August, there are 708. Their $1.8 trillion of increased wealth alone over 17 months, which will not be taxed unless they sell their assets, would pay for more than half of Biden’s 10-year $3.5 trillion investment package.

COVID-19 ERASED The Regulatory And Trial-Related Hurdles To IMMENSE PROFIT

unlimitedhangout |  How did Moderna know that COVID-19 would create those conditions months before anyone else, and why did they later claim that their vaccine being tested in NIH trials was different than their commercial candidate? 

In late 2019, the biopharmaceutical company Moderna was facing a series of challenges that not only threatened its ability to ever take a product to market, and thus turn a profit, but its very existence as a company. There were multiple warning signs that Moderna was essentially another Theranos-style fraud, with many of these signs growing in frequency and severity as the decade drew to a close. Part I of this three-part series explored the disastrous circumstances in which Moderna found itself at that time, with the company’s salvation hinging on the hope of a divine miracle, a “Hail Mary” save of sorts, as stated by one former Moderna employee. 

While the COVID-19 crisis that emerged in the first part of 2020 can hardly be described as an act of benevolent divine intervention for most, it certainly can be seen that way from Moderna’s perspective. Key issues for the company, including seemingly insurmountable regulatory hurdles and its inability to advance beyond animal trials with its most promising—and profitable—products, were conveniently wiped away, and not a moment too soon. Since January 2020, the value of Moderna’s stock—which had embarked on a steady decline since its IPO—grew from $18.89 per share to its current value of $339.57 per share, thanks to the success of its COVID-19 vaccine.

Yet, how exactly was Moderna’s “Hail Mary” moment realized, and what were the forces and events that ensured it would make it through the FDA’s emergency use authorization (EUA) process? In examining that question, it becomes quickly apparent that Moderna’s journey of saving grace involved much more than just cutting corners in animal and human trials and federal regulations. Indeed, if we are to believe Moderna executives, it involved supplying formulations for some trial studies that were not the same as their COVID-19 vaccine commercial candidate, despite the data resulting from the former being used to sell Moderna’s vaccine to the public and federal health authorities. Such data was also selectively released at times to align with preplanned stock trades by Moderna executives, turning many of Moderna’s highest-ranking employees into millionaires, and even billionaires, while the COVID-19 crisis meant economic calamity for most Americans. 

Not only that, but—as Part II of this three-part series will show, Moderna and a handful of its collaborators at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) seemed to know that Moderna’s miracle had arrived—well before anyone else knew or could have known. Was it really a coincidental mix of “foresight” and “serendipity” that led Moderna and the NIH to plan to develop a COVID-19 vaccine days before the viral sequence was even published and months before a vaccine was even considered necessary for a still unknown disease? If so, why would Moderna—a company clearly on the brink—throw everything into and gamble the entire company on a vaccine project that had no demonstrated need at the time?

Big Pharma's RNA Therapeutics Race - Temporariness Is A Feature Not A Bug...,

c&en  | For small biotech companies hoping to strike a deal with larger drug developers, there’s no greater destination than the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. In early January 2020, leaders from the start-up Shape Therapeutics made the annual pilgrimage to this mecca of biotechnology networking in San Francisco to make a pitch: What if you could edit someone’s genetic code without ever touching their DNA?

The biotech industry is awash in companies using tools like CRISPR gene editing to fix or turn off problematic DNA. If gene editing works, it could provide a one-and-done cure. But some researchers are worried that if CRISPR slips up and cuts DNA at the wrong site, the damage could also be permanent. “Targeting DNA has a lot of all-or-nothing consequences,” says David Huss, head of research at Shape.

At the conference, Huss explained to potential partners that Shape’s solution was to edit RNA instead of DNA. Our cells constantly produce short-lived RNA molecules that convert the DNA code into functional proteins. Incredibly, our bodies have already evolved an ingenious tool for editing RNA: an enzyme called ADAR—adenosine deaminase acting on RNA. The enzyme converts select adenosine (A) bases, one of four letters that compose the messenger RNA (mRNA) code, into another base that the cell interprets as guanosine (G). Shape was founded in 2018 on the basis of academic work showing that synthetic molecules called guide RNAs could recruit ADAR and direct it to make these A-to-G edits at precise sites.

