Table 4: Other variants (=delta) andomikron in over 12y olds vs. vaccination status:
Delta vs. Omikron (n = 90k cases & 41k cases since Nov 22nd = 1st Danish Omikron case)
No Jab (unvaxxed): 24 vs. 9% 1 Jab: 3 vs. 2% 2 Jabs 63 vs. 72% 3 Jabs (boostered) 11 vs. 18%
Unvaxxed to vaccinated cases – delta : 24% to 76% – omikron 9% to 91%
Danish vax rate for population >12y is around 81% (i.e. 19% unvaxxed)
= for delta vaxnated are slightly underrepresented (i.e. neo-vaccinoid seems to protect against infection/ being a transmitter by a small amount)
=for omikron the vaxnated are over-representedvs. their population percentage. – is it the age-skew? – are the vaxnated more risk-taking? – does the neovaccinoid make one more susceptible to infection? – are unvaxxed avoiding getting tested (counter intuative as it would give 7months valid green pass)
Who knows, but any claim to blame the unvaxxed for the transmission numbers has no basis in Danish data (Denmark having highest daily per-capita testing in the world = free PCR tests).
From the same report regarding hospitalizations (Table 5) – omikron hospitalized number is still rising – but omikron patients in ICU remains under 5 & has been there the last 2-3 weeks without change) – table 6: 99.2% of omikron cases have not required hospitalisation (skewing young, but nonetheless, Danish has free health care, so no disincentives to treatment)
rwmalonemd | Before you vaccinate your child, which is irreversible and
potentially permanently damaging, find out why 16,000 physicians and
medical scientists around the world signed a declaration publicly
declaring that healthy children should NOT be vaccinated for COVID-19.
On behalf of these MDs and PhDs, I have published a clear statement
outlining the scientific facts behind this decision.
My
name is Robert Malone, and I am speaking to you as a parent,
grandparent, physician and scientist. I don’t usually read from a
prepared speech, but this is so important that I wanted to make sure
that I get every single word and scientific fact correct.
I stand
by this statement with a career dedicated to vaccine research and
development. I’m vaccinated for COVID and I'm generally pro-vaccination.
I have devoted my entire career to developing safe and effective ways
to prevent and treat infectious diseases.
After this, I will be posting the text of this statement so you can share it with your friends and family.
Before
you inject your child - a decision that is irreversible - I wanted to
let you know the scientific facts about this genetic vaccine, which is based on the mRNA vaccine technology I created:
There are three issues parents need to understand:
The
first is that a viral gene will be injected into your children's cells.
This gene forces your child’s body to make toxic spike proteins. These
proteins often cause permanent damage in children’s critical organs,
including
Their brain and nervous system
Their heart and blood vessels, including blood clots
Their reproductive system
And this vaccine can trigger fundamental changes to their immune system
The most alarming point about this is that once these damages have occurred, they are irreparable
You can’t fix the lesions within their brain
You can’t repair heart tissue scarring
You can’t repair a genetically reset immune system, and
This vaccine can cause reproductive damage that could affect future generations of your family
The second thing you need to know about is the fact that this novel technology has not been adequately tested.
We need at least 5 years of testing/research before we can really understand the risks
Harms and risks from new medicines often become revealed many years later
Ask yourself if you want your own child to be part of the most radical medical experiment in human history
One final point: the reason they’re giving you to vaccinate your child is a lie.
Your children represent no danger to their parents or grandparents
It’s actually the opposite. Their immunity, after getting COVID, is
critical to save your family if not the world from this disease
In
summary: there is no benefit for your children or your family to be
vaccinating your children against the small risks of the virus, given
the known health risks of the vaccine that as a parent, you and your
children may have to live with for the rest of their lives.
The risk/benefit analysis isn’t even close.
As a parent and grandparent, my recommendation to you is to resist and fight to protect your children.
You could argue that it’s simple happenstance. The by-product of a
multi-focused evolving narrative, a story being told by a thousand
authors all at once, each concerned with covering their own little patch
of agenda. A car with multiple drivers fighting over a single steering
wheel.
There’s probably some truth to that.
But it’s also true that control, true control, can only be achieved with a lie.
In clinical psychology one of the diagnostic signs of the psychopath
is that they tell elaborate lies, compulsively. Many times they will
tell a lie even if the truth would be more beneficial.
Nobody knows why they do this, but I have a theory, and it applies to
the swarming groups of little rat minds running the sewers of power as
much as it does any individual monstrosity.
If you want to control people, you need to lie to them, that’s the only way to guarantee you have power.
If you are standing in the road, and I yell “look out, there’s a car a coming”, and you move just as a car whips past, I will never know if you moved because I said so, or because there actually was a car.
If my interest is in making sure you don’t get hurt, this would not matter to me either way.
But, what if my only true aim is the gratification of watching you do what I say, simply because I said it?
…well, then I need to scream out a warning of a car that does not
exist, and watch you dodge an imaginary threat. Or, indeed, tell you
there is no car, and watch you get run over.
Only by doing this can I see my words mean more to you than perceivable reality, and only then do I know I’m truly in control.
You can never control people with the truth, because the truth has an
existence outside yourself that cannot be altered or directed. It may
be the truth itself that controls people, not you.
You can never force people to obey rules that make sense, because they may be obeying reason, not your force.
True power lies in making people afraid of something that does not
exist, and making them abandon reason in the name of protecting
themselves from the invented threat.
Guardian | Now that the British former socialite Ghislaine Maxwell has been convicted in her sex-trafficking trial,
speculation is growing that she may try to cut a deal and become a
government witness in any broader investigation into the elite social
circle of her ex-boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein.
Maxwell would be aiming for a reduced sentence by
naming powerful names when it comes to others who may be involved in
Epstein’s crimes.
