November 15th, 2020 • 3h 12m
Shownotes
Every new episode of No Agenda is accompanied by a comprehensive list of shownotes curated by Adam while preparing for the show. Clips played by the hosts during the show can also be found here.
Planedemic
How they'll fake the success of the COVID vaccine Jon Rappoport's Blog
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 13:38
by Jon Rappoport
November 13, 2020
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I've described how the major clinical trials of the COVID vaccine are designed to prevent nothing more than a cough, or chills and fever [1] [2].
The whole plan to gain FDA approval of the vaccine is a stark fraud.
Now let's move on to the next con: how to make it seem the vaccine is a roaring success.
Brief background: My readers know I've presented a complete case to show the SARS-CoV-2 virus was never proved to exist in the first place [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]. So the whole idea of a vaccine is a non-sequitur, an absurdity. Likewise, the PCR test for ''the virus'' is a fraud on several levels [11]:
For example, the number of ''cycles'' for which the test is set is a key factor. Each cycle is a huge amplification of the tissue sample taken from the patient.
When you blow up that tissue sample above 34 cycles, you get gigantic numbers of false-positive results, even by the standards of the test. Fauci has admitted it. I've pointed out that FDA guidelines nevertheless recommend doing the test at up to 40 cycles. This alone explains reports of ''rising COVID case numbers.''
Let's say Pfizer and then Moderna win FDA approval to release their vaccines in the US. With the military doing the logistics of shipping, millions of doses move out, and soon, an extraordinary number of Americans are lining up to take the shot.
After a suitable period of time, the elite medical planners will change the way the PCR test is done. The number of cycles will be drastically reduced. That order will go out to labs in the US.
What does this mean? It means that far fewer positive test results will occur.
Therefore, the trend of ''new COVID cases'' will stop rising. It will level off, and then it will fall.
This rigging will be heralded as proof that that vaccine is producing a victory over the virus.
There is another strategy: change the definition of ''a case of COVID.'' Make the new definition, in terms of clinical symptoms, more restrictive. Something like this would do the trick: ''The patient must exhibit a body temperature of at least 100 for 48 consecutive hours.''
That will automatically cause a significant drop in the number of cases. The drop will be attributed to the salutary effect of the vaccine.
For purposes of lockdowns and general clampdowns [12], to promote more fear and punish areas where the economy is ''too open,'' a reverse-technique can be applied:
Make PCR tests adjust their cycles UPWARD, thus producing huge numbers of positive results and ''new cases.''
''Well, in South Dakota, we have to mandate at least 100,000 more vaccinations in each of the following 'hot spots,' where case numbers have suddenly escalated. And we must lock down those areas immediately'...''
Needless to say, any and all serious harm and death caused by the vaccine anywhere will be attributed to ''the pandemic disease.''
And there you have it. Simple, brutal, criminal, and controlled from the federal level. A strategy for making it seem the COVID vaccine is effective, and saved the day.
Here is a backgrounder I wrote on the subject of COVID vaccine fraud:
Making a vaccine look like it's a champion isn't difficult for public health agencies. There are a number of strategies.
Of course, these fraudulent strategies would be serious crimes. But when has that stopped the CDC or the World Health Organization?
In no particular order'---
ONE: Rework the definition of a ''COVID case.'' Presently, the CDC absurdly allows doctors to diagnose a person with COVID who has a cough, or chills and fever, and lives in an area where cases are being claimed. No test necessary.
So change this practice, once the vaccine is approved. Demand testing for a diagnosis. State that cough alone is not enough. Chills and fever must also be present. Require fever to be above 100.
These and other changes would automatically shrink the number of cases. The drop in numbers would be attributed to the vaccine.
This ''definitional shrinking'' was, in fact, deployed in the 1950s, after the introduction of the polio vaccine.
TWO: Order a change in the way the PCR diagnostic test is done. The practice of amplifying the original test sample from the patient occurs in cycles, or jumps. The greater the number of cycles, the more likely the test will result in a COVID diagnosis. Therefore, order a reduced number of cycles for all testing labs.
Outcome? Fewer COVID diagnoses. Fewer case numbers. ''The vaccine is working.''
THREE: Quietly restrict the present hospital practice of arbitrarily writing ''COVID'' on patient case and death files.
FOUR: Cook up and publish false studies showing more and more people are developing immunity to the virus. Attribute this to the vaccine.
FIVE: Another type of false study'--''the transmission of the virus from person to person is slowing, thanks to the vaccine.''
SIX: Pump up the success of issuing Immunity certificates after vaccination. ''People are feeling safer now. More businesses are reopening'...''
SEVEN: Using the compliant press, simply issue bald declarations that the vaccine is a success.
EIGHT: Hide the many instances of injury and death from the vaccine. When necessary, claim COVID was the cause.
NINE: Warn that the wonderful vaccine-derived immunity is not permanent, and frequent booster shots are necessary.
TEN: Rework the definition of ''vaccine-acquired immunity.'' Even a very weak antibody response from the shot would qualify as ''protective immunity.''
ELEVEN: Huge numbers of people with ordinary flu-like illness, pneumonia, and other traditional lung infections are being called ''COVID.'' Change this practice. Go back to calling many of these people ''flu,'' ''pneumonia,'' etc. COVID case numbers will drop. Claim the drop is the effect of the vaccine.
TWELVE: Presently, millions of so-called COVID cases have ''co-morbidities.'' These are prior serious health conditions which are, in fact, the true causes of illnesses and death. Of course, this is denied. But after the vaccine is introduced'... scale back the practice of counting all these ill and deceased co-morbid patients as ''COVID.'' Case and death numbers will drop. Claim the vaccine is the reason.
THIRTEEN: After the vaccine is introduced, slow down testing for a brief period. This will automatically reduce the rate of new cases. Attribute the decline to the vaccine.
Committing these crimes are a walk in the park for public health agencies.
And appointing official mouthpieces to carry lies to the public is as easy as training little Faucis to sit up and bark.
SOURCES:
[1] https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/11/11/covid-vaccine-revelation-sinks-like-a-stone-disappears/
[2] https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/09/24/covid-vaccine-clinical-trials-doomed-to-fail-fatal-design-flaw/
~
[3] https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/10/08/the-smoking-gun-where-is-the-coronavirus-the-cdc-says-it-isnt-available/
[4] https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/10/09/covid-the-virus-that-isnt-there-the-root-fraud-exposed/
[5] https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/10/12/the-fake-coronavirus-and-the-missing-study-the-secret-in-plain-sight/
[6] https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/10/13/yet-another-case-of-the-missing-virus-they-lied-and-locked-down-the-world/
[7] https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/10/15/if-the-virus-isnt-there-why-do-they-believe-it-is/
[8] http://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/10/19/dr-tom-cowan-explores-the-covid-virus-invented-out-of-sheer-nonsense/
[9] https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/10/22/the-virus-that-isnt-there-genetic-sequencing-and-the-magic-trick/
[10] https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/10/26/the-missing-virus-answering-critics-objections/
~
[11] https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/11/06/smoking-gun-fauci-states-covid-test-has-fatal-flaw/
[12] https://www.rt.com/usa/506308-biden-covid19-advisor-lockdown/
(To read about Jon's mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here .)
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED , EXIT FROM THE MATRIX , and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX , Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here .
PCR
Dumb ER Doctor PCR
Dear John and Adam,
PCR testing for COVID has been well covered on the show, but I wanted to add my two cents as a dumb ER doc in California making decisions from these tests everyday
My hospital switched to the Cepheid Xpert Xpress SARS-CoV-2/Influenza Real-Time PCR test two weeks ago. It uses a nasal swab for sampling, and the test uses the Cepheid GeneXpert® Xpress Machine andstandardized cartridges that the test sample and reagents are loaded into. The cartridge is placed in the machine, and it runs for up to 35 minutes, and goes through a max of 40 thermal cycles (OMG!!). The test will stop early if a certain threshold is reached
The protocols are pre-determined by Cepheid, and the machine reads the cartridge QR code to know what protocol to run. Lab techs have no control over the protocol
Cepheid's Emergency use Authorization from the FDA has data from their validation study, which used an extremely small sample size of 90 patients to get the EUA
The test is advertised as 97.8% Sensitive and 95.6% Specific. Of the 90 people in their study, 46 tested positive for SARS-COV-2 and of those positive tests, 2 were false positives.
On the face of it, this test looks great and is very sensitive and specific. The marketing people will play up those numbers like crazy when advertising to doctors and hospitals and health officials
However; if we apply Baye's Theorem (as true badass), which you can think of as adding common sense and critical thinking to interpreting these tests by adding prior knowledge, we can get a better idea if the test is useful and when to use it
Pharmaceutical and Diagnostic companies love to ignore Baye's Theorem; because it usually shows how bad their products are when not used in the right population
Consider 3 different clinical situations where I, the Doctor, estimate different prevalence of disease beforeI order the test:
Scenario #1 - An elderly person from a nursing home comes into the ER super sick looking, fevers, crappy sounding lungs, very low oxygen levels awful looking xray. I estimate a 90% prevalence of COVID in this patient population
This gives a Positive Predictive Value of 99.5%. Meaning a positive test has a 99.5% chance of being a true positive, very good! It also gives a negative predictive value of 82%, meaning a negative test has an 82% chance of being truly negative
Scenario #2 - A young healthy 20-something comes in with COVID like symptoms such as fevers, cough, diarrhea. I estimate a 30% prevalence of COVID in this of patient population
This gives a Positive Predictive Value of 90%. Meaning a positive test has a 90% chance of being a true positive, not bad. This also gives a negative predictive value of 99%, meaning a negative test has 99% chance of being truly negative for COVID
Scenario #3 - The worst case scenario, consider randomly testing people in California, with a published prevalence of 17.1 cases per 100,000 people over the last 7 days, or 0.017% of the people in California have COVID currently.
