SCMP | The new coronavirus has an HIV-like mutation that means its ability to bind with human
cells could be up to 1,000 times as strong as the Sars virus, according
to new research by scientists in China and Europe.
The discovery could help to explain not only how the infection has spread but also where it came from and how best to fight it.
Scientists
showed that Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome) entered the human
body by binding with a receptor protein called ACE2 on a cell membrane.
And some early studies suggested that the new coronavirus, which shares
about 80 per cent of the genetic structure of Sars, might follow a
similar path.
But
the ACE2 protein does not exist in large quantities in healthy people,
and this partly helped to limit the scale of the Sars outbreak of
2002-03, in which infected about 8,000 people around the world.
Other
highly contagious viruses, including HIV and Ebola, target an enzyme
called furin, which works as a protein activator in the human body. Many
proteins are inactive or dormant when they are produced and have to be
“cut” at specific points to activate their various functions.
When
looking at the genome sequence of the new coronavirus, Professor Ruan
Jishou and his team at Nankai University in Tianjin found a section of
mutated genes that did not exist in Sars, but were similar to those
found in HIV and Ebola.
“This
finding suggests that 2019-nCoV [the new coronavirus] may be
significantly different from the Sars coronavirus in the infection
pathway,” the scientists said in a paper published this month on
Chinaxiv.org, a platform used by the Chinese Academy of Sciences to
release scientific research papers before they have been peer-reviewed.
“This virus may use the packing mechanisms of other viruses such as HIV.”
According to the study, the mutation can generate a structure known as a cleavage site in the new coronavirus’ spike protein.
The
virus uses the outreaching spike protein to hook on to the host cell,
but normally this protein is inactive. The cleavage site structure’s job
is to trick the human furin protein, so it will cut and activate the
spike protein and cause a “direct fusion” of the viral and cellular
membranes.
Compared to the Sars’ way of entry, this binding method is “100 to 1,000 times” as efficient, according to the study.
Just two weeks after its release, the paper is already the most viewed ever on Chinarxiv.
jrnyquist | As everybody knows, according to the views propagated by Western
scholars, humanity as a whole originated from one single mother in
Africa. Therefore, no race can claim racial superiority. However,
according to the research conducted by most Chinese scholars, the
Chinese are different from other races on earth. We did not originate in
Africa. Instead, we originated independently in the land of China. The
Peking Man at Zhoukoudian that we are all familiar with represents a
phase of our ancestors’ evolution. “The Project of Searching for the
Origins of the Chinese Civilization” currently undertaken in our country
is aimed at a more comprehensive and systematic research on the origin,
process and development of the ancient Chinese civilization. We use to
say, “Chinese civilization has had a history of five thousand years.”
But now, many experts engaged in research in varied fields including
archeology, ethnic cultures, and regional cultures have reached
consensus that the new discoveries such as the Hongshan Culture in the
northeast, the Liangahn Cutlure in Zhejiang province, the Jinsha Ruins
in Sichuan province, and the Yongzhou Shun Emperor Cultural Site in
Hunan province are all compelling evidence of the exitence of China’s
early civilizations, and they prove that China’s rice-growing
agricultural history alone can be traced back as far as 8,000 to 10,000
years. This refutes the concept of “five thousand years of Chinese
civilization.”
Therefore, we can assert that we are the product of cultural roots of
more than a million years, and a single Chinese entity of two thousand
years. This is the Chinese entity of two thousand years. This is the
Chinese nation that calls itself, “descendants of Yan and Huang,” the
Chinese nation that we are so proud of. Hitler’s Germany had once
bragged that the German race was the most superior race on earth, but
the fact is, our nation is far superior to the Germans.
During our long history, our people have disseminated throughout the
Americas and the regions along the Pacific Rim, and they became Indians
in the Americas and the East Asian ethnic groups in the South Pacific.
We all know that on account of our national superiority, during the
thriving and prosperous Tang Dynasty our civilization was at the peak of
the world. We were the center of the world civilization, and no other
civilization in the world was comparable to ours. Later on, because of
our complacency, narrow-mindedness, and the self-enclosure of our own
country, we were surpassed by Western civilization, and the center of
the world shifted to the West.
In reviewing history, one may ask: Will the center of the world civilization shift back to China?
Comrade He Xin put it in his report to the Central Committee in 1988:
If the fact is that the center of leadership of the world was located
in Europe as of the 18th Century, and later shifted to the United States
in the mid-20th century the center of leadership of the world will
shift to the East of our planet. And, “the East” of course mainly refers
to China.
Harvard | Two of the world’s biggest threats may someday be reduced by wires
thousands of times thinner than a hair but capable of detecting a single
virus. The specter of worldwide viral epidemics is always with us, so
detecting them quickly offers the possibility of saving thousands of
lives. The pathogens also can be stealthy biological weapons, making
their positive detection a vital national defense requirement.
“We want to find a single virus before it finds you,” says Charles
Lieber, Hyman Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University. Tests
recently completed in his laboratory show that these unimaginably thin
nanowires can sense and distinguish between viruses that cause flu,
measles, and eye infections. Lieber believes future versions will be
able to spot HIV, Ebola, SARS, West Nile, hepatitis, bird flu, and other
dangerous viruses.
“Viruses are among the most important causes of human disease and are
of increasing concern as agents for bioterrorism,” Lieber says. “Our
work shows that nanoscale silicon wires can be configured as detectors
that turn on or off in the presence of a single virus particle. Such
detectors could be fashioned into arrays capable of sensing thousands of
different viruses, ushering in a new era for diagnoses, biosafety, and
quick response to viral outbreaks.”
