WaPo |Julia
Azari is an associate professor and assistant chair in the Department
of Political Science at Marquette University. This is the third op-ed in
a series about how to improve the presidential nominating process.
Only
a fraction of the Democratic primary electorate has voted so far, but
the nomination season is off to a rocky start. Independent Bernie
Sanders seems to be leading in popular votes, while upstart Pete Buttigieg is ahead in the delegate count.
And there’s also the question of whether either one — or any of the
other candidates — can bring the party together moving forward.
The
current process is clearly flawed, but what would be better? Finding an
answer means thinking about the purpose of presidential nominations,
and about how the existing system falls short. It will require swimming
against the tide of how we’ve thought about nominations for decades — as
a contest between everyday voters and elites, or as a smaller version
of a general election. A better primary system would empower elites to
bargain and make decisions, instructed by voters.
One lesson from the 2020 and 2016 election cycles is that a lot of
candidates, many of whom are highly qualified and attract substantial
followings, will inevitably enter the race. The system as it works now —
with a long informal primary, lots of attention to early contests and
sequential primary season that unfolds over several months — is great at
testing candidates to see whether they have the skills to run for
president. What it’s not great at is choosing among the many
candidates who clear that bar, or bringing their different ideological
factions together, or reconciling competing priorities. A process in
which intermediate representatives — elected delegates who understand
the priorities of their constituents — can bargain without being bound
to specific candidates might actually produce nominees that better
reflect what voters want.
wsws | In an appearance Monday on ABC’s “The View” program, the prominent black
Democrat Stacey Abrams brushed aside the right-wing, racist record of
Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg, telling the show’s
hosts that the billionaire oligarch’s entry into the race was positive
since “for once we actually know where the money is coming from.”
The former New York City mayor, who served two terms as a Republican
and one as an independent, and who backed George W. Bush in 2004, has
pumped hundreds of millions of dollars from his $60 billion fortune into
his campaign to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, or
at least secure enough delegates to block Vermont Senator Bernie
Sanders at the party’s nominating convention in July.
Asked whether she thought it was an issue that Bloomberg was spending
hundreds of millions of dollars to buy a frontrunner spot in the
primary elections, Abrams replied that this was no different than a
candidate using his or her pet on the campaign trail to attract voters.
“Every person is allowed to run and should run the race that they
think they should run, and Mike Bloomberg has chosen to use his
finances. Other people are using their dog, their charisma, their
whatever,” she said. “I think it’s an appropriate question to raise. But
I don’t think it’s disqualifying for anyone to invest in fixing
America.”
She was also asked about the fact that her political action
committee, Fair Fight Action, had received $5 million from Bloomberg,
the largest donation the group has received since it was founded in
2018. Queried as to whether the donation had any influence on her
political views, she replied, “I am grateful to any person who
contributes to Fair Fight. We have more than one hundred thousand
contributors. His check just had a few more zeros on it.”
Bloomberg met with Abrams in Atlanta in January and gave a closed-door speech to a voting rights summit that she hosted.
The minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives from 2011
to 2017 and defeated 2018 gubernatorial candidate, Abrams is widely
seen as a leading pick for vice president by whichever candidate wins
the Democratic nomination. She has been courted by former Vice President
Joe Biden, who raised her name as a possible running mate in November.
NYPost | Mike Bloomberg’s millions in campaign spending flew right out the window Wednesday night.
The billionaire’s self-bankrolled presidential bid was torn to shreds in the opening minutes
of Wednesday’s Democratic debate as his opponents skewered him for his
checkered past on sexual harassment and his record on stop-and-frisk.
Each candidate on the Las Vegas stage attacked Bloomberg right out of the gate, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren made the former Big Apple mayor visibly squirm and roll his eyes in frustration.
“I’d like to talk about who we’re running against, a billionaire who
calls women ‘fat broads’ and ‘horse-faced lesbians,'” she said from the
Paris Theater.
“And, no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg.”
Bloomberg, 78, started to surge in national and state polls
after pouring hundreds of millions of dollars of his personal fortune
into a slick campaign with catered campaign events and wall-to-wall TV
ads.
wired | When the notorious online forum 8chan was forced off the internet in August, after being linked to acts of violence including the Christchurch shooting, it looked like a blow to the Qanon
conspiracy movement, which had made 8chan its virtual home. Rather than
fade away, though, 8chan's Qanon posters migrated to other platforms,
where they’re still trying to use social media to influence elections.
The
two most popular new homes for Qanon followers are Endchan and 8chan's
successor 8kun. In late 2019, Qanon followers on Endchan used Twitter to
influence governors' races in Kentucky and Louisiana, posting tweets
and memes in favor of Republican candidates and attacking their
opponents. They analyzed social media conversations, including popular
hashtags, to decide where and how to weigh in. Both Republicans lost in
close elections. Now, Qanon adherents are employing the same tactics on
the 2020 presidential race.
"We need memes that are funny and
mocking of the democrat candidates, but also that are informative and
revealing about their policies that are WRONG for the United States of
America and the American people,” wrote a poster in a thread titled
"Meme War 2020" on 8kun in November 2019. “We also need memes that are
PRO-TRUMP, that explain how his policies are RIGHT for the United States
of America and the American people, and that can debunk the smears and
attacks that are no doubt going to come at POTUS.. again, and again."
