Debt Rattle June 19 2021
June 19, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:50 am Finance Tagged with: antivirals, defector, FBI, ivermectin, mandatory vaccination, Springsteen, terrorist, truth, WaPo 49 Responses »
Vincent van Gogh The sower 1888
• Why Has "Ivermectin" Become a Dirty Word? (Taibbi)
• Feds Now See the Need for Funding Antivirals (TSN)
• What If The Mainstream Media Had Told The Truth? (PF Whalen)
• AstraZeneca Vaccine Not Good Enough to See 'Springsteen on Broadway' (NM)
• 'I'd Rather Die Actually Living': Buffalo Bills' Wide Receiver (G.)
• EU Regulator Won't Impose 50% Efficacy Threshold For Covid-19 Vaccines (RT)
• Only 41.9% Of French Nursing Home Workers Vaccinated (RT)
• Greece Bioethics Committee To Green-light Mandatory Vaccinations (K.)
• Dying Of Covid-19 Has Become Optional In Russia (RT)
• Will US Meet Biden's Vaccine Goal? (ZH)
• Chinese Defector's Identity Confirmed, Was Top Counterintelligence Official (RS)
• Democracy Dies at the Washington Post Editorial Board (MPN)
• Who Is A "Terrorist" In Biden's America? (Whitney Webb)
• Questions About the FBI's Role in 1/6 (Greenwald)
• Free At Last (Jim Kunstler)
Positive test does NOT mean infected with SARS-CoV-2….
It means one or multiple target genes of the SARS-CoV-2 genome, that has never been purely isolated, showed a hit after immense amplification.
But what is SARS-CoV-2 besides a computersimulation?
pic.twitter.com/SUBeXa2woC
— Heidegger (@heidegger79) June 19, 2021
Taibbi should ask not only "Why Has "Ivermectin" Become a Dirty Word?" but also "When Has "Ivermectin" Become a Dirty Word?". And then apologize to his readers for completely missing the story for a year, or at least the half year it's been since Kory's Senate testimony -which he talks about- was cancelled.
One of the challenges of the pandemic period is the degree to which science has become intertwined with politics. Arguments about the efficacy of mask use or ventilators, or the viability of repurposed drugs like hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, or even the pandemic's origins, were quashed from the jump in the American commercial press, which committed itself to a regime of simplified insta-takes made opposite to Donald Trump's comments. With a few exceptions, Internet censors generally tracked with this conventional wisdom, which had the effect of moving conspiracy theories and real scientific debates alike far underground. A consequence is that issues like the ivermectin question have ended up in the same public bucket as debates over foreign misinformation, hate speech, and even incitement.
The same Republican Senator YouTube suspended for making statements in support of ivermectin, Ron Johnson, has also been denounced in the press for failing to call the January 6th riots an insurrection, resulting in headlines that blend the two putative offenses. "You have these ideas about the need to censor hate speech, calls for violence, and falsity," Kory says, "and they've put science on the same shelf." As a result, doctors and organizations that may have little to do with politics but have advocated for ivermectin, from Dr. Tess Lawrie's British Ivermectin Recommendation Development (BIRD) to California pulmonologist Roger Seheult to many others, have been shut down online with the same unilateral abruptness platforms apply to hate speech or threats.
Dr. Sabine Hazan, a gastroenterologist and CEO of a genetic sequencing laboratory called ProGenaBiome in Ventura, California, was blindsided. She got involved with ivermectin when she was pulling out the stops for Covid-19 patients. "I'm a doctor. My job isn't to do nothing. If I wanted to do nothing, I'd be selling shampoo," Hazan says. When patients got really sick, she tried everything, treating off-label with a number of drugs in combination, including ivermectin. Eventually, she ended up taking it upon herself to run clinical trials with repurposed, off-patent drugs like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, fearing that the lack of a profit angle would prevent a major corporate effort in that direction.
"I felt, no one is going to be investigating a cheap solution, so I did it myself," she says. Some weeks ago, Hazan got up early on a Sunday to present findings to a group of physicians that included Dr. Kylie Wagstaff, one of the physicians in the first in vitro ivermectin study, a family doctor in Zimbabwe named Jackie Stone, and others. She uploaded the talk on YouTube, and "lo and behold, it got taken down. It's amazing. These are doctors talking. It's not anyone selling anything."
