*Working Towards a Better World

 

New York Times

Senate Health Bill Reels as C.B.O. Predicts 22 Million More Uninsured

Fact Check

www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000005181436/health-...

 

Thank you for your kind visit. Have a wonderful and beautiful day! ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

   

A rusty garden statute of a tin man and his cooking. Of course tin man, cooker and other names have been hurled at members of our society who have more extreme views and behaviours. These were on display during the Pandemic but in reality were always there, perhaps being more easily ignored. The views and behaviours have caused problems for all sorts of governmental organisations such as police, libraries, council parking officers, law courts. Freedom they cry, less often responsibility or some semblance of truth. The current world affairs seem likely to stoke the "outlier" views in a range of places with X, Meta and other enormous social networking companies walking away from content moderation and fact checking. We shall see whether this backfires on these large, unregulated tech companies or whether we are going to be further influenced by lies, disinformation and scurrilous rumours. One of the reasons I so dislike disinformation is that it impacts negatively on the rights and responsibilities of the majority and minorities in our society. Rant over - www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jan/08/australia-...

Olivetti Studio 46

I researched as well as I could. Update me if I am wrong. 500 reported corona virus cases. This does not count the numbers on the cruise ship. In that 500, there are 20 reported fatalities. That is 4%. This is math.

Quality prints, greeting cards and many useful products can be purchased at >> kaye-menner.pixels.com/featured/sun-during-australian-fir...

 

An image of the sun setting that I captured on 4 December 2019 from the front of my house in the north of Sydney during the catastrophic bushfires in Australia in December 2019 and January 2020.

It is only in the past day or so that we have seen a partially normal sun in the sky. Of course, this depends upon the wind direction and where you live.

 

Some of the fires came close to our house, but we were not effected thank goodness. But very poor air quality with smoke particles has left us with very smokey red skies for a month or more now with the sun most days with an eerie red hue.

 

The weather has cooled down here today with supposedly similar cooler conditions for the next few days which will give our firefighters a better chance. We were having temperatures up to 45 degrees C (113F) in north western Sydney where I am, and even up to 48.9 degrees C (around 120F) further west.

 

Sydney, New South Wales and other states have been in severe drought, so until we get some decent rain, these fires may keep on going if we get more very hot temperatures. We have rather severe water restrictions in force at present.

  

One site just for further info - although there is much news of the Australian Bushfires:

www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/22/australia-...

 

New hope in 2009

有段話我覺得不要翻成英文比較好,老美看了大概會不爽,這張圖我弄好後覺的很像黑人牙膏的mark說....TT我應該把它作成貼紙印出來的!以下就轉貼他的生平:

"Barack" and "Obama" redirect here. For other uses, see Barack (disambiguation) and Obama (disambiguation).

Barack Obama

   

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44th President of the United States

Incumbent

Assumed office

January 20, 2009

Vice President Joe Biden

Preceded by George W. Bush

 

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United States Senator

from Illinois

In office

January 3, 2005 – November 16, 2008

Preceded by Peter Fitzgerald

Succeeded by Roland Burris

 

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Member of the Illinois Senate

from the 13th district

In office

January 8, 1997 – November 4, 2004

Preceded by Alice Palmer

Succeeded by Kwame Raoul

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Born August 4, 1961 (1961-08-04) (age 47)[1]

Honolulu, Hawaii, United States[2]

Birth name Barack Hussein Obama II[2]

Nationality American

Political party Democratic

Spouse Michelle Obama (m. 1992)

Children Malia Ann (b. 1998)

Natasha (a.k.a. Sasha) (b. 2001)

Residence Chicago, Illinois (private)

White House, Washington, D.C. (official)

Alma mater Occidental College

Columbia University (B.A.)

Harvard Law School (J.D.)

Profession Community organizer

Attorney

Author

Professor

Politician

Religion Protestant Christian[3]

Signature

Website WhiteHouse.gov

This article is part of a series about

Barack Obama

Background · Illinois Senate · U.S. Senate

Political positions · Public image · Family

2008 primaries · Obama–Biden campaign

Transition · Inauguration · US Presidency

 

Barack Hussein Obama II (pronounced /bəˈrɑːk hʊˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama was the junior United States Senator from Illinois from 2005 until he resigned following his 2008 election to the presidency. He was inaugurated as President on January 20, 2009.

 

Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. He worked as a community organizer, and practiced as a civil rights attorney in Chicago before serving three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He also taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, Obama was elected to the Senate in November 2004. Obama delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004.

 

As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, Obama helped create legislation to control conventional weapons and to promote greater public accountability in the use of federal funds. He also made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. During the 110th Congress, he helped create legislation regarding lobbying and electoral fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism, and care for U.S. military personnel returning from combat assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan

Early life and career

Main article: Early life and career of Barack Obama

Barack Obama was born at the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children in Honolulu, Hawaii,[4][5] to Stanley Ann Dunham,[6] a White American from Wichita, Kansas,[7][8][9] and Barack Obama, Sr., a Luo from Nyang’oma Kogelo, Nyanza Province, Kenya. Obama's parents met in 1960 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, where his father was a foreign student on scholarship.[10][11] The couple married on February 2, 1961.[12] Obama's parents separated when Obama was two years old, and they divorced in 1964.[11] Obama's father returned to Kenya and saw his son only once more before dying in an automobile accident in 1982.[13]

 

After her divorce, Dunham married Indonesian student Lolo Soetoro, who was attending college in Hawaii. When Soeharto, a military leader in Soetoro's home country, came to power in 1967, all students studying abroad were recalled and the family moved to Indonesia.[14] There Obama attended local schools in Jakarta, such as Besuki Public School and St. Francis of Assisi School, until he was ten years old.

 

He then returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Armour Dunham, while attending Punahou School from the fifth grade in 1971 until his graduation from high school in 1979.[15] Obama's mother returned to Hawaii in 1972 for five years, and then in 1977 went back to Indonesia, where she worked as an anthropological field worker. She stayed there most of the rest of her life, returning to Hawaii in 1994. She died of ovarian cancer in 1995.[16]

  

Right-to-left: Barack Obama and half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng, with their mother Ann Dunham and grandfather Stanley Dunham, in Hawaii (early 1970s).Of his early childhood, Obama has recalled, "That my father looked nothing like the people around me — that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk — barely registered in my mind."[17] In his 1995 memoir, he described his struggles as a young adult to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage.[18] He wrote that he used alcohol, marijuana and cocaine during his teenage years to "push questions of who I was out of my mind."[19] At the 2008 Civil Forum on the Presidency, Obama identified his high-school drug use as his "greatest moral failure."[20]

 

Some of his fellow students at Punahou School later told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin that Obama was mature for his age, and that he sometimes attended college parties and other events in order to associate with African American students and military service people. Reflecting later on his formative years in Honolulu, Obama wrote: "The opportunity that Hawaii offered — to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect — became an integral part of my world view, and a basis for the values that I hold most dear."[21]

 

Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles, where he studied at Occidental College for two years.[22] He then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations.[23] Obama graduated with a B.A. from Columbia in 1983. He worked for a year at the Business International Corporation[24][25] and then at the New York Public Interest Research Group.[26][27]

 

After four years in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago, where he was hired as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West Pullman and Riverdale) on Chicago's far South Side. He worked there for three years from June 1985 to May 1988.[26][28] During his three years as the DCP's director, its staff grew from one to thirteen and its annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000. His achievements included helping set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens.[29] Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute.[30] In mid-1988, he traveled for the first time to Europe for three weeks and then for five weeks in Kenya, where he met many of his paternal relatives for the first time.[31]

 

Obama entered Harvard Law School in late 1988. He was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year,[32] and president of the journal in his second year.[33] During his summers, he returned to Chicago where he worked as a summer associate at the law firms of Sidley & Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990.[34] After graduating with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) magna cum laude[35][36] from Harvard in 1991, he returned to Chicago.[32]

 

Obama's election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review gained national media attention[33] and led to a publishing contract and advance for a book about race relations.[37] In an effort to recruit him to their faculty, the University of Chicago Law School provided Obama with a fellowship and an office to work on his book.[37] He originally planned to finish the book in one year, but it took much longer as the book evolved into a personal memoir. In order to work without interruptions, Obama and his wife, Michelle, traveled to Bali where he wrote for several months. The manuscript was finally published in mid-1995 as Dreams from My Father.[37]

 

From April to October 1992, Obama directed Illinois's Project Vote, a voter registration drive with a staff of ten and seven hundred volunteers; it achieved its goal of registering 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African Americans in the state, and led to Crain's Chicago Business naming Obama to its 1993 list of "40 under Forty" powers to be.[38][39]

 

For twelve years, Obama served as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School teaching Constitutional Law. He was first classified as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996 and then as a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004.[40] He also joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a twelve-attorney law firm specializing in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development, where he was an associate for three years from 1993 to 1996, then of counsel from 1996 to 2004, with his law license becoming inactive in 2002.[26][41][42]

 

Obama was a founding member of the board of directors of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife, Michelle, became the founding executive director of Public Allies Chicago in early 1993.[26][43] He served from 1994 to 2002 on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which in 1985 had been the first foundation to fund the Developing Communities Project, and also from 1994 to 2002 on the board of directors of the Joyce Foundation.[26] Obama served on the board of directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995 to 2002, as founding president and chairman of the board of directors from 1995 to 1999.[26] He also served on the board of directors of the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, and the Lugenia Burns Hope Center.[26]

  

Political career

 

State legislator: 1997–2004

Main article: Illinois Senate career of Barack Obama

Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, succeeding State Senator Alice Palmer as Senator from Illinois's 13th District, which then spanned Chicago South Side neighborhoods from Hyde Park-Kenwood south to South Shore and west to Chicago Lawn.[44] Once elected, Obama gained bipartisan support for legislation reforming ethics and health care laws.[45] He sponsored a law increasing tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare.[46] In 2001, as co-chairman of the bipartisan Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, Obama supported Republican Governor Ryan's payday loan regulations and predatory mortgage lending regulations aimed at averting home foreclosures.[47]

 

Obama was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998, defeating Republican Yesse Yehudah in the General Election, and reelected again in 2002.[48] In 2000, he lost a Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives to four-term incumbent Bobby Rush by a margin of two to one.[49][50]

 

In January 2003, Obama became chairman of the Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services Committee when Democrats, after a decade in the minority, regained a majority.[51] He sponsored and led unanimous, bipartisan passage of legislation to monitor racial profiling by requiring police to record the race of drivers they detained and legislation making Illinois the first state to mandate videotaping of homicide interrogations.[46][52] During his 2004 general election campaign for U.S. Senate, police representatives credited Obama for his active engagement with police organizations in enacting death penalty reforms.[53] Obama resigned from the Illinois Senate in November 2004 following his election to the U.S. Senate.[54]

  

2004 U.S. Senate campaign

See also: United States Senate election in Illinois, 2004

In mid-2002, Obama began considering a run for the U.S. Senate; he enlisted political strategist David Axelrod that fall and formally announced his candidacy in January 2003.[55] Decisions by Republican incumbent Peter Fitzgerald and his Democratic predecessor Carol Moseley Braun not to contest the race launched wide-open Democratic and Republican primary contests involving fifteen candidates.[56] Obama's candidacy was boosted by Axelrod's advertising campaign featuring images of the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington and an endorsement by the daughter of the late Paul Simon, former U.S. Senator for Illinois.[57] He received over 52% of the vote in the March 2004 primary, emerging 29% ahead of his nearest Democratic rival.[58]

 

In July 2004, Obama wrote and delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts.[59] After describing his maternal grandfather's experiences as a World War II veteran and a beneficiary of the New Deal's FHA and G.I. Bill programs, Obama spoke about changing the U.S. government's economic and social priorities. He questioned the Bush administration's management of the Iraq War and highlighted America's obligations to its soldiers. Drawing examples from U.S. history, he criticized heavily partisan views of the electorate and asked Americans to find unity in diversity, saying, "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America."[60] Though it was not televised by the three major broadcast news networks, a combined 9.1 million viewers watching on PBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and C-SPAN saw Obama's speech, which was a highlight of the convention and confirmed his status as the Democratic Party's brightest new star.[61]

 

Obama's expected opponent in the general election, Republican primary winner Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race in June 2004.[62] Two months later and less than three months before Election Day, Alan Keyes accepted the Illinois Republican Party's nomination to replace Ryan.[63] A long-time resident of Maryland, Keyes established legal residency in Illinois with the nomination.[64] In the November 2004 general election, Obama received 70% of the vote to Keyes's 27%, the largest victory margin for a statewide race in Illinois history.[65]

  

U.S. Senator: 2005–2008

Main article: United States Senate career of Barack Obama

Obama was sworn in as a senator on January 4, 2005.[66] Obama was the fifth African-American Senator in U.S. history, and the third to have been popularly elected.[67] He was the only Senate member of the Congressional Black Caucus.[68] CQ Weekly, a nonpartisan publication, characterized him as a "loyal Democrat" based on analysis of all Senate votes in 2005–2007. The National Journal ranked him as the "most liberal" senator based on an assessment of selected votes during 2007; in 2005 he was ranked sixteenth most liberal, and in 2006 he was ranked tenth.[69][70] In 2008, Congress.org ranked him as the eleventh most powerful Senator.[71] Obama announced on November 13, 2008 that he would resign his senate seat on November 16, 2008, before the start of the lame-duck session, to focus on his transition period for the presidency.[72][73] This enabled him to avoid the conflict of dual roles as President-elect and Senator in the lame duck session of Congress, which no sitting member of Congress had faced since Warren Harding.[74]

  

Legislation

See also: List of bills sponsored by Barack Obama in the United States Senate

 

Senate bill sponsors Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Obama discussing the Coburn–Obama Transparency Act.[75]Obama voted in favor of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and cosponsored the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act.[76] In September 2006, Obama supported a related bill, the Secure Fence Act.[77] Obama introduced two initiatives bearing his name: Lugar–Obama, which expanded the Nunn–Lugar cooperative threat reduction concept to conventional weapons,[78] and the Coburn–Obama Transparency Act, which authorized the establishment of USAspending.gov, a web search engine on federal spending.[79] On June 3, 2008, Senator Obama, along with Senators Thomas R. Carper, Tom Coburn, and John McCain, introduced follow-up legislation: Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008.[80]

 

Obama sponsored legislation that would have required nuclear plant owners to notify state and local authorities of radioactive leaks, but the bill failed to pass in the full Senate after being heavily modified in committee.[81] Obama is not hostile to Tort reform and voted for the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 which grants immunity from civil liability to telecommunications companies complicit with NSA warrantless wiretapping operations.[82]

 

In December 2006, President Bush signed into law the Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act, marking the first federal legislation to be enacted with Obama as its primary sponsor.[83] In January 2007, Obama and Senator Feingold introduced a corporate jet provision to the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, which was signed into law in September 2007.[84] Obama also introduced Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, a bill to criminalize deceptive practices in federal elections[85] and the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007,[86] neither of which have been signed into law.

  

Obama and U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) visit a Russian mobile launch missile dismantling facility in August 2005.[87]Later in 2007, Obama sponsored an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act adding safeguards for personality disorder military discharges.[88] This amendment passed the full Senate in the spring of 2008.[89] He sponsored the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act supporting divestment of state pension funds from Iran's oil and gas industry, which has not passed committee, and co-sponsored legislation to reduce risks of nuclear terrorism.[90][91] Obama also sponsored a Senate amendment to the State Children's Health Insurance Program providing one year of job protection for family members caring for soldiers with combat-related injuries.[92]

  

Committees

Obama held assignments on the Senate Committees for Foreign Relations, Environment and Public Works and Veterans' Affairs through December 2006.[93] In January 2007, he left the Environment and Public Works committee and took additional assignments with Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.[94] He also became Chairman of the Senate's subcommittee on European Affairs.[95] As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. He met with Mahmoud Abbas before he became President of the Palestinian Authority, and gave a speech at the University of Nairobi condemning corruption in the Kenyan government.[96][97][98][99]

  

2008 Presidential campaign

Main articles: Barack Obama presidential primary campaign, 2008 and Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2008

Wikinews has related news: Barack Obama elected 44th President of the United States

On February 10, 2007, Obama announced his candidacy for President of the United States in front of the Old State Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois.[100][101] The choice of the announcement site was symbolic because it was also where Abraham Lincoln delivered his historic "House Divided" speech in 1858.[102] Throughout the campaign, Obama emphasized the issues of rapidly ending the Iraq War, increasing energy independence, and providing universal health care.[103]

  

Obama stands on stage with his wife and two daughters just before announcing his presidential candidacy in Springfield, Illinois, Feb. 10, 2007.During both the primary process and the general election, Obama's campaign set numerous fundraising records, particularly in the quantity of small donations.[104][105][106] On June 19, Obama became the first major-party presidential candidate to turn down public financing in the general election since the system was created in 1976.[107]

 

A large number of candidates initially entered the Democratic Party presidential primaries. After a few initial contests, the field narrowed to a contest between Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton, with each winning some states and the race remaining close throughout the primary process.[108][109][110][111] On May 31, the Democratic National Committee agreed to seat all of the disputed Michigan and Florida delegates at the national convention, each with a half-vote, narrowing Obama's delegate lead.[112] On June 3, with all states counted, Obama passed the threshold to become the presumptive nominee.[113][114] On that day, he gave a victory speech in St. Paul, Minnesota. Clinton suspended her campaign and endorsed him on June 7.[115] From that point on, he campaigned for the general election race against Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee.

 

On August 23, 2008, Obama announced that he had selected Delaware Senator Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate.[116]

  

Obama delivers his presidential election victory speech.At the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, Obama's former rival Hillary Clinton gave a speech in support of Obama's candidacy and later called for Obama to be nominated by acclamation as the Democratic presidential candidate.[117][118] On August 28, Obama delivered a speech to 84,000 supporters in Denver. During the speech, which was viewed by over 38 million people worldwide, he accepted his party's nomination and presented his policy goals.[119][120]

 

After McCain was nominated as the Republican presidential candidate, there were three presidential debates between Obama and McCain in September and October 2008.[121][122] In November, Obama won the presidency with 53% of the popular vote and a wide electoral college margin. His election sparked street celebrations in numerous cities in the United States[123] and abroad.

  

Election victory

Main article: Presidential transition of Barack Obama

 

President-elect Obama meets with President George W. Bush in the Oval Office, November 10, 2008.On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama defeated John McCain in the general election with 365 electoral votes to McCain's 173[124] and became the first African American to be elected President of the United States.[125][126][127][128] In his victory speech, delivered before a crowd of hundreds of thousands of his supporters in Chicago's Grant Park, Obama proclaimed that "change has come to America".[129]

 

On January 8, 2009, the joint session of the U.S. Congress met to certify the votes of the Electoral College for the 2008 presidential election. Based on the results of the electoral vote count, Barack Obama was declared to have been elected President of the United States and Joseph Biden was declared to have been elected Vice President of the United States.[130]

  

Presidency

Main article: Presidency of Barack Obama

The inauguration of Barack Obama as the forty-fourth President, and Joe Biden as Vice President, took place on January 20, 2009. The theme of the inauguration was "A New Birth of Freedom," commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.[131]

 

In his first few days in office, Obama issued executive orders and presidential memoranda reversing President Bush's ban on federal funding to foreign establishments that allow abortions (known as the Global Gag Rule),[132] and changed procedures to promote disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act,[133] directing the U.S. military to develop plans to withdraw troops from Iraq,[134] and reducing the secrecy given to presidential records,[135] and closing Guantanamo Bay detention camp "as soon as practicable and no later than" January 2010, and "Immediate Review of All Guantánamo Detentions".

  

Political positions

Main article: Political positions of Barack Obama

A method that some political scientists use for gauging ideology is to compare the annual ratings by the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) with the ratings by the American Conservative Union (ACU).[136] Based on his years in Congress, Obama has a lifetime average conservative rating of 7.67% from the ACU,[137] and a lifetime average liberal rating of 90% from the ADA.[138]

  

Obama campaigning in Abington, Pennsylvania, October 2008.Obama was an early opponent of the Bush administration's policies on Iraq.[139] On October 2, 2002, the day President George W. Bush and Congress agreed on the joint resolution authorizing the Iraq War,[140] Obama addressed the first high-profile Chicago anti-Iraq War rally in Federal Plaza,[141] speaking out against the war.[142][143] On March 16, 2003, the day Bush issued his 48-hour ultimatum to Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq before the U.S. invasion of Iraq,[144] Obama addressed the largest Chicago anti-Iraq War rally to date in Daley Plaza and told the crowd that "it's not too late" to stop the war.[145] Although Obama had previously said he wanted all the U.S. troops out of Iraq within 16 months of becoming President, after he won the primary, he said he might "refine" that promise.[146]

 

Obama stated that if elected he would enact budget cuts in the range of tens of billions of dollars, stop investing in "unproven" missile defense systems, not "weaponize" space, "slow development of Future Combat Systems," and work towards eliminating all nuclear weapons. Obama favors ending development of new nuclear weapons, reducing the current U.S. nuclear stockpile, enacting a global ban on production of fissile material, and seeking negotiations with Russia in order to take ICBMs off high alert status.[147]

 

In November 2006, Obama called for a "phased redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq" and an opening of diplomatic dialogue with Syria and Iran.[148] In a March 2007 speech to AIPAC, a pro-Israel lobby, he said that the primary way to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons is through talks and diplomacy, although he did not rule out military action.[149] Obama has indicated that he would engage in "direct presidential diplomacy" with Iran without preconditions.[150][151][152] Detailing his strategy for fighting global terrorism in August 2007, Obama said "it was a terrible mistake to fail to act" against a 2005 meeting of al-Qaeda leaders that U.S. intelligence had confirmed to be taking place in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas. He said that as president he would not miss a similar opportunity, even without the support of the Pakistani government.[153]

 

In a December 2005, Washington Post opinion column, and at the Save Darfur rally in April 2006, Obama called for more assertive action to oppose genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.[154] He has divested $180,000 in personal holdings of Sudan-related stock, and has urged divestment from companies doing business in Iran.[155] In the July–August 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, Obama called for an outward looking post-Iraq War foreign policy and the renewal of American military, diplomatic, and moral leadership in the world. Saying that "we can neither retreat from the world nor try to bully it into submission," he called on Americans to "lead the world, by deed and by example."[156]

  

Obama speaking at a rally at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri.In economic affairs, in April 2005, he defended the New Deal social welfare policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and opposed Republican proposals to establish private accounts for Social Security.[157] In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Obama spoke out against government indifference to growing economic class divisions, calling on both political parties to take action to restore the social safety net for the poor.[158] Shortly before announcing his presidential campaign, Obama said he supports universal health care in the United States.[159] Obama proposes to reward teachers for performance from traditional merit pay systems, assuring unions that changes would be pursued through the collective bargaining process.[160]

 

In September 2007, he blamed special interests for distorting the U.S. tax code.[161] His plan would eliminate taxes for senior citizens with incomes of less than $50,000 a year, repeal income tax cuts for those making over $250,000 as well as the capital gains and dividends tax cut,[162] close corporate tax loopholes, lift the income cap on Social Security taxes, restrict offshore tax havens, and simplify filing of income tax returns by pre-filling wage and bank information already collected by the IRS.[163] Announcing his presidential campaign's energy plan in October 2007, Obama proposed a cap and trade auction system to restrict carbon emissions and a ten year program of investments in new energy sources to reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil.[164] Obama proposed that all pollution credits must be auctioned, with no grandfathering of credits for oil and gas companies, and the spending of the revenue obtained on energy development and economic transition costs.[165]

 

Obama has encouraged Democrats to reach out to evangelicals and other religious groups.[166] In December 2006, he joined Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) at the "Global Summit on AIDS and the Church" organized by church leaders Kay and Rick Warren.[167] Together with Warren and Brownback, Obama took an HIV test, as he had done in Kenya less than four months earlier.[168] He encouraged "others in public life to do the same" and not be ashamed of it.[169] Addressing over 8,000 United Church of Christ members in June 2007, Obama challenged "so-called leaders of the Christian Right" for being "all too eager to exploit what divides us."[170]

  

Family and personal life

Main articles: Early life and career of Barack Obama and Family of Barack Obama

 

Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama.In June 1989, Obama met Michelle Robinson, who later became his wife, when he was employed as a summer associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin.[171] Assigned for three months as Obama's adviser at the firm, Robinson joined him at group social functions, but declined his initial requests to date.[172] They began dating later that summer, became engaged in 1991, and were married on October 3, 1992.[173] The couple's first daughter, Malia Ann, was born in 1998,[174] followed by a second daughter, Natasha ("Sasha"), in 2001.[175] Because of Michelle Obama's employment with the University of Chicago, the Obama daughters attended the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. When they moved to Washington, D.C., in January 2009, the girls started at the private Sidwell Friends School.[176]

 

Obama was known as "Barry" in his youth, but asked to be addressed with his given name during his college years.[177]

 

Applying the proceeds of a book deal, in 2005 the family moved from a Hyde Park, Chicago condominium to their current $1.6 million house in neighboring Kenwood.[178] The purchase of an adjacent lot and sale of part of it to Obama by the wife of developer and friend Tony Rezko attracted media attention because of Rezko's indictment and subsequent conviction on political corruption charges that were unrelated to Obama.[179][180]

 

In December 2007, Money magazine estimated the Obama family's net worth at $1.3 million.[181] Their 2007 tax return showed a household income of $4.2 million—up from about $1 million in 2006 and $1.6 million in 2005—mostly from sales of his books.[182]

  

Obama playing basketball with U.S. military at Camp Lemonier, Djibouti in 2006.[183]In a 2006 interview, Obama highlighted the diversity of his extended family. "Michelle will tell you that when we get together for Christmas or Thanksgiving, it's like a little mini-United Nations." he said. "I've got relatives who look like Bernie Mac, and I've got relatives who look like Margaret Thatcher."[184] Obama has seven half-siblings from his Kenyan father's family, six of them living, and a half-sister with whom he was raised, Maya Soetoro-Ng, the daughter of his mother and her Indonesian second husband.[185] Obama's mother was survived by her Kansas-born mother, Madelyn Dunham[186] until her death on November 2, 2008, just before the presidential election.[187] In Dreams from My Father, Obama ties his mother's family history to possible Native American ancestors and distant relatives of Jefferson Davis, president of the southern Confederacy during the American Civil War.[188] Obama's maternal and paternal grandfathers fought in World War II. Obama's great-uncle served in the 89th Division that overran Ohrdruf,[189] the first Nazi camp liberated by U.S. troops.[190]

 

Obama plays basketball, a sport he participated in as a member of his high school's varsity team.[191] He is an avid sports fan. Obama follows the Chicago Bears, Chicago White Sox, Chicago Bulls and West Ham United F.C.[192][193][194][195] While he has never been a heavy smoker, Obama has tried to quit smoking several times, including a well-publicized and ongoing effort which he began before launching his presidential campaign.[196] Obama has said he will not smoke in the White House.[197]

 

Obama is a Protestant Christian whose religious views have evolved in his adult life. In The Audacity of Hope, Obama writes that he "was not raised in a religious household." He describes his mother, raised by non-religious parents (whom Obama has specified elsewhere as "non-practicing Methodists and Baptists") to be detached from religion, yet "in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known." He describes his father as "raised a Muslim," but a "confirmed atheist" by the time his parents met, and his stepfather as "a man who saw religion as not particularly useful." In the book, Obama explains how, through working with black churches as a community organizer while in his twenties, he came to understand "the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change."[198][199] He was baptized at the Trinity United Church of Christ in 1988 and was an active member there for two decades.[200][201]

 

Besides his native English, Obama speaks Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia), at least on a colloquial level, which he learned during his four childhood years in Jakarta.[202] After the APEC summit in November 2008, Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono related a telephone conversation with Obama in Indonesian to Indonesian media. Obama had told Yudhoyono that he missed Indonesian food like Nasi Goreng, Bakso or Rambutan.[203]

  

Cultural and political image

Main article: Public image of Barack Obama

With his black Kenyan father and white American mother, his upbringing in Honolulu and Jakarta, and his Ivy League education, Obama's early life experiences differ markedly from those of African-American politicians who launched their careers in the 1960s through participation in the civil rights movement.[204] Expressing puzzlement over questions about whether he is "black enough", Obama told an August 2007 meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists that the debate is not about his physical appearance or his record on issues of concern to black voters. Obama said that "we're still locked in this notion that if you appeal to white folks then there must be something wrong."[205]

 

Echoing the inaugural address of John F. Kennedy, Obama acknowledged his youthful image in an October 2007 campaign speech, saying: "I wouldn't be here if, time and again, the torch had not been passed to a new generation."[206] A popular catch phrase distilled the concept: "Rosa sat so Martin could walk; Martin walked so Obama could run; Obama is running so our children can fly."[207]

  

From left: Presidents George H. W. Bush, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter meet in the Oval Office on January 7, 2009.Obama has been praised as a master of oratory on par with other renowned speakers in the past such as Martin Luther King, Jr.[208][209] His "Yes We Can" speech, which artists independently set to music in a video produced by Will.i.am, was viewed by 10 million people on YouTube in the first month,[210] and received an Emmy Award.[211] University of Virginia professor Jonathan Haidt researched the effectiveness of Obama's public speaking and concluded that part of his excellence is because the politician is adept at inspiring the emotion of elevation, the desire to act morally and do good for others.[212] Obama used these communication skills in a series of weekly internet video addresses during his pre-inauguration transition period;[213] he has suggested he will make a series of broadcast and internet addresses similar to Franklin D. Roosevelt's famous fireside chats throughout his term as president to explain his policies and actions.[214]

 

Many commentators mentioned Obama's international appeal as a defining factor for his public image.[215] Not only did several polls show strong support for him in other countries,[216] but Obama also established close relationships with prominent foreign politicians and elected officials even before his presidential candidacy, notably with then incumbent British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whom he met in London in 2005,[217] with Italy's Democratic Party leader and then Mayor of Rome Walter Veltroni, who visited Obama's Senate office in 2005,[218] and with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who also visited him in Washington in 2006.[219]

 

Obama won Best Spoken Word Album Grammy Awards for abridged audiobook versions of both of his books; for Dreams from My Father in February 2006 and for The Audacity of Hope in February 2008.[220]

 

In December 2008, Time magazine named Barack Obama as its Person of the Year for his historic candidacy and election, which it described as "the steady march of seemingly impossible accomplishments."[221]

  

Notes

^ "President Barack Obama". www.whitehouse.gov.

^ a b "Birth Certificate of Barack Obama". Department of Health, Hawaii. PolitiFact.com (August 8, 1961). Retrieved on 2008-12-12.

^ "Obama's church choice likely to be scrutinized". Associated Press. msnbc.com (November 17, 2008). Retrieved on 2009-1-20.