Scientists estimate that A-to-G editing could fix mutations responsible for nearly 50% of genetic diseases. “We have a tool that can be applied to so many diseases that we couldn’t possibly do them all ourselves,” Huss says. When Shape executives pitched their RNA-editing technology to the Big Pharma company Roche, the two teams clicked, says Sylke Poehling, head of therapeutic modalities at Roche.

Why Is The Entire Western Media Lying About Ivermectin And Calling It "Horse Deworming Paste?"

Why is basically the entire media lying about what Ivermectin is and calling it a horse drug?

— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) September 2, 2021

Because Ivermectin has been chosen as a group membership indicator, independent of its own nature. If you advocate for Ivermectin then you must be an ignorant and expendable spreadneck extremist according to most of my Democrat friends. The media is signaling adherence to that group. This same group doesn't really care whether it works, only what tribe you belong to based on your attitude about it.  Quoth the great IMDoc:

The NIH current status on ivermectin is there is not enough data to recommend OR to discourage its use. The NIH changed this recommendation in December of 2020 as previously the NIH status on ivermectin usage was to discourage its use. Usually the status in which ivermectin is now placed would be accompanied with all kinds of funds to study the true efficacy of the drug, to see if it is successful. That of course is not being done at this time.

Interestingly, 2 of our other COVID modalities have exactly the same recommend/discourage status. That would be remdesevir and outpatient monoclonal antibodies. EXACTLY the same status on both of these as ivermectin currently. The NIH states there is not enough evidence to recommend or to discourage the use of either of these.

And yet we continue right on with both the others without a blink of an eye.

A little math –

An Ivermectin course for COVID is less than twenty dollars.

A course of REMDESEVIR is currently right at $8800.00 dollars.

An outpatient treatment with monoclonal antibodies is right at $23,000.00 – 25,000.00 dollars with all the infusion costs added.

Remdesevir is loaded with all kinds of safety problems that I have seen with my own eyes. And it has the extra benefit of obviously not working – it literally does not do a god damned thing. Multiple studies have hinted at this.

The monoclonal antibodies are reasonably safe, unless you are one of the unlucky 1-3 out of 200 who have a very significant allergic reaction. Sometimes quite bad. They do seem to help to some degree.
But it is my immunologist and virologist friends who are having seizures about their use like this in massive 100-200 daily infusion centers, and the very high likelihood of producing all kinds of mutant variants with this therapy.

Your bankrupt government that is in hawk already for tens of trillions of dollars is currently “paying” for the last 2 choices – but not sure how long that will last.

Facebook feeds are now filled with all kinds of memes and stories with horse paste and horse pictures. But not a word about the other 2 or how expensive they are. I have seen all kinds of pics lately of my fully vaccinated friends and family in a monoclonal infusion center. They seem to have no clue they are bankrupting their kids future for a medication with the same NIH recommendation as ivermectin – which they are just laughing out of the room. They go right on blaming the unvaccinated for the pandemic in their feeds, all the while the antibodies they have just been given may be leading to the next mutation that will come up snake-eyes. And to boot, that one dose of meds they are getting is more than a lot of people in this country make in a year.

Yet, I continue to use ivermectin and budesonide with statistically obvious effects to keep patients out of the hospital compared to my peers who are not using it.

I have never dreamed in my life that I would live to see the American people bamboozled this easily. But here we are. I just keep working – very hard lately – it keeps my mind in much better places.

I spoke with one of my old students who is now a medical missionary in Africa this week. How this is being handled in the West has been an eye-opener for all to see where he lives. At least they have perspective in Africa. We have lost 600K people in the USA to COVID. The world loses upwards of 1 to million a year from diarrhea. The only difference between the two is that the diarrhea deaths are almost completely avoidable with appropriate care that is freely available in the West but not so much in Africa. And that is just diarrhea. They see the immense COVID freak out in the West and just shake their heads. My poor student just stated that he has to pray every day for strength not to despise what his culture has become.