And Trial Site News should not pretend they invented the wheel.
After over a year of TrialSite reporting on the need for early-onset, antiviral-like care for COVID-19, now the U.S. government will launch a mini "moonshot" targeting antivirals necessary not only for viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 but for the inevitable new ones that will surface in the future. Powered by the same players—that is, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) as well as the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA)—under the current Executive Branch administration, a new program under Dr. Anthony Fauci's NIAID called the "Antiviral Program for Pandemics" will target the 90% of cases involving either asymptomatic to mild-to-moderate SARS-CoV-2 infection.
But now with a focus on "sustainable platforms" to discover and develop antivirals, perhaps one of the key players in what's been a total failure on the part of the federal research apparatus to address affordable repurposed antivirals (other than ensure Gilead could secure billions starting last May), Dr. Anthony Fauci was still able to get his customary quote, emphasizing, "New antivirals that prevent serious COVID-19 illness and death, especially oral drugs that could be taken at home early in the course of disease, would be powerful tools for battling the pandemic and saving lives."
TrialSite makes the case below that the time to act to save lives with antivirals, especially cost-effective ones, addressing the pandemic was last summer at the latest. The federal money train spent probably north of $20 billion not only to help accelerate vaccines but also several novel experimental therapies with little pragmatic utility during a pandemic where 90% of the cases are asymptomatic to early-onset mild-to-moderate infections, necessitating care over advanced experimentation.
This platform supported the experimentation but implored that the NIH move aggressively with dozens of identified repurposed drugs to consider for treating COVID-19 early on. More on that below. But what the federal bureaucracy has done now is created yet another program where more than likely over-paid bureaucrats will be able to take credit for first and foremost handing lots of money over to biotech and pharmaceutical companies. In this post-free market, crony capitalistic world, one where regulatory capture is the norm, not the exception, this is exactly what happens as the same old cast of characters behind the last efforts are at it all over again.
They will "evaluate, prioritize and advance antiviral candidates to Phase 2" while benefitting from the present day and "expanded contract resources" of the NIH as well as the infrastructure provided by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) to "de-risk" those early pipeline candidates. They'll spend over $300 million for research and lab support and toss in almost $1 billion for preclinical and clinical evaluation plus nearly $700 million for development and manufacturing via NIAID and BARDA.
Moreover, the feds will now spend up to $1.2 billion to create and support a new group called the Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) Centers for Pathogens and Pandemic Concern that seeks to "harness the creativity of the biomedical research community and drive innovative antiviral drug discovery and development." Seeking to develop "platforms," the initial target is SARS-Cov-2, although as TrialSite has and will argue, they're about a year or more late in the game, and unfortunately, the lives lost can't be changed.
Whalen has 5 things the media got wrog on Trump. One of them is HCQ.
2. Hydroxychloroquine Last year at this time it was verboten to even bring up the name of the drug and doing so was enough to get you booted off Twitter or Facebook. President Trump frequently touted hydroxychloroquine's efficacy in battling COVID, and it was that advocacy which sent the media into conniptions on the subject. If Trump supports the drug, it must be bad. Last week, over a year after most Americans became familiar with the medication, a new study out of New Jersey, the hardest hit state by COVID, shows that if used in conjunction with a regimen of zinc, hydroxychloroquine can give COVID patients upwards of a 200% better survival rate against COVID. Hydroxychloroquine is indeed a miracle drug.
With modern news cycles, our attention spans are merely fractions of what they once were, but we must remember the context with which the attacks on Trump and hydroxychloroquine were being made. The media was whipping up everyone into a full-blown panic with COVID. "It's highly infectious to the point you can't go to church or walk around the park. If you get it bad enough to be sent to the hospital, you're probably going to die. And there's no cure; we're doomed." Meanwhile Trump was right all along, and this treatment was available the whole time. So, what if the media had told us the truth from the beginning with hydroxychloroquine? Patients who died having refused the drug because of the media's lies need not have perished. How many thousands of patients died because of the media's deceit? We'll never know.
