How the Government Makes Corporations Woke

When corporations promote left-wingery, free-market conservatives are met with a taunt: “You want companies to have freedom of speech, and you want the free market to decide, so what are you complaining about? This is what you wanted.”

Of course, private, free-market de­cisions are never immune to private criticism. But “woke capitalism” is also not purely the result of private, free-market decisions. Behind the invisible hand of the market is the mailed fist of the government, pushing companies to the left in ways direct and indirect, in areas ranging from climate policy to workplace and hiring rules.

There are four major capacities in which government pressures companies to go woke: government as corporate shareholder, government as customer, government as capital-market regulator, and government as workplace regulator.

Government as shareholder: Who owns corporations? The shareholders. In theory, corporations work equally for the financial benefit of all the shareholders. But not all shareholders have an equal voice. Those with large holdings and organizations get more attention. In today’s America, many of the largest and most active investors are state and local public-pension funds that manage enormous pots of money, such as the colossal California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) and the New York State and Local Retirement System (NYSLRS). These are, in theory, merely investment fiduciaries, seeking the best returns to support the retirement benefits paid out to each state’s retired government employees. In practice, many of the pension funds are shot through with left-wing activists who see a government-controlled stake in public companies as a lever with which to move the world.

For example, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) is the second-largest pension fund in the U.S., with approximately $275 billion in assets. It owns $300 million of Exxon­­Mobil stock. It could reap the profits of owning ExxonMobil for the benefit of California teachers, or it could sell the stock if it felt morally obligated to divest. Instead, it is the largest share­holder involved in a “Reenergize Exxon” campaign that recently in­stalled three dissident directors on the board with the aim of moving America’s largest oil company away from carbon-based fuels.

In a March 2021 blog post on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, the head of sustainable investment and stewardship strategies at CalSTRS, along with a member of her staff and an Oxford professor, wrote that “CalSTRS is working on develop­ing its model so that it can be sub­stantially scaled in order to address the many environmental (e.g., global warm­ing, loss of biodiversity, and plastics in the oceans) and social (e.g., racial, gender, and income inequality)” issues it wishes to address through its share­holdings. She described the anti-ExxonMobil campaign as a “pilot” for strategies to storm the “Corporate Castle” of companies that decline to follow the activists’ directives. That model includes an “army of investors (could be few but mighty) who will support attacking the castle walls,” “NGOs and other stakeholder repre­sentatives who can be marshalled to apply pressure,” “executive search firm(s) for identifying the slate of new executives and directors” to be installed, and “appropriate media outlets who can amplify the message.”

This pressure campaign goes beyond environmental issues, which are just one of the three corners of the “ESG” formula of environmental, social, and governance topics on which government shareholders are active. CalPERS has been investing in private as well as public companies and then using its stake to pressure the companies to meet racial and other “diversity” quotas. In 2018, CalSTRS announced that it would use its financial heft to pressure retailers anywhere in the country to stop selling guns that are banned in California — overriding the laws of other states. It signed on to a collective effort of state pension funds declaring “Principles for a Responsible Civilian Firearms Industry,” with a roster that also included CalPERS and the pension funds of Connecticut, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Oregon, and San Francisco. These are all arms of government, seeking to own the means of production in order to dictate what may be produced and sold.

As discussed by Patrick Pizzella elsewhere in this issue, the Trump administration promulgated a rule re­focusing shareholder fiduciaries on pursuing the economic interests of their beneficiaries over their own political causes. The Biden administration blocked the rule from going into effect.

Public-shareholder activism is not limited to American government entities. Pension funds and sovereign-wealth funds of foreign states have their own lists of demands and priorities. Norway’s trillion-dollar sovereign-wealth fund, whose revenue comes from taxes and fees on the country’s oil industry, is the largest single owner in the world’s stock markets. Taking its marching orders from the Norwegian parliament, it sets “clear expectations” that “the companies in our portfolio should address global challenges in their corporate govern­ance” that “largely coincide with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.”

Government as customer: Government doesn’t just invest, it also buys and spends. Collectively, government con­tracts can provide a large share of a business’s income. In some industries, such as military contractors or health providers, it is effectively impossible to survive solely by selling to private customers. Federal, state, and local governments are especially aggressive about requiring contractors to sign on to their environmental and racial agendas. This phenomenon, too, is global in scope. A 2016 OECD paper observes that “public procurement expenditures amount to 13% of OECD countries’ gross domestic products” and urged that this large governmental footprint be used as leverage to promote “ambitious low-carbon innovation strategies.”

Contracts do not involve just the government spending its own money; governments also control access to public facilities. Chick-fil-A, for example, was banned from operating in airports in multiple cities — San Antonio, Buffalo, San Jose — by government officials angered at the company for the political views of one of its executives on same-sex marriage.

Government as capital-market regu­la­tor: It’s not possible to access American capital markets without getting past the gatekeepers. These include the Securities and Exchange Commission, which sets disclosure rules, the markets (the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ), the ratings agencies, and the accounting firms. The SEC is the government; the markets exercise directly delegated governmental authority, which in some circumstances can even preempt state law; the others live in that vague space where compliance is effectively compelled by the need to keep government happy. Then there are the central banks, which have been quite insistent in imposing their own woke visions on lenders, with the aim of raising the cost of capital for disfavored businesses and industries.

SEC disclosure requirements, and rules for what proposals can be raised by dissident shareholders, have been a hotly contested field for political activism. Joe Biden’s presidential campaign called for “requiring public companies to disclose climate risks and the greenhouse gas emissions in their operations and supply chains.”

Government pressure can be indirect, too. Climate envoy John Kerry spent this spring pressuring Wall Street banks to commit to “climate-friendly finance” that aims to redirect lending and investment towards “zero emissions” targets — with the understanding that collective refusals to do business made at the prodding of government may be less vulnerable to challenge under the antitrust laws.

Government as workplace regulator: Finally, the government’s rules shape the workplace. Civil-rights laws were originally written to guarantee equal opportunity under the law, even in private workplaces. But, in practice, many diversity-related corporate initia­tives have gone far beyond equality. They have instead created sinecures in human-resources depart­ments for left-wing activists who use the implicit threat of lawsuits to persuade corporate management to give them a free hand in leftist indoctrination. Maybe the most naïve joke among conservatives in recent years is to ask what kind of job you could get with, say, a gender-studies major. The answer is that you can get a job in a big corporation that puts you in a position to decide who gets all the other jobs. That power structure would not exist without substantial coercive govern­ment pressure.

If we want corporations to get back to the business of business, and out of politics, the first step is to get government out of their business.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/07/01/how-the-government-makes-corporations-woke/

*************************************

TX Gov. Abbott says Texas will build its own Mexican border barrier

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced on Thursday that he has immediate plans to build border barriers along the state’s border with Mexico in an effort to assist law enforcement apprehensions of immigrants attempting to cross into the United States illegally.

“President Biden’s open-border policies have led to a humanitarian crisis at our southern border as record levels of illegal immigrants, drugs, and contraband pour into Texas,” Abbott said. “While securing the border is the federal government’s responsibility, Texas will not sit idly by as this crisis grows.”

Abbott said the state will immediately begin construction on barriers in easily accessible and unsecured areas like Del Rio.

“The influx across the border is out of control, and the Biden Administration has shown that is not going to step up and do its job,” Abbott told Breitbart exclusively prior to a border summit on Thursday. “And amidst reports of even more people coming in across the border, we know we have to step up and do more.”

Customs and Border Patrol statistics revealed that the Del Rio Sector saw 27,890 illegal immigrant apprehensions in May this year, a 1,118 percent increase from the same period last year.

“The reason why we are here (Del Rio) is because of the massive increase,” Abbott stated, noting that unlawful border crossings were once “concentrated in the Rio Grande Valley. “Now, you know we’re upstream from the Rio Grande Valley in the Del Rio Sector and the Del Rio sector is suffering from some of the largest increases.”

Abbott said local residents are reporting “a lot of very bad dangerous people” coming into Texas illegally.

“They’re seeing a lot of very bad dangerous people come across the border,” Abbott said. “People that they are afraid of encountering, people who are causing damage to their fences, their livestock, their crops, their neighborhoods, and their homes.”

“Bad things are happening around here, and so they need help from the state to help them address this exploding crisis,” he continued.

Abbott said the Biden administration seems to be “welcoming these people into the United States,” but that Texas won’t send the same message. He said Texas will use it authority under a State of Emergency to ramp up enforcement of laws along the border.

“If you come to Texas, you’re subject to being arrested. You’re not going to have a pathway to roam the country,” Abbott said. “You’re going to have a pathway directly into a jail cell.”

“We want to be very aggressive in working with local officials and begin making mass arrests,” he continued. “In working in collaboration with a large number of counties — that means we’re going to be arresting a lot more people.”

Abbott acknowledged the increase in apprehensions will necessitate additional jail space, and he has partnered with Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey to seek assistance from governors nationwide with the crisis.

“With your help, we can apprehend more of these perpetrators of state and federal crimes before they can cause problems in your state,” the governors said. “Texas and Arizona have stepped up to secure the border in the federal government’s absence, and now, the Emergency Management Assistance Compact gives your State a chance to stand strong with us.”

Abbott said he predicts a “high level of participation,” adding, “The immigration issue and the border issue is not just the number one issue of Texas, it’s the number one issue in America. And so all of these other governors, they hear the same concerns that we hear about in Texas.”

Abbott said Texas is going to do whatever it can to secure the border, but “in the end, only the federal government and Congress can fix this.”

“…but as it stands right now, the state of Texas is going to step up and we’re going to start making arrests — sending a message to anybody thinking about coming here, you’re not going to get a free pass to the U.S. They’re getting a straight pass to a jail cell,” he concluded.

https://americanmilitarynews.com/2021/06/tx-gov-abbott-says-texas-will-build-its-own-mexican-border-barrier

***************************************

Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

*************************************

Evidence Mounts — Chauvin Did Not Murder Floyd

The strange evolution of the prosecution’s asphyxiation charge.