My mind has been reliving the story of Lot and Sodom & Gomorrah a lot lately. But also to the Book of Daniel and Balthazzar’s feast. MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSHIM. Written by a hand on the wall to leader of the most powerful country on earth at the time. NUMBERED NUMBERED WEIGHED AND DIVIDED. “Alas O Babylon, the Lord God Jehovah has weighed you in the balance and has found you wanting. Thy last day is upon you.”

Lord have mercy.

Why Is The FDA Attacking A Safe Effective Drug While Approving Hot Garbage?

 WSJ  |  The Food and Drug Administration claims to follow the science. So why is it attacking ivermectin, a medication it certified in 1996?

Earlier this year the agency put out a special warning that “you should not use ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19.” The FDA’s statement included words and phrases such as “serious harm,” “hospitalized,” “dangerous,” “very dangerous,” “seizures,” “coma and even death” and “highly toxic.” Any reader would think the FDA was warning against poison pills. In fact, the drug is FDA-approved as a safe and effective antiparasitic.

Ivermectin was developed and marketed by Merck & Co. while one of us (Mr. Hooper) worked there years ago. William C. Campbell and Satoshi Omura won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discovering and developing avermectin, which Mr. Campbell and associates modified to create ivermectin. 

Ivermectin is on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines. Merck has donated four billion doses to prevent river blindness and other diseases in Africa and other places where parasites are common. A group of 10 doctors who call themselves the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance have said ivermectin is “one of the safest, low-cost, and widely available drugs in the history of medicine."

Ivermectin fights 21 viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, the cause of Covid-19. A single dose reduced the viral load of SARS-CoV-2 in cells by 99.8% in 24 hours and 99.98% in 48 hours, according to a June 2020 study published in the journal Antiviral Research.

Some 70 clinical trials are evaluating the use of ivermectin for treating Covid-19. The statistically significant evidence suggests that it is safe and works for both treating and preventing the disease. 

In 115 patients with Covid-19 who received a single dose of ivermectin, none developed pneumonia or cardiovascular complications, while 11.4% of those in the control group did. Fewer ivermectin patients developed respiratory distress (2.6% vs. 15.8%); fewer required oxygen (9.6% vs. 45.9%); fewer required antibiotics (15.7% vs. 60.2%); and fewer entered intensive care (0.1% vs. 8.3%). Ivermectin-treated patients tested negative faster, in four days instead of 15, and stayed in the hospital nine days on average instead of 15. Ivermectin patients experienced 13.3% mortality compared with 24.5% in the control group.

Moreover, the drug can help prevent Covid-19. One 2020 article in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications looked at what happened after the drug was given to family members of confirmed Covid-19 patients. Less than 8% became infected, versus 58.4% of those untreated.

 

Mass Human Experimentation Yields: Genetic "Vaccine", Contact Tracing, Molecular Drug Discovery

theconversation |  DNA and mRNA vaccines offer huge advantages over traditional types of vaccines, since they use only genetic code from a pathogen – rather than the entire virus or bacteria. Traditional vaccines take months, if not years, to develop. In contrast, once scientists get the genetic sequence of a new pathogen, they can design a DNA or mRNA vaccine in days, identify a lead candidate for clinical trials within weeks and have millions of doses manufactured within months. This is basically what happened with the coronavirus.

During the pandemic, researchers have taken full advantage of the proliferation of smartwatches, smart rings and other wearable health and wellness technology. These devices can measure a person’s temperature, heart rate, level of activity and other biometrics. With this information, researchers have been able to track and detect COVID-19 infections even before people notice they have any symptoms.

Proteins are the molecular machines that make your cells function. When proteins malfunction or are hijacked by a pathogen, you often get disease. Most drugs work by disrupting the action of one or several of these malfunctioning or hijacked proteins. So a logical way to look for new drugs to treat a specific disease is to study individual genes and proteins that are directly affected by that disease. For example, researchers know that the BRCA gene – a gene that protects your DNA from being damaged – is closely related to the development of breast and ovarian cancer. So a lot of work has focused on finding drugs that affect the function of the BRCA protein.