Qanon followers have cultivated connections over social media with key Trump allies. President Trump himself has retweeted Qanon-linked accounts at least 72 times, including 20 times in one day
in December 2019. Other influential Trump allies also promoted
Qanon-linked accounts. For example, on December 23, Trump's personal
lawyer Rudy Giuliani retweeted @QAnonWomen4Rudy (the bio of which reads "Patriotic Ladies supporting the sexiest man alive").
The Qanon conspiracy theory
is based on the belief that Trump and a mysterious individual known as
“Q” are battling against a powerful cabal of elite pedophiles in the
media and Democratic Party. Q supposedly communicated with their
followers through encoded posts known as ”Q drops” on the
quasi-anonymous forum 8chan. After 8chan was taken down, Q, or someone
using the Q persona, resumed posting on 8kun.
Beginning
early last year, Qanon followers more explicitly embraced concepts of
“information warfare,” efforts to shape narratives and people’s beliefs
to influence events. The Russian interference in the US elections in
2016 has been described
as information warfare. In a February 2019 thread titled "Welcome to
Information Warfare" on Endchan's Qanon research forum, a poster
exhorted fellow users to "[g]et ready for a new phase in the battle
anons: the fight to take back the narrative from the [mainstream
media].” Now, Qanon users are trying to wield the same tactics to shape
the political narrative for 2020.
americanthinker |We’re
living in dramatic times that are difficult to understand. One way to
try to interpret them is through the cryptic clues provided by Q, which
appear on an anonymous online forum and imply top-secret knowledge of
upcoming events.
As I wrote in my article
“An Introduction to Q,” “Q’s followers believe that Q is a military
intelligence operation, the first of its kind, whose goal is to provide
the public with secret information… Q is a new weapon in the game of
information warfare, bypassing a hostile media and corrupt government to
communicate directly with the public.” It’s interesting to note that
shortly after my article was published here, American Thinker suffered a
series of unprecedented hacking
attempts. Also noteworthy is that Twitter permanently shut down the
account of Zero Hedge, a popular finance blog, two weeks after it posted
my article.
President Trump continues to bring attention
to Q, repeatedly retweeting Q followers, featuring Q fans in his ad
campaign, and making a public display of a “Q baby” at a rally. Yet the
media never asks Trump the obvious question: What do you think about Q?
Instead,
the media keeps ratcheting up its attacks on Q and the ever-growing
worldwide movement that Q inspires. On February 9, both the AP and New York Times published
blistering anti-Q articles, claiming that Q promotes baseless, debunked
far right conspiracies and accusing Q of inciting violence in deranged
followers. The day before this latest media ambush, a massive cyber
assault temporarily brought down 8kun, the message board on which Q
posts. Ron Watkins, 8kun’s administrator, tweeted,
“Attacks
have been coming in all day. Very sophisticated and expensive attacks;
the person paying for this likely has deep pockets.”
At
the same time that 8kun was attacked, X22 Report, which covers Q
postings, also was bombarded. On its Twitter feed, the site wrote it was
“being attacked from 54 different countries using hundreds of different
IP addresses, I have never seen anything like it.”
On
February 12, in response to these events, Q posted, “Highly
sophisticated ‘State-level’ attacks [v 8kun] followed by FAKE NEWS
attacks [v Q] the next day? Coordinated? Ask yourself a simple question -
- why? It’s time to wake up.”
In
almost 4,000 posts, Q has painted a disturbing, multi-faceted portrait
of a global crime syndicate that operates with impunity.
asiamediacentre | As a former daily newspaper editor in China, I have learnt how to
identify useful hidden information from the lengthy official statements.
Unfortunately, this is not a skill that everyone gets the opportunity
to develop.
I still remember when, at the beginning of 1997, a
series of official statements on Deng Xiaoping’s health situation was
delivered by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC.
As a high
school student at that time, I noticed there was something unusual
behind the wording of the last statement, ‘As an older man in his
nineties, his (Deng Xiaoping’s) health situation is still okay’.
On 19 February 1997, Deng's death was announced.
Ordinary
people should not be expected to have text analysis skills to read
between the lines of news reports in any given scenario. But in this
case, my background and abilities helped my family escape from
uncertainty and threats we might have encountered had we not left China
early.
In the official language system, what has been emphasised
is what has been missing and needs to be solved. Below is another
example.
On 3 February 2020, President Xi Jinping held a PRC Politburo Standing Committee meeting. News coverage from the official Xinhua News Agency, shows four key points were emphasised:
– Stop the spread of the virus
– Local governments must strictly follow orders and instructions from the central government.
– Focus on the key areas, which include Wuhan and other cities in Hubei Province.
– Do everything possible to save the infected patients, reduce the infection rate and mortality rate.
There was no sign of optimism in the report.
Ten
days after that meeting, Jiang Chaoliang, the Communist Party Secretary
of Hubei Province was sacked; as was Ma Guoqiang, the Communist Party
Secretary of Wuhan City.
It’s almost impossible to know when this indirect style of official statements was established in China. But if anyone
wants to figure out what’s really going on, they should try analyse
changes in the official text rather than pouring over social media.
quartz | A video intended as a tribute to China’s female medical
workers backfired as people instead vented their frustration over the
way Chinese state-owned media outlets use women as tools for propaganda.
The video,
posted by Gansu Daily, a government-owned newspaper in Gansu province,
showed over a dozen mask-wearing female nurses, who were weeping as
their hair was shaved off. They were about to be sent to Hubei, the
Chinese province worst hit by the coronavirus, where they would help
treat patients. The video attempted to paint the women as “the most
beautiful warriors” who fight the epidemic, praising their bravery as
they sacrificed their hair so they could better wear protective gear
when treating patients. But instead, the video was met with largely
angry comments on China’s Twitter-like social network Weibo.