In his motion for a new trial, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, through his attorney Eric Nelson, made an obvious point. Quoting case law, Nelson reminded the court of “the prosecutor’s inherently unique role in the criminal justice system, which mandates that the prosecutor not act as a zealous advocate for criminal punishment, but as the representative of the people in an effort to seek justice.”

Had the State prosecutors set out to honor this mandate and seek justice, they would not have presented the medical evidence they did. In fact, they would not have charged Derek Chauvin with second-degree murder or charged his colleagues as accomplices.

Prosecutors knew they had a problem. To make the murder charge stick in the Chauvin case, they had to secure an “asphyxia” diagnosis from a physician. 

If justice were the goal, prosecutors would have taken two critical steps to assure that the medical testimony supported the charge of murder. The first was to run a controlled experiment to see if Chauvin’s actions could possibly have resulted in the death of George Floyd. The second was to make the court and the defense aware of the potential compromise of its star medical witness, Hennepin County Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker.

Dr. John Dunn did run such an experiment, and he made a video of the same. Dr. Dunn comes well credentialed. He is a former member and chair of the medico-legal committee for the American College of Emergency Physicians, board certified in legal medicine, and co-author with a pathologist of a chapter on forensics for a text published by the American College of Legal Medicine. He has followed the case from the beginning, studied the videos, and reviewed Floyd’s autopsy report.

Not content to speculate, Dr. Dunn enlisted the help of two men to determine whether or not the prone restraint used by Chauvin on Floyd could have asphyxiated and killed him. He recruited a 230-pound man to play the role of Floyd and a 170-pound man to play Chauvin’s role. At the time of the incident, Floyd weighed 223 pounds, and Chauvin, with his gear, weighed about 170.

The Chauvin proxy applied the handcuffs and placed the “suspect” in the prone restraint position. For a 10-minute period, he put his left knee on the man’s neck and shoulder, matching the pressure Chauvin put on Floyd. Throughout the experiment, Dunn used a pulse oximeter to monitor the oxygen level and pulse of the man being held in this prone restraint.

As Dunn attests and the video shows, “The results were that there was no impact on the oxygen level or the pulse of the restrained man for the full 10 minutes, and no ill effects at the time or two days later when he was interviewed.” Arguably, Dunn’s experiment has more evidentiary value than any contrary proof offered by the State.

Dunn believes that Floyd died from cardiac arrhythmia — a lethal heart rhythm. He observes that Floyd was suffering from severe cardiac disease aggravated by the drugs in his system including methamphetamine and fentanyl. “Exertion and excitement from intoxication and the arrest situation along with the amphetamine stimulant drug effects increase the arrhythmia risk,” says Dunn.

As the State’s charging documents make clear, even the officers on the scene were aware that Floyd may have been suffering from the severe effects of intoxicants. While restraining Floyd, rookie officer Thomas Lane said to Chauvin, “I am worried about excited delirium or whatever.” Chauvin responded, “That’s why we have him on his stomach.” Chauvin was acting in the interest of Floyd’s safety in his positioning, not acting to kill him.

A week or so before Floyd’s death, I saw a Kansas City police officer use the same technique on a prone female suspect for at least 10 minutes. My thought on seeing this: ‘Thank God, she’s white.” Not wanting to make the officer nervous — the woman was large and violent — I chose not to shoot video. In retrospect I wish I had. The technique does not look good, but the officer in question was able to restrain the woman until backup arrived with no apparent ill effect to her or to him.

Prosecutors knew they had a problem. To make the murder charge stick in the Chauvin case, they had to secure an “asphyxia” diagnosis from a physician. Neither Dr. Baker nor another forensic pathologist who reviewed the case for prosecutors supported that diagnosis.

So prosecutors doctor-shopped until the congenial Dr. Martin Tobin, a pulmonologist, essentially recruited himself to the case. With no relevant experience in death investigation, Dr. Tobin charmed the jury and the New York Times into believing that Floyd’s drug use and heart problems had nothing to do with his death.

Key to Dr. Tobin’s testimony was his contention that Floyd’s hypopharynx was cut off by neck pressure. Under oath, Dr. Tobin testified to the existence of research that supports his contention implicating a closed-off hypopharynx in asphyxia deaths. But, tellingly, prosecutors failed to present any such research in support of Tobin’s claim.

Tobin’s testimony would not have sufficed without at least some support from Dr. Baker. In Chauvin’s request for a new trial, his attorney cited “evidence that, under pressure from prosecutors, Dr. Baker altered his findings and conclusions regarding the death of George Floyd.” This is not an idle accusation.

In the way of background, Baker prepared the autopsy on May 26, 2020, the day after Floyd died. He met with prosecutors that same day. On May 29, in a criminal complaint charging Chauvin with manslaughter and third-degree murder, the State attested as follows (emphasis added):

The autopsy revealed no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxiation or strangulation. Mr. Floyd had underlying health conditions including coronary artery disease and hypertensive heart disease. The combined effects of Mr. Floyd being restrained by police, his underlying health conditions and any potential intoxicants in the system likely contributed to his death.

In an amended complaint on June 3, the State upped the charge against Chauvin to “Second Degree Murder — Unintentional — While Committing a Felony.” The complaint noted the results of the toxicology test, namely “the presence of fentanyl and evidence of recent methamphetamine use.”

Now, however, Baker supplied the State with one new detail that would prove to be essential for conviction: “The ME listed the cause of death as “[c]ardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint and neck compression” (italics added). Baker first announced the “neck compression” detail in a June 1 press release.

In a May 17 article in The American Spectator, George Parry details the nature of the pressure brought to bear on Baker. The conduit for that pressure was Dr. Roger Mitchell, a former Washington, D.C., medical examiner and deputy mayor of Washington. Parry’s source was a motion for sanctions against the prosecution filed by attorneys representing Chauvin’s partner and alleged accomplice, Tou Thao.

Although some questioned Parry’s (and my own) reliance on the Thao motion, three days after Parry’s article the State confirmed that Thao’s attorneys were over the target. Admitted the State in its response to Thao’s motion, “At some point before Dr. Baker issued his findings and autopsy report on June 1, 2020, Dr. Roger Mitchell, who was acquainted with Dr. Baker professionally as a colleague and fellow forensic pathologist, reached out to Dr. Baker, and they discussed this case” (italics added).

Prosecutors go on to say they learned of Mitchell’s conversations with Baker during a routine meeting to discuss the medical aspects of the case on November 5, 2020. “Ultimately,” they report, “the State opted not to utilize Dr. Mitchell as a testifying expert witness.” They should never have even considered him.

On July 2, 2020, Mitchell had given an interview to the Guardian, in which he said, “From what the world has seen, we know that George Floyd’s intoxication, or George Floyd’s heart condition, played absolutely no part in his death.”

“From what the world has seen?” In that one statement, Mitchell summarized the effect a misleading video snippet was having on the State’s case. The mob was now dictating Minnesota justice.

The increasingly radicalized Mitchell was speaking out wherever he could find a microphone. His diagnosis of society’s ills was as skewed as his diagnosis of Floyd’s. Mitchell said on a podcast around the same time as his meeting with the prosecutors, “my people are starving. My people are hungry. My people have foots on their necks…. White supremacy has placed itself at the center disenfranchisement of black and brown people in this country.”

Five prosecutors and a paralegal sat in on the November 2020 meeting with Mitchell. If anyone recorded the conversation, no one provided the defense with the audio. The four defendants — Chauvin, Lane, Thao, and Alexander Keung — have had to rely on the State’s own account of that meeting. Prosecutors surely presented Mitchell’s story in its best possible light, but even that light is troubling.

The accusations against Mitchell in Thao’s motion came from the meeting summary prepared by the State and shared with the defense in a belated document dump. The summary was sufficiently well buried that defense attorney Eric Nelson was unaware of the Mitchell meeting at the time of the trial.

Thao’s motion quotes from the prosecutors’ notes taken at the November 5 meeting with Mitchell. Here are some of the highlights:

“Baker said that he didn’t think the neck compression played a part.”

Dr. Mitchell called Dr. “Baker first to let him know that he was going to be critical of Baker’s findings.”

“In this conversation, Mitchell said, you don’t want to be the medical examiner who tells everyone they didn’t see what they saw. You don’t want to be the smartest person in the room and be wrong. Said there was a way to articulate the cause and manner of death that ensures you are telling the truth about what you are observing and via all of the investigation. Mitchell said neck compression has to be in the diagnosis.”

George Parry covered this well, but in brief, Baker told Mitchell neck compression played no role in Floyd’s death, and Mitchell threatened to write a disparaging op-ed about Baker in the Washington Post unless he said it did. Thao’s attorneys knew what they were saying when they demanded “sanctions for prosecutorial misconduct stemming from witness coercion.”

In an angry response that reads as though written by Keith Olbermann, the State answered Thao by saying, “These preposterous accusations are simply false, and Defendant Thao does not offer even a shred of evidence to support this baseless conspiracy theory.” There it is, the ultimate refuge from a losing argument — a charge of “conspiracy theory.”

As Thao’s motion noted, Mitchell was not at all coy about his second cited attempt at coercion, namely his efforts to destroy the career of of Dr. David Fowler, the one medical witness to testify in Chauvin’s defense. But that is a story for another day.

The story for today is Chauvin’s sentencing in two weeks and his request for a new trial. Time after time, prosecutors have failed to honor their “inherently unique role.” On the medical front alone, they either ignored the evidence that cast Chauvin’s guilt into doubt or buried it. If their goal truly is “to seek justice,” they should at the very least run an experiment comparable to the one performed by Dr. Dunn to put their theory of the case to the test. Even police officers deserve due process, not just the semblance of it.

**************************************

What Does It Mean When a Nation Honors a Mass-Murdering, Pedophilic Slaver?

Turning churches into mosques is very much on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s mind these days.  Last Friday,  June 4, he “spoke of the Turkish legacy of conquest and the conversion of the Hagia Sophia [into a mosque] during a mosque opening in the city of Zonguldak on Friday.”  In his own words, “the re-opening of the Hagia Sophia as a mosque is important, as it is a legacy of conquest.”