The Panicdemic Has Scared Open The Floodgates Of Funding And Human Experimentation Opportunity

The Antibody Deception from Rosemary Frei on Vimeo.

off-guardian |  The world has been fixated for months on novel-coronavirus PCR testing, contact tracing and vaccination.

Meanwhile, another major part of the Covid biomedical complex has received far less attention: the use of antibodies for detecting, diagnosing and treating infection with the novel coronavirus.

Hundreds of antibodies have been approved for these purposes since January 2020. And hundreds more are poised to start being marketed soon.

This is part of the biomedical gold rush: by last summer already, antibodies were on track to become the most lucrative medical product, with global revenue projected to reach nearly half a trillion dollars by 2024. Profit margins in the range of 67% aren’t uncommon.

Pharma giants such as AstraZeneca, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline and Eli Lilly are among the companies grabbing the largest chunks of the novel-coronavirus-antibody market. And some of the most muscular government agencies, including Anthony Fauci’s US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the US’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, are part of the action (see, for example, the second-last section of this article, on antibodies used to treat Covid).

Virtually every study and piece of marketing material related to Covid is premised on scientists having positively and correctly identified the presence of the novel coronavirus (also known as SARS-CoV-2) in the material they’re working with.

The job of that identification is usually given to antibodies that are said to bind to the novel coronavirus. The assumption is these antibodies are able to pick out the virus and only the virus from among every other organism and substance surrounding it.

Unfortunately it turns out that the antibodies rarely (if ever) do that. This is because of, among other things, inadequate verification of the antibodies’ accuracy in targeting the virus by the companies that manufacture and sell them. And there’s even less verification by government regulators.

Let’s take a 30,000-foot tour of a couple of the main features of the antibody-industry landscape, which is awash in complexity and cash.

Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation Investment In Pfizer-Biontech

fool |  Pfizer

Bill Gates recently stated that he views Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) as the leader in the coronavirus vaccine race. In a CNBC interview, he said, "The only vaccine that, if everything went perfectly, might seek the emergency use license by the end of October, would be Pfizer."

The Gates Foundation also owns shares of the big drugmaker. However, this investment wasn't initiated because of Pfizer's coronavirus program. Actually, the foundation first bought a stake in Pfizer back in 2002 with the stated intention of "expand[ing] access to the pharmaceutical company's all-in-one injectable contraceptive, Sayana Press, giving women in the developing world an affordable option." 

Gates is probably correct in assessing Pfizer as the coronavirus vaccine leader. The company expects to report initial results next month from a late-stage study of BNT162b2, the COVID-19 vaccine candidate that it's developing with BioNTech (NASDAQ:BNTX). If all goes well, BNT162b2 could very well become the first coronavirus vaccine available to Americans. 

BioNTech

It's not surprising that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation also owns shares of BioNTech. Again, though, the nonprofit foundation didn't invest in the German biotech stock because of its coronavirus program. 

The Gates Foundation first bought a position in BioNTech in September 2019, well before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. It invested $55 million in the biotech, with the potential for total funding to reach $100 million. The foundation's goal with this investment was to work with BioNTech to develop vaccines and immunotherapies for preventing HIV and tuberculosis (TB) infection.

BioNTech began developing its BNT162 COVID-19 vaccine program earlier this year. It had already made significant progress with this program when it announced a partnership with Pfizer in March.

How Come A Small Minority CULTURALLY Promotes And Profits Off Hoodrats But Not Walmartians?

advancingtime  |   We need a new demographic category: WALMARTIANS.

They are almost always overweight, usually functionally illiterate, often incapable of all but the most basic personal hygiene, not merely unemployed but also unemployable, addicted to corn syrup junk food and TV they were force-fed as children, convinced that nothing is their fault because they've never heard otherwise and physically aggressive whenever there is no prospect of immediate punishment. 

Such types were rare when I was a lad but now they are 10 to 20 percent of the population and increasing.

It's not their fault but it's time to cull the herd.