This gives a Positive Predictive Value of 0.37%. Meaning any positive test only has a 0.37% chance of being a true positive, beyond awful. This also gives a negative predictive value of 100%, meaning a negative test has 100% chance of being truly negative for COVID
The utility of this test is determined by the prevalence of disease in the population being tested, and has little to do with the actual sensitivity or specificity of the test. Diagnostic companies almost never advertise these simple calculations; because it exposes how terrible the test can be. Many doctors know about this, but they almost never use this knowledge in clinical practice. Just too busy to consider it
It's not that RT-PCR tests are bad, it's that they need to be appropriately applied, and scaring healthy people without any symptoms to go take the test will only result in a huge number of false positives!
These tests should only be used to rule out COVID in low prevalence populations, and to rule in COVIDfor high prevalence populations.
Positive tests in extremely low prevalence general populations should not be published as cases, they have no real meaning!
THAT'S WHAT THE SCIENCE SAYS, LISTEN TO THE SCIENCE!!!!
Just my two cents
Sean Wilkie, MD
P.S.
If I had to guess, the false positives come from two main sources.
1) Contamination at the testing site or in the lab. Running 1.5 million tests a day in the US, and keeping high quality sampling and lab standards has to be difficult to impossible for many labs
2) Random viral particles trapped in the nose of people who will never get sick.
Running 40 cycles on the Cepheid is going to pick up even the tiniest contamination. Cepheid validated this test in a group of people with 50% prevalence of COVID, and surely used the best sampling and lab practices. I'd venture to guess that in actual practice, the actual Positive Predictive Value for this test in any situation is significantly worse.
Erykah Badu Shares Unusual COVID-19 Test Results: 'Left Nostril Positive, Right Nostril Negative'
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 23:50
Erykah Badu is a little confused by her results from a recent COVID-19 test.
On Friday (Nov. 13), the Grammy-winning songstress shared on social media that she was ultimately given a clean bill of health after multiple tests over 24 hours, but that previous results strangely showed she had tested both positive and negative.
"No symptoms. Was tested for COVID. Same machine. Left nostril positive. Right nostril negative," Badu tweeted. "Maybe they need to call Swiss Beats so they can do a versus between them. Funny thing is, Dr. ONLY reported the positive result. What the fack is goin on here. Rapid Test. $$$$ smh."
The "Afro Blue" singer shared a screenshot of the contradictory test results and noted that she and her band regularly take coronavirus tests prior to livestream broadcasts.
"What an inconvenience to be tested positive then negative 3x after within 24 hours. Same test. We understand that they aren't 100% accurate but this is strange," she tweeted.
Badu isn't the only celebrity experiencing unusual COVID test results. Earlier in the day, Elon Musk tweeted that he went through the same ordeal.
''Something extremely bogus is going on,'' the Tesla and SpaceX founder wrote. ''Was tested for covid four times today. Two tests came back negative, two came back positive. Same machine, same test, same nurse. Rapid antigen test from BD.''
Check out Badu's tweets below.
Iggy Azalea Apologizes to Erykah Badu, Invites Her Daughter To Show
Let Us Out
WA Gov. Jay Inslee to reinstate COVID-19 restrictions | Crosscut
Sun, 15 Nov 2020 13:10
The new restrictions, which were revealed in a memo from the Washington Food Industry Association, also restrict grocery store capacity to 25%, a limit that was not seen in the previous stay-home orders issued in March.
Inslee is expected to announce the new restrictions at a press conference Sunday morning.
Outdoor service at restaurants and bars will also be curtailed; it will be limited to five people, according to the industry association's memo.
The 25% occupancy limit for retail stores will apply to all types of retail businesses, including grocery stores and convenience stores. Employees won't be part of the calculation.
The new rules come after Inslee held a press conference earlier this week urging Washingtonians to stay home for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday to prevent further spread of the virus. On Thursday, Inslee joined the governors of Oregon and California in issuing a travel advisory recommending that anyone traveling across state lines quarantine for 14 days.
These travel recommendations are also more strict and specific than the original stay-home order from last spring.
''COVID-19 cases have doubled in Washington over the past two weeks,'' Inslee said in a press release Thursday. ''This puts our state in as dangerous a position today as we were in March. Limiting and reducing travel is one way to reduce further spread of the disease.''
In March, after the first cases of coronavirus in the United States were identified in Washington state, Inslee also put many private businesses in the state on hold, from construction companies to dental offices. That work has slowly reopened over the spring and summer. It was not immediately known how far this new round of restrictions will go.
The Washington State Department of Health on Friday reported 2,147 new cases of COVID-19, the highest daily case count since the pandemic began. Health officials noted that two weeks earlier they announced 1,000 cases in one day, evidence of the rapid spread of the pandemic in Washington state.
Also on Sunday, Inslee is expected to announce new guidance surrounding mask-wearing, according to the memo sent to members of the Washington Food Industry Association.
Tara Lee, a spokesperson for Inslee, didn't provide more detail in an email Saturday night.
"...I am not disputing it but more information will be coming tomorrow," Lee wrote.
This post was updated to add a response from Gov. Inslee's office.
Crosscut Audience Engagement Manager Anne Christnovich contributed to this report.
Support for making Covid Tracer app scanning mandatory
Sun, 15 Nov 2020 13:32
A digital technology expert is backing the Government's moves to make the use of the Covid Tracer app mandatory in certain circumstances.
Ministry of Health data shows fewer than one in six of the 2.3 million registered app users are using it daily.
Minister for the Covid-19 response Chris Hipkins is looking at whether people should be required to scan in with the app at big events and in places like bars and restaurants, where physical distancing is difficult.
University of Auckland Centre for Informed Futures research fellow Andrew Chen said it was likely people had become complacent about app use, either because they believed they were at low risk of getting Covid-19, or they found the app tricky or annoying to use.
But he said total daily scans needed to get back up to the 2.5 million mark - levels seen in the midst of the Auckland August outbreak.
"That shows what is possible and we need to be getting back up to those sorts of levels to have confidence that enough of the population is covered, so if we send out an exposure notification, we have reasonable confidence that the right people will be notified of a potential exposure."
Businesses also had a role to play in ensuring their QR codes were easily accessible, Chen said.
"There have been a lot of reports that businesses have been strictly speaking complying with the requirement of displaying a QR code, but having it in a place that's annoying to get to, or is hidden or is otherwise obscured."
The app's key advantage, Chen said, was speed.
"I believe that the manual contact tracing system is good and that given enough time, we can find all of the contacts that we need to find.
"But one of the strongest factors that influences the spread of the disease is speed of response and if we can use the app, we might be able to give instructions to people who may have been exposed to Covid-19 more quickly.
"If they can isolate themselves more quickly, then they can reduce the spread of the disease and potentially save lives."
However, Chen said the Government needed to be mindful of people who were not able to use the app.
"I do think that we have to be careful in terms of understanding that not everybody can use the app and that there has to be other provisions in place for people who cannot or have very legitimate reasons for choosing not to use the app."
Hipkins has said he would be getting more advice in the next few days about how to strengthen the contact tracing system.
Text by Sarah Robson of RNZ
Oregon sex workers can apply for coronavirus relief grants - oregonlive.com
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 14:18
A protester holds up a sign during a PDX Stripper Strike event on June 24, 2020.
Nearly $600,000 in federal COVID-relief funds is available for Oregon strippers and sex workers of color who have been financially impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Anyone ''who has made income from using their or other people's sexuality to financially assist themselves'' can apply, said Cat Hollis, founder of PDX Stripper Strike and Haymarket Pole Collective, which is administering the grant. Priority will be given to Black, Indigenous and transgender applicants, those with minor dependents living in the household and those experiencing homelessness.
The funds are part of $45 million in health equity grants distributed by the Oregon Health Authority to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in tribal communities and communities of color, which have been disproportionally affected by the virus.
The grants will allow Haymarket Pole Collective to provide financial assistance to 75 people, who can receive up to $1,600 in rent assistance, $500 in utility assistance and $150 toward internet services.
Another 200 applicants will receive a wellness tote, which will include a mail-in COVID test and sexually-transmitted infection test, reusable masks, personal hygiene supplies, sanitizer products, gas and grocery gift cards, thermometers and blood oximeters.
Applications will be taken through Dec. 1, and funds will be distributed by Dec. 30.
So far, 93 people have applied for grants.
PDX Stripper Strike was founded earlier this year by strip club dancers advocating for equitable scheduling for dancers of color. It evolved into the group Haymarket Pole Collective.
''PDX Stripper Strike is the verb,'' Hollis said. ''Haymarket Pole Collective formed out of PDX Stripper Strike realizing that we needed something that would be more long-term. Our strategy is to empower workers in our industry to have advocacy and agency and safety in their workspaces.''
Hollis said the collective's goals include providing educational services, support groups and childcare for those in the adult entertainment industry.
Most strip club dancers are contractors, not employees, and aren't eligible for traditional unemployment benefits. Clubs have taken a hit during the pandemic, and Hollis said there's more competition for digital sex work as people who hadn't previously worked in adult entertainment tried their luck online.
''Not only has the industry been flooded with people looking for easy income, it had already shrunk in the number of spaces people can safely practice their work in,'' Hollis said. ''I think (sex workers) are in a hard spot, not for lack of trying.''
This was the Haymarket Pole Collective's first grant application. The YWCA of Greater Portland, which provides domestic violence services, social justice programs and other services to women and families, is serving as the fiscal agent for the grant's distribution.
Donations to PDX Stripper Strike are tax-deductible if made through the YWCA at ywcapdx.org/stripperstrike. For more information, or to apply for a grant, visit haymarketpole.com.
-- Samantha Swindler, sswindler@oregonian.com, @editorswindler
Note to readers: if you purchase something through one of our affiliate links we may earn a commission.
Florida governor drafts laws that allow people to shoot looters
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 14:22
November 11, 2020 | 9:06am | Updated November 11, 2020 | 12:41pm
Florida's governor has drafted ''anti-mob'' legislation to expand already controversial Stand Your Ground laws '-- to allow people to shoot looters, according to a report.
A draft of Gov. Ron DeSantis' proposed bill expands the list of ''forcible felonies'' under Florida's self-defense law to include criminal mischief causing ''interruption or impairment'' of a business, according to the Miami Herald, which obtained a copy through a records request.