Thus, while the West falls all over itself to disavow any “conquest” its ancestors may have engaged in—for example, the “conquest of the Americas” at the hands of the “genocidal” Columbus—here is the president of Turkey praising the violent conquests committed by his Muslim ancestors.  The significance of this dichotomy, and what it portends for the future, is in need of acknowledgement.

As a case study, take Erdoğan’s stance towards Turkey’s greatest jihadis of history—men whose atrocious deeds would shame ISIS.  Last summer, while celebrating his decree to transform the Hagia Sophia—which for a millennium had functioned as Eastern Christendom’s greatest basilica—into a mosque, Erdoğan repeatedly saluted Sultan Muhammad al-Fatah (“the Conqueror,” 1432-1481) for violently transforming Christian Constantinople into Islamic Istanbul.

And yet consider: Sultan Muhammad’s sole justification for conquering Constantinople was that Islam demands the subjugation of “infidels,” in this case, Christians. He had no other “grievance” than that.  In fact, when he first became sultan, he “swore by the god of their false prophet, by the prophet whose name he bore,” a bitter Christian contemporary retrospectively wrote, that “he was their [the Christians’] friend, and would remain for the whole of his life a friend and ally of Constantinople.” Although they believed him, Muhammad was taking advantage of “the basest arts of dissimulation and deceit,” wrote Edward Gibbon. “Peace was on his lips while war was in his heart.”

During his siege of Constantinople, he regularly exhorted his Muslim army with jihadi ideology, including by unleashing throngs of preachers crying,

Children of Muhammad, be of good heart, for tomorrow we shall have so many Christians in our hands that we will sell them, two slaves for a ducat, and will have such riches that we will all be of gold, and from the beards of the Greeks we will make leads for our dogs, and their families will be our slaves. So be of good heart and be ready to die cheerfully for the love of our [past and present] Muhammad.

“Recall the promises of our Prophet concerning fallen warriors in the Koran,” the sultan himself exhorted: “the man who dies in combat shall be transported bodily to paradise and shall dine with Muhammad in the presence of women, handsome boys, and virgins.”

The mention of “handsome boys” was not just an accurate reference to the Koran’s promise (e.g., 52:24, 56:17, and 76:19); Muhammad was a notorious pedophile.  His enslavement and rape of Jacob Notaras—a handsome 14-year-old nobleman’s son in Constantinople, whom Muhammad forced into becoming his personal catamite until he escaped—was only one of the most infamous. The sultan stabbed to death another Christian boy who “preferred death to infamy.”

After his conquest and desecration of the Hagia Sophia, Sultan Muhammad had the “wretched citizens of Constantinople” dragged before his men during evening festivities and “ordered many of them to be hacked to pieces, for the sake of entertainment.” The rest of the city’s population—as many as 45,000—was hauled off in chains to be sold as slaves.

This is the man whom Turkey and its president honor—including by rededicating one of Christendom’s greatest and oldest churches as a victory mosque to him last year.  Nor is Muhammad al-Fatah the only terrorist to be honored; as Erdoğan explained in one of his speeches:

The conquest of Istanbul [Constantinople] and the conversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque are among the most glorious chapters of Turkish history.….The resurrection of the Hagia Sophia represents our memory full of heydays in our history, from [the battles of] Badr to Manzikert, from Nicopolis, to Gallipoli [all jihadi victories] … The resurrection of the Hagia Sophia is required by our respect and commitment to all of our ancestors, from Alp Arslan [Islamic victor of Manzikert who opened the way to the conquest of Asia Minor, and massacred or enslaved tens of thousands of Christians], to Muhammad al-Fatah, to Abdulhamid [who massacred as many as 300,000 Armenians in the name of jihad between 1894-1896].  The resurrection of the Hagia Sophia … honors Muhammad al-Fatah’s spirit of conquest… Allah willing, we will continue to walk on this sacred path without pause or hesitation, until we reach our ultimate destination [emphasis added].

The message could not be clearer: jihadi ideology dominates Turkey, at least its leadership.  Invading and conquering neighboring peoples—not due to any grievances but because they are non-Muslim—with all the attending atrocities, rapes, destruction, and mass slavery, is apparently the ideal, to resume once the sunset of Western power is complete.

Meanwhile, because Americans are used to seeing statues of their own nation’s heroes toppled—for no other reason than that they were white and/or Christian, and therefore inherently evil—the significance of Erdoğan’s words and praise of Sultan Muhammad the Conqueror—who as an Asian Muslim is further immune from Western criticism, as that would be “racist”—will remain lost on them.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/raymond-ibrahim/2021/06/08/what-does-it-mean-when-a-nation-honors-a-mass-murdering-pedophilic-slaver-n1453043

**********************************

A malaria drug which Donald Trump touted as a possible prevention for COVID-19 could increase survival rates in severe patients by up to 200 per cent, according to a new study.

Scientists found that, when ventilated patients with a severe version of COVID were given high doses of hydroxychloroquine with zinc, their survival rates could increase dramatically.

Trump said in March 2020 he was taking it to prevent him catching the virus, rather than treat it. He did not become infected until October, and was not treated with the drug.

Yet Trump's allies on Wednesday were highlighting the study, conducted by Saint Barnabas Medical Center in New Jersey on 255 patients.

It was published on May 31 on the medical site medRxiv.

Trump's spokesman, Jason Miller, tweeted: 'Oh.'

He quoted: 'Study shows hydroxychloroquine and zinc treatments increased coronavirus survival rate by almost three times'

His son, Donald Trump Jr, said: 'In the last week alone, we've learned that the media, so-called fact checkers and their Big Tech enforcers lied to us about the lab-leak theory, Hydroxychloroquine and the clearing of Lafayette Square.

'All to hurt Donald Trump. 'What else are they lying about?'

Marjorie Taylor Greene, the stridently pro-Trump congresswoman for Georgia, tweeted: 'How many people died bc Dr. Fauci said trust the science and Hydroxychloroquine isn't effective?

'New study shows: Hydroxychloroquine + Azithromycin therapy at a higher dose improved survival by nearly 200% in ventilated COVID patients.

'Trump was right.'

In April 2020, Trump declared: 'We bought a tremendous amount of hydroxychloroquine, which I think is, you know, it's a great malaria drug. 

'It's worked unbelievably, it's a powerful drug on malaria. And there are signs that it works on [coronavirus], some very strong signs. 

'And in the meantime, it's been around a long time, and also works very powerfully on lupus. So there are some very strong, powerful signs, and we'll have to see. 

'Because again, it's being tested now, this is a new thing that just happened to us, the invisible enemy, we call it.'

He continued: 'It's a very strong, powerful medicine, but it doesn't kill people. We have some very good results and some very good tests. You've seen the same test that I have. 

'In France, they had a very good test. But we don't have time to go and say, gee, let's take a couple of years and test it out. And let's go and test with the test tubes and the laboratories. 

'We don't have time. I'd love to do that.' A month later, on May 28, 2020, he told a roundtable event at the White House: 'I happen to be taking it. 

'A lot of good things have come out. You'd be surprised at how many people are taking it, especially the front-line workers. Before you catch it. The front-line workers, many, many are taking it.'

He added: 'I'm taking it, hydroxychloroquine. Right now, yeah. Couple of weeks ago, I started taking it. Cause I think it's good, I've heard a lot of good stories.'

White House physician Dr. Sean Conley released a memo that evening, which said that after discussing evidence for and against hydroxychloroquine with Trump, they concluded 'the potential benefit from treatment outweighed the relative risks.' 

 Trump's support of the unproven drug was described by critics as reckless and dangerous.

Last summer, Twitter restricted the account of Trump Jr after he posted a video of doctors touting the effectiveness of the drug. The social media platform accused him of 'spreading misleading and potentially harmful misinformation' related to the coronavirus.

In March of this year, the World Health Organization warned against using the drug to prevent the coronavirus, citing data suggesting it was ineffective.

Yet the authors of the new report state: 'We found that when the cumulative doses of two drugs, HCQ and AZM, were above a certain level, patients had a survival rate 2.9 times the other patients.

'By using causal analysis and considering of weight-adjusted cumulative dose, we prove the combined therapy, >3 g HCQ and > 1g AZM greatly increases survival in Covid patients on IMV and that HCQ cumulative dose > 80 mg/kg works substantially better.'

Hydroxychloroquine is still an unproven drug for COVID treatment.

Early in the pandemic, Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation's top public health expert, expressed interest in the drug, but he maintained that more data was needed to prove its efficacy.

Fauci's emailed comments on hydroxychloroquine line up with what he said in public and the scientific consensus about the drug.

Republican critics, however, accuse him of secretly supporting the drug - although there is no evidence to prove it.

Several other studies in recent months, after Fauci's email, have found that hydroxychloroquine can be effective in certain situations.

A December study from the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents showed 84 per cent fewer hospitalizations among patients treated with the drug, and a January study, conducted by Hackensack Meridian Health, found encouraging results in patients with mild symptoms who were treated with the drug.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9671029/Hydroxychloroquine-zinc-increase-COVID-19-survival-rates-nearly-200.html

Why a Judge Has Georgia Vote Fraud on His Mind: ‘Pristine’ Biden Ballots That Looked Xeroxed

When Fulton County, Georgia, poll manager Suzi Voyles sorted through a large stack of mail-in ballots last November, she noticed an alarmingly odd pattern of uniformity in the markings for Joseph R. Biden. One after another, the absentee votes contained perfectly filled-in ovals for Biden—except that each of the darkened bubbles featured an identical white void inside them in the shape of a tiny crescent, indicating they’d been marked with toner ink instead of a pen or pencil.

Adding to suspicions, she noticed that all of the ballots were printed on different stock paper than the others she handled as part of a statewide hand recount of the razor-thin Nov. 3 presidential election. And none was folded or creased, as she typically observed in mail-in ballots that had been removed from envelopes.

In short, the Biden votes looked like they’d been duplicated by a copying machine.

“All of them were strangely pristine,” said Voyles, who said she’d never seen anything like it in her 20 years monitoring elections in Fulton County, which includes much of Atlanta.

She wasn’t alone. At least three other poll workers observed the same thing in stacks of absentee ballots for Biden processed by the county, and they have joined Voyles in swearing under penalty of perjury that they looked fake.