Many
critics said that the way the nurses were treated was humiliating, not
complimentary of their bravery. In one scene, a nurse averts her gaze so
that she doesn’t have to see her newly cut-off ponytail in her
hairdresser’s hands. In another shot, some female nurses had tears
rolling down their faces after their haircut.
The video has now been deleted after the online backlash.
“In the video, the people who shaved the women’s heads
grabbed their ponytails roughly and just started shaving their hair
using electronic clippers. Are you treating them as humans or some
animals waiting to be shaved? I am so angry that my mind’s gone blank,”
said a user (link in Chinese) on Weibo yesterday (Feb. 17), when the video started trending on the network.
“If
you didn’t tell me they were medical workers, I would have thought they
were some evil criminals who were going through this serious
humiliation… Even their tears are used by the authorities to try to
touch the audience, making them the illustration of the spirit of
collectivism,” wrote Chen Mashu,
an author for “Epoch Story,” an account on messaging app WeChat that
publishes analyses and first-person accounts of social affairs.
popularmechanics |In June 2019, the Office of Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s office, confirmed that closed door meetings on UAP have occured. More recently, last December, when asked by Conway Daily Sun
reporter Daymond Steer about the Navy UAP encounters, recent
presidential candidate and current member of the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence, Sen. Michael Bennet, was cautious in saying
he wouldn’t share anything he’d learned on the Intelligence Committee.
However, Bennet said, “Our guys are seeing stuff that’s unidentified.
They don’t know what it is, I don’t know what it is … We’re trying to
learn more about it. The Air Force is trying to learn more about it.”
Popular Mechanics has since learned
in October 2019, staffers with the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence and the Senate Armed Service Committee were briefed on
current UAP issues. According to people with knowledge of these
briefings, some former BAASS contractors and current AATIP leadership
were in attendance.
Insiders also say this past year, during a closed-door meeting with the Senate Intelligence Committee, Brigadier General Richard Stapp,
Director of the DoD Special Access Program Central Office, testified
the mysterious objects being encountered by the military were not
related to secret U.S. technology. The Pentagon did not respond to
requests by Popular Mechanics to confirm Stapp’s testimony before the Intelligence Committee.
In only the second time publicly discussing the event, Popular Mechanics spoke with the Navy fighter pilot who was Cdr. David Fravor’s wingman during the now-famous 2004 Nimitz UFO
encounter. Agreeing to talk only under the condition of anonymity, the
fighter pilot confirmed they testified in front of congressional
leadership about their encounter. “I’ve been requested repeatedly to go
to the Pentagon and asked, ‘Is this what you saw?’.”
During a series of email exchanges, Popular Mechanics provided
specific information to Gough, the Pentagon spokesperson, in an effort
to see if this might influence the DoD’s current position. Initially,
Gough said she would examine the information and see if she could
provide a statement in response. However, Gough has not responded to
repeated follow-up requests from Popular Mechanics.
popularmechanics | The elusive engineer behind several highly unusual
patents, filed on behalf of the U.S. Navy, has broken his silence and
finally spoken to the media. Salvatore Cezar Pais responded to emails sent by The War Zone,
but his answers bring us no closer to how the technology behind the
patents, which involve fusion power and other exotic tech, came about.
Dr.
Pais, formerly an aerospace engineer with Naval Air Systems Command/
Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division and now at the Navy’s
Strategic Systems Programs, recently achieved notoriety with the
publication of patents involving compact fusion reactor energy—truly wild stuff that stretches the limits of science—and a “hybrid aerospace-underwater craft.”
The two technologies combined could theoretically create a “UFO”-like craft similar to the one seen by U.S. Navy pilots in 2004 and 2014-15.
Although highly unusual, Naval Air Systems’ Chief Technology Officer
James Sheehy assured the U.S. Patent Technology Office (USPTO) that the
technology behind them was indeed real, and that some aspects were
already undergoing testing.
Pais recently published a paper in EEE Transactions on Plasma Science titled, “The Plasma Compression Fusion Device—Enabling Nuclear Fusion Ignition.”
The device is essentially a fusion reactor, the holy grail of energy
research. Fusion reactors promise cheap, limitless energy without
complications of nuclear power—particularly nuclear meltdowns and the
generation of nuclear waste.
charleshughsmith |Here's a sampling of complacent assertions being made about the COVID-19 virus as if they were certitudes:
It's no worse than a bad cold.
It's less deadly than a normal flu.
You can't catch it unless you're in sustained close contact with a carrier.
Carriers are only contagious for 14 days. After that, you're home free.
A vaccine is just around the corner.
The Chinese government has it under control.
Only 2,000 people have died, it's no big deal.
The few cases in other countries are being managed, and it will soon disappear.
The pandemic will fade away by April due to rising temperatures.
China's GDP will only take a 1% hit, and global growth will only drop 0.25%.
Interestingly, there is no large-scale, credible data to support any of these claims. But the complacent are not just falling for false claims being passed off as "facts" rather than what they really are--magical thinking--they're making a much larger error known as Survivorship Bias.
NYTimes | Maybe the medical authorities in China didn’t report more infections previously because they couldn’t — because, say, they were short of reliable test kits
(which they were). It’s possible that the numbers were fudged. But
maybe they weren’t, or not as much as some people seem to fear. The
change in criteria for what counts as an infection may indicate, not so
much nefarious evidence of a cover-up now exposed, but the struggles of a
local health care system overwhelmed by a sudden and colossal medical
crisis.