It also specifically allows force against those looting, which the draft defines as burglary within 500 feet of a ''violent or disorderly assembly.''
DeSantis also wants to make it a third-degree felony to block traffic during a protest '-- and offer immunity to drivers who accidentally kill or injure protesters who do so, according to the Herald.
Numerous other sections enhance criminal penalties for people involved in ''violent or disorderly assemblies,'' and withholds state funds from local governments that cut law enforcement funding, the report said.
DeSantis has long threatened to introduce the ''strongest pro-law enforcement, anti-rioting, anti-looting legislation anywhere in the country'' '-- even though the Sunshine State has not been a hub of violent protests.
While a draft version of the bill was circulated to the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice, it has not been filed in either the House or Senate '-- but has already sparked outrage, the paper said.
''It allows for vigilantes to justify their actions,'' Denise Georges, a former Miami-Dade County prosecutor who had handled Stand Your Ground cases, told the paper.
''It also allows for death to be the punishment for a property crime '-- and that is cruel and unusual punishment. We cannot live in a lawless society where taking a life is done so casually and recklessly.''
Former Miami-Dade prosecutor Aubrey Webb warned that the draft was far too vague and could lead to justifiable deaths after minor infractions.
''It dangerously gives armed private citizens power to kill as they subjectively determine what constitutes 'criminal mischief' that interferes with a business,'' Webb told the Miami paper.
''Someone graffiti-ing 'Black Lives Matter' on a wall? Urinating behind a dumpster? Blocking an entrance?
''The Boston Tea Party members would have been lawfully shot under Florida's law by the British East India Tea Company,'' he said.
Civil rights attorney Melba Pearson warned that the proposals would ''have a chilling effect on free speech.''
''These are not mobs running around the street. People are using their First Amendment rights. This is a democracy,'' she told the paper.
DeSantis' office did not respond to the Herald's requests for comment.
Lockdown in Griekenland wordt grimmig: overdag geen recreatief internetgebruik meer '' De Dagelijkse Standaard
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 13:52
Het coronavirus blijft behalve longen, levens en ziekenhuisbedden ook burgerlijke vrijheden opeisen. Griekenland dreigt nu twintig jaar in de tijd te worden teruggeworpen, nu het internetgebruik van het land aan banden wordt gelegd met als doel de nationale lockdown te laten slagen.
Leuk is anders, maar de meeste Nederlanders komen er nog wel doorheen. Ondanks alle mondkapjes, gesloten kroegen, en nu zelfs de Efteling die de poorten moet sluiten. Maar als 21e eeuwse burgers hebben we altijd nog het entertainment van het wereldwijde web: Netflix, games, livestreams, YouTube en de hele digitale santenkraam. We vermaken ons wel, kunnen we wel stellen.
Hoe anders gaat dat in Griekenland, waar de regering nu vindt dat het internet niet meer gebruikt moet gaan worden tussen 09.00u en 18.00u. Dit om te zorgen dat het web niet overbelast raakt voor de hulpdiensten. Yikes:
''Het ministerie van digitaal bestuur zag de bui vrijdag al hangen. Die gaf een instructie uit om ''het vlekkeloos, ononderbroken en verantwoord functioneren van de telecommunicatienetwerken'' te garanderen. Voor de lol online gaan is tussen negen uur 's ochtends en zes uur 's middags bijvoorbeeld uit den boze.''
Deze maatregelen volgen al op de rest van de lockdown, die nog meer dan drie weken duurt. Niemand mag z'n huis verlaten, tenzij hij een sms met toestemming van de overheid krijgt.
Of dit ook in Nederland kan gebeuren, weten we niet. In ieder geval heeft ons land een veel stabieler en robuster netwerk dankzij de Amsterdam Internet Exchange, (C)(C)n van de belangrijkste internetknooppunten ter wereld, en zou tegen veel forsere stoten moeten kunnen. Hoe dan ook mogen we hopen dat dit berichtje uit Trouw niet wordt gelezen op het RIVM of door Ernst Kuipers. Je weet wel: voordat ze nog op ideen worden gebracht'...
Waardeer jij de artikelen op DagelijkseStandaard.nl? Volg ons dan op Twitter!
Lock Yourself Down, Now - The Atlantic
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 14:34
A devastating surge is here. Unless Americans act aggressively, it will get much larger, very quickly.
Zeynep Tufekci 8:32 AM ET John Moore / GettyThe end may be near for the pestilence that has haunted the world this year. Good news is arriving on almost every front: treatments, vaccines, and our understanding of this coronavirus.
Pfizer and BioNTech have announced a stunning success rate in their early Phase III vaccine trials'--if it holds up, it will be a gamechanger. Treatments have gotten better, too. A monoclonal antibody drug'--similar to what President Donald Trump and former Governor Chris Christie received'--just earned emergency-use authorization from the FDA. Dexamethasone'--a cheap, generic corticosteroid'--cut the death rate by a third for severe COVID-19 cases in a clinical trial.
Doctors and nurses have much more expertise in managing cases even in using nonmedical interventions like proning, which can improve patients' breathing capacity simply by positioning them facedown. Health-care workers are also practicing fortified infection-control protocols, including universal masking in medical settings
Our testing capacity has greatly expanded, and people are getting their results much more quickly. We may soon get cheaper, saliva-based rapid tests that people can administer on their own, itself a potential game-changer.
Read: The vaccine news that really matters
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has finally acknowledged that aerosol transmission happens and that ventilation is important. The initial bungled messaging and science around masks was unfortunate, but things have turned around; the CDC has even publicized how masks can help protect the wearer from infection, as well as lower the chances of onward transmission. The importance of clusters and super-spreading is more widely appreciated, maybe partly because of the highly publicized White House cluster, which is still simmering.
We have reasons to celebrate, but'--and you knew there was a but'--a devastating surge is now under way. And worse, we are entering this dreadful period without the kind of leadership or preparation we need, and with baseline numbers that will make it difficult to avoid a dramatic rise in hospitalizations, deaths, and potential long-term effects on survivors.
Almost every day, America is breaking new records in confirmed cases: They are up 40 percent from just one week ago. These cases are not confined to a region or a state; the whole nation is in the midst of a terrible surge. So too is much of Europe, where country after country is experiencing record numbers of cases.
This is not a ''casedemic'''--the false notion that we just have better testing and detection, without any real change in the underlying risk for illness and death. It's true that we missed a lot of cases in the spring because we didn't have enough tests, and that we are catching more of them now. But it's not just confirmed cases that are on the rise. The United States is also experiencing a steep increase in hospitalizations, as well as about 1,500 reported deaths a day; those are the highest numbers since mid-May, and they are still rising sharply. Trevor Bedford, a scientist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in Seattle, calculates that more than 2,000 deaths a day may already be baked in for early December, meaning that even if we stopped every new infection from now on, we'd still see that many people die per day in just a few weeks among those already infected.
Read: 'No one is listening to us'
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine'--or Moderna's vaccine'--may be available in the United States to health-care workers and other high-priority people as early as the end of this year. But it won't be distributed widely until well into 2021, even in the best-case scenario'--and the Pfizer vaccine needs two doses, about 21 days apart. Those promising monoclonal antibodies, too, are in very short supply. The president was one of fewer than 10 people to receive the treatment outside of a clinical trial. Even if the drug works as well as we hope, the 300,000 doses that Eli Lilly has agreed to deliver will not be enough when they finally arrive, probably toward the end of this year when we have a hundred fifty thousand positive cases per day, and still rising. Dexamethasone availability is excellent, but deaths are climbing despite its widespread use, because it helps address only one of this disease's complications.
We have little reason to count on the authorities for leadership that has the precision and scale we need. The outgoing president has refused to concede the election and has launched a flurry of frivolous lawsuits to muddy the transition, thereby making the odds of an effective federal response over the next few months less likely.
All of this means we desperately need to flatten the curve again before hospitals nationwide are overrun. Utah, Illinois, Minnesota, Colorado, and other states are already reporting that hospitals and intensive-care units are at or near capacity. The bottleneck for medical care isn't just lack of space, or even equipment, which we may be able to increase, but staff'--trained nurses and doctors who can attend to patients, and who cannot be manufactured out of thin air. During the spring crisis in the New York tri-state area, health-care workers from around the country rushed to the region, buttressing the exhausted medical workforce. With a nationwide surge, doctors and nurses are needed in their hometown hospitals.
If fewer people can be admitted to hospitals because of lack of space, patients won't benefit from our improved clinical management of COVID-19. We may give back some of our gains in the mortality rate. We may also see deaths rise from other causes: Fewer nonurgent but important surgeries, more overworked medical staff, and overburdened emergency rooms could all contribute to worsening health outcomes for many other viruses that peak in winter months, like influenza, as well other ordinary medical conditions.
This seasonality is not a huge surprise, which makes our lack of preparation even more tragic. The 1918 flu pandemic saw an earlier, milder wave in the spring; a lull in the summer; and a deadlier surge starting in the fall. Other coronaviruses endemic to us are also sharply seasonal, tending to peak in winter. This may be because the humidity and temperature conditions of fall and winter favor the virus more. It may also be because we spend more time indoors during the winter. Most likely, it's a combination, along with other factors (Less vitamin D? less light?). Whatever the causes, public-health experts knew a fall and winter wave was a high likelihood, and urged us to get ready.
But we did not.
The best way to prepare would have been to enter this phase with as few cases as possible. In exponential processes like epidemics, the baseline matters a great deal. Once the numbers are this large, it's very easy for them to get much larger, very quickly'--and they will. When we start with half a million confirmed cases a week, as we had in mid-October, it's like a runaway train. Only a few weeks later, we are already at about 1 million cases a week, with no sign of slowing down.
Americans are reporting higher numbers of contacts compared with the spring, probably because of quarantine fatigue and confusing guidance. It's hard to keep up a restricted life. But what we're facing now isn't forever.
It's time to buckle up and lock ourselves down again, and to do so with fresh vigilance. Remember: We are barely nine or 10 months into this pandemic, and we have not experienced a full-blown fall or winter season. Everything that we may have done somewhat cautiously'--and gotten away with'--in summer may carry a higher risk now, because the conditions are different and the case baseline is much higher.