“Nano” refers to a “nanometer,” one billionth of a meter, four hundred billionths of an inch, or about 10 atoms in size. One hundred
thousand wires, each 20 nanometers long, would fit on the head of a pin.
The Department of Defense, Office of Naval Research, and National
Cancer Institute all supported Lieber’s research, and at least two
commercial companies have shown interest in manufacturing nanosensors.
In his office, Lieber shows visitors a two-inch-square silicon and
metal chip containg an array of nanowires and two pinhead-size entry
ports through which blood, saliva, or other bodily fluids can enter. Air
samples put into a fluid solution would also be tested this way.
On March 16th 2008 I called out and subsequently rejected the Great "Unifier" after he made his responsible negroe speech and repudiated Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Like Obama, Cheat Bootyplug is a nobody selected by elites from sociopath central casting for the purpose of installing a republican blue dog as the head of the DNC corporatist shill party. Bootyplug is toast with Black and Latino voters, so I'm not quite sure who his handlers thought he could "unify" with his glib, empty rhetoric.
Kennedy was the first to inform the audience of the death of Martin Luther King, causing some in the audience to scream and wail. Several of Kennedy's aides were even worried that the delivery of this information would result in a riot. Once the audience quieted down Kennedy acknowledged that many in the audience would be filled with anger, especially since the assassin was believed to be a white, and that he had felt the same when his brother John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. These remarks surprised Kennedy aides, who had never heard him speak of John Kennedy's death. Kennedy continued, saying that the country had to make an effort to "go beyond these rather difficult times," and then quoted a poem by the Greek playwright Aeschylus. To conclude Kennedy said that the country needed and wanted unity between blacks and whites, asked the audience members to pray for the King family and the country, and once more quoted the ancient Greeks. Despite rioting in other major American cities, Indianapolis was calm the night after Kennedy's remarks, which is believed to have been in part because of the speech. The speech itself has been listed as one of the greatest in American history, ranked 17th on American Rhetoric's Top 100 speeches in the 20th century. Former US Congressman and media host Joe Scarborough said that it was Kennedy's greatest speech, and was what prompted him into entering into public service. Journalist Joe Klein has called it "politics in its grandest form and highest purpose," and said that it "marked the end of an era" before American political life was taken over by consultants and pollsters. It is also featured as the prologue of his book, Politics Lost.
libertyblitzkrieg | It’s important to understand the ruling class doesn’t actually fear
Trump or Sanders individually — any one person can be dealt with. What they really fear is you.
They fear people flocking to unapproved candidates and then talking
about things the establishment doesn’t want them talking about. This is
the main reason the whole Russiagate fantasy was unrolled against Trump
and pushed hysterically by mass media.
By ensuring “the resistance” to Trump revolved around some invented
intelligence agency narrative, the power structure was able to prevent
large numbers of people from talking about anything real or significant
for four years straight. Although it didn’t remove Trump from office, it
successfully reduced hitherto thoughtful people into emotionally broken
mental midgets.
This is the reason the exact same tactic was just unrolled against Bernie Sanders, with Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post reporting
the day before the Nevada caucuses that Russia is also supposedly
helping Sanders. It’s ridiculous, but you have to understand the
strategy here. If Sanders can’t be prevented from winning the
nomination, the establishment needs a plan B, and that plan appears to
be Russiagate all over again. These people aren’t very creative.
When it became clear Trump couldn’t be stopped he was smeared with
being a tool of the Russians, and the same seeds are being planted
around the Sanders campaign. It doesn’t matter how preposterous it is,
the primary goal is to ensure nobody ever talks about anything
important. Absent Russia hysteria, a Sanders vs. Trump matchup would
quickly become a battle of who’s more populist, and issues that make
so-called elites very uncomfortable would become widely discussed. The
ruling class doesn’t want the public talking about such things so they
need to turn the election into a complete circus if Sanders can’t be
blocked. Instead of talking about economic insecurity, healthcare, the
cost of college and wars for empire, the goal is to make Sanders and
Trump spend the entire campaign season arguing about who hates Russia
more.
The important takeaway here is how completely terrified and decrepit
the ruling class of this country really is. They have no argument or
philosophy about anything important. As such, their only tactic is to
overwhelm the public with nonsense and invented narratives in order to
divide, befuddle and control the masses while keeping the imperial
oligarchy running exactly as it has for decades. Once you see the game,
it’s impossible to unsee it, but the good news is we all possess within
ourselves the power they fear most. The power to think for ourselves and
to reject ridiculous lies.
downwithtyranny | This is a small point that leads to a larger one. Consider what Mike
Bloomberg is building within the Democratic Party, within the DNC.
According to the following analysis he's turning the DNC into an
anti-Sanders machine, a force loyal to himself, that will operate even
after Sanders is nominated, even after Sanders is elected, if he so
chooses.
With that he hopes to limit and control what Sanders and his rebellion
can do. It's the ultimate billionaire counter-rebellion — own the Party
machine that the president normally controls, then use it against him.
Our source for this thought is Glen Ford at Black Agenda Report.
Ford is one of the more vitriolic defenders of radical change in
America, but in this analysis I don't think he's wrong, at least in
making the case that Bloomberg is giving himself that option. But do
decide for yourself.
