Rafa Still Gassing About MIT's Corrupt Old Nerds And Epstein's "Irresistible" Jailbait

To the members of the MIT community,   Last January, following the release of a fact-finding report about Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to MIT, I articulated five actions to address the challenges that emerged during that difficult time. I write with updates on those actions.   Please know that MIT offers extensive resources for survivors. I encourage you to use any you might find helpful.

1. We are establishing clear policies and processes to guide decisions about controversial donors.   In September, Provost Marty Schmidt and Chair of the Faculty Rick Danheiser released the draft reports of two ad hoc committees, one charged with identifying values and principles to guide MIT’s outside engagements, and one with improving MIT’s processes around gift acceptance. Following a comment period and a forum to gather feedback, the committees are incorporating community input into the final versions of their reports and recommendations. You will hear about next steps early in the new year.   Separately, the MIT Alumni Association and Resource Development retained Huron Consulting to review MIT’s donor and alumni database. The review confirmed that the information captured in the database is accurate and secure. It also proposed a number of steps MIT is now pursuing to further centralize the handling of donor and alumni information across the Institute.

Robert Kraft Walked While Trafficked Asian Women Got The Book Thrown At Them

palmbeachpost |  After the arrests, prosecutors and several law-enforcement agencies said they believed the spas may be linked to human trafficking. To date, no one has been charged with human trafficking in relation to these cases, according to court records.

Once the case was brought to court, the recordings were challenged by lawyers and barred by judges from being used as evidence because of the controversial means in which law enforcement obtained the video, known as "sneak-and-peek" warrants. 

MORE: Search warrant used to catch Robert Kraft built for terrorists, not johns, critics say

After prosecutors spent a year fighting the charges, an appeals court ruled in August that the lower court was correct and that "total suppression was the appropriate remedy under the circumstances of this case."

"The type of law enforcement surveillance utilized in these cases is extreme," the 23-page opinion read. 

Florida's Attorney General Ashley Moody said she wouldn't take an appeal to the Florida Supreme Court, so the prostitution solicitation charges were dropped in September.

Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg said he and his office were forced to drop the charges after the rulings.

"Without these videos, we cannot move forward with our prosecutions, and thus we are ethically compelled to drop the cases against all the defendants," he said in September. 

When asked why the charges against the women were not dropped, Aronberg said there was still enough evidence without the recordings to prosecute them. 

"Orchids of Asia Day Spa was a notorious brothel in a family shopping center," Aronberg said.

"Rich guys from a local country club lined up to receive sex acts throughout the day until the place closed around midnight," Aronberg said.

American Neofeudalism The True Source Of Its Discontents

dailyreckoning |  It’s easy to lay America’s visible frustrations at the feet of Covid lockdowns or political polarization, but this conveniently ignores the real driver: systemic unfairness.

The status quo has been increasingly rigged to benefit insiders and elites as the powers of central banks and governments have picked the winners (cronies, insiders, cartels and monopolies) and shifted the losses and risks onto the losers (the rest of us).

We now live in the world the 19th-century French economist Frédéric Bastiat so aptly described:

“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.”

Ours is a two-tier society and economy with a broken ladder of social mobility for those trying to reach the security of the technocrat class.

As Bastiat observed, those rigging the system to benefit themselves always create a legal system that lets them off scot-free and a PR scheme that glorifies their predation as well-deserved rewards from their enormous appetite for hard work and innovation.

Embezzling a couple billion dollars also earns you a get out of jail free card: none of the perps in Wall Street’s skims, scams and frauds ever gets indicted, much less convicted, and none of Wall Street’s legalized looters ever goes to prison.

And this is a fair and just system? Uh, right.

Meanwhile, the reality is the roulette wheel is rigged, and only chumps believe it’s a fair game. Those who know it’s rigged have essentially zero agency (control/power) or capital to demand an unrigged game or finagle their way into the elite class doing the skimming.

The net result is soaring frustration with a patently unfair system that’s touted as the fairest in the entire world.

The key takeaway, in my view, is that the unfairness isn’t limited to the economy, society or politics —  it’s manifesting in all three realms. It isn’t just frustration with domestic issues — the global economic order is also a source of unfairness and powerlessness.

These are the dynamics that are tearing apart our social cohesion and that will soon start destabilizing the economy — regardless of how much “money” the Federal Reserve prints.

How divided is America?

 

There Are 600,000 Hardcore American Homeless And Many Millions More Couch Surfing

currentaffairs |  When most people think of “couch surfing,” they picture the adventurous European travels of college students during summer vacations. But the term is also used by homeless people to describe their own efforts to avoid the streets by temporarily staying with friends, family members, or (oftentimes) complete strangers. This type of couch surfing is a sort of purgatory that exists midway between sleeping in the abandoned ruins of factories and the relative comfort of one’s own subsidized housing. If the couch surfer is staying in someone else’s subsidized housing unit (as is often the case, because poor people tend to shelter with people from their own social networks) that is likely to draw intense bureaucratic scrutiny. For both couch surfers and those harboring them, there is risk from landlords, housing authority officials, and caseworkers who (often in concert) have the authority to harass, evict, and even terminate precious subsidies. Couch surfers then become the targets in a high stress game of cat and mouse. For millions of Americans there is no assurance that the bed, sleeping bag, or undersized couch they slept on last night will be available the next day. But in a country where the “official” social safety net exists more in theory than practice, poor people have few other options. 

Couch surfing is a form of homelessness, but the U.S. government refuses to recognize it as such. To appreciate this conceptual failure, one has merely to scan the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) 2019 Homeless Assessment Report to Congress. The 98-page document begins with a statement by HUD secretary Ben Carson, accompanied by a photo of his sleepy face. The thing that most struck me about this document, however, is that the term “couch surfing” never appeared. Not once. The report mentioned, in passing, that many homeless people stay with relatives or friends prior to becomi00,000ng officially homeless, but “staying with relatives or friends” is a rather euphemistic phrase that does not capture the anxiety and desperation inherent in the struggle to keep a roof over your head when you can’t pay rent. 