^ Maraniss, David (August 24, 2008). "Though Obama Had to Leave to Find Himself, It Is Hawaii That Made His Rise Possible", Politics, Washington Post. Retrieved on 27 October 2008.

^ Serafin, Peter (March 21, 2004). "Punahou grad stirs up Illinois politics" (Article), Special to the Star-Bulletin, Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Retrieved on November 30 2008.

^ For Stanley Ann's first name, see Obama (1995, 2004), p. 19

^ "Born in the U.S.A.". FactCheck (August 21, 2008). Retrieved on October 24, 2008.

^ Hutton, Brian (May 3, 2007). "For sure, Obama's South Side Irish", Politics, The Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved on 23 November 2008.

^ "Tiny Irish Village Is Latest Place to Claim Obama as Its Own - washingtonpost.com". Washingtonpost.com. Retrieved on 2008-11-08.

^ Obama (1995, 2004), pp. 9–10. For book excerpts, see "Barack Obama: Creation of Tales", East African (2004-11-01). Retrieved on 13 April 2008. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007.

^ a b Jones, Tim (2007-03-27). "Obama's mom: Not just a girl from Kansas: Strong personalities shaped a future senator", Chicago Tribune, reprinted in The Baltimore Sun. Retrieved on 27 October 2008.

^ Ripley, Amanda (2008-04-09). "The Story of Barack Obama's Mother", Time. Retrieved on 9 April 2007.

^ Merida, Kevin (2007-12-14). "The Ghost of a Father", Washington Post. Retrieved on 24 June 2008. See also: Ochieng, Philip (2004-11-01). "From Home Squared to the US Senate: How Barack Obama Was Lost and Found", East African. Retrieved on 24 June 2008. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. In August 2006, Obama flew his wife and two daughters from Chicago to join him in a visit to his father's birthplace, a village near Kisumu in rural western Kenya. Gnecchi, Nico (2006-02-27). "Obama Receives Hero's Welcome at His Family's Ancestral Village in Kenya", Voice of America. Retrieved on 24 June 2008.

^ Obama (1995, 2004), pp. 44–45.

^ Serafin, Peter (2004-03-21). "Punahou Grad Stirs Up Illinois Politics", Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Retrieved on 13 April 2008. See also: Obama (1995, 2004), Chapters 3 and 4.

^ Ripley, Amanda (2008-04-09). "The Story of Barack Obama's Mother", Time. Retrieved on 24 June 2008. See also: Suryakusuma, Julia (2006-11-29). "Obama for President... of Indonesia", Jakarta Post. Retrieved on 24 June 2008.

^ Obama (1995), pp. 9–10.

^ Obama (1995), Chapters 4 and 5. See also: Serrano, Richard A (March 11, 2007). "Obama's Peers Didn't See His Angst" (paid archive), Los Angeles Times. Retrieved on 4 January 2008.

^ "Obama Gets Blunt with N.H. Students", Associated Press, Boston Globe (November 21, 2007). Retrieved on 4 January 2008. In Dreams from My Father, Obama writes: "Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it." Obama (1995), pp. 93–94. For analysis of the political impact of the quote and Obama's more recent admission that he smoked marijuana as a teenager ("When I was a kid, I inhaled."), see: Romano, Lois (January 3, 2007). "Effect of Obama's Candor Remains to Be Seen", Washington Post. Retrieved on 4 January 2008. Seelye, Katharine Q (October 24, 2006). "Obama Offers More Variations From the Norm", New York Times. Retrieved on 4 January 2008.

^ Hornick, Ed (August 17, 2008). "Obama, McCain talk issues at pastor's forum", CNN.com. Retrieved on 4 January 2009.

^ Reyes, B. J (February 8, 2007). "Punahou Left Lasting Impression on Obama", Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Retrieved on 4 January 2008. "As a teenager, Obama went to parties and sometimes sought out gatherings on military bases or at the University of Hawaii that were mostly attended by blacks."

^ "Oxy Remembers "Barry" Obama '83". Occidental College (2007-01-29). Retrieved on 2008-04-13.

^ Boss-Bicak, Shira (January 2005). "Barack Obama '83", Columbia College Today. Retrieved on 9 June 2008.

^ "Curriculum Vitae". The University of Chicago Law School. Archived from the original on 2001-05-09. Retrieved on 2008-11-03.

^ Issenberg, Sasha (2008-08-06). "Obama shows hints of his year in global finance: Tied markets to social aid", Boston Globe. Retrieved on 13 April 2008.

^ a b c d e f g Chassie, Karen (ed.) (2007). Who's Who in America, 2008. New Providence, NJ: Marquis Who's Who. p. 3468. ISBN 9780837970110. www.marquiswhoswho.com/products/WAprodinfo.asp. Retrieved on 2008-06-06.

^ Scott, Janny (2007-10-30). "Obama's Account of New York Years Often Differs from What Others Say", The New York Times. Retrieved on 13 April 2008. Obama (1995, 2004), pp. 133–140; Mendell (2007), pp. 62–63.

^ Secter, Bob; McCormick, John (2007-03-30). "Portrait of a pragmatist", Chicago Tribune, p. 1. Retrieved on 6 June 2008. Archived from the original on 9 February 2008. Lizza, Ryan (2007-03-19). "The Agitator: Barack Obama's Unlikely Political Education" (alternate link), New Republic. Retrieved on 13 April 2008. Obama (1995, 2004), pp. 140–295; Mendell (2007), pp. 63–83.

^ Matchan, Linda (1990-02-15). "A Law Review breakthrough" (paid archive), The Boston Globe, p. 29. Retrieved on 6 June 2008. Corr, John (1990-02-27). "From mean streets to hallowed halls" (paid archive), The Philadelphia Inquirer, p. C01. Retrieved on 6 June 2008.

^ Obama, Barack (August–September 1988). "Why organize? Problems and promise in the inner city". Illinois Issues 14 (8–9): 40–42. reprinted in: Knoepfle, Peg (ed.) (1990). After Alinsky: community organizing in Illinois. Springfield, IL: Sangamon State University. pp. 35–40. ISBN 0962087335. Tayler, Letta; Herbert, Keith (2008-03-02). "Obama forged path as Chicago community organizer", Newsday, p. A06. Retrieved on 6 June 2008.

^ Obama (1995, 2004), pp. 299–437.

^ a b Levenson, Michael; Saltzman, Jonathan (2007-01-28). "At Harvard Law, a unifying voice", The Boston Globe. Retrieved on 15 June 2008. Kantor, Jodi (2007-01-28). "In law school, Obama found political voice", The New York Times, p. 1. Retrieved on 15 June 2008. Kodama, Marie C (2007-01-19). "Obama left mark on HLS", The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved on 15 June 2008. Mundy, Liza (2007-08-12). "A series of fortunate events", The Washington Post, p. W10. Retrieved on 15 June 2008. Heilemann, John (2007-10-22). "When they were young". New York 40 (37): 32–7, 132–3. www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&titl.... Retrieved on 15 June 2008. Mendell (2007), pp. 80–92.

^ a b Butterfield, Fox (1990-02-06). "First black elected to head Harvard's Law Review", The New York Times, p. A20. Retrieved on 15 June 2008. Ybarra, Michael J (1990-02-07). "Activist in Chicago now heads Harvard Law Review" (paid archive), Chicago Tribune, p. 3. Retrieved on 15 June 2008. Matchan, Linda (1990-02-15). "A Law Review breakthrough" (paid archive), The Boston Globe, p. 29. Retrieved on 15 June 2008. Corr, John (1990-02-27). "From mean streets to hallowed halls" (paid archive), The Philadelphia Inquirer, p. C01. Retrieved on 15 June 2008. Drummond, Tammerlin (1990-03-12). "Barack Obama's Law; Harvard Law Review's first black president plans a life of public service" (paid archive), Los Angeles Times, p. E1. Retrieved on 15 June 2008. Evans, Gaynelle (1990-03-15). "Opening another door: The saga of Harvard's Barack H. Obama", Black Issues in Higher Education, p. 5. Retrieved on 15 November 2008. Pugh, Allison J. (Associated Press) (1990-04-18). "Law Review's first black president aims to help poor" (paid archive), The Miami Herald, p. C01. Retrieved on 15 June 2008.

^ Aguilar, Louis (1990-07-11). "Survey: Law firms slow to add minority partners" (paid archive), Chicago Tribune, p. 1 (Business). Retrieved on 15 June 2008. "Barack Obama, a summer associate at Hopkins & Sutter in Chicago"

^ Adams, Richard (2007-05-09). "Barack Obama", The Guardian. Retrieved on 26 October 2008.

^ Mendell, David. "Barack Obama (American politician)". Retrieved on 2008-10-26.

^ a b c Scott, Janny (2008-05-18). "The story of Obama, written by Obama", The New York Times, p. 1. Retrieved on 15 June 2008. Obama (1995, 2004), pp. xiii–xvii.

^ White, Jesse (ed.) (2000). Illinois Blue Book, 2000, Millennium ed.. Springfield, IL: Illinois Secretary of State. p. 83. OCLC 43923973. www.sos.state.il.us/bb/toc.html. Retrieved on 2008-06-06.

^ Jarrett, Vernon (1992-08-11). "'Project Vote' brings power to the people" (paid archive), Chicago Sun-Times, p. 23. Retrieved on 6 June 2008. Reynolds, Gretchen (January 1993). "Vote of Confidence". Chicago 42 (1): 53–54. www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/January-1993/Vote-of-.... Retrieved on 6 June 2008. Anderson, Veronica (September 27–October 3 1993). "40 under Forty: Barack Obama, Director, Illinois Project Vote". Crain's Chicago Business 16 (39): 43.

^ University of Chicago Law School (2008-03-27). "Statement regarding Barack Obama". University of Chicago Law School. Retrieved on 2008-06-10. Miller, Joe (2008-03-28). "Was Barack Obama really a constitutional law professor?". FactCheck.org. Retrieved on 2008-06-10. Holan, Angie Drobnic (2008-03-07). "Obama's 20 years of experience". PolitiFact.com. Retrieved on 2008-06-10.<

^ Robinson, Mike (Associated Press) (2007-02-10). "Obama got start in civil rights practice", The Boston Globe. Retrieved on 15 June 2008. Pallasch, Abdon M (2007-12-17). "As lawyer, Obama was strong, silent type; He was 'smart, innovative, relentless,' and he mostly let other lawyers do the talking", Chicago Sun-Times, p. 4. Retrieved on 15 June 2008. "People" (paid archive), Chicago Tribune (1993-06-27), p. 9 (Business). Retrieved on 15 June 2008. "Business appointments" (paid archive), Chicago-Sun-Times (1993-07-05), p. 40. Retrieved on 15 June 2008. Miner, Barnhill & Galland (2008). "About Us". Miner, Barnhill & Galland – Chicago, Illinois. Retrieved on 2008-06-15. Obama (1995, 2004), pp. 438–439, Mendell (2007), pp. 104–106.

^ "ARDC Individual Attorney Record of Public Registration and Public Disciplinary and Disability Information as of October 17, 2008 at 12:52:13 PM". Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois. Retrieved on 2008-10-19.

^ Public Allies (2008). "Fact Sheet on Public Allies' History with Senator Barack and Michelle Obama". Public Allies. Retrieved on 2008-06-06.

^ Jackson, David; Ray Long (2007-04-03). "Obama Knows His Way Around a Ballot", Chicago Tribune. Retrieved on 14 January 2008. [dead link] White, Jesse (2001). "Legislative Districts of Cook County, 1991 Reapportionment". Illinois Blue Book 2001–2002. Springfield: Illinois Secretary of State. p. 65. State Sen. District 13 = State Rep. Districts 25 & 26.

^ Slevin, Peter (2007-02-09). "Obama Forged Political Mettle in Illinois Capitol", Washington Post. Retrieved on 20 April 2008. Helman, Scott (2007-09-23). "In Illinois, Obama dealt with Lobbyists", Boston Globe. Retrieved on 20 April 2008. See also: "Obama Record May Be Gold Mine for Critics", Associated Press, CBS News (2007-01-17). Retrieved on 20 April 2008. "In-Depth Look at Obama's Political Career" (video), CLTV, Chicago Tribune (2007-02-09). Retrieved on 20 April 2008.

^ a b Scott, Janny (2007-07-30). "In Illinois, Obama Proved Pragmatic and Shrewd", The New York Times. Retrieved on 20 April 2008. See also: Pearson, Rick; Ray Long (2007-05-03). "Careful Steps, Looking Ahead", Chicago Tribune. Retrieved on 20 April 2008. Archived from the original on 16 February 2008.

^ Allison, Melissa (2000-12-15). "State takes on predatory lending; Rules would halt single-premium life insurance financing", Chicago Tribune, p. 1 (Business). Retrieved on 1 June 2008. Long, Ray; Allison, Melissa (2001-04-18). "Illinois OKs predatory loan curbs; State aims to avert home foreclosures.", Chicago Tribune, p. 1. Retrieved on 1 June 2008.

^ "13th District: Barack Obama" (archive). Illinois State Senate Democrats (2000-08-24). Archived from the original on 2000-04-12. Retrieved on 2008-04-20. "13th District: Barack Obama" (archive). Illinois State Senate Democrats (2004-10-09). Archived from the original on 2004-08-02. Retrieved on 2008-04-20.

^ "Federal Elections 2000: U.S. House Results - Illinois". Federal Election Commission. Retrieved on 2008-04-24.. See also: "Obama's Loss May Have Aided White House Bid". and Scott, Janny (2007-09-09). "A Streetwise Veteran Schooled Young Obama", The New York Times. Retrieved on 20 April 2008.

^ McClelland, Edward (2007-02-12). "How Obama Learned to Be a Natural", Salon. Retrieved on 20 April 2008. See also: Wolffe, Richard; Daren Briscoe (2007-07-16). "Across the Divide", Newsweek, MSNBC. Retrieved on 20 April 2008. Helman, Scott (2007-10-12). "Early Defeat Launched a Rapid Political Climb", Boston Globe. Retrieved on 20 April 2008. and Wills, Christopher (2007-10-24). "Obama learned from failed Congress run", USA Today. Retrieved on 20 September 2008.

^ Calmes, Jackie (2007-02-23). "Statehouse Yields Clues to Obama", Wall Street Journal. Retrieved on 20 April 2008.

^ Tavella, Anne Marie (2003-04-14). "Profiling, taping plans pass Senate", Daily Herald, p. 17. Retrieved on 1 June 2008. Haynes, V. Dion (2003-06-29). "Fight racial profiling at local level, lawmaker says; U.S. guidelines get mixed review", Chicago Tribune, p. 8. Retrieved on 1 June 2008. Pearson, Rick (2003-07-17). "Taped confessions to be law; State will be 1st to pass legislation", Chicago Tribune, p. 1 (Metro). Retrieved on 1 June 2008.

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^ Goudie, Chuck (2006-01-12). "Obama Meets with Arafat's Successor", WLS-TV. Retrieved on 27 April 2008.

^ "Obama Slates Kenya for Fraud", News24.com (2006-08-28). Retrieved on 27 April 2008.

^ Wamalwa, Chris (2006-09-02). "Envoy Hits at Obama Over Graft Remark", The Standard (Nairobi). Retrieved on 27 April 2008. Archived from the original on 10 October 2007. Moracha, Vincent; Mangoa Mosota (2006-09-04). "Leaders Support Obama on Graft Claims", The Standard (Nairobi). Retrieved on 27 April 2008. Archived from the original on 7 October 2007.

^ Pearson, Rick; Long, Ray (February 10, 2007). "Obama: I'm running for president", Chicago Tribune. Retrieved on 20 September 2008.

^ "Obama Launches Presidential Bid", BBC News (2007-02-10). Retrieved on 14 January 2008.

^ "Presidential Campaign Announcement" (video), Obama for America, Brightcove.TV (2007-02-10). Retrieved on 14 January 2008.

^ "Barack Obama on the Issues: What Would Be Your Top Three Overall Priorities If Elected?", Washington Post. Retrieved on 14 April 2008. See also: Falcone, Michael (2007-12-21). "Obama's 'One Thing'", The New York Times. Retrieved on 14 April 2008.

^ Malone, Jim (July 2, 2007). "Obama Fundraising Suggests Close Race for Party Nomination", Voice of America. Retrieved on 14 January 2008.

^ Cummings, Jeanne (September 26, 2007). "Small Donors Rewri

i think there was talk of using these for her christmas cards that year...

 

PLEASE NOTE: This image is copyright 2004 Addison Godel. It is pending registration with the US Electronic Copyright Office. All rights reserved. Unauthorized publication of this image, or images derived therefrom, may be subject to legal action.

 

Update for those folks looking for answers/statements from me, but who are understandably disinclined to read all the comments below, and at the various linked images where I've chimed in....

 

1) Yes, this is the real photo. Yes, the Palin one is a Photoshop job. No, I didn't do the Photoshop - that turned out to be InnocuousFun who I had never met or heard of before all this. No, it's not a "real" gun.

 

A concise and accurate summary of the significant facts can be found at www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/is_that_a_real_photo_of_sa.... Where other sources contradict that account, or my statements here, trust the latter. FactCheck, as far as I've been able to discern, is as dry and nonpartisan as you can expect for the internet - certainly better than you'll get from my own forays into campaign bloggery!

 

To be avoided: Fox News's article on the episode, which manages to be a screed against a rival news organization's ostensibly poor fact-checking, while being itself wrong on points that could have easily been confirmed by either reading the FactCheck story or contacting me. I am flattered that they think Elizabeth was my girlfriend - then or ever - but, very sadly, this was not the case.

 

2) No, I cannot give you any more information about Elizabeth. No, I can't tell you her side of the story. I am uncomfortable issuing statements on her behalf or taking on the role of being her "manager" or anything similar; for her part, she is mainly concerned about her privacy. Both of us are riddled with mixed feelings about the Photoshop image, which makes issuing a definitive "statement" difficult; as well, it seems clear that the blogosphere/commentosphere will inevitably find its own meanings for anything we'd attempt to say. That's the way the world works - but the main point is that both of us kind of wish this whole thing would go away, not from our lives so much as from people's inboxes. More on this below.

 

3) Thanks for your interest, but I am really not inclined to participate in any online fora, guest blogs, podcasts, et cetera. Major news organizations should refer to the FactCheck story. If you want to put me on national television, get in touch, but only if you are willing to pay travel expenses to somewhere I'd want to visit anyway, plus charitable gifts. What I would really prefer is to be put on "Jeopardy!" and to have this be my cutesy anecdote that Alex asks me about after the first commercial break.

 

My reticence doesn't stem from any hostility to anybody who's written with such requests, but mainly from a sense that I personally don't have much more to say than I'm saying here, and that everyone's time would really be better spent covering actual news.

 

4) I am flattered by those who think I somehow have the power to wipe the Palin 'shop off the Internet, but this strikes me as unrealistic in the extreme. Strangers on my bus to work in the morning have seen the thing. Google turns up hundreds of thousands of hits for "'sarah palin' bikini." It's out of my hands - so whether you agree with my statements on this page or not, don't hold the 'shop image's existence, or distributed reach, over my head as something for which I should be responsible.

 

At the same time, I don't appreciate or accept my photo being used for profit, in whatever its altered state, without my permission or even my knowledge. If you see it for sale in any context, please let me know. This may also be a losing battle but frankly it is weird enough seeing my photo (and my friend's body) all over the Internet - I really don't want to see them on a T-Shirt.

 

The bottom line: I'm not a spokesperson for the left, for feminism, or for Barack Obama's campaign. I'm just some guy who took a photo four years ago and posted it on this blog two years ago, for the delight and entertainment of my friends. When the Palin 'shop first broke, I was amused because, I mean, I knew it was Elizabeth and it was just...bizarre. I also figured it was just one of countless 'shops being done at that time - I really could not have imagined, when it first appeared in my browser, that it would become as ubiquitous as it has.

 

I rather wish it hadn't. We deserve better from this election than deception and worn-out old narratives. It's deception to keep forwarding along a fake photo as a real one. It's a worn-out old narrative to imply that a female candidate (for any position, political or not) is unqualified because she has a body and sometimes puts a bathing suit on it (the "bimbo" frame-up).

 

Sarah Palin is in my view unqualified to be President, and being qualified to be President is really the only qualification to be Vice President. But she's not unqualified because she's a woman, or because of what's going on in her family, or because some Internet person put her face on the photo of some other Internet person. Her lack of qualification broadcasts itself right off of her resume, and is indeed the driving force behind her narrative as "hockey mom"; if she were qualified, she would lose the glow of the Everyperson.

 

Similarly, I think it's clear that Sarah Palin, to the extent that she has any documented policy convictions, stands for a vision of America with which I, along with millions of others disagree. Some aspects of that vision are what, no doubt, have lent this image an air of plausibility to many. Elizabeth was donning a particular stereotype of us Southerners when this photo was taken; it would have been read by our friends as hilariously out-of-character, but clearly to many people (on both ends of the Palin love/hate spectrum) they seem in-character for the Governor. But: we don't need the perverse patriotism of an American flag bathing suit (I still wonder how the Flag Code handles this) to point out how self-righteous patriotism of the "Liberals aren't really Americans!" variety poisons the well of our political discourse. And we don't need a BB gun to point out that the McCain/Palin ticket is a pro-gun ticket, calling gun control "a proven failure in fighting crime," opposing waiting periods for gun ownership, and seeking to end restrictions on assault weapons and armor-piercing ammunition.

 

No doubt this will all blow over soon and this text will look like the overpreening ramblings of a small man trying to elevate his teacup's tempest to the status of a major news story. I would offer this, though: I didn't choose to be thrust into the brief, fourth-tier spotlight. All I chose to do was leave the photo up and link it from a version of the other image. I caught the 'shop very early in its cycle and could have very easily taken this down; eagle-eyed viewers would still recognize the tell-tale signs of 'shopping, but many more people who now know the truth probably would still be fooled. I'm not asking for a standing ovation, but to those who have their own ideas about what I could or should have done, I do ask you to imagine yourselves in my shoes. I never quite anticipated that my life's most significant contribution in either photography or politics would be that I would not deny authorship of a candid snapshot. To quote Batman's spooky growly voice: "What would you have me do?"

 

When the furor blows over and bloggers can again focus on, you know, the economy, health care, education, foreign policy, and energy, this blog will continue with its normal course: pictures of architecture with academic rambling that only five people care about; and pictures of days spent with my family and friends...including any future picnics at the rock quarry. It was, after all, a really lovely afternoon.

Youngest victim of Hamas massacre was just 14 hours old, new October 7 report reveals

Britain reveals new report on October 7 massacre, describing the horrors inflicted on innocent Israeli civilians, and featuring witnesses

 

Israel National News

2 minutes

Mar 19, 2025 at 11:22 AM (GMT+2)

 

British ParliamentOctober 7th

 

Kibbutz Nir Oz after the October 7 massacre

Chaim Goldberg/Flash90

The 7 October Parliamentary Commission, chaired by Lord Roberts of Belgravia on behalf of the UK-Israel All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), on Wednesday published its first report into the 2023 Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel.

 

Publication of the findings are the culmination of a 12-month process undertaken in January 2024, with a view to establishing an exact sequence of events and countering any denials or misrepresentation of what took place.

 

What unfolded over the course of the attack amounted to one of the worst terror outrages in the annals of history, leaving 1,182 dead including 18 UK citizens. This marks the largest number of UK deaths from a terror attack in the Middle East, and the second highest globally after 9/11.

 

Wednesday's report details the catalogue of murder, torture and sexual violence which took place, while also shedding light on the planning process and groups involved in the assault. In total, citizens from 44 nations were either killed or taken hostage by Hamas and other groups. The victims were overwhelmingly Jewish Israelis, but the attackers showed no mercy and slaughtered Israel Arabs and Bedouins without hesitation.

 

The 7 October Parliamentary Commission Report is being shared with Members of Parliament from the Commons and Lords, University Vice Chancellors as well as being made publicly available online.

 

Introducing the report, Lord Roberts likened refutations of the events to Holocaust denial saying: “Hamas and its allies, both in the Middle East and equally shamefully in the West, have sought to deny the atrocities, despite the ironic fact that much of the evidence for the massacres derives come from film footage from cameras carried by the terrorists themselves - though of course there is also much more from many other sources, as this Report delineates.”

 

“The present Report has been undertaken to counter such pernicious views, and to lay down incontrovertible proof - for now and for the years to come – that nearly 1,200 innocent people were indeed murdered by Hamas and its allies, and very often in scenes of sadistic barbarism not seen in world history since the Rape of Nanjing in 1937.”

 

Findings include:

 

• Years of planning went into the invasion. The origins can be traced back to 2018 when Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip established the “Joint Room for Palestinian Resistance Factions” to coordinate activities.

 

• Approximately 7,000 individuals took part in the large-scale, coordinated assault on 55 distinct locations.

 

• 18 UK citizens were killed including Rotem Kalderon, 66, a dual UK-Israel citizen who was previously unnamed. Her body lay undiscovered until two weeks after the attack at Kibbutz Be’eri. The report details the deaths of all 17 UK citizens killed on that day, and the two hostages that were taken – one who was then also killed in captivity, bringing the total to 18 dead.

 

• Deliberate killings of civilians took place at 26 locations. The youngest victim was newborn Naama Abu Rashed who suffered a gunshot wound while still in his mother’s womb and died just 14-hours after doctors performed an emergency delivery. The oldest victim was Moshe Ridler, a 92-year-old Holocaust survivor, who was killed when Hamas invaders fired a rocket propelled grenade at the door of his safe room. Civilians account for 73% of the victims of 7 October.

 

• The biggest age group of victims was 18-30 – largely due to the attack on the Nova music festival, which account for 375 victims.

 

• Causes of death included shooting, burning, asphyxiation and grenade explosions.

 

• Desecration of corpses was widespread, including mutilation, beheadings and boobytrapping bodies with grenades. Dead bodies were taken as hostages.

 

• Detailed maps of villages (kibbutzim) and hostage taking manuals were found on the attackers who also designed special weaponry to breach the doors of civilian saferooms.

 

• The findings support and add to an earlier report authored by the UN’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence, Pramila Patten on allegations of Conflict Related Sexual Violence (CRSV), which found that “several fully naked or partially naked bodies from the waist down [that] were recovered – mostly women – with hands tied and shot multiple times.” Acts of sexual violence occurred across all sites during attack.

 

• 119 breaches in the border fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel took place during the attack, and simultaneous incursions by air and sea. The attack included an unprecedented rocket barrage which placed 75% of Israel’s population, around 7.3 million people, under threat.

 

The investigation leading to Wednesday’s report was conducted by Lord Roberts, with support from a panel of UK parliamentarians. The panel heard testimonials from those directly impacted including family members of victims and hostages who provided testimony and evidence, academics and military experts. The report also drew on footage from GoPro cameras worn by Hamas operatives on the day and CCTV footage which captured the attack.

 

Related articles:

US announces task force to pursue justice for 10.7 victims

'I must give credit to Hamas for tricking us'

NHS doctor under investigation for racist and antisemitic remarks

Herzog proposes framework for commission of inquiry

Lord Roberts commented: “This report will serve as a permanent memorial and enduring resource for governments, educators, and civil society in order to safeguard the truth against denialism and distortion.”

 

“The purpose of commissioning our report has been to chronicle the events of 7 October with clarity and meticulous, factchecking precision, to ensure it is never forgotten.”

 

Israel’s Ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, who participated in the event, said: "The UK Parliament’s report on the events of 7th October provides crucial fact-based clarity on the horrific war crimes committed by Hamas against innocent civilians."

 

"We live in a world where fake news prevails, and the truth is systematically erased through denial and distortion. This comprehensive report is part of the fight against the spread of lies and misinformation. I'd like to thank Professor Andrew Roberts and the Israel APPG for this important step in preserving historical truth."

FACT CHECK: Wages are NOT keeping up with Biden’s inflation crisis.

 

Real wages are down over 5 percent since President Biden entered the Oval Office.

Since President Biden took office, the average worker has lost over $4,900 in real wages.

www.billhunterphotography.com

 

Olivetti Studio 46

Chicago, IL

August 22nd, 2018

 

All photos © Joshua Mellin per the guidelines listed under "Owner settings" to the right.

 

twitter | instagram

 

USA Today cited this photo as evidence the Earth is a sphere: www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/12/05/fact-che...

Lying in general and the form of lying known as gaslighting is one of the Trump regime's most important tools for gaining and holding onto power. Donald Trump constantly says things that are demonstrably false and, on the rare occasion when someone actually challenges his lie, Trump deflects the challenge and continues spouting the same lie.

 

A current example is the following baseless claim:

 

"Trump, April 28: We are way ahead on testing. We are the best in the world on testing. We’ve tested much more than anybody else, times two — or every country combined. We’ve tested more than every country combined." Now that it's in Trump's repertoire, we'll be hearing it until Trump finds something else big to lie about.

 

You don't believe it, I don't believe it, yet Trump's base absorbs the lie and the damage is done. Here's Fact Check's piece demolishing Trump's lie: www.factcheck.org/2020/04/trumps-covid-19-testing-claim-i...

 

This week Trump's spectral son-in-law Lil' Jared outdid his wife's old man when he, Jared, appeared on the ministry of propaganda's cable station to proclaim full victory in the effort to curb the covid virus. The reality could not be further from the truth. I felt compelled to respond.

 

Before getting to that, though, when I hear about the lies coming out of the Trump mob, I ask myself whether they are so cloistered and divorced from the world we inhabit that they actually believe what they're saying, or whether they're so morally bankrupt that they knowingly utter untruths and half-truths. Might both phenomena be occurring at the same time?

========================================================

 

Jared Kushner, a White House senior adviser and son-in-law to President Donald Trump, praised himself and the rest of the administration on Wednesday morning for its efforts to reopen the U.S. economy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Kushner’s comments came after the nation’s death toll from coronavirus surpassed the Vietnam War.

 

“I think that we’ve achieved all the different milestones that are needed,” Kushner said during an interview on “Fox and Friends.” “So, the government — federal government — rose to the challenge and this is a GREAT SUCCESS STORY and I think that that’s really what needs to be told.”

 

talkingpointsmemo.com/news/jared-kushner-were-doing-amazi...

 

Bloody Hell.

========================================================

By: Rick Wilson

The Daily Beast

March 20, 2020

 

The cliché about authoritarian leaders being strong but brittle is coming true with Donald Trump. The cost of this lesson will be tallied in lives and a wrecked economy.

 

Donald Trump and his fans are learning that karmic externalities are a bitch. They're learning that you can get away with a chain of scams, business failures, bankruptcies, and branding disasters and win the presidency but still fail utterly as a president and a person.