Read: How we survive winter
When community transmission is this high, every kind of exposure is more dangerous. A gym class is more likely to have someone who is infectious. Workplaces will have more cases, meaning more employees will unknowingly bring the virus home. More people at the grocery store will be positive. A casual gathering of friends may be harder to hold outdoors. Even transmission from surfaces may pose a higher risk now, because lower humidity levels may improve the survivability of the virus.
Plus, the holidays are upon us, which means a spike in gatherings of people who do not otherwise see one another. Such get-togethers, especially if they are multigenerational, can spark more outbreaks. I take no joy in saying this, but all of this means that any gathering outside one's existing quarantine pod should be avoided for now'--especially if it is indoors. Think of it as a postponement and plan to hold it later. Better a late Christmas than an early medical catastrophe. Pods should not expand unless absolutely necessary. Order takeout instead of dining indoors. Make game night virtual. Shop in bulk, so you can do fewer trips to the store. It's not the right time for wedding receptions or birthday parties.
Young people present one of the biggest challenges. Many colleges are ending school and sending students home, for what could be a country-wide super-spreader event. That age group'--young adults'--is especially dangerous; while they can get infected, they are less likely to get very sick, so they don't stay put the way sick people would. That means they pose a great risk to their more vulnerable parents and other older relatives as they go about their lives. Ideally, colleges should offer the students already on campus the option to stay in the dorms over winter break, and those who live in off-campus housing should consider staying put. If they do go home, the students should quarantine for the recommended two weeks to the greatest degree possible.
It might also be time for ordinary people to consider using higher-quality masks (N95s and KN95s)'--something that public-health experts have long recommended. This is especially true for low-wage workers, a disproportionate number of whom are people of color and have to work indoors; older people, and anyone who works with them; and people with preexisting conditions that put them at higher risk. Ideally, we'd have a significant aid package, allowing businesses to remain closed and workers to stay home as much as possible, while also increasing workplace standards through better ventilation and masks. Tragically, that doesn't seem to be in the cards.
On the plus side, though, it's now possible for ordinary people to purchase higher-quality masks, which suggests that the dire shortage of Spring is over. It's still wise to avoid hoarding; most people don't need that many, and this surge will put a fresh strain on the supplies. As long as they are put on and taken off carefully (use hand sanitizer before and after), such masks are reusable after being left in a paper bag or breathable container for at least five days, which means as few as five are enough to rotate through a typical work week for people who work with others'--especially indoors.
All of this is unpleasant, but the alternative is much worse. There is a Turkish saying for times like these, when we can see a light at the end of the tunnel: ''Time passes quickly if we can count the days until the end.'' We are no longer in the open-ended, dreadful period of spring 2020, when we did not know if we'd even have a vaccine, whether any therapeutics would work, and whether we'd ever emerge from the shadow of this pandemic. We can see the cavalry coming, but until it's here, we need to lock ourselves down once again.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.
Zeynep Tufekci is a contributing writer at
The Atlantic and an associate professor at the University of North Carolina. She studies the interaction between digital technology, artificial intelligence, and society.
Masks and Muzzles
Maine's Rise in COVID-19 Cases Linked to Face Masks; The Data Shows Prolonged Face Mask Use Increases Risk of Catching Respiratory Illness
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 14:00
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Maine's Rise in COVID-19 Cases Linked to Face Masks
Gov. Mills' Face Mask Mandate Not Based on Actual Science
The Data Shows Prolonged Face Mask Use Increases Risk of Catching Respiratory Illness
By: David Deschesne
Fort Fairfield Journal, November 4, 2020
EDITOR'S NOTE: FOR SCREEN SHOTS OF THE REFERENCED DOCUMENTS CITED HEREIN, PLEASE SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE IN THE FOOTNOTE SECTION
The recent rise in COVID-19 cases in Maine could be linked to the prolonged use of face masks by the general public. Scientific data collected in randomized controlled trials over the past sixty years has shown consistently that the use of face masks to stop respiratory viruses is not only ineffective, but face masks may actually cause an increase in respiratory illnesses such as influenza and COVID-19.
Maine's governor, Janet ''Big Sister'' Mills has been mandating face masks among the public since early Spring ostensibly to stop the spread of COVID-19. However, in light of the voluminous amounts of data that were already available at the time, the move by Big Sister seems to be one based more on psychology and brainwashing than on actual, objective, empirical scientific data.
The U.S. CDC reported a meta-analysis of 10 face mask studies in the February, 2020 edition of its medical Journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases1 which concluded face masks do not work to prevent transmission of respiratory viruses.
One of the key studies cited in that CDC report was of 1607 hospital workers in Vietnam, published in the journal BMJ Open on April 22, 2015.2 The study concluded that the use of surgical masks to control viral spread (which they are not designed to do, anyway) was negligible and that the prolonged use of the iconic cloth masks, so popular in today's society, actually increased the cases of respiratory illness significantly.
Furthermore, a more recent study conducted by the US CDC's COVID-19 Response Team and published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report3 showed that there is a 20 times greater chance of catching COVID-19 with prolonged wearing of a face mask when compared to those who never wore a face mask. In that CDC study, it was found that of the 154 new cases of COVID-19, where patients had both a positive PCR test for the purported virus' RNA particle and real symptoms, around 85% reported they wore a face mask often, or always, up to fourteen days prior to symptom onset. The control group in that study also showed symptoms of some sort of respiratory illness, but had a negative COVID-19 PCR test. In that control group, 88% of the people reported often or always wearing a face mask. Around 4% of both groups reported never wearing a face mask prior to symptom onset.
This data continues to be ignored by Big Sister Mills and an establishment corporate media who simply refuses to report these facts on face masks in order to prop up a fear-based narrative that turns people into fearful slaves of the governor, rather than empowered masters of their own lives via a strong, healthy and functional immune system.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., professor at Stanford University Medical School, physician, epidemiologist, health economist and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations, said he thinks face masks should not be mandated. ''Masks have a use in certain settings where people use them properly. So, for instance, in hospital settings and places where you can't avoid being in very, very close contact with people that are vulnerable,'' said Dr. Bhattacharya. ''Mask mandates, like I've heard some politicians propose, are not supported by the scientific data. For instance, there is no randomized evidence to suggest mask mandates would work to slow the spread of the disease. In fact, for influenza the randomized studies that have been done suggest that they don't work to slow the spread of the disease.''
To be clear, Dr. Bhattacharya is admittedly not against face mask use when used properly. ''As I said, they have appropriate uses in appropriate places. We should take seriously what the scientific evidence is saying and not adopt policies that are far beyond what the scientific evidence has said.''
Most people today aren't even using face masks correctly. Face masks must be changed out after every hour of use to prevent bacterial growth from building up and being re-breathed. Nearly all people in society wear a mask into a business, then when they leave they'll hang it under their chin, stuff it in their purse or pocket, or throw it on the dashboard of their car. At the next stop, they take that dirty, contaminated mask, put it on and begin breathing through it, thinking they are ''stopping the spread'' of a virus, unaware of how their handling of the mask has made it more likely they'll catch a respiratory illness than if they had worn no mask at all.
Dr. Bhattacharya is also disturbed at the collateral damage done to society when governments irresponsibly mandate face masks when there is no scientific evidence to support that position. ''I think there are also enormous social harms caused by these mask mandates. Masks have become a political issue, a partisan issue; you wear a mask if you are a Democrat, you don't wear a mask if you are a Republican and you look on your fellow citizens and say well, you're being irresponsible or you don't care about freedom. I think public health should unite, not divide. Masks, I think, have become an issue, especially these mandates. When it turns into a political issue like this we have to think, as public health workers, very carefully whether we've actually done the right thing. I think we've done a very, very poor job with the messaging, taking the science seriously, and we've created a disunity in the populace around masks - the distrust for one another that public health is not supposed to create.''
In addition to Dr. Bhattacharya sounding the alarm on face masks, the University of Minnesota's Centers for Infectious Disease Research and Prevention (CIDRAP) also posted a commentary4 co-authored by Dr. Lisa Brosseau ScD, a national expert on respiratory protection and infectious diseases and professor (retired) at the University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC) and Dr. Margaret Sietsema, Ph D, an expert on respiratory protection and an assistant professor at UIC. They noted, ''Sweeping mask recommendations - as many have proposed - will not reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission, as evidenced by the widespread practice of wearing masks in Hubei province, China before and during its mass COVID-19 transmission experience earlier this year. Our review of relevant studies indicates that cloth masks will be ineffective at preventing SARS-CoV-2 transmission, whether worn as source control or PPE......we continue to conclude that cloth masks and face coverings are likely to have limited impact on lowering COVID-19 transmission'...''
Notes - hyperlinks with respective screen shots
1. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article
2. https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577
The next screen shot is an addendum added by the study's authors in the above link in footnote 2
3. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6936a5-H.pdf
4. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/commentary-masks-all-covid-19-not-based-sound-data
Vaccines an such
Measles Cases Reach 23-Year High, Killing More Than 200,000 - Bloomberg
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 15:54
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AJ Kay on Twitter: "More evidence re: FDA approval of Remdesivir on 10/22 affected hospitalization volume: We aquired internal #covid19 treatment protocol for a large, multi-hospital regional healthcare system: As of 11/3, Remdesivir is FIRST LINE treatme
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 19:48
AJ Kay : More evidence re: FDA approval of Remdesivir on 10/22 affected hospitalization volume: We aquired internal'... https://t.co/HlrnkbrH1r
Sat Nov 14 00:19:46 +0000 2020
Jay Turberville : @AJKayWriter @ThomasEWoods Would like to see the page 4 the document referenced. Also would like to know the hospital.
Sat Nov 14 17:53:22 +0000 2020
COVID PETS
Netherlands to cull 48,000 chickens after ANOTHER bird flu outbreak '-- RT World News
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 20:43
The Dutch government has ordered the culling of a further 48,000 chickens after an outbreak of highly infectious bird flu was detected '' the second such incident in less than a week.