The 2019 HUD report on homelessness estimated there are fewer than 600,000 homeless people in America on any given night. However, this is equivalent to concluding that the only Americans who eat are those who are within the walls of a grocery store on “any given night.” The HUD’s numbers refer only to people who stay in an official shelter, or no shelter all. The total would be far higher if the HUD included people who fall under the Urban Dictionary’s definition of a couch surfer, which refers to anyone “who is homeless and finds various couches to sleep on and homes to survive in until they are put out.” It is both concerning and darkly amusing that an extensive, supposedly definitive government report provides less context than an anonymous quip posted to illustrate vernacular speech.

With Covid19 Americans Don't Know The Difference Between Science And Scientism

tomluongo |  And with COVID-19 we’ve reached the height of this practice of imbuing scientists with a god-like knowledge of what we should do given any thorny political problem.

That’s why pseudo-intellectuals and midwits in white suburbia bought into the lies of Anthony Fauci, while ignoring the flip-flopping of him, the CDC, the WHO, and every other ‘expert.’

This science worship neatly bypasses politicians you don’t like to support whatever argument you want to believe. It doesn’t matter that it’s now just as much a religion as Christianity or Islam.

If the high priest of ‘science’ says masks are necessary on Tuesdays but not Thursdays then they simply go along with it because the alternative is admitting that your priests are just hucksters with fancy government titles.

It also absolves people of the responsibility of making the hard decisions. The experts have all that worked out.

Which brings me to what actually started this blog post.

One of these true high priests of ‘scientism,’ the straight-out-of-central-casting Neil Degrasse Tyson opined recently on RT about how disappointed he was with humanity over not coming together over COVID-19.

“I thought that when the coronavirus landed that we would’ve all banded together and say: ‘We’re all human and that’s a common enemy, like an alien invasion. We’ve all seen it in the movies. We got to be together on this one.’ But it didn’t happen to my great disappointment in our species.”

At this late date for a guy like Mr. Tyson to go on thinking COVID-19 was such an existential threat to humanity as an alien invasion is really stunning.

I thought this guy was supposed to be smart? Like really smart? 

He goes on further:

“I don’t mind political fights. Political fights are fine when you’re talking about policy and legislation. But you should never have a political fight about…scientific research that has been objectively shown to be true in peer-reviewed journals,” Tyson said, adding that doing so is a “recipe for disaster.”

Now this I agree somewhat with, which is why I consider this more like Coronapocalypse: The Movie and not a true existential threat to humanity which required any kind of policy decision which sparked this political fight he’s crying crocodile tears over.

Because, and I’m sure Mr. Tyson would agree with this if he were a scientist, there is little “…scientific research that has been objectively shown to be true in peer-reviewed journals…” about COVID-19 which has been properly discussed in the public sphere.

And yet very polarizing policies are in place depriving people of not only their rights, which he seems cavalier to, but also their future prosperity.

Since the ‘science’ has been used by governments assume a level of control over our movements and activities far beyond the scope of what the ‘science’ has shown. And since when the science isn’t settled shouldn’t we settle back on first principles to minimize human suffering along all vectors, not just the one variable, virus transmission, we think we’re controlling, especially for most people the survival rate is greater than 99.9%?

And even this position undermines the basic framework of human rights by placing some cost/benefit analytic overlay on society giving the social engineers more credit than they deserve.

 

As Went Arecibo - Now Goes America's International Space Station...,

spaceaustralia |  On November 2nd, 2000, humans set foot on the International Space Station (ISS). What we now know as two decades of continuous habitation in space.

During these 20 years, the US$150 billion orbital space lab has hosted 241 crew members from 19 different countries. And in doing so, has made up 43% of all people in space.

The 16 module station houses four Russian, nine US, two Japanese, and one European module with six regular crew members taking six-monthly shifts. To date, the rotating crew have conducted more than 3,000 scientific experiments.

But as the bi-decadal benchmark came and went, we were reminded that all good things come to an end.

And the ISS is no different.

 Although the ISS is cleared to circle Earth until 2028, wear and tear is an issue. And the White House has "asked" NASA to stop finding the ISS in 2025.

It's highly doubtful that NASA will clear the space station for another run past 2028, and will be decommissioned sometime shortly after.

A good run considering its expected shelf-life was only 15 years.

The station's mileage has seen a Russian toilet go kaput, an oxygen-supply system on the fritz, and a notorious air leak worsen over time. Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka said of the Russian side of the ISS, "All modules of the Russian segment are exhausted,'

And it's not like a Russian - let alone a Russian cosmonaut - to complain.

Once NASA decides to retire and decommission the space station, the complex will be de-orbited over the Pacific Ocean, most likely burning up during re-entry.

So, what does a post-ISS space look like?

 

Arecibo Collapse: When It Was Built, It Was Only Intended For A Decade Of Use..,

space |  After two cable failures in the span of four months, Puerto Rico's most venerable astronomy facility, the Arecibo radio telescope, has collapsed in an uncontrolled structural failure.

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), which owns the site, decided in November to proceed with decommissioning the telescope in response to the damage, which engineers deemed too severe to stabilize without risking lives. But the NSF needed time to come up with a plan for how to safely demolish the telescope in a controlled manner.

Instead, gravity did the job this morning (Dec. 1) at about 8 a.m. local time, according to reports from the area.

"NSF is saddened by this development," the agency wrote in a tweet. "As we move forward, we will be looking for ways to assist the scientific community and maintain our strong relationship with the people of Puerto Rico."