It should be noted that I started witting this article in December of 2019 but dropped it onto the back burner because of its questionable nature. At times, it seems deviant and dysfunctional behavior overlap. On occasion I have found myself, surprised, shocked, amazed, and even appalled at just how much the shape of the human body can be distorted by obesity or a lack of exercise. Widening the scope to people "deviating from the norm," at times it appears these often atypical humans are in a race to present us with the most bizarre. Some of these folks are not just offbeat or unusual but seem to be making an over the top effort to give new meaning to the term freaky.

An article by Ralph Nader that appeared on Common Dreams explored the idea that if you want to see where a country’s priorities lie you should look at the direction its culture is moving. The article which is linked above exhibits a very strong bit of a "leftist tinge," however, some of the points he makes seem valid. Nader writes, Plutocrats like to control the range of permissible public dialogue. Plutocrats also like to shape what society values. If you want to see where a country’s priorities lie, look at how it allocates its money. He contends that while teachers and nurses earn comparatively little for performing critical jobs, corporate bosses including those who pollute our planet and bankrupt defenseless families, make millions.

It may be simplistic to label this or that, good or bad but it could be argued our culture and society is geared much like the caste system. Today we are seeing inequality soar and it can be argued this tends to reduce the ability of individuals to move up the social ladder. The question is just how much of this is by design and due to the culturally elite putting their foot on the head of those below them.

Circling back to the subjects of weirdos, diversity, and individuality could it be this is all being encouraged to weaken and divide the power of the masses? For years Japan has been pointed to as a society that functions with little friction. Much of the credit is attributed to their culture and its homogeneous nature. Japan has a strong sense of group and national identity and little or no ethnic or racial diversity. Another unique aspect of Japanese society has a highly structured approach to managing and resolving these differences. 

Corporate Economization Is Complete Little Man - You Cannot Escape - No Lives Matter!

counterpunch  |  It is a truism to suggest that the public has now been replaced by the consumer; that the public good has been replaced by individual desire; that public space has been reduced to the private visions of the individual; that democracy has been sacrificed on the altar of economics. As Wendy Brown writes, in, Undoing the Demos, 2012, “Neoliberal reason, ubiquitous today in statecraft and the workplace, in jurisprudence, education, culture, and a vast range of quotidian activity, is converting the distinctly political character, meaning, and operation of democracy’s constituent elements into economic ones.”. Thus, the Left’s traditional urge to build a bureaucracy that restrains predatory commerce in the interest of the public good is subverted by the growth of a corporate state designed to suppress its vestigial caring dimension.

This neoliberal attribute fatally weakens the viability of the obvious ‘Alternative’ to which Thatcher was so averse, that of democratic socialism, which thrived in post-war Western Europe as it emerged from the worldwide crisis. Those governments were driven by a mission: to embrace responsibility for the health of all of their citizens – rather than let it be controlled by black marketeers or corporate looters; to ensure that elder care, youth services and childcare be freely available – not powered by profit; to provide good, free education to all – not restricted by its expense to the privileged few; to declare that housing and adequate nutrition are a human right – not resources to be leveraged by the financially strong; to assert that homelessness has no place in an enlightened state – not accepted as a necessary alternative to the supposed evils of welfare; to declare that the mentally ill, together with the anxious and alienated, find a haven in adequate social services – not left to swell the ranks of mendicant street people; and to ensure that public order is maintained without a militarized police force supporting the criminalization of poverty, the presumption of Black and minority criminality and the thuggish treatment of those it arrests. All these beneficent outcomes must now be sought elsewhere. As Bruno Latour points out in his recent essay, ‘Are you ready to extract yourself from the Economy?’, “After a hundred years devoted to socialism limited just to the redistribution of the benefits of the economy, it might now be more a matter of inventing a socialism that contests production itself”.

Latour makes the point that in the miraculous COVID-inspired halting of production, travel and pollution, the world discovered a hitherto unsuspected superpower – the power of interruption. We have the ability, collectively, it now seems, to become globalization interrupters, neoliberalism interrupters and interrupters of all those modes of production that are destroying the habitability of the earth for humans and our neighboring species. He suggests we have an opportunity of, “Getting away from production as the overriding principle of our relationship to the world.” This constitutes a retreat from the very principle that informed the colonization of the Americas and continues to inform its despoliation.