 

It took a global pandemic, the bursting of the Fed-fueled stock market bubble, and an opponent Trump can't face. It doesn't read Twitter, watch Fox, or respond to derisive nicknames. It took a plague to peel back the scales from his eyes finally, and even now, too many Trumpist Republicans insist this is fine. Heckuva job, Trumpie.

 

His enablers know the truth and have tried to turn the battleship of bullshit toward it.

 

They know Trump didn't just mishandle the Coronavirus crisis, and he did so with his political standing and benefit in mind.

 

Trump spent six weeks claiming to his soft-minded followers that the worst public health crisis since the 1918 H1N1 Spanish Flu was a fake news Democratic media hoax.

 

He shook hands and shared microphones and touched his umber jowls and modeled what not to do even after he'd been in a room with people with the virus—doing his damnedest to make my warning that how Everything Trump Touches Dies a literal as well as a serious one.

 

Sure, we warned them a million times. The evidence before the election of 2016 was utterly clear to see and every damn minute of his corrupt and chaotic reign of misrule smacked Americans in the face like a cast-iron frying pan yielded by a vicious ex, but Republicans kept defending him. They kept excusing him. They kept cheering every fuckup, every crime, and every insult to America's charter and our character.

 

They excused every lie, forgave every incompetent utterance and ideological heresy. How's that working out now that the feces has impacted the rotating blades?

 

He can hold a thousand sweaty monster-Trump rallies, but when the call to leadership is bigger than shittweeting insults and delivering nicknames, Trump's world goes sideways.

 

He can do press conferences full of lies, whoppers, and time-machine hindsight like “I'd rate it at 10. I think we've done a great job” and “I don't take responsibility for anything at all” and “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic” were capped by today's gem about how “It kind of snuck up on us.” This is a president, and a White House, out of its depth and out of its mind with the plain reality that he's making it up as he goes along. The scientists and doctors on the stage with him seem as focused on avoiding his wrath as they are on defeating the virus.

 

When tested by the fire of crisis, Trump showed us what he's always been: a weak, spoiled, intellectually vacant conman who has stumbled through a life of betrayal and failure papered over by bullshit and public relations. The media image from The Apprentice that hypnotized so many Trump voters was always the product of Mark Burnett's writers' room, not reality. The bold leader was a teleprompter confection, a D-grade celebrity playing a C-grade CEO in a reality show.

 

Sorry, MAGAs, but Trump must face blame for the viral Chernobyl that is rolling over our population now; the one thing you never get back when fighting an epidemic is time. He spent weeks spinning that COVID-10 was no big deal, and that there was no crisis about to scythe through our nation.

 

He had the usual vigorous ass-kissing from the human centipede of Trump media bootlicks, toadies, and ball-washers from the Fox C-suite down to lunatic bloggers and social-media flotsam. They've been very busy the last few days trying to retcon Trump's colossal incompetence and indifference from January until this week.

 

He soft-pedaled the crisis even as it grew in scope and risk. His minions and minders repeatedly said that this crisis was contained. He promised a vaccine that is, at best, a year away. He promised testing, without the intention or ability to deliver. He compared it to the common flu, which left disease specialists and epidemiologists heads exploding worldwide. He failed as a leader, from the very start.

 

In my political practice, one thing I handled outside campaigns was crisis management for politicians, corporations, and governments. While it's not always glamorous, crisis management specialists do a vital job of—to use a term of political art—unfucking human errors.

 

Good leadership helps. Good leaders react to a crisis swiftly and honestly. Bad leaders blameshift, lie, cover-up, and try to rewrite history. Good crisis leadership has a set of consistent characteristics; it is honest, transparent, and prompt. The path Trump chose, naturally, was the opposite.

 

Terrible leaders pretend there is no crisis, lie to their stakeholders, the press, and the public. They are frequently shocked by how bad it really looks from the outside. They minimize impacts, and issue statements that are either overly lawyered or blustery swagger. They hold daily press briefings with more heat than light, more hat than cattle.

 

Donald Trump's mistake with the COVID-19 pandemic was simple; the virus doesn't follow him on Twitter. The virus doesn't care about his rages. The virus doesn't care about the Trumphadis of Fox News, Breitbart, and elsewhere. It does what it does, and exploits time and complacency in its human hosts. Trump gave it a six-week pass.

 

The men and women from the CDC, HHS, and corporate America being dragged before the cameras to serve as a backdrop for the daily press briefings show it in their haunted eyes.

 

They know the CEO of this particular operation is President von Munchausen, and that their jobs have been made infinitely more difficult by his ineptitude—“Hey, let's put Jared in charge” said no one, ever—lies, delays, and the agitprop culture war strategy of this White House.

 

Why is every part of the Trump media apparatus trying to drag the Democrats into a culture war battle by calling the Coronavirus or COVID-19 the “Chinese Flu” or the “Wu-Flu” or the “Kung-Flu”? It's because they understand that it's the last refuge of the scoundrel culture they've created.

 

They want the MAGA base to have a political enemy to attack, and there's nothing that pisses off Trump's followers more than being called racists, even as they earn that merit badge over and over. Secretary of Hate Stephen Miller and Oberst-Docuhenführer Steve Bannon are rubbing their hands and cackling like movie villains. They're delighted to expand their propaganda war beyond the usual fear centers; instead of Mexican rapists, immigrant caravans, and shithole countries, they're rebooting the old Yellow Peril tropes for their remixed racist memes.

 

The catalog of excuses for Donald Trump's mishandling of the early, vital weeks of the Coronavirus story will go down in the annals of political mendacity, in part because the evidence is so abundant, so much video exists, and the change in tone from complacency to panic is so evident.

 

The Trump media agitprop arm’s desperate attempt to pretend their robust “it's just the flu” and “this is just duh librul media trying to hurt Trump” defenses never happened is astounding. The internet remembers, and they can't undo the last six weeks of excuse-making on Trump's behalf.

 

There are good leaders, bad leaders, and lucky leaders. Sometimes good leaders have bad luck. Sometimes bad leaders have good luck. This time, we've got a bad leader whose luck finally ran out, and whose reservoir of trust outside his base is essentially zero.

 

And we're not even at the end of the beginning of this pandemic. God help us.

www.thedailybeast.com/you-cheered-as-he-fucked-up-no-take...

 

The more desperate Donald Trump gets, the more dangerous he becomes. This was the message on a poster I did last month. And, as we get get closer to the election, the President's actions pose a threat to our country.

 

As he’s seen his popularity plummet, he’s created numerous distractions to bury his malfeasance. His aim is to delegitimize the election, a hallmark of our democracy. It seems unfathomable a president would do such a thing. But Donald Trump is no ordinary president. After four years of his reign, it’s clear he has no respect for our Constitution nor the welfare of the American people. He says our election will be rigged. Because the pandemic has failed to abate, he’s called for its delay. Despite our vulnerability voting in person, he warns us of the dangers of mail-in voting, even though he’s voted this way for years. And in an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, he suggested he may not accept the results of the election. He’s become so desperate, he no longer falls on pretense. In March 2020 he said on Fox News "If you ever agreed to [mail-in voting], you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again." And in August 2020 he admitted he would block a funding bill to the post office to stop voting by mail.

 

To thwart the practice, the President has appointed Trump donor and heavy investor in post office competitors Louis DeJoy as Postmaster General to destroy the post office’s ability to carry out its mandate. Fortune magazine reviewed an internal post office memo that stated DeJoy will intentionally slow mail delivery as a cost-cutting measure. "Overtime will be eliminated… If the plants run late they will keep the mail for the next day. “If we cannot deliver all the mail due to call offs or shortage of people and you have no other help, the mail will not go out." In addition, mail sorting machines, which can handle over 36,000 pieces of mail per hour run by only two employees, are being removed. It’s estimated that it would take 30 employees to sort the same volume of mail by hand. As a former letter carrier, I can attest to the time it accurately takes to do that.

 

The traditional difference between the Republican and Democrat parties has been the role and size of government. Democrats believe it’s part of our government’s responsibility to make sure our infrastructure is sound and Americans can lead decent lives with living wages. No one should fall through the cracks. In the past, the Republican Party gave that responsibility to the corporate sector and were fiscal hawks on the deficit. The smaller the government, the better. It was the GOP’s belief that corporate profits would lead to more jobs and better wages. But studies have shown this trickle-down economy theory doesn’t work. Worse, capitalism has ignored workers’ needs. Instead, it rewards its stockholders for companies’ successes. And today’s GOP couldn’t care less about the size of the deficit.

 

Instead, the Republican Party has turned its attention to the perils of their own existence. As demographics change, and the party’s older White base has diminished, they are relying more and more on limiting the voting rights of the new majorities of Blacks, Latinos, and other groups. It has become their obsession to prevent certain people from voting. And they have found their leader in Donald Trump.

 

This election is the People's Wall against Donald Trump’s tyranny. It’s the only thing standing between our democracy and his authoritarianism. Worse yet, he has had help from collaborators in this farce: Attorney General William Barr, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and just about every Republican senator and representative in Congress (to say nothing of the Russians). During Trump's tenure and the GOP's majority in the Senate, there has been no unified federal COVID-19 strategy. The rich have received tax cuts and Trump’s proposed payroll tax cut will not help the unemployed, those who have lost their jobs because of the pandemic. Senator McConnell adjourned the Senate until after Labor Day without passing an important stimulus bill, and the President has admitted he wants to eliminate mail-in voting to usurp the will of the people.

 

The state of America’s union? Clearly, we’re on our own.

  

Feel free to pass this poster on. It's free to download here (click on the down arrow just to the lower right of the image).

 

See the rest of the posters from the Chamomile Tea Party! Digital high res downloads are free here (click the down arrow on the lower right side of the image). Other options are available. And join our Facebook group.

 

Follow the history of our country's political intransigence from 2010-2018 through a six-part exhibit of these posters on Google Arts & Culture.

In his National Conservatism Conference keynote address, Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley recently stated, “Many men in this country are in crisis, and their ranks are swelling.” Hawley blames the left. As politicians often do, he speaks in broad strokes and oversimplifications. “The left’s attack on America leads directly to an attack on manhood.” Political misdirection is nothing new for Hawley or the Republicans.

 

On January 6, 2021, Hawley raised his fist to support Capitol insurrectionists. With presidential aspirations, the masculinity he supports threatened the Vice President and Congress with a noose, baseball bats, and firearms. They also assaulted police and left many dead. A year later, Congressional staff, from legislative aides to blue-collar workers, are still unnerved by the attack. And many are leaving jobs they once loved.

 

Men’s problems are diverse and replay over generations. Understanding is complex. Solutions run the gamut from Robert Bly’s attempts to reconnect old myths with boys’ development to blaming feminism. Just as women’s rights are under attack, the courts have been slow to recognize the value of fathers’ parental rights. Both men’s and women’s roles are under intense scrutiny, from the #MeToo movement to bitter backlashes against gender equality. Hawley’s words and actions do nothing to bring about change. Instead, he uses male disenfranchisement to enrage conservatives but offers no concrete solutions. He has no interest in bettering men’s lives. He simply wants to politicize them for his personal aspirations.

 

My father grew up in a violent family. My grandfather physically and sexually abused my grandmother. In the 1930s, she divorced him, and the court awarded her child support, but my grandfather refused to pay. It’s hard enough today for single mothers to raise a family. Back then, it was impossible. To survive, she had to remarry him. My father was not immune to this aggression. My grandparents sent him to military school to “straighten him out.” Only after her children were adults did my grandmother divorce her husband for the last time.

 

Dad didn’t follow in his father’s footsteps. But he never talked about his childhood, and it scarred him. He could lash out indiscriminately, often without rhyme or reason. I didn’t know where the line was, so I was always on edge. Once, after our obligatory father/son attendance at my elementary school’s sex education night, as we drove home and with no prologue, my father said to me, “If you ever touch your sister, I will kill you.” My father had just handed me my early inheritance. At eleven, I was too young to rationalize or question it. And we never talked about it again. It would take decades before I knew what to do with it. While my sister rebelled in her teens, my rebellion didn’t come until my 20s. I did what I was told because I feared my father’s wrath. It’s easy to see how I might have grown up and mirrored his behavior, but that’s not what happened.

As I grew older, I probed my father’s modus vivendi, discovering his secrets and his shame. I wanted to connect with him, but if I got too close, he’d retreat. I remember telling him, “Someday, you’re going to die, and we will never have talked.” We never did. But I learned how to deal with him and disarm his anger. And finally, I learned how to tell him how I would live my life. By that point, it didn’t matter if he understood. I no longer needed his approval. It only mattered that I was resolute and expressed myself without malice. I would not pass down this pattern to my family.

 

So, as a man with my own history, I have a stake in Senator Hawley’s definition of masculinity. I’m also trying to understand the conflicting ways we talk about gender. With men’s roles in constant flux, it is no simple task to make sense of them. Physically stronger and full of testosterone, nature conditioned us to fight predators, the elements, and other men. For many, that remains our prime duty. Will Smith felt the need to protect and defend his wife at the 2022 Academy Awards, slapping Chris Rock on stage after he made a lame joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. His duty? His testosterone? His stress? Or, as Denzel Washington warned, “At your highest moment, be careful. That’s when the devil comes for you”? Ms. Smith, more wisely, didn’t feel compelled to comment nor defend herself.

 

A recent study published by the British Journal of Psychology shows that men with high testosterone levels are more likely to engage in unethical behavior when competing with other men. Study authors Marcelo Vinhal Nepomuceno and Eric Stenstrom believe that “high testosterone men become angry and behave unethically to gain status and increase the likelihood of attracting women.” But we are also a sensitive lot for all our bravado, wasting our energy by hiding it from our families and friends.

 

Now in my 70s, I’ve seen significant improvements in gender equality over my lifetime. But it hasn’t been enough or universally accepted. Legalized abortion seems as close to extinction now as it’s ever been. Still, no one is holding men accountable for unwanted pregnancies. A close look at women’s lives requires the same for men. The spectrum of male behavior is nuanced—burrowed deep within our society’s zeitgeist. Politicians don’t like nuance. It muddies their message. Hawley uses a sledgehammer to solidify entrenched traditions, and men are caught in this tug-of-war.

 

China recently banned effeminate men from television. “Broadcasters must ‘resolutely put an end to sissy men and other abnormal esthetics,’ the [Chinese] TV regulator said, using an insulting slang term for effeminate men—niang pao, or literally, girlie guns.” Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro mocked his aides who wore masks by calling their protective gear “coisa de viado,” roughly translated “for fairies.” He thinks men’s masculinity can protect them from COVID.

  

Not only is this systematic tar pit an injustice, but it’s also a waste of our human capital. In 2014, the Congressional Budget Office reported that 16% of American men were incarcerated or jobless, an increase from 11% in 1980. The rate for minorities was much more significant than for Whites. So when we discuss masculinity, we can’t ignore race, education, culture, and poverty as essential factors. According to Psychology Today, “Mass shootings have tripled since 2011, with the majority carried out by young men, while young male suicide rates have increased fifty percent since 1994.”

 

While many attempt to create a language that clarifies and facilitates fruitful discussions, that same language can also serve as coded shorthand, allowing us to jump to conclusions. “Toxic masculinity” is the latest phrase for men’s anger and estrangement. Men can indeed be toxic, both to women and to each other. But not all men act that way. To promote those discussions, ask us questions about what we mean, especially on social media, where anonymity hides the context of our lives. “Why did you say that?” offers us a chance to explain (or reveal the misogyny we might defend).

 

Howard J. Ross, the author of Everyday Bias, says, “Learning to slow down decision-making, especially when it affects other people, can help reduce the impact of bias.” Our biases make us prone to reaction instead of reflection. In his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, social psychologist Daniel Kahneman looked at how we make these decisions. According to Kahneman, we use two different systems to come to our conclusions. One is fast, automatic, and impulsive: full of impressions, intuition, and emotions. This is precisely what happens on social media. The second is slow and more considered and serves as our self-control. Kahneman writes, “Every human being has had the experience of not telling someone to go to hell.” We’ve become a reactive nation. Slowing down would make for more valuable discourse.

 

After a Facebook friend mentioned they were anxious, I suggested finding ways to calm down might be wise. Women immediately chastised me for telling a woman to calm down. To be honest, I didn’t even know my Facebook friend was a woman. Her online name was a gender-neutral “nom de plume.” Someone was upset, and that concerned me. I crossed a line without even knowing it.

 

Sometimes, I act like a “typical guy” despite my best efforts. I laugh—I’m still a work in progress, even at my age. Men can be prone to thoughtless mansplaining with women and other men (it’s part of our competitive, know-it-all nature). But that’s not what I was doing here. I backed off, not even attempting to explain. Cancel culture is indiscriminate and swift. We often talk over each other without listening. Anger in the absence of context is harmful. When groups gang up on individuals, it can be debilitating. Both men and women need to slow our reactions down to better gauge our responses.

 

After watching a recent Saturday Night Live sketch called “Man Park,” I lamented my lack of close male friends. This isolation has been especially hard for me during the pandemic. In the sketch, women come home to their boyfriends only to be inundated with non-stop chatter after their partners’ days alone. The women decide to take their BFs to the Man Park, where they can find social interaction and comradery. It takes a concerted effort for men to develop friendships, and they’re often more competitive than supportive. Robert Bly would probably approve of man parks, and I see franchise opportunities.

 

In reaction to this SNL sketch, Dr. Avrum Weiss wrote in “The High Cost of Loneliness,” boys start out feeling as connected in their friendships as girls do. But as they grow, they neglect personal relationships to pursue external success. This has been true for me. And many of my present relationships come about from being part of a couple. Weiss says, “Eighty percent of successful suicides are men, and one of the leading contributing factors is loneliness.” It’s as important a risk factor to longevity as exercise, smoking, and obesity.

 

Look at how we treat our veterans. We praise them for their strength and heroism on the battlefield, yet we do little for their PTSD when they return home. And, as women take on traditionally male roles, they encounter the same thing. Society often judges both women and men harshly when they express cross-gender behavior. Whatever our genders, our evolutions are intrinsically linked. Whether or not we like it, we’re in this together.

 

Like COVID vaccinations and mask mandates, Josh Hawley has politicized manhood, pointing to the left as a threat to men. It’s an oversimplification that does none of us any justice. The culmination of his argument is clear: “[The left wants] to define the traditional masculine virtues—things like courage, and independence, and assertiveness—as a danger to society.” This is nothing more than toxic propaganda. These are valuable assets in both men and women; the left has no interest in replacing them. If you’re concerned about men’s lives, invest in our empathy, not in political opportunism.

 

But there is room to reimagine what it means to be a man. And men need to take the lead. We need to create viable alternatives to the “good ole boy” network (often based on financial success). Nurturing the values that allow us to be more sensitive to others and attentive to our needs would help free ourselves from this unrealistic paradigm. Government and companies can help by creating policies that encourage us to spend more time with our families, like paid paternity leave. This would support new patterns for a successful life. Josh Hawley would find this ridiculous. Evolution will be slow given the multitudes who live by his contorted view.

 

Despite inroads into gender equality, men still value their fortitude above all—not only physical strength but the wherewithal to surmount any obstacle. This exacts an enormous price in our daily lives, and few fathers offer, let alone know any alternatives. Fewer talk to their sons about their passions and emotions, and peer pressure silences us.

Senator Hawley, our country’s founders, handed down a document that is a blueprint for how we live our lives as Americans. Your words offer no such plan. Instead, they perpetuate outdated stereotypes about men that cannot be sustained in the 21st century. They hurt rather than help us live our best lives. I’ve never forgotten what my father passed down to me. That legacy will go no further. And neither should yours.

 

Josh Hawley blames the left for men’s problems. Men like Josh Hawley are the problem.

  

Feel free to pass this poster on. It's free to download here (click on the down arrow just to the lower right of the image).

 

See the rest of the posters from the Chamomile Tea Party! Digital high res downloads are free here (click the down arrow on the lower right side of the image). Other options are available. And join our Facebook group.

 

Follow the history of our country's political intransigence from 2010-2020 through a eight-part exhibit of these posters on Google Arts & Culture.

A missing filter... Picture or maybe in the air of the time that brews a little anguish, it grinds ideas by dint of filtering the words... the cunning life with a twist. Angel or mill?

  

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in conspiracy theories and misinformation about the scale of the pandemic and the origin, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of the disease.[1][2][3] False information, including intentional disinformation, has been spread through social media,[2][4] text messages,[5] and mass media,[6] including the tabloid media,[7] conservative media,[8][9] state media of countries such as China,[10][11] Russia,[12][13] Iran,[14] and Turkmenistan.[2][15] It has also been spread by state-backed covert operations to generate panic and sow distrust in other countries.[16][17]

 

Misinformation has been propagated by celebrities, politicians[18][19] (including heads of state in countries such as the United States,[20][21] Iran,[22] and Brazil[23]), and other prominent public figures.[24] Commercial scams have claimed to offer at-home tests, supposed preventives, and "miracle" cures.[25][26] Politicians and leaders of some countries have promoted purported cures, while some religious groups said that the faith of their followers and God will protect them from the virus.[27][28][29] Others have claimed the virus is a lab-developed bio-weapon that was accidentally leaked,[30][31] or deliberately designed to target a country,[32] or one with a patented vaccine, a population control scheme, the result of a spy operation,[3][4] or linked to 5G networks.[33]

 

The World Health Organization has declared an "infodemic" of incorrect information about the virus, which poses risks to global health.[2]

 

Types and origin and effect

On January 30, the BBC reported about the increasing spread of conspiracy theories and false health advice in relation to COVID-19. Notable examples at the time included false health advice shared on social media and private chats, as well as conspiracy theories such as the origin in bat soup and the outbreak being planned with the participation of the Pirbright Institute.[1][34] On January 31, The Guardian listed seven instances of misinformation, adding the conspiracy theories about bioweapons and the link to 5G technology, and including varied false health advice.[35]

 

In an attempt to speed up research sharing, many researches have turned to preprint servers such as arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv or SSRN. Papers can be uploaded to these servers without peer review or any other editorial process that ensures research quality. Some of these papers have contributed to the spread of conspiracy theories. The most notable case was a preprint paper uploaded to bioRxiv which claimed that the virus contained HIV "insertions". Following the controversy, the paper was withdrawn.[36][37][38]

 

According to a study published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, most misinformation related to COVID-19 involves "various forms of reconfiguration, where existing and often true information is spun, twisted, recontextualised, or reworked". While less misinformation "was completely fabricated". The study found no deep fakes in the studied sample. The study also found that "top-down misinformation from politicians, celebrities, and other prominent public figures", while accounting for a minority of the samples, captured a majority of the social media engagement. According to their classification, the largest category of misinformation (39%) includes "misleading or false claims about the actions or policies of public authorities, including government and international bodies like the WHO or the UN".[39]

 

A natural experiment correlated coronavirus misinformation with increased infection and death; of two similar television news shows on the same network, one took coronavirus seriously about a month earlier than the other. People and groups exposed to the slow-response news show had higher infection and death rates.[40]

 

The misinformations have been used by politicians, interest groups, and state actors in many countries to scapegoat other countries for the mishandling of the domestic responses, as well as furthering political, financial agenda.[41][42][43]

 

Combative efforts

Further information: Impact of the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic on journalism

File:ITU - AI for Good Webinar Series - COVID-19 Misinformation and Disinformation during COVID-19.webm

International Telecommunication Union

On February 2, the World Health Organization (WHO) described a "massive infodemic", citing an over-abundance of reported information, accurate and false, about the virus that "makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it". The WHO stated that the high demand for timely and trustworthy information has incentivised the creation of a direct WHO 24/7 myth-busting hotline where its communication and social media teams have been monitoring and responding to misinformation through its website and social media pages.[44][45][46] The WHO specifically debunked several claims as false, including the claim that a person can tell if they have the virus or not simply by holding their breath; the claim that drinking large amounts of water will protect against the virus; and the claim that gargling salt water prevents infection.[47]

 

In early February, Facebook, Twitter and Google said they were working with WHO to address "misinformation".[48] In a blogpost, Facebook stated they would remove content flagged by global health organizations and local authorities that violate its content policy on misinformation leading to "physical harm".[49] Facebook is also giving free advertising to WHO.[50] Nonetheless, a week after Trump's speculation that sunlight could kill the virus, the New York Times found "780 Facebook groups, 290 Facebook pages, nine Instagram accounts and thousands of tweets pushing UV light therapies," content which those companies declined to remove from their platforms.[51]

 

At the end of February, Amazon removed more than a million products claimed to cure or protect against coronavirus, and removed tens of thousands of listings for health products whose prices were "significantly higher than recent prices offered on or off Amazon", although numerous items were "still being sold at unusually high prices" as of February 28.[52]

 

Millions of instances of COVID-19 misinformation have occurred across a number of online platforms.[53] Other fake news researchers noted certain rumors started in China; many of them later spread to Korea and the United States, prompting several universities in Korea to start the multilingual Facts Before Rumors campaign to separate common claims seen online.[54][55][56][57]

 

The media has praised Wikipedia's coverage of COVID-19 and its combating the inclusion of misinformation through efforts led by the Wiki Project Med Foundation and the English-language Wikipedia's WikiProject Medicine, among other groups.[58][59][60]

 

Many local newspapers have been severely affected by losses in advertising revenues from coronavirus; journalists have been laid off, and some have closed altogether.[61]

 

Many newspapers with paywalls lowered them for some or all their coronavirus coverage.[62][63] Many scientific publishers made scientific papers related to the outbreak open access.[64]

 

The Turkish Interior Ministry has been arresting social media users whose posts were "targeting officials and spreading panic and fear by suggesting the virus had spread widely in Turkey and that officials had taken insufficient measures".[65] Iran's military said 3600 people have been arrested for "spreading rumors" about coronavirus in the country.[66] In Cambodia, some individuals who expressed concerns about the spread of COVID-19 have been arrested on fake news charges.[67][68] Algerian lawmakers passed a law criminalising "fake news" deemed harmful to "public order and state security".[69] In the Philippines,[70] China,[71] India,[72][73] Egypt,[74] Bangladesh,[75] Morocco,[76] Pakistan,[77] Saudi Arabia,[78] Oman,[79] Iran,[80] Vietnam, Laos,[81] Indonesia,[73] Mongolia,[73] Sri Lanka,[73] Kenya, South Africa,[82] Somalia,[83] Thailand,[84] Kazakhstan,[85] Azerbaijan,[86] Malaysia[87] and Hong Kong, people have been arrested for allegedly spreading false information about the coronavirus pandemic.[88][73] The United Arab Emirates have introduced criminal penalties for the spread of misinformation and rumours related to the outbreak.[89]

 

Conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theories have appeared both in social media and in mainstream news outlets, and are heavily influenced by geopolitics.[90]

 

Accidental leakage

 

Virologist and immunologist Vincent R. Racaniello said that "accident theories – and the lab-made theories before them – reflect a lack of understanding of the genetic make-up of Sars-CoV-2."[91]

A number of allegations have emerged supposing a link between the virus and Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV); among these is that the virus was an accidental leakage from WIV.[92] In 2017, U.S. molecular biologist Richard H. Ebright expressed caution when the WIV was expanded to become mainland China's first biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory, noting previous escapes of the SARS virus at other Chinese laboratories.[93] While Ebright refuted several conspiracy theories regarding the WIV (e.g., bioweapons research, or that the virus was engineered), he told BBC China this did not represent the possibility that the virus can be "completely ruled out" from entering the population due to a laboratory accident.[92] Various researchers contacted by NPR concluded there was "virtually no chance" (in NPR's words) that the pandemic virus had accidentally escaped from a laboratory.[94] Disinformation researcher Nina Jankowicz from Wilson Center indicates the lab leakage claim entered mainstream media in United States during April, propagated by pro-Trump news outlet.[43]

 

On February 14, 2020, Chinese scientists explored the possibility of accidental leakage and published speculations on scientific social networking website ResearchGate. The paper was neither peer-reviewed nor presented any evidence for its claims.[95] On March 5, the author of paper told Wall Street Journal in an interview why he decided to withdrew the paper by the end of February, stating: "the speculation about the possible origins in the post was based on published papers and media, and was not supported by direct proofs."[96][97] Several newspapers have referenced the paper.[95] Scientific American reported that Shi Zhengli, the lead researcher at WIV, started investigation on mishandling of experimental materials in the lab records, especially during disposal. She also tried to cross-check the novel coronavirus genome with the genetic information of other bat coronaviruses her team had collected. The result showed none of the sequences matched those of the viruses her team had sampled from bat caves.[98]

 

In February, it was alleged that the first person infected may have been a researcher at the institute named Huang Yanling.[99] Rumours circulated on Chinese social media that the researcher had become infected and died, prompting a denial from WIV, saying she was a graduate student enrolled in the Institute until 2015 and is not the patient zero.[100][99] In April, the conspiracy theory started to circulate around on Youtube and got picked up by conservative media, National Review.[101][6]

 

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that one of the WIV's lead researchers, Shi Zhengli, was the particular focus of personal attacks in Chinese social media alleging that her work on bat-based viruses was the source of the virus; this led Shi to post: "I swear with my life, [the virus] has nothing to do with the lab". When asked by the SCMP to comment on the attacks, Shi responded: "My time must be spent on more important matters".[102] Caixin reported Shi made further public statements against "perceived tinfoil-hat theories about the new virus's source", quoting her as saying: "The novel 2019 coronavirus is nature punishing the human race for keeping uncivilized living habits. I, Shi Zhengli, swear on my life that it has nothing to do with our laboratory".[103] Immunologist Vincent Racaniello stated that virus leaking theory "reflect a lack of understanding of the genetic make-up of Sars-CoV-2 and its relationship to the bat virus". He says the bat virus researched in the institution "would not have been able to infect humans—the human Sars-CoV-2 has additional changes that allows it to infect humans."[91]

 

On April 14, the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, in response to questions about the virus being manufactured in a lab, said "... it's inconclusive, although the weight of evidence seems to indicate natural. But we don't know for certain."[104] On that same day, Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin detailed a leaked cable of a 2018 trip made to the WIV by scientists from the U.S. Embassy. The article was referenced and cited by conservative media to push the lab leakage theory.[43] Rogin's article went on to say that "What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington. The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and proposed more attention and help. The first cable, which I obtained, also warns that the lab's work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic."[105] Rogin's article pointed out there was no evidence that the coronavirus was engineered, "But that is not the same as saying it didn't come from the lab, which spent years testing bat coronaviruses in animals."[105] The article went on to quote Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, "I don't think it's a conspiracy theory. I think it's a legitimate question that needs to be investigated and answered. To understand exactly how this originated is critical knowledge for preventing this from happening in the future."[105] Washington Post's article and subsequent broadcasts drew criticism from virologist Angela Rasmussen of Columbia University, which she states "It's irresponsible for political reporters like Rogin [to] uncritically regurgitate a secret 'cable' without asking a single virologist or ecologist or making any attempt to understand the scientific context."[43] Rasmussen later compared biosafety procedure concerns to "having the health inspector come to your restaurant. It could just be, ‘Oh, you need to keep your chemical showers better stocked.’ It doesn’t suggest, however, that there are tremendous problems.”[106]