The NSF added that no injuries had been reported, that the top priority was to maintain safety and that more details would be provided when confirmed.

"What a sad day for Astronomy and Planetary science worldwide and one of the most iconic telescopes of all time," Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for science, wrote in a tweet. "My thoughts are with the staff members and scientists who have continued to do great science during the past years and whose life is directly affected by this."

Images shared on Twitter by Deborah Martorell, a meteorologist for Puerto Rican television stations, compare views of the observatory taken yesterday — showing the 900-ton science platform suspended over the massive dish strung up on cables — and today, when the observatory's three supporting towers are bare.

Warren Buffett's Kneegrows For Biden BLM Just Now Getting "Woke" To How They Got PLAYED!!!

Thank you @joebiden from the 87% of Black men that voted for you whom you overlooked when hiring these positions. Instead opting largely for a white female base that in majority did not vote you to President-elect. “Biden hires all-female senior communications team.” pic.twitter.com/ORrUMr57la

— Antonio Moore (@tonetalks) November 29, 2020

blmchapterstatement |  It was recently declared that Patrisse Cullors was appointed the Executive Director to the Black Lives Matter Global Network (BLMGN) Foundation. Since then, two new Black Lives Matter formations have been announced to the public: a Black Lives Matter Political Action Committee, and BLM Grassroots. BLM Grassroots was allegedly created to support the organizational needs of chapters, separate from the financial functions of BLMGN. We, the undersigned chapters, believe that all of these events occurred without democracy, and assert that it was without the knowledge of the majority of Black Lives Matters chapters across the country and world.

We became chapters of Black Lives Matter as radical Black organizers embracing a collective vision for Black people engaging in the protracted struggle for our lives against police terrorism. With a willingness to do hard work that would put us at risk, we expected that the central organizational entity, most recently referred to as the Black Lives Matter Global Network (BLMGN) Foundation, would support us chapters in our efforts to build communally. Since the establishment of BLMGN, our chapters have consistently raised concerns about financial transparency, decision making, and accountability. Despite years of effort, no acceptable internal process of accountability has ever been produced by BLMGN and these recent events have undermined the efforts of chapters seeking to democratize its processes and resources.

In the spirit of transparency, accountability, and responsibility to our community, we believe public accountability has become necessary. As a contribution to our collective liberation, we must make clear:

1. Patrisse Cullors, as the sole board member of BLMGN, became Executive Director against the will of most chapters and without their knowledge.
2. The newly announced formation, BLM Grassroots, does not have the support of and was created without consultation with the vast majority of chapters. 
3. The formation of BLM Grassroots effectively separated the majority of chapters from BLMGN without their consent and interrupted the active process of accountability that was being established by those chapters.
4. In our experience, chapter organizers have been consistently prevented from establishing financial transparency, collective decision making, or collaboration on political analysis and vision within BLMGN
5. For years there has been inquiry regarding the financial operations of BLMGN and no acceptable process of either public or internal transparency about the unknown millions of dollars donated to BLMGN, which has certainly increased during this time of pandemic and rebellion.
6. To the best of our knowledge, most chapters have received little to no financial support from BLMGN since the launch in 2013. It was only in the last few months that selected chapters appear to have been invited to apply for a $500,000 grant created with resources generated because of the organizing labor of chapters. This is not the equity and financial accountability we deserve.

We remain committed to collectively building an organization of BLM chapters that is democratic, accountable, and functions in a way that is aligned with our ideological values and commitment to liberation. We will move forward with transparency and expound on our collective efforts to seek transparency and organizational unity in a fuller statement in the near future. As we collectively determine next steps, we encourage our supporters to donate directly to chapters, who represent the frontline of Black Lives Matter.

Caren An'Em Still Not Woke To The Great Reset As New Normal Slavery 2.0

publicseminar |  This past summer, Kroger, one of the nation’s largest grocery store chains, received a 15-year, 75 percent sales tax exemption for setting up two new data centers in Ohio. This is the definition of unnecessary. Kroger is not exactly poverty struck – it accrued profits of more than $2 billion last year. Moreover, subsidizing data centers is for suckers. Companies need to build that infrastructure, and they don’t create all that many positions. Municipalities and state governments that subsidize data centers sometimes literally pay upwards of seven figures per job.

Then it got worse: Kroger is using its data to move into what’s known as the “ghost kitchen” business, something that is a terrible development for local independent restaurants. So, Ohio taxpayers are helping a massive supermarket chain put other businesses out of business, including their favorite corner eatery. That Ohio is doing this in a year when small restaurant proprietors are under all but existential threat adds insult to injury.

Ghost kitchens are as spooky as they sound. Big corporations like gig companies, supermarkets, and fast food chains use the data they collect through their various lines of business to create delivery-only food operations. But here’s the catch: They often hide and disguise the fact that they aren’t actual restaurants. They give them homey sounding names, like Seaside or Lorenzo’s, and build out web pages that make them appear to be places you could drop in on. In fact, they are randomly located in warehouses and other industrial spaces, and backed by big investors and corporations whose participation is often hidden by a web of shell companies.

The poster children for this issue are the big delivery app companies — UberEats, GrubHub, and Doordash — which use the data they collect doing deliveries for restaurants, and which they don’t subsequently share with those restaurants, to see what sort of items sell best and when. Then, much like Amazon weaponizes the data it collects from small businesses that sell on its platform to create its own products, the delivery apps use the data to create their own, delivery-only food outlets, with the aim of cutting real restaurants out of the business entirely. (Amazon, of course, won’t miss this opportunity either: It has invested in a delivery and ghost kitchen company called Deliveroo.) 