Now election watchdogs have used their affidavits to help convince a state judge to unseal all of the 147,000 mail-in ballots counted in Fulton and allow a closer inspection of the suspicious Biden ballots for evidence of counterfeiting. They argue that potentially tens of thousands may have been manufactured in a race that Biden won by just 12,000 votes thanks to a late surge of mail-in ballots counted after election monitors were shooed from State Farm Arena in Atlanta.

“We have what is almost surely major absentee-ballot fraud in Fulton County involving 10,000 to 20,000 probably false ballots,” said Garland Favorito, the lead petitioner in the case and a certified poll watcher who runs VoterGa.org, one of the leading advocates for election integrity in the state.

He said the suspect ballots remain in the custody of the election officials and inaccessible from public view.

“We have confirmed that there are five pallets of shrink-wrapped ballots in a county warehouse,” Favorito said in an interview with RealClearInvestigations.

He and other petitioners were ordered to meet at the warehouse May 28 to settle the terms of the inspection of the absentee ballots. But the day before the scheduled meeting, the county filed a flurry of motions to dismiss the case, delaying the inspection indefinitely.

“We will be in court on June 21 to resolve these motions,” said Favorito, calling them another “roadblock” the county has tried to throw in their way. He expects talks over the logistics of the inspection to resume after the Fourth of July holiday.

As part of his May 21 order, Superior Court Judge Brian Amero requested officials guard the warehouse around the clock until an inspection date can be set. But just eight days later, a breach in security was reported after sheriff’s deputies left their post for a couple of hours.

“The front door was [found] unlocked and wide open in violation of the court order,” Favorito said.

County officials confirmed that a motion-detection alarm was triggered Saturday, May 29, shortly after the deputies drove away from the building in their patrol cars around 4 p.m. But they said a locked room where the ballots are kept “was never breached or compromised.”

Favorito is not convinced, and his lawyer is seeking to obtain the video footage from building security cameras. “How do we know for certain there was no tampering with the ballots?” asked Favorito, who said he did not vote for Trump.

News of the security lapse caught the attention of former President Donald Trump, who has claimed his loss to Biden was marred by fraud. In a statement, he implied election officials in the Democratic-controlled county are trying to hide evidence of fraud. “They are afraid of what might be found,” he asserted.

Trump is also closely monitoring the ongoing election audit in Arizona, another red state that turned blue in 2020. If evidence of fraud is found in these key swing states, it might help confirm suspicions the election was “stolen” from Trump and the 74 million who voted for him—as a recent poll found 61 percent of Republicans believe—as well as provide the proof of voter fraud that Democrats and major media have long claimed doesn’t exist.

The cases could potentially give other battleground states incentive to take steps to tighten election security and root out fraud, including passing legislation to limit the use of controversial mail-in drop boxes and require the verification of signatures on such ballots. In Georgia, relatively few mail-in ballots were rejected for invalid signatures in the November general election, even though several thousand had been disqualified for signature issues in the primary election.

In a move that inspired national boycotts alleging voter “suppression,” Georgia recently passed a law limiting, but not removing, the drop boxes. The state had installed them for the first time in 2020 under pressure from Democratic groups, who argued officials needed to make voting easier for minorities who didn’t trust the mail and feared going to the polls during the COVID scare.

The 38 drop boxes Fulton distributed throughout the county in the November election will be cut to eight in the future. The boxes had been largely unregulated and unattended—located outdoors, open 24 hours a day and available for drop-offs until the evening of Election Day, prompting complaints of ballot stuffing and double voting. But now they have to be located inside election offices or early voting locations, and can only be available during the hours when early voting is permitted. The new law also requires ballots be printed on special security paper.

Voting by mail traditionally was limited to voters who had clearly defined and well-documented reasons to be absent from the polls. But Democrats in key swing states lobbied to relax the rules in the middle of the election and amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Mail-in or drop-off ballots create opportunities for voter error and fraud. In a typical election, one in 20 mailed ballots are rejected, according to recent studies. More than 534,000 mail-in ballots were rejected during the 2020 Democratic primaries alone.

Still, both Republican and Democratic officials in Georgia say they have found no credible evidence of widespread fraud in the general election. Democrats, as well as many major media outlets, have written off Favorito’s group’s allegations of fraud as “conspiracy theories.”

“This is nothing more than a circus that’s being put on by those who promote the ‘big lie’” that Trump won the election, said Robb Pitts, the Democratic chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. “Where does it end? The votes have been counted. The elections have been certified. It’s over.”

Pitts effectively controls the county elections board through his Democratic appointee Mary Carole Cooney, who runs the board. They are in charge of securing the pallets of disputed Biden mail-in ballots awaiting inspection in the county warehouse.

But Judge Amero, who federal elections records show is a Democratic donor, felt compelled to unseal the ballots for a forensics review after reading the sworn affidavits submitted by election monitors. Here are key witnesses in the case:

Suzi Voyles, a veteran Fulton poll manager who audited the Nov. 14 recount at Georgia World Congress Center, testified she examined several stacks of ballots of about 100 ballots each from a cardboard box marked “Box No. 5—Absentee—Batch Numbers 28-36.” She said these ballots “came from the ballot [drop] boxes that had been placed throughout Fulton County.”

“Most of the ballots had already been handled; they had been written on by people, and the edges were worn. They showed obvious use,” she wrote in her Nov. 17 affidavit. “However, one batch stood out. It was pristine. There was a difference in the texture of the paper,” and these mail-in ballots hadn’t been folded even though they ostensibly had been removed from envelopes.

All but three of the 110 ballots in the bundle—which had been labeled “State Farm Arena”—were marked for Biden and appeared to be “identical ballots.”

The most “alarming peculiarity” was the identically marked ovals next to Biden’s name. In every ballot, “The bubble next to ‘Joseph R. Biden’ had a slight white eclipse in the bubble,” she said, leading her to believe that the batch of 107 Biden ballots had been “copied” from a single ballot.

Voyles speculated that “additional absentee ballots had been added [for Biden] in a fraudulent manner” at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta on election night.

The void she and other auditors witnessed in the exact same spot of the oval filled in on 107 ballots for Biden “was alarming to us,” Voyles said in an RCI interview. “Every single bubble was precisely alike. I had never seen that before in 20 years” of election monitoring.

But when she and other recount workers raised concerns with county election officials, “we were told not to worry about it,” she said. “They seemed uninterested in the [integrity of the] ballots.”

After Voyles later blew the whistle in affidavits and state election hearings, she was fired as a poll manager by the Fulton County Department of Elections. “I got the boot for speaking the truth,” she told RCI.

Robin Hall, a certified Fulton County recount observer, also testified she witnessed a number of boxes of absentee ballots marked “100 percent for Biden” that appeared to be “perfectly filled out as if they were pre-printed with the presidential candidate selected.” She stated: “They did not look like a person had filled this out at home. All of them looked alike.”

Judy Aube also worked at the World Congress Center on Nov. 14 where she observed the same thing: “suspicious batches” of mail-in ballots for Biden whose markings appeared identical, as if they had been duplicated by a machine and not filled out by a voter at home.

Barbara Hartman, another election official auditor, also doubted the authenticity of absentee ballots she handled that she said were never folded, as would normally be the case for ballots returned in an envelope by mail or dropped in a box. “The absentee ballots looked as though they had just come from a fresh stack,” she swore in her affidavit. “I could not observe any creases in the ballots and [it] did not seem like they were folded and put into envelopes or mailed out.” Also, “The majority of the mail-in ballots that I reviewed contained suspicious black perfectly bubbled markings for Biden,” Hartman stated, adding that “they looked as if they were stamped.”

The veteran poll watchers found no plausible explanation for the anomalies other than possible fraud.

However, election officials have offered an explanation for why the mail-in ballots examined in the stacks did not have folds or creases. They say ballots are sometimes copied onto other paper when they are too damaged to be fed through one of the scanning machines during tabulation. The mailed ballots can be torn or crumpled by postal workers during delivery or by poll workers while opening them and removing them from envelopes, which could prevent the machines from reading them.

But Favorito suspects the hundreds, if not thousands, of allegedly duplicate absentee ballots for Biden might be connected to spikes in votes for Biden he observed late on election night in Fulton County after election officials cleared monitors from State Farm Arena and pulled cases full of ballots out from under tables and began scanning them.

“There’s always the chance it was an inside job,” said Favorito, a career IT professional who’s been a leading advocate for Georgia election integrity over the past two decades.

On Nov. 3, Fulton County elections officials informed monitors that they were shutting down the State Farm tabulation center before midnight, only to continue counting throughout the night while no one was watching.

“Election workers don’t bring ballots in after the supervisor has delayed processing until the morning, hide them under a table, and then bring them out for scanning and tabulation after the supervisor tells [monitors] they are done scanning for the evening and they go home,” Favorito said.

“Once scanning [was] completed, an election line feed showed an unprecedented vote spike that turned the election in favor of Biden,” he added. In fact, “just over a half hour after workers scanned the potentially fraudulent ballots, an election line feed showed a 100,000-plus vote spike for Biden.”

“Where did those ballots come from and why did they handle them so suspiciously?” Favorito asked.

Voyles noted that the county elections supervisor who oversaw the secret scanning of the cases full of ballots also helps run the warehouse where the suspect ballots are being stored.

Phone calls and emails to Fulton County went unanswered.

Similar Anomalies, Other Counties

Favorito pointed out that the potential for counterfeit ballots exists in other Georgia counties, not just Fulton.

In fact, two Democrat poll workers blew the whistle on similar anomalies they witnessed in neighboring DeKalb and Cobb counties, where the election process also is controlled by Democrats.

Carlos E. Silva, for one, declared in a Nov. 17 affidavit that he observed a similar “perfect black bubble” in absentee ballots for Biden during the recount he worked in DeKalb County. And while overseeing the Cobb County recount, he swore he “observed absentee ballots being reviewed with the same perfect bubble that I had seen the night before in DeKalb. All of these ballots had the same characteristics: they were all for Biden and had the same perfect bubble.”

Added Silva, a registered Democrat, “There were thousands of [mail-in] ballots that just had the perfect bubble marked for Biden and no other markings in the rest of the ballot.”