Here's his case:
Bloomberg Wants to Swallow the Democrats and Spit Out the Sandernistas
If, somehow, Bernie Sanders is allowed to win the nomination, Michael
Bloomberg and other plutocrats will have created a Democratic Party
machinery purpose-built to defy Sanders -- as nominee, and even as
president.
The details of his argument are here (emphasis added):
Bloomberg has already laid the groundwork to directly seize the party
machinery, the old fashioned way: by buying it and stacking it with his
own, paid operatives, with a war-against-the-left budget far bigger than
the existing Democratic operation. Bloomberg’s participation in
Wednesday’s debate, against all the rules, is proof-of-purchase.
In addition to the nearly million dollar down payment to the party in
November that sealed the deal for the debate rules change, Bloomberg has
already pledged to pay the full salaries of 500 political staffers for
the Democratic National Committee all the way through the November
election, no matter who wins the nomination. Essentially, Bloomberg will be running the election for the corporate wing of the party, even if Sanders is the nominee.
independent | Michael Bloomberg called Goldman Sachs bankers his ‘peeps’ and promised to defend them, leaked tape reveals. Presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg is being criticised for telling bankers he would have defended them as president in a leaked audio from a private Goldman Sachs event in 2016.
At the event, Mr Bloomberg first described the
audience as his “peeps”, and said that had he run for president that
year, his “first campaign platform” would have been “to defend the banks.”
But, he added, “you know how well that’s gonna go down in this country”.
Mr Bloomberg then defended the banks more
seriously: “Somebody's gotta stand up and do what we need. A healthy
banking system that's going to take risks because that's what creates
the jobs for everybody. And nobody's willing to say that.”
The audio was uploaded to hosting platform Soundcloud and sent to CNN
and several journalists. The sender used the email address and username
“CancelGoldman”, and claimed to have worked at Goldman Sachs for 14
years.
The Bloomberg campaign has confirmed that the audio is real. In an email to CNN,
spokesperson Stu Loeser said that much of what Mr Bloomberg said was in
jest, and that his remarks were of an analytical standard almost
unheard of in current politics.
theatlantic | When last in power, Bloomberg presided over the mistreatment of
Democrats who sought to protest Republicans, violating the
constitutional rights of hundreds of dissenters.
At the time, Bloomberg was a first-term Republican mayor of New York.
The GOP hoped that holding the 2004 Republican National Convention in
the city, a site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, would help reelect
George W. Bush. Protests in deep-blue New York were inevitable.
Bloomberg had months to prepare.
And he did. Nearly as soon as the convention location was announced,
the police department that Bloomberg presided over launched a secret
mission to infiltrate protest groups, TheNew York Times later reported:
For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention,
teams of undercover New York City police officers traveled to cities
across the country, Canada and Europe to conduct covert observations of
people who planned to protest at the convention, according to police
records and interviews.
From Albuquerque to Montreal, San Francisco to Miami, undercover New
York police officers attended meetings of political groups, posing as
sympathizers or fellow activists, the records show.
Some people planned to break the law during protests,
but in hundreds of secret reports, the NYPD “chronicled the views and
plans of people who had no apparent intention of breaking the law,”
including “members of street theater companies, church groups and
antiwar organizations, as well as environmentalists and people opposed
to the death penalty, globalization and other government policies.”
theintercept |I am one of the many women Mike
Bloomberg’s company tried to silence through nondisclosure agreements.
The funny thing is, I never even worked for Bloomberg.
But my story shows the lengths that the Bloomberg machine will go to
in order to avoid offending Beijing. Bloomberg’s company, Bloomberg LP,
is so dependent on the vast China market for its business that its
lawyers threatened to devastate my family financially if I didn’t sign
an NDA silencing me about how Bloomberg News killed a story critical of
Chinese Communist Party leaders.
It was only when I hired Edward
Snowden’s lawyers in Hong Kong that Bloomberg LP eventually called off
their hounds after many attempts to intimidate me.
In 2012, I was working toward a Ph.D. in
sociology at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and my husband, Michael
Forsythe, was a lead writer on a Bloomberg News article about
the vast accumulation of wealth by relatives of Chinese President Xi
Jinping, part of an award-winning “Revolution to Riches” series about
Chinese leaders.
Soon after Bloomberg published the article on Xi’s family wealth in
June 2012, my husband received death threats conveyed by a woman who
told him she represented a relative of Xi. The woman conveying the
threats specifically mentioned the danger to our whole family; our two
children were 6 and 8 years old at the time. The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos
reports a similar encounter in his award-winning book, “Age of
Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China,” when the
same woman told Osnos’s wife: “He [Forsythe] and his family can’t stay
in China. It’s no longer safe,” she said. “Something will happen. It
will look like an accident. Nobody will know what happened. He’ll just
be found dead.”
The experience was especially terrifying because it came just months
after the murder of a British businessman, Neil Heywood, who was
poisoned by the wife of a senior Chinese leader, Bo Xilai, according to
Chinese state media. His body was reportedly discovered in a hotel in
the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing. While our family spent the
kids’ summer vacation in 2012 outside of China, Bloomberg executives
kept my husband busy in nonstop conference calls about how to maintain
our security. I had recurring nightmares about my young children getting
beaten up or killed. I desperately wanted to speak publicly about the
death threats, feeling it would give us stronger protection, but
Bloomberg News wanted us not to say anything about it while the company
conducted its own internal investigation. I had been loyal to the
company ever since my husband and I married in 2002, and I didn’t want
to jeopardize his job. I stayed silent until October 26, 2012, when
another (unrelated) story was published in defiance of the Chinese
government. I decided to tweet that we had received death threats after
the Bloomberg story on Xi Jinping.