This model of operating a platform and then also competing on it should just be illegal, even though it’s widespread. Whether it’s Amazon using info gained from its third-party sellers to steal products, Google using data gleaned from its advertising technology to outbid publishers, or delivery apps cutting real restaurants out of the restaurant business, the issue is the same: The corporation that runs the infrastructure has an anticompetitive advantage over all of the other participants. As Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, succinctly puts it, “You can be an umpire, or you can be a player—but you can’t be both.”

But even if authorities woke up and banned Uber from going into the ghost kitchen business, that wouldn’t stop Kroger. It’s got the data too, and it doesn’t need to trick rival businesses into turning it over. It’s the largest grocer in the U.S., and the second-largest in-person retailer after Walmart. It runs stores under its own corporate name, as well as Harris Teeter and 14 other brands. They are using info gained from their own shoppers. Kroger is partnering with an outfit called ClusterTruck that uses algorithms to remove the so-called “pain points” of ordering food, which I suppose means orders showing up cold, or something.

To Date, No Evidence THAT The DOJ Has Investigated Russiagate, Huntergate, Or Systemic Election Fraud

AP |  In an interview with The Associated Press, Barr said U.S. attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up specific complaints and information they’ve received, but they’ve uncovered no evidence that would change the outcome of the election.

“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr told the AP.

The comments are especially direct coming from Barr, who has been one of the president’s most ardent allies. Before the election, he had repeatedly raised the notion that mail-in voter fraud could be especially vulnerable to fraud during the coronavirus pandemic as Americans feared going to polls and instead chose to vote by mail. 

Last month, Barr issued a directive to U.S. attorneys across the country allowing them to pursue any “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities, if they existed, before the 2020 presidential election was certified, despite no evidence at that time of widespread fraud. That memorandum gave prosecutors the ability to go around longstanding Justice Department policy that normally would prohibit such overt actions before the election was certified. Soon after it was issued, the department’s top elections crime official announced he would step aside from that position because of the memo.

The Trump campaign team led by Rudy Giuliani has been alleging a widespread conspiracy by Democrats to dump millions of illegal votes into the system with no evidence. They have filed multiple lawsuits in battleground states alleging that partisan poll watchers didn’t have a clear enough view at polling sites in some locations and therefore something illegal must have happened. The claims have been repeatedly dismissed including by Republican judges who have ruled the suits lacked evidence. Local Republicans in some battleground states have followed Trump in making similar unsupported claims.

 

Georgia Getting Busy With The BleachBit On Its Dominion Servers...,

epochtimes |   Attorney Sidney Powell said on Monday that someone had removed a Dominion Voting Systems server from a recount center in Fulton County, Georgia.

“Someone went down to the Fulton center where the votes and Dominion machines were, claimed there was a software glitch and they had to replace the software, and it seems that they removed the server,” Powell told “Lou Dobbs Tonight” in an interview aired on Nov. 30.

Powell added that her team does not know where the server is.

Jessica Corbitt, the director of external affairs for Fulton County, told The Epoch Times on Dec. 1 that the server in question is still on the premises of the recount location at World Congress Center in Atlanta.

Robb Pitt, the chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, told reporters on Tuesday that the county 88 percent through the recount when the Dominion server crashed. The Dominion technician on-site could not resolve the problem so another Dominion representative flew in the day after.

Pitt vehemently denied that his county was involved in any “hanky panky” in relation to the 2020 election.

Dominion’s software and hardware feature prominently in two lawsuits filed by Powell in Georgia and Michigan. The lawsuits claim that the software is vulnerable to manipulation by hackers and was used to alter vote totals in the presidential election.

Powell prefaced her comment by saying that the alleged removal of the server took place when her team was seeking a temporary restraining order against the resetting, wiping, or altering of any of the Dominion machines. A district court judge subsequently granted the temporary restraining order on Sunday night.

Election Fraud Treason By Foreign And Domestic Actors

gnews |  “The Kraken” is the Military’s nickname for the 305th Military Intelligence Battalion in Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

We have all been wondering what was the meaning of this term, what was the meaning of the rumor that a server was seized in a CIA facility in Frankfurt, was the rumor that people were killed or hurt in the raid true, why is it important that Sidney Powell is trained in procedures of Military Tribunals?

WVW-TV broadcast an exclusive interview with General Mike Flynn, General McInerney and Mary Fanning on November 28^th which sheds light on all of these questions. It is a must-listen for anybody who believes in the Constitution, the Republic and finding out the truth about this election.

What we are finding out is that we are facing treason in the homeland and clear interference by foreign actors – aka by the CCP, and others. The dam of closely-held secrets is breaking. The conspiring actors have been trying to hold the dam but the cracks are appearing.

The Constitution did not contemplate cyber-warfare by the CIA on America, a collaboration by media and social media in treason, treason by a major party, and unlimited cyber warfare by foreign actors, all at the same time! We are facing a Constitutional “safe harbor” deadline of December 14^th, but for treason, the President and the Military will not, cannot, stand by and watch this election be stolen. The President swore an oath to protect the American people and the Constitution from all enemies Foreign and Domestic, not to give up because of an artificial deadline. Treason is a matter for a military tribunal. Sidney Powell is trained in the procedures of military tribunals. These charges will be brought to the Supreme Court of the United States, but beyond that, it can be a matter for a military tribunal.

General McInerney also disclosed that his phone has been hacked by the treasonous forces trying to subvert the democratic process in America. His warning to Joe Biden and all the forces arrayed with him was to surrender, the American people will not rest until they are brought to justice for treason.

American Thinker also published an important article (“The smartest man in the room has joined Sidney Powell’s team, Andrea Widburg) on November 28th. Widburg states that Sidney Powell in her Georgia lawsuit included the declaration of Dr Navid Keshawarz-Nia. He is a witness stating that the election was turned in favor of Joe Biden through computer fraud.