Another registered Democrat, Mayra Romera, testified that while monitoring the Cobb County recount, she noticed that “hundreds of these ballots seemed impeccable, with no folds or creases. The bubble selections were perfectly made … and all happened to be selections for Biden.”

In a recent article pooh-poohing complaints of fraud in Georgia, as well as Arizona, The New York Times portrayed Favorito as “a known conspiracy theorist” and suggested he was a 9/11 truther. As evidence, it cited a 2002 book he published “questioning the origin of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”

Asked about it, Favorito responded: “My book did not propose any theories on what happened on 9/11. I don’t mention anything about explosives” planted in the World Trade Center, as truthers have speculated. Rather, he said, he questioned Bush family business connections with the bin Laden family and other wealthy Saudis, and argued that the war on terror benefited the Bushes. He also faulted the Bush administration for “obstructing” FBI investigations into the attacks.

Favorito says he is a “constitutionalist” and neither a Republican nor a Trump supporter.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/why-a-judge-has-georgia-vote-fraud-on-his-mind-pristine-biden-ballots-that-looked-xeroxed_3849309.html

An Orchestrated Hoax

Dinesh D’Souza

It can now be said publicly: The massive public campaign to convince and even compel the world to accept the idea that SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19, arose naturally from a meat market in Wuhan was a hoax.

The gory details are contained in a bombshell investigative report in the magazine Vanity Fair. This alone is surprising. Vanity Fair is a culture and trends magazine, not noted for this type of serious inquiry. Yet Katherine Eban’s in-depth article is thoroughly researched, with multiple named sources, and written in the style of a detective story.

The first question to ask is: How did we get a scientific and media consensus that SARS-CoV2 originally came from the Wuhan meat market? The answer is a group letter signed by leading virologists that appeared in the reputable science publication The Lancet. This article dismissed theories that suggested SARS-CoV2 might have come from the Wuhan lab as “conspiracy theories” that had were flatly rejected by the scientific community.

Apparently convinced they had to “listen to the science,” the Lancet statement convinced media around the world to revile public figures, especially politicians such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), for even asking for an investigation into where COVID-19 came from. Cotton was almost universally dubbed a kook for even raising the possibility of “debunked” and “discredited” theories.

Digital media promptly imposed its strict regime of restriction, banning, shadowbanning, and deplatforming of users who were deemed to share such “misinformation.” Acting on the recommendation of its so-called fact checkers, Facebook took down millions, perhaps tens of millions, of posts supposedly conveying the false notion that SARS-CoV2 might have leaked out from a lab.

But what Vanity Fair exposes is the behind-the-scenes mechanism for how that Lancet statement was produced. According to the article, it was organized by a zoologist named Peter Daszak, himself involved in U.S. government-funded research aimed at the making of deadly viruses in labs. Daszak has worked in close collaboration with Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina. Daszak’s group, EcoHealth Alliance, has worked directly with China’s Wuhan laboratories to research coronaviruses, and potentially make them more contagious and more lethal.

The ostensible purpose of such “gain-of-function” research is to study viruses, to understand them better, and to develop better cures for pandemics that might arise naturally. But of course, such research is very dangerous, because viruses could through accident or negligence be released and cause the very pandemics they are designed to prevent. Alternatively, such research can be exploited for military purposes, because lethal viruses also make for a powerful weapon of biological warfare.

When Daszak learned that a virus was causing global havoc, he moved quickly to line up a group of virologists to declare, without any persuasive evidence whatever, that COVID-19 had a natural origin. It might seem puzzling why prominent scientists would agree to sign a letter taking a position on something for which there is no valid scientific evidence. Why would they do this?

The one-word answer is: money. Figures like Daszak and institutions like EcoHealth Alliance that receive large amounts of government money typically package those funds into sub-grants that are dispersed among researchers and research institutions around the country. Consequently, there’s a large group of virologists who are, in a sense, in Daszak’s back pocket. They have a financial vested interest in doing what he wants, and moreover, they, like Daszak, have a stake in camouflaging the possibility that their type of work caused a global pandemic with millions of deaths and untold ruin in its wake.

Not only did Daszak organize the Lancet statement, but he did so, according to Vanity Fair, “with the intention of concealing his role and creating the impression of scientific immunity.” In an email addressed to Baric, Daszak said, “No need for you to sign the ‘Statement’ Ralph.” Daszak explained that neither he nor Baric should sign the declaration “so it has some distance from us and therefore doesn’t work in a counterproductive way.”

Daszak added, “We’ll then put it out in a way that doesn’t link it back to our collaboration so we maximize an independent voice.” Baric agreed, responding, “Otherwise it looks self-serving and we lose impact.” In the end, Baric didn’t sign. Daszak did. And at least six of the others who signed the statement either worked at, or had received funding from, EcoHealth Alliance, according to Vanity Fair.

What we have here is a group of scientists actively involved in cooking up potentially deadly viruses, and possibly involved in a dangerous collaboration with the Wuhan lab that may have helped cause the death of millions, working in concert to create a false public impression of scientific consensus, when they knew perfectly well that there was no such consensus.

Not only did the media and digital media run with it, but, in addition, the Biden administration used the pretext of scientific consensus—the bogus consensus the Lancet helped create—to shut down an ongoing State Department investigation, begun late in the Trump era and spearheaded by Mike Pompeo, into the true origins of COVID-19. This shutdown was actively promoted by U.S. government agencies and bureaucrats who had no intention of revealing their own role in sponsoring and subsidizing highly dangerous “gain-of-function” research.

The consequences of the COVID-19 deception, jointly promoted by scientists, journalists, digital moguls, and bureaucrats in the U.S. government, all eager to hide their possible role in a 21st century pandemic, are far-reaching. The big lie that COVID-19 arose naturally from a meat-market has stymied a true inquiry into what happened. Now we might never know. Not knowing means that preventing a future epidemic becomes that much more difficult.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/an-orchestrated-hoax_3846921.html

*********************************

‘Extortionists will never see this money’: US seizes ransom paid to Colonial Pipeline hackers

Washington: The US Justice Department has recovered the majority of a multimillion-dollar ransom payment to hackers after a cyberattack that caused the operator of the nation’s largest fuel pipeline to halt its operations last month.

The operation to recover the cryptocurrency from the Russia-based hacker group is the first undertaken by a specialised ransomware task force created by the Biden administration Justice Department.

It reflects what US officials say is an increasingly aggressive approach to deal with a ransomware threat that in the last month has targeted critical industries around the world.

“By going after an entire ecosystem that fuels ransomware and digital currency, we will continue to use all of our tools and all of our resources to increase the costs and the consequences of ransomware attacks and other cyber-enabled attacks,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said on Monday (Tuesday AEST) at a news conference announcing the operation.

Georgia-based Colonial Pipeline, which supplies roughly half the fuel consumed on the East Coast, temporarily shut down its operations on May 7 after a gang of criminal hackers known as DarkSide broke into its computer system.

Colonial officials have said they took their pipeline system offline before the attack could spread to its operating system, and decided to pay a roughly US$4.4 million ($5.6 million) ransom in hopes of bringing itself back online as soon as it could.

The 63.7 bitcoin ransom — a favoured currency of hackers because of the perception that it is more difficult to trace — is currently valued at $US2.3 million.

US law enforcement tracked multiple transfers of bitcoin that has been moved to a specific digital address, for which the FBI had the “private key,” which has a role similar to a password needed, to access assets accessible from the specific bitcoin address.

Once officials identified the account, called a “wallet,” that DarkSide had use to collect the payment, it sought permission from a judge in the Northern District of California to seize the funds from the wallet, the New York Times reported.

Ransomware to be treated more like terrorism, US official says

The filing said the “cryptocurrency address” was located in the Northern District of California. “Following the money remains one of the most basic, yet powerful tools we have,” said Monaco.

“Ransom payments are the fuel that propels the digital extortion engine, and today’s announcement demonstrates that the United States will use all available tools to make these attacks more costly and less profitable for criminal enterprises.”

“We will continue to target the entire ransomware ecosystem to disrupt and deter these attacks,” she said.

Stephanie Hinds, the acting US attorney for the Northern District of California, where the seizure warrant was filed, said “the extortionists will never see this money.”

The FBI generally discourages the payment of ransom, fearing it could encourage additional hacks. Monaco said the takeaway for the private sector is that if companies come quickly to law enforcement, officials may be able to conduct similar seizures in the future.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/us-seizes-ransom-paid-to-colonial-pipeline-hackers-20210608-p57yyz.html

***************************************

Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

*************************************

US promises vaccines for Taiwan amid China row

Taipei: The US will give Taiwan 750,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine, part of President Joe Biden’s move to share tens of millions of jabs globally, three American senators said on Sunday, after the self-ruled island complained that China is hindering its efforts to secure vaccines as it battles an outbreak.

Democratic senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who made a three-hour stop in Taiwan with fellow Democrat Christopher Coons of Delaware and Republican Dan Sullivan of Alaska, said their visit underscores bipartisan US support for the democratic island that Beijing claims as its own renegade territory. Taiwan faces a severe vaccine shortage and has geopolitical significance as a flashpoint in US-China relations.

In this photo released by the Taiwan Presidential Office, President Tsai Ing-wen, second right, and Foreign Minister Joseph Wu, right, listen as Republican senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska at left speaks next to Democratic senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois in Taipei, Taiwan, on Sunday.
In this photo released by the Taiwan Presidential Office, President Tsai Ing-wen, second right, and Foreign Minister Joseph Wu, right, listen as Republican senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska at left speaks next to Democratic senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois in Taipei, Taiwan, on Sunday.CREDIT:AP

“I’m here to tell you that the United States will not let you stand alone,” Duckworth said at the airport after landing on a US military transport plane. “We will be by your side to make sure the people of Taiwan have what they need to get to the other side of the pandemic and beyond.”

Taiwan was included on a long list of places announced last week that would receive 25 million doses from the United States in what the Biden administration says is the first tranche of at least 80 million doses to be distributed globally. Most of the first tranche, including Taiwan’s, will be sent through COVAX, a UN-backed program to distribute vaccines to low and middle-income countries.