Nike Thrives On the Empty Stomachs and Other Hardships of Young Women Worldwide...,

counterpunch |  Nike changes its brand more often than Madonna and more profitably. In the company’s latest transformation, Nike has risked–make that sought–the ire of Donald Trump and his drones by making Colin Kaepernick the face of its latest campaign under the inspiring slogan: “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” 

Kaepernick’s brief presence in an otherwise sentimental ad triggered a tweet from Trump and a boycott by the Deplorables, who took to burning their overpriced footwear. It was precisely the response Nike wanted and sales of Nike products have surged over the last week. With social justice icon Kaepernick fronting the brand, no one will be thinking about Nike’s wretched labor practices inside its sweatshops in Honduras, Indonesia and Vietnam. 

This is a proven formula for the company. When Nike was under intense public scrutiny in the 1990s, it recruited civil rights legend Andrew Young to whitewash the company’s record. The image changed, but the cruel conditions didn’t. 

Now, with the company rocked by sexual harassment charges against some of its top executives, Nike’s betting that Kaepernick will refrain from speaking out against the dismal practices of his employer. Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and LeBron James have all remained mute about the savage treatment of the workers who make the shoes and apparel that are sold under their image. So as a reminder who Nike really is under the patina of its pitchmen, we’re running this excerpt from my book Born Under a Bad Sky.–J

Silly Kneegrows: I KNOW You Don't Believe Nike "Just Did It" For You!?!?

theconservativetreehouse |  From a pure economic/financial perspective this Nike  branding campaign doesn’t make sense…. unless, you realize a much bigger picture. A hidden bigger picture.

On its face, it just seems absurd. Why would any major corporation intentionally stake out a branding position that is adverse to their financial interests?

I’ve spoken to some very excellent business actuaries on this late today; and one specific conversation finally helped to make it all make sense.  During that conversation a good ally shared: “a multinational corporation would never make a branding decision adverse to their financial interests. Unless there is a hidden risk unrelated to what is visible on the surface.” ….

''BINGO, there it is, the lightbulb went on.

A hidden risk that likely has nothing whatsoever to do with Colin Kaepernick.

The bigger risk to Nike has nothing to do with Black Lives Matter, U.S. Consumers, or Antifa-like political advocacy. The bigger financial risk to the Nike Corporation has everything to do with geopolitics and a reset of international trade agreements.

Here’s the hidden aspect with research to back it up.  Nike Inc. has hitched its massive corporate existence to a 10-year business plan that is dependent on the continuance of recently negotiated manufacturing contracts.

The Nike political branding position is reconciled when you look at the bigger picture and see where the real financial risk aligns. The Nike economic decision is to align with China, and by extension North Korea, for a position of mutual benefit. It is all about the proverbial $$$$ and Nike’s best financial play is to mitigate risk and assist Communist China in their trade strategy.

China is willing to subsidize Nike (lower production costs), and replace any dropped revenue, in exchange for mutually beneficial political opposition against Trump and by extension his policies that are a risk to Beijing. As a result there is minimal financial risk to the Nike Corporation.

And with the current multinational Wall Street agenda now being confronted, we should not expect this approach to stop at Nike.

Father Of Synthetic Genomics Better Be Careful Tampering With Whydte Folks Money....,

Genomeweb |  Human Longevity (HLI) is suing the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) and a number of unknown defendants over the misappropriation and use of trade secrets passed along by Craig Venter, the founder of both the company and the institute that bears his name.

In a complaint filed last Friday with the US District Court for the Southern District of California, Human Longevity alleges that upon his termination from HLI on May 24, Venter took a company-owned laptop with trade secrets and passed on protected information to the Venter Institute, of which he is chairman and CEO. HLI also claims that the institute is working on a product that will compete with its own business.