Twenty Things About The 2020 Election That Don't Pass The Smell Test

americanthinker |   Americans have common sense, so they can understand when they're being played (for example, when politicians place Americans under house arrest and then ignore their own rules to party and travel).  And they know there is no way on God's green earth that decrepit, demented, corrupt, and terminally stupid Joe Biden fairly won this election.  This post assembles various election anomalies that don't pass the smell test.

J.B. Shurk, who frequently publishes at American Thinker, wrote a knock-out article for The Federalist about Joe Biden's magical performance in the election.  You should read the whole article, but here are four things that don't pass the smell test:

1. Biden allegedly got 80 million votes, which is more than Obama received at his peak, in 2008 — and Biden did this despite losing minority voters to Donald Trump and trailing Trump in voter enthusiasm.

2. Biden broke 60 years of precedent by winning nationally despite losing prodigiously in bellwether states and counties.  The last time this happened was when the mafia got out the vote for John F. Kennedy in 1960.

3. Trump had extraordinary coattails, so much so that even the New York Times admitted that the "Democrats Suffered Crushing Down-Ballot Losses Across America."  Think about that: Biden had no coattails and no enthusiasm, yet he allegedly won a record number of votes.  Smells fetid to me.

4. Biden barely made it through the primaries, while Trump soared, with Trump's performance being a historically sure sign of voter enthusiasm and probable victory — yet Biden, again, allegedly scored an equally historically strong victory.

At The Spectator, Patrick Basham, a professional pollster, also felt that Biden's alleged win cannot pass the smell test.  Again, this is a summary, so you should read the original article:

2020 Election Was The Most Secure In American History

cbsnews  |  Though the transition has begun, President Trump remains largely holed up in the White House tweeting false accusations of a rigged election from behind a crumbling wall of lawsuits. No legal challenge, no recount, no audit has changed the outcome in any state. Mr. Trump's claim that millions of votes were deleted or switched is denied by the official he chose to secure the nation's election systems. Christopher Krebs called the 2020 vote "the most secure in American history" which promptly got him fired. Tonight, in his first interview since he was dismissed, Krebs tells us why he believes the vote was accurate and why saying otherwise puts the country in danger.

Chris Krebs: I have confidence in the security of this election because I know the work that we've done for four years in support of our state and local partners. I know the work that the intelligence community has done, the Department of Defense has done, that the FBI has done, that my team has done. I know that these systems are more secure. I know based on what we have seen that any attacks on the election were not successful.

Two years ago, President Trump put Christopher Krebs in charge of the new Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Krebs, a lifelong Republican, was confirmed unanimously by the Senate. 

His agency, known by its acronym, "CISA" helps secure computer systems anywhere that a security breach could be catastrophic, nuclear power plants for example, and the election hardware in all 50 states.

Dr. Navid Keshavarz-Nia Sees Election Fraud - With Certainty

americanthinker |  Professionally, Dr. Kershavarz-Nia has spent his career as a cyber-security engineer.  "My experience," he attests," spans 35 years performing technical assessment, mathematical modeling, cyber-attack pattern analysis, and security intelligence[.]"  I will not belabor the point.  Take it as given that Dr. Kershavarz-Nia may know more about cyber-security than anyone else in America.

So what does the brilliant Dr. Kershavarz-Nia have to say?  This:

1. Hammer and Scorecard is real, not a hoax (as Democrats allege), and both are used to manipulate election outcomes.

2. Dominion, ES&S, Scytl, and Smartmatic are all vulnerable to fraud and vote manipulation — and the mainstream media reported on these vulnerabilities in the past.

3. Dominion has been used in other countries to "forge election results."

4. Dominion's corporate structure is deliberately confusing to hide relationships with Venezuela, China, and Cuba.

5. Dominion machines are easily hackable.

6. Dominion memory cards with cryptographic key access to the systems were stolen in 2019.

Although he had no access to the machines, Dr. Kershavarz has looked at available data about the election and the vote results.  Based on that information, he concluded

1. The counts in the disputed states (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia) show electronic manipulation.

2. The simultaneous decision in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia to pretend to halt counting votes was unprecedented and demonstrated a coordinated effort to collude toward desired results.

3. One to two percent of votes were forged in Biden's favor.

4. Optical scanners were set to accept unverified, un-validated ballots.

5. The scanners failed to keep records for audits, an outcome that must have been deliberately programmed.

6. The stolen cryptographic key, which applied to all voting systems, was used to alter vote counts.

7. The favorable votes pouring in after hours for Biden could not be accounted for by a Democrat preference for mailed in ballots.  They demonstrated manipulation.  For example, in Pennsylvania, it was physically impossible to feed 400,000 ballots into the machines within 2–3 hours.

8. Dominion used Chinese parts, and there's reason to believe that China, Venezuela, Cuba interfered in the election.

9. There was a Hammer and Scorecard cyber-attack that altered votes in the battleground states, and then forwarded the results to Scytl servers in Frankfurt, Germany, to avoid detection.

10. The systems failed to produce any auditable results.

Based on the above findings, Dr. Keshavarz-Nia concluded with "high confidence that the election 2020 data were altered in all battleground states resulting in a [sic] hundreds of thousands of votes that were cast for President Trump to be transferred [sic] to Vice President Biden."

Johns Hopkins - A Closer Look At U.S. Deaths

retractionwatch |  A student newspaper at Johns Hopkins has retracted an article claiming that COVID-19 has had “relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.”

The article, “A closer look at U.S. deaths due to COVID-19” (link from the Wayback Machine) was published on November 22 and relied on a presentation by Genevieve Briand, assistant program director of the Applied Economics master’s degree program at Hopkins. 

From the article:

These data analyses suggest that in contrast to most people’s assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.

Not surprisingly, the article was promoted on social media by COVID-19 skeptics. And yesterday, The News-Letter made the article disappear, tweeting:

As is typical in such cases, that earned the article another round of tweets, this time with cries of censorship.