Last Thursday, the Hubei authorities also reported a leap in the new daily tally of deaths: 242, compared with 94 for Wednesday.
That’s a big jump, but not nearly as big as the increase in the number
of newly infected people over the same period. Which could be a cause
for some measure of relief: The disease’s lethality would seem to have
decreased or be lower than was previously thought. Yet that’s not the
takeaway likely to have prevailed.
Some of the reporting has amounted to a set of contradictory pronouncements,
confusing at best. Journalists could display more critical distance and
a modicum of skepticism toward the data they relay, instead of turning
the media coverage into a hall of mirrors.
One
major problem is the doing of no one in particular. The story about the
coronavirus’s spread is evolving quickly, with medical authorities in
China and elsewhere disclosing figures daily (or more often), and the
media reporting the information immediately to satisfy the fast-paced,
staccato rhythms of publishing cycles. But up-to-the-minute,
blow-by-blow accounts of hard data can create mistaken impressions about
the underlying facts, even if both the data and the accounts are
accurate.
Last Thursday, a surge in
the number of infections was reported, because of that change in
official criteria. On Monday, China announced a drop in the number of
new cases for the third consecutive day. Now what should we make of that?
Constant on-the-nose reporting, however much it seems to serve transparency, has limitations, too.
It’s
a short-term, and shortsighted, approach that’s difficult to resist,
especially when people are afraid and the authorities are taking
draconian actions. It’s only natural to compare and contrast whatever
hard facts are available. And yet it’s especially dangerous to do that
precisely because people are so anxious, and fear can trick the mind.
A
view from a loftier perch — a month’s, or even just a week’s,
perspective — would, and will, produce far more reliable information.
nakedcapitalism | We’ll focus on China, since the immediate economic concern is how the
progress of the disease and efforts to manage it hurt their citizens
and companies, which affects the West directly (supply chain disruption,
loss of critical supplies, damage to companies that do a lot of
business in and with China) and indirectly (the hit to global demand).
So forgive me a US aside before returning to the China front. Even
though the plural of anecdote is not data, I see signs of concern even
in the currently low-risk US (my scenario for how things might get
troublesome here is that coronavirus winters in the global South,
particularly Africa and Australia, and is primed to become US health
risk during the 2020-2021 flu season). For instance, a friend in Dallas
supplied me with several products, including a hand sanitizer used in
operating theaters that supposedly kills nasties for five hours.
Interestingly, she didn’t view coronavirus as a current risk but felt it
was important to establish protective habits and routines well in
advance of a potential threat. This suggests that not only will
Americans stay well away from China for some time, but some may already
be considering foregoing travel not just to Asia, but potentially even
non-essential US trips.
Back to the main event. The fact that gas prices at the pump in
low-fuel tax states are increasingly at or below $2.00 a gallon ought to
be a wake-up call that serious deflationary forces are at work, even if
cheaper fillups provide a short-term boost to consumers.
The apparent reason for continued peppy stock markets is that too
many investors are mistakenly comparing the coronavirus to China’s
2002-2003 SARS outbreak. There are plenty of reasons why this is
wrong-headed. SARS was easier to contain because China was much poorer
then, so Chinese traveled less. Its high fatality rate (nearly 10%) also
likely resulted in citizens taking social distancing measures of their
own, in addition to official ones. Experts in China also claim the
government was faster to address the contagion then. One result was the
successful identification of “supertransmitters,” which was a
considerable aid in containment.
Economically, China was vastly smaller in global GDP terms. It had
just been admitted to the WTO and thus was only beginning to become
integrated into global supply chains. And the timing of SARS worked out
to be better too. Its major outbreak took place later in the year, as
opposed to during a peak travel time.
And the coronavirus has already surpassed SARS in number of deaths and number of confirmed cases.
China has been fragile for some time. It has managed to avoid a
downturn but to a significant degree, that has occurred by virtue of
increasing risk, particularly private sector leverage. That might not be
such a cause for concern if the additional borrowing were going into
productive activities. But China bears have been pointing out for years
how borrowing is producing less and less incremental GDP growth, as
evidenced by often shoddily built ghost cities. China has been trying to
curtail bank lending, but the government has engaged in stop and go
tightening, relenting and loosening liquidity when growth flags.
China has already taken damage from the swine flu, with more costly
pork hitting consumer budgets, and from the Trump trade wars, where many
small and mid-sized Chinese companies reporting considerable delays in
getting paid, forcing them to belt-tighten to conserve cash.
globalresearch |t should be apparent that the launching of bio-warfare, as with
conventional warfare, is considerably eased by locating military bases,
offensive weapons and delivery systems as physically close as possible
to one’s potential enemies. This is one reason the US has established
its nearly 1,000 foreign military bases – to ensure the capability of
putting an enemy under attack within 30 minutes anywhere in the world.
Clearly, the same strategy applies to biological warfare, the US
military having created scores of these labs euphemistically defined as
“health-security infrastructure” in foreign countries.
It is frightening to learn that many of these foreign
bio-installations are classified as so “Top-Secret” they are outside the
knowledge and control of even the local governments in the nations
where they are built. It is also frightening to learn that the Ebola
outbreaks all occurred in close proximity to several of these well-known
(and top-secret) US bio-weapons labs in Africa.