According to the complaint, Venter was CEO of Human Longevity from 2014 until January 2017, when he became the firm's executive chairman and signed a "proprietary information and inventions" agreement. He assumed the role of interim CEO in November of 2017 until his employment was terminated in May of this year. During his time at HLI, Venter used a company-owned laptop computer, the contents of which were backed up in the cloud, and consistently used his JCVI email address rather than his HLI email to conduct company business, the complaint states.

In the spring of this year, Venter "withheld critical information from the board and the HLI investors regarding the conduct of an HLI key executive which would likely result in termination," the complaint says. Further, in May, Venter had an HLI-paid counsel "draft a Venter-favorable employment contract" and appointed a new interim president without conferring with the HLI board first.

On May 24, the HLI board "considered a rushed investor deal which Venter presented to them only less than two weeks earlier," the terms of which the board considered one-sided. The deal would have provided financial incentives to Venter and offered the new investor rights that had already been granted to another party, according to the complaint. "At that point, the HLI board voted to terminate Venter from HLI," it states.

Following his termination, Venter left the HLI offices with the company-owned laptop and "immediately began using the HLI computer and server to communicate to the public, solicit HLI investors and employees," the complaint says. In a Twitter message on May 24, Venter said that he was retiring from HLI and returning to JCVI.

His access to the HLI server and HLI emails was disabled the next day, but the company alleges that "even after his HLI termination, Venter used the HLI computer, accessed and sent HLI proprietary information and trade secrets," including communications involving Series C and Asia JV Series A documents.

Why Would Victims of Globalization Be Loyal And Patriotic Servants Of Globalism?

nakedcapitalism |  The term “economic shock therapy” is based on an analogy with electroshock therapy for mental patients. One important analysis of it comes from Naomi Klein, who became famous explaining in 2000 the system of fashion production through subsidiaries that don’t adhere to the safety rules taken so seriously in Western countries (some of you may recall the scandal of Benetton and Rana Plaza, where more than a thousand workers at a Bangladesh factory producing Benetton (and other) clothes were crushed under a collapsing building).

Klein analyzes a future (already here to some degree) in which multinational corporations freely fish from one market or another in an effort to find the most suitable (i.e. cheapest) labor force. Sometimes relocating from one nation to another is not possible, but if you can bring the job market of other countries here in the form of a low-cost mass of people competing for employment, then why bother?

The Doctrine in Practice

Continuing flows of low-cost labor can be useful for cutting costs. West Germany successfully absorbed East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but the dirty secret of this achievement is the exploitation of workers from the former East, as Reuters reports.

The expansion of the EU to Poland (and the failed attempt to incorporate the Ukraine) has allowed many European businesses to shift local production to nations where the average cost of a blue or white collar worker is much lower (by 60-70% on average) than in Western European countries.

We see further evidence of damage to the European middle class daily, from France where the (at least verbally) pro-globalization Macron is cutting social welfare to attract foreign investment, to Germany where many ordinary workers are seriously exploited. And so on through the UK and Italy.

Political Reactions

The migrant phenomenon is a perfect counterpoint to a threadbare middle class, given its role as a success story within the narrative of globalization.

Economic migrants are eager to obtain wealth on the level of the Western middle class – and this is of course a legitimate desire. However, to climb the social ladder, they are willing to do anything: from accepting low albeit legal salaries to picking tomatoes illegally (as Alessandro Gassman, son of the famous actor, reminded us).

The middle class is a silent mass that for many years has painfully digested globalization, while believing in the promises of globalist politicians,” explains Luciano Ghelfi, a journalist of international affairs who has followed Lega from its beginnings. Ghelfi continues:

This mirage has fallen under the blows it has received from the most serious economic crisis since the Second World War. Foreign trade, easy credit (with the American real estate bubble of 2008 as a direct consequence), peace missions in Libya (carried out by pro-globalization French and English actors, with one motive being in my opinion the diversion of energy resources away from [the Italian] ENI) were supposed to have created a miracle; they have in reality created a climate of global instability.