We learned about the deletion this morning, and contacted the editors, along with Briand, for explanations. First, Briand explained the disappearance by saying that as a student newspaper, The News-Letter 

simply rotates the articles it features on a weekly basis so as to showcase as many JHU students articles as possible.

Having cut some of our teeth as student newspaper editors, that didn’t quite wash. The News-Letter’s editors, Rudy Malcom and Katy Wilner, sent us a link to a just-published retraction notice that provides a lot more detail:

After The News-Letter published this article on Nov. 22, it was brought to our attention that our coverage of Genevieve Briand’s presentation “COVID-19 Deaths: A Look at U.S. Data” has been used to support dangerous inaccuracies that minimize the impact of the pandemic.

We decided on Nov. 26 to retract this article to stop the spread of misinformation, as we explained on social media. However, it is our responsibility as journalists to provide a historical record. We have chosen to take down the article from our website, but it is available here as a PDF.

In accordance with our standards for transparency, we are sharing with our readers how we came to this decision. The News-Letter is an editorially and financially independent, student-run publication. Our articles and content are not endorsed by the University or the School of Medicine, and our decision to retract this article was made independently.

Briand’s study should not be used exclusively in understanding the impact of COVID-19, but should be taken in context with the countless other data published by Hopkins, the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

As assistant director for the Master’s in Applied Economics program at Hopkins, Briand is neither a medical professional nor a disease researcher. At her talk, she herself stated that more research and data are needed to understand the effects of COVID-19 in the U.S.

Briand was quoted in the article as saying, “All of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers.” This claim is incorrect and does not take into account the spike in raw death count from all causes compared to previous years. According to the CDC, there have been almost 300,000 excess deaths due to COVID-19. Additionally, Briand presented data of total U.S. deaths in comparison to COVID-19-related deaths as a proportion percentage, which trivializes the repercussions of the pandemic. This evidence does not disprove the severity of COVID-19; an increase in excess deaths is not represented in these proportionalities because they are offered as percentages, not raw numbers.

Briand also claimed in her analysis that deaths due to heart diseases, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia may be incorrectly categorized as COVID-19-related deaths. However, COVID-19 disproportionately affects those with preexisting conditions, so those with those underlying conditions are statistically more likely to be severely affected and die from the virus.

Because of these inaccuracies and our failure to provide additional information about the effects of COVID-19, The News-Letter decided to retract this article. It is our duty as a publication to combat the spread of misinformation and to enhance our fact-checking process. We apologize to our readers.

Update, 1200 UTC, 11/28/20: Briand tells us:

The News-Letter is an editorially and financially independent, student-run publication. Their decision to retract the article was their own. Yanni Gu did an excellent at reporting the content of the presentation.

Will Busted Municipalities Use Covid Non-Compliance Fines To Gin Up Revenues?

taibbi |   The most penniless residents of the St. Louis exurb were written up for everything from actual crimes to municipal code violations like “High Grass and Weeds,” “Barking Dog,” and “Dog Running at Large.” Between 2010 and 2014, the city wrote up 90,000 summonses and citations, and the number in the last year of that period was double what it was in the first year. Either crime and dog-barking were skyrocketing, or police were experiencing more pressure to write tickets. As the report wrote:

The City’s emphasis on revenue generation has a profound effect on FPD’s approach to law enforcement. Patrol assignments and schedules are geared toward aggressive enforcement of Ferguson’s municipal code, with insufficient thought given to whether enforcement strategies promote public safety or unnecessarily undermine community trust and cooperation… The result is a pattern of stops without reasonable suspicion and arrests without probable cause…

For a lot of Americans, this was the first time they were introduced to the idea that cash-strapped municipalities were using the justice system as a means of generating revenue. The grotesque angle was that cities were so desperate that they were reduced to systematically ticketing people who couldn’t pay.

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Taibbi’s Iowa for criminal justice “fees.” Hard to believe that the Midwest used to be truly innovative and “progressive” once upon a time. Hollowed out, the state and local municipal elites cannibalize their institutions and their populace at the altar of the local financial elites who decided to hollow them out in the first place. I know they’re making choices on the winners and the losers so they can maintain their own hierarchy. But if you cannibalize your state and regional areas long enough, and even that little bit of hierarchy these careerist political elites manage to maintain can be taken away once they are no longer needed to manage the decline. 

That whole ‘tax breaks for jobs’ filtered down to even poorly paid, seasonal, or short term jobs. Think of the tax abatements local cities give to a Walmart or Amazon warehouse center; with the poor pay, the large infrastructure costs the city bears, and the lost tax revenue the local property owners end up paying for the tax abatements with rises in their property tax. (Until the city is faced with revolt by the voters for ever increasing property tax.) Then there’s the loss of Main St. jobs that the giant chains displaced.

Now it’s the big national, usually out-of-state, apartment complex developers asking for, and in many cases receiving huge property tax abatements to develop (in many cases “excess) complexes. The local property tax can’t be raised much higher to cover the lost tax revenues to the city, and the city is on the supporting end for roads, water, and electricity infrastructure. The profits from these complexes then leave the city and most often even the state. The jobs created for construction are short term. 

It’s a next loss to the city’s tax base. It’s a gift to giant real estate developers. One of the lures the developers in my area use is that their apartments are so great that they’ll attract the “creative class” to live here, and of course “every city needs to attract the creative class”. Sure. Right. It doesn’t take many of these to punch large holes in a city budget.

So, here we are. In the name of “build it and they will come” cities and counties and even states have wrecked their budgets, and now they’re increasing turning to fines and fees, too often from the poorest and defenseless, to try making up the shortfall.  I’d love to see every city, county, state examine all the tax abatements for businesses they’ve given out over the past 20-30 years and examine which ones of what type have actually improved their budgets and economy, and which have been a net loss to their budgets.