 

Days later, multiple media outlets confirmed that U.S. intelligence officials were investigating the possibility that the virus started in the WIV.[107][108][109][110] On April 23, Vox presented disputed arguments on lab leakage claims from several scientists.[111] Scientists suggested that virus samples cultured in the lab have significant amount of difference compare to SARS-CoV-2. The virus institution sampled RaTG13 in Yunnan, the closest known relative of the novel coronavirus with 96% shared genome. Edward Holmes, SARS-CoV-2 researcher at the University of Sydney, explained 4% of difference "is equivalent to an average of 50 years (and at least 20 years) of evolutionary change."[111][112] Virologist Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, which studies emerging infectious diseases, noted the estimation that 1–7 million people in Southeast Asia who live or work in proximity to bats are infected each year with bat coronaviruses. In the interview with Vox, he comments, "There are probably half a dozen people that do work in those labs. So let's compare 1 million to 7 million people a year to half a dozen people; it's just not logical."[94][111]

 

On April 30, The New York Times reported the Trump administration demanded intelligence agencies to find evidence linking WIV with the origin of SARS-Cov-2. Secretary of State and former Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A) director Mike Pompeo was reportedly leading the push on finding information regarding the virus origin. Analysts were concerned that pressure from senior officials could distort assessments from the intelligence community. Anthony Ruggiero, the head of the National Security Council which responsible for tracking weapons of mass destruction, expressed frustration during a video conference that C.I.A. was unable to form conclusive answer on the origin of the virus. According to current and former government officials, as of April 30, C.I.A has yet to gather any information beyond circumstantial evidence to bolster the lab theory.[113][114] US intelligence officers suggested that Chinese officials tried to conceal the severity of the outbreak in early days, but no evidence had shown China attempted to cover up a lab accident.[115] One day later, Trump claimed he has evidence of the lab theory, but offers no further details on it.[116][117] Jamie Metzl, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, claimed the SARS-CoV-2 virus "likely" came from a Wuhan virology testing laboratory, based on "circumstantial evidence". He was quoted as saying, "I have no definitive way of proving this thesis."[118]

 

On April 30, 2020, the U.S. intelligence and scientific communities issued a public statement dismissing the idea that the virus was not natural, while the investigation of the lab accident theory was ongoing.[119][120] The White House suggested an alternative explanation, along with a seemingly contradictory message, that the virus was man-made. In an interview with ABC News, Secretary of State Pompeo said he has no reason to disbelieve the intelligence community that the virus was natural. However, this contradicted the comment he made earlier in the same interview, in which he said "the best experts so far seem to think it was man-made. I have no reason to disbelieve that at this point."[121][122][123] On May 4, Australian tabloid The Daily Telegraph claimed a reportedly leaked dossier from Five Eyes, which alleged the probable outbreak was from the Wuhan lab.[124] Fox News and national security commentators in the US quickly followed up The Telegraph story,[125][126] rising the tension within international intelligence community.[127] Australian government, which is part of the Five Eyes nations, determined the leaked dossier was not a Five Eyes document, but a compilation of open-source materials that contained no information generated by intelligence gathering.[128] German intelligence community denied the claim of the leaked dossier, instead supported the probability of a natural cause.[129][130] Australian government sees the promotion of the lab theory from the United States counterproductive to Australia’s push for a more broad international-supported independent inquiry into the virus origins.[127] Senior officials in Australian government speculated the dossier was leaked by US embassy in Canberra to promote a narrative in Australia media that diverged from the mainstream belief of Australia.[127][128][125]

 

Beijing rejected the White House's claim, calling the claim "part of an election year strategy by President Donald Trump’s Republican Party".[131] Hua Chunying, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, urged Mike Pompeo to present evidence for his claim. "Mr. Pompeo cannot present any evidence because he does not have any," Hua told a journalist during a regular briefing, "This matter should be handled by scientists and professionals instead of politicians out of their domestic political needs."[131][132] The Chinese ambassador, in an opinion published in the Washington Post, called on the White House to end the "blame game" over the coronavirus.[133][134] As of May 5, assessments and internal sources from the Five Eyes nations indicated that the coronavirus outbreak was the result of a laboratory accident was "highly unlikely", since the human infection was "highly likely" a result of natural human and animal interaction. However, to reach such a conclusion with total certainty would still require greater cooperation and transparency from the Chinese side.[135]

 

Anti-Israeli and antisemitic

Further information: Antisemitic canard

Iran's Press TV asserted that "Zionist elements developed a deadlier strain of coronavirus against Iran".[14] Similarly, various Arab media outlets accused Israel and the United States of creating and spreading COVID-19, avian flu, and SARS.[136] Users on social media offered a variety of theories, including the supposition that Jews had manufactured COVID-19 to precipitate a global stock market collapse and thereby profit via insider trading,[137] while a guest on Turkish television posited a more ambitious scenario in which Jews and Zionists had created COVID-19, avian flu, and Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever to "design the world, seize countries, [and] neuter the world's population".[138]

 

Israeli attempts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine prompted mixed reactions. Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi denied initial reports that he had ruled that a Zionist-made vaccine would be halal,[139] and one Press TV journalist tweeted that "I'd rather take my chances with the virus than consume an Israeli vaccine".[140] A columnist for the Turkish Yeni Akit asserted that such a vaccine could be a ruse to carry out mass sterilization.[141]

 

An alert by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding the possible threat of far-right extremists intentionally spreading the coronavirus mentioned blame being assigned to Jews and Jewish leaders for causing the pandemic and several statewide shutdowns.[142]

 

Anti-Muslim

Further information: 2020 Tablighi Jamaat coronavirus hotspot in Delhi

In India, Muslims have been blamed for spreading infection following the emergence of cases linked to a Tablighi Jamaat religious gathering.[143] There are reports of vilification of Muslims on social media and attacks on individuals in India.[144] Claims have been made Muslims are selling food contaminated with coronavirus and that a mosque in Patna was sheltering people from Italy and Iran.[145] These claims were shown to be false.[146] In the UK, there are reports of far-right groups blaming Muslims for the coronavirus outbreak and falsely claiming that mosques remained open after the national ban on large gatherings.[147]

 

Bioengineered virus

It has been repeatedly claimed that the virus was deliberately created by humans.

 

Nature Medicine published an article arguing against the conspiracy theory that the virus was created artificially. The high-affinity binding of its peplomers to human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) was shown to be "most likely the result of natural selection on a human or human-like ACE2 that permits another optimal binding solution to arise".[148] In case of genetic manipulation, one of the several reverse-genetic systems for betacoronaviruses would probably have been used, while the genetic data irrefutably showed that the virus is not derived from a previously used virus template.[148] The overall molecular structure of the virus was found to be distinct from the known coronaviruses and most closely resembles that of viruses of bats and pangolins that were little studied and never known to harm humans.[149]

 

In February 2020, the Financial Times quoted virus expert and global co-lead coronavirus investigator Trevor Bedford: "There is no evidence whatsoever of genetic engineering that we can find", and "The evidence we have is that the mutations [in the virus] are completely consistent with natural evolution".[150] Bedford further explained, "The most likely scenario, based on genetic analysis, was that the virus was transmitted by a bat to another mammal between 20–70 years ago. This intermediary animal—not yet identified—passed it on to its first human host in the city of Wuhan in late November or early December 2019".[150]

 

On February 19, 2020, The Lancet published a letter of a group of scientists condemning "conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin".[151]

 

Chinese biological weapon

India

Amidst a rise in Sinophobia, there have been conspiracy theories reported on India's social networks that the virus is "a bioweapon that went rogue" and also fake videos alleging that Chinese authorities are killing citizens to prevent its spread.[152]

 

Ukraine

According to the Kyiv Post, two common conspiracy theories online in Ukraine are that American author Dean Koontz predicted the pandemic in his 1981 novel The Eyes of Darkness, and that the coronavirus is a bioweapon leaked from a secret lab in Wuhan.[153]

 

United Kingdom

 

Tobias Ellwood said, "It would be irresponsible to suggest the source of this outbreak was an error in a Chinese military biological weapons programme ... But without greater Chinese transparency we cannot entirely completely sure."[154]

In February, Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood, chair of the Defence Select Committee of the UK House of Commons, publicly questioned the role of the Chinese Army's Wuhan Institute for Biological Products and called for the "greater transparency over the origins of the coronavirus".[154][non-primary source needed] The Daily Mail reported in early April 2020 that a member of COBRA (an ad-hoc government committee tasked with advising on crises[citation needed]) has stated while government intelligence does not dispute that the virus has a zoonotic origin, it also does not discount the idea of a leak from a Wuhan laboratory, saying "Perhaps it is no coincidence that there is that laboratory in Wuhan"; the Asia Times reported the story as if it were factual,[155] perhaps unaware of the reputation of the Daily Mail.

 

United States

Further information: Cyberwarfare in the United States and Propaganda in the United States

In January 2020, BBC News published an article about coronavirus misinformation, citing two January 24 articles from The Washington Times that said the virus was part of a Chinese biological weapons program, based at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).[1] The Washington Post later published an article debunking the conspiracy theory, citing U.S. experts who explained why the WIV was unsuitable for bioweapon research, that most countries had abandoned bioweapons as fruitless, and that there was no evidence the virus was genetically engineered.[156]

 

On January 29, financial news website and blog ZeroHedge suggested without evidence that a scientist at the WIV created the COVID-19 strain responsible for the coronavirus outbreak. Zerohedge listed the full contact details of the scientist supposedly responsible, a practice known as doxing, by including the scientist's name, photo, and phone number, suggesting to readers that they "pay [the Chinese scientist] a visit" if they wanted to know "what really caused the coronavirus pandemic".[157] Twitter later permanently suspended the blog's account for violating its platform-manipulation policy.[158]

  

Logo of the fictional Umbrella Corporation, which some internet rumours linked to the pandemic. The corporation was invented for the Resident Evil game series.

In January 2020, Buzzfeed News reported on an internet meme of a link between the logo of the WIV and "Umbrella Corporation", the agency that created the virus responsible for a zombie apocalypse in the Resident Evil franchise. Posts online noted that "Racoon [sic]" (the main city in Resident Evil) was an anagram of "Corona".[159] Snopes noted that the logo was not from the WIV, but a company named Shanghai Ruilan Bao Hu San Biotech Ltd (located some 500 miles (800 km) away in Shanghai), and that the correct name of the city in Resident Evil was "Raccoon City".[159]

 

In February 2020, U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) suggested the virus may have originated in a Chinese bioweapon laboratory.[160] Francis Boyle, a law professor, also expressed support for the bioweapon theory suggesting it was the result of unintended leaks.[161] Cotton elaborated on Twitter that his opinion was only one of "at least four hypotheses". Multiple medical experts have indicated there is no evidence for these claims.[162] Conservative political commentator Rush Limbaugh said on The Rush Limbaugh Show—the most popular radio show in the U.S.—that the virus was probably "a ChiCom laboratory experiment" and the Chinese government was using the virus and the media hysteria surrounding it to bring down Donald Trump.[163][164]

 

On February 6, the White House asked scientists and medical researchers to rapidly investigate the origins of the virus both to address the current spread and "to inform future outbreak preparation and better understand animal/human and environmental transmission aspects of coronaviruses".[165] American magazine Foreign Policy said Xi Jinping's "political agenda may turn out to be a root cause of the epidemic" and that his Belt and Road Initiative has "made it possible for a local disease to become a global menace".[90]

 

The Inverse reported that "Christopher Bouzy, the founder of Bot Sentinel, conducted a Twitter analysis for Inverse and found [online] bots and trollbots are making an array of false claims. These bots are claiming China intentionally created the virus, that it's a biological weapon, that Democrats are overstating the threat to hurt Donald Trump and more. While we can't confirm the origin of these bots, they are decidedly pro-Trump."[166]

 

Conservative commentator Josh Bernstein claimed that the Democratic Party and the "medical deep state" were collaborating with the Chinese government to create and release the coronavirus to bring down Donald Trump. Bernstein went on to suggest those responsible should be locked in a room with infected coronavirus patients as punishment.[167][168]

 

Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, promoted a conspiracy theory on Fox News that North Korea and China conspired together to create the coronavirus.[169] He also said people were overreacting to the coronavirus outbreak and that Democrats were trying to use the situation to harm President Trump.[170]

 

Hospital ship attack

The hospital ship USNS Mercy (T-AH-19) deployed to the Port of Los Angeles to provide backup medical services for the region. On March 31, 2020, a Pacific Harbor Line freight train was deliberately derailed by its onboard engineer in an attempt to crash into the ship, but the attack was unsuccessful and no one was injured.[171][172] According to U.S. federal prosecutors, the train's engineer "[...] was suspicious of the Mercy, believing it had an alternate purpose related to COVID-19 or a government takeover".[173]

 

Population control scheme

See also: List of conspiracy theories § RFID chips

According to the BBC, Jordan Sather, a conspiracy theory YouTuber supporting the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory and the anti-vax movement, has falsely claimed the outbreak was a population control scheme created by Pirbright Institute in England and by former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. This belief is held mostly by right-wing libertarians, NWO conspiracy theorists, and Christian Fundamentalists.[1][174]

 

Spy operation

Some people have alleged that the coronavirus was stolen from a Canadian virus research lab by Chinese scientists. Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada said that conspiracy theory had "no factual basis".[175] The stories seem to have been derived[176] from a July 2019 news article[177] stating that some Chinese researchers had their security access to a Canadian Level 4 virology facility revoked in a federal police investigation; Canadian officials described this as an administrative matter and "there is absolutely no risk to the Canadian public."[177]

 

This article was published by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC);[176] responding to the conspiracy theories, the CBC later stated that "CBC reporting never claimed the two scientists were spies, or that they brought any version of the coronavirus to the lab in Wuhan". While pathogen samples were transferred from the lab in Winnipeg, Canada to Beijing, China, on March 31, 2019, neither of the samples was a coronavirus, the Public Health Agency of Canada says the shipment conformed to all federal policies, and there has not been any statement that the researchers under investigation were responsible for sending the shipment. The current location of the researchers under investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is not being released.[175][178][179]

 

In the midst of the coronavirus epidemic, a senior research associate and expert in biological warfare with the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, referring to a NATO press conference, identified suspicions of espionage as the reason behind the expulsions from the lab, but made no suggestion that coronavirus was taken from the Canadian lab or that it is the result of bioweapons defense research in China.[180]

 

U.S. biological weapon

Arab world

According to Washington DC-based nonprofit Middle East Media Research Institute, numerous writers in the Arabic press have promoted the conspiracy theory that COVID-19, as well as SARS and the swine flu virus, were deliberately created and spread to sell vaccines against these diseases, and it is "part of an economic and psychological war waged by the U.S. against China with the aim of weakening it and presenting it as a backward country and a source of diseases".[181] Iraqi political analyst Sabah Al-Akili on Al-Etejah TV, Saudi daily Al-Watan writer Sa'ud Al-Shehry, Syrian daily Al-Thawra columnist Hussein Saqer, and Egyptian journalist Ahmad Rif'at on Egyptian news website Vetogate, were some examples given by MEMRI as propagators of the U.S. biowarfare conspiracy theory in the Arabic world.[181]

 

China

Further information: Cyberwarfare by China, Propaganda in China, and Chinese information operations and information warfare

 

The Xinhua News Agency is among the news outlets that have published false information about COVID-19's origins.

According to London-based The Economist, plenty of conspiracy theories exist on China's internet about COVID-19 being the CIA's creation to keep China down.[182] NBC News however has noted that there have also been debunking efforts of U.S.-related conspiracy theories posted online, with a WeChat search of "Coronavirus is from the U.S." reported to mostly yield articles explaining why such claims are unreasonable.[183] According to an investigation by ProPublica, such conspiracy theories and disinformation have been propagated under the direction of China News Service, the country's second largest government-owned media outlet controlled by the United Front Work Department.[184] Global Times and Xinhua News Agency have similarly been implicated in propagating disinformation related to COVID-19's origins.[185][186]

 

Multiple conspiracy articles in Chinese from the SARS era resurfaced during the outbreak with altered details, claiming SARS is biological warfare. Some said BGI Group from China sold genetic information of the Chinese people to the U.S., which then specifically targeted the genome of Chinese individuals.[187]

 

On January 26, Chinese military enthusiast website Xilu published an article, claimed how the U.S. artificially combined the virus to "precisely target Chinese people".[188][189] The article was removed in early February. The article was further distorted on social media in Taiwan, which claimed "Top Chinese military website admitted novel coronavirus was Chinese-made bio-weapons".[190] Taiwan Fact-check center debunked the original article and its divergence, suggesting the original Xilu article distorted the conclusion from a legitimate research on Chinese scientific magazine Science China Life Sciences, which never mentioned the virus was engineered.[190] The fact-check center explained Xilu is a military enthusiastic tabloid established by a private company, thus it doesn't represent the voice of Chinese military.[190]

 

Some articles on popular sites in China have also cast suspicion on U.S. military athletes participating in the Wuhan 2019 Military World Games, which lasted until the end of October 2019, and have suggested they deployed the virus. They claim the inattentive attitude and disproportionately below-average results of American athletes in the games indicate they might have been there for other purposes and they might actually be bio-warfare operatives. Such posts stated that their place of residence during their stay in Wuhan was also close to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where the first known cluster of cases occurred.[191]

 

In March 2020, this conspiracy theory was endorsed by Zhao Lijian, a spokesperson from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China.[192][193][194][195] On March 13, the U.S. government summoned Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai to Washington over the coronavirus conspiracy theory.[196] Over the next month, conspiracy theorists narrowed their focus to one U.S. Army Reservist, a woman who participated in the games in Wuhan as a cyclist, claiming she is "patient zero". According to a CNN report, these theories have been spread by George Webb, who has nearly 100,000 followers on YouTube, and have been amplified by a report by CPC-owned newspaper Global Times.[197][198]

 

Iran

Further information: Propaganda in Iran

 

Reza Malekzadeh, deputy health minister, rejected bioterrorism theories.

According to Radio Farda, Iranian cleric Seyyed Mohammad Saeedi accused U.S. President Donald Trump of targeting Qom with coronavirus "to damage its culture and honor". Saeedi claimed that Trump is fulfilling his promise to hit Iranian cultural sites, if Iranians took revenge for the airstrike that killed of Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani.[199]

 

Iranian TV personality Ali Akbar Raefipour claimed the coronavirus was part of a "hybrid warfare" programme waged by the United States on Iran and China.[200] Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali, head of Iranian Civil Defense Organization, claimed the coronavirus is likely a biological attack on China and Iran with economic goals.[201][202]

 

Hossein Salami, the head of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), claimed the coronavirus outbreak in Iran may be due to a U.S. "biological attack".[203] Several Iranian politicians, including Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Rasoul Falahati, Alireza Panahian, Abolfazl Hasanbeigi and Gholamali Jafarzadeh Imanabadi, also made similar remarks.[204] Iranian Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made similar suggestions.[205]

 

Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a letter to the United Nations on March 9, claiming that "it is clear to the world that the mutated coronavirus was produced in lab" and that COVID-19 is "a new weapon for establishing and/or maintaining political and economic upper hand in the global arena".[206]

 

The late[207] Ayatollah Hashem Bathaie Golpayegani claimed that "America is the source of coronavirus, because America went head to head with China and realised it cannot keep up with it economically or militarily."[208]

 

Reza Malekzadeh, Iran's deputy health minister and former Minister of Health, rejected claims that the virus was a biological weapon, pointing out that the U.S. would be suffering heavily from it. He said Iran was hard-hit because its close ties to China and reluctance to cut air ties introduced the virus, and because early cases had been mistaken for influenza.[205]

 

Philippines

 

In the Philippine Senate, Tito Sotto has promoted his belief that COVID-19 is a bioweapon.

A Filipino Senator, Tito Sotto, played a bioweapon conspiracy video in a February 2020 Senate hearing, suggesting the coronavirus is biowarfare waged against China.[209][210]

 

Russia

Further information: Cyberwarfare by Russia and Propaganda in the Russian Federation

On February 22, U.S. officials alleged that Russia is behind an ongoing disinformation campaign, using thousands of social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to deliberately promote unfounded conspiracy theories, claiming the virus is a biological weapon manufactured by the CIA and the U.S. is waging economic war on China using the virus.[211][12][212] The acting assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, Philip Reeker, said "Russia's intent is to sow discord and undermine U.S. institutions and alliances from within" and "by spreading disinformation about coronavirus, Russian malign actors are once again choosing to threaten public safety by distracting from the global health response."[211] Russia denies the allegation, saying "this is a deliberately false story".[213]

 

According to U.S.-based The National Interest magazine, although official Russian channels had been muted on pushing the U.S. biowarfare conspiracy theory, other Russian media elements do not share the Kremlin's restraint.[214] Zvezda, a news outlet funded by the Russian Defense Ministry, published an article titled "Coronavirus: American biological warfare against Russia and China", claiming that the virus is intended to damage the Chinese economy, weakening its hand in the next round of trade negotiations.[214] Ultra-nationalist politician and leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, claimed on a Moscow radio station that the virus was an experiment by the Pentagon and pharmaceutical companies. Politician Igor Nikulin made rounds on Russian television and news media, arguing that Wuhan was chosen for the attack because the presence of a BSL-4 virus lab provided a cover story for the Pentagon and CIA about a Chinese bio-experiment leak.[214] An EU-document claims 80 attempts by Russian media to spread disinformation related to the epidemic.[215]

 

According to the East StratCom Task Force, the Sputnik news agency was active publishing stories speculating that the virus could've been invented in Latvia, that it was used by Communist Party of China to curb protests in Hong Kong, that it was introduced intentionally to reduce the number of elder people in Italy, that it was targeted against the Yellow Vests movement, and making many other speculations. Sputnik branches in countries including Armenia, Belarus, Spain, and in the Middle East came up with versions of these stories.[216]

 

Venezuela

Constituent Assembly member Elvis Méndez declared that the coronavirus was a "bacteriological sickness created in '89, in '90 and historically" and that it was a sickness "inoculated by the gringos". Méndez theorized that the virus was a weapon against Latin America and China and that its purpose was "to demoralize the person, to weaken to install their system".[217]

 

COVID-19 recovery

It has been wrongly claimed that anyone infected with COVID-19 will have the virus in their bodies for life. While there is no curative treatment, infected individuals can recover from the disease, eliminating the virus from their bodies; getting supportive medical care early can help.[279]

 

COVID-19 xenophobic blaming by ethnicity and religion

Main article: List of incidents of xenophobia and racism related to the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic

File:IOM - Fighting Stigma and Discrimination against Migrants during COVID-19.webm

UN video warns that misinformation against groups may lower testing rates and increase transmission.

COVID-19-related xenophobic attacks have been made against people the attacker blamed for COVID-19 on the basis of their ethnicity. People who are considered to look Chinese have been subjected to COVID-19-related verbal and physical attacks in many other countries, often by people accusing them of transmitting the virus.[281][282][283] Within China, there has been discrimination (such as evictions and non-service in shops) against people from anywhere closer to Wuhan (where the pandemic started) and against anyone perceived as being non-Chinese (especially those considered African), as the Chinese government has blamed continuing cases on re-introductions of the virus from abroad (90% of reintroduced cases were by Chinese passport-holders). Neighbouring countries have also discriminated against people seen as Westerners.[284][285][286] People have also simply blamed other local groups along the lines of pre-existing social tensions and divisions, sometimes citing reporting of COVID-19 cases within that group. For instance, Muslims have been widely blamed, shunned, and discriminated against in India (including some violent attacks), amid unfounded claims that Muslims are deliberately spreading COVID-19, and a Muslim event at which the disease did spread has received far more public attention than many similar events run by other groups and the government.[287] White supremacist groups have blamed COVID-19 on non-whites and advocated deliberately infecting minorities they dislike, such as Jews.[288]

 

False causes

5G

 

5G towers have been burned by people wrongly blaming them for COVID-19.

 

Openreach engineers appealed on anti-5G Facebook groups, saying they aren't involved in mobile networks, and workplace abuse is making it difficult for them to maintain phonelines and broadband.

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In February 2020 BBC News reported that conspiracy theorists on social media groups alleged a link between coronavirus and 5G mobile networks, claiming that Wuhan and Diamond Princess outbreaks were directly caused by electromagnetic fields and by the introduction of 5G and wireless technologies. Some conspiracy theorists also alleged that the coronavirus outbreak was a cover-up for a 5G-related illness.[33] In March 2020, Thomas Cowan, a holistic medical practitioner who trained as a physician and operates on probation with Medical Board of California, alleged that coronavirus is caused by 5G, based on the claims that African countries were not affected significantly by the pandemic and Africa was not a 5G region.[289][290] Cowan also falsely alleged that the viruses were wastes from cells that are poisoned by electromagnetic fields and historical viral pandemics coincided with the major developments in radio technology.[290] The video of his claims went viral and was recirculated by celebrities including Woody Harrelson, John Cusack, and singer Keri Hilson.[291] The claims may also have been recirculated by an alleged "coordinated disinformation campaign", similar to campaigns used by the Internet Research Agency in Saint Petersburg, Russia.[292] The claims were criticized on social media and debunked by Reuters,[293] USA Today,[294] Full Fact[295] and American Public Health Association executive director Georges C. Benjamin.[289][296]

 

Professor Steve Powis, national medical director of NHS England, described theories linking 5G mobile phone networks to COVID-19 as the "worst kind of fake news".[297] Viruses cannot be transmitted by radio waves. COVID-19 has spread and continues to spread in many countries that do not have 5G networks.[279]

 

After telecommunications masts in several parts of the United Kingdom were the subject of arson attacks, British Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove said the theory that COVID-19 virus may be spread by 5G wireless communication is "just nonsense, dangerous nonsense as well".[298] Vodafone announced that two Vodafone masts and two it shares with O2 had been targeted.[299][300]

 

By Monday April 6, 2020 at least 20 mobile phone masts in the UK had been vandalised since the previous Thursday.[301] Because of slow rollout of 5G in the UK, many of the damaged masts had only 3G and 4G equipment.[301] Mobile phone and home broadband operators estimated there were at least 30 incidents of confronting engineers maintaining equipment in the week up to April 6.[301] There have been eleven incidents of attempted arson at mobile phone masts in the Netherlands, including one case where "Fuck 5G" was written, as well as in Ireland and Cyprus.[302][303] Facebook has deleted multiple messages encouraging attacks on 5G equipment.[301]

 

Engineers working for Openreach posted pleas on anti-5G Facebook groups asking to be spared abuse as they are not involved with maintaining mobile networks.[304] Mobile UK said the incidents were affecting attempts to maintain networks that support home working and provide critical connections to vulnerable customers, emergency services and hospitals.[304] A widely circulated video shows people working for broadband company Community Fibre being abused by a woman who accuses them of installing 5G as part of a plan to kill the population.[304]

 

YouTube announced that it would reduce the amount of content claiming links between 5G and coronavirus.[299] Videos that are conspiratorial about 5G that do not mention coronavirus would not be removed, though they might be considered "borderline content", removed from search recommendations and losing advertising revenue.[299] The discredited claims had been circulated by British conspiracy theorist David Icke in videos (subsequently removed) on YouTube and Vimeo, and an interview by London Live TV network, prompting calls for action by Ofcom.[305][306]

 

On April 13, 2020, Gardaí were investigating fires at 5G masts in County Donegal, Ireland.[307] Gardaí and fire services had attended the fires the previous night in an attempt to put them out.[307] Although Gardaí were awaiting results of tests they were treating the fires as deliberate.[307]

 

There were 20 suspected arson attacks on phone masts in the UK over the Easter 2020 weekend.[297] These included an incident in Dagenham where three men were arrested on suspicion of arson, a fire in Huddersfield that affected a mast used by emergency services and a fire in a mast that provides mobile connectivity to the NHS Nightingale Hospital Birmingham.[297]

 

Ofcom issued guidance to ITV following comments by Eamonn Holmes after comments made by Holmes about 5G and coronavirus on This Morning.[308] Ofcom said the comments were "ambiguous" and "ill-judged" and they "risked undermining viewers' trust in advice from public authorities and scientific evidence".[308] Ofcom also local channel London Live in breach of standards for an interview it had with David Icke who it said had " expressed views which had the potential to cause significant harm to viewers in London during the pandemic".[308]

 

Some telecoms engineers have reported threats of violence, including threats to stab and murder them, by individuals who believe them to be working on 5G networks.[309] West Midlands Police said the crimes in question are being taken very seriously.[309]

 

On April 24, 2020 The Guardian revealed that an evangelical pastor from Luton had provided the male voice on a recording blaming 5G for deaths caused by coronavirus.[310] Jonathon James claimed to have formerly headed the largest business-unit at Vodafone, but insiders at the company said that he was hired for a sales position in 2014 when 5G was not a priority for the company and that 5G would not have been part of his job.[310] He left the company after less than a year.[310]

 

Mosquitoes

It has been claimed that mosquitoes transmit coronavirus. There is no evidence that this is true; coronavirus spreads through small droplets of saliva and mucus.[279]

 

Petrol pumps

A warning claiming to be from the Australia Department of Health said coronavirus spreads through petrol pumps and that everyone should wear gloves when filling up petrol in their cars.[311]

 

Shoe-wearing

There were claims that wearing shoes at one's home was the reason behind the spread of the coronavirus in Italy.[312]

 

Resistance/susceptibility based on ethnicity

There have been claims that specific ethnicities are more or less vulnerable to COVID-19. COVID-19 is a new zoonotic disease, so no population has yet had the time to develop population immunity.[medical citation needed]

 

Beginning on February 11, reports, quickly spread via Facebook, implied that a Cameroonian student in China had been completely cured of the virus due to his African genetics. While a student was successfully treated, other media sources have noted that no evidence implies Africans are more resistant to the virus and labeled such claims as false information.[313] Kenyan Secretary of Health Mutahi Kagwe explicitly refuted rumors that "those with black skin cannot get coronavirus", while announcing Kenya's first case on March 13.[314] This myth was cited as a contributing factor in the disproportionately high rates of infection and death observed among African Americans.[315][316]

 

There have been claims of "Indian immunity": that the people of India have more immunity to the COVID-19 virus due to living conditions in India. This idea was deemed "absolute drivel" by Anand Krishnan, professor at the Centre for Community Medicine of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). He said there was no population immunity to the COVID-19 virus yet, as it is new, and it is not even clear whether people who have recovered from COVID-19 will have lasting immunity, as this happens with some viruses but not with others.[317]

 

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed the virus was genetically targeted at Iranians by the U.S., and this is why it is seriously affecting Iran. He did not offer any evidence.[318][22]