Doctors who refrained from administering the drug based on the treachery of so-called experts and the menaces in the media had patients die for no reason other than politics. Again, how many thousands of Americans died because of their fraudulence? We'll never know. For many patients who survived severe cases of COVID, they will carry the long-term effects of the virus around with them for the rest of their lives. Severe, long-lasting damage to both the lungs and hearts of severe COVID patients is common, and it's likely many of those folks must now endure shortened life expectancies as a result. There were undoubtedly scores of them, particularly at the beginning of the pandemic, who could have been treated with hydroxychloroquine but weren't. If the media had told the truth, many of those patients would now be living normal lives.
Badlands. No more freedom fighter.
Bruce Springsteen is returning to Broadway, though certain people inoculated against COVID-19 will not be allowed to see him. Springsteen's show, set to run June 26-Sept. 4, will not be open to people who've been vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the New York Post reported Friday. "At the direction of New York State, Springsteen on Broadway and the St. James Theatre will only be accepting proof of FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson)," the show's website reads.
People attending the show must be fully vaccinated with an FDA-approved shot to get in. That means at least 14 days after a second dose of the Pfizer-BioNtech or Moderna vaccine, or at least 14 days after a single dose of Johnson & Johnson's Janssen vaccine. The Post reported Springsteen said in a statement he wanted to make the 2-hour-plus shows as "personal and intimate as possible." Some Canadian fans who received the AstraZeneca shot were upset about potentially being denied entrance. "It's just plain not fair," said University of Toronto bioethicist Kerry Bowman in Wednesday's Toronto Star.
"From an ethical point of view, it's very difficult, because what has happened is people have made their commitment to being vaccinated for their own health and the health of their communities and the world, and people are turning their nose up at it." The only exceptions to the vaccine policy will be for children under the age of 16 who have had a negative antigen COVID-19 screening within six hours of the show's start, or a negative nose swab test within 72 hours of the start. Masks were not mentioned on the show's website, which reminded guests that all seating is "not socially distant."
I got my vaccine from God.
Buffalo Bills wide receiver Cole Beasley leaned into the sharp backlash from statements he's made critical of the coronavirus vaccine on Friday, disclosing that he is not vaccinated and pledging to "live my one life like I want to regardless". "I will be outside doing what I do," he wrote in a statement posted to social media. "I'll be out in the public. If your (sic) scared of me then steer clear, or get vaccinated. Point. Blank. Period. I may die of covid, but I'd rather die actually living. "I have family members whose days are numbered. If they want to come see me and stay at my house then they are coming regardless of protocol. I don't play for the money anymore. My family has been taken care of. Fine me if you want. My way of living and my values are more important to me than a dollar.
I love my teammates and enjoy playing ball because all the outside bs goes out the window in these moments. I just want to win the Super Bowl and enjoy these relationships that will be created along the way. "I'm not going to take meds for a leg that isn't broken. I'd rather take my chances with Covid and build up my immunity that way. Eat better. Drink water. Exercise and do what I think is necessary to be a healthy individual. That is MY CHOICE based on MY experiences and what I think is best. I'll play for free this year to live life how I've lived it from day one. If I'm forced into retirement, so be it." The 32-year old veteran also said that he has spoken with the NFL Players Association about his issues with the NFL's new virus policies. Beasley said he is not inoculated against Covid-19 and made it clear he did not want to receive the vaccine.
Feel lucky, punk?
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has said it will not bring in a minimum efficacy threshold for Covid-19 vaccines. The comment comes after clinical trials showed Germany's CureVac jab to be only 47% effective against the virus. CureVac announced data on the efficacy of its jab on Wednesday after it was tested in second- and third-phase trials involving 40,000 people across ten countries. The company suggested variants of the virus may be behind the poor result.