But defense lawyers and
sexual-crimes prosecutors have cast doubt on the government’s appetite
to strike a bargain. They question whether Maxwell has any vital
information the government does not already have, and whether it
represents a strategy Maxwell has previously attempted that has failed.
“It
all depends on who she would be cooperating against, and what she has
to offer,” said Jeffrey Lichtman, the defense attorney who represented
the Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán at trial two years
ago. “I would not be surprised if she had already tried to cooperate
and it had failed.”
Maxwell, who is expected to
appeal her conviction, was found guilty on five of six charges for her
involvement in Epstein’s sexual abuse of teenage girls. Prosecutors said
Maxwell “preyed on vulnerable young girls, manipulated them and served
them up to be sexually abused”. She is expected to receive a significant
prison term.
According to Lichtman, there are
defendants who, in the eyes of the government, are so bad that it does
not want to strike a deal in exchange for testimony. “They don’t want to
take the hand of someone involved a criminal operation and let them
cooperate against people who are well below them.”
“That may be the case here – they just feel that she’s so bad they won’t allow her to cooperate,” Lichtman said.
But
that does not preclude Maxwell and her lawyers from making an offer.
“There’s a tremendous amount of information she has on some very
important people. Now that she’s been convicted she may be more eager to
discuss. She certainly should, in my mind, because a lot of people
skated here, while she bore the brunt of the government’s full wrath,”
Lichtman said.
slate | “It’s
all connected,” one woman would say, repeatedly, to no one in
particular. “It’s the cabal.” She at one point told me that she
suspected it was a Maxwell lookalike sitting at the defense table, while
the actual Maxwell was off freely gallivanting somewhere. The
fifth-floor types spoke frequently of links between Jeffrey Epstein, the
CIA, and Mossad, expecting anyone in earshot to understand the
significance without further explanation.
Among
the conspiracists, there seemed to be a belief that this trial would
unlock the secrets of the universe—that it would lay bare a web touching
every rich person in the world, every celebrity, every government
agency, implicating them all in some sort of horrific global plot. In
the end, of course, it did nothing of the sort.
The
prosecution’s case was narrowly focused on the harm done to four
teenage girls. It was built on the testimony of those four accusers, now
women, who alleged that Maxwell aided, and sometimes participated in,
Epstein’s efforts to sexually abuse them. When Epstein’s “little black book” came into evidence,
it wasn’t because it included contact information for prominent
politicians and businesspeople—it was because the book had phone numbers
for those underage girls.
After
testimony came to a close, I didn’t think the question of Maxwell’s
guilt was much of a question at all. The accusers were, to my eyes and
ears, extremely credible. Corroborating evidence affirmed their stories.
The prosecutors were polished and effective in their presentation,
while defense attorneys often stumbled and looked overmatched. When the
defense team got a chance to put on its case, it turned out to be
shockingly flimsy. The defense’s lead character witness—Maxwell’s
onetime executive assistant—barely even managed to say anything nice
about Maxwell. There was zero doubt, in my mind, that Maxwell committed
the crimes she was charged with. But this was a jury trial, and with a
jury, you just never, ever know.
Day
after day, the deliberations went on without a verdict. The jurors
requested transcripts of testimony from about a third of the
witnesses—just reams of words—which made it seem like maybe they were
attempting to rerun the entire trial in their chambers. As time dragged
on, and they kept asking for more transcripts, I wondered if they were
simply overwhelmed by the case, lost at sea, unable to make heads or
tails of what they’d seen and heard in the courtroom. Some trial
watchers had earlier complained that the prosecution’s case was too
narrow, and that more accusers should have been called to testify, but
the jury’s behavior during deliberations suggested that the case was
confusing enough as it was. When the jurors requested a whiteboard,
highlighters, and colored Post-it notes, I wondered if one among them
was attempting to patiently explain to the rest, in a clear and visual
way, what actually happened.
miamiherald | Maxwell was once a fixture on the New York social scene who possessed a Rolodex of names and direct phone numbers to former presidents, world leaders, billionaires and celebrities. She was also for years Epstein’s girlfriend and, according to testimony, managed his household in Palm Beach and other locales where the multimillionaire maintained estates.
At least two women have claimed that they were trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell to powerful and wealthy men, including Prince Andrew, former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell and former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Federal prosecutors purposefully seemed to steer the case around the potential minefield of identifying figures they referred to as “third parties” who were in Epstein’s orbit. All the men have denied the allegations.
David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor, said the verdict shows that prosecutors were right not to focus on these other figures. “The government’s decision to streamline their case was the right choice,” he said.
Like Epstein, Maxwell hired a team of defense lawyers who filed a flurry of legal motions focused on undermining the credibility of the accusers and portraying them as prostitutes. “Depending on the age of the accusers during the time frame of the conspiracy, consent may be an appropriate and viable defense,’’ Maxwell’s attorneys said in one motion, noting that in Florida at the time the crimes were allegedly committed, “individuals under the age of 18 could be charged with commission of the crime of prostitution.”
Michael Reiter, the former Palm Beach police chief who oversaw the earlier 2005-08 case against Epstein, said the verdict should send a message to everyone in the criminal justice system.
“In 2005, early in our investigation, the Palm Beach Police Department recognized the importance of stopping Jeffrey Epstein and bringing him to justice. The department never bent to the power and influence brought to bear against us.,” Reiter said.
“Now that the courts have spoken, I hope and pray that the professionals in our justice system learn from this case. Law school professors should teach this case in legal ethics courses as an example of how not to treat victims of sex crimes and as a forewarning to prosecutors on how they can be influenced to fail in their duties to both victims and the public.”