The island of 24 million people, which lies 160 kilometres off China’s east coast, is desperate for vaccines after a sudden outbreak that started in late April caught authorities by surprise. Japan shipped 1.2 million doses to Taiwan on Friday, opting to skip the COVAX process in the interest of speed. It was unclear when the 750,000 American doses would arrive.

Taiwan reported 343 new domestic COVID-19 cases on Sunday, including eight added to totals for recent days as authorities readjust infection numbers following delays in reporting positive tests.

The total was down from the 511 domestic infections reported on Saturday.

Taiwan has accused China of blocking its efforts to reach a deal with BioNTech to import the vaccine co-developed by the German company and Pfizer. Beijing has said it is willing to supply vaccines to Taiwan, including BioNTech, through Chinese partner Fosun, and that the island’s government is to blame for putting politics above the lives of its people. Taiwanese law bans the import of Chinese-made medicines.

Foreign Minister Joseph Wu, welcoming the senators at the airport, said that Taiwan is fortunate to have like-minded countries showing support, which he said is about sustaining freedom and democracy in the face of autocracy.

“Taiwan is facing unique challenges in combating the virus,” he said. “While we are doing our best to import vaccines, we must overcome obstacles to ensure that these life-saving medicine are delivered free from troubles of Beijing.”

He said China is trying to block Taiwan’s international assistance and prevent it from participating in the World Health Organisation. “We are no strangers to that kind of obstructionism,” he said.

Taiwan and China split amid civil war in 1949, and most Taiwanese favour maintaining the current state of de facto independence while engaging in robust economic exchanges with the mainland.

China’s ruling Communist Party says Taiwan must come under its control, and has in recent months increased pressure on the island, including flying warplanes near Taiwan. The increasing activity and vast improvements in China’s military capabilities have raised concern in the US, which is bound by its own laws to ensure Taiwan is capable of defending itself and to regard all threats to the island’s security as matters of “grave concern.”

Taiwan, which had weathered the pandemic virtually unscathed until the recent outbreak, is now facing its most serious flare-up with more than 10,000 new cases since late April.

President Tsai Ing-wen, meeting with the senators, expressed gratitude to the Biden administration for including Taiwan in the first group to receive vaccines and said the doses will arrive at a critical time for the island.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/us-promises-vaccines-for-taiwan-amid-china-row-20210606-p57yku.html

**********************************

No, Western Culture Is Not About “White Supremacy”

Chief among the Big Lies currently being promulgated by the American Left is that Western culture is inherently racist, a manifestation of White Supremacy. This is not only nonsense but pernicious, dangerous nonsense.

Before we go on, perhaps we should define “Western culture.” It is essentially the marriage of Judeo-Christian morality with classical (that is, Greek and Roman) intellectualism. It privileges reason over emotion and the individual over the state. Its central tenet is that, through their own efforts, a person can rise above their circumstances.

Western culture is not now nor has it ever been perfect. But it has given us a wealth of great ideas: that all men (and women) are created equal, that we are endowed by our Creator with natural rights, that we can learn much (if not everything) about our world through careful observation and experimentation, and that we must love our neighbor as ourselves.

It has produced the technological advances that have made modern life so relatively carefree and comfortable--such that, in the West, our “poor” now live better (and longer) than the royalty of years past.

Western culture has also given us much beauty, in the form of art, music literature, and architecture, as well as an appreciation for the even greater beauties of nature. For those reasons, Western culture represents the best that humanity has yet produced.

Still, we are told that Western culture is racist because Western nations once practiced slavery. Yes, they did. But what that indictment ignores is that virtually every culture in the history of the world practiced slavery, including in Africa and North America long before Europeans showed up. For most of recorded human history, slavery was the status quo. One group of people conquered another, and those that weren’t killed were captured and enslaved.

It was Western culture, in Europe and North America, that eventually put an end to that abominable practice (although it still exists in some parts of the world). And the reason the West was motivated to do so was that slavery is ultimately incompatible with our core belief in the worth of the individual. It took us a few hundred years to get to that point, true, and many thousands perished in the effort. But we did finally get there—precisely because of our cultural heritage, not in spite of it.

Furthermore, contrary to the popular narrative, Western culture has never been tied exclusively to “whiteness.” Its roots can be traced back to North Africa and the great library at Alexandria, as well as to the Middle East and the Mediterranean. It has also absorbed and incorporated, over the centuries, the best that other cultures have to offer, as is readily apparent in today’s music, literature, and fashion.

That is not, as some would have it, “cultural appropriation.” Rather, it is a tribute to those other cultures and the good they bring. It also reflects the open-mindedness and liberalism (in the best sense of the word) of the Western ethos, which naturally seeks truth and beauty wherever they can be found.

Finally, Western culture in its current incarnation is expressly not racist because it is not limited to any particular race. It’s not just for White people or those whose ancestors were European. In fact, it is not exclusive at all. Far from it. All are invited to participate. And many do, all around the world, flocking if they can to Western Europe, the United States, and Canada specifically because they wish to be part of our culture and enjoy the individual freedoms and opportunities it presents.

And when they cannot actually come here, they seek as much as possible to incorporate elements of our culture into theirs. Indeed, the power of Western culture to promote freedom and prosperity is such that totalitarian, collectivist regimes, like the one in Communist China, must squelch or remove by force all vestiges of Western-style democracy with its emphasis on the individual. Despots know, if they allow their subjects (who are, in fact, little more than slaves to the state) too many of the freedoms we Westerners enjoy every day, their hold on power will become increasingly tenuous. That is exactly what is going on in Hong Kong today.

Unfortunately, it is also what is going on in the United States and other Western nations, although to a lesser extent (for now). The would-be despots of the Left understand that, if they wish to control us—as they clearly do; witness COVID—they must wean us from such “antiquated” notions as individual liberty and personal responsibility.

Make no mistake: They wish to make us all slaves, or at least serfs, as F. A. Hayek predicted many years ago. And when I say “us,” I mean all of us—Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, you name it. That, to the Left, is the end game, what “equity” really means: We all become serfs together.

But their opening gambit is to destroy our faith in Western culture as a force for good and convince us that, if we enjoy the peace and prosperity Western culture has produced, we must be racist. We cannot allow ourselves to fall for it—nor can we allow our children and grandchildren to do so. For that will indeed mark the end of what Ronald Reagan rightly called “the last best hope of man on Earth.”

https://townhall.com/columnists/robjenkins/2021/06/06/no-western-culture-is-not-about-white-supremacy-n2590527

***************************************

Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

*************************************

With Trump Out of White House, Media Suddenly Finds ‘Lab Leak Theory’ Plausible

Former President Donald Trump is known for a lot of things, but one of his special powers is his ability to make the entire corporate media act in concert to bring embarrassment upon themselves.

For nearly a year, almost every major news outlet declared that it was a debunked, fringe conspiracy theory to even discuss the idea that the coronavirus pandemic began as a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

It so happened that Trump was the most visible person pressing the case of the “lab leak theory,” which meant that the media felt compelled to push back extra hard. Now, a year later, the very same news organizations are allowing that the lab leak hypothesis is indeed plausible.

So, what changed?

Practically and factually, the only real difference today, versus a year ago, is that Trump is no longer in the White House, so journalists are safe to entertain competing ideas again.

This is as stark a reversal of reporting on a story of worldwide interest as there has been in decades. And it is clearly attributable to the innate need of many in the media to oppose everything Trump did or said, their practice of following each other’s narratives, and their unwillingness to be the one who breaks away from the pack.

CNN’s Chris Cillizza, who once infamously tweeted that journalists don’t choose sides, gave away the game with a piece titled “Anthony Fauci Just Crushed Donald Trump’s Theory on the Origins of the Coronavirus.”

In that May 5, 2020, piece, Cillizza wrote that “Fauci’s view on the origins of the disease matters a whole lot more than Trump’s opinion about where it came from.” And he quoted Fauci from a National Geographic interview in which Fauci threw cold water on the lab leak theory and endorsed the belief that the virus evolved in nature and then jumped to humans.

Case closed, right? The rest of the media certainly thought so.

In an earlier March 2020 story, which was edited more than a year later to make it less strident, Vox wrote that the lab leak theory was “a dangerous conspiracy theory” that “won’t die.” Why exactly it was dangerous to discuss how the pandemic began remains unclear.

Vanity Fair chipped in with an item that included the headline “The Discussion is Basically Over,” regarding the virus origin. This venerable publication ascribed advancement of the lab leak theory to Trump’s “cold war” with China and his desire to implicate the communist government.

None other than The New York Times, in February 2020, blistered Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., for daring to “ask the question to see what the evidence says.” The Times accused Cotton of repeating a “fringe theory” put forward by “those who see China as a threat.” That would, presumably, include Trump.

On that same day, The Washington Post piled on Cotton for “repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory,” even though he said, truthfully, that “we don’t know where it originated.” The Post suggested it was unnecessary to ask China about the virus’ origin because the lab leak hypothesis had been “repeatedly debunked by experts.”

So, a year later, let’s check in with those “experts” and our friends in the media.

Earlier this month, Fauci was asked if he still believed the virus developed naturally.

“I am not convinced about that,” he said. “I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China.”

Also this month, The New York Times related the position of a group of scientists calling for “further inquiry” into the origin of the virus, since the lab leak theory is one of the explanations that is still “viable.” Again, this is the same newspaper that called such talk by a U.S. senator a “fringe theory” a little more than a year ago.

At CNN, they are now acknowledging that a lab leak is a “possibility” and the theory “reasonable,” while noting a new Wall Street Journal report that several researchers in Wuhan fell ill mysteriously in November 2019. CNN is also now suddenly disturbed that the communist Chinese are curiously uncooperative with investigative efforts.

What about Cillizza, who previously celebrated that Fauci had “crushed” the lab leak theory? Well, now he says, “The origins of the virus remain not fully known.”

And finally, just this week, The Washington Post weighed in with a timeline titled “How the Wuhan Lab-Leak Theory Suddenly Became Credible.” But naturally, it was all Trump’s fault again because his “administration’s messaging was often accompanied by anti-Chinese rhetoric that made it easier for skeptics to ignore its claims.”