On Thursday, the EMA's vaccine chief Marco Cavaleri said it was "a bit early to say" after being asked by a journalist about the CureVac results and the threat variants may pose to vaccine efficacy. "We will need to collect all the final data from this clinical trial, and have a good analysis of the outcome throughout different regions, age groups and according to different variants," he told an EMA briefing. Asked specifically about a 50% efficacy minimum level for vaccines, he added that the EMA had "always felt it was difficult to define upfront a threshold."
"He said it could not be the case that there was more vaccine uptake in the general population than there was among care home workers."
They simply know more.
Public Health France (SpF) has said that less than half of health professionals working in nursing homes are vaccinated against Covid-19 after the health minister called on workers to come forward and get their shot.
In data published on Thursday evening, SpF stated that only 41.9% of people working in nursing homes in France had been fully vaccinated against the deadly Covid-19 virus, despite the country's vaccination program being nearly six months old, and 55.3% had received one shot. Healthcare workers were among the first in the country to be offered the jab. The health agency had stopped publishing this data for several weeks as it reworked its calculation method. SpF has reportedly realized that the figures were overestimated.
Meanwhile, of the care home residents surveyed, some of society's most vulnerable people to the Covid-19 virus, only 81.1% were fully vaccinated. SpF estimates that as of June 15, 87.8% had received at least one dose. Earlier on Thursday morning, Health Minister Olivier Veran, speaking on BFM TV, made a "solemn appeal" to caregivers, in particular in nursing home staff, who have not yet been vaccinated. He also threatened to make inoculations compulsory for them. He said it could not be the case that there was more vaccine uptake in the general population than there was among care home workers. As of Wednesday, approximately 46% of France's population has received at least one shot.
Desperate for tourists.
The National Bioethics Committee is expected to give its approval for the mandatory vaccination of specific social and professional groups, such as health workers, in its report on Friday to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. The obligation will apply in the fall once all the opportunities for the voluntary vaccination of citizens have been exhausted over the summer. In the meantime, a "persuasion campaign" will be undertaken to ensure that as many people are vaccinated as possible. Kathimerini understands that the conditions set by the committee before mandatory vaccinations begin include making the process as easy as possible and allowing people to choose the vaccine they want, and to have additional vaccination centers so that people don't have to travel far to get the vaccine.
What's more, the committee is set to insist on the need for information campaigns over the summer targeting specific groups, such as health professionals, educators, young people and the elderly who have not yet been vaccinated. Discussions are being held about including statistics that will prove the benefit of the vaccine. Those who refuse to be inoculated will not be fired, but they will be transferred to other divisions that are not in contact with vulnerable citizens, Kathimerini understands. The campaigns are expected to go on air from July onward, and will run for a full two to three months before any final decisions on mandatory vaccination are made.
It is a given, however, that from next autumn vaccinated people will enjoy privileges such as being able to eat in indoor dining areas. Fully vaccinated people will begin enjoying privileges in the coming weeks, as they will be able to head to gyms without a mask and enter indoor cinemas that open at the beginning of July with the demonstration of their certificate without having to upload their self-test results. As of July 1, the fully vaccinated are expected to be excluded from the program of mandatory self-tests.
More vaccine hesitancy.
In a speech on Tuesday, the head of Russia's central bank, Elvira Nabiullina, announced that the country's finances had recovered from the losses caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. "The economy has recovered to its pre-crisis level, and in many industries it has exceeded it and continues to grow," she said. This success has been achieved without racking up substantial debts. While Western states plunge deeper into the red with borrowing, Russia's reserves keep growing. It's quite an achievement. However, next is the bad news. On the same day as Nabiullina was giving her triumphant speech, Russian statistical agency Rosstat released new figures on coronavirus deaths in the country, indicating that the number of people who died in the country last year was around 340,000 higher than the year prior, before the pandemic.
This means that the country suffered an increase in its mortality rate of 2,328 per million inhabitants, a figure well in excess of most other developed nations. By comparison, the equivalent numbers in the UK and USA stand at 1,275 and 1,535 per million, respectively. The good news and bad news are not unrelated. One of the reasons why Russia's economy has been able to recover so rapidly from the impact of the virus is that after an initial tough lockdown in spring 2020, the government refused to reimpose the harshest available measures. That saved the economy, but by allowing people to freely mix, it may have enabled the spread of the virus. The economy's recovery came at a price paid in human lives.