 

Religious protection

A number of religious groups have claimed protection due to their faith, some refusing to stop large religious gatherings. In Israel, some Ultra-Orthodox Jews initially refused to close synagogues and religious seminaries and disregarded government restrictions because "The Torah protects and saves",[319] which resulted in an 8 times faster rate of infection among some groups.[320] The Tablighi Jamaat movement organised mass gatherings in Malaysia, India, and Pakistan whose participants believed that God will protect them resulted the biggest rise in COVID-19 cases in a number of countries.[321][29][322] In Iran, the head of Fatima Masumeh Shrine encouraged pilgrims to visit the shrine despite calls to close the shrine, saying that they "consider this holy shrine to be a place of healing."[323] In South Korea the River of Grace Community Church in Gyeonggi Province spread the virus after spraying salt water into their members' mouths in the belief that it would kill the virus,[324] while the Shincheonji Church of Jesus in Daegu where a church leader claimed that no Shincheonji worshipers had caught the virus in February while hundreds died in Wuhan later caused in the biggest spread of the virus in the country.[325][326]

 

In Somalia, myths have spread claiming Muslims are immune to the virus.[327]

 

Unproven protective and aggravating factors

Vegetarian immunity

[icon]

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (April 2020)

Claims that vegetarians are immune to coronavirus spread online in India, causing "#NoMeat_NoCoronaVirus" to trend on Twitter.[328][better source needed] Eating meat does not have an effect on COVID-19 spread, except for people near where animals are slaughtered, said Anand Krishnan.[329] Fisheries, Dairying and Animal Husbandry Minister Giriraj Singh said the rumour had significantly affected industry, with the price of a chicken falling to a third of pre-pandemic levels. He also described efforts to improve the hygiene of the meat supply chain.[330]

 

Efficacy of hand sanitiser, "antibacterial" soaps

 

Washing in soap and water for at least 20 seconds is the best way to clean hands. Second-best is a hand sanitizer that is at least 60% alcohol.[331]

Claims that hand sanitiser is merely "antibacterial not antiviral", and therefore ineffective against COVID-19, have spread widely on Twitter and other social networks. While the effectiveness of sanitiser depends on the specific ingredients, most hand sanitiser sold commercially inactivates SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.[332][333] Hand sanitizer is recommended against COVID-19,[279] though unlike soap, it is not effective against all types of germs.[334] Washing in soap and water for at least 20 seconds is recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as the best way to clean hands in most situations. However, if soap and water are not available, a hand sanitizer that is at least 60% alcohol can be used instead, unless hands are visibly dirty or greasy.[331][335] The CDC and the Food and Drug Administration both recommend plain soap; there is no evidence that "antibacterial soaps" are any better, and limited evidence that they might be worse long-term.[336][337]

 

Alcohol (ethanol and poisonous methanol)

Contrary to some reports, drinking alcohol does not protect against COVID-19, and can increase health risks[279] (short term and long term). Drinking alcohol is ethanol; other alcohols, such as methanol, which causes methanol poisoning, are acutely poisonous, and may be present in badly-prepared alcoholic beverages.[338]

 

Iran has reported incidents of methanol poisoning, caused by the false belief that drinking alcohol would cure or protect against coronavirus;[339] alcohol is banned in Iran, and bootleg alcohol may contain methanol.[340] According to Iranian media in March 2020, nearly 300 people have died and more than a thousand have become ill due to methanol poisoning, while Associated Press gave figures of around 480 deaths with 2,850 others affected.[341] The number of deaths due to methanol poisoning in Iran reached over 700 by April.[342] Iranian social media had circulated a story from British tabloids that a British man and others had been cured of coronavirus with whiskey and honey,[339][343] which combined with the use of alcohol-based hand sanitizers as disinfectants, led to the false belief that drinking high-proof alcohol can kill the virus.[339][340][341]

 

Similar incidents have occurred in Turkey, with 30 Turkmenistan citizens dying from methanol poisoning related to coronavirus cure claims.[344][345]

 

In Kenya, the Governor of Nairobi Mike Sonko has come under scrutiny for including small bottles of the cognac Hennessy in care packages, falsely claiming that alcohol serves as "throat sanitizer" and that, from research, it is believed that "alcohol plays a major role in killing the coronavirus."[346][347]

 

Cocaine

Cocaine does not protect against COVID-19. Several viral tweets purporting that snorting cocaine would sterilize one's nostrils of the coronavirus spread around Europe and Africa. In response, the French Ministry of Health released a public service announcement debunking this claim, saying "No, cocaine does NOT protect against COVID-19. It is an addictive drug that causes serious side effects and is harmful to people's health." The World Health Organisation also debunked the claim.[348]

 

Ibuprofen

A tweet from French health minister Olivier Véran, a bulletin from the French health ministry, and a small speculative study in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine raised concerns about ibuprofen worsening COVID-19, which spread extensively on social media. The European Medicines Agency[349] and the World Health Organization recommended COVID-19 patients keep taking ibuprofen as directed, citing lack of convincing evidence of any danger.[350]

 

Helicopter spraying

In some Asian countries, it has been claimed that one should stay at home on particular days when helicopters spray disinfectant over homes for killing off COVID-19; no such spraying is taking place.[351][352]

 

Cruise ships safety from infection

Main article: COVID-19 pandemic on cruise ships

 

Claims by cruise-ship operators notwithstanding, there are many cases of coronaviruses in hot climates; some countries in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, and the Persian Gulf are severely affected.

In March 2020, the Miami New Times reported that managers at Norwegian Cruise Line had prepared a set of responses intended to convince wary customers to book cruises, including "blatantly false" claims that the coronavirus "can only survive in cold temperatures, so the Caribbean is a fantastic choice for your next cruise", that "[s]cientists and medical professionals have confirmed that the warm weather of the spring will be the end of the [c]oronavirus", and that the virus "cannot live in the amazingly warm and tropical temperatures that your cruise will be sailing to".[353]

 

Flu is seasonal (becoming less frequent in the summer) in some countries, but not in others. While it is possible that the COVID-19 coronavirus will also show some seasonality, it is not yet known.[354][355][356][medical citation needed] The COVID-19 coronavirus spread along international air travel routes, including to tropical locations.[357] Outbreaks on cruise ships, where an older population lives in close quarters, frequently touching surfaces which others have touched, were common.[358][359]

 

It seems that COVID-19 can be transmitted in all climates.[279] It has seriously affected many warm-climate countries. For instance, Dubai, with an year-round average daily high of 28.0 Celsius (82.3°F) and the airport said to have the world's most international traffic, has had thousands of cases.

 

Vaccine pre-existence

It was reported that multiple social media posts have promoted a conspiracy theory claiming the virus was known and that a vaccine was already available. PolitiFact and FactCheck.org noted that no vaccine currently exists for COVID-19. The patents cited by various social media posts reference existing patents for genetic sequences and vaccines for other strains of coronavirus such as the SARS coronavirus.[360][4] The WHO reported as of February 5, 2020, that amid news reports of "breakthrough" drugs being discovered to treat people infected with the virus, there were no known effective treatments;[361] this included antibiotics and herbal remedies not being useful.[362] Scientists are working to develop a vaccine, but as of March 18, 2020, no vaccine candidates have completed Phase II clinical trials.[citation needed]

 

Miscellaneous

Name of the disease

Social media posts and internet memes claimed that COVID-19 means "Chinese Originated Viral Infectious Disease 19", or similar, as supposedly the "19th virus to come out of China".[477] In fact, the WHO named the disease as follows: CO stands for corona, VI for virus, D for disease and 19 for when the outbreak was first identified (31 December 2019).[478]

 

Bat soup

Some media outlets, including Daily Mail and RT, as well as individuals, disseminated a video showing a Chinese woman eating a bat, falsely suggesting it was filmed in Wuhan and connecting it to the outbreak.[479][480] However, the widely circulated video contains unrelated footage of a Chinese travel vlogger, Wang Mengyun, eating bat soup in the island country of Palau in 2016.[479][480][481][482] Wang posted an apology on Weibo,[481][482] in which she said she had been abused and threatened,[481] and that she had only wanted to showcase Palauan cuisine.[481][482] The spread of misinformation about bat consumption has been characterized by xenophobic and racist sentiment toward Asians.[90][483][484] In contrast, scientists suggest the virus originated in bats and migrated into an intermediary host animal before infecting people.[90][485]

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_related_to_the_COVID...

After a Kurdish Iranian nuclear scientist was accused of spying for the Great Satan and executed, a group of Iranians held a rally in Brussels to protest the recent executions and to remember the victims of the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners.

 

The [expletive deleted] who is running for President of the United States tried to start the totally false rumor — « Many people are saying... » — that the killing of the scientist had something to do with Ms. Clinton’s emails. Shame on you, Drumpf!

Donald Trump has tapped into a dark part of the American psyche. This is his power base. Many Americans feel they are failing and falling behind. Globalization and technology have been changing our economic landscape for years and many now feel the effects. Recently, Pew conducted a survey which showed that White Americans who lack a college education are being hit the hardest. And it is this segment which supports Trump.

 

The problem, however, is that Trump can't really solve their problems: make America great again. His followers' devotion to him is without question. Anything else becomes heresy. In reality, the majority of economic indicators are in good shape. It seems that after the international follies of the Bush Administration, President Obama has gone to great lengths to make America great once again. The problems many are having are real. But the solution is in the details, not in Trump's grandiose pronouncements.

 

Donald Trump, is a false prophet. His power is born of ignorance. He knows it and unabashedly uses it for his own devices. If you use the Bible as the guide to your life, look at Matthew 7:15: "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." Trump is a hungry wolf and he is biting the life out of the very people who need help the most.

 

See all the posters from the Chamomile Tea Party! Digital high res downloads are free here. Other options are available. And join our Facebook group.

Also called the "Maytag Cathedral" on account of the design was stolen from a washing machine agitator...

 

My ex's uncle (Paul Ryan) was one of the leading architects on this project. His washing machine was a front-loader...

 

P.S. The church promotes their version of mind-laundering by running you through a reason-softener cycle and finally a 'spin' cycle before you leave... (But I find it appalling that in 2017 they still have different cycles for "whites" and "colors." They also have cycles for fallen-away Roman Catholics "heavy-duty" and gay Catholics "delicates".)

 

P.P.S. And I find it irksome that you have to deposit 80 quarters before they let you in.

 

P.P.P.S. According to FactCheck.org, the third and fourth paragraphs of this post -- the P.S. and P.P.S. -- are FAKE NEWS...

The Central Business District in Houston, Texas, USA.

 

Prior to the arrival of the Streetcar in Houston in the 1870, the area that is now the Central District of the city was the main residential area of the city.

 

While generally focused on the most prosperous areas of town, the Houston City Street Railway extended one line a full mile south of the centre of the city, making it the first streetcar network designed to spur residential development.

 

By the 1890s, new, larger local streetcar companies finally accumulated the capital necessary to begin constructing streetcar suburbs beyond the conventional boundaries of the city.

 

This led to the development and rapid growth of areas like the Houston Heights and Montrose Residential development subsequently moved out of the central business district; Quality Hill previously being Houston's first upscale neighbourhood was left virtually abandoned by the turn of the 20th century.

 

This spurred the redevelopment of the district into becoming the home to nine Fortune 500 corporations, 3,500 businesses, and approximately 150,000 workers. Major employers include Chevron, JPMorgan Chase, and United Airlines. It contains between 35% and 40% of the Class A office locations of the overall business districts in Houston

 

Information sources:

www.logically.ai/factchecks/library/f66dfe84

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_Houston#Economy

 

So my mother has been provoking some controversy in Turkey while we are trying to relax on our Ferragosto vacation in Lenola. One of her photos was posted on Twitter, and the caption stated that this was a "Turkish woman in the 1940's". The period was correct but the nationality wrong. I'm not sure what the controversy was really about, though fashion and clothes, obviously, play a strong role in our cultural identity.

For whatever reason, the fact-checking website, teyit.org, decided to discover the woman's true identity. The journalist reverse searched the photo until she found my family photos on Flickr, and I was asked to certify that my mom was not Turkish. I think the journalist enjoyed her discovery because she linked to many of my mother's photos on the website -- more than really necessary to debunk this little internet fable: teyit.org/fotografin-1940larda-bir-turk-kadini-gosterdigi...

The Republican Club will be screening 2000 Mules for their members this afternoon. Since overheard chatter here has on occasion opined on how good slaves had it before the Civil War, the occasional reference to how Donny is a figure second only to George Washington and what a nice young man that Tucker is I guess this is their target demographic. That would be old people who spend too much time in the sun and have only one source for news. Kool Aid will be served after the screening.

 

"2000 Mules is a 2022 American political film by political commentator Dinesh D'Souza that falsely claims unnamed nonprofit organizations paid Democrat-aligned "mules" to illegally collect and deposit ballots into drop boxes in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin during the 2020 presidential election. D'Souza has a history of creating and spreading conspiracy theories.

 

The Associated Press (AP) reported that the film relies on "faulty assumptions, anonymous accounts and improper analysis of cellphone location data" provided by conservative non-profit True the Vote. FactCheck.org found the film's "supposed evidence is speculative." National Public Radio (NPR) reported True the Vote "made multiple misleading or false claims about its [own] work". AP reported that the film's assertion that True the Vote identified 1,155 paid mules in Philadelphia alone was false. The film presented a single unverified anonymous witness who said she saw people picking up what she "assumed" were payments for ballot collection in Arizona; no evidence of payments was presented in any of the other four states. The film characterizes the alleged operation as "ballot trafficking" with "stash houses", but presents no evidence that ballots were illegally collected to be deposited in drop boxes."

  

“In 2012, D'Souza contributed $10,000 to the senate campaign of Wendy Long on behalf of himself and his wife, agreeing in writing to attribute that contribution as $5,000 from his wife and $5,000 from him. He directed two other people to give Long a total of $20,000 additional, which he agreed to reimburse, and later did. At the time, the Election Act limited campaign contributions to $5,000 from any individual to any one candidate. Two years later, D'Souza pleaded guilty in federal court to one felony charge of using a "straw donor" to make the illegal campaign contribution. He was sentenced to eight months in a halfway house near his home in San Diego, five years' probation, and a $30,000 fine. In 2018, D'Souza was issued a pardon by President Donald Trump.”

© 2016 Eric Haynes

[Editor note: Apologies for this politically incorrect post, but it is presented here on Flickr to highlight the tireless conflict between Leo Frank's detractors and defenders, even more than a century after the case began. First Trigger Warning: Insensitive language is used in the below published retort to Professor Randy Blazak, Criminologist at Portland State University. Permission granted to republish this critique by the retorting author. This post is for informational purposes only. Second Trigger Warning: The following open letter was originally published on YouTube in the comments section and has been updated, it has some very impolite language, viewer discretion is advised. Sensitive people should not read forward. Apologies to anyone offended by the republishing of this updated (version 2.0) open letter retort to RB about the Frank case, but it is presented here to highlight the contentious and controversial battle over the facts of the Frank-Phagan affair. -- Leo Frank Case Flickr Curator]

 

An Open Letter to Criminology Professor Randy Blazak of Portland State University (Washington State) about his Leo Frank lynching video published on Aug 21, 2009 at YouTube.com

 

The Source of Randy Blazak's video on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmg16BuvCEs

 

Dear Mr. Randy Blazak of Portland State University,

 

The Leo Frank case news report

 

www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/05/22/leo-...

 

you promote-posted from the Washington Post authored by Jacob Bogage suggests www.LeoFrank.info 'The Leo Frank Research Library', and -- through Jewish Daily Forward derivative links -- 'The American Mercury' www.theamericanmercury.org are posting "fakenews" research analysis about the murder of Mary Phagan and trial of Leo Frank, but when I went to both of those alleged "disingenuous" websites, I learned a tremendous amount of factual information about the true crime from the primary source legal records and original 1913 newspaper account facsimiles (The Leo Frank Research Library offers almost all the Atlanta newspaper reports about the Frank-Phagan affair from April 1913 onward in PDF).

 

Many of the independent articles posted on these two websites give you direct links to the 1913 Leo Frank trial brief of evidence (300+ pages), 1914 Leo Frank Georgia Supreme Court appeals records (1800+ pages) and the newspaper reports from the dailies (thousands of pages): Atlanta Georgian, Atlanta Journal and Atlanta Constitution (1913-1915 is where the highest concentration of reports appear).

 

Thus anyone can fact check claims about this notorious case and see whether or not these websites provide an accurate portrait of what was reported to have occurred, long ago. I was quite impressed by the scholarly Leo Frank case articles published on www.LeoFrank.org and www.LeoFrank.info and www.theamericanmercury.org since I have read every monograph on the criminal case available, and there is not a single book that even comes close to the breadth and accuracy of the information provided by the above said websites.

 

So my question to you is this: How do we reconcile the very well written, researched and scholarly articles published on The American Mercury, with people like you, Jacob Bogage, The Jewish Daily Forward, Abraham Foxman (ADL), Mark Potok (SPLC) and others who are suggesting these "disingenuous" websites promote false narratives?

 

I don't consider personal attacks or ad hominem arguments against the alleged authors of these websites as a legitimate reason as to why we shouldn't fact check and explore ideas or positions that we agree or disagree with. There are no opinions or consensuses above scrutiny, including mine and yours or clusters of pseudo-scholars and fakenews journalists.

 

Let me break it down for you Randy: no ideas, public statements, ideologies or arguments are above scrutiny, no matter the source. And absolutely all claims made about the Leo Frank case should inspire inquiry because of the contentious nature of the affair. No history is dogma above revisionism or factchecking for that matter.

 

I'm actually surprised you're a criminologist by training and a professor by trade, because most of the things you said in your Leo Frank Lynching video published on YouTube, do not stand up to minimum fact checking and I wrote the specific reasons why in a separate post in the comments area of your video. I'm now going to outline them here with more details, because my response on YouTube was shadow banned by either you, or the new ADL censors on YouTube. So get ready for the Barbara Streisand Effect.

 

Please try to be open minded about this case and actually learn the facts from the primary sources. Don't presume that just because some activist hack journalist or activist academics make agenda based claims that they are true. Be skeptical about everything you read from all sides of the case, prosecution or defense, and try doing some original research by looking into the sources of every claim that is made about the Frank-Phagan affair you hear, see or learn.

 

I fact checked everything you said in your video and you are patently incorrect on numerous fronts and I provide the evidence as to why I believe you are wrong. You got a lot of homework to do, because it's obvious you don't really understand what transpired in this criminal case at even a basic introductory level. Shame on you Professor Blazak for pushing obvious false history and fake news.

 

Things you should know, but don't #1:

 

Leo Frank was never officially absolved or exonerated regarding his August 25, 1913 conviction for the murder of Mary Phagan when he was given a posthumous pardon on March 11th, 1986. The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles officially stated that they were not going to address Leo Frank's guilt or innocence when they gave him back his right to vote (Felons can't legally vote during State political elections in Georgia) some 71 years after he was hanged on August 17, 1915 for the April 26, 1913, strangulation-murder of Mary Phagan. I learned this fact that Leo Frank was not officially absolved or exonerated of the Mary Phagan murder from pro-Frank biased sources like Wikipedia, Steve Oney and also the Ben Loeterman docudrama called People vs. Leo Frank (they state so at the very end if I'm not mistaken). You can see the biased docudrama on YouTube, here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9fRs2xd890

 

You should know this because you claim he was/is innocent in your video, but the evidence is overwhelming of his guilt and his conviction was never overturned to date and I doubt anyone exonerate him when they learn Leo Frank changed his alibi on the witness stand and placed himself at the scene of the murder.

 

Since you're a criminologist, you really should read the Leo Frank trial brief of evidence, and get your facts straight before spreading obvious falsehoods about his supposed "innocence".

 

Attempts for more than 100 years to have his conviction overturned have utterly failed between 1913 - 2017, maybe you should stop hiding behind racism and delve in a little deeper into why it would be an injustice to overturn his official status of guilty as charged. His coreligionists haven't given up and continue working behind the scenes even at this "late hour" a century later, still trying to subvert justice for Mary Phagan and get the Toilet-Strangler's conviction nullified.

 

Indisputable fact you should know #2:

 

Leo Frank's wife, Lucille Selig, refused to be buried next to her "Beloved Husband" (his inscription on his grave marker at Mount Carmel cemetery, Queens, NY). When she died April 23rd, 1957, her last will and testament (Registered in 1954 and present in the Georgia Archives) is evidence of this fact. I first learned the fact of this historical curiosity from Steve Oney that Lucille Selig wanted to be cremated and have her ashes spread in Atlanta (Oney, Georgia Magazine, March 2004). Oney learned about her post-passing aftermath in the early 1990s from Lucille Selig's nephew living on the West Coast of Florida. Oney talked about it in an article published in UGA's Georgia Magazine, March 2004, Features (the article is available online and you should consider reading it if you want the details). I contacted the Mount Carmel cemetery in Queens, NY, and verified that the grave left-adjacent to Leo Frank's grave is still empty. I think that empty grave sustains State Exhibit J, Magnolia "Mineola" McKnight's Affidavit, Signed and Notarized, June 3rd, 1913.

 

Indisputable fact you show know #3:

 

Leo Frank astoundingly changed his alibi on the witness stand during the final week of his trial, with an "unconscious" visit to the men's toilet in the metal room, and thus placed himself precisely at the prosecution's theory of where the scene of the crime had occurred and at the time when the prosecution proposed to the jury when the Phagan murder had likely happened. Leo Frank in soccer terminology shot an "own goal". Check out Leo Frank's "unconscious" visit to the men's toilet in his trial testimony (look in the leo frank trial brief of evidence, 1913) to explain why Monteen Stover found his office empty at the exact same time Frank formerly told police Mary Phagan was with him at his business office (See State Exhibit B and Atlanta Constitution, August 2nd 1913).

 

The Ugly Racist Anti-Black Anti-Gentile Framing:

 

The ugliest part of this famous 20th century criminal case is that the racist Leo Frank tried to frame two of his black employees, first Newt Lee the Nightwatchman and then Jim Conley (the accessory after the fact). And the ugliness of this racist framing, continues even today a century later and you're a permanent part of that ugly racist history now. Congratulations on always playing the race-card against White people, but actually being a politically racist and hypocrite yourself.

 

So the natural follow-up question is this: When is this ugly racist framing against Black people going to end? or is it going to drag on forever, since it's been going on already for 104 years strong and counting. Why do you pretend to be an anti-racist leftist in real life (yes I watched all your anti-White ramblings on YouTube), but have no problem framing innocent black people for a crime where there is no evidence for their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?

 

Ponder this during your free time: Why do you feel comfortable framing a black man for the crime, one who actually helped the police learn the juicy details of what happened after the Toilet-Strangler raped and murdered his child laborer?

 

I want to get specific now because I went to the "disingenuous" Leo Frank Research Library at www.LeoFrank.info to fact check everything you said in your Leo Frank lynching video and you made a number of factually incorrect statements that need to be flushed out like the turd that won't flush.

 

1. At 14 seconds of your Leo Frank lynching video, you said Leo Frank was from Texas, but this statement is a little bit of a misrepresentation. Leo Frank was born in Cuero Texas April 17, 1884 and was moved from there when he was 3 months old (approximately July 1884) to Brooklyn, NY, and lived there, until he attended college at Cornell University during school terms in Ithaca, NY (September 1902- June 1906). So to say Leo Frank was from Texas, is a just a misnomer, he spent the first major part of his life in New York City from July 1884 to September 1902 and 4 years more upstate NY (Ithaca) during school terms. Leo Frank, living in Texas for 3 months during his 31 year long life span, does not make him from Texas. Brooklyn, NY was where he always called home and that was where he was raised and educated until he went off to college to study mechanical engineering in the same State. So from 1884 to 1906 he primarily lived in New York State, that's roughly 22 years of his 31 year life span. From 1908 to 1915 he lived in primarily Atlanta Georgia, or 7 years approximately. Other than some domestic vacations in the U.S., he made two transatlantic trips spending the summer of 1905 in Europe, and 9 months in Germany from late 1907 to August of 1908 apprenticing in pencil manufacturing. Compare that with 3 unmemorable goo-goo ga-ga baby months in Texas. So clearly to say he was from Texas shows a clear lack of understanding about his life and what geographic areas influenced him most significantly. Randy, do you remember anything from the first 3 months of your life on the outside from birth to 12 weeks later?!

 

2. At 19 seconds you suggest he was falsely accused of raping and strangling a 13-year-old girl in his employ. Leo Frank was only indicted for murder and tried for murder, not rape, but there was material medical forensic evidence testified about at the trial, indicating she had been "outraged" (raped) and Conley testified that Frank confessed to him that he wanted to be with her (have sex) and she refused (Conley's trial testimony, August 4, 1913).

 

You are entitled to believe whatever you want about his innocence or guilt, but who is more qualified to judge the merits of the trial, a regressive criminologist who literally doesn't even know the most elementary facts of the case and never read the trial brief of evidence, or some of the best legal minds in America at the time who could deliberate in their quiet and calm quarters? My point is this, you clearly didn't bother to learn anything even rudimentary about the affair, but act like an authoritative scholar.

 

In reality if he was falsely accused, why did the presiding judge Leonard Strickland Roan reject Leo Frank's appeal for a new trial on more than 100 grounds (100 is not a typo)! Why did the Georgia Supreme Court rule that the evidence presented at the trial of Leo Frank proved his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt? Why did every State appeals court reject -- in their majority and unanimous decisions -- his petitions including -- after his state appeals exhausted -- the Supreme Court of the United States? Why did the Governor of Georgia at the time, John Slaton, not pardon him in 1915, but merely gave him an equal punishment for the crime of murder at the time which was life in prison? I guess you didn't read Governor Slaton's 29-page commutation order of June 21, 1915, he never gives any indication he thought Leo Frank's trial was a sham or Leo Frank was innocent and Conley was guilty, quite the contrary, Slaton said he was sustaining the judge, jury and appeals courts in his final decision (you might want to actually read page 29 of the order). Why did the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles refuse to exonerate and absolve Leo Frank of the murder when they pardoned him in 1986? Why did Nathan Deal and the Georgia state congress in 2015 refuse to say Leo Frank was innocent when Rabbi Steven Lebow organized the Jewish community and several leading activist judges to petition the governor and congress of Georgia? There is a good video about it on YouTube by Eli Goodstein, titled "Leo Frank Doc Final Cut", published March 16, 2016. Source: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEIv8ZQ0MAc to see how the racist hate crime hoax of anti-Semitism is perpetuated about the trial for more than a century.

 

You're a criminologist by training and professor at Portland State University, so you might want to actually take a break from your echo chamber to look at the evidence from alternative points of view, like The American Mercury www.theamericanmercury.org and Leo Frank Research Library www.leofrank.info that actually publish with learned commentary info about the official Leo Frank trial brief of evidence, Leo Frank Georgia Supreme Court records and original MSM newspaper reports from 1913 Atlanta.

 

Most of the modern books written today about this case, if they are pro-Frank, intentionally leave out 99% of the incriminating evidence presented against Leo Frank at his trial, forcing students of the case to go back to the official records from 1913-1915 to learn what really happened.

 

3. Circa 26 seconds you claim there was clear evidence the Black janitor (maintenance worker) Jim Conley was the real culprit, but this is absolutely not true. There is scant evidence of his guilt, in fact it was Jim Conley who partly helped the police solve the murder. Don't you think falsely accusing a black man of a crime he didn't commit is a bit racist? If there was evidence Jim Conley helped Leo Frank murder Mary Phagan he would have been tried. Read the article by the American Mercury debunking the Alonzo Mann Hoax, it puts things into perspective and context too about Jim Conley's roll as the accessory-after-the-fact.

 

4. You accuse the South of being Anti-Semitic, this is a racist Anti-Gentile blood libel, the South was never Anti-Semitic taken as a whole, in fact the south is the exact opposite, very philo-semitic and has always been, with only minor exceptions and exceptions are not the rule. The highest concentration of Christian and Gentile Zionists can be found in the South, and the census data from 20th century, pre-1940 shows many Jews and Gentiles married (Ancestry.com). So you're statement about the South being anti-Semitic at the time is racist, bigoted, prejudiced, anti-Southern, Anti-White, Anti-Christian, Anti-Gentile and just flat out blood libel. All of this excepting Tom Watson, who obvious wrote some anti-Semitic statements about Leo Frank's Northern media supporters in his Watson's Magazine, January, March, August, September and October of 1915 (you should read them or listen to the free audio books of them online at The American Mercury, you might learn a thing or two from a seasoned attorney vastly more intelligent than you and more knowledgeable about the Frank case than the average hack criminology professor). Those ad hominem statements by one man doesn't make the entire South anti-Semitic. You're totally stereotyping the people of the South from 100 years ago based on the statements of one populist politician and it's totally false and racist that you're doing so. The population of Jews in the South has steadily risen over the decades, proving the broad claims of Southern anti-Semitism are nothing but ugly blood libel against the Southern peoples. This however does not exonerate the South of generally treating Black people as far below second class citizens.

 

5. At 58 seconds, you say the Governor John Slaton was convinced of Leo Frank's innocence. If Governor John Slaton was convinced of Leo Frank's innocence why didn't he pardon him? I guess you never read any of John Slaton's papers, because he absolutely never said once in his life Leo Frank was innocent in any direct quotes documented. You either made that up or just regurgitated the claim from one of Leo Frank's activist defenders.

 

Where you aware that Governor John Slaton was the law partner of Luther Rosser who represented Leo Frank at trial? Are you aware that Governor Slaton was part-owner of the Law firm that represented Leo Frank at his trial? Do you not see that as an illegal conflict of interest and betrayal of the Georgia and U.S. Constitution for the Governor to pardon his own law client!?!?

 

6. Circa 135 seconds you said half of 3,000 Jews who lived in Georgia fled the state, this is categorically false, the census data from 1910 and 1920 is now in the public domain (Ancestry.com), and the Jewish population actually increased between this time in Georgia, not decreased by half, so you are stating fake news and false history, like you do throughout most of your entire video. Half the Jews of Georgia did not leave the state during the decade between 1910 to 1920, you are promoting an ugly racist anti-Gentile smear.

 

7. Circa 141 if I heard you correctly, you said the 1915 lynching led to the founding of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, this is fake news and fake history if you stated so. The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith was founded 2 years earlier in October of 1913, and some Jewish sources claim that it was the conviction and death sentence of Leo Frank the B'nai B'rith president of Atlanta, is what galvanized the founding of the ADL by B'nai B'rith in 1913, NOT 1915.

 

8. Leo Frank wasn't lynched right where you were standing in the video, he was actually lynched about 300 feet in front of where you are facing in the video -- just for your own edification. In other words, the lynching historical marker is not the exact location or even "near" where the lynching happened.