The Wall Street Journal story about the sick Wuhan researchers came after most of the radical shift in media perspective had occurred. So what had happened earlier to change everyone’s thinking? 

According to the media’s favorite statistician, Nate Silver, not a whole lot. “[T]he evidence seems murky and inscrutable either way and I’m not sure it has *changed* that much,” he tweeted.

So it doesn’t take much scrutiny to realize that these media figures are admitting their biases in plain view. It didn’t matter what was being said last year as much as who was saying it.

If Trump or another Republican promoted the lab leak theory, it had to be wrong. But now that their villain is no longer in the White House, the media are free to consider all possibilities.

And—what do you know? —today all their stories are pretty much identical to each other again, even if their new pack narrative directly contradicts their groupthink of a year ago.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/05/26/with-trump-out-of-the-white-house-media-suddenly-finds-the-lab-leak-theory-plausible/

*********************************

Antibody from common cold can neutralise COVID-19 and could lead to vaccine that protects against all coronaviruses, new study suggests

An antibody that develops after people have the common cold can neutralize the virus that causes COVID-19, a new study suggests.

Both the common cold and SARS-CoV-2 fall under a family known as coronaviruses, which cause upper-respiratory tract illnesses.

However, it was believed that antibodies that react to ordinary coronaviruses didn't work against the virus that leads to COVID. 

But in blood samples of COVID survivors, researchers found high levels of immune cells generated during the common cold that 'remember' diseases and are called back into action if the threat returns.

The team, from the Scripps Research Institute, in La Jolla, California, says the findings could help scientists develop a vaccine or antibody treatment that protects against all coronaviruses. 

The team found the antibody is produced by a type of immune system cell known as a memory B cell. Memory B cells lock onto the surface of invading pathogens and mark them for destruction by other immune cells. 

They also can circulate in the bloodstream for years - even decades - and the immune system can call up on them if there is another infection. 

For the study, published in the journal Nature Communications, the team looked at blood samples from participants pre-pandemic and during the pandemic. 

'By examining blood samples collected before the pandemic and comparing those with samples from people who had been sick with COVID-19, we were able to pinpoint antibody types that cross reacted with benign coronaviruses as well as SARS-CoV-2,' senior author Dr Raiees Andrabi, an investigator at Scripps' Department of Immunology and Microbiology, told News Medical.

Results showed that levels of memory B cell antibodies were higher in blood samples of people who had been infected with COVID-19 than those who never had been.

The team says this suggests that exposure to a non-serious coronavirus can spur the production of antibodies when infected with a more serious coronavirus.

Tests showed that the antibody also neutralized SARS-CoV-1, the coronavirus that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and a cousin of COVID-19.

'We were able to determine that this type of cross-reactive antibody is likely produced by a memory B cell that's initially exposed to a coronavirus that causes the common cold, and is then recalled during a COVID-19 infection,' Andrabi told News Medical.

Next, researchers examined how the antibody was able to neutralize several different types of coronaviruses. 

They found that the antibody binds to the base of the spike protein (S protein) on coronaviruses, which they use to enter and infect cells.

Co-author Dr Dennis Burton, Chair of Scripps' Department of Immunology and Microbiology, said the discovery is important for understanding how to protect against future coronaviruses.

'Another deadly coronavirus will likely emerge again in the future--and when it does, we want to be better prepared,' Burton told News Medical. 

'Our identification of a cross-reactive antibody against SARS-CoV-2 and the more common coronaviruses is a promising development on the way to a broad-acting vaccine or therapy.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9637739/Antibody-cold-neutralize-COVID-19-lead-vaccine-against-coronaviruses.html

Americans Remain Patriotic

Despite every effort of the “woke” left and its allies in the left-wing news media, most Americans remain proud of our country and value patriotism.

The greatest dangers facing the Democrats in 2022 and 2024 are their radical wing’s constant outbursts of public anti-Americanism and their woke efforts to coerce Americans into accepting ideas they don’t believe—and, in some cases, deeply repudiate.

Despite everything you see in the woke-radical left-dominated media, Americans remain remarkably traditional in how they see themselves and how they value patriotism.

McLaughlin & Associates did a survey for a Gingrich 360 project we are working on, and the results were far more definite than the left-wing media would lead you to expect.

Consider the following survey results.

The left constantly uses divisive language and tries to force Americans to assume tribal identities along racial or ethnic lines rather than favor a shared national identity. Regardless, 87 percent of Americans see themselves primarily as Americans, while only 8 percent see themselves primarily as persons of color. Blacks see themselves as Americans by a 66 percent to 28 percent margin. Hispanics are 76 percent to 17 percent pro-American identity. Specifically, among immigrant households, 85 percent consider themselves American and only 11 percent consider themselves persons of color.

So, the next time you hear some left-wing figure promoting racial or tribal identity over a united American identity, remember they are talking to one-tenth of the country and are rejected by 85 percent of the country.

While the left is attacking America, our history, and our institutions, more than three in four Americans (78 percent) agree that the United States is the greatest country on earth. Only 19 percent disagree. Interestingly, immigrant households are 79 percent to 18 percent in agreement that the United States being the greatest nation on earth.

While the left focuses on anti-American distortions of history and diatribes against the United States, three out of four Americans (75 percent) also agree that America is the freest and most democratic country on the planet. This is true for black Americans (64 percent), Hispanic Americans (72), and immigrant households (77 percent).

After all the ranting about systemic racism, critical race theory, and other efforts to get people to think in terms of tribal divisiveness, the American ideal remains unifying and oriented toward individuals rather than groups.

In fact, by 91 percent to 5 percent, Americans agree with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that the content of a person’s character is more important than the color of his or her skin.

This remarkably consistent support of the American people for a positive view of America is a warning to the left: If you persist in being the racist, negative, divisive party that is trying to use the government and societal elitism to force tribal identities upon the American people, you will be rejected by massive majorities.

Americans do not accept your warped and destructive repudiation of America.

**********************************

Vietnam Finds Dangerous New Virus Variant

Vietnam has discovered a new coronavirus variant that's a hybrid of strains first found in India and the U.K., the Vietnamese health minister said Saturday.

Nguyen Thanh Long said scientists examined the genetic makeup of the virus that had infected some recent patients and found the new version of the virus. He said lab tests suggested it might spread more easily than other versions of the virus.

Viruses often develop small genetic changes as they reproduce, and new variants of the coronavirus have been seen almost since it was first detected in China in late 2019. The World Health Organization has listed four global "variants of concern" – the two first found in the U.K. and India, plus ones identified in South Africa and Brazil.

Long said the new variant could be responsible for a recent surge in Vietnam. Infection has spread to 30 of the country's 63 municipalities and provinces.

Vietnam was initially a standout success in battling the virus. In early May, it had recorded just more than 3,100 confirmed cases and 35 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

But in the last few weeks, Vietnam has confirmed more than 3,500 new cases and 12 deaths, increasing the country's total death toll to 47.

Most of the new transmissions were found in Bac Ninh and Bac Giang, two provinces dense with industrial zones where hundreds of thousands of people work for major companies, including Samsung, Canon and Luxshare, a partner in assembling Apple products. Despite strict health regulations, a company in Bac Giang discovered that one-fifth of its 4,800 workers had tested positive for the virus.

In Ho Chi Minh City, the country's largest metropolis and home to 9 million, at least 85 people have tested positive as part of a cluster at a Protestant church, the Health Ministry said. Worshippers sang and chanted while sitting close together without wearing proper masks or taking other precautions.

Vietnam has since ordered a nationwide ban on all religious events. In major cities, authorities have banned large gatherings and have closed public parks and nonessential businesses, including in-person restaurants, bars, clubs and spas.

Vietnam so far has vaccinated 1 million people with AstraZeneca shots. Last week, it sealed a deal with Pfizer for 30 million doses, which are scheduled to be delivered in the third and fourth quarters of this year. It is also in talks with Moderna that would give it enough shots to fully vaccinate 80% of its 96 million people.

https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/vietnam-finds-new-virus-variant

'This is why Big Tech must never be the arbiter of truth': Republicans slam 'arrogant' Facebook for thinking it can 'decide where COVID comes from' - as it FINALLY scraps ban on 'man-made virus' posts

Republicans in Congress pounced on Facebook after the tech giant suddenly reversed its its policy of removing posts calling the COVID-19 'man-made' now that President Joe Biden has ordered the intelligence community to review the origins of the coronavirus.   

'The arrogance of @Facebook to decide where and how precisely covid originated, and who should be able to talk about it, is stunning. But sadly typical,' fumed Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) on Twitter.

'The more we learn, the clearer it is that Communist China played a role in killing millions of people,' said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.).

'This is why Big Tech must never be the arbiter of truth,' she said in a statement to DailyMail.com.

The blasts come as the 'lab leak' proposition has gone from a notion derided as a conspiracy theory to something viable enough that senior government officials are demanding be at least examined.

Ted Cruz tweeted: 'This is why the Big Tech overlords shouldn't be involved in fact checking'.  

Also slamming the company was Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.). 'This was another sorry attempt by Facebook to shut down discussions that didn’t fit its political narrative. Social media platforms should encourage open debate instead of blocking content that offends their political views,' he said. 

The tech giant was already facing political pressure in Congress over its efforts to impose guardrails on false election claims at election time and its privacy practices, as well as its role as a conduit for potential election interference and its overall market power. 

'In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps,' the company said in a statement Wednesday.

That was a stark turnaround from February, when it came out with a statement on its policy for 'removing more false claims about Covid-19 and vaccines.'

'Following consultations with leading health organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO), we are expanding the list of false claims we will remove to include additional debunked claims about the coronavirus and vaccines,' it said then.

Since that time, many top scientists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, have said the potential of a lab leak should at least be investigated.

Fauci said at a hearing this week if he still believed the virus was a 'natural occurrence.' 'I still believe that the most likely scenario was that this was a natural occurrence, but no one knows that 100 per cent for sure,' Fauci responded. 

'And since there's a lot of concern, a lot of speculation, and since no one absolutely knows that, I believe we do need the kind of investigation where there's open transparency and all the information that's available to be made available to scrutinize.' 