There were great fears a few years ago when American scientists
recreated the Spanish flu virus that killed around 50 million people in
1918. They spent nine years on this effort before succeeding, and now
large quantities of this virus are stored in a high-security government
laboratory in Atlanta, Georgia. More recently, scientists have created a
mutated super-strain of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus that is directly
transmissible among humans and would have at least a 50% kill rate,
spawning fears in 2005 of a global pandemic that might kill hundreds of
millions.
In late 2013, more than 50 of the world’s most eminent scientists
severely criticised the research Ron Fouchier and colleagues at the
Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, who have been developing mutant
varieties of the H5N1 bird-flu virus that are far more dangerous to
humans. The scientists wrote that the research was designed to make the
virus fully transmissible between humans, and clearly had a dual
civil-military function. This engineered flu could kill half the world’s
population, and not by accident. The US military funded this research
with more than $400 million.
asiatimes | Besides the economic and military realm, decoupling is also occurring
at the local level of academic and people-to-people exchanges. A Bloomberg
article in June 2019 revealed that the US is purging ethnic Chinese
scientists, including US citizens, from cancer research in top
institutions, as well as various other projects in STEM – science,
technology, engineering, mathematics – fields. Many institutions have
partnered with the FBI to target Chinese scientists and scholars for
surveillance, leading to fear among Asian Americans this could be a
dangerous lurch down the path of paranoia and racial profiling, similar to China’s campaign of racially profiling Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
Back in 2015, after various bungled cases, Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) and 42 members
of Congress raised these concerns with the Department of Justice. But
in face of an increasingly fearful and tense environment in academic
institutions, there has been a chill in bilateral scholarly exchanges
and research collaboration, and this decoupling looks likely to
continue.
Given Kissinger is known to have prescient observations, at this
critical juncture it appears his warnings in regard to a new Cold War
seem apt. Paul Haenle,
a former Asia adviser to presidents Bush and Obama, said: “If you talk
to folks in the Pentagon, they say they’re no longer debating whether or
not China is an enemy. They’re planning for war… and if you talk about
cooperation, you’re [seen as] naïve.”
Evan Osnos of The New Yorker noted
how Kissinger compares the current bilateral situation to a disturbing
analogy about the First World War. In that view, the trade war is an
ominous signal of economic polarization, the same kind that pitted
Britain against Germany before 1914, which has often been a prelude to
real war.
“If it freezes into a permanent conflict, and you have two big blocs
confronting each other,” Kissinger said, “then the danger of a pre-World
War I situation is huge. Look at history: none of the leaders that
started World War I would have done so if they had known what the world
would look like at the end. That is the situation we must avoid.”
Yale historian Odd Arne Westad
agrees. He noted: “The pre-1914 parallel is, of course, not just the
growth in German power. What we, I think, need to focus on, is what
actually led to war. What led to war was the German fear of being in a
position where their power would not strengthen in the future, where
they were, as they put it in the summer of 1914, at the maximum moment.”
Fort-Russ | Faced with Trump’s often re-stated desires to build positive
relations with China and achieve a trade deal, the deep state has gone
on overdrive pushing to sabotage this dynamic by promoting the support
of Taiwan and Hong Kong independence, while working hard to shut down as
many American-based Confucius institutes which had grown to 90 at their
max.
In recent months, FBI and CIA pressure has resulted in the closing of 29 of the 100 Confucius institutes
in the past 6 years. Most recently, under pressure of the new National
Defense Authorization Acts of 2018 and 2019, 22 Institutes have been
forced to shut down with sinophobe senators Mark Rubio, and Ted Cruz
leading the charge on the republican side and sinophobe democrats like
Seth Moulton running the pressure campaign for the democrats. On top of
this, hundreds of Chinese scholars, and scientists have been fired from
their positions as professors and researchers in universities, and
slandered as espionage agents by the new McCarthyite Witch hunt run
under the Christopher Wray’s FBI. The policy is blunt and simple: Sever
as many intellectual and cultural connections between America and China
as humanly possible to prevent any alliance from forming.
Pompeo’s
deployment to the Governors’ conference was a major part of this
fanatical campaign since the oligarchy is aware that American governors
like Matt Bevin of Kentucky, Bill Lee of Tennessee, Nebraska’s Pete
Ricketts, and many others
see China’s desire to invest in American infrastructure and
agricultural products as a life line for survival where no federal
relief appears visible and an economic meltdown looms overhead.
The
irony which leading deep state operatives managing the
anti-China/Russia campaign refuse to acknowledge is that America’s
oncoming economic collapse can only be stopped by a FDR-styled
bankruptcy reorganisation of Wall Street and a new alliance with
actually viable nations like Russia and China who wish to help America
rebuild its decayed agro-industrial foundations.
SCMP | Many Chinese students see the United States as an ideal place for college, despite the current tension between the two economic superpowers.
But
students and their parents need to exercise caution. A stark
demographic drop is coming for US colleges. The US high school
population, which has been declining, will drop significantly by 2026.
This will strain an already financially stressed industry.
Like
any investor, it will be important to look at a school’s current
financial condition and assess how well it is run for future viability.
As a start, here are three areas and specific metrics commonly tracked
by schools.
First,
how good is the college at their core function(s) of teaching and/or
research? If they’re poorly run in key functions, they’re likely to be
poorly run administratively.
Look
at the following for the school overall and by major/college:
graduation rates, retention rates, teaching scores, number of books and
articles published recently, research funding and per cent of external
funding. External funding is a quick measure on how competitive research
and approaches are.
Second,
how effective is the school in getting students to their goal of
discovering a career, getting an advanced degree, or getting a job in
their desired country?
Look
at the percentage of students using career services, satisfaction
rates, and the percentage of students graduating with a job or accepted
to graduate school by major/college. Schools should publish these
numbers so be wary of any place that doesn’t.
kansascitymag |Radio Sputnik doesn’t
really lean left or right, though. It leans hard both ways. Another
show, “By Any Means Necessary,” features interviews with the likes of
Noam Chomsky, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Black Lives Matter activists.
The notion that Democrats are cheating Bernie Sanders out of votes was
in heavy rotation on that one.
At first glance, having a program that denounces social justice
warriors (SJWs) and another that hosts Chomsky seems wildly
inconsistent. Today’s Russian propaganda, however, doesn’t promote any
particular political perspective. The point is simply to sow division,
according to reports prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee.
For example, in 2016, two Russian-controlled Facebook pages organized rallies in Houston.
One group, called Heart of Texas but controlled by Russia, held a rally
to “Stop Islamification of Texas.” Another Russian-sponsored page,
United Muslims of America, organized a “Save Islamic Knowledge”
counter-rally.
Sputnik feels a lot like that. If there’s a fault-line in our society
(guns, abortion, Meghan Markle) then Russia wants to exploit it. That’s
the dark reality too few Americans across the political spectrum seem
willing to acknowledge.
If you are looking for a takeaway, though, the real “fault lies not
in our stars” moment came when I first tuned into KCXL on a random
Tuesday and found myself listening to speculation that Chief Justice
John Roberts had been blackmailed by Jeffery Epstein. The show turned
out to be TruNews, hosted by Rick Wiles.
Texas-based Wiles, purportedly a pastor, has publicly claimed, among
other things, that Queen Elizabeth II is a satanist and Bill Clinton is a
cannibal. You might also recognize Wiles as the guy who called
impeachment proceedings a “Jew coup” and was later given press
credentials by the White House.
Yet you’ll notice nobody protests TruNews. It doesn’t make national news for broadcasting in a new city. Nobody at the Star writes an editorial denouncing Wiles.
banditobooks | Why not actually think this through? I’m especially talking to those
who ‘agree with’, say, Jon Rappoport, who believes the China Scare is a
complete hoax, i.e., there are no more people dying in China today than
two months ago. This is the ‘reasoning’ some of you have used to subtly
(in subtext) claim that I am somehow ‘wrong’ in suggesting you prepare
for the worst.
Okay, if the scare is a complete hoax, then what’s the motive? And
what’s next? Did any of you Rappoport fans even think about these
questions, and the questions that follow from them?
Come on, fellas, why would they do that? You haven’t thought about this, have you? Why engineer a completely false pandemic scare? Do I have to do your thinking for you?
‘Well, duhhh,’ you’re going to say, ‘They want to keep us
frightened.’ (Therefore being prepared for infrastructure collapse is
‘giving in to fear.’) Is this it? This is all you’ve got?
How would this even work? I mean when it becomes obvious that there is
no pandemic and all’s well? Wouldn’t people start thinking that all the scary shit is really just a hoax or misunderstanding. So in the long run a hoax like this would lessen general fear.
Do you really think they’d go to the media lengths you see now if this was just a hoax?
‘They’ve done it before,’ you say? ‘Remember the Mexican flu in 2009? How about the bullshit ebola scare?’
See, I was in Mexico for the 2009 ‘scare’ and it was like no one,
especially not the locals, seemed to notice. Yes, it was probably a
hoax, to keep us nerve-wracked. But neither that one nor the ebola scare
(one ebola infected person in the U.S.) were on this scale. Does this
seem to be the case with the Chinese Scare? Do you think all those
street scenes are faked? Why hasn’t someone blown the whistle on fakery
of this magnitude? Do you have an answer?
Don’t you think that at some point they are going to have to come up
with the real thing? I mean if they are going to get what they want, be
it a one-world economy and/or government, or a culling of the population
down to half a billion (their number).
A complete hoax is not going to work in bringing about
the world-changing paradigm they yearn for. They will need the real
thing.
If the Chinese are behind the hoax, what are they accomplishing?
omegashock | As we move into the second phase of this outbreak, we are starting to
understand more and more about this virus. We know who is at greatest
risk. We know what to do to avoid it. We are also beginning to
understand that our fears about this virus are unnecessary. Being
cautious is wise, being fearful is not.
Unfortunately, the
hysterical media continue to pump out hysteria and deception. And, we’ll
be seeing their clickbait headlines for a while longer, so remember who
is engaging in these lies. As we move further into these Last Days, the
fearmongers will only drag you down. So, ignore them.
Instead, show a dark and dying world what a true follower of Christ is really like.
Our job, as Christians, is to love the Truth. This means that we need
to be extremely careful to never pass on a lie. And, if we should ever
send out a lie, by mistake, we need to bend-over-backwards to make sure
that this mistake was corrected. It should horrify us, if we should ever
promote a lie.
Unfortunately, the men/websites that I have listed
above have all been found to have promoted lies, without a shred of
remorse. I have caught each and every one of them in a lie, and they
have refused to even retract what they said – let alone apologize. And,
this means that none of them can be trusted.
It also means that they are corrupt.
I
really do not enjoy saying this about people, but those who do not love
the truth are dangerous. They might not make up the lies that they
peddle, but they are still doing grave damage to those of us who are
seeking to warn others about what is coming.
Unfortunately, it is
one thing to pass on a lie. It is quite another thing to actually create
the lies. And, I have found these sites and people to be unflinching
liars:
Rick Wiles – TruNews
Debkafile (Giora Shamis)
V The Guerilla Economist – (Viji Varghese)
The Epoch Times
Hal Turner – Hal Turner Radio Show
GreatGameIndia
These
people KNOW that they are lying. I’ve caught them at it, and they are
unashamed by their lies. And, that lack of conscience over their
deception is truly nauseating. We could speculate all day about how they
could be so evil, but it really isn’t important. And, I’ve already
shared some speculation in previous articles and videos.
The Epoch Times Is Lying
The only one that I have not really talked about is The Epoch Times.
That ‘newspaper’ has been passing on a lot of deception about the Wuhan
Coronavirus, and I strongly suspect that they are making up a lot of it
all by themselves.
Why are they deceptive?
They are the media arm of the Falun Gong.
The
Falun Gong are a Buddhist/Daoist mystical, shmystical cult started by
Li Hongzhi in China. He made the mistake of challenging the Chinese
Communist Party, which responded in a brutal crackdown that continues
today. If you go to China to get an organ transplant, chances are high
that the organ that you received came from a Falun Gong practitioner
that was murdered by the Chinese Communist Party.
The Falun Gong
might be a cult, and Li Hongzhi might be a moron for going up against
the CCP. But, what China is doing to the Falun Gong is pure evil. And,
it’s understandable that the media arm of the Falun Gong, The Epoch
Times, would be interested in painting the Chinese government in as
unfavorable a light as possible.
Unfortunately, a lie is a lie. And, we should never be a party to lies. And, that means avoiding The Epoch Times.
theguardian | The coronavirus epidemic could spread to about two-thirds of the
world’s population if it cannot be controlled, according to Hong Kong’s
leading public health epidemiologist.
His warning came after the head of the World Health Organization
(WHO) said recent cases of coronavirus patients who had never visited
China could be the “tip of the iceberg”.
Prof Gabriel Leung, the chair of public health medicine at Hong Kong
University, said the overriding question was to figure out the size and
shape of the iceberg. Most experts thought that each person infected
would go on to transmit the virus to about 2.5 other people. That gave
an “attack rate” of 60-80%.
“Sixty per cent of the world’s population is an awfully big number,”
Leung told the Guardian in London, en route to an expert meeting at the
WHO in Geneva on Tuesday.
Even if the general fatality rate is as low as 1%, which Leung thinks is
possible once milder cases are taken into account, the death toll would
be massive.
He will tell the WHO meeting that the main issue is the scale of the
growing worldwide epidemic and the second priority is to find out
whether the drastic measures taken by China to prevent the spread have
worked – because if so, other countries should think about adopting
them.
medrxiv | The novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) is a recently emerged human pathogen
that has spread widely since January 2020. Initially, the basic
reproductive number, R0, was estimated to be 2.2 to 2.7. Here we provide
a new estimate of this quantity. We collected extensive individual case
reports and estimated key epidemiology parameters, including the
incubation period. Integrating these estimates and high-resolution
real-time human travel and infection data with mathematical models, we
estimated that the number of infected individuals during early epidemic
double every 2.4 days, and the R0 value is likely to be between 4.7 and
6.6. We further show that quarantine and contact tracing of symptomatic
individuals alone may not be effective and early, strong control
measures are needed to stop transmission of the virus.
off-guardian |Joker does something that has been beyond the bounds of
acceptable Hollywood film-making for 20 years (if not more) – it holds a
mirror up to the real problems of society. It challenges the
American meme that absolutely everyone is just a day away from realising
their wildest dreams. It admits that some people truly are alone, with
no prospect of help or happiness. Ever.
The poor of this film are not Steinbeck’s “temporarily embarrassed millionaires”,
they are just poor. And will be for the rest of their lives. This film
dares to tell a secret truth – that for a lot of people, life is a
struggle. Not a “there aren’t enough black Oscar nominees” struggle, or a “this man whistled at me on my way home struggle”, or a “some guy on twitter got my pronouns wrong” struggle. An actual struggle. To survive.
The violence of this film is not the vicarious, sanitized catharsis
of a hero, nor the malign recourse of the soulless monster, a series of
disconnected incidents linked by nothing but the inhumanity of the
perpetrators. No, here, violence is a slow build to a sudden shock. Not a
disease but a symptom. A boil bursting out societal puss.
Understandable maybe, but not justifiable. Exactly the sort of subtle
position which today’s media are inoculated against.
The politics of this film are neither left or nor right. Puppets in
coloured ties don’t debate non-issues here, the world isn’t blue or red.
It is flat grey. Austerity measures kill off social programs which help
those with mental illnesses get medication, therapy and employment.
Thomas Wayne, a billionaire politician, goes on TV to berate,
belittle and insult the victims of poverty as “not trying hard enough”,
they never say which party he represents. They recognise it does not
matter.
An out of touch media class – personified by Robert De Niro’s
late-night chatshow host – punches down, mocking the victims of
society’s decline and protected, by his media bubble, from ever having
to see the way the world truly is.
In that sense, it’s a truly realistic comic book film. Joker‘s world could nearly be our own. All it takes is a little push.
Look at the months of protests in France. Look at the soaring poverty
and food-bank use here in the UK. Look at the homeless tent cities
sprouting like fields of crops around Los Angeles and San Francisco.