Within hours of my tweets — the original and my replies to questions —
a Bloomberg manager called my husband and said, “Get your wife to
delete her tweets.” I did not delete them, but I also did not tweet or
speak publicly about the death threats again. I did not want to anger
the company because we needed it to relocate us to Hong Kong, where our
children would be safe. As we finished the remainder of our time in
Beijing, applying for schools in Hong Kong and preparing for our move, I
lived in constant fear. Would someone get to our children while they
were on their way to or from school? Who was watching and listening to
us? I obsessively pulled down all our window blinds at night in case
Chinese security agents were watching us. I was careful not to speak
loudly about our plans in our home or on my phone in case we were
bugged.
In August 2013, I finally relaxed as we flew out of Beijing and moved
to a temporary apartment in Hong Kong. I thought that our yearlong
nightmare had ended. But things would soon get even worse.
My husband had been working for many months on another investigative
report for Bloomberg about financial ties between one of China’s richest
men, Wang Jianlin, and the families of senior Communist Party
officials, including relatives of Xi. Bloomberg editors had thus far
backed the story. A Bloomberg managing editor, Jonathan Kaufman, said in
an email in late September 2013, “I am in awe of the way you tracked
down and deciphered the financial holdings and the players. … It’s a
real revelation. Looking forward to pushing it up the line,” according
to an account published by the Financial Times.
Then Bloomberg killed the story at the last minute, and the company
fired my husband in November after comments by Bloomberg News
editor-in-chief Matt Winkler were leaked. “If we run the story, we’ll be
kicked out of China,” Winkler reportedly said on a company call.
theintercept |In October 2014, on a stage in San Francisco in front of a
live audience, Katie Couric asked Mike Bloomberg whether he had ever
“sexted on Snapchat.” The former New York City mayor, speaking alongside
Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit,
joked that he “couldn’t answer the question.” But the question prompted
Bloomberg to describe his views on data collection, and a personal
“Richard Nixon lesson” about record-keeping.
What followed was a lighthearted discussion of digital privacy, in
which Bloomberg, now a candidate in the Democratic presidential
race, praised the National Security Agency and said he doesn’t have a
problem with apps selling users’ personal data, as long as consumers
understand what is happening.
“Look, if you don’t want it to be in the public domain, don’t take
that picture, don’t write it down. In this day and age, you’ve got to be
pretty naive to believe that the NSA isn’t listening to everything and
reading every email,” Bloomberg said. “And incidentally, given how
dangerous the world is, we should hope they are, because this is really
serious, what’s going on in the world.”
Bloomberg’s comments in 2014 came more than a year after the first
disclosures of documents by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, but before a federal appeals court ruled
that the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records was illegal.
Bloomberg did not describe any specific NSA program or form of data
collection in detail, but the lighthearted conversation contains
insights into his views on digital privacy.
Bloomberg mentioned Snowden by name, saying that because hackers or
whistleblowers can obtain and leak records, he joked that he has a rule
against keeping records. “And when you write something, you take a
picture and somebody leaks it,” Bloomberg said. “How many times does
that have to happen before you realize it’s gonna happen again and it
could happen to you? And so whether it’s Snowden or some hacker or
something, it’s what I call the Richard Nixon lesson: Don’t record it.”
imperial.ac.uk |Dr Sangeeta Bhatia,
report author, explained: “We compared the average monthly number of
passengers travelling from Wuhan to major international destinations
with the number of COVID-19 cases that have been detected overseas.
Based on these data, we then estimate the number of cases that are
undetected globally and find that approximately two thirds of the cases
might be undetected at this point. Our findings confirm similar analyses
carried out by other groups.”
As of 20 February 2020, over 74,000 cases of COVID-19 (formerly
2019-nCoV) have been reported in China (with 2121 deaths). Over 1000
cases have been confirmed in 29 regions and countries outside mainland
China (including Hong Kong SAR and Macau SAR).
Dr Natsuko Imai,
report author, said: “We are starting to see more cases reported from
countries and regions outside mainland China with no known travel
history or link to Wuhan City. Our analysis, which extends and confirms
previously released analysis by other groups using flight volumes from
Wuhan City and the reported number of COVID-19 cases, demonstrates the
importance of surveillance and case detection if countries are to
successfully contain the epidemic."
Exported cases vary in the severity of their clinical symptoms,
making some cases more difficult to detect than others. Some countries
have detected significantly fewer than would have been expected based on
the volume of flight passengers arriving from Wuhan City, China.
Gina Cuomo-Dannenburg, report author, added: “We compiled data from a
variety of publicly available sources, such as national and provincial
ministries of health and local news, to determine information about
travel history, exposure and symptom onset of individual patients
observed outside of mainland China. We would like to thank countries for
their continued transparency in presenting information on new cases,
and would like to encourage communication of patient outcomes going
forward to present a true picture of severity and clinical
presentation.”
Based on comparisons with Singapore only, 63% of cases are estimated
to be undetected. Comparing with Singapore, Finland, Nepal, Belgium,
Sweden, India, Sri Lanka, and Canada, 73% of cases are estimated to be
undetected.
strategic-culture | The New Silk Roads – or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – were
launched by President Xi Jinping in 2013, first in Central Asia
(Nur-Sultan) and then Southeast Asia (Jakarta).
One year later, the Chinese economy overtook the U.S. on a PPP basis.