Resisting The Great Reset Equals "Hating Democracies For Their Freedoms"

bloomberg |  Poland and Hungary are going for broke. After meeting in Budapest yesterday, Prime Ministers Mateusz Morawiecki and Viktor Orban reiterated their threat to veto $2.2 trillion of European Union spending, even at the risk of losing their share.

For Orban and Morawiecki, this isn’t about money. It’s about the bloc’s decision to tie funds — including access to the pandemic rescue package — to democratic standards.

Both right-wing nationalist governments are outraged at EU charges of democratic backsliding. But in holding up the budget in defiance of Brussels and fellow EU leaders, they may find themselves on an unsustainable path.

Donald Trump’s election defeat isn’t the only sign that the populist wave is fading. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is again looking for better ties with the west, while in Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro’s favored candidates all lost in the first round of municipal elections that were a de facto midterm referendum on his rule.

tomluongo |  Because the Great Reset is predicated on a few things occurring.

1. The EU having a budget and mechanism in place where the Commission has tax/spend and debt issuance capability.
2. This gives them the political bludgeon necessary to consolidate power in Brussels the same way income tax redistribution undermined Federalism in the U.S.
3. Extending the COVID-19 narrative to purposefully destroy what’s left of the middle class in Europe and the U.S.
4. Donald Trump being overthrown as President of the U.S. restoring power there to those loyal to the WEF.
5. All Populist leaders in Europe – like Matteo Salvini, Geert Wilders, Boris Johnson, Germany’s AfD, Austria’s Freedom Party — neutralized leaving Orban alone against Angela Merkel.
6. Brexit undermined to the point where either Boris Johnson’s government falls or the U.K. collapses into a failed police state indistinguishable from V for Vendetta.
7. Control not only over traditional television media but also the flow of information through the newer social media networks, limiting access to any countervailing narratives.

Most of these are in place. Johnson’s personal weakness has squandered one of the greatest political victories of the past century in less than a year.

Trump’s chances of overturning a fraudulent election are at best a coin flip, and realistically, vanishingly small.

AfD has been neutralized in Germany. Italy’s electoral situation is mixed. Austria has been consolidated under a fake populist Sebastian Kurz.

Local police are openly despotic in enforcing the most draconian lockdown regulations.

But Orban and Moraweicki have stood their ground. Trump is standing his ground. David Frost in the U.K., not Boris Johnson, is standing his ground. Will their example inspire others to do the same?

It’s a good question. The sheer desperation of articles like one from the Spectator, entitled “The Visegrád bloc are threatening to tear apart the EU,” speaks volumes when the author realizes the Visegrads don’t hate the EU for its freedom:

Resetting the Future of Work Agenda: Disruption and Renewal in a Post-COVID World

weforum |  presents the experiences and lessons learned from the COVID-19 response of the World Economic Forum’s broader future of work industry community, encompassing more than 60 CHROs of leading global employers as well as a the Forum’s network of Preparing for the Future of Work Industry Accelerators, comprising more than 200 senior HR leaders, education technology and learning providers, academia and government stakeholders across nine industries. The report is intended as a call to action for companies and organizations globally to update and reset their future of work preparedness agendas for a more relevant and inclusive post-pandemic “new” future of work.

The time frame is ten years – by 2030 – the UN agenda 2021 – 2030 should be implemented.

Planned business measures in response to COVID-19:

• An acceleration of digitized work processes, leading to 84% of all work processes as digital, or virtual / video conferences.

• Some 83% of people are planned to work remotely – i.e. no more interaction between colleagues – absolute social distancing, separation of humanity from the human contact.

• About 50% of all tasks are planned to be automated – in other words, human input will be drastically diminished, even while remote working.

• Accelerate the digitization of upskilling / reskilling (e.g. education technology providers) – 42% of skill upgrading or training for new skills will be digitized, in other words, no human contact – all on computer, Artificial Intelligence (AI), algorithms.

• Accelerate the implementation of upskilling / reskilling programs – 35% of skills are planned to be “re-tooled” – i.e. existing skills are planned to be abandoned – declared defunct.

• Accelerate ongoing organizational transformations (e.g. restructuring) – 34% of current organizational set-ups are planned to be “restructured’ – or, in other words, existing organizational structures will be declared obsolete – to make space for new sets of organizational frameworks, digital structures that provide utmost control over all activities.

• Temporarily reassign workers to different tasks – this is expected to touch 30% of the work force. That also means completely different pay-scales – most probably unlivable wages, which would make the also planned “universal basic salary” or “basic income” – a wage that allows you barely to survive, an obvious need. – But it would make you totally dependent on the system – a digital system, where you have no control whatsoever.

• Temporarily reduce workforce – this is projected as affecting 28% of the population. It is an additional unemployment figure, in disguise, as the “temporarily” will never come back to full-time.

• Permanently reduce workforce – 13% permanently reduced workforce.

• Temporarily increase workforce – 5% – there is no reference to what type of workforce – probably unskilled labor that sooner or later will also be replaced by automation, by AI and robotization of the workplace.

• No specific measures implemented – 4% – does that mean, a mere 4% will remain untouched? From the algorithm and AI-directed new work places? – as small and insignificant as the figure is, it sounds like “wishful thinking”, never to be accomplished.

• Permanently increase workforce – a mere 1% is projected as “permanently increased workforce”. This is of course not even cosmetics. It is a joke.

This is the what is being put forth, namely the concrete process of implementing The Great Reset.

 

The Mass Of The American Public Is Not Interested In Learning The Truth

southfront  |  The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized.”

Edward Bernays (1928)

“With the Hunter Biden Expose, Suppression is a Bigger Scandal Than The Actual Story “ (Article Title)

Matt Taibbi (2020)

Bernays, drawing on Walter Lippmann, as Hermann and Chomsky also did in Manufacturing Consent in 1988, got it right.