Cynics might accuse the Russian state of putting money before people, but Russia's large death rate is a result of more than a lax attitude to social mingling. This is shown by a third story coming out of the country this week, with the city of Moscow issuing an order to make vaccination against coronavirus compulsory for all workers who have direct contact with the public. Justifying the move, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin declared, "ultimately, it's up to everyone to get vaccinated or not." He added that whether you get the jab is "a personal matter… as long as you sit at home." But, the politician argued, "when you go out into public places… you become an accomplice of the epidemiological process."
The reason why Sobyanin has had to issue this order is clear. Residents of his city simply aren't getting vaccinated. Russia is believed to have administered about 33 million vaccine doses to its 145 million population, a rate of only 23 doses per 100 people. This now lags far behind much of the rest of Europe. The UK, for instance, has administered over 100 doses for every 100 inhabitants (most Covid-19 vaccines require two doses, so a complete vaccination program would require 200 doses). Russia's vaccination rate is therefore about one-fifth of the UK's.
They'll play with the data.
White House officials on Thursday brushed off questions about President Joe Biden's July 4 vaccine goal, which appears to be in jeopardy due to the current vaccination rate. Asked about the goal during a virtual briefing on Thursday, White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients did not say whether the goal could still be met. "We've made tremendous progress. Today, more than 175 million Americans have gotten at least one shot: as I said, 87 percent of seniors, 74 percent of people over the age of 40. And we're now nearly 2 in 3 adult Americans, hundreds of thousands of people are continuing to get their first shot each day," he said.
"And we are going to get to 70 percent. And we're going to continue across the summer months to push beyond 70 percent," he added. Biden earlier this year said he wanted 7 out of 10 adults to get at least one COVID-19 jab by Independence Day. But the rate of vaccination has fallen sharply, dropping from over 4 million to around 1 million on an average day. Only 184,847 shots were administered on Memorial Day, and several other recent days have seen a figure well under 1 million. Biden also wanted 160 million Americans to be fully vaccinated by July 4. Fully vaccinated refers to a person getting both doses of the Pfizer or Moderna shots or the single-shot Johnson & Johnson, and then two weeks elapsing.
Just 147.7 million people have been fully vaccinated as of June 17. White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Sunday, after being asked whether she was concerned the goals wouldn't be reached, that while the government can provide incentives to get a vaccine, "it is ultimately up to individuals to do that." "What you've seen is that a number of states have met and surpassed that goal, right? Many have not yet. But we've started—kicked off this one-month campaign to do everything we can to reach it. And we'll see where we get. We've got some time," she said.
"If the stories are true, Dong would be the highest-level defector in the history of the People's Republic of China."
We now know the name of the Chinese defector who has been working with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for a few months and what his position within the Chinese military and government was, among other details. Matthew Brazil and Jeff Stein at Spy Talk reported on the "rumor," and gave the name and background of the rumored defector: "Chinese-language anti-communist media and Twitter are abuzz this week with rumors that a vice minister of State Security, Dong Jingwei defected in mid-February, flying from Hong Kong to the United States with his daughter, Dong Yang. Dong is, or was, a longtime official in China's Ministry of State Security (MSS), also known as the Guoanbu. His publicly available background indicates that he was responsible for the Ministry's counterintelligence efforts in China, i.e., spy-catching, since being promoted to vice minister in April 2018. If the stories are true, Dong would be the highest-level defector in the history of the People's Republic of China."
RedState's sources confirmed that the defector is, in fact, Dong, that he was in charge of counterintelligence efforts in China, and that he flew to the United States in mid-February, allegedly to visit his daughter at a university in California. When Dong landed in California he contacted DIA officials and told them about his plans to defect and the information he'd brought with him. Dong then "hid in plain sight" for about two weeks before disappearing into DIA custody. According to Spy Talk, Dong's name came up during the Sino-American Summit held in Alaska in March 2021: "In a tweet on Wednesday, Han [Dr. Han Lianchao, a Chinese defector], citing an unnamed source, alleged that China's foreign minister Wang Yi and Communist Party foreign affairs boss Yang Jiechi demanded that the Americans return Dong and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken refused."