Inexorably, year after year since the start of the millennium, the U.S.
share of the global economy shrinks while China’s increases.
China is already the key hub of the global economy and the leading trade partner of nearly 130 nations.
While the U.S. economy is hollowed out, and the casino financing of
the U.S. government – repo markets and all – reads as a dystopian
nightmare, the civilization-state steps ahead in myriad areas of
technological research, not least because of Made in China 2025.
China largely beats the U.S. on patent filings and produces at least 8 times as many STEM graduates a year than the U.S., earning the status of top contributor to global science.
A vast array of nations across the Global South signed on to be part
of BRI, which is planned for completion in 2049. Last year alone,
Chinese companies signed contracts worth up to $128 billion in
large-scale infrastructure projects in dozen of nations.
The only economic competitor to the U.S. is busy reconnecting most of the world to a 21st century, fully networked version of a trade system that was at its peak for over a millennia: the Eurasian Silk Roads.
Inevitably this state of things is something interlocking sectors of the U.S. ruling class simply would not accept.
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.
gizmodo | It’s no secret that Amazon’s marketplace is overrun with garbage—literal
or otherwise—and that the company struggles and often fails to manage
its own massive marketplace that lumps legitimately trustworthy brands
and products in with third-party sellers. Amazon’s latest challenge
appears to be regulating a burgeoning market for products feeding off of
flu and coronavirus fears—including products that claim to “kill” them.
In an email obtained by CNBC, Amazon has been contacting third-party
merchants about products that make extraordinary and unapproved claims
relating to coronavirus, as a strain that originated in Wuhan, China continues to spread
globally. In that email, Amazon informs a seller that the company
removed from its store an item “identified as a face mask or related
product that makes unapproved medical marketing claims regarding
coronavirus or the flu.”
The email cites federal regulations on products making unapproved
medical claims in their marketing and further states that its own rules
bar “the listing or sale of products that are marketed as unapproved or
unregistered medical devices.” According to CNBC, users have also posted
about receiving these warnings in seller groups on Facebook.
Disturbingly, CNBC also found multiplelivelistings
for disinfectants that were still up on Amazon’s marketplace as of this
writing, several of which claimed the item “kills coronavirus.”
Moreover, Gizmodo found that simply searching “kills coronavirus” or
“kill coronavirus” turns up numerous products with these claims in their titles, so they’re not exactly needles in a haystack.
Amazon did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the seller
notice, its ongoing response to the products, and items that remained
on its site at the time of publication.
NYPost | More eyes are reading about Ghislaine Maxwell than seeing her. Now we
hear from her longtime, oldtime friend/acquaintance Christina Oxenberg.
“I remember it: 1997. Never forget it. We were alone. Pacing around
her living room, hands on her hips, the defiance of a champion
gladiator, she said many things. All creepy. Unorthodox. Strange. I
could not believe whatever she was saying was real.
“Stuff like: ‘Jeffrey and I have everyone on video tape!’
“I didn’t have it in me to ask anything additional. Like, if she’d
actually had the actual consent of those people she videotaped. Or even
who they were. I wish I had asked. At the time, I heard a lot of things,
none of which had the ring of truth. In fact, I thought the woman was a
raving lunatic. But I wasn’t comfortable. I was keen to get away, and I
figured the less I asked the sooner I get out.
“I have since told the FBI what I know. They asked if I’m willing to
testify should it be necessary, and I said, ‘Absolutely yes.’
“I care that the women victimized as children are given some form of reparation. Maxwell’s millions are a good place to start.”
bloomberg | On Feb. 6, Charles Lieber was elected
to the National Academy of Engineering, making the Harvard
nanoscientist just the 30th person in history to achieve the hallowed
hat trick at the apex of American science: membership in all three
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
A
week earlier, however, he was ushered into a different federal
institution in downtown Boston, in handcuffs and an orange jailhouse
jumpsuit. He left the federal courthouse after posting $1 million in bail.
Lieber’s arrest on Jan. 28
came in connection with his dealings in China. He hasn’t been charged
with any type of economic espionage, intellectual-property theft, or
export violations. Instead, he’s accused of lying to U.S. Department of
Defense investigators about his work with the People’s Republic—an
eye-popping escalation of the Trump administration’s pursuit of scientists and engineers for secretly collaborating with America’s economic rival.
Until now, the government crackdown on undisclosed China ties has
ensnared relatively obscure researchers, nearly all of them immigrants
from China, in red states such as Georgia, Oklahoma, and Texas. But by
targeting Lieber, the chairman of Harvard’s chemistry department and a
veritable ivory tower blue blood, prosecutors struck at the crimson
heart of the academic elite, raising fears that globalism, when it comes
to doing science with China, is being criminalized. The collateral
impact, if it deters Chinese students and researchers from coming to the
U.S., threatens the American leadership in science and technology that
the Trump administration says it’s trying to protect, academic leaders
warn.
According to a government affidavit, signed by a Federal Bureau of
Investigation agent named Robert Plumb, Lieber signed at least three
agreements with Wuhan Technology University, or WUT, in central China.
These included a contract with the state-sponsored Thousand Talents Plan—an effort by Beijing to attract mostly expatriate researchers and their know-how back home—worth a total of about $653,000 a year in pay and living expenses for three years, plus $1.74 million
to support a new “Harvard-WUT Nano Key Lab” in Wuhan. The government
offered no evidence that Lieber actually received those sums.