Maxwell’s verdict comes three years after the publication of “Perversion of Justice,” a Miami Herald investigation that told in vivid detail how Epstein and his team of high-profile attorneys manipulated the criminal justice system more than a decade earlier allowing him to escape federal prosecution. It told the stories of the girls, now women, and how they were coping years after their encounters with Epstein. Despite the fact that the FBI had evidence he sexually abused at least 34 girls, Epstein served just 13 months in the Palm Beach county jail on charges that he solicited one minor.
lamag |In Beverly Hills, even the purchase of a firearm comes with certain…expectations. The city’s only gun store, Beverly Hills Guns, is a “concierge service” by appointment only, for a largely affluent clientele. And business is booming.
Since opening in July 2020, the store has seen upscale residents from Santa Monica to the Hollywood Hills increasingly in a panic following several high-profile smash-and-grab and violent home invasion robberies. The apparent siege has brought in a daily stream of anxious business owners and prominent actors, real estate moguls and film execs, says owner Russell Stuart. Most are arming themselves for the first time.
“This morning I sold six shotguns in about an hour to people that say, ‘I want a home defense shotgun,’” says Stuart, whose store is discreetly located in a Beverly Hills office building, with no sign on the doors, down the hall from a diamond dealer. “Everyone has a general sense of constant fear, which is very sad. We’re used to this being like Mayberry.”
That fear has the wealthiest of local gentry contemplating every more elaborate security measures: armored luxury cars, safe rooms and bullet-proof glass in their homes. One client asked about creating the “Tony Stark-level” security of a half-dozen automated drones to hover over his house, says Stuart, whose gun store is part of his larger security company, Force Protective Agency. “If you want the Gucci package, it’s going to cost money.”
The security business is experiencing a rebound after a couple of diminished years because of the pandemic. Some firms had their on-site security guards sent home for health and social distancing reasons. Not anymore. In Beverly Hills, the craving for additional security dates to the riot that followed an otherwise peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in May 2020, with unprecedented looting along Rodeo Drive that left broken boutique windows beneath beloved luxury brands: Chanel, Dior, Gucci, Michael Kors, MCM, Ermenegildo Zegna. Last March, a $500,000 Richard Mille watch was stolen at gunpoint from a diner at the Il Pastaio restaurant.The Dec. 1 home-invasion robbery and shooting death of philanthropist Jacqueline Avant, 81, in her Trousdale Estates home, only accelerated the arms race among the affluent.
“Beverly Hills is definitely a target,” says security expert David Perez, CEO of Omega International Group and a former Marine who previously worked security in the Clinton White House and at the Pentagon. “We’re telling clients, ‘Hey, don’t go out with flashy jewelry. Try to keep a lower profile. Instead of driving the Bentley, maybe just take the SUV. “
Or hit the streets in a luxo ride retrofitted with countermeasures like electrified door handles, run-flat tires and armor plating that can withstand military ordnance—say, the $650,000 Mercedes-Benz S680 Guard, which can repel assault rifle rounds and the detonation of hand grenades, or the $1 million tanklike SUV from Latvia’s Dartz Motorz Co.
Hard to believe a public health agency is running a campaign to drive vaccination by scaring people about cost of seeking care. Is CDC unaware of gaps in our healthcare system that already leave many vulnerable Americans excessively exposed to the costs and consequences of Covid? https://t.co/iEmPxYP1uO
erictopol |There were serious problems about the new 5-day isolation period.
First, there are no data or evidence to back it up. Yes, we’re facing
an Omicron onslaught of cases and it would be useful to come up with a
strategy to avoid a mass loss of functionality among our workforce and
the on-the-go public, no less in the midst of the holiday season. But
that doesn’t justify issuing a vacuous guideline. Second, there was no
mention of using a test, to confirm that the isolated individual is now
OK to circulate, that there is no indication of infectiousness. That
could be done via a rapid antigen test, which denotes infectiousness, carries some reduced sensitivity with Omicron,
or via a PCR. The cycle threshold value of a PCR test is also
indicative of infectiousness; the lower it is, the more likely potential
for spread. Either of these tests would be far better than no test to
justify a reduced isolation time in any individual.
Fourth,
the guidance did not mention a word about vaccinated or unvaccinated
status of people. We know from past studies there is a more rapid
clearance among vaccinees than people who were not vaccinated, but the
recommendation does not take this knowledge into account. Fifth, it
assumes that all people handle the virus similarly when, it fact, there
is considerable variability.
Note from the Figure that there are significant differences for
vaccinated, average 5.5 days (95% CI 4.6, 6.5), compared with
unvaccinated, average 7.5 days (95% CI 6.8,8,2) There is marked
inter-individual variability: for example, look at all the green dots
even >20 days in the unvaccinated group, panel D. These data,
representing nearly 20,000 samples, were obtained from predominantly
healthy young men and may not be representative of the population at
large. By the way, the NBA uses a 6-day isolation cutoff with testing with heavy emphasis on testing.
This problem can be fixed.
The CDC could come out and revise their guidance and say there are no
such data for Omicron (as a cover, like they did when they finally
recommend boosters for all adults) and require testing. Even the
airlines, which pushed for a shortened 5-day isolation period, wanted to
use testing as part of that requested change in policy.