 

Should we presume your PhD dissertation is also filled with academic dishonesty? Does your PhD dissertation need to be publicly fact checked and the results published on the Internet? Because you seem to have a real problem with the truth when it comes to criminology and you're a university professor charged with the task of educating students to boot!

 

Most of the facts you present in your Leo Frank Lynching video at 1200 Roswell Road are objectively misrepresentations, fake news, false history and show that you never actually did any real original research into this case, but just repeat what you read from hack journalists and fakenews historians.

 

My challenge to you is this:

 

Listen to the free 2015 audio book at The American Mercury, 'The Murder of Little Mary Phagan' by Mary Phagan-Kean the great niece (1989), read by Vanessa Neubauer (the entire audio book is available FREE) and also listen to the 'Leo Frank Trial' (which is now in the process of being released, in weekly segments) at the same website and by the same orator.

 

The American Mercury and Leo Frank Research Library have produced the best researched and scholarly articles about the Leo Frank case anywhere on the Internet, and you should try reading alternative sources of information, instead of basing your entire world view on the words of politically correct ivory tower of ignorance pseudo-scholars or from information that you learned via fake news journalists and false news historians, which you parrot like a Muppet in your video. You clearly don't have even a basic understanding of the case and you are originally from Atlanta and a criminologist by training, WOW!

 

And please be my guest and censor or delete my response to your video on YouTube, suppress the truths I have presented here, and I promise you this will be revised, upgraded, enhanced and posted on major discussion forums as a gargantuan long winded open letter. So be a coward if you want and ignore me, and censor me or delete me, but you obviously only know made-up anti-Gentile version of this famous criminal case and you are very obviously a neo-Marxist anti-White self-loathing professor from the interviews I have watch of you online. You have the right to be whatever you want, but it's obvious your biases make it impossible for you to be a genuine criminologist who seeks the truth.

 

I don't claim to be the ultimate authority on this case, but I can easily fact check what people claim and I too have come to learn I don't know everything about this affair either, but when I discover something I stated was wrong, I at least try to correct myself. What I have stated above is not the last word on anything either. I'm open to discussion, improving my understanding and willing to revise any statements that can be improved or not accurate.

 

However that being said, you just GOT FACT CHECKED and POWNED for objectively being a bona fide pseudo-scholar.

 

Best Regards.

Vincent Tucci, Brooklyn, NY

 

PS: I don't claim that any research is the last word on this case, but it's definitely inspiration for discussion. Here's some reading material handy for you Randy:

 

Leo Frank: The Coroner’s Inquest Into The Mary Phagan’s Murder Mystery, May, 1913

theamericanmercury.org/2015/08/leo-frank-the-coroners-inq...

 

100 Years Ago Today: The Trial of Leo Frank Begins, July 28, 1913.

theamericanmercury.org/2013/07/100-years-ago-today-the-tr...

 

The Summer of 1913 Leo Frank Trial Week One

theamericanmercury.org/2013/08/the-leo-frank-trial-week-one/

 

The Summer of 1913 Leo Frank Trial Week Two

theamericanmercury.org/2013/08/the-leo-frank-trial-week-two/

 

The Summer of 1913 Leo Frank Trial Week Three

theamericanmercury.org/2013/08/the-leo-frank-trial-week-t...

 

One Hundred Years Ago Leo Frank Mounts the Witness Stand on August 18, 1913.

theamericanmercury.org/2013/08/100-years-ago-today-leo-fr...

 

The Summer of 1913 Leo Frank Trial Week Four

theamericanmercury.org/2013/09/the-leo-frank-trial-week-f...

 

Leo Frank Trial Closing Arguments, August, 1913: Luther Rosser, Reuben Arnold and Frank Hooper, 1913

theamericanmercury.org/2013/10/the-leo-frank-trial-closin...

 

Closing Arguments of Prosecutor Hugh Dorsey at the Leo Frank Trial, August 22, 23, 25, 1913

theamericanmercury.org/2013/12/the-leo-frank-trial-closin...

 

Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (ADL): One Hundred Years of Jewish Hate, October 1913 – 2013

theamericanmercury.org/2013/10/adl-100-years-of-hate/

 

An Empty Grave in NYC: The Amazing Story of Mrs. Leo Frank, Lucille Selig (1888 - 1957).

theamericanmercury.org/2015/09/the-amazing-story-of-mrs-l...

 

Leo Frank Pardon (1982 - 1986): The Astounding Alonzo Mann Hoax and ADL-led Posthumous Pardon of Leo Frank

theamericanmercury.org/2015/09/the-astounding-alonzo-mann...

 

Leo Frank Case Analysis, Centennial of Mary Phagan Murder: One Hundred Arguments Why Leo Frank is Guilty

theamericanmercury.org/2013/04/100-reasons-proving-leo-fr...

 

Professor Emeritus of Judaic Studies: Leonard Dinnerstein’s Pseudo-history About The Leo Frank Case

theamericanmercury.org/2012/10/the-leo-frank-case-a-pseud...

 

Review of Tabloid Style Journalist Steve Oney’s, 'And The Dead Shall Rise': Who Really Solved the Mary Phagan Murder Case?

theamericanmercury.org/2012/10/who-really-solved-the-mary...

 

New Audio Book: The Murder of Little Mary Phagan by Mary Phagan-Kean (1989), read by Vanessa Neubauer (2015)

theamericanmercury.org/2015/12/new-audio-book-the-murder-...

 

* * *

 

U.S. Senator From Georgia, Tom Watson, Five Part Series on The Leo Frank Case, 1915:

 

A Mercury Exclusive: Introduction to Tom Watson on the Leo Frank Case

theamericanmercury.org/2014/03/a-mercury-exclusive-tom-wa...

 

Tom Watson: The Leo Frank Case, January, 1915

theamericanmercury.org/2014/03/tom-watson-the-leo-frank-c...

 

Tom Watson: A Full Review of the Leo Frank Case, March, 1915

theamericanmercury.org/2014/03/tom-watson-a-full-review-o...

 

Tom Watson: The Celebrated Case of The State of Georgia vs. Leo Frank, August, 1915

theamericanmercury.org/2014/03/tom-watson-the-celebrated-...

 

Tom Watson: The Official Record in the Case of Leo Frank, a Jew Pervert, September, 1915

theamericanmercury.org/2014/03/the-official-record-in-the...

 

Tom Watson: The Rich Jews Indict a State, October, 1915

theamericanmercury.org/2014/03/tom-watson-the-rich-jews-i...

 

* * *

Model:B Light

Who Runs The World? Solid Proof That A Core Group Of Wealthy Elitists Is Pulling The Strings

From:theeconomiccollapseblog.com

by:By Michael, on January 29th, 2013

 

Does a shadowy group of obscenely wealthy elitists control the world? Do men and women with enormous amounts of money really run the world from behind the scenes? The answer might surprise you. Most of us tend to think of money as a convenient way to conduct transactions, but the truth is that it also represents power and control. And today we live in a neo-fuedalist system in which the super rich pull all the strings. When I am talking about the ultra-wealthy, I am not just talking about people that have a few million dollars. As you will see later in this article, the ultra-wealthy have enough money sitting in offshore banks to buy all of the goods and services produced in the United States during the course of an entire year and still be able to pay off the entire U.S. national debt. That is an amount of money so large that it is almost incomprehensible. Under this ne0-feudalist system, all the rest of us are debt slaves, including our own governments. Just look around - everyone is drowning in debt, and all of that debt is making the ultra-wealthy even wealthier. But the ultra-wealthy don't just sit on all of that wealth. They use some of it to dominate the affairs of the nations. The ultra-wealthy own virtually every major bank and every major corporation on the planet. They use a vast network of secret societies, think tanks and charitable organizations to advance their agendas and to keep their members in line. They control how we view the world through their ownership of the media and their dominance over our education system. They fund the campaigns of most of our politicians and they exert a tremendous amount of influence over international organizations such as the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. When you step back and take a look at the big picture, there is little doubt about who runs the world. It is just that most people don't want to admit the truth.

 

The ultra-wealthy don't run down and put their money in the local bank like you and I do. Instead, they tend to stash their assets in places where they won't be taxed such as the Cayman Islands. According to a report that was released last summer, the global elite have up to 32 TRILLION dollars stashed in offshore banks around the globe.

 

U.S. GDP for 2011 was about 15 trillion dollars, and the U.S. national debt is sitting at about 16 trillion dollars, so you could add them both together and you still wouldn't hit 32 trillion dollars.

 

And of course that does not even count the money that is stashed in other locations that the study did not account for, and it does not count all of the wealth that the global elite have in hard assets such as real estate, precious metals, art, yachts, etc.

 

The global elite have really hoarded an incredible amount of wealth in these troubled times. The following is from an article on the Huffington Post website...

 

Rich individuals and their families have as much as $32 trillion of hidden financial assets in offshore tax havens, representing up to $280 billion in lost income tax revenues, according to research published on Sunday.

 

The study estimating the extent of global private financial wealth held in offshore accounts - excluding non-financial assets such as real estate, gold, yachts and racehorses - puts the sum at between $21 and $32 trillion.

 

The research was carried out for pressure group Tax Justice Network, which campaigns against tax havens, by James Henry, former chief economist at consultants McKinsey & Co.

 

He used data from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, United Nations and central banks.

 

But as I mentioned previously, the global elite just don't have a lot of money. They also basically own just about every major bank and every major corporation on the entire planet.

 

According to an outstanding NewScientist article, a study of more than 40,000 transnational corporations conducted by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich discovered that a very small core group of huge banks and giant predator corporations dominate the entire global economic system...

 

An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

 

The researchers found that this core group consists of just 147 very tightly knit companies...

 

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a "super-entity" of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity - that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network," says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

 

The following are the top 25 banks and corporations at the heart of this "super-entity". You will recognize many of the names on the list...

 

1. Barclays plc

2. Capital Group Companies Inc

3. FMR Corporation

4. AXA

5. State Street Corporation

6. JP Morgan Chase & Co

7. Legal & General Group plc

8. Vanguard Group Inc

9. UBS AG

10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc

11. Wellington Management Co LLP

12. Deutsche Bank AG

13. Franklin Resources Inc

14. Credit Suisse Group

15. Walton Enterprises LLC

16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp

17. Natixis

18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc

19. T Rowe Price Group Inc

20. Legg Mason Inc

21. Morgan Stanley

22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc

23. Northern Trust Corporation

24. Société Générale

25. Bank of America Corporation

 

The ultra-wealthy elite often hide behind layers and layers of ownership, but the truth is that thanks to interlocking corporate relationships, the elite basically control almost every Fortune 500 corporation.

 

The amount of power and control that this gives them is hard to describe.

 

Unfortunately, this same group of people have been running things for a very long time. For example, New York City Mayor John F. Hylan said the following during a speech all the way back in 1922...

 

The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation. To depart from mere generalizations, let me say that at the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as the international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes.

 

They practically control both parties, write political platforms, make catspaws of party leaders, use the leading men of private organizations, and resort to every device to place in nomination for high public office only such candidates as will be amenable to the dictates of corrupt big business.

 

These international bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government. It operates under cover of a self-created screen [and] seizes our executive officers, legislative bodies, schools, courts, newspapers and every agency created for the public protection.

 

These international bankers created the central banks of the world (including the Federal Reserve), and they use those central banks to get the governments of the world ensnared in endless cycles of debt from which there is no escape. Government debt is a way to "legitimately" take money from all of us, transfer it to the government, and then transfer it into the pockets of the ultra-wealthy.

 

Today, Barack Obama and almost all members of Congress absolutely refuse to criticize the Fed, but in the past there have been some brave members of Congress that have been willing to take a stand. For example, the following quote is from a speech that Congressman Louis T. McFadden delivered to the U.S. House of Representatives on June 10, 1932...

 

Mr. Chairman, we have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. The Federal Reserve Board, a Government board, has cheated the Government of the United States and the people of the United States out of enough money to pay the national debt. The depredations and iniquities of the Federal Reserve Board has cost this country enough money to pay the national debt several times over. This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of the United States, has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our Government. It has done this through the defects of the law under which it operates, through the maladministration of that law by the Federal Reserve Board, and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it.

 

Sadly, most Americans still believe that the Federal Reserve is a "federal agency", but that is simply not correct. The following comes from factcheck.org...

 

The stockholders in the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks are the privately owned banks that fall under the Federal Reserve System. These include all national banks (chartered by the federal government) and those state-chartered banks that wish to join and meet certain requirements. About 38 percent of the nation’s more than 8,000 banks are members of the system, and thus own the Fed banks.

 

According to researchers that have looked into the ownership of the big Wall Street banks that dominate the Fed, the same names keep coming up over and over: the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, the Warburgs, the Lazards, the Schiffs and the royal families of Europe.

 

But ultra-wealthy international bankers have not just done this kind of thing in the United States. Their goal was to create a global financial system that they would dominate and control. Just check out what Georgetown University history professor Carroll Quigley once wrote...

 

[T]he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.

 

Sadly, most Americans have never even heard of the Bank for International Settlements, but it is at the very heart of the global financial system. The following is from Wikipedia...

 

As an organization of central banks, the BIS seeks to make monetary policy more predictable and transparent among its 58 member central banks. While monetary policy is determined by each sovereign nation, it is subject to central and private banking scrutiny and potentially to speculation that affects foreign exchange rates and especially the fate of export economies. Failures to keep monetary policy in line with reality and make monetary reforms in time, preferably as a simultaneous policy among all 58 member banks and also involving the International Monetary Fund, have historically led to losses in the billions as banks try to maintain a policy using open market methods that have proven to be based on unrealistic assumptions.

 

The ultra-wealthy have also played a major role in establishing other important international institutions such as the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. In fact, the land for the United Nations headquarters in New York City was purchased and donated by John D. Rockefeller.

 

The international bankers are "internationalists" and they are very proud of that fact.

 

The elite also dominate the education system in the United States. Over the years, the Rockefeller Foundation and other elitist organizations have poured massive amounts of money into Ivy League schools. Today, Ivy League schools are considered to be the standard against which all other colleges and universities in America are measured, and the last four U.S. presidents were educated at Ivy League schools.

 

The elite also exert a tremendous amount of influence through various secret societies (Skull and Bones, the Freemasons, etc.), through some very powerful think tanks and social clubs (the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, the Bohemian Grove, Chatham House, etc.), and through a vast network of charities and non-governmental organizations (the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the World Wildlife Fund, etc.).

 

But for a moment, I want to focus on the power the elite have over the media. In a previous article, I detailed how just six monolithic corporate giants control most of what we watch, hear and read every single day. These giant corporations own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, music labels and even many of our favorite websites.

 

Considering the fact that the average American watches 153 hours of television a month, the influence of these six giant corporations should not be underestimated. The following are just some of the media companies that these corporate giants own...

 

Time Warner

 

Home Box Office (HBO)

Time Inc.

Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.

Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

CW Network (partial ownership)

TMZ

New Line Cinema

Time Warner Cable

Cinemax

Cartoon Network

TBS

TNT

America Online

MapQuest

Moviefone

Castle Rock

Sports Illustrated

Fortune

Marie Claire

People Magazine

 

Walt Disney

 

ABC Television Network

Disney Publishing

ESPN Inc.

Disney Channel

SOAPnet

A&E

Lifetime

Buena Vista Home Entertainment

Buena Vista Theatrical Productions

Buena Vista Records

Disney Records

Hollywood Records

Miramax Films

Touchstone Pictures

Walt Disney Pictures

Pixar Animation Studios

Buena Vista Games

Hyperion Books

 

Viacom

 

Paramount Pictures

Paramount Home Entertainment

Black Entertainment Television (BET)

Comedy Central

Country Music Television (CMT)

Logo

MTV

MTV Canada

MTV2

Nick Magazine

Nick at Nite

Nick Jr.

Nickelodeon

Noggin

Spike TV

The Movie Channel

TV Land

VH1

 

News Corporation

 

Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Fox Television Stations

The New York Post

Fox Searchlight Pictures

Beliefnet

Fox Business Network

Fox Kids Europe

Fox News Channel

Fox Sports Net

Fox Television Network

FX

My Network TV

MySpace

News Limited News

Phoenix InfoNews Channel

Phoenix Movies Channel

Sky PerfecTV

Speed Channel

STAR TV India

STAR TV Taiwan

STAR World

Times Higher Education Supplement Magazine

Times Literary Supplement Magazine

Times of London

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

20th Century Fox International

20th Century Fox Studios

20th Century Fox Television

BSkyB

DIRECTV

The Wall Street Journal

Fox Broadcasting Company

Fox Interactive Media

FOXTEL

HarperCollins Publishers

The National Geographic Channel

National Rugby League

News Interactive

News Outdoor

Radio Veronica

ReganBooks

Sky Italia

Sky Radio Denmark

Sky Radio Germany

Sky Radio Netherlands

STAR

Zondervan

 

CBS Corporation

 

CBS News

CBS Sports

CBS Television Network

CNET

Showtime

TV.com

CBS Radio Inc. (130 stations)

CBS Consumer Products

CBS Outdoor

CW Network (50% ownership)

Infinity Broadcasting

Simon & Schuster (Pocket Books, Scribner)

Westwood One Radio Network

 

NBC Universal

 

Bravo

CNBC

NBC News

MSNBC

NBC Sports

NBC Television Network

Oxygen

SciFi Magazine

Syfy (Sci Fi Channel)

Telemundo

USA Network

Weather Channel

Focus Features

NBC Universal Television Distribution

NBC Universal Television Studio

Paxson Communications (partial ownership)

Trio

Universal Parks & Resorts

Universal Pictures

Universal Studio Home Video

 

And of course the elite own most of our politicians as well. The following is a quote from journalist Lewis Lapham...

 

"The shaping of the will of Congress and the choosing of the American president has become a privilege reserved to the country’s equestrian classes, a.k.a. the 20% of the population that holds 93% of the wealth, the happy few who run the corporations and the banks, own and operate the news and entertainment media, compose the laws and govern the universities, control the philanthropic foundations, the policy institutes, the casinos, and the sports arenas."

 

Have you ever wondered why things never seem to change in Washington D.C. no matter who we vote for?

 

Well, it is because both parties are owned by the establishment.

 

It would be nice to think that the American people are in control of who runs things in the U.S., but that is not how it works in the real world.

 

In the real world, the politician that raises more money wins more than 80 percent of the time in national races.

 

Our politicians are not stupid - they are going to be very good to the people that can give them the giant piles of money that they need for their campaigns. And the people that can do that are the ultra-wealthy and the giant corporations that the ultra-wealthy control.

 

Are you starting to get the picture?

 

There is a reason why the ultra-wealthy are referred to as "the establishment". They have set up a system that greatly benefits them and that allows them to pull the strings.

 

So who runs the world?

 

They do. In fact, they even admit as much.

 

David Rockefeller wrote the following in his 2003 book entitled "Memoirs"...

 

"For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."

 

There is so much more that could be said about all of this. In fact, an entire library of books could be written about the power and the influence of the ultra-wealthy international bankers that run the world.

 

But hopefully this is enough to at least get some conversations started.

 

So what do you think about all of this? Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below...

 

The vast majority of Britain's CCTV cameras are operating illegally or in breach of privacy guidelines, a new watchdog has warned.

 

London has 7.2 million residents and the UK has around 60 million, the country has at least 4,285,000 cameras, approximately one for every 14 people.

 

Up to 90 per cent of surveillance cameras may be breaching the Information Commissioner's code of practice laid down to stop cameras being used inappropriately. Even more seriously, a large proportion of the UK's 14.2 million cameras breach the Data Protection Act and so are illegal, the watchdog CameraWatch warned.

 

www.channel4.com/news/articles/society/factcheck+how+many...

  

www.youtube.com/watch?v=queM4c-W048

 

The United States is fast growing it's army of surveillance CCTV cameras.

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KYbaxmYlkg

Data: nodexlgraphgallery.org/Pages/Graph.aspx?graphID=765

 

Zoomable high resolution image: zoom.it/jV2X

 

The graph represents a network of 876 Twitter users whose recent tweets contained "ericfehrn". The network was obtained on Friday, 06 July 2012 at 04:18 UTC. There is an edge for each follows relationship. There is an edge for each "replies-to" relationship in a tweet. There is an edge for each "mentions" relationship in a tweet. There is a self-loop edge for each tweet that is not a "replies-to" or "mentions". The tweets were made over the 10-day period from Wednesday, 27 June 2012 at 19:35 UTC to Friday, 06 July 2012 at 03:44 UTC.

 

The graph is directed.

 

The graph's vertices were grouped by cluster using the Clauset-Newman-Moore cluster algorithm.

 

The graph was laid out using the Harel-Koren Fast Multiscale layout algorithm.

 

The edge colors are based on relationship values. The vertex sizes are based on followers values. The vertex opacities are based on followers values.

 

Overall Graph Metrics:

Vertices: 876

Unique Edges: 14636

Edges With Duplicates: 1032

Total Edges: 15668

Self-Loops: 840

Connected Components: 40

Single-Vertex Connected Components: 38

Maximum Vertices in a Connected Component: 836

Maximum Edges in a Connected Component: 15621

Maximum Geodesic Distance (Diameter): 6

Average Geodesic Distance: 2.471

Graph Density: 0.0188519243313764

Modularity: 0.332678

NodeXL Version: 1.0.1.217

 

Top 10 Vertices, Ranked by Betweenness Centrality:

chucktodd

EricFehrn

stefcutter

andreamsaul

LOLGOP

donnabrazile

dailyrundown

BuzzFeedBen

DavidCornDC

Norsu2

 

Top Replied-To, in Entire Graph

ericfehrn

mittromney

dailyrundown

chucktodd

stefcutter

paulbegala

dcarter888k

norsu2

zacmoffatt

mmurraypolitics

 

Top Mentioned, in Entire Graph

ericfehrn

dailyrundown

mittromney

stefcutter

barackobama

zacmoffatt

norsu2

andreamsaul

ryangop

chucktodd

 

Top URLs in Tweet, in Entire Graph

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDfH_lajwmA&feature=youtu.be

bit.ly/LseFvl

youtu.be/aDfH_lajwmA

ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-424614

bit.ly/M1mngI

FactCheck.org

bit.ly/NLJbzU

OFA.BO/ayPgAZ

www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2011/10/12/mitt-romney-commits-...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTByvLtYIYA

 

Top Hashtags in Tweet, in Entire Graph

#tcot

#p2

#mitt2012

#obamacare

#gop

#romney

#obamatax

#teaparty

#mapoli

#aca

 

Top Tweeters, in Entire Graph

missb62

mommadona

lovelyladypa

sasha2000

MWJ1231

MelissaTweets

JeffersonObama

Jarjarbug

sgw94

stefsstuff

via

 

By Roger Stone (Part 1)

 

I once tweeted that “John Podesta’s time in the barrel will come.”

 

Well, friends, at the risk of having my barrel comments absurdly interpreted as some of sort of obscure racist slur as General John Kelly’s comment about Congressional cowgirl Frederica Wilson was this past week, put on your polka shoes because it may be time to roll out the barrel…or roll out the barrels, I should say: one for John Podesta and another for his brother and business partner, Tony Podesta.

 

The two Podestas – the “Podestae”, if you will — have run a highly-lucrative influence peddling shop since the first days of Bill Clinton’s presidency, and continued their nefarious self-enrichment orgy at public expense well through the Obama reign.

 

Just yesterday it was revealed that special counsel Robert Mueller is now investigating Tony Podesta, brother of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

 

Of course, it was this inevitable scrutiny of the Podestas’ underhanded business dealings that my “time in the barrel” referred to and not, as some have quite falsely claimed, to the hacking and publication almost two months later of John Podesta’s emails.

 

Factcheck.org reported the plain truth that there is absolutely no evidence anywhere in the substantial public record of campaign 2016 to substantiate the cynical partisan allegation by, among others, California Democrat and ranking member of the House Intelligence committee, that I predicted the Podesta email hack.

 

In a House hearing on March 20, 2017, Schiff stated:

 

“[I]n August, Stone does something truly remarkable when he predicts that John Podesta’s personal emails will soon be published. “Trust me,” he says, “it will soon be Podesta’s time in the barrel, hashtag #CrookedHillary.” In the weeks that follow, Stone shows a remarkable prescience. “I have total confidence that WikiLeaks and my hero, Julian Assange, will educate the American people soon,” he says, hashtag, “#LockHerUp.” “Payload coming,” he predicts. And two days later, it does. WikiLeaks releases its first batch of Podesta emails. The release of John Podesta’s emails would then continue on a daily basis up until the election.” [Emphasis added.]

 

Schiff continued his allegation by asking, “Is it a coincidence that Roger Stone predicted that [Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman] John Podesta would be a victim of a Russian hack and have his private emails published, and did so even before Mr. Podesta himself was fully aware that his private emails would be exposed?”

 

Schiff’s defamatory claim is a conclusory leap that simply does not hold to any honest, logical or factual scrutiny. He simply assumes for his own purposes that my August 21 Tweet about “Podesta’s time in the barrel” had to have been a reference to the release of Podesta’s emails by WikiLeaks two months later.

 

On ABC’s “This Week” on March 26, I flatly denied that I predicted Podesta’s emails would be hacked, adding — correctly — that nothing in the Tweet, “made any reference to John Podesta’s email.” Nothing in the context of my Twitter feed in which the Tweet was posted would support Schiff’s claim either. I told ABC’s This Week that my Tweet referred to Podesta’s business dealings with Russia, and the expectation that it would become a news story, before too long.

 

But inexplicably Factcheck.org, rather negating the whole purpose of having an organization by that name, posted a note saying “just because there is no proof whatsoever that something happened doesn’t mean it didn’t.” Thankfully we haven’t sunk quite to the point in which this passes for an evidentiary standard.

 

It is important to understand the context of that Tweet. Paul Manafort, who is one of my oldest friends in politics and usher in my wedding to Nydia Bertran de Espinosa (Stone), was being hounded in a media frenzy based on financial records of the political party Manafort was then legally working for being splashed all over page one of the New York Times.

 

We now know that a ledger reportedly showing payments to Manafort of $12 million were a forgery. The Ukrainian prosecutor handling the Manafort investigation debunked the purported ledger entirely, saying that Manafort is not a target of any impending indictment. You will not, however, read this fact in the New York Times.

 

Nonetheless, if Manafort’s business activities in the region were going to get scrutiny it was only fair that the Podesta Brothers’ adventures also be exposed to the public.

 

The Clintons were obsessed with Manafort’s reputation as a hyper-organized hard-driving political operative with extensive national experience. Those of us in the Trump Camp new that the Clinton political operation was scouring Russia and Ukraine to find negative dirt on my fellow Connecticut native, Manafort.

 

In Ukraine, these matters were handled by Ukrainian intelligence at the direction of Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk, who essentially paid the Clinton Foundation so much money that he was able to overturn the democratically-elected and U.S.-recognized government of Ukraine in a coup.

 

The Podesta brothers’ extensive business dealings were first revealed in the “Panama Papers”, published in January 2016, as reported by the Observer in “Panama Papers Reveal Clinton’s Kremlin Connection”, published on April 7, 2016.

 

Around August 1, 2016, Dr. Jerome Corsi briefed me in a conversation in which he detailed the extent and breadth of the Podesta’s business dealings. I asked Corsi to memorialize his outline in a memo. I must again stress that all of this had been reported and was public information, available to anyone who knew where to look.

 

Both Manafort and the Podesta’s retroactively-filed reports pursuant to the Foreign Agent Registration Act, though I think it can be fairly argued that neither was actively engaged in any lobbying. There are some lawyers who argue that attempting to effectuate public opinion in the United States while being paid by foreign entity requires registration. Presumably out of an abundance of caution both Manafort and the Podestas filed.

 

Back in August 2016, CNN reported that the FBI was investigating Paul Manafort’s ties to Russia and the Podesta Group to the Ukrainian government and the alleged corruption by the party of former Ukranian president Victor Yanukovych.

 

On August 19, CNN further reported that the Podesta Group issued a statement affirming that the Group had retained the Washington-based boutique law firm of Caplin & Drysdale “to determine if we were misled by the Center for a Modern Ukraine or any other individuals with potential ties to foreign governments or political parties.”

 

The Podesta Group statement to CNN continued: “When the Center became a client, it certified in writing that ‘none of the activities of the Center are directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed or subsidized in whole or in part by a government of a foreign country or a foreign political party.’ We relied on that certification and advice from counsel in registering and reporting under the Lobbying Disclosure Act rather than the Foreign Agents Registration Act.”

 

“We will take whatever measures are necessary to address this situation based on Caplin & Drysdale’s review, including possible legal action against the Center,” concluded the Podesta Group’s statement.

 

That same August 19, Buzz Feed reported that the Podesta Group and Manafort’s D.C. political firm were working under contract with the same group advising Yanukovych and his Ukrainian Party of Regions – namely the non-profit European Center for a Modern Ukraine based in Brussels.

 

Way back in 2013, Reuters reported the European Center for a Modern Ukraine paid $900,000 to the Podesta Group for a two-year contract aimed at improving the image of the Yanukovych government in the United States and that the Podesta Group told Reuters that they were implementing the contract via their contacts with key congressional Democrats.

 

Mainstream media attention has focused on the contract Manafort’s K-Street firm of Davis, Manafort & Freedman had from all the way back in 2007 with Yanukovych’s political party, Ukraine’s Party of Regions to perform an “extreme makeover,” re-positioning the party from being perceived as a “haven for Donetsk-based mobsters and oligarchs” into that of a legitimate political party.

 

On February 21, 2014, Russian leader Vladimir Putin helped then-President Yanukovych to flee violent protests seeking to oust him from office, flying him out of Ukraine and then traveling through Crimea, to arrive in Russia, where he has remained, trying desperately to restore himself to power back home in Kiev.

 

Just as the Trump/Russia collusion propaganda continued making headlines, the Manafort/Russia investigation was churning away, despite its lack of any evidence and documentation. In Manafort’s case, opponents have failed to demonstrate that Manafort ever received $12.7 million in some 22 previously-undisclosed cash payments from Yanukovych’s pro-Russian party, as purportedly documented by entries in a “black ledger” revealed by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau.

 

Yet, this dubious, unverified “evidence” was sufficient for New York Times reporters to conclude that Manafort had hidden back-channel ties to Putin, financed by under-the-table payments arranged via Ukraine.

 

Ironically Putin has little use for Manafort because Manafort strongly urged Yanukovych to take Ukraine into the European Union, a move obviously opposed bitterly the Russians. Manafort did evidently briefly represent Russian oligarch and Putin crony, Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska, but it was none other than U.S. Senator John McCain who met privately with Deripaska during McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, despite being warned twice by the FBI that Deripaska was a Russian asset. A source has informed me that McCain solicited money from Deripaska for the Republican Institute McCain controlled and which was legally able to accept foreign funds.