In April 2018, when Defense Department investigators asked Lieber
about his ties to China, he responded that he was familiar with the
Thousands Talents Plan but had never been asked to participate in the
program, according to the FBI affidavit. “He also told DoD investigators
that he ‘wasn’t sure’ how China categorized him,” the agent wrote.
Lieber also deceived Harvard about his China contracts, the
affidavit said. Harvard placed Lieber on administrative leave upon his
arrest and issued a statement calling the federal charges “extremely
serious.” Lieber’s attorney, Peter Gelhaar, declined to comment.
Whatever extracurricular arrangements Lieber may have had in China, his
Harvard lab was a paragon of U.S.-China collaboration. He relied on a
pipeline of China’s brightest Ph.D. students and postdocs, often more
than a dozen at a time, to produce prize-winning research on the
revolutionary potential of so-called nanowires in biomedical implants.
Dozens of Lieber’s 100 or so former lab members from China have chosen
to stay in the U.S. Many now lead their own nanoscience labs at top
universities, including Duke, Georgia Tech, MIT, Stanford, University of
California at Berkeley, and UCLA.
SCMP | Lieber’s
arrest dovetails with Washington’s aggressive “China Initiative”, which
began in 2018. Earlier this month, the Trump administration launched a
“whole of society” counter-intelligence strategy to further guard
against Beijing “stealing our technology and intellectual property in an
effort to erode United States economic and military superiority”, the
administration said.
Chinese
intellectual property theft costs the United States up to US$600
billion annually, according to US trade representative figures. FBI
officials characterise academia as a weak link in their efforts to stem
the loss.
“The Chinese government doesn’t play by the same rules of academic fairness and freedom,”
Academics
and legal experts acknowledge the growing threat from China and admit
they need more safeguards to avoid becoming a pawn in Beijing’s hands.
But
turning universities into fortresses and jealously guarding basic
research is counterproductive, threatening to undermine the economic
leadership and innovation Washington seeks, they argue.
Academic
watchdogs say they have long warned researchers that standards were
tightening – foreign talent programmes were, until recently, viewed as
prestigious – as Washington’s distrust of Beijing increased. But their
warnings were often brushed off, they add.
“The
Lieber case has been the biggest help we could possibly get,” said Mary
Sue Coleman, the American Association of Universities’ president.
“Before the view was, if you’re not a Chinese national, not a
naturalised American citizen, it didn’t affect you.”............
FBI
agents are investigating an estimated 1,000 China-related cases from
its 56 field offices, Wray said, while US attorneys in five cities
oversee their prosecutions. Law enforcement authorities have arrested 19
people in such cases since October, compared with 24 the previous year.
Lelling
denied any administration bias in choosing which China-related cases to
investigate and prosecute. Investigating Lieber’s many Chinese students
without specific cause, for example, would be problematic, he said.
“This
isn’t racial profiling,” the US attorney said. “You have a rival nation
state made up almost 100 per cent of Han Chinese. Unfortunately there’s
going to be tremendous overlap. We’re looking for the conduct, then the
person.”
NationalReview | U.S. government agencies including the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health dole out more than $150 billion
in research grants each year. University scientists rely on that money
to fund their labs. Because grants can make or break a career,
professors spend an inordinate amount of time navigating the funding
labyrinth. A 2007 study
found that researchers spend 42 percent of their time writing grant
proposals and ensuring compliance with the conditions of the grants they
receive. Stringent regulations on everything from affirmative action to
animal welfare place a needless burden on scientists, reducing their
productivity. Since any given proposal has a 20 percent chance of being
approved, researchers devote 170 days to proposal-writing for every grant they’re awarded.
In addition to the administrative burden, American funding programs
push researchers toward low-risk, low-reward studies. Since papers are
evaluated by the number of citations they generate, professors tend to
focus on questions that guarantee a meaningful result, rather than
taking risks on novel research that might fail. Though the latter is
more likely to deliver high gains in the long run, delayed recognition
of breakthrough research means that scientists in new fields may have to
wait years before they see results, which reduces their ability to
attract funding in the interim. A 2016 paper
found that “funding decisions which rely on traditional bibliometric
indicators . . . may be biased against ‘high risk/high gain’ novel
research.” As a result, American scientists tinker at the margins of
existing research but rarely attempt breakthroughs. This partially
explains the general slowdown of scientific progress over the past few decades.
Enter China. In 2008, the Chinese Communist party (CCP) announced the
Thousand Talents Plan (TTP), which was designed to recruit 2,000
high-quality foreign professionals within five to ten years. By 2017,
the program had lured 7,000 foreigners — more than triple its target. As
part of a broad push to achieve global technological supremacy, China
has committed 15 percent of its GDP — equivalent to $2.1 trillion in
2019 — to human-capital development.
The TTP doesn’t require grant applications or regulatory compliance,
either. Faced with a choice between a Byzantine funding apparatus at
home and instant cash from China, more than 3,000 university researchers
have opted for the latter. In return for that money, the CCP requires
its researchers to turn over intellectual property to which they have
access, as well as to sign agreements preventing them from disclosing
the results of work conducted under Chinese patronage. Some scientists
have concluded that those stipulations are worthwhile. And in a perverse
sense, it is true that the Chinese system provides a great deal of
academic freedom: no applications, no progress reports, no environmental
standards. In a few cases, TTP-linked academics have even opened
“shadow labs” in China that conduct research identical to what they are
doing domestically. The effect is a wholesale transfer of American
intellectual capital and property to our largest geostrategic foe.
theamericanconservative |What do you call a civilian law
professor who, after successfully filing for federal whistleblower
status to keep his job teaching at West Point Military Academy, proceeds
to write a bombshell book about the systematic corruption, violence,
fraud, and anti-intellectualism he says has been rampant at the historic
institution for over a hundred years?