Health officials said on Tuesday that an outbreak of the H5N8 strain of bird flu had been discovered at a chicken farm in the village of Lutjegast, in the northern province of Groningen.
A local transport ban on products including poultry and eggs has been placed on farms within a 10km radius of the affected site by the Minister of Agriculture and Deputy Dutch PM Carola Schouten.
It comes after the Netherlands, Europe's largest exporter of chicken meat and eggs, ordered some 215,000 chickens to be slaughtered on November 5, following a bird flu outbreak at a farm in the eastern town of Puiflijk near the German border.
Also on rt.com 215,000 chickens to be culled after bird flu detected on Dutch farm '' Ministry of Agriculture Also on Tuesday, German authorities in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein ordered that poultry there be kept indoors, after outbreaks on two farms in the region.
British health officials have meanwhile called for some 13,500 chickens to be culled in the northwestern county of Cheshire, where a bird flu outbreak was detected.
In the Netherlands, commercially farmed poultry must be kept indoors in line with the current national measures to tackle bird flu. In addition, zoos, animal sanctuaries, and bird owners are required to ''shield'' poultry and waterfowl, so the animals do not have contact with wild waterfowl or their droppings.
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Transition
Pope and Biden discuss equality, climate change and immigration
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 14:14
President-elect Joe Biden wavs as he leaves The Queen theater, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2020, in Wilmington, Del. (Credit: Carolyn Kaster/AP.)
NEW YORK '-- According to a press release for the campaign of President-elect Joe Biden, Pope Francis and Biden had a phone conversation Thursday morning where they discussed working together on issues such as equality, climate change and immigration.
''The president-elect thanked His Holiness for extending blessings and congratulations and noted his appreciation for His Holiness' leadership in promoting peace, reconciliation, and the common bonds of humanity around the world,'' the statement said.
Pope Francis hasn't publicly congratulated Biden as of Thursday afternoon. In response to a Crux question, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni confirmed that a call between Francis and Biden took place but did not comment on its contents.
Biden is set to become the second Catholic president in United States history and the first since John F. Kennedy 60 years ago. He was named president-elect by news outlets Saturday after a victory in Pennsylvania put him over the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election.
Equality, climate change and immigration were three prominent issues Biden ran on in the election. His stance in those areas had some Catholic voters calling him more pro-life than President Donald Trump, despite Biden's pro-choice stance on abortion. Those also three issues of great importance to Francis.
''The president-elect expressed his desire to work together on the basis of a shared belief in the dignity and equality of all humankind on issues such as caring for the marginalized and the poor, addressing the crisis of climate change, and welcoming and integrating immigrants and refugees into our communities,'' the statement said.
Francis and Trump met at the Vatican in 2017. The two previously had a well-documented back and forth in the media over Trump's immigration policy.
As for Biden, he was very open about the importance of his Catholic faith on the campaign trail. He ran on an idea that this election was a ''battle for the soul of the nation.'' In June, he spoke about his Catholic upbringing as a foundation of the country working towards equality in a Eulogy at George Floyd's funeral.
On the morning of the election he was spotted attending mass at St. Joseph on the Brandywine in Wilmington, Del., his hometown parish. And in his first speech to the nation as president-elect he referenced his favorite hymn ''On Eagle's Wings,'' as a message of solace for the nation.
Though the Pope hasn't come out with a public statement, many clerics in the United States congratulated Biden on becoming President-elect including Archbishop Jos(C) H. Gomez of Los Angeles and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
''We congratulate Mr. Biden and acknowledge that he joins the late President John F. Kennedy as the second United States president to profess the Catholic faith,'' he said in the statement.
The election, however, still isn't officially decided. The Trump campaign has called for recounts in a number of states, as well as filed lawsuits in some over the vote counting process. If Biden is confirmed as the next president of the United States he will be inaugurated Jan. 20, 2021.
Follow John Lavenburg on Twitter: @johnlavenburg
Verify: There is no official Office of the President Elect | wusa9.com
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 16:07
Joe Biden has an 'Office of the President-Elect' sign at his speeches. It's not an official federal office, but it is an informal one.
WASHINGTON '-- It's been almost a week since the Associated Press projected Joe Biden as the next president. But still President Donald Trump has not conceded the election.
Biden is still moving forward assembling a transition team. We've gotten a lot of questions about the presidential transition process this week.
Viewers sent us this tweet from former adviser to President Trump, and conservative commentator, Sebastian Gorka.
Beijing @JoeBiden's team really thinks you're dumb.As a former member of a real Presidential Transition Team, I assure you, there is no such thing in America as ''Office of President Elect.''
Until the Electoral College votes in December it's ALL TO PLAY FOR.
They're lying. pic.twitter.com/WDWaN7N6bQ
'-- Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) November 9, 2020In it the tweet Gorka points out the backdrop during a Joe Biden speech that reads: Office of the President-Elect and claims there is no such thing.
Question:
Is there an official Office of the President-Elect?
Answer:
No, it is an informal title used by federal agencies.
Our Sources:
Gary Nordlinger, professor of Political Science at George Washington University and a memo from the General Services Administration.
Our Process:
''As best I can tell it's a very, very nice photo backdrop that Joe Biden came up with in the last week,'' Nordlinger said of the picture.
Nordlinger explained there is not an official federal Office of the President-Elect.
However, our researchers did find a memo written this year by the General Services Administration. This is the agency that enables the presidential transition.
The memo informally refers to an 'Office of the President-Elect' to simplify the terms for the transition team of the President-Elect and Vice President-Elect.
Our researchers also found this picture from November 11, 2016.
If you look closely, President Trump himself has a similar sign that reads 'Office of the President-Elect.'
No, there is no official 'Office of the President-Elect', but it is an informal title for a transition team, and Joe Biden isn't first to use the title.
Download the brand new WUSA9 app here.
Sign up for the Get Up DC newsletter: Your forecast. Your commute. Your news.
Trump eyes starting his own digital media empire to take on Fox News - Axios
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 16:11
President Trump has told friends he wants to start a digital media company to clobber Fox News and undermine the conservative-friendly network, sources tell Axios.
The state of play: Some Trump advisers think Fox News made a mistake with an early call (seconded by AP) of President-elect Biden's win in Arizona. That enraged Trump, and gave him something tangible to use in his attacks on the network.
"He plans to wreck Fox. No doubt about it," said a source with detailed knowledge of Trump's intentions.With loyal viewers and longtime dominance, Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch said on a Nov. 3 earnings call:
"We love competition. We have always thrived with competition. ... Fox News has been the number one network, including broadcast networks, ... from Labor Day through to Election Day."Here's Trump's plan, according to the source:
There's been lots of speculation about Trump starting a cable channel. But getting carried on cable systems would be expensive and time-consuming.Instead, Trump is considering a digital media channel that would stream online, which would be cheaper and quicker to start.Trump's digital offering would likely charge a monthly fee to MAGA fans. Many are Fox News viewers, and he'd aim to replace the network '-- and the $5.99-a-month Fox Nation streaming service, which has an 85% conversion rate from free trials to paid subscribers '-- as their top destination. Trump's database of email and cellphone contacts would be a huge head start.
Trump's lists are among the most valuable in politics '-- especially his extensive database of cellphone numbers for text messages. Axios is told Trump may use vote-count rallies to undercut Fox.
"He's going to spend a lot of time slamming Fox," the source said. Trump has increasingly complained that Fox News interviews more Democrats than it used to. He has needled the network by promoting other conservative outlets, including One America News and Newsmax.
"Fox has changed a lot," Trump said during the most recent interview he has given anywhere, with "Fox & Friends" on Election Day. "Somebody said: What's the biggest difference between this and four years ago? And I say Fox.""I'm not complaining '-- I'm just telling people," Trump added. "It's one of the biggest differences this season compared to last."
Ian Miles Cheong on Twitter: "Facebook removed Donald Trump's label as "President" and replaced it with "Political Candidate." https://t.co/uB4nIJkoQE" / Twitter
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 22:35
Ian Miles Cheong : Facebook removed Donald Trump's label as "President" and replaced it with "Political Candidate." https://t.co/uB4nIJkoQE
Fri Nov 13 22:07:40 +0000 2020
Jerome Horwitz : @stillgray This is outrageous since he is still President, whether he won or lost the 2020 election.
Fri Nov 13 22:35:01 +0000 2020
Louann ' : @stillgray @browngravy_93 Smh...
Fri Nov 13 22:33:45 +0000 2020
Teri : @stillgray @Facebook really? Your immaturity and bias is showing.
Fri Nov 13 22:33:31 +0000 2020
Prez-Elect Dave Hickey : @stillgray Petty.
Fri Nov 13 22:33:28 +0000 2020
Biden Likely to Break Barriers, Pick Woman to Lead Pentagon
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 18:38
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Biden Review Teams Include Many Former Tech Officials and Digital Service Members - Nextgov
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 20:22
If the early list of advisers is any indication, the administration of President-elect Joe Biden will be heavily influenced by technology experts who spent time in government as part of an Obama-era program that remained through the Trump administration: the U.S. Digital Service.
The Biden/Harris administration is moving ahead with transition plans, including releasing a list of agency review teams that will land at specific departments and programs to assess the current state and needs of each.
The review teams are packed full of prominent names who have spent time working on federal policies and programs, many while working at federal agencies. There are also a ton of people who worked on important technology issues outside or adjacent to the government.
For the purposes of this list, we kept it to former government employees who worked on tech issues.
The highest ranking former fed with a technology-focus is Aneesh Chopra, who served as the first U.S. chief technology officer, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009. Chopra, currently the president of health care analytics company CareJourney, is serving on the U.S. Postal Service review team.
The Biden/Harris agency review teams include a group focused solely on the U.S. Digital Service, an outfit created when Biden was vice president.This is the first time an agency review team has been specifically created for USDS, a transition spokesperson confirmed to Nextgov.
USDS originated in 2014 after the Healthcare.gov website crashed soon after going live. The service was designed to bring private sector technology experience to D.C. for short-term stints to work on really hard problems at agencies across the government.