RedState's sources say that Chinese officials did demand that the United States return Dong, but Blinken didn't exactly refuse; at that time Blinken wasn't aware that Dong was with the US government, the sources say, and told China that the US didn't have Dong. It's only in the last three to four weeks that anyone outside DIA knew about the defector, according to RedState's sources. Prior to that time, DIA was vetting the information provided and confronting Langley officials with what they'd learned without divulging the source.
A proud tradition.
The Washington Post's glaring conflicts of interest have of late once again been the subject of scrutiny online, thanks to a new article denouncing a supposed attempt to "soak" billionaires in taxes. Written by star columnist Megan McArdle — who previously argued that Walmart's wages are too high, that there is nothing wrong with Google's monopoly, and that the Grenfell Fire was a price worth paying for cheaper buildings — the article claimed that Americans have such class envy that the government would "destroy [billionaires'] fortunes so that the rest of us don't have to look at them." Notably, the Post chose to illustrate it with a picture of its owner, Jeff Bezos, making it seem as if it was directly defending his power and wealth, something they have been accused of on more than one occasion.
There was considerable speculation online as to whether Bezos himself wrote the piece, so blatantly in his interest it was. Unfortunately, this sort of speculation has raged ever since the Amazon CEO bought the newspaper in 2013 for $250 million. Being owned by the world's richest individual does not mean that The Washington Post and its employees are rolling in dough themselves. Far from it: Bezos' revolution at the newspaper, which has led to both increased pageviews and company value, has been largely based on simply squeezing workers harder than before. In an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review, management acknowledged that Post reporters are pushed to produce almost four times as many stories as their peers at The New York Times.
Furthermore, the Post writes and rewrites the same story but from slightly different angles and with different headlines in order to generate more clicks, and thus more revenue. Thanks to new technology, reporters' every keystroke is monitored and they are under constant pressure from management not to fall behind. The technique of constant surveillance is not unlike what hyper-exploited Amazon warehouse workers who wear GPS devices or Fitbit watches have to endure.
Everyone, potentially.
In the latest sign that the US government's War on Domestic Terror is growing in scope and scale, the White House on Tuesday revealed the nation's first ever government-wide strategy for confronting domestic terrorism. While cloaked in language about stemming racially motivated violence, the strategy places those deemed "anti-government" or "anti-authority" on a par with racist extremists and charts out policies that could easily be abused to silence or even criminalize online criticism of the government.
[..] In introducing the strategy, the Biden administration cites "racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists" as a key reason for the new policy and a main justification for the War on Domestic Terror in general. This was most recently demonstrated Tuesday in Attorney General Merrick Garland's statement announcing this new strategy. However, the document itself puts "anti-government" or "anti-authority" "extremists" in the same category as violent white supremacists in terms of being a threat to the homeland. The strategy's characterization of such individuals is unsettling. For instance, those who "violently oppose" "all forms of capitalism" or "corporate globalization" are listed under this less-discussed category of "domestic terrorist."
This highlights how people on the left, many of whom have called for capitalism to be dismantled or replaced in the US in recent years, could easily be targeted in this new "war" that many self-proclaimed leftists are currently supporting. Similarly, "environmentally-motivated extremists," a category in which groups such as Extinction Rebellion could easily fall, are also included. In addition, the phrasing indicates that it could easily include as "terrorists" those who oppose the World Economic Forum's vision for global "stakeholder capitalism," as that form of "capitalism" involves corporations and their main "stakeholders" creating a new global economic and governance system. The WEF's stakeholder capitalism thus involves both "capitalism" and "corporate globalization." The strategy also includes those who "take steps to violently resist government authority . . . based on perceived overreach."