But the bad day wasn’t just about isolation in isolation. There was also the major gaffe about genomic sequencing surveillance. Here are the data from last week, and the corrected data this week,
announced today by CDC. The point estimate for Omicron changed for the
week ending December 18th from 73% to 22.5%, which is remarkable. We
were led to believe that the country was well in the midst of the
Omicron wave when, in fact, we were and are still experiencing a large
number of Delta infections. As of December 25th, the point estimate is
59% with 95% confidence intervals lower 42%, upper 74%, indicating there
is a lot of wobble, a relatively limited number of sequencing samples
to draw upon, no less a reduction in confidence for the CDC itself.
wsws | Anger is growing in the working class in the United States in
response to Monday’s announcement by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) that it was shortening its guidelines for quarantining
for positive cases from 10 days to five. In remarks to the press, CDC
Director Rochelle Walensky and Biden’s top COVID adviser Anthony Fauci
admitted that the purpose of loosening the restrictions is to ensure the
supply of labor for American businesses. This occurs while the surge of
the Omicron variant is expected to infect 140 million Americans in the
next three months, more than 40 percent of the country.
The
announcement amounts to an abdication by the federal government of any
pretense of attempting to contain the pandemic. Instead, workers are
being told that they must learn to live—and to die—with the virus, in
the name of protecting the “economy,” a euphemism for the profit margins
and share values of the major corporations. It follows a televised
address last week by President Biden in which he rejected new lockdowns
of schools and workplaces, and even encouraged Americans not to cancel
their holiday travel plans.
However, the spread of the virus
itself among airline workers forced the cancellation of thousands of
flights. An appeal to the CDC by the heads of major airlines is what
immediately prompted the change to quarantine guidelines.
The announcement has stunned and angered workers, who are being
confronted with the fact that the corporate and political establishment
consider their lives and those of their friends and relatives
expendable. One tweet by a worker who was instructed to come to work
even though his roommate tested positive was liked more than 360,000
times and retweeted 44,000 times. Workers flooded the replies to the
tweet with their own horror stories from work and school.
One such
tweet read, “I'm a high school teacher and when I was told two weeks
ago during lunch that the group of people I had dinner with tested
positive I told my admin that I was leaving to get tested. The [New York
City Department of Education] told me if I didn't have any symptoms, I
would be docked a half day. I was positive.”
Another tweet read,
“My granddaughter’s Daycare sent a text last night that said one of the
care givers had tested positive but is asymptomatic and will still be
coming to work. Just a heads up in case someone didn’t want their kid
exposed. Unbelievable.” Another said, “My sister's workplace told her to
just come to work because you could test positive for 3 months so it
doesn't matter if you come to work. and they didn’t tell other employees
when someone got covid. gotta love america.”
Workers across the country spoke to the World Socialist Web Site.
One
Southern California nurse said, “To be honest, I have lost a lot of
trust in the CDC. This is the same organization that told us it was okay
to come to work wearing a bandana [in the opening weeks of the
pandemic, in response to widespread mask shortages]. I get it—the
country wasn’t prepared and there weren't enough N95s, but they put us
at risk and a lot of people got sick.
“Then we were told by Fauci,
‘If you’re vaccinated you won’t get it and you won’t spread it.’ That
was also a lie and they have really undermined the legitimacy of the
CDC. This is a big issue because it has played into the hands of people
denying that COVID exists.”
pbs | So, they have
also issued some new guidelines from the CDC for anyone who's just
exposed to the virus, if you come into contact with someone who has
tested positive for COVID-19.
And I want to lay this out for
people. There's a lot to digest. They are saying, if you are exposed,
and you are unvaccinated, they recommend five days of isolation, plus
five days of masking. If you have been vaccinated earlier, which means
more than six months have passed since the time you were fully
vaccinated with Pfizer or Moderna or more than two months for the
J&J, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, they say five days of
isolation and five days of masking.
If you were vaccinated
recently — that means fewer than six months for Pfizer or Moderna, fewer
than two months for J&J — no isolation recommended, and they say 10
days of masking. And if you have been boosted, they say no isolation
and 10 days of masking.
Dr. Davis, it's a lot to keep up with. A
lot of people are very confused. How are you making sure people in your
community understand this? And how are you implementing it?
Dr. Mati Hlatshwayo Davis:
Well, Amna, my background before I became the director of
health for the City of St. Louis is, I'm an infectious diseases
physician and a public health expert.
And so one of the things you
understand in my field is that infectious diseases are not static.
They're not a monolith. They evolve over time, which means the guidance
is going to change over time.
So what needs to happen is that the
leadership needs to do a good job of helping people to make those
transitions when they occur. So, the confusion is warranted. The job now
is on the CDC, on the federal government, and on local health officials
to make sure that people understand the science and can make that
transition.
Now, what's also a challenge is that, while I
completely agree with the science, as the director of health of a major
city, the implementation may take time, because we need to do it in a
way that is as safe and effective for our populations.
And not
every county or city has the same level of support measures to make sure
that this is successful as the next. So, for example, my counterparts
in New York are able to ramp up testing to support this, because part of
these guidelines do make the recommendation for testing at day five for
certain populations.
But if you come from a city or a county
where the funds and the capabilities just aren't there for that level of
testing, this may not be something that you can implement right away.
They're within lies the challenge.
theatlantic | The internet gives groups the
ability not just to express and bond over misery but to inflict it on
others—in effect, to transfer their own misery onto those they resent.
The most extreme examples come in the form of racist or misogynist
harassment campaigns—many led by young white men—such as Gamergate or
the hashtag campaigns against Black feminists.
Misery
trickles down in subtler ways too. Though the field is still young,
studies on social media suggest that emotions are highly contagious on
the web. In a review of the science,
Harvard’s Amit Goldenberg and Stanford’s James J. Gross note that
people “share their personal emotions online in a way that affects not
only their own well-being, but also the well-being of others who are
connected to them.” Some studies found that positive posts could drive
engagement as much as, if not more than, negative ones, but of all the
emotions expressed, anger seems to spread furthest and fastest. It tends
to “cascade to more users by shares and retweets, enabling quicker
distribution to a larger audience.”