The group remains, working on projects at several agencies, including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Small Business Administration, and has permanent offshoots established at the Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and Defense departments.
The team that will be reviewing USDS for the Biden/Harris transition includes Matt Bailey, who worked in the Office of the Federal Chief Information Officer under Trump and Obama, and Andrew Nacin, who also served under both presidents as a member of USDS from 2015 to 2018.
But there are also a ton of USDS alumni included on other review teams:
Victor Garcia of Rebellion Defense worked with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services while on the USDS team. He will be advising on the DOD review team.
Lisa Wiswell Coe will also be on the DOD team. She served with the Defense Digital Service and helped establish the Hack the Pentagon program. Coe is employed with OtherSide Consulting.
HHS is bringing back at least two former USDS members: Mina Hsiang of Devoted Health and Natalie Kates of Alloy. The two cofounded and co-directed the USDS team at HHS.
The Labor Department team includes Viv Graubard, New America's senior adviser for public interest technology and founding member of USDS. Graubard also served as chief of staff and senior adviser to the U.S. CTO.
Liyan David Chang, with Devoted Health, was a member of USDS's team at IRS. Chang will be sitting on two review teams: the Treasury Department and Small Business Administration.
Matt Collier, who worked with USDS on human resources projects at DOD in 2015'--just prior to the establishment of the Defense Digital Service offshoot'--is on the review team for the government's HR department: the Office of Personnel Management. Collier is a senior director at Prudential.
The Social Security Administration review team includes USDS-alumni David Holmes of Rebellion Defense and Raphael Majma of Alloy. Holmes served as USDS director of engineering under both Obama and Trump. During the Obama administration, Majma served in a number of roles, including stints with USDS'--including serving as director of the State Department Digital Service'--as well as the Presidential Innovation Fellows, a senior adviser to the U.S. CTO, and as a product manager with 18F, an internal tech consultancy based out of the General Services Administration.
Like USDS, 18F also brings private sector tech experts into government for short terms. Along with Majma, other former 18Fers include Chris Goranson, currently with the Carnegie Mellon University Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, joins the Interior Department review team. While at 18F, Goranson worked on projects at Interior, as well as NASA, the National Science Foundation, Commerce Department, U.S. Forest Service, Navy and USAID.
A number of former agency chief information officers are coming back to advise on the transition.
Ashwin Vasan of Sophant previously served as CIO at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from 2013 to 2016. Vasan will be returning to advise with the CFPB review team.
Ann Dunkin of Dell Technologies has joined the review team for her former department, the Environmental Protection Agency, where she served as CIO from 2014 to 2017.
The Office of Management and Budget team includes another Obama-era CIO: Mark Schwartz, who works at Amazon Web Services but formerly led IT operations at USCIS.
Michael Hornsby, director of customer success at Salesforce, is on the team landing at the General Services Administration. Prior to joining Salesforce, Hornsby spent nearly eight years serving in various technology-related positions in the White House, including serving as acting CIO for the Executive Office of the President.
The National Security Council landing team includes another former White House IT manager, Austin Lin, who served in several positions in the Obama White House, including associate director for operations, senior technical program manager and deputy director of IT.
Lin is joined on the NSC team by Nicole Wong, deputy U.S. CTO under Obama. Wong joins the transition on two review teams: the NSC and the Office of Science and Technology Policy, where the U.S. CTO serves as deputy administrator.
OSTP's team is stacked with a number of tech experts. Former tech-focused government employees include Wong; Cristin Dorgelo, who served with OSTP from 2012 to 2017 and worked on Challenge.gov; Kei Koizumi, chief adviser on science, technology and research and development budgets for eight years; and Erin Szulman, co-developer of the National Strategic Computing Initiative.
Kate Gage of The Movement Cooperative is returning to her roots with the International Development landing team, which will review the Millennium Challenge Corporation, Peace Corps, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation and USAID. Gage served at USAID during the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak. She later served as a senior policy adviser for international science and technology at the White House from 2016 to 2017.
The Defense Department review team is stocking up on former Pentagon techies, including Michelle Howard, who teaches at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Among her many credentials, Howard holds the distinction of being the first woman to achieve a four-star rank in the Navy and the first Black woman to captain a ship. During her time in the military, Howard also served as vice chief naval officer, focused on cyber culture and information security.
Andrew Hunter, director of the Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is also on the DOD team. Hunter worked under Obama's last defense secretary, Ash Carter, serving as a senior executive covering acquisition, technology and logistics.
The Justice Department is bringing back the FBI's former lead data strategist, Afua Bruce, who also served in OSTP. Bruce is the chief program officer at DataKind.
Another OSTP alumnus, Austin Brown, is on the Transportation Department review team. Brown served as OSTP assistant director for clean energy and transportation in the Obama administration.
And the intelligence community is seeing the return of some familiar faces. Retired Lt. Gen. Vince Stewart is on that review team, bringing his experience as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, commanding general of Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command and deputy director of U.S. Cyber Command.
Stewart is joined by Natalie Evans Harris, currently with Brighthive and a former adviser to the U.S. CTO under Obama, and Sean Roche, who served as the CIA's associate deputy director for digital innovation.
This article was updated with comment from the Biden transition team.
Heather Kuldell, Mila Jasper, Brandi Vincent, Mariam Baksh and Frank Konkel contributed to this report.
Here's Why The Same Jeeps Showed Up To All Of Joe Biden's Speeches
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 20:59
Photo: Win McNamee (Getty Images) President-elect Joe Biden gave his victory speech accepting the United States presidency last night, and after a week of uncertainty, plenty of folks started noticing something: the exact same vehicles appeared in the front row at every one of the drive-in rallies. Here's why.
The answer is actually really simple: the Biden crew got their hands on Jeep Gladiators, Jeep Wranglers, Ford Rangers, and Chevy Silverados in alternating red, white, and blue colors before decking them out with Biden-Harris d(C)cor. They were the same cars because they were reserved for family and friends, Buzzfeed reports.
''They had the clean and perfect look of new rental cars, windows darkened, paint gleaming in the sun,'' Buzzfeed writes. ''In the style of a tailgate, aides had placed a pair of blue folding chairs in the back of each truck.''
WTOL, a local news station in Toledo, Ohio, verified the same thing .
Basically, that front row of Jeeps and trucks served as a way to reserve that front row for the people close to the Biden campaign. Yes, they were placed there. No, they were not the cars of everyday citizens turning up to watch the speech. Yes, they were props. No, it isn't a big scandal.
G/O Media may get a commission
But it's a pretty normal situation for speeches, especially in these situations. Family and friends get the front row. In an era of social distancing, setting up a handful of Jeeps, Fords, and Chevys was an easy way to highlight the automotive industry, provide space for loved ones, and stick with the drive-in theme of the day. And, considering the UAW did endorse Biden, it makes sense that its cars would take center stage.
But because this is 2020, there are already conspiracy theories floating around about how it's all a setup, some underground Jeep sponsorship that indicates... I don't know. The fact that all elites are in cahoots together? The fact that no actual, real people support Biden? That America is a dystopian nightmare? That it's staged?
Of course it's staged. It's political theater. Politics'--especially American politics'--is all about posturing, making statements and impressions. It's not a scandal. It's just the way we've functioned in America ever since we realized that politics makes good TV. It's not much deeper than that.
How Trump's Voter Fraud War Room Became a Fart-Infused 'Room From Hell'
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 12:42
On Friday, the remnants of Donald Trump's failed re-election campaign informed staff that they were putting an end to ''voter fraud'' hotline duty. It meant the death of a bare, depressing communal office space tucked away on a floor of the Team Trump headquarters in Arlington, Virginia; a workspace that one senior Trump campaign official described to The Daily Beast simply as ''the room from hell.''
For the past few days, as the president's political lieutenants and attorneys have hunted for nonexistent evidence of a massive voter-fraud conspiracy that'--they would then argue'--tilted the 2020 election to President-elect Joe Biden, campaign brass have assigned mid-level and junior staffers to man the in-house phone and email hotline recently set up to field tips. The ''room from hell'' had some TVs, on which staffers could pass the time by watching sports or cable news. The office space was lined with phones and swivel desk-chairs, where a dozen or more aides could field calls at the same time.
When the room first opened for business, staffers worked in rotating shifts, from 7 a.m. ET to 1 a.m. the following day, a source with knowledge of the matter said. No complimentary food was regularly provided. And the phones were constantly ringing in the dreary, dull hell-space, like a scene out of the movie Boiler Room.
But unlike Boiler Room, the day there was filled with a far greater number of death threats and infinitely more farting sounds on the telephone lines.
According to three people familiar with the situation, the hotline was inundated for nearly a week by crank callers impersonating public figures such as Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, anti-Trump callers launching into vulgarity-laden tirades, pranksters making sounds of flatulence, and others issuing threats of physical violence at the lower- and mid-level Trump 2020 staffers.
For every three or four hours of threats and pranking endured, staff estimated that they'd get roughly one caller with an earnest, maybe-promising tip. This was done against the backdrop of a re-election campaign that virtually all of them knew was over and defeated. The search for ''FRAUD,'' they knew, would not actually stop Biden's presidency from commencing.
After hours stuck on tip-line duty, staff would often leave looking visibly upset, worn out, and feeling undervalued. One staffer told The Daily Beast they had to go to the bathroom at least twice over the last few days just to cry because of the sheer volume of abusive phone calls.
''It's misery. It's one of the worst ways to end a campaign that you could think of,'' this person said. Some staff had started getting aggressive with the prank callers, giving fake names and arguing or yelling back into the landline.
Though these Trump campaign hands exhaled a heavy sigh of relief on Friday as news trickled out that the telephone tip-line would cease operations, the emotional damage had already been done, the insult layered thickly on top of injury.
The fiasco of Team Trump's hotline was a perfect microcosm of the ongoing flailing of the president and his senior officials' efforts to play make-believe that Trump had actually won the election. An effort to obstruct and delay the presidential transition process following a decisive Biden victory in both the popular vote and the Electoral College count has been plagued from the start by an utter lack of seriousness.