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) deemed the Biden administration's intel investigation 'too little, too late.' 

'Twitter users have never been stopped from sharing stories about the lab theory. Last September, Chinese virologist Dr. Li Meng Yan was suspended. She claimed it was because she'd promoted the theory. Twitter reactivated her account a month later. While neither Twitter nor YouTube have banned people from discussing the theory, they do both have policies on blocking COVID content that they deem to be 'misleading'. 

Twitter on Thursday told that it wasn't changing its policies on the subject, but a spokesman refused to confirm which stories Twitter deems to be false. YouTube, a which is owned by Google, has said nothing on the subject.'

Facebook was accused of 'showing its true and ugly colors' and smothering free speech to cosy up to China as it scrapped its ban on posts debating whether Covid-19 could be man-made - but only after Joe Biden ordered the CIA to probe if the virus came from a Wuhan lab.

Mark Zuckerberg's global policy chief Nick Clegg, the former British Member of Parliament and Liberal Democrat leader, has also been branded 'feeble' for allowing months of censorship on the social network.

Critics branded Facebook's behavior had been 'contemptible' and begged them to respect free speech rather than 'ingratiating' themselves with states such as China, which has banned the website but remains a $5billion-a-year ad market. 

The criticism spanned to Britain as well. British Conservative Member of Parliament Peter Bone told MailOnline: 'It does seem to me that Facebook is not an open platform for people to put their views on. It is an open platform for people to put their views on as long as they agree with Facebook.

'Their decisions are based on politics not on principle... if it is fashionable with the liberal elite it can go down. If it is liberal elite say it it must be OK, if it's President Trump that says it it must be awful.

'The thing that Trump was saying is exactly the same as Biden is saying, but Trump was according to Facebook not allowed to say that. Whereas everyone loves Biden from Facebook therefore it must be right. It is one rule for one political view and another for another.'

And the liberal media in the US, who lampooned Donald Trump when he said a year ago said he had 'a high degree of confidence' that the virus escaped from a lab, have finally conceded that he may have been right - after a year ridiculing the suggestion. 

Facebook ruled in February it would 'remove' any posts that claimed that coronavirus was 'man-made' or that the virus was 'created by an individual, government or country' - branding it 'misinformation' and a 'debunked claim' that required 'aggressive action' from moderators.

But today the tech giant reversed its ban on its users discussing the theory, just hours after President Biden ordered his intelligence agencies to launch a probe into whether it was man-made after all - and report back in 90 days.  

The tech firm has been accused of bowing to Beijing, liberal media outlets as well as left-wing politicians and commentators, who reacted furiously when then president Donald Trump laid blame for the fast-spreading virus on Beijing, calling it the 'China virus' or 'Kung Flu' and suggesting there was evidence it was borne from a laboratory in Wuhan, the epicentre of the pandemic in early 2020.  

'Social distancing does not help prevent the spread of Covid-19' 

The fundamental principle of social distancing – staying away from other people – is clearly a good way to stop the virus spreading. But scientists and authorities have disagreed on suitable distances.

In the UK the rule is 2 metres (6'6') or 'one metre plus' if someone is wearing a mask or is outdoors or behind a screen. Experts said almost no virus particles could make it through 2m of moving air to infect someone.

But the World Health Organization is less strict and its official guidance on social distancing is to keep people 1m (3'3') apart. Some countries have followed this while others have been more cautious, like Britain.

A study by MIT in Boston found that social distancing indoors could give people a false sense of security and that it wasn't enough on its own to stop the spread of Covid, which is airborne. 

China has reacted furiously to Biden's call for a new investigation into the virus's origins, accusing him of 'politicising' the issue and suggesting that US biolabs should be investigated instead.

Lijian Zhao, foreign ministry spokesman who has been Beijing's point-man in trying to pin blame for the pandemic outside the country's borders, accused the US of trying to shift blame away from its own high Covid case and death counts - and suggested security services may be involved in a cover-up.

Meanwhile Hu Xijin, editor of the state mouthpiece Global Times newspaper, accused Biden of trying to discredit a WHO investigation which concluded that a lab leak is 'unlikely' - though critics have previously blasted that report as a China-centric whitewash.

China's American embassy also hit out, accusing Biden and his security services of being 'fixated on political manipulation and (the) blame game' in a statement on its website.

Earlier this week, Project Veritas claimed that it obtained leaked documents from whistleblowers inside the company which prove that the social network is testing an algorithm that would rate users' comments according to a 'vaccine hesitancy score.'

Those comments which discourage others from taking the vaccine would be demoted, according to the documents obtained by investigators.

After months of minimizing that possibility as a fringe theory, the Biden administration is joining worldwide pressure for China to be more open about the outbreak, aiming to head off GOP complaints the president has not been tough enough as well as to use the opportunity to press China on alleged obstruction.

In another sign of shifting attitudes, the Senate approved two Wuhan lab-related amendments without opposition, attaching them to a largely unrelated bill to increase US investments in innovation.

One of the amendments, from Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, would block US funding of Chinese 'gain of function' research on enhancing the severity or transmissibility of a virus.

Paul has been critical of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious-disease expert, and aggressively questioned him at a recent Senate hearing over the work in China.

The other amendment was from GOP Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa and it would prevent any funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Both were approved without roll call votes as part of the broader bill that is still under debate in the Senate.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that the White House supports a new World Health Organization investigation in China, but she added that an effective probe 'would require China finally stepping up and allowing access needed to determine the origins.'

Administration officials continue to harbor strong doubts about the lab leak theory.

Rather, they view China's refusal to cooperate in the investigation — particularly on something of such magnitude — as emblematic of other irresponsible actions on the world stage.

Privately, administration officials say the end result, if ever known, won't change anything, but note China's stonewalling is now on display for the world to see.

'Because nobody has identified a virus that's 100 per cent identical to SARS-CoV-2 in any animal, there is still room for researchers to ask about other possibilities.'

Andy Slavitt, Biden's senior adviser for the coronavirus, said Tuesday that the world needs to 'get to the bottom ... whatever the answer may be.'

'We need a completely transparent process from China; we need the WHO to assist in that matter,' Slavitt said. 'We don't feel like we have that now.' 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9626231/Josh-Hawley-leads-outrage-against-arrogant-Facebook-deleting-man-virus-posts.html

A reprieve

The core biopsy I had last week showed that my cancers are of a type that is susceptible to immunotherapy. My oncologist has recommended a drug which should cure me -- no certainty of course.  The cure will be a rather long road requiring at least 4 months so no early results can be expected.  There is however now hope that I could be back to my old form until something else gets me -- JR

*********************************

Has the Covid vaccine blood clot puzzle been solved? Rare side effect from Johnson & Johnson and AztraZeneca shots is caused by cold virus used to deliver the jab - and can be fixed, scientists claim

German scientists claim they have discovered why some coronavirus vaccines cause blood clots - and how to fix it.

Two vaccines, one from Johnson & Johnson and the other from AstraZeneca-University of Oxford have been linked to rare, but serious, blood clots, particularly among women under age 50.

In the U.S., J&J's shot was paused for 11 days by federal health regulators while, in Europe, some countries have stopped using AztraZeneca's jab completely and others, like the UK, recommend that younger women get a different vaccine.

But in a new pre-print paper published on Wednesday, researchers at Goethe-University of Frankfurt and Ulm University, in Helmholtz, say the problem lies in the adenovirus vector - a common cold virus used so the vaccine can enter the body.

What's more, they say the vaccines can be adapted to prevent the rare side effect from occurring, reported the Financial Times.

Dr Rolf Marschalek, a professor at Goethe University, told the Financial Times the reason the vaccines have been causing these problems is because they are adenovirus vector vaccines.  

Both J&J's and AstraZeneca's vaccine combine genetic material from the new virus with the genes of the adenovirus - which causes the common cold - to induce an immune response.

The cold virus is altered so it cannot make you sick and a little section of the COVID-19 vaccine genetic material, which codes for the spike protein, is inserted.

The spike protein is what the virus uses to enter and infect our cells. The vaccine is injected and the body recognizes the protein and makes antibodies against it.

That way, if you become ill with the real virus, your body recognizes it and knows how to fight it off. 

Marschalek says the vaccine is sent into nucleus of our cells, where the genetic material is found, instead of into the cytosol fluid, liquid found inside cell where the virus makes it proteins.  

Marschalek told the Financial Times that after entering the nucleus, parts of the spike protein break off and create mutated versions of themselves, which then enter the body and trigger the rare blood clots.

In particular, the vaccines were causing a condition known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST).

CVST is a rare type of blood clot that blocks the brain's sinus channels of draining blood, which can cause hemorrhages.

It occurs in about five per million people in the general population.

In most cases, CVST occurred in combination with low levels of blood platelets, also known as thrombocytopenia. 

As of Wednesday, the J&J vaccine has been linked to 28 cases in the U.S. out of more than 10.4 million shots.

Meanwhile, the AstraZeneca vaccine has been linked to 242 clotting cases and 49 deaths in the UK out of nine million shots and more than 100 in continental Europe out of 16 million.

Comparatively, Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna vaccines use newer messenger RNA (mRNA) technology.

By comparison, mRNA vaccines use part of the pathogen's genetic code and give instructions for our cells to make part of the spike protein so the body can recognize the virus and attack if we become infected.

Marschalek told the Financial Times that with mRNA vaccines, the genetic material of the spike protein is sent directly to the cell fluid and does not enter the nucleus. 

'When these...virus genes are in the nucleus they can create some problems,' Marschalek told the Financial Times.

He says there is a fix, however, and says the vaccine can be genetically modified so the spike protein doesn't split apart when it enters our cells.

He says he has not spoken to AstraZeneca yet, but that J&J has contacted his lab and that he is working them to improve their shot.  

'[J&J] is trying to optimize its vaccine now,' Marschalek told the newspaper. 

'With the data we have in our hands we can tell the companies how to mutate these sequences, coding for the spike protein in a way that prevents unintended splice reactions.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9622627/German-scientists-claim-figured-Covid-vaccines-cause-blood-clots.html