Italy is of course not untouched by this phenomenon. It’s easy enough to give an explanation for the Five Stars getting votes from part of the southern electorate that is financially in trouble and might hope for some sort of subsidy, but the North? The choice of voting center right (with a majority leaning toward Lega) can be explained in only one way – the herd (the middle class) has tried to rise up.

I asked him, “So in your opinion, is globalization in stasis? Or is it radically changing?”

He replied:

I think unrestrained globalization has taken a hit. In Italy as well, as we have seen recently, businesses are relocating abroad. And the impoverished middle class finds itself forced to compete for state resources (subsidies) and jobs which can be threatened by an influx of economic migrants towards which enormous resources have been dedicated – just think of the 4.3 billion Euros that the last government allocated toward economic migrants.

This is an important element in the success of Lega: it is a force that has managed to understand clearly the exhaustion of the impoverished middle class, and that has proposed a way out, or has at least elaborated a vision opposing the rose-colored glasses of globalization.

In all of this, migrants are more victims than willing actors, and they become an object on which the fatigue, fear, and in the most extreme cases, hatred of the middle class can easily focus.

Meanwhile, Profit-Seeking Bankster Parasites Busy Eyeballing What Sustainably Remains....,

eurasiareview |  Indigenous Peoples have ownership, use and management rights over at least a quarter of the world’s land surface according to a new study published this week in the journal Nature Sustainability.

The 38 million square kilometers (14.6 million square miles) are spread across 87 countries or politically distinct areas and overlap with about 40 percent of all terrestrial protected areas.

The results of the study provides strong evidence that recognizing the rights of Indigenous Peoples to their traditional lands and waters is not only an ethical obligation it is essential to meeting local and global conservation goals. The authors say that more collaborative partnerships between Indigenous Peoples and governments would yield significant benefits for conservation of ecologically valuable landscapes, ecosystems, and genetic diversity for future generations.

“Understanding the extent of lands over which Indigenous Peoples retain traditional connection is critical for several conservation and climate agreements,” said Professor Stephen Garnett from Charles Darwin University in Australia who led the international consortium that developed the maps. “Not until we pulled together the best available published information on Indigenous lands did we really appreciate the extraordinary scale of Indigenous Peoples’ ongoing influence,” he said.

There are at least 370 million people who define themselves as Indigenous, are descended from populations who inhabited a country before the time of conquest or colonization, and who retain at least some of their own social, economic, cultural and political practices. The proportion of countries with indigenous people is highest in Africa and lowest in Europe-West Asia.

Failure Migration

unz  |  The victory of Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) in the recent Mexican presidential election likely means an increase in immigration to the United States. AMLO has called immigration a “human right that we will defend” and will probably continue the Mexican government’s meddling in American affairs. AMLO has also reportedly promised to demand “respect” from President Trump and the United States, which probably means less cooperation in stopping Central American migrants from moving through the country. [Mexican populist Lopez Obrador triumphs in presidential race, by Sabrina Rodriguez, Politico, July 1, 2018] If Mexico continues its decline into lawlessness or goes into recession, immigration from Mexico itself will sharply increase.

The ironic result of all this: the worse Mexico performs, the more powerful that nation becomes. Many nominal American citizens believe their first loyalty is with Mexico. Though they don’t want to live there, they don’t want to surrender their identity. [Not a country, not even a team, by Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, June 26, 2018] Exporting its underclass to the U.S. spares Mexico and other Latin American countries the need for internal reform. As Tucker Carlson recently put it: “America is now Mexico’s social safety net, and that’s a very good deal for the Mexican ruling class”. [Mexican presidential candidate calls mass migration to US a “human right,” by Dominic Mancini, Daily Caller, June 22, 2018]

Furthermore, Mexico and other Latin American countries continue to benefit from the endless flow of remittances from the U.S. America is literally paying welfare benefits to illegal aliens (if only for their anchor babies), some portion of which they then proceed to send home [Cutting welfare to illegal aliens would pay for Trump’s wall, by Paul Sperry, New York Post, March 10, 2018].

This phenomenon should be termed “Failure Migration.” The lower a people’s level of civilizational accomplishment, the more that people is able to expand its influence.