Tech
executives thought that connecting the world would be an unmitigated
good. Widespread internet access and social media have made it far
easier for the average person to hear and be heard by many more of his
fellow citizens.
But it also
means that miserable people, who were previously alienated and isolated,
can find one another, says Kevin Munger, an assistant professor at Penn
State who studies how platforms shape political and cultural opinions.
This may offer them some short-term succor, but it’s not at all clear
that weak online connections provide much meaningful emotional support.
At the same time, those miserable people can reach the rest of us too.
As a result, the average internet user, Munger told me in a recent
interview, has more exposure than previous generations to people who,
for any number of reasons, are hurting. Are they bringing all of us
down?
In an essay titled “Facebook Is Other People,”
Munger uses one of his relatives as an example. The relative is in his
60s and has a cognitive disability. Munger describes him as “an
embittered, lonely man, the perfect target for information fraudsters
who will claim to explain that the source of his pain is some despised
group (immigrants, the deep state).” The relative has expressed an
interest in getting online, and Munger sees only downsides: “His
presence as a consumer of online news will have negative consequences,
both for himself and for the wider information environment.”
It may
sound obvious to say that our digital spaces are not okay because
people are not okay. But too many conversations about the problems in
online communities elide this fact. They frame the information crisis as
solely a technological issue. When Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow tech
CEOs come before Congress for their bipartisan grillings, the subtext is
that if the companies could only implement the proper moderation
policies, remove a few of the most toxic personalities, and change the
way content is recommended (according to their desired politics), the
problem would go away.
talkliberation | In a document titled The WikiLeaks Threat: An Overview
authored by Palantir Technologies in conjunction with HBGary Federal
and Berico Technologies, a slide centrally featuring the WikiLeaks logo
depicts spokes leading to key public supporters. Notes at the bottom of
the slide outline the corporate grievances in play, decrying
“established professionals… with a liberal bent” and declaring that
“this level of support needs to be disrupted”. The final line reads
“without the support of people like Glenn, WikiLeaks would fold”.
What folded, in fact, was very nearly HBGary itself. CEO and minority shareholder Aaron Barr stepped down in disgrace.
It wouldn’t be the first time or the last that Greenwald would be
targeted in some form for his journalism. That he is also named (and
even central) in some of the new #WLDragnet documents, will likely come
as no surprise.
Nor to the other influencers identified in the
documents. Popular Australian independent journalist Caitlin Johnstone,
repeatedly named in the NodeXL files said that it was “not surprising”
but “still pretty freaky”.
A who’s who of high profile independent media, whistleblowers and
support organizations who stand with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are
named again and again in the #WLDragnet documents.
As are thousands of their followers, members of their personal
networks and frankly, damn near anyone with even the vaguest sense of
political awareness or understanding as to the historic importance of
the battle to save Julian Assange.
It has long been
assumed by all and sundry that only WikiLeaks staff, closest
collaborators or other persons of significance could be plausibly caught
in such a web. That those possessing insider knowledge, occupying
positions of some influence or power, or with the ability to extend
significant social reach were the logical focal targets of state-led
efforts to clip the wings of WikiLeaks.
But new evidence points
to a truly global network of digital repression targeted at WikiLeaks
supporters who possess little if any such secret knowledge, significance
or power. The documents we are publishing, sourced from publicly
available data, contain the social media user account handles of
hundreds of members of the public, with thousands collected on.
bloomberg |Palantir Technologies Inc.
has long pursued some of the largest governments and companies in the
world as customers. Now, in a dramatic shift in strategy, it’s chasing
startups.
The controversial data integration and analytics company
co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel plans to announce Tuesday it will
sell software on a monthly subscription model to smaller companies,
starting first with a handful of startups connected to former Palantir
employees.
The startup sales push is a break with tradition
for the $40 billion company that made its name on large contacts with
the U.S. Army, Merck KGaA and a handful of other high-profile
organizations -- and is part of Palantir’s larger effort to diversify
its sources of revenue away from a few big customers.
The
new program, called Foundry for Builders, will start with five startups
in fields including robotics, health and fintech. The group will
experiment with software that Palantir says functions as an operating
system for company data. Palantir chose startups connected to former
employees, who are already familiar with how to operate the system, and
use their feedback to refine the product for startups before rolling it
out more broadly in coming months.
Palantir
had 149 customers driving $341 million revenue for the first quarter,
with the bulk of sales coming from government contracts. A flurry of
deal-making during the pandemic, including agreements with the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, pushed the company’s
government business to more than 60% of revenue -- an imbalance that
unsettled some investors.
Foundry for Builders aims to counteract that
disparity by adding a larger number of potentially fast-growing
companies to Palantir’s customer base. Developing closer relationships
with early-stage companies appears to have been an increasing focus in
recent months for Denver-based Palantir.
Besides
expanding sales to startups, the company has also been investing in
them. Palantir recently made a string of direct investments in companies
going public through SPACs totaling more than $130 million. All of
those companies also became customers, a practice that has raised some eyebrows.
"The reason is that with the sheer volume of new cases that we are having and that we expect to continue with Omicron, one of the things we want to be careful of is that we don't have so many people out," Dr. Anthony Fauci explains why CDC changed Covid isolation guidelines. pic.twitter.com/g48XwcDdJh
americanthinker | Biden ran on a promise: he was going to federalize the COVID response
and end COVID in America. He introduced vaccine mandates for federal
employees and those doing business with the federal government and had
OSHA do the same for every business with more than 100
employees. Various states, cities, and businesses, especially when it
came to health care, followed suit. We were also told that if we even
breathed the same air as a COVID person, we had to quarantine ourselves
for ten days. In the last two days, that promised federal response,
COVID mandates, and quarantines have all fallen apart, thanks to the
very contagious but seemingly relatively harmless omicron variant.