 

This is how the Democrat Party builds a “case” against President Trump, layering one unproven accusation on top of another, forming a chain of “evidence” that, at least to them, looks like an open-and-shut case, but in truth is nothing but a string of unsubstantiated innuendo that wouldn’t make it past the desk of any honest prosecutor or court of law.

 

Mainstream media, led by the drain-swirling New York Times serially reports every loose allegation and partisan leap to convenient, albeit false, conclusions and suddenly, BAM, it is news! This is what they do. This is why the term “fake news” has become a truer description than President Trump ever thought when he first coined it in the national lexicon.

 

Following the initial “charge”, the Democratic Party narrative charges alleges that Manafort never registered as a foreign agent with the U.S. Justice Department, which that would only have been required if he was contracted with the Ukrainian government, not with a political party in the Ukraine, and further that Manafort transferred his close relationship with Putin (via Yanukovych) to the Trump campaign.

 

From there, the Democrat narrative keeps going, suggesting that Manafort’s close relationship to the Kremlin allowed him to position the Trump campaign to receive a dump of embarrassing Clinton campaign hacked exposing the efforts Debbie Wasserman Schultz, as chairman of the DNC, took to rig the primaries for Hillary, and distinctly disadvantage her challenger, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.

 

But this entire Democrat Party narrative is thrown into disarray if it turns out the Podesta brothers, via the Podesta Group, have tighter and better-documented financial ties to Russia, involving far more numerous and tangled contacts than have ever been suggested to tie Manafort to Russia via Ukraine.

 

Among the revelations made public through the 11.5 million documents leaked by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists detailing the legal and financial arrangements behind secretive off-shore banking transactions dating back to the 1970’s was the disclosure that Russia’s largest bank, the state-owned Sberbank, uses the Podesta Group as its registered lobbyist in Washington.

 

“Sberbank (Savings Bank in Russian) engaged the Podesta Group to help its public image—leading Moscow financial institutions not exactly being known for their propriety and wholesomeness—and specifically to help lift some of the pain of sanctions placed on Russia in the aftermath of the Kremlin’s aggression against Ukraine, which has caused real pain to the country’s hard-hit financial sector,” wrote former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer John R. Schindler in an article entitled “Panama Papers Reveal Clinton’s Kremlin Connection” published by the Observer on April 7, 2016.

 

On April 17, 2014, the Moscow Times reported Ukraine opened criminal proceedings against Sberbank and 13 other banks on suspicion of “financing terrorism.” Schindler noted the Ukrainian criminal investigation concluded Sberbank had distributed millions of dollars in illegal aid to Russian-backed separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine, with the bank serving as “a witting supporter of Russian aggression against Ukraine.”

 

On April 5, 2016, Lachlan Markay, reporting in the Washington Free Beacon, published the lobbying registration form the Podesta Group filed with the U.S. government proving Sberbank had contracted with the Podesta Group to advance their interests with banking, trade, and foreign relations. It doesn’t end there.

 

On Aug. 20, 2016, Breitbart reporter Jerome Hudson documented that the Podesta Group was paid a total of $180,000, according to public records, for the consulting work done under contract with the Russia-controlled firm Uranium One in 2012, 2014, and 2015.

 

As first documented in Peter Schweizer’s bestselling book “Clinton Cash,” and confirmed in Jerome Corsi’s bestselling book “Partners in Crime: The Clinton’s Scheme to Monetize the White House,” Uranium One directed millions to the Clinton Foundation as the Russian government gained ownership of the company.

 

Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons; despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.”

 

The Daily Caller reported on April 29, 2015, that the Podesta group was to lobby the State Department while Hillary was secretary of state, with $40,000 of the total paid to lobby the State Department, the Senate, and the National Security Council on “international mining projects.”

 

According to a New York Times report published August 13, 2013, in 2011 a wave of mid-level program staff members departed the Clinton Foundation, “reflecting the frustration of much of the foundation’s policy personnel with the old political hands running the organization.”

 

Around that time, in 2011, Bruce Lindsey, then the Clinton Foundation’s CEO, suffered a stroke, underscoring concerns about the foundation’s line of succession. Who stepped in to replace Lindsey for several months as temporary chief executive? None other than John D. Podesta, a chief of staff in William Jefferson Clinton’s White House, stepped in.

 

It’s not hard to realize that the links between Podesta and Russia are well documented and go back many years.

 

fromhttps://stonecoldtruth.com/is-it-the-podestas-time-in-the-barrel-yet/ rogerstone1.blogspot.com/2017/10/is-it-podestas-time-in-b...

#BienvenueEnFrance: BIENVENUE NULLE PART !

Aujourd'hui c'est le 6ème jour de GREVE DE LA FAIM pour les 5 etudiant-e-s de #Nantes qui s'opposent à l'augmentation des frais d'inscription pour les étudiant-e-s étranger-e-s, ceci dans une indifférence quasi générale. Pas trop honte Frederique Vidal ?

 

#13février, Blocus de la Fac (dès 6h/6h30) puis Manif (10h) contre l'augmentation drastique des frais d'inscription pour les étudiant-e-s étranger-e-s.

Communiqué de Université de Nantes en Lutte : nantes.indymedia.org/articles/44531

 

Bilan santé par les Street Medics : nantes.indymedia.org/articles/44527

 

Plus d'infos sur : twitter.com/UnivNantesLutte et www.facebook.com/Universit%c3%a9-de-Nantes-en-lutte-16915... et plus de photos sur : frama.link/valk

 

Articles sur le sujet :

 

Les pré-inscriptions d'étudiants étrangers à l'université française sont-elles stables, comme l'affirme le gouvernement?

#Factchecking de Libération - www.liberation.fr/amphtml/checknews/2019/02/11/les-pre-in...

 

Analyse du dispositif #BienvenueEnFrance par Olivier Ertzscheid sur : www.affordance.info/mon_weblog/2018/11/bienvenueenfrance....

Puis dénonciation de Frédérique Vidal : Ministre du mensonge, du racisme d'état et de l'apartheid décomplexé. www.affordance.info/mon_weblog/2019/02/frederique-vidal-m...

During training with the Sony A7SIII a common question I get is: since you can't use Super 35 mode in 4k video, can you still use APS-C lenses to film with?

 

It's logical that you can't use Super 35 mode (= APS-C sized video mode) in 4k since the A7SIII films 4.2k in full sensor readout. Hence you can only use the Super 35 mode in FHD (1080p).

 

In Sony full frame mirrorless cameras you can always switch between using the camera full frame or in APS-C. For photo you always sacrifice megapixels. The A9/A9II/A7II/A7III's 24MP becomes 10MP in APS-C, A7RIII's 42MP becomes a usuable 18MP in APS-C, A7RIV's 61MP becomes a very decent 26MP in APS-C. The advantage for photo is that you can turn a 600mm lens into a 900mm lens without teleconvertor.

The A7S-series have a 12MP sensor (to be used as a lowlight behemoth with those giant-sized photocytes in the sensor - factcheck: www.digicamdb.com/specs/sony_a7s-iii/ ) so that would result in a very poor APS-C sized picture.

 

But what with people who are using APS-C lenses on their A7III full frame cameras and want to use them on their new A7SIII for video?

HACK: Select in the menu "Zoom", activate "Clear image zoom", and add the option "Zoom" to 1 of your programmable C-buttons. Once you film, you can push the C-button and zoom in (using the touchscreen) until the vignetting from the APS-C sized lens is gone.

 

Yes, you can also use this hack for photography with an APS-C lens. However, you can't make RAW pictures. You'll have to set the camera to shooting JPG/HEIF only (in that case it's very important to tweak your Creative Look to get the shot in camera looking the way you like, but with all the adjustable parameters of the new Creative Looks, that's easy.)

 

And yes, you can use Clear Image Zoom on all Sony ILCE-cameras (from A6000 up to A9II) to get extra reach from your lens.. you can even turn a prime lens into a zoom lens with minimal quality loss.

For photo I would recommend it in cases of emergency, or for shoots where you only need JPG's (webcontent?)

For video however it's already becomming a rather popular feature ever since the A6400/A7III generations of ILCE-cameras.

 

Was this clear?

Did it help you in any way?

Are you going to try it?

 

Source: redcathedral.blogspot.com/2020/09/how-to-use-a7siii-with-...

NOORDERDICHT

 

ONZE PLANEET BESTAAT VOOR 80 PROCENT UIT WATER

EN DAAROM NOEMEN WIJ HAAR AARDE

 

Deze inzending kwam via een derde en viel daardoor een beetje buiten de boot maar leek heel geschikt voor het brugwachtershuisje waar Worldport Cleanup domicilie houdt en goede werken verricht in de Rotte. De jury vond het een grappige en spitsvondige tekst en een pijnlijke tegenstelling. En, laat weten #factchecking: rond 70% van onze wereld bestaat uit water.

 

OUR PLANET IS 80 PERCENT WATER

AND THAT IS WHY WE CALL IT EARTH

 

This entry came via a third party and therefore fell by the wayside, but it seemed very suitable for the bridge keeper's house where Worldport Cleanup has its domicile and does good work in the Rotte. The jury thought it was a funny and clever text and a painful contradiction. And, let us know #factchecking: around 70% of our world consists of water.

During training with the Sony A7SIII a common question I get is: since you can't use Super 35 mode in 4k video, can you still use APS-C lenses to film with?

 

It's logical that you can't use Super 35 mode (= APS-C sized video mode) in 4k since the A7SIII films 4.2k in full sensor readout. Hence you can only use the Super 35 mode in FHD (1080p).

 

In Sony full frame mirrorless cameras you can always switch between using the camera full frame or in APS-C. For photo you always sacrifice megapixels. The A9/A9II/A7II/A7III's 24MP becomes 10MP in APS-C, A7RIII's 42MP becomes a usuable 18MP in APS-C, A7RIV's 61MP becomes a very decent 26MP in APS-C. The advantage for photo is that you can turn a 600mm lens into a 900mm lens without teleconvertor.

The A7S-series have a 12MP sensor (to be used as a lowlight behemoth with those giant-sized photocytes in the sensor - factcheck: www.digicamdb.com/specs/sony_a7s-iii/ ) so that would result in a very poor APS-C sized picture.

 

But what with people who are using APS-C lenses on their A7III full frame cameras and want to use them on their new A7SIII for video?

HACK: Select in the menu "Zoom", activate "Clear image zoom", and add the option "Zoom" to 1 of your programmable C-buttons. Once you film, you can push the C-button and zoom in (using the touchscreen) until the vignetting from the APS-C sized lens is gone.

 

Yes, you can also use this hack for photography with an APS-C lens. However, you can't make RAW pictures. You'll have to set the camera to shooting JPG/HEIF only (in that case it's very important to tweak your Creative Look to get the shot in camera looking the way you like, but with all the adjustable parameters of the new Creative Looks, that's easy.)

 

And yes, you can use Clear Image Zoom on all Sony ILCE-cameras (from A6000 up to A9II) to get extra reach from your lens.. you can even turn a prime lens into a zoom lens with minimal quality loss.

For photo I would recommend it in cases of emergency, or for shoots where you only need JPG's (webcontent?)

For video however it's already becomming a rather popular feature ever since the A6400/A7III generations of ILCE-cameras.

 

Was this clear?

Did it help you in any way?

Are you going to try it?

 

Source: redcathedral.blogspot.com/2020/09/how-to-use-a7siii-with-...

Tradewell Stores, a regional grocery chain, funded this plaque in 1975 along with part of the cost of restoring the Pike Place Market. As the plaque explains, Tradewell was located here, and their predecessor Eba's Cut Rate Markets had a store in the building early on.

 

But the history isn't quite right.

 

Herman and Minnie Eba's stall opened by 1908, not in 1910.

 

The Eba's store in the Corner Market opened in 1927, not 1929.

 

Tradewell took over Eba's in 1939, not 1934.

 

Ouch, right? The only accurate dates were contemporary to the plaque. I'm just glad that Tradewell was still interested in its early history in 1975. That's pretty cool.

 

Here is my full history of Eba's, and its transition to Tradewell, ba-kground.com/ebas-cut-rate-markets-tradewell-story-part-7/

 

(I've lost the original caption to this photo, so my comment below does not refer to this text.)

Okay, this one takes some explanation, and some narrative. Please bear with me.

 

Urbanity is the proportion of the population that lives in urban areas (as opposed to rural). Figures for it properly come from the US Census Bureau. I used a summary of the 1990 Census urbanity data that had already been assembled online:

www.allcountries.org/uscensus/37_urban_and_rural_populati...

 

In a previous chart on US violent crime rates, I noted that there was an obvious national peak in violence in the early 1990s, but that the states contributed to that peak in a variety of extents ranging from not at all to many hundreds of crimes per 100,000 population. I decided to name the extent to which a state's crime rate changed as part of that national trend, and the name I came up with is "Violent Crime Elasticity."

 

National violence rate peak graph:

flickr.com/photos/91128695@N07/8298646211/

 

To calculate a numerical value for this elasticity for each state, I chose a low point in the state's crime rates of the 60s, a high point from the early 90s, and a low point in the past 5 or 6 years. If we call these three values A, B, and C respectively, the formula for Violent Crime Elasticity is |B - (A + C) / 2| where |x| means absolute value of X. In simple terms, the number describes how much that state's violent crime rate rose and fell in the national pattern.

 

It seems to me that some powerful crime-causing force of society was exerted and that the states were susceptible to that force to varying degrees. That is not properly called a hypothesis because it is not obviously testable, but it potentially explains what's going on. (FactCheck.org says it's "a trend criminologists chalked up to 'changes in the crack cocaine market.'")

 

WIth that paradigm in mind, I examined this map of the peak crime rates during the most violent years of the early 1990s.

flickr.com/photos/91128695@N07/8299176067/

The states that formed the top of the peak seemed to be ones with major urban populations: It occurred to me that perhaps urban populations were more susceptible to that crime-causing force I suspect may exist.

 

This chart represents a rough test of that properly testable hypothesis. It results in a 30.5% correlation between elasticity and urban proportion of the population, which is not high enough to mark the the hypothesis as confirmed but is high enough to suggest that a better analysis may be able to. Perhaps a county-by-county analysis could confirm or reject the theory more conclusively.

While eating lunch. I had to see who got into this car. He added "REAL" with a felt-tipped marker.

 

I'm skeptical of the certificate but tend to believe this.

 

EDIT (May 26, 2011): But see this too!

 

(Now, I'm really skeptical!)

 

My bumperstickers.

 

I photoshopped out the car logo & name. (I used Serif PagePlusX4.)

Tonight's Debate is Brought to You

by the Letter F for Failure.

 

Obamageddon: Obama's Economic Record...

 

1. Median Household Income has declined by 7.3% percent from January 2009 ($54,983) to June 2012 ($50,964)

 

2. According to the Federal Reserve, the median net worth of families plunged by 39 percent in three years, from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010

 

3. According to the Federal Reserve, the percentage of families with no or negative wealth increased to 32.5 percent in 2010 – up from 19.2 percent in 2007.

 

4. According to the Pew Research Center, the middle income class has shrunk to 51 percent in 2011 from 61 percent in 1971.

 

5. According to the Pew Research Center, the median Net Worth of the Middle Class plummeted 39% from $152,950 in 2007 to $93,150 in 2010.

 

6. According to the Pew Research Center, middle income class share of U.S. income shrunk to 45 percent in 2010 from 62 percent in 1970.

 

7. The unemployment rate in the United States has been above 8 percent for 43 straight months from Feb 2009 to Aug 2012.

 

8. Long-term Unemployed Americans (jobless for 27 weeks or more) has risen by 92 percent from 2.6 million (Jan 20, 2009) to 5 million (Aug 2012)

 

9. The average duration of unemployment is 39.2 weeks (Aug 2012), a 96 percent increase from strong>20 weeks when Obama took office.

 

10. The percentage of working age Americans with a job has been below 59 percent for 36 straight months

 

11. According to the National Employment Law Project, 58 percent of the new jobs created have been low paying jobs.

 

12. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, only 24.6 percent of all of the jobs are “good jobs.”

 

13. In 2011, 53 percent of college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed last year.

 

14. The number of jobs created by new businesses decreased by approximately 1 million from 2008 to 2010.

 

15. One out of every four workers earn less than $10 per hour in the ‘Recovery’ from the Great Recession.

 

16. Due to the Great Recession, the average pay for self-employed people has fallen 8 percent from $46724 in 2006 to $43,003 in 2010.

 

17. In the past decade, insurance premiums have increased three times as fast as wages.

 

18. Worker Health insurance contributions have risen by 17.5 percent from 3,515 family coveragein 2009 to $4,129 family coverage in 2011.

 

19. From 2001 to 2010, America has lost 15 manufacturing facilities every day on average. In 2010, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities every day closed every day.

 

20. According to Harvard Univesity’s State of the Nation’s Housing 2012 Study, 20.2 million American households spent more than half of their incomes on housing in 2010, a 12.8 percent increase from 2007 (17.9 million American households)

 

21. Since 2009, the cost of Household electricity skyrocketed by $300 in one year to $1419 in 2010. Electric rates have increased above the inflation rate for five consecutive years.

 

22. Home Values have fallen 18 percent. From $185,000 (January 2009) to $151,600 (July 2012)

  

Romney's Record as Governor of Massachusetts...

1. State Mandated Healthcare (RombamaCare)

2. First Governor to unconstitutionally institute Gay Marriage

3. Romney supported homosexual and transgendered education in public schools

4. Romney supported abortion with taxpayer funding

5. Fee Fee Romney increased Fees to support Big Government Spending

6. Romney Increased State spending 20.7% ($22.848 billion to $27.588 billion)

7. Government employment grew 7.2% during Romney's tenure.

8. Romney's net job growth of 1.4 percent was far below the growth of the national average at 5.3 percent.

9. Romney supports amnesty for illegal immigrants

   

Romney's Economic Record...

 

Record| Jan, 2003 | Jan, 2007 | Change

  

Unemployed | 192,914 | 159,101 | -17.5%

  

Unemployment Rate | 5.6% | 4.6% | -17.9% (1)

  

State Debt | $16 billion (Jan. 1, 2003 - A22) | $18.7 billion (Oct. 1, 2006 - A24) | +16.9%

  

Debt per person | b$7,551 | $10,612 | +40.5%

  

(1) Massachusetts ranked 47th in job growth during Romney’s entire term. Romney took office during an economic upswing yet, Massachusetts' net job growth of 1.4 percent was far below the growth of the national average at 5.3 percent.

 

In his first year as Governor, Romney increased the Gas Tax by 400% to raise taxes by $60 million per year.

 

Fee Fee Romney increased fees and taxes to the taxed tune of $740.5 million.

 

The father of RombamaCare has increased private insurance costs by $4.3 billion, increased federal spending by $2.4 billion on Medicaid, and Romneycare is estimated to cost $2 billion more than was budgeted over 10 years.

 

Today at Liverpool's 'Bedroom Tax' protest held in Derby Square outside the Queen Elizabeth 11 Law Courts, Garston's Labour Member of Parliament does a 'piece to camera'.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Eagle

 

blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-cameron-slips-up-o...

Think for yourself and question authority.

- Timothy Leary, psychologist and writer (22 Oct 1920-1996)

 

Each state is shaded to reflect Violent Crime Elasticity, a term I made up for the extents the state conformed to the national trend of violent crime increasing from about 1960 to 1990, then falling quickly from about 1990 to 2000. States colored red reflected the trend, green state showed essentially no change, and the rest are in between.

 

I noted that there was an obvious national peak in violence in the early 1990s, but that the states contributed to that peak in a variety of extents ranging from not at all to many hundreds of crimes per 100,000 population. I decided to name the extent to which a state's crime rate changed as part of that national trend, and the name I came up with is "Violent Crime Elasticity."

 

National violence rate peak graph:

flickr.com/photos/91128695@N07/8298646211/

A comparison of urbanity to elasticity:

flickr.com/photos/91128695@N07/8299411079/

 

It seems to me that some powerful crime-causing force of society was exerted and that the states were susceptible to that force to varying degrees. (FactCheck.org says it's "a trend criminologists chalked up to 'changes in the crack cocaine market.'" In essence, this map shows which states were hardest hit by the "crack epidemic.")

playability.de/

via

Roger Stone releases his testimony that will be delivered to the House Intelligence Committee, setting the record straight and debunking the lies concerning Russia.

 

Good morning Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, Committee members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and staff. My name is Roger J. Stone, Jr., and with me today are my counsel, Grant Smith and Robert Buschel.

 

I am most interested in correcting a number of falsehoods, misstatements, and misimpressions regarding allegations of collusion between Donald Trump, Trump associates, The Trump Campaign and the Russian state. I view this as a political proceeding because a number of members of this Committee have made irresponsible, indisputably, and provably false statements in order to create the impression of collusion with the Russian state

 

Stone Opening Statement without any evidence that would hold up in a US court of law or the court of public opinion.

 

I am no stranger to the slash and burn aspect of American politics today. I recognize that because of my long reputation and experience as a partisan warrior, I am a suitable scapegoat for those who would seek to persuade the public that there were wicked, international transgressions in the 2016 presidential election. I have a long history in this business: I strategize, I proselytize, I consult, I electioneer, I write, I advocate, and I prognosticate. I’m a New York Times bestselling author, I have a syndicated radio show and a weekly column, and I report for Infowars.com at 5 o’clock eastern every day.

 

While some may label me a dirty trickster, the members of this Committee could not point to any tactic that is outside the accepted norms of what political strategists and consultants do today. I do not engage in any illegal activities on behalf of my clients or the causes in which I support.

 

There is one “trick” that is not in my bag and that is treason. As someone whose political activism was born from the anti-communism of Senator Barry Goldwater and President Ronald Reagan; and whose freedom seeking family members were mowed-down by Russian tanks on the streets of Budapest in 1956, I deeply resent any allegation that I would collude with the oppressive Russian state to affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

 

My colleague, Michael Caputo, voluntarily sat in this seat a couple of months ago, gave what I believe were candid and truthful answers to those who cared to sit in on the interview; and yet, when he was done, he was accused of perjury by a member who did not even have the pretention to show up for his interview. He was eviscerated by some Committee members and consequently, the press.

 

The most unfair aspect of this turn of events, and behavior by some Committee members, is that this Committee refuses, to this day, to release the transcripts of his testimony for the world to read and judge for themselves.

 

Roger Stone

Multiple members of this Committee have made false allegations against me in public session in order to ensure that these bogus charges received maximum media coverage. Now however, you deny me the opportunity to respond to these charges in the same open forum. This is cowardice. Fortunately, we will have the opportunity today to take the exact words of some members of this Committee and examine them in order to uncover the lies.

 

Members of this Committee as well as some members of the Senate Intelligence Committee aren’t alone in their irresponsibility. On January 20, 2017, the New York Times reported that the intelligence services were in possession of emails, records of financial transactions and transcripts of telephone intercepts, which proved that Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, and Carter Page colluded with the Russians for the benefit of Donald Trump. So, where are these records? Can this Committee or our intelligence agencies produce them? I didn’t think so.

 

Nor, is this irresponsibility entirely partisan. Sen. John McCain told CNN that I “…should be compelled to appear before the Senate to explain my ties to Yanukovych and the Russians.” This is very simple, Senator the answer is: “None” and “None.” In fact, I worked against Yanukovych’s party in the 2006 parliamentary elections in Ukraine, and have no ties to any Russians.

 

Given this Committee’s consistent refusal to allow me to testify in a public session, in the interest of compromise, I have repeatedly requested that the transcript of mytestimony here today, be released immediately upon conclusion of today’s session. Even this constructive suggestion has been rejected. What is it you fear? Why do you oppose transparency? What is it you don’t want the public to know?

 

I can assure each of you, I will not let myself be a punching bag for people with ill intentions or political motives. Understand, I will expose the truth in every forum and on every platform available to me.

 

As a 40- year friend and advisor of Donald Trump, I had continually urged him to run for the presidency, beginning in 1988. When he decided in 2015 to become a serious candidate against a weak slate of opponents, I became one of the Trump campaign’s first consultants, reprising a role I played in 2012 when Donald Trump briefly considered a candidacy in that election. I performed consulting work for the campaign for five months and the consulting relationship ended in August 2015. I, however, didn’t go quietly into the night, I continued to work, write, and advocate on behalf of his candidacy because to this day, I believe he has the potential to be a truly transformative president and to make our nation great again.

 

These hearings are largely based on a yet unproven allegation that the Russian state is responsible for the hacking of the DNC and John Podesta and the transfer of that information to WikiLeaks. No member of this Committee or intelligence agency can prove this assertion.

 

Because the DNC steadfastly refused to allow the FBI to examine their computer servers, this entire claim is based on a self-serving report by CloudStrike, a forensic IT company retained by, directed, and paid for by the DNC.

The Nation magazine recently reported on a study issued by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), which is comprised of numerous former high-level US intelligence officials. Based upon the VIPS study, The Nation concluded that, “There was no hack of the Democratic National Committee’s system on July 5, 2016… not by the Russians and not by anyone else. Hard science now demonstrates it was a leak- a download executed

 

locally with a memory key or a similarly portable datastorage device. In short, they reported it was an inside job by someone with access to the DNC’s system. This casts serious doubt on the alleged initial “hack,” that led to the very consequential publication of a large store of documents on WikiLeaks last summer.” Additionally, these unproven allegations have led to a frivolous lawsuit filed by former Obama administration lawyers against me and the Trump campaign. In my motion to dismiss, I submitted a sworn declaration of Dr. Virgil Griffith, a cognitive computer graduate from the California Institute of Technology, who questioned the unproven assumptions that Russian hackers are responsible for theft of DNC emails and other data.

 

I recognize that those who believe that there was collusion between the Trump camp and the Russian state, now say Stone, “MUST HAVE” been involved, but that is not based on one shred of evidence. This is nothing more than conjecture, supposition, projection, allegation, and coincidence, none of it proven by evidence or fact. I understand the Committee’s interest in me, I use all clauses of the 1st Amendment to achieve my goals, I am out there, I am provocative and partisan, but let’s be clear, I have no involvement in the alleged activities that are within the publicly stated scope of this Committee’s investigation – collusion with the Russian state to affect the outcome of the 2016 election. I have every right to express my views in the public square. I actively participate in matters of great public concern. I also believe, and you should too, my friend, Tucker Carlson, who said last week, ‘You should never accept, uncritically, the imprecise conclusions of ….the “intel community.’’

 

The mantra-like repetition of the claim by our vaunted 17 intelligence agencies that the “Russians” colluded with the Trump campaign to affect the 2016 election, does not make it so. These are, after all, the same entities who insisted the North Koreans would not be able to launch a viable rocket for 3-5 years, that insisted Saddam Hussein was in possession of WMD, that there was no torture at Abu Ghraib prison, and that the government had no bulk data collection program, until Edward Snowden revealed otherwise. Our intelligence agencies have been politicized. I realize they are deeply unhappy over President Trump’s refusal to expand the proxy war in Syria and their failure to obtain the no-fly zone promised to them by Hillary Clinton, which would be an open invitation for World War III. That the intelligence agencies have continued to leak, to the detriment of President Trump, in violation of the law, is proof positive of their politicization. Members of this Committee have made three basic assertions against me which must be rebutted here today.

   

Roger Stone and Donald Trump

 

The charge that I knew in advance about, and predicted, the hacking of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s email,that I had advanced knowledge of the source or actual content of the WikiLeaks disclosures regarding Hillary Clinton or that, my now public exchange with a persona that our intelligence agencies claim, but cannot prove, is a Russian asset, is anything but innocuous and are entirely false. Again, such assertions are conjecture, supposition,

projection, and allegations but none of them are facts.

 

For example, Mr. Schiff, the ranking member of this Committee asked, “Is it a coincidence that Roger Stone predicted that John Podesta would be a victim of a Russian hack and have his private emails published, and did so even before Mr. Podesta himself was fully aware that is private emails would be exposed?” I want to know where I predicted this. Can Mr. Schiff read us the exact quote and source from where I predicted the hacking or Mr. Podesta’s email? Can Mr. Schiff even come up with a documented quote where I use Podesta and email in the same sentence — before it happened?

 

My Tweet of August 21, 2016, in which I said, “Trust me, it will soon be the Podesta’s time in the barrel. #CrookedHillary” Must be examined in context. I posted this at a time that my boyhood friend and colleague, Paul Manafort, had just resigned from the Trump campaign over allegations regarding his business activities in Ukraine. I thought it manifestly unfair that John Podesta not be held to the same standard. Note, that my Tweet of August 21,2016, makes no mention, whatsoever, of Mr. Podesta’s email, but does accurately predict that the Podesta

brothers’ business activities in Russia with the oligarchs around Putin, their uranium deal, their bank deal, and their Gazprom deal, would come under public scrutiny.

 

Podesta’s activities were later reported by media outlets as diverse as the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. My extensive knowledge of the Podesta brothers’ business dealings in Russia was based on The Panama Papers, which were released in early 2016, which revealed that the Podesta brothers had extensive business dealings in Russia. The Tweet is also based on a comprehensive, early August opposition research briefing provided to me by investigative journalist, Dr. Jerome Corsi, which I then asked him to memorialize in a memo that he sent me on August 31st, all of which was culled from public records. There was no need to have John Podesta’s email to learn that he and his presidential candidate were in bed with the clique around

Putin.

 

In fact, FactCheck.org, a news organization funded by the Annenberg Foundation, reported, “There is nothing in the public record so far that proves Stone, a political operative and longtime Trump associate, predicted thePodesta email hack.”

 

Now, let me address the charge that I had advance knowledge of the timing, content and source of theWikiLeaks disclosures from the DNC. On June 12, 2016,WikiLeaks’ publisher Julian Assange, announced that he was in possession of Clinton DNC emails. I learned this by reading it on Twitter. I asked a journalist who I knew had interviewed Assange to independently confirm this report, and he subsequently did.

 

This journalist assured me that WikiLeaks would release this information in October and continued to assure me of this throughout the balance of August and all of September. This information proved to be correct. I have referred publicly to this journalist as an, “intermediary”, “go-between” and “mutual friend.” All of these monikers are equally true.

 

In the March 20th public session of this Committee, Mr. Schiff asked former FBI Director Comey, “Are you aware that Mr. Stone also stated publicly that he was in direct communication with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks?” The way the question was asked was clearly designed to cast me in a bad light. I have never said or written that I had any direct communication with Julian Assange and have always clarified in numerous interviews and speeches that my

communication with WikiLeaks was through the aforementioned journalist. Again, Mr. Schiff is guilty of a false assertion.