Matt Taibbi got it almost right.

“Almost”, because he seems to suggest that media censorship, redaction and news blackouts, as in the case of the Hunter Biden scandal, are exceptional events, when they are really just examples of what the Main Stream Media (MSM) does all the time: a time-honored tradition that has been a fixture of the Western World since before WWI. What Bernays called “conscious and intelligent manipulation” — molding your mind on behalf of a small group of people, “ the invisible government that is the true ruling power” — is what the media was set up to do, its main job with the advent of general literacy and newspapers.

Lippmann and Bernays claimed that this kind of subtle authoritarian control is what people wanted, an idea that Adolph Hitler naturally liked, as he did most things American. And, today’s mainstream media seem to agree — people don’t want to think for themselves.

At least, that belief is implicit in the redaction of the Hunter Biden story — along with the news blackout of Joe Biden’s past — coupled with constant repetition of Joe Biden’s faux virtues and the enthusiastic whitewashing of his cabinet of neocons and neoliberals. Redaction and Repetition” are the two, all-important R’s of mind control.

 

Biden Administration Will Camouflage Corruption With A Diversity Figleaf

caitlinjohnstone |  There has never been a better time to be a woman, minority or member of the LGBT community who works in the DC establishment and thinks the poor should be made into pet food.

The New York Times has published an article titled "Could Limiting Corporate Candidates Hurt Biden’s Diversity Push?", for the benefit of all those normal everyday readers who've been lying awake at night wondering if limiting corporate candidates might hurt Biden's diversity push.

The article's authors warn against the nonexistent, completely imaginary threat of the next presidential administration rejecting corporatists for cabinet positions to appease the Democratic Party's progressive wing, claiming that doing so would be "narrowing the candidate pool" in a way that hurts Biden's stated aim of creating an administration that is as diverse as America. Because apparently executive positions in the corporate and financial sector are the only place you can find ethnic minorities in America.

“Groups from the far left throw out edicts, but these don’t reflect the realities of the American experience or inequality, the racial wealth gap, and may prove counterproductive to diversify the administration and to implement policies that work for all Americans,” NYT is told by a member of the influential DC lobbying firm Mehlman Castagnetti.

The New York Times is warning of the pressing danger of the Biden administration conceding too much to "the far left" at a time when progressive politicians have reportedly already been ruled out as candidates for cabinet positions due to concerns of appearing to be too far left, and when members of the Biden camp are already waving off demands from progressives using the phrase "we don't negotiate with terrorists".

Vox has also put out an article celebrating diversity without regard to policies or behavior titled "President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team is one of the most diverse ever", subtitled "Biden wants his administration to 'look like America.' His transition team is a start."

"Thus far, 46 percent of Biden’s transition staff are people of color and 41 percent of senior staff are people of color," Vox reports. "More than half of the transition staff — 52 percent — are women, and 53 percent of senior staff are women."

 

What Politics Will You Profess In The Era Of Diminishing Returns?

theamericanconservative  |  Jeff Rubin, author of The Expendables: How the Middle Class got Screwed by Globalization, has an answer to the above question that is easily deduced from the subtitle of his book. The socio-economic arrangements produced by globalization have made labor the most flexible and plentiful resource in the economic process. The pressure on the middle class, and all that falls below it, has been so persistent and powerful, that now “only 37 percent of Americans believe their children will be better off financially than they themselves are. Only 24 percent in Canada or Australia feel the same. And in France, that figure dips to only 9 percent.” And “[i]n the mid-1980s it would have taken a typical middle-income family with two children less than seven years of income to save up to buy a home; it now takes more than ten years. At the same time, housing expenditures that accounted for a quarter of most middle-class household incomes in the 1990s now account for a third.”

The story of globalization is engraved in the “shuttered factories across North America, the boarded-up main streets, the empty union halls.” Rubin does admit that there are benefits accrued from globalization, billions have been lifted up out of poverty in what was previously known as the third world, wealth has been created, certain efficiencies have been achieved. The question for someone in the western world is how much more of a price he’s willing to pay to keep the whole thing going on, especially as we have entered a phase of diminishing returns for almost all involved.

As Joel Kotkin has written, “[e]ven in Asia, there are signs of social collapse. According to a recent survey by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, half of all Korean households have experienced some form of family crisis, many involving debt, job loss, or issues relating to child or elder care.” And “[i]n “classless” China, a massive class of migrant workers—over 280 million—inhabit a netherworld of substandard housing, unsteady work, and miserable environmental conditions, all after leaving their offspring behind in villages. These new serfs vastly outnumber the Westernized, highly educated Chinese whom most Westerners encounter.” “Rather than replicating the middle-class growth of post–World War II America and Europe, notes researcher Nan Chen, ‘China appears to have skipped that stage altogether and headed straight for a model of extraordinary productivity but disproportionately distributed wealth like the contemporary United States.’”

Although Rubin concedes to the globalist side higher GDP growth, even that does not seem to be so true for the western world in the last couple decades. Per Nicholas Eberstadt, in “Our Miserable 21st Century,” “[b]etween late 2000 and late 2007, per capita GDP growth averaged less than 1.5 percent per annum.” “With postwar, pre-21st-century rates for the years 2000–2016, per capita GDP in America would be more than 20 percent higher than it is today.”

Stagnation seems to be a more apt characterization of the situation we are in. Fredrik Erixon in his superb The Innovation Illusion, argues that “[p]roductivity growth is going south, and has been doing so for several decades.” “Between 1995 and 2009, Europe’s labor productivity grew by just 1 percent annually.” Noting that “[t]he four factors that have made Western capitalism dull and hidebound are gray capital, corporate managerialism, globalization, and complex regulation.”