As omicron spreads, especially in New York City, one of the most vaccinated places in America, other Democrat-driven initiatives are falling. The CDC has had to shorten by 50% its
COVID isolation and quarantine period recommendations, reflecting (a)
that omicron seems to be a cold and (b) that America can't shut down
because of a cold.
And finally, and most ironically, as omicron cases increase,
hospitals are facing staff shortages because their ludicrous,
unscientific vaccine mandates saw them firing thousands of
employees. Last week, the CDC updated a document entitled "Strategies to Mitigate Healthcare Personnel Staffing Shortages." It appears that more than thirteen states are
struggling to deal with omicron cases because of staff
shortages. Interestingly, the Forbes article to which I linked talks
about staff burnout and more patients as reasons for the shortage but
makes no mention of mass firings. Funny that.
The point is that
Democrats made pie-in-the-sky promises and completely failed to make
good on them. More people died from COVID under Biden than under Trump,
Biden's had to admit that Trump's state-based approach was the correct
one, unreasonably long quarantines are becoming impossible to maintain,
and all the things that Democrats and Democrat-driven businesses did to
destroy the workforce are now becoming a serious problem.
NYPost | Vanity Fair reported Thursday that experts from Harvard’s T.H. Chan
School of Public Health, the Rockefeller Foundation, the COVID
Collaborative and other groups pitched a 10-page plan to White House officials on
Oct. 22 that called for the production of 732 million tests per month
for a “Testing Surge To Prevent [a] Holiday COVID surge.” The plan
wanted “Every American Household to Receive Free Rapid Tests for the
Holidays/New Year.”
Three days after the meeting, White House officials told the experts
that the administration would not adopt the plan. One official who
participated in the meeting told the magazine, “We did not have capacity
to manufacture over-the-counter tests at that scale.”
Biden ran for president last year pledging to bring competent
management to the pandemic. But this year’s Delta variant surge caused
his approval rating on COVID-19 to fall. Earlier this month, the number
of US pandemic deaths under Biden exceeded the number of fatalities
under former President Donald Trump within a nearly identical period of
time — despite the mass distribution of vaccines.
Biden expressed regret last week about his seemingly sluggish
response to the new Omicron variant, which has caused the highest-ever
infection rates in areas including New York City and Washington, DC.
Biden said in an ABC News interview Wednesday that he should have thought more quickly of a plan to mass distribute 500 million at-home rapid tests, which was announced Dec. 21 but won’t begin to happen until January.
“The answer is, yeah, I wish I had thought about ordering a half a
billion [tests] two months ago, before COVID hit here,” Biden told ABC’s
David Muir as FEMA rushed to set up sites in New York City and other areas slammed by massive holiday testing demand.
In mid-January, a previously announced Biden rule will
take effect requiring private insurance companies to reimburse
policyholders for rapid tests that they buy themselves. Another
50 million rapid tests are in the process of being shipped by the
federal government to local clinics for free distribution.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at a pre-Christmas press
briefing last week that details of how to mass-distribute
the 500 million free at-home rapid tests are still being developed —
despite the rollout being previewed to reporters last Monday and formally announced on
Tuesday. It’s not yet clear how many tests each household will be
allowed to request, how quickly they will be mailed or when a website
will be launched.
westernjournal | While most documentaries now are either about serial killers or
social justice movements, the Daily Caller’s “Cartelville, USA” brings
fresh investigative journalism to the table.
The film, clocking in at a brief but impactful 36 minutes, features
reporter Jorge Ventura as he delves into a troubling trend in the high
desert of Los Angeles County: illegal cannabis farms.
Ventura was the perfect person to produce and narrate the documentary,
as he is one of the few journalists who have covered the crisis at the
U.S.-Mexico border on location.
Ventura uses his own experience growing up in Palmdale, California, to
explain that many families move to the desert to get out of the hustle
and bustle of Los Angeles. Now, they’re starting to flee what used to be
their sanctuary.
Using testimonies from local residents and law enforcement,
the documentary reveals how cartels are buying up poor-quality houses
with vast amounts of land in order to start pot farms without proper
state licensing.
Property prices in the area have skyrocketed, ruining the region’s
reputation for being more affordable. The high desert is now overrun by
criminal enterprises wasting precious resources, including water, with
no regard for the communities around them.
These cartels staff their operations with migrants smuggled across the southern border, many of whom are working as indentured servants.
Ventura does a fantastic job drawing distinctions between the people running the farms and the ones laboring on them.
He tells a far more nuanced story about the average person coming
across the border than the hyper-partisan narrative coming from both
sides of the aisle.
NYPost | Santa Muerte has a fondness for tequila, cigarettes, candy — and human blood.
The saint is a favorite of Mexican and Central American drug traffickers
who are known to leave the severed heads of their enemies at improvised
shrines, featuring wax effigies and votive candles emblazoned with the
skeletal image of the one also known as Holy Death.
Dressed in a flowing white robe and often wielding both a scythe and a
globe, Santa Muerte — a cross between the Grim Reaper and the Virgin of
Guadeloupe, Mexico’s patron saint — is just one of a rapidly growing
religious movement of “narco saints,” worshiped by drug traffickers who
pray to them for protection, riches and the silence necessary to mask
their underworld dealings.
“The narcos and the gangs all believe in the power of prayer,” said
Robert Almonte, a Texas-based security consultant and former deputy
chief of the El Paso Police Department who specialized in narcotics.
“They believe that the saints will protect them no matter what they do —
and that’s dangerous because it emboldens the traffickers who truly
believe they can get away with murder and still go to heaven.”