 

The fact is that during the March 20th Comey hearing and many times subsequent, members of this Committee, and even Democratic nominee for president, felt that theycould go into the public square and make similar charges without any substantiation or basis in fact. Congressman Heck of Washington, stated, for example, “… we’ve heard about quite a few individuals in the Trump orbit who fell somewhere on that spectrum from mere naïveté, disturbing enough if this naïveté is a feature of those (who) were supposed to be running our country and foreign policy, to unwitting Russian dupes, to willing blindness, to active coordination. This rogues gallery includes those already fired- Roger Stone, adviser to Donald Trump…” This is the worst sort of neo-McCarthyism. To be clear, I have never represented any Russian clients, have never been to Russia, and never had any communication with any Russians or individuals fronting for Russians, in connection with the 2016 presidential election.

 

To pile on, in an interview on MSNBC on May 19, 2017, Congresswoman Speier felt compelled to say: “I believe that Michael Caputo is part of this cabal including Roger Stone and Paul Manafort, and others who had business relationships with Russia.” No, I do not have and I’ve never had any relationship with Russia or any Russian entity.

 

You have falsely accused me without any evidence – you should apologize today. One more apology I would demand in public, if she were here today, is from presidential runner-up, Hillary Clinton. Following the lead of the minority members of this Committee, in her new fiction book, she repeats the same false narratives about me as if they were the truth…they could not be further from the truth.1

 

And then there is Congressmen Eric Swalwell who, as reported in Newsmax, said, “From Roger Stone, we hope to learn the same things we learned from Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Don [Trump] Jr., and others who were particularly active in their dealings with Russians during the summer of 2016.” Has Mr. Swalwell read my exchange with the Twitter persona which he alleges constitutes collusion?

 

The exchange is innocuous at best. Since I had no other contact with Russians, what could he be referring to?

 

Finally, let me address this limited, benign, and now entirely public exchange with a persona on Twitter calling themselves Guccifer 2.0. While some in the intelligence community have claimed that Guccifer 2.0 is a Russian cutoutand that it is responsible for the hacking of the DNC servers, neither of these assertions can be proven by this Committee or the aforementioned intelligence community.

 

I wrote an article for Breitbart on August 5, 2016, in which I express my view that Guccifer 2.0 was not a Russian asset, at the same time reporting their claim taking credit for hacking the DNC. My only exchange with Guccifer 2.0 would begin on August 14, 2016, after my article appeared, and ran through September 9, 2016. Imagine my deep disappointment when Mr. Schiff purposefully conflated these dates before this Committee, reversing them to create the false impression that I had communicated with Guccifer 2.0 on Twitter prior to publication of the article questioning whether Guccifer 2.0 is a Russian cut-out. Shame on you Mr. Schiff.

 

Now that more information is in the public domain, the very question of whether Guccifer 2.0 hacked the DNC must be revisited in light of the VIPS report cited by The Nation.

 

As they concluded, “Forensic investigations of documents made public two weeks prior to the July 5 leak by the person or entity known as Guccifer 2.0 show that they were fraudulent: Before Guccifer posted them they were adulterated by cutting and pasting them into a blank template that had Russian as its default language. Guccifer took responsibility on June 15 for an intrusion the DNC reported on June 14 and professed to be a WikiLeaks source – claims essential to the official narrative implicating Russia in what was soon cast as an extensive hacking operation. To put the point simply, forensic science now devastates this narrative.” I am left to conclude that the President is right when he calls this Congressional investigation a, “witchhunt.”

 

Based on what we know now, it is clear that there was a foreign nation which was colluding with a presidential campaign in an attempt to influence the outcome of the . Therefore, I strongly urge this Committee to investigate the numerous, publicly documented contacts between Ukraine and the Clinton campaign, particularly in light of recent public reports that Ukraine is now providing sophisticated missile technology to North Korea.

 

Please do not continue to perpetuate falsehoods here today.

   

View this document on Scribd

 

from Roger Stone – Stone Cold Truth stonecoldtruth.com/roger-stone-official-statement-to-cong...

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www.factcheck.org/2022/09/scicheck-qa-on-omicron-updated-...

 

Q&A on Omicron-Updated COVID-19 Boosters

 

Earlier this month, the U.S. began administering the first COVID-19 booster vaccines that have been updated to better match the latest circulating coronavirus strains.

 

Many scientists expect the revised boosters will be more effective than their predecessors, but whether that’s the case and to what degree remains unknown.

 

The new vaccines, from mRNA vaccine makers Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, are bivalent, meaning that along with the original version of the coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2, they also specifically target the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants. At the end of August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that together the two subvariants accounted for more than 90% of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S.

 

The Food and Drug Administration authorized the retooled boosters on Aug. 31, and the CDC signed off on the shots the following day, after the agency’s vaccine advisory committee voted 13 to 1 to recommend both boosters.

 

The authorizations mark a shift in American COVID-19 vaccination policy. In what’s being called a “fall booster ‘reset,’” people will no longer count the number of vaccine doses they’ve received. Instead, the guidelines are simple: If you’ve had your primary series (one dose of J&J or two doses Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna or Novavax) and it’s been at least two months since your last dose, then you’re eligible for one omicron-updated booster.

 

We’ll explain how the new vaccines are different and what experts are saying about them.

 

How are the updated shots different from the original ones?

 

The revised boosters are essentially identical to the original ones, except for a tweak to some of the mRNA included in the shots.

 

For both Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, half of the mRNA in the vaccine includes the instructions used in the earlier vaccines for cells to make the spike protein of the original coronavirus strain. The other half includes the instructions for making the spike protein of the BA.4 and BA.5 strains, which is the same in the two subvariants. The spike proteins trigger a protective immune response in the body.

 

The dual components are why the boosters are referred to as “bivalent.” For the same reason, you may hear the original vaccines being called “monovalent.”

 

As before, the new Pfizer/BioNTech booster contains a total of 30 micrograms of mRNA, matching the dosage of the primary series shots, while the revamped Moderna booster contains a total of 50 micrograms, or half of the dosage of the primary series.

 

Who is eligible to get an updated booster?

 

People 12 years of age and older are eligible to receive Pfizer/BioNTech’s updated booster and adults 18 years or older are eligible to receive Moderna’s updated booster, two or more months after a previous COVID-19 vaccination.

 

It doesn’t matter if you’ve never been boosted or if you’ve received multiple boosters already — everyone who meets the age requirements and has had their primary vaccinations can get the updated booster as long as they are two months or more out from their last COVID-19 dose. (If you’re still not sure if you’re eligible, you can take an online quiz from the CDC to find out.)

 

The updated boosters are only authorized as booster shots, so they can’t be given to people as primary vaccinations. For the specified populations, the updated boosters are also replacing the earlier versions of the boosters, which are no longer authorized. As a result, all booster doses will be the bivalent ones — except for kids 5 to 11 years old, who are currently only eligible to receive Pfizer/BioNTech’s original booster dose for their age group.

 

What evidence supports the use of these omicron-updated boosters?

 

To authorize the updated boosters, the FDA borrowed its approach for influenza vaccines, which each year are modified to match the flu strains that are expected to circulate that season. Because the changes are only tweaks — and because it would be impractical if not impossible to test the vaccines in people prior to the flu season — flu vaccines are approved without doing clinical studies each year.

 

The omicron-updated boosters are similar in that they have not yet been evaluated in people, although there is other supporting evidence to suggest that they will work. For one, there is clinical data on a slightly different omicron-specific bivalent booster that targets the BA.1 subvariant that was dominant earlier this year.

 

Moderna tested this booster in about 600 adults who had received two primary doses and one original booster, and at least three months later were given a second original booster or a BA.1 bivalent booster. In blood tests, there was a stronger antibody response a month out in those who had received the BA.1 booster against both BA.1, BA.4/5 and the original virus, as well as against a variety of other variants.

 

The Pfizer/BioNTech BA.1 bivalent booster was tested in a similar way, in about 600 people over the age of 55, with a median of about six months in between the booster doses. At one month, the antibody responses to BA.1 were better in those who had received the BA.1 booster than the original, and the antibody responses to the original virus were similar in the two groups.

 

Although similar studies are being done in people for the BA.4/5 bivalent booster now, those results aren’t in yet. However, experiments from both companies show that mice previously vaccinated and then boosted with the bivalent BA.4/5 vaccines have higher BA.5 neutralizing antibody responses than those boosted with the original vaccine.

 

immune responses.

 

Still, some experts have been wary of moving forward with a new COVID-19 booster without human data on these specific vaccines. Dr. Pablo Sanchez, a professor of pediatrics at the Ohio State University and a member of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, ultimately voted against recommending the new boosters because of that concern.

 

“I voted no because I really feel that we need the human data,” he said during the meeting. “There’s a lot of vaccine hesitancy already. We need the human data.” Nonetheless, Sanchez said that, given his age, he was “almost sure” that he would take it.

 

The rest of the committee, though, felt comfortable enough, given the precedent with flu, to recommend the boosters.

 

Numerous other countries have opted to go with updated BA.1 bivalent vaccines, which do have clinical data (although the European Medicines Agency, which recommended BA.1-adapted boosters in early September, also recommended the BA.4/5 boosters on Sept. 12). The FDA, however, decided that the best strategy would be to target BA.4/5, since BA.1 is already no longer circulating.

 

The agency could have waited for the clinical data on BA.4/5, but thought that doing so would sacrifice too many lives. Estimates from the COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub suggest that delaying the booster campaign by a month would result in 137,000 more hospitalizations and 9,700 more deaths.

 

“We have to be a step ahead, or at least we have to try,” FDA chief Dr. Robert Califf explained in a press conference following the authorization of the new boosters. “Because if we waited for all the proof to come in, the wave will have already passed us by and the damage will have been done.”

 

E. John Wherry, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania, said the difference between BA.1- versus BA.4/5-targeted boosters was likely to be small, but given the choice, he would also opt for BA.5.

 

“This will not be the last version of the vaccine that we see,” he said. “Going with what’s here currently makes a lot of sense to me.”

 

As for when the human data on the bivalent BA.4/5 booster will be available, Dr. Peter Marks, the head of vaccines at the FDA, said on Aug. 31 that it would probably be at least until the end of September or October, “because of the time it takes to actually dose and then do the assays.”

 

How effective are the new boosters?

 

Scientists don’t know how well the redesigned shots will work. In theory, the omicron-updated boosters should be better than the original boosters in protecting against disease because they will more specifically target the coronavirus strains currently circulating — and some data suggest that will be the case.

 

It’s also possible the updated boosters will prevent more infections, although that protection will be short-lived.

 

But as the World Health Organization has said, “The full public health benefit of variant-updated vaccines and their value proposition over current vaccines can only be quantified once vaccine effectiveness data have been obtained.”

 

The real question is not whether the booster will increase protection — they will, scientists told us — but whether and to what degree the updated booster will be better than the original boosters.

 

Wherry said he thought the new boosters would be better, but the difference would likely be modest.

 

“I think it’s important to not give the false sense of hope that this new bivalent vaccine is going to be a magic bullet that stops all omicron viruses,” he said. “We should be expecting that they keep the most vulnerable people out of the hospital, but we should not be expecting them to completely protect from, say, mild disease.”

 

Dr. Paul A. Offit, a vaccine expert and pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, is not convinced that the updated boosters will be an improvement.

 

“I think they’re all going to be of value, I don’t think they’re necessarily going to be of any greater value than just boosting with the ancestral strain,” he said. “What worries me in all this is … that it’s sort of being oversold, being overpromised,” Offit added. “I just fear that people might be disappointed.”

 

How safe are the new boosters?

 

The exact formulation found in the new boosters has not yet been tested in people, but the revised vaccines are very similar to the original vaccines that have now been given hundreds of millions of times in the U.S. alone and have been shown to only very rarely result in serious side effects.

 

In addition, both companies tested the slightly different BA.1 omicron-specific bivalent booster in people, and found no new safety concerns. Vaccine recipients reported experiencing the same expected and temporary side effects as the original shots, including pain, redness and swelling at the injection site; fatigue; headache; muscle pain; and fever.

 

Given the similarity in design and manufacturing process as the original vaccines, the FDA felt very confident authorizing the boosters. Other experts also told us there is no reason to think that the revamped boosters will pose any new safety hazards. Offit, for example, said it was “extremely unlikely” that the new boosters would be any different in terms of safety.

 

Notably, Sanchez, the sole dissenter on the CDC’s advisory committee, explained after his “no” vote that while he felt there needed to be clinical data to be able to recommend the boosters, he was not that worried about safety.

 

“I am comfortable that the vaccine will likely be safe like the others,” he said, adding that he would almost certainly get the new booster himself.

 

Like the original vaccines, scientists do expect the updated shots will carry a small increased risk of myocarditis and pericarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle and its surrounding tissue, particularly in young males. Most people who are affected by the rare side effect and are treated, the CDC says, feel better quickly.

 

Another issue being monitored by scientists is whether boosting could hurt a person’s ability to respond to a future variant, as we have written. But Wherry, who has been following this topic, said there is no indication that is a current risk. “From the data that exists, I see no concern about that whatsoever,” he said. Some animal studies suggest that giving an omicron-only vaccine as a first vaccine dose in animals could be detrimental, he added, but that’s not what is being given to people.

 

What do experts say about who should get the updated shots, and when?

 

There is broad agreement that older people and those at higher risk of developing severe COVID-19 should get the new boosters. But experts differ on whether young, healthy people should get another dose.

 

“I don’t think that a healthy young person who has already received three doses frankly needs another dose, because I think they are protected against serious illness,” Offit said. “After about six months after their last dose, they’re not going to be as protected against mild illness, but that’s true of all infections like this one, meaning short incubation period, mucosal infections.”

 

Offit still recommends that people over 75 years old, those with significant underlying health problems and those who are immunocompromised seek out the shots. Those are the groups, he said, that have benefited from the previous boosters.

 

But others think it’s reasonable to give the shots more widely, and that younger people should at least consider them.

 

“Most young, healthy people are protected from severe disease even after three doses and that protection is pretty durable,” Wherry said. The updated booster, he said, is primarily meant to protect the most vulnerable and to perhaps offer a little bit better protection from mild or moderate disease.

 

“If you’re over 65, everyone should get boosted,” he said. “If you have comorbidities or are immunosuppressed, absolutely get boosted.”

 

For younger people, Wherry said boosters are still a good idea, but there can be more individual choice — and that people shouldn’t think that the booster will make them impervious to infection.

 

“I would encourage people to think about their own behavior and when the right timing for the boost would be,” he said. “If you last got a dose of vaccine or were last infected three months ago and you’re a middle-aged, otherwise healthy individual, you may consider waiting a month or two and time your next dose closer to the holidays or closer to when there’s going to be more indoor activities so that peak level of antibodies coincides with when you’re going to be attending family gatherings or be inside more.”

 

Although two months is the minimum amount of time to wait since the last COVID-19 dose before getting the updated booster, many experts, including Offit and Wherry, suggest that people wait longer than that since last being vaccinated or being infected with SARS-CoV-2.

 

“The science really says for a young, healthy individual, you’re going to get the best boosting if you wait four to six months,” Wherry explained. “That allows for your memory B cells and memory T cells to mature a little bit, antibody levels to come down from their sort of max peak level after infection or vaccination.”

 

But for people who are older or have health problems, Wherry suggested consulting a doctor, because those individuals might need to get their doses sooner.

 

Is this the start of a shift to an annual COVID-19 vaccine?

 

Maybe. The Biden administration has presented this fall’s booster as the first of a once-a-year shot for COVID-19, similar to an annual seasonal flu vaccine. But while that could be a reasonable approach, it’s too early to truly know.

 

Some federal health officials have said as much, noting that new variants might disrupt those plans and that older or high-risk people might need more than one vaccine a year. Some experts, including Offit, are critical of the administration for getting ahead of itself on this question. Offit told us it was reasonable to target high-risk groups, but that young, healthy people may not need an annual boost.

 

Others are more comfortable with the concept. Wherry, for instance, said that given data that protection against severe disease begins to wane a little around nine months, the one-year time frame makes sense as “a benchmark for the average person” — and also is practical.

 

“A bit of aligning to traditional health care is an important part of this because it’s actually going to help with vaccine compliance, keeping up with what’s new,” he said, adding that there would remain flexibility for higher-risk people, who likely already interact more with the health care system, to get additional doses if needed.

 

Where can I get an updated booster?

 

You can find where the new boosters are available in your area by visiting Vaccines.gov. As with other COVID-19 vaccines, the reformulated boosters will be available at pharmacies, community health centers, and some clinics and doctor’s offices. But a lack of funding means they are less likely than the earlier shots to be available in various public health outreach efforts.

 

In some places, the boosters may be difficult to find at first. Certain locales have reported shortages of the Moderna vaccine in particular in the first weeks of the rollout, in part due to the delayed release of 10 million doses from a packaging plant in Indiana.

 

Again, the only booster available to people 12 years and older will be the updated one, so even if it’s not advertised as being new or bivalent, that’s what you will receive.

 

Are the shots still free?

 

Yes. The U.S. government has purchased more than 170 million doses of the updated boosters, and at this time, all COVID-19 vaccinations remain available to the public free of charge, regardless of immigration or insurance status.

 

The administration, however, has warned that without additional funding, it expects it will need to transition COVID-19 vaccine costs “to the commercial market” as early as January. When that occurs, the vaccines will likely be covered for most people with health insurance, similar to flu and other vaccines. People without insurance, however, would need to pay out of pocket.

 

Can I get my updated booster along with my flu shot?

 

Yes. Health officials are suggesting this pairing be offered to you this fall, since they know that getting both in one go is more convenient and increases the likelihood that you’ll get both vaccinations.

 

After one nearly nonexistent and one mild flu season — likely thanks to COVID-19 mitigation measures — some experts are concerned this flu season might be worse than normal. The relative lack of flu for two years running likely means there is less immunity in the population and more people will be susceptible. Clues from the Southern Hemisphere, which often presage flu severity in the North, have been mixed. Australia has had a bad flu season in terms of the number of cases, raising concerns — but other countries have not had particularly active seasons.

 

Regardless of how severe the flu season turns out to be, vaccination is still recommended. Several studies, along with surveillance data, indicate that getting a COVID-19 shot at the same time as a flu shot is safe and doesn’t reduce your immune response to either virus. The temporary, expected side effects of vaccination are usually on par with or only slightly worse in people getting both shots compared with those just getting a COVID-19 dose.

 

For some individuals, getting the shots together may make sense, but for others, the timing might not be ideal. The CDC recommends getting the flu shot in September or October, but many experts recommend October or later because vaccine protection against flu wanes and may not last the entire season if given too early. Still, getting the flu vaccine a bit early is better than not getting it at all.

 

If you opt for dual vaccination, you should get the two shots in different arms or in the same arm with the injections at least an inch apart.

 

This year, for the first time, the CDC is preferentially recommending that people over 65 years of age get a high dose or adjuvanted flu vaccine instead of a standard flu vaccine, given evidence that those shots may work better for this group.

 

When will kids be able to get updated shots?

 

Teens 12 and older are eligible for Pfizer/BioNTech’s omicron-updated booster, but the wait is likely to be at least a few more weeks for younger kids.

 

On Sept. 21, the head of vaccines at the FDA said that the agency was “only a matter of weeks away” from authorizing updated boosters for kids 5 to 11 years old and “a few months away” for children under 5. The day before, the CDC released a planning document saying it expected Pfizer/BioNTech’s booster for 5- through 11-year-olds and Moderna’s booster for 6- to 17-year-olds in “early to mid-October.”

 

Pfizer and BioNTech had previously said that they expect to submit their EUA application for updated boosters for children 5 through 11 years of age in early October and that they were pursuing an application for the youngest children down to 6 months.

 

As with the new boosters for those 12 and up, there may not be clinical data in children for the specific vaccine prior to authorization.

 

At the CDC’s advisory committee meeting, a Moderna representative said that the company would be completing its EUA submission for its original booster vaccine in kids 6 through 17 by mid-September. The company, she said, is currently conducting a study of primary series BA.1 bivalent vaccines and original and BA.1 bivalent boosters in children 6 months to 5 years old, which is expected to be finished by the end of 2022. She added that Moderna was “exploring” ways of testing BA.4/5 bivalent vaccines in children for use as primary vaccinations and boosters.

..like wearing a vagina hat and demanding someone else pay for your birth control..

 

And why is birth control anybody's business but your own? If you can't afford birth control, you really, really, shouldn't be having sex. In case you haven't read the box, it's only 99% effective.. Just saying'...

 

And.. be careful what you wish for.. A government that can decide who gets birth control is a government that may just as easily decide who *needs* to take it.. Or who is sponge-worthy, as they joked about on Seinfeld.

 

The whole issue reminds me another false narrative that was put forward in Ashley Judd's "Nasty Woman" rant, where she essentially said if "they" pay for Viagra, "they" should pay for birth control..

 

I suppose there *are* some men who qualify for free Viagra through some Federal program. But I am equally sure there are just as many programs where women can get free birth control - with the same kinds of strings and qualifiers attached. But if you want free stuff, there are always going to be hoops to jump through, and a master to serve.

 

Because one of the immutable facts of the universe is "There ain't no free lunch. Period." And there ain't no free birth control (or Viagra) either..

www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/covid-19-herd-immunity-is-a-mir...

 

COVID-19 herd immunity is a mirage. Here's how the virus could become 'manageable' instead

 

Last May, “we had enough vaccination and natural immunity to have basically almost achieved a population level of immunity,” said Dr. Eric Topol. “We were getting down to fewer than 10,000 cases a day. We were looking good.”

 

Then the delta variant moved the goal posts.

 

With the original version of the virus that causes COVID-19, America's current vaccination rate of about 65% would have been enough to stop the spread.

 

"If we were dealing with the original, we have sufficient vaccination such that the large-scale pandemic would be over in this country," said Dr. Joshua Schiffer, a physician and mathematical modeling expert who studies infectious diseases at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

 

Unfortunately, the now-dominant delta strain is more than twice as contagious and requires more people to be immune through vaccination or previous infection for the virus to stop spreading, say experts.

 

“Now we need 85 to 90% vaccinated against delta,” said Topol, vice president for research at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, and a national expert on the use of data in medical research.

 

It’s not an impossible number. In countries like Portugal, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, upwards of 80% of the total population are now vaccinated, and cases and deaths are falling.

 

'Cannot believe we are here': 700,000 US COVID-19 deaths is a milestone we never expected to reach

 

That seems unlikely to happen in the United States, where only 55% of the total population is fully vaccinated, and 12% of Americans say are adamantly opposed to it.

 

Herd immunity is now effectively out of reach, said Stephen Kissler, an infectious disease fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

 

“I don’t think it’s realistic,” he said.

 

What is herd immunity?

 

The concept of herd immunity is simple: When disease sweeps through a herd of animals, the ones that survive become immune. Eventually, enough have what’s known as natural immunity, and the disease has so few animals left to infect that it dies down or evens out.

 

The concept got a lot of press early in the pandemic when various politicians and even nations suggested that if young, healthy people got mild cases and recovered, there would be enough immunity that the virus wouldn’t circulate anymore and vulnerable people would be protected.

 

This was before vaccines were available, and the United Kingdom, Sweden, Brazil and the U.S. under the Trump administration advocated the idea to varying degrees.

 

On one extreme was a group, which included Florida’s now surgeon general, that in October 2020 published the Great Barrington Declaration. It called for the world to end lockdowns and other transmission prevention measures and embrace herd immunity for COVID-19 to protect the vulnerable while allowing economies to thrive.

 

New Florida surgeon general Dr. Joseph Ladapo stands apart, agrees with governor on COVID policy

 

The idea was quickly denounced. With a death rate at the time of 1%, COVID-19 would have had to kill 3.2 million Americans for enough people to be infected to reach herd immunity.

 

For a time, the arrival of COVID-19 vaccines changed the calculation. If two-thirds of Americans had gotten immunized in the spring, the virus would have had so few new people to infect that it could have been largely stopped.

 

Then the delta variant hit.

 

At the same time, new data began to show natural immunity wasn't as protective as vaccination, and the benefits of shots began to fade after about six months.

 

COVID news: New antiviral is highly effective, study finds, and is stirring hope that COVID-19 could be treated by a pill

 

Vaccine mandates: California becomes first state to announce plans to mandate COVID-19 vaccine for schoolchildren

 

More than a third of COVID-19 infections result in zero protective antibodies, said Dr. Mark Rupp, an infectious disease expert at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

 

“I wish it weren’t true,” Rupp said. Many of his patients are convinced that having recovered from COVID-19 is all the defense they need.

 

The good news is that for people who’ve recovered from COVID-19, a single dose of vaccine gives excellent immunity, Topol said.

 

“You cannot replicate that with any vaccine we have," he said. "It’s pretty extraordinary.”

 

So far, Rupp isn’t having much success convincing his vaccine-resistant patients to get a shot.

 

“I've been pleading with folks,” he said.

 

When will the pandemic end?

 

With 55% of Americans fully vaccinated and at least 30% recovered from COVID-19 at least once, how is it possible the pandemic can still be surging in so many places?

 

America is a big country, and even a small number is a lot of people. While it’s hard to pinpoint the number of people not exposed to COVID-19 either through infection or vaccination, experts put it likely at about 15% of the U.S. population. That’s almost 50 million people – plenty to still be getting sick, said Harvard’s Kissler.

 

It’s also becoming clear that COVID-19 is not “one and done,” said Lauren Ancel Meyers, a professor of statistical and data science and director of the COVID-19 Modeling Consortium at the University of Texas at Austin.

 

Reinfection and breakthrough cases are changing the landscape of susceptibility as immunity wanes.

 

On October 1, the seven-day daily COVID-19 deaths in the United States were at 1,479, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 

“I find it humbling that the leftover percentage, 15%, is still enough to overwhelm our health care system," said Schiffer.

 

Experts say endemic COVID-19 could make virus 'manageable'

 

The optimistic expectation, experts say, is that the pandemic will die down, and the virus will become one of the world's many endemic viruses that continue to circulate but cause much less disease and death.

 

It's predicted to become an infection that still sweeps through the adult population in the winter, sickening some but generally delivering serious illness only to the very old, those with compromised immune systems, and pregnant women who are unvaccinated, said Dr. Gregory Poland, editor-in-chief of the journal Vaccine.

 

“Once we get to the point where everybody has been exposed or vaccinated and if – and it’s a big if – COVID does what other respiratory illnesses do, it may be a disease that’s manageable,” said Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University.

 

June 2021: How does COVID-19 end in the US?

 

February 2021: Health officials say the coronavirus will likely become endemic in the next several years.

 

Ideally, babies and toddlers would get it multiple times before making it to kindergarten, experts say. For the vast majority, COVID-19 would be mild as it is today for most young children. By the time they begin school, they would have pretty strong immune protection.

 

The COVID-19 vaccine would become one of the routine immunizations of childhood, probably requiring several doses and possible boosters if new variants appear, experts say.

 

Much like the flu, COVID-19 in the Northern Hemisphere is expected to be an illness that shows up in the colder months.

 

If infected, vaccinated adults would generally have mild or even asymptomatic cases. Unvaccinated adults would be at higher risk for severe disease. With age, the immune system becomes less robust, so annual COVID-19 shots would be especially important for those over 65 and the immunocompromised.

 

COVID-19 also would likely continue to mutate. In some years it would be very mild, in others more severe.

 

COVID-19 is still evolving

 

But will this virus follow the typical path of others that we come to live with?

 

“That’s the trillion-dollar question,” said Columbia’s Shaman.

 

There are no guarantees with SARS-CoV-2, which can so quickly mutate. The worst-case scenario is that it evolves into something even more dangerous or more contagious than delta.

 

"All that has to happen is for a new variant with a greater escape from immunity to come along, and we start all over again," Poland said.

 

Fact check: Yes, viruses can mutate to become more deadly

 

Public health experts have worried for years about a virus with the infectiousness of SARS-CoV-2 and the death rate of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV), which is 32% fatal.

 

Learning to live with COVID-19 means accepting uncertainty and staying ever-vigilant for what might come, said Rustom Antia, a professor of population biology at Emory University.

 

“Barring a miracle,” added Schiffer, “COVID will be part of our lives for the rest of our lives.”

 

Contact Weise at eweise@usatoday.com

The Central Business District in Houston, Texas, USA.

 

Prior to the arrival of the Streetcar in Houston in the 1870, the area that is now the Central District of the city was the main residential area of the city.

 

While generally focused on the most prosperous areas of town, the Houston City Street Railway extended one line a full mile south of the centre of the city, making it the first streetcar network designed to spur residential development.

 

By the 1890s, new, larger local streetcar companies finally accumulated the capital necessary to begin constructing streetcar suburbs beyond the conventional boundaries of the city.

 

This led to the development and rapid growth of areas like the Houston Heights and Montrose Residential development subsequently moved out of the central business district; Quality Hill previously being Houston's first upscale neighbourhood was left virtually abandoned by the turn of the 20th century.

 

This spurred the redevelopment of the district into becoming the home to nine Fortune 500 corporations, 3,500 businesses, and approximately 150,000 workers. Major employers include Chevron, JPMorgan Chase, and United Airlines. It contains between 35% and 40% of the Class A office locations of the overall business districts in Houston

 

Information sources:

www.logically.ai/factchecks/library/f66dfe84

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_Houston#Economy

 

Fake News Game: Kanye Edition. (c) Allan LEONARD @MrUlster

Atrapado tras las rejas.

Detalle del Foot Locker de Portal de l'Àngel.

 

Gerard Girbes Berges (2009)

 

Fotografía utilizada en:

www.deon.pl/wiadomosci/polska/art,13729,dzp-wiezniowie-ch...

 

Fotografía utilizada en Subgamers:

www.subgamers.com/alligation-gaming-assisting-organized-c...

 

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emmalwallace.com/2009/02/jail-the-bad-bankers-global-move...

 

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jvik.no/?p=384

 

Fotografía utilizada en:

atelier.rfi.fr/profiles/blog/show?id=1189413:BlogPost:99232

 

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tcjewfolk.com/law-politics-gaza-flotilla-activists/

 

Fotografía utilizada en:

www.destadutrecht.nl/misdaad/nieuws/962/meer-schooluitval...

www.destadutrecht.nl/misdaad/nieuws/773/veelpleger-utrech...

www.destadutrecht.nl/misdaad/nieuws/519/snackbar-voorstra...

www.destadutrecht.nl/misdaad/nieuws/106/utrechts-college-...

 

Fotografía utilizada en:

fullfact.org/factchecks/romanian_criminals_UK_Britain-28799

 

Fotografía utilizada en:

www.nemokennislink.nl/publicaties/wereldwijd-steeds-meer-...

Governor Romney claims that capping tax deductions as part of his plan to pay for across the board tax cuts would make his plan "revenue neutral". The math doesn't add up. Read Third Way's analysis in The New Romney Tax Plan: Does it add up?

This is the drawing is included in my new collection of Daily Drawings: The Election Series

Available now! magcloud.com/browse/Issue/5142