The hotline, and what came with it, also represented a fitting coda to President Trump's unsuccessful bid for a second term, during which a candidate famous for refusing to return the loyalty that he demands from his underlings left numerous staffers who've devoted years of their lives to his cause to fend for themselves, as he works to construct an alternate reality.
Some Team Trump staff have talked amongst themselves about filing for unemployment next week, as many contracts were set to expire on Nov. 15 and the campaign undergoes downsizing. Senior officials offered scant guidance about what was coming next, though the human resources department did tell them that many of their campaign emails would soon be shut off. And in keeping with Trump's delusion of an imminent second term, the situation froze several more senior officials from even offering themselves up as listed references to junior staff scrambling to find another job for fear that they'd get in trouble for aiding with some informal transition.
Earlier this week, CNN reported that an assistant to Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien had yelled at a staff member for printing a r(C)sum(C) at the campaign HQ.
''Instead of throwing staff a life line they're tying anchors to their feet as they begin to navigate the murky waters associated with massive job turnover throughout Washington, D.C.'' one of the sources said.
However, on Friday night, Jason Miller, a senior Trump adviser on the campaign, told The Daily Beast, ''We also asked for everyone's r(C)sum(C)s for potential future endeavors.'' And Tim Murtaugh, the Trump 2020 communications director, told The Daily Beast that the campaign, while downsizing because it had shifted into ''a legal and recount fight'' was ''retaining appropriate staff to see the post-election process through to the president's victory.''
As for the hotline, Murtaugh confirmed that there was ''verbal abuse'' that often included ''very sexually graphic language'... including physical threats and death threats.''
''That our staffers were able to withstand this in order to hear from voters who had real concerns about the security of the election is a testament to their dedication to the president and his re-election,'' he added.
On Friday morning, an email did go out from top staff to others on the team thanking them for their ''sacrifices'' and calling everyone aboard Team Trump a ''family.'' The email, which was obtained by The Daily Beast, was signed by senior officials Bill Stepien, Justin Clark, Miller, and Stephanie Alexander.
''[W]e want each of you to know how much we have appreciated your hard work and dedication to President Trump,'' the note read. ''Each member of this team has made sacrifices in order to participate in this re-election effort, and that will not be forgotten. We also realize today is the last day in the office for many of you, and we want to make sure you are aware that we are here to help you chart out the next phase of your career. We get it. We too have been there before and know how it feels.''
In addition to the email, two senior staffers said that they personally made themselves available to underlings as professional references and offered help in future endeavors.
But one of the three sources described the email and the outreach as ''too little too late.''
In recent days, Trump officials had also asked campaign subordinates if they'd be interested in being uprooted to key states such as Nevada and Pennsylvania to assist with the legal challenges and public-relations blitzes that prominent Trump advisers and lawyers have been waging to attack the legitimacy of the election. Several aides have immediately declined the offer of such a transfer, assuming the work would be short-lived, pointless, and yet another obstacle to staffers getting on with their lives.
Through all of this, their candidate has seemed unaware of, or uninterested in, the plight of his foot soldiers. So far, according to knowledgeable sources, there has been no conference call or memo from President Trump thanking staffers for their service and for committing themselves to the fight.
Trump's new defense secretary signals troop drawdown ahead: 'All wars must end' - Chicago Tribune
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 15:18
WASHINGTON '-- President Donald Trump's new defense secretary signaled to the military in a late Friday message that he may be there to carry out one of the president's early campaign promises, an overseas drawdown of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
''This is the critical phase in which we transition our efforts from a leadership to supporting role,'' acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller said in a memo obtained by McClatchy. ''We are not a people of perpetual war '-- it is the antithesis of everything for which we stand and for which our ancestors fought. All wars must end.''
Trump in a tweet Monday had announced Miller as the replacement for fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
In the memo to the Defense Department workforce, Miller described at length the respect he has for the institution and the sacrifices made by thousands of men and women who have deployed to the Middle East since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He said, ''ending wars requires compromise and partnership. We met the challenge; we gave it our all. Now, it's time to come home.''
It was the first indication of what direction the Pentagon may take in Trump's final weeks in office, the uncertainty of which has raised concerns among career defense officials and the incoming Biden administration about what the changes mean '-- whether he is rewarding loyalists or trying to force through policies the department has resisted over the last four years.
Top Biden transition officials said that postelection upheaval at the Defense Department, Trump's firing of Esper and the resignations of top defense policy and intelligence chiefs that followed, amount to a final push to politicize the military.
The firings and resignations come amid Trump's refusal to acknowledge his electoral defeat and authorize the federal government to begin preparing for a transition of power to President-elect Joe Biden. The defense officials and Biden's team said that gap could increase security risks for the country.
''In the 9-11 Commission report, one of the things they talked about was the impact of the delay of the transition period on our national security,'' Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for the Biden transition team, told reporters on a call Friday.
''Of course it's of concern to see the upheaval. It should be of concern to anybody because there shouldn't be a politicization of the military,'' said Psaki, who previously served in the Obama administration.
The firing and quick replacement of Esper had worried longtime defense civilian staffers, who wondered if there are major policy changes '-- such as a rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan or new counterterrorism action in the Middle East or the Sahel, or even a potential use of military forces on U.S. soil to contest the election results '-- on the horizon before the president departs.
''I don't know what the end game is,'' said one current defense official who worked with policy staff members at the Office of the Secretary of Defense during Trump's time in office. ''For me that's probably the most difficult thing to try and figure out. The instability and uncertainty complicates things.''
''They aren't letting us talk about transition,'' another current defense official said.
A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on the changes.
''It's helpful to decapitate the senior civilian leadership at the Pentagon in preparation of some aggressive use of the military to bolster the president's claims that he has won this election,'' said one former defense official who has stayed close to the Pentagon's current uniformed senior leadership. ''That is probably the most worrisome, most extreme reason they could be making these decisions,'' the official said.
''Then the other extreme '-- which is also possible, in fact some people think it's the most likely, which is that this is just about score settling,'' the official said.
''Once you got rid of Esper the decks were cleared to get rid of these other people that didn't pass the loyalty test, and replace them with people that could use the experience over the next 70 days to pad their resume.''
In the last four years, the Pentagon has pushed back on decisions that senior military leaders hoped they could counsel the president to amend, such as the creation of the Space Force, withdrawal from Afghanistan and Syria and the use of military force to quell protests.
Each pushback has come at a cost.
Now-retired Air Force Gen. David Goldfein's public resistance to creating a Space Force, over cost and bureaucracy concerns, is widely believed to be one of the reasons Trump did not select him to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Former Defense Secretary James Mattis irked Trump by convincing him not to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in 2017, and ultimately resigned over Trump's announcement that U.S. forces in Syria would depart in late 2018.
Esper fell out of favor with Trump when he pushed back on the use of active duty forces to counter nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.
''I don't see what the legal order would be for the military to get involved in something that had to do with the elections,'' said retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Arnold Punaro, who has assisted new administrations with Senate confirmations since the late 1990s.
Withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan or Germany, where the U.S. military has thousands of troops based, is much more likely to be the reason for the recent changes, Punaro said.
''There are certain things the president can do without the Congress. One is to deploy troops, two he can bring troops home,'' Punaro said. ''Troop levels in various locations is the most logical thing he could change with most recent changes in personnel.''
Punaro, like the former defense official, also said it was more likely some of these last-minute replacements were about rewarding staff that have remained in Trump's favor.
''It really depends on the billet or the person,'' Punaro said. ''Allowing people a chance to have a significant position, for example they are bringing in some people in the chief management officer's office, a new deputy chief management officer.''
''There's some other people coming in,'' Punaro said. ''These aren't related to bring(ing) the troops home from Afghanistan or (to) settle scores. These are really positions that have been vacant where they are giving people opportunities to serve perhaps only 70 days.''
After Esper was replaced by Miller, the following changes were also made at the Defense Department:
James Anderson, acting under secretary of defense for policy, was replaced by Anthony Tata, who Trump previously sought for the position. Tata, at that time, was unable to get Senate confirmation due to inflammatory remarks he has made about Muslims and former President Barack Obama. Tata will serve as ''performing the duties of'' the under secretary role, which will result in some limits to his authorities.
Retired Navy Vice Adm. Joseph Kernan, under secretary of defense for intelligence and security, was replaced by Ezra Cohen-Watnick, an early administration hire by former national security adviser retired Air Force Gen. Michael Flynn, before Flynn was replaced by retired Army Gen. H.R. McMaster.
Esper's chief of staff, Jen Stewart, was replaced with Kash Patel, who previously worked for Rep. Devin Nunes, R- Calif., on the Senate Intelligence Committee and assisted the Republican efforts on the committee to question the credibility of FBI agents investigating Russian election interference.
Largely Out of Sight in Washington, Kamala Harris Preps for White House - The New York Times
Sun, 15 Nov 2020 12:11
Ms. Harris has barely appeared on the public radar since her acceptance speech last Saturday in Wilmington, Del., where she declared ''a new day for America.''
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in Wilmington, Del., this month. It is unclear when she might relinquish her Senate seat. Credit... Amr Alfiky/The New York Times Published Nov. 14, 2020 Updated Nov. 15, 2020, 2:26 a.m. ET WASHINGTON '-- At a chic cafe in the West End neighborhood here, a young waiter knew that the incoming vice president lived ''upstairs,'' as he noted by gesturing to an upscale condominium building overhead, but said he had not actually seen her lately.
''The Secret Service sometimes stops me from taking out the trash, though,'' he added, saying that agents closed off the building's alley when their protectee came and went from its garage.
Around the corner, two black Suburbans with federal license plates were parked by the building's entrance '-- the only visible clue to the nearby presence of the California senator and vice president-elect, Kamala Harris.
In the days since he prevailed in the election, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has made several public remarks and released summaries of his calls with foreign leaders as reporters track his every public movement. But Ms. Harris has barely appeared on the public radar since her acceptance speech last Saturday in Wilmington, Del., where she declared ''a new day for America.''
She shared a stage again with Mr. Biden in Wilmington two days later, after a coronavirus briefing they had attended together. Ms. Harris stood silently several feet away while Mr. Biden spoke, without giving remarks of her own.