The movement is growing, with estimates of up to 12 million devotees
in Mexico and, now, parts of the US. American law enforcement officials
struggling under the recent wave
of illegal migrant crossings are increasingly documenting altars to the
macabre saint — and another, Jesus Malverde — in stash houses in US
border communities where Mexican drug cartel members often hold migrants
for ransom, Almonte said.
Not that these saints are canonized. The Catholic Church has
condemned Santa Muerte worship as “blasphemous and Satanic.” When Pope
Francis visited Mexico for the first time in 2016, he condemned the
cult, which is one of the fastest growing new “religious” movements in
the world, according to the Catholic Herald.
“I am particularly concerned about those many persons who, seduced by
the empty power of the world, praise illusions and embrace their
macabre symbols to commercialize death in exchange for money,” the Pope
said, referring to Santa Muerte. “I urge you not to underestimate the
moral and antisocial challenge which the drug trade represents for
Mexican society as a whole, as well as for the Church.”
CNN is PISSED that a parent would say "Let's Go Brandon" to Biden directly. Analyst says it's ungracious. It's juvenile. It's reprehensible...and (this is CNN)...it's about "insurrection." pic.twitter.com/vRRIZagEvb
dailycaller | A CNN panelist claimed that a father of four, who tagged a phone call
with President Joe Biden with the phrase “Let’s Go, Brandon,” was not
only being impolite but also harboring feelings “about insurrection.”
Ron Brownstein, a senior editor at The Atlantic,
joined a CNN panel to discuss a phone call between Biden, First Lady
Jill Biden, and an Oregon father Jared Schmeck who ended his
live-streamed phone call with a less vulgar substitute for “f*** Joe
Biden.”
The CNN host dubbed the interaction between Schmeck and
the Bidens “disrespectful,” “juvenile” and “reprehensible.” He also
asked Brownstein for his opinion on the matter.
“I don’t think it’s fundamentally about incivility. I think it’s fundamentally about insurrection,” Brownstein said.
“The
whole ‘Let’s Go, Brandon’ motif is the reflection of the view [that]
two-thirds of the Republican base — driven by Trump’s false claims and
the Big Lie that Biden is an illegitimate President,” he continued.
“And, it reflects the findings in multiple polls by the American
Enterprise Institute, Vanderbilt University, and others, that a majority
of Republican voters now say the American way of life is disappearing
so fast that … we may have to use force to save it.”
Schmeck told The Oregonian that
he is now being “attacked” for his “joke” on the phone call. Schmeck
claims he is not a “Trumper,” though he is frustrated with Biden’s
political preferences and policy choices such as federal vaccine
mandates, inflation, and supply chain problems.
“At the end of
the day, I have nothing against Mr. Biden, but I am frustrated because I
think he can be doing a better job,” Schmeck said. “I mean no
disrespect to him.”
off-guardian | Whereas power stands on its own, without the need to move against
anything at all, force always moves against something. Force is
fragmented and therefore has to be fed energy constantly. Force consumes whereas power creates. While force requires sustained input, power acts without effort.
Newton’s third law teaches us that force always creates counterforce
and therefore it is limited by definition. While force must struggle
against opposition, power stands still. Power effects change through its
own field of influence, without the need to expend energy.
Force is associated with friction and conflict. This point is perhaps best explained by Dr. David Hawkins himself:
“Force always creates
counterforce; its effect is to polarize rather than unify. Polarization
always implies conflict; its cost, therefore, is always high. Because
force incites polarization, it inevitably produces a win/lose dichotomy;
and because somebody always loses, enemies are created. Constantly
faced with enemies, force requires constant defense. Defensiveness is
invariably costly, whether in the marketplace, politics, or
international affairs.”
Hawkins, R, D., 1995. Power vs Force. Hay House, Inc. 2012 reprint.
Thinking about the concept of power and force within the context of
the current global crisis leads us toward some profound conclusions. For
one, agendas that center around inequality, control, profit and
material gain are always driven by force.
Force is a tool used by those who lack power. When your motives go
against the good of humanity, when your intentions fail to support life
itself, your only option is to use force. Force includes all manner of
fear-mongering, manipulation, coercion and violence. Force may work up
to a point but as we discovered, it requires a constant input of energy
and therefore, results are obtained at a cost. Propaganda campaigns
require vast amounts of money, coordination and tireless censorship.
Vaccine mandates require bribes, threats, and the covering up of adverse
events.
This energy input is immense and, most importantly, unsustainable.
As force creates friction, it must constantly be fed with more and
more energy. But as the force becomes stronger, so does the friction.
Force, due its polarizing nature, increases entropy. As entropy rises,
the available energy decreases, until, eventually, momentum ceases and
the entire thing grinds to a halt.
While the source of power is self-evident, indestructible and
inarguable, force is subject to ‘proof’ and requires constant
justification. While true power emanates from consciousness itself,
force is driven by the ego.
Those who use force to impose their will on humanity always succumb
to power. As history has shown, all totalitarian regimes eventually come
crashing down – not on account of some divine intervention, but because
each of us is born with inalienable rights that are intrinsic to human
creation.
Therefore, it is only a matter of time before the transhumanist force
implodes. However, the time it takes for that to happen is dependent on
our ability to reduce disorder and increase power. A lower entropy
consciousness means more energy available to do work which results in
more power, freedom, happiness and love. As our power collectively
grows, we create an immovable wall able to repel any and all negative
influences and nefarious threats.
On the other hand, the ego-mind is constantly asking unanswerable
questions and worrying about unlikely futures. As our minds become
cluttered with fear-laden media, our power decreases and we find
ourselves at the mercy of “authorities”.
summit |A CNN correspondent noted how Joe Biden appeared “confused”
throughout an entire interview as he repeatedly mistook COVID home tests
for anti-viral pills.