Well, if you are part of the military leadership or an alumnus of the storied military academy, you may call him a traitor.
But
if you are anyone searching for reasons why the most powerful military
in the world has not won a war in 75 years, you might call him a
truth-teller. And a pretty brave one at that.
Tim Bakken’s The Cost of Loyalty: Dishonesty, Hubris and Failure in the U.S. Militaryis
set for release tomorrow, and it should land like a grenade. Unlike the
myriad critiques of the military that wash over the institution from
outside the Blob, this one is written by a professor with 20 years on
the inside. He knows the instructors, the culture, the admissions
process, the scandals, the cover-ups, and how its legendary
“warrior-scholars” have performed after graduation and on the
battlefield.
Bakken’s
prognosis: the military as an institution has become so separate, so
insulated, so authoritarian, that it can no longer perform effectively.
In fact, it’s worse: the very nature of this beast is that it has been
able to grow exponentially in size and mission so that it now conducts
destructive expeditionary wars overseas with little or no real cohesive
strategy or oversight. Its huge budgets are a source of corporate grift,
self-justification, and corruption. The military has become too big,
yes, but as Bakkan puts it, it’s failing in every way possible.
In
addition to losing wars, “the military’s loyalty to itself and
determined separation from society have produced an authoritarian
institution that is contributing to the erosion of American democracy,”
writes Bakkan, who is still, we emphasize, teaching at the school. “The
hubris, arrogance, and self-righteousness of officers have isolated the
military from modern thinking and mores. As a result, the military
operates in an intellectual fog, relying on philosophy and practices
that literally originated at West Point two hundred years ago.”
Tom Dispatch | When Smedley Butler retired in 1931, he was one of three Marine Corps
major generals holding a rank just below that of only the Marine
commandant and the Army chief of staff. Today, with about 900 generals
and admirals currently serving
on active duty, including 24 major generals in the Marine Corps alone,
and with scores of flag officers retiring annually, not a single one has
offered genuine public opposition to almost 19 years worth of
ill-advised, remarkably unsuccessful American wars. As for the most
senior officers, the 40 four-star generals and admirals whose vocal
antimilitarism might make the biggest splash, there are more
of them today than there were even at the height of the Vietnam War,
although the active military is now about half the size it was then.
Adulated as many of them may be, however, not one qualifies as a public
critic of today’s failing wars.
Instead, the principal patriotic dissent against those terror wars
has come from retired colonels, lieutenant colonels, and occasionally
more junior officers (like me), as well as enlisted service members. Not
that there are many of us to speak of either. I consider it disturbing
(and so should you) that I personally know just about every one of the
retired military figures who has spoken out against America’s forever
wars.
The big three are Secretary of State Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson; Vietnam veteran and onetime West Point history instructor, retired Colonel Andrew Bacevich; and Iraq veteran and Afghan War whistleblower, retired Lieutenant Colonel Danny Davis.
All three have proven to be genuine public servants, poignant voices,
and -- on some level -- cherished personal mentors. For better or worse,
however, none carry the potential clout of a retired senior theater
commander or prominent four-star general offering the same critiques.
Something must account for veteran dissenters topping out at the
level of colonel. Obviously, there are personal reasons why individual
officers chose early retirement or didn’t make general or admiral.
Still, the system for selecting flag officers should raise at least a
few questions when it comes to the lack of antiwar voices among retired
commanders. In fact, a selection committee of top generals and admirals
is appointed each year to choose the next colonels to earn their first
star. And perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that, according to
numerous reports,
“the members of this board are inclined, if not explicitly motivated,
to seek candidates in their own image -- officers whose careers look
like theirs.” At a minimal level, such a system is hardly built to
foster free thinkers, no less breed potential dissidents.
Consider it an irony of sorts that this system first received criticism in our era of forever wars when General David Petraeus, then commanding the highly publicized “surge”
in Iraq, had to leave that theater of war in 2007 to serve as the chair
of that selection committee. The reason: he wanted to ensure that a
twice passed-over colonel, a protégé of his -- future Trump National
Security Advisor H.R. McMaster -- earned his star.
Mainstream national security analysts reported on this affair at the
time as if it were a major scandal, since most of them were convinced
that Petraeus and his vaunted counterinsurgency or “COINdinista" protégés and their "new"
war-fighting doctrine had the magic touch that would turn around the
failing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, Petraeus tried to apply
those very tactics twice -- once in each country -- as did acolytes of
his later, and you know the results of that.
But here’s the point: it took an eleventh-hour intervention by
America’s most acclaimed general of that moment to get new stars handed
out to prominent colonels who had, until then, been stonewalled by Cold
War-bred flag officers because they were promoting different (but also
strangely familiar) tactics in this country’s wars. Imagine, then, how
likely it would be for such a leadership system to produce genuine
dissenters with stars of any serious sort, no less a crew of future
Smedley Butlers.
At the roots of this system lay the obsession of the American officer corps with “professionalization" after the Vietnam War debacle. This first manifested itself in a decision to ditch the citizen-soldier tradition, end the draft, and create an “all-volunteer force.” The elimination of conscription, as predicted by critics at the time, created an ever-growing civil-military divide, even as it increased public apathy regarding America’s wars by erasing whatever “skin in the game" most citizens had.