This, of course, creates a dangerous situation in which the government could, purposely or otherwise, implement a policy that is an obvious overreach and/or blatantly unconstitutional and then label those who resist it "domestic terrorists" and deal with them as such—well before the overreach can be challenged in court. Another telling addition to this group of potential "terrorists" is "any other individual or group who engages in violence—or incites imminent violence—in opposition to legislative, regulatory or other actions taken by the government." Thus, if the government implements a policy that a large swath of the population finds abhorrent, such as launching a new, unpopular war abroad, those deemed to be "inciting" resistance to the action online could be considered domestic terrorists.
"A laughable conspiracy theory," chortled The Huffington Post, who has done more to help the FBI find citizens allegedly at the Capitol riot than any local law enforcement agency."
In 2011, Mother Jones published an outstanding, lengthy investigation by reporter Trevor Aaronson, entitled "The Informations," which asked: "The FBI has built a massive network of spies to prevent another domestic attack. But are they busting terrorist plots—or leading them?" Aaronson covered numerous similar cases for The Intercept where the FBI designed, directed and even funded the terror plots and other criminal rings they then boasted of disrupting. A widely praised TEDTalk by Aaronson, which, in the words of organizers, "reveals a disturbing FBI practice that breeds terrorist plots by exploiting Muslim-Americans with mental health problems," featured this central claim: "There's an organization responsible for more terrorism plots in the United States than al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab and ISIS combined: The FBI."
So far from being some warped conspiracy theory, that the FBI purposely targets vulnerable people and infiltrates groups in order to create attacks and direct targets to engage in them is indisputably true, well established, and a commonly reported fact in mainstream liberal media. Exactly that has been happening for decades. Yet the DNC-loyal sector of the corporate media reacted to the Revolver News article and Carlson's segment which raised these questions as though they were positing something that no sentient being could possibly regard as viable. CNN — which spent years leading its viewers to believe that the Kremlin controlled the U.S. Government through sexual and financial blackmail — published what they labeled a "fact-check" that denounced this as a "haywire theory" that "is nothing more than a conspiratorial web of unproven claims, half-truths and inaccurate drivel about perceived bombshells in court filings."
As it usually does, The Washington Post — which told Americans that Russians had invaded the U.S. electricity grid and that a huge army of Kremlin-loyal American writers was shaping our discourse — echoed the instant CNN/liberal consensus by mocking it as "Tucker Carlson's wild, baseless theory," claiming that "it's the kind of suggestion journalists in other organizations would quite possibly be fired for if they sought to push it nearly as hard." The standard liberal blob of HuffPost/ DailyBeast/ BusinessInsider all recited from the herd script. "A laughable conspiracy theory," chortled The Huffington Post, who has done more to help the FBI find citizens allegedly at the Capitol riot than any local law enforcement agency.
"But Americans have to do something to make a living,.."
The biggest question that the authorities want to evade is: if the virus did originate from the Wuhan lab, was it released by accident… or on purpose? The "Joe Biden" government is now forced to, at least, pretend that it will investigate. My guess is: they don't want to know. It would raise enough subsidiary questions to leave a normal person panting with nausea. For instance: was China trying to soften-up the USA by disabling our economy? And soften us up… for what? Some observers who are hardly dumb or crazy think that China wants to reduce the USA to a vassal nation that can only supply China with food, oil, and other resources.
Sound far-fetched? Maybe. After all, we still have that fleet of submarines armed with multiple-warhead nuclear missiles circulating around the oceans as a kind of insurance policy. But Americans have to do something to make a living, and it sure isn't going to be mass production of consumer goods, like in the old days. Meanwhile, the infrastructure of the service economy got gutted during the lockdowns — millions of businesses bankrupted, restaurants, yoga studios, concert venues, dog groomers, shops of all kinds, you name it — gone, and a lot of the people who took livelihoods from all that are financially ruined for good.
What's left? Health care and pharma, two odious rackets preying on the psychological weakness of people so beaten down by adversity that they can only console themselves with junk food, liquor, sexual debauchery, and drugs, and then must beg the health care system to fix them — after which it squashes them to death with outlandish charges for services rendered? Or government, another reprehensible racket, seeking desperately now to control its citizens' every move while everything it does is not only running wildly out of control, but via the most idiotic, suicidal policies — such as throwing the border with Mexico wide open to all comers, while it pays Americans to not work.
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