It is not unprecedented for a vice president-elect to keep a low profile in an election's aftermath. ''You know, you've been fairly invisible since the election,'' the ABC News host George Stephanopoulos told Mr. Biden in an interview more than a month after his own election as Barack Obama's vice president.
Mr. Biden replied by insisting he had ''been in the room'' for every one of Mr. Obama's important transition meetings. Because of social-distancing restrictions related to the coronavirus, Ms. Harris has no such luxury, at least not in the physical sense.
After spending election week in Delaware, she has returned to the two-bedroom Washington condominium she bought after she was elected to the Senate in 2016. From there, she is in regular touch with Mr. Biden, by text message or telephone, according to aides with the Biden-Harris transition team, and with other transition officials. Ms. Harris's husband, Douglas Emhoff, also has a close relationship with the incoming first lady, Jill Biden; the two campaigned together in the race's final weeks.
One focus of her time is the quantum leap Ms. Harris is soon to make from the legislative to the executive branch. Whereas Mr. Biden will have virtually no learning curve upon returning to the White House after eight years as vice president, Ms. Harris has spent little, if any, substantive time at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. (A transition official could not immediately say when she had last visited there.)
That process is made no easier by President Trump's refusal to acknowledge the election results and authorize an official transition process in which Ms. Harris and her aides would have access to White House officials and documents. Ms. Harris has not been contacted by her departing counterpart, Vice President Mike Pence. Days after the 2016 election, Mr. Biden hosted Mr. Pence for nearly two hours at the official vice-presidential compound at the U.S. Naval Observatory. ''I told Mike, the vice president-elect, that I'm available to him 24/7,'' Mr. Biden told reporters.
Biden-Harris transition officials declined to comment.
For now, Ms. Harris remains a senator. It is unclear when she might relinquish her seat. Mr. Obama stepped down from his Senate seat days after his 2008 election, but Mr. Biden, ever the sentimentalist, hung on to his until shortly before he was sworn in as vice president the following January, telling friends he wanted to take one last oath of office for the seat he had held for decades. (Mr. Biden also said he wanted to retain his vote in case it might be needed in a lame-duck Senate session.)
Like Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris also has her own staff to build '-- another task potentially made more challenging by her relative lack of Washington experience. While Mr. Biden, after nearly 50 years in the capital, has a network of hundreds of former Senate and White House aides, Ms. Harris has a smaller circle, though she is expected to hire several familiar faces from her Senate office and her 2020 campaign.
On social media, Ms. Harris has stayed rigorously on message, posting on Twitter several times about the coronavirus and her determination to work with Mr. Biden to contain it. ''In just a few months, we will swear in a new president who is committed to getting the pandemic under control: @JoeBiden,'' she tweeted on Saturday morning.
Later in the day, Ms. Harris, who will become the first occupant of the White House who is of Indian heritage, also tweeted greetings for the beginning of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights.
Ms. Harris has ventured out in the Washington area at least once since the election. On a rainy Veterans Day, wearing bluejeans and a black raincoat, she and Mr. Emhoff dropped by Georgetown's Dog Tag Bakery, which was founded to help support veterans.
She has otherwise been out of sight at her condo building, about a mile from the White House, and twice that distance from the Naval Observatory complex she will soon call home. ''No great thing created suddenly,'' reads an inscription on the side of the building, a quote from the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus.
Mimicking a sad face, the server at the Bluestone Lane cafe on the building's ground floor said he hoped she would visit again soon.
Swamp
BOMBSHELL: The 2020 election took place under a Trump-declared "National Emergency" that set an Election Day trap for the "unauthorized accessing of election and campaign infrastructure"
Sun, 15 Nov 2020 12:09
BOMBSHELL: The 2020 election took place under a Trump-declared "National Emergency" that set an Election Day trap for the "unauthorized accessing of election and campaign infrastructure"
We have another major bombshell for you here, regarding the 2020 election. Despite the intense, malicious censorship of Big Tech, we're really becoming known for in-depth analysis and research of current events, so thank you for your support as we continue to fight for the very survival of America, our constitutional republic.This story begins with the little-known executive order signed into existence on September 12, 2018, by President Donald J. Trump. That order,
available at Whitehouse.gov, is entitled, "Executive Order on Imposing Certain Sanctions in the Event of Foreign Interference in a United States Election."In that executive order, which almost no one has covered since the day it was signed, President Trump
declares a national emergency. That emergency is still in play to this day, and the 2020 election was conducted under this state of emergency, which is a crucial point to understand what's coming next.
"Unauthorized accessing of election infrastructure"In the EO, the President also states that people and organizations located, in part, outside the United States are known to be able to, "interfere in or undermine public confidence in United States elections, including through the unauthorized accessing of election and campaign infrastructure or the covert distribution of propaganda and disinformation."If you're starting to see how this ties in to CNN, the NY Times, the Washington Post and MSNBC, you're not alone. All those organizations, as you'll soon see, have been caught under this emergency declaration of "foreign interference" in U.S. elections, aided by complicit corporations on U.S. soil.The EO further states that this foreign interference in U.S. elections, "constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States."Why is this relevant to anything we're seeing right now with the massive election fraud carried out by the Democrats and the deep state? Because
Dominion Voting Systems is a Canadian company. And Scytl is run out of Spain.That's right. Dominion is a foreign-owned company, which makes Dominion-based election theft a "foreign interference issue."Scytl, by the way, is
connected to George Soros and the Democrats, and according to TGP (see below), "Bill Gates also own stock in Scytl."
Dominion is Canadian, Scytl is from Spain; both represent "foreign interference" in US elections... with data routed through servers in GermanyAnother voting machine company called Scytl -- also widely used in US elections -- is located in Spain. As
Great Game India reports:
Days after it was revealed how 2020 US Elections were rigged by Canadian Crown Agent Dominion Voting Systems through a so-called ''glitch'', now GreatGameIndia has found involvement of another dubious foreign company in US Election meddling. The votes cast by Americans were counted by a bankrupted Spanish company Scytl in Spain. Like Dominion Voting Systems, Scytl has a long history of election fraud in various nations including injecting backdoors in its election software. The issue has prompted experts to question why the sensitive job of counting votes was outsourced to a foreign company? How could a bankrupted Spanish company count American votes in Spain? Due to such widespread fraud, the Chairman of the US Federal Election Commission Trey Trainor believes that the 2020 US Presidential Elections is illegitimate.What people are missing in all this is that Trump's 2018 executive order gives the DOJ the power
to seize all assets of individuals and companies that were complicit in aiding or covering up this foreign interference in U.S. elections.The National Emergency order specifically calls for seizure of all assets of entities that have, "directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed, or otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in a United States election."That would, of course, have to include practically every CNN fake news anchor, every Big Tech CEO, every fake news journo-terrorist from NBC News, the NY Times and the Washington Post. They are all complicit in gaslighting America and covering up the massive foreign election interference that just took place.Trump's EO further explains that asset seizures shall target people and entities which have:
...materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, any activity described in subsection (a)(i) of this section or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or (iii) to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property or interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.In other words,
the EO covers every person who has been corrupted or compromised by communist China. And that includes at least 80% of Democrat lawmakers, by our estimates, including Senators Feinstein and Schiff.
Every organization involved in the election theft and cover-up can now be seized by the US governmentBut that's not even the full extent of what's demanded by this Executive Order. In Section 8, the order explains that the term "person" also means, "a partnership, association, trust, joint venture, corporation, group, subgroup, or other organization."In other words, any media organization that assisted in covering up or assisting foreign interference in a U.S. election is specifically targeted by this Executive Order.Further in the definitions section, the EO explains:
...the term ''election infrastructure'' means information and communications technology and systems used by or on behalf of the Federal Government or a State or local government in managing the election process, including voter registration databases, voting machines, voting tabulation equipment, and equipment for the secure transmission of election results.That would include the Dominion voting systems as well as all other voting systems used in the recent election.Finally, the EO describes what it means by the term "foreign interference." It means: (emphasis added)
...any covert, fraudulent, deceptive, or unlawful actions or attempted actions of a foreign government, or of any person acting as an agent of or on behalf of a foreign government, undertaken with the purpose or effect of influencing, undermining confidence in, or altering the result or reported result of, the election, or undermining public confidence in election processes or institutions.Note the important words of "altering the result or reported result of the election." This is
exactly what Big Tech and the lying fake news media have done to America. More that merely a crime, it's
treason... and it fell right into the national emergency trap that Trump publicly announced in 2018 which now means all these corporations and organizations can have their assets seized literally overnight.In this video, Trump attorney Sidney Powell describes "staggering statistical evidence" and "staggering witness testimony" about the criminal election fraud that was carried out across America. She adds, "If you want to talk about foreign election interference, we certainly have it now." Listen:https://twitter.com/LouDobbs/status/1327379704014393344
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) says the US military just raided the server farm of Scytl in SpainLest you think this is all speculation and rumor, we now get to the part where the rubber meets the road. According to a video interview with Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX) which aired earlier today, the US military has just conducted a raid on the server farm of the now-bankrupt Scytl company in Barcelona, Spain.The Gateway Pundit, which has been at the forefront of much of the bombshell reporting of the election rigging conspiracy that took place on November 3rd, reached out to its sources to confirm the military operations in Europe, as related to gathering evidence of election theft.
Here's what TGP just reported:
The US government, once they determined that this Dominion server was involved in switching votes, then the intelligence community began a search for the server and discovered that the server was in Germany. In order to get access to that server and have it available for use in a legal manner they had to have the State Department work in tandem with the Department of Justice. They had to request that the government of Germany cooperate in allowing this seizure of this server.The appropriate documents required to affect that kind of seizure were put in place, signed off on, and it appears there was also US military support in this operation. The US military was not in the lead. But this helps explain why Esper was fired and Miller and Kash Patel were put in place '-- so that the military would not interfere with the operation in any way.By getting ahold of the server they now are going to have the direct evidence of when they were instructed to stop counting. They will also discover who gave the direction to stop counting and who initiated the algorithm that started switching votes. The CIA was completely