More than just helping to squelch civilian antiwar activism, though,
the professionalization of the military, and of the officer corps in
particular, ensured that any future Smedley Butlers would be left in the
dust (or in retirement at the level of lieutenant colonel or colonel)
by a system geared to producing faux warrior-monks. Typical of such
figures is current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army General
Mark Milley. He may speak gruffly and look like a man with a head of his own, but typically he’s turned out to be just another yes-man for another war-power-hungry president.
One group of generals, however, reportedly
now does have it out for President Trump -- but not because they’re
opposed to endless war. Rather, they reportedly think that The Donald
doesn't “listen enough to military advice” on, you know, how to wage war
forever and a day.
libertyblitzkreig |“Happy 18th Birthday! Meet your new Daddy,” read one
website advertisement. “Do you have strong oral skills? We’ve got a job
for you!” cooed another.
A message on another billboard directed at the “daddies”
was more blunt: “The alternative to escorts. Desperate women will do
anything”…
SeekingArrangement was founded by Las Vegas tech tycoon
Brandon Wade. Wade is apparently worth somewhere in the neighborhood of
$40 million. His motto is, “Love is a concept invented by poor people”…
SA also markets itself as an antidote to student debt. In
the U.S. and elsewhere, college students are enduring financial
instability and hardship. Because of rising college fees and rent, and
the lack of time available for work during studies, many women are
extremely vulnerable to exploitation. “SeekingArrangement.com has helped
facilitate hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of arrangements that
have helped students graduate debt-free,” Wade boasts on the website.
Promotional videos show young, beautiful women enrolled in “Sugar Baby
University” — in classrooms, holding wads of cash, driving luxury cars,
and discussing the pleasure and ease of being a sugar baby.
When signing up for an account, potential sugar babies are told, “Tip: Using a .edu email address earns you a free upgrade!”
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a
society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal
system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
medium | The
billionaire class has to buy up narrative control because there is
nothing about plutocracy that is sane or healthy; people would never
knowingly consent to it unless they were manipulated into doing so.
Because power is relative, and because money is power in a plutocracy,
plutocrats are naturally incentivized to maintain a system where
everyone else is kept as poor as possible so that they can have as much
relative power as possible. A glance at what the
Sanders campaign has been able to accomplish just with small-dollar
donations and grassroots support gives you some insight into why these
plutocrats want people working long, exhausting hours with as little
spare income as possible.
Nobody would ever knowingly consent to being kept poor and busy just so some billionaires can live as modern-day kings,
so they need to be propagandized into it via narrative manipulation. If
you’ve ever wondered why it seems like the news man is always lying to
you, that’s why.
Whenever
I write about the power of plutocratic propaganda, I always get people
saying I’m just a conspiracy theorist (and that I have an awful
addiction to alliteration). They argue that sure, it’s possible to
influence public opinion a bit, but people are free agents and they make
up their own minds based on any number of potential factors, so it’s
silly to focus on media manipulation as the underlying cause of all the
world’s ills.
Oh
yeah? If people can’t be manipulated by the wealthy into supporting
agendas which don’t benefit them, how come a billionaire presidential
candidate was able to quadruple or quintuple his polling numbers in three months just by throwing money at them?
And that’s just one agenda of just one billionaire. There are 607 billionaires in the United States. And none of them are interested in giving up their plutocratic throne.
BAR | Bloomberg threw his hat and billions into the race when it became
clear that corporate surrogates Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg could not
be depended on to halt Bernie Sanders, the purported socialist who now
leads the Democratic pack. Joe Biden’s aura of electability, which was
always a media-invented mirage, evaporated when he collapsed into the
basement in Iowa and New Hampshire. The Black voters of South Carolina
are his only hope for resurrection. But Blacks don’t back Biden for
ideological reasons, or even on the strength of his service as Barack
Obama’s number two. Older (and scarier) African Americans were under the
impression that Biden was the Democrat best equipped to beat Trump –
but it turns out he can’t even beat previously unknown Democrats.
“Joe Biden’s aura of electability, which was always a
media-invented mirage, evaporated when he collapsed into the basement in
Iowa and New Hampshire.”
Some of those Black Biden supporters will now switch to Bloomberg,
believing he is the one Democrat rich enough to drown Trump in November.
Blacks don’t vote their own ideological preferences in Democratic
primaries. Rather, many will support whomever they perceive as the
strongest opponent against the White Man’s Party, the Republicans. That
invariably means the Democrat favored by corporations and their media.
Thus, the duopoly system effectively negates the core political
aspirations of Black America, the most left-leaning constituency in the
nation. The duopoly is a trap that neutralizes independent, progressive
Black politics – a mechanism to force Blacks to vote their fears, rather
than their aspirations.
However, as BAR senior columnist Margaret Kimberley points out in this issue,
there are threats to Black lives and rights even worse than the flaming
orange racist now squatting in the White House. As three-term mayor of
New York City, Bloomberg increased the frequency of his predecessor
Rudolph Giuliani’s stop-and-frisks by 700 percent.
Although real estate magnate Donald Trump infamously called for the
death penalty for the Central Park Five, it was Mayor Bloomberg who for
years delayed payment of
a $41 million settlement to the grievously wronged young Black men. And
Bloomberg was the nation’s most aggressive, unrepentant ethnic
cleanser, gleefully removing more Black and brown people from the city’s
five boroughs than any of his predecessors.
“The duopoly is a mechanism to force Blacks to vote their fears, rather than their aspirations.”
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