It IS getting crazier out there. But that’s a message the media are no longer capable of comprehending.
*
Like I said earlier, Joker is not an all-time great movie. But it is a great movie for our time.
It tells a lot of hard truths, and explores ideas that are being
bullied out of vogue by the increasingly authoritarian “liberal” class.
thesaker | Whatever we all may think of Jewish identity politics or whatever our
opinion of the Soviet Union, it is undeniable that Hitler’s policies
inflicted unspeakable suffering upon both Russians and Jews. Western
Alt-Righters, who still delude themselves into thinking that Russians
share in their racist delusions, can deny and denounce this, but the
fact is that history has forever created a bond between Jews
and Russians: their common memory of the mass atrocities perpetuated
against them by the Nazis. No amount of political gesticulations will change that.
That does not, of course, mean that Putin, the Kremlin or anybody
else is an “ally” of Israel or that Putin and Bibi Netanyahu are working
together (or for each other). This utter nonsense is a completely false
conclusion resulting from a fundamental and profound misreading of
Russian history and Russian culture. But it goes even further than that.
I would argue that the history of the Russian culture is also
fundamentally incompatible with any racist/racialist ideas.
Conclusion two: Putin, Zelenskii and the Israelis
The recent trip of both Zelenskii and Putin to Israel has, again,
brought the topic of the Jewish, Russian and Ukrainian “triangle” to the
front page news. The Poles also seized the opportunity to make things
worse for themselves when they chimed in on it all. You read the
stories, so no need to repeat it all here. What was most impressive
about this event was that Zelenskii decided that he would travel to
Israel, only to then declare that he would not participate in the
commemorative events. Why? Clearly, he was terrified that the Ukronazis
will denounce him for caving in to Zionist pressure.
Putin did the exact opposite, not only did he travel to Israel and he
spoke at the event, he also reminded the (mostly Jewish) audience of
the horrors which the Russian people also suffered at the hands of the
Nazis. Clearly, Putin did not fear that some Russian nationalists would
accuse him of caving in to Zionist pressure. Why not?
Second, Jewish supremacism was very short lived in the USSR
(roughly from 1917 to 1937) and neither Putin nor any other Russian
political leader will let claims of exclusive “special” Jewish suffering
go unchallenged. And while most Russian politicians don’t feel the need
to express any doubts about the “official” 6 million figure, they do
like to remind their Jewish friends that the Russian nation suffered
anywhere between 20 to 27 million dead people during WWII, thus denying
Jewish victims any superior victim status over non-Jewish victims.
Our fundamental disagreement about WWII, Hitler and Jews
Likewise, it is BECAUSE Russians have zero sense of guilt towards
Jews, that Putin could mention this figure of 80-85% of Jews in the
first Bolshevik regime in front of an assembly of Haredi rabbis (see the video here for yourself: https://youtu.be/7bSAB5OPkwQ).
Can you imagine Merkel or Trump daring to say these things in front of such an audience?
Unthinkable!
Conclusion three:
Ever since Vladimir Putin came to power, Russia has been gradually
and steadily separating herself from the collective West. This process
is not so much about being “against” the West as it is about being
“different” from the West, but unapologetically so! This is especially
visible in the nature and quality of the political discourse in Russia
which is truly dramatically different from the kind of hyper-controlled
(and, of course, hyper-manipulated) political discourse in the West.
Simply put, Russians live in a much more open and diverse intellectual
landscape than their western neighbors. As a result, it would be a major
mistake to assume, for example, that Russian patriots hold views
similar to those held by western nationalists. Hence the existence of
what we could call “Our fundamental disagreement about WWII, Hitler,
Jews and race”.
NYTimes | Sputnik argues that the station is not
trying to sow distrust or to undermine public confidence, but rather is
seeking to express opinions that cannot be heard in other venues. “They
know perfectly well that they are not going to be allowed to say that on
CNN or Fox or MSNBC,” said Mindia Gavasheli, a veteran Russian
television journalist who runs Sputnik’s Washington bureau.
Sputnik
produces eight hours of daily material in Washington, filling the rest
with feeds from its bureau in Edinburgh, from RT broadcasts and from
shows that highlight aspects of Russia, like traveling to the Caspian
Sea. In Kansas City, Sputnik airs six hours every day, during commuting
times in the morning and evening as well as on weekends.
There
are no immediate plans to expand elsewhere, Mr. Gavasheli said,
although what he described as the “brouhaha” over Kansas City had
prompted inquiries from other markets in the United States.
The Sputnik hosts seemed to revel in
having a new audience. The morning show did a couple of segments on
Kansas City barbecue and tried to make light of Russian influence by
joking that Mr. Putin had ordered that the Kansas City Chiefs win the
Super Bowl. (That was before the game, which the Chiefs won.)
Sputnik
shares its Kansas City stations with a cast of far-right conspiracy
theorists, evangelical pastors and anti-Semites. The host of one
program, TruNews, recently described the impeachment of Mr. Trump as a “Jew coup.”
“He
calls things the way that he sees them,” Mr. Schartel said of Rick
Wiles, who made the remark. “I feel that he has got a right to say what
he is saying.”
“We’ve always put on voices and people
that wouldn’t be able to get on anyplace else,” said Mr. Schartel, who
has owned the station for 26 years.
A
mission statement on KCXL’s website says the United States has become a
different country that now looks down on traditional values. “We tell
you the things that the liberal media” will not, it said.
A Foundation of Joy
-
Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