The comment was made in reference to Biden’s 20 minute interview with
ABC’s David Muir, during which the president attempted to defend his
response to the pandemic and complaints that people in New York were
waiting in line for five hours to receive a COVID test.
Biden repeatedly referred to the 500 million at-home tests that had
been ordered as “pills,” confusing them with a new Pfizer drug, which
was federally approved on the same day.
“Repeatedly throughout this interview – President Biden seems
confused and was confusing the half a billion tests that they’ve ordered
with a half a billion pills,” said Jeff Zeleny, CNN’s chief national
affairs correspondent.
Many people have questioned whether Biden is in any fit mental state to
run for president again in 2024, never mind remain in office until 2028,
at which point he will be 86-years-old.
Last month we highlighted
the comments of Congressman Ronny Jackson, who was the former White
House physician under President Obama and President Trump, regarding
Biden’s cognitive state.
“Over 50% of this country does not believe he’s cognitively fit to be
our Commander in Chief and our head of state,” said Jackson, adding,
“If anyone needs a cognitive test, it’s this president.”
off-guardian | Vanessa Beeley sits down with researcher, economic reform activist,
free speech advocate & soul singer Ian Jenkins, to discuss the worst
of the impact of Covid-19 lockdown on the most vulnerable of society.
Governments do not care about these marginalised communities and the
measures imposed upon them do nothing to alleviate their suffering,
rather it is compounded by draconian, nonsensical restrictions. What can
we do as human beings to preserve what it means to be human in the face
of a tsunami of tyranny.
Enough of the tyranny of experts in narrow fields, with
no concept of the broader and quite disastrous consequences of their
inability to think outside their range of knowledge. Scientific
qualifications bestow absolutely no added ability to behave ethically or
to form policy.”
Ian Jenkins
I care far more how humanity lives than how long.
Progress, for me, means increasing goodness and happiness of individual
lives. For the species, as for each man, mere longevity seems to me a
contemptible ideal.”
C S Lewis, from ‘Is Progress Possible?‘
twitter | Just had an illuminating convo with my hubby where he (an essential blue
collar worker who never stopped going to his job) floated the idea that
all these moving goalposts in the face of what’s now an endemic virus
is about professional classes not wanting to return to the office
That implicates a lot of you so maybe take a beat before replying that
it’s about saving lives. I’m married to a Black Cuban immigrant who
works with 100% people of color. Neither of his Black female colleagues
is vaxxed, one of them didn’t even know there was a third shot…
And there’s a ton of mistrust among the Black folks he works around in
the vaccines. Like, him telling her people are getting a 3rd shot just
makes her feel vindicated - how are these things so good that you have
to keep injecting yourself??! I share all this to say that Twitter
By and large acts like these people don’t exist. Whether it’s the “karen
and chad” anti-vaxxer memes that totally ignore the vast vaccine
hesitancy among Black folks specifically but also a fair share of
Latinos, or the elitist calls for new lockdowns that don’t take into
account the ppl who can’t work from home, who would be again sacrificed so the
professional classes can keep getting their groceries, takeout,
supplies, weed, etc - a lot of people on here are incredibly out of
touch. And don’t think service workers don’t recognize it.
The pandemic
has exacerbated our class divide where white-collar workers are completely
divorced from the experiences of blue-collar workers who can’t do their
jobs from home but must continue for society to keep functioning. Yes,
there are larger structural forces at play - our lack of a safety
net, lack of universal paid leave and healthcare, etc. But that has
never been the country we live in and it’s preposterous for people to
argue that our whole society should shut down with zero services. They
don’t want that. They’re not even considering the vast implications.
It’s fucking Twitter socialism at its most absurd.
Anyway this thread went a little wonky cuz I’m talking about two
different things: vax hesitancy and lockdowns. But they both relate to
the racialized class divide and how it’s so rarely acknowledged on here
& in pub health msg
So maybe we need a little less listening to Fauci and Walensky and a
little more getting the hell out of our homes and start asking our
maintenance people, baristas, bus drivers, grocery store workers what
they think and how they feel.
NationalReview |Dr. Aaron Kheriaty has been fired from the University of
California Irvine, where he has worked as a professor at UCI School of
Medicine and director of the Medical Ethics Program at UCI Health for
almost 15 years. Back in the spring of 2020, he could have been a poster
boy for the medical professionals we were cheering on every night. That
was then. It seems that he has not only been dismissed because he is
unvaccinated, but because he has dared to make the medical argument that
natural immunity puts people in a similar — or better — place than a
vaccine against Covid-19. I’m not a doctor, and I’d like to think
doctors are free to raise questions based on their scientific judgment.
Kheriaty is not the only doctor I know who has found
himself in situations where it is understood that you are to go along
and not raise questions when it comes to Covid-19 protocols. I know
that’s happened in other places in medicine — the scandal of women’s
health is how they use the contraceptive pill for a whole host of
problems, cover up symptoms, treat fertility as itself a problem, and
sometimes leave women infertile when they actually want to have a child
later on down the line. So it happens. And it’s not good.
An added injustice would be to not shed light on what’s
happening. At one point this fall, when Dr. Kheriaty was still on forced
leave, I tried to post a video commentary to YouTube about his
situation and it was rejected as vaccine misinformation — to simply talk
about what was happening. I myself do not know anything about Covid-19
except my own experiences and what doctors tell me, because I am not a
doctor. It’s amazing how many of us think we are. And it’s terrifying
when doctors suppress scientific debate.
More here. You don’t have to have a strong position on vaccines to be disturbed by what’s happened to Dr. Aaron Kheriaty.
A Foundation of Joy
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Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
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eel ...
April Three
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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
...
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immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
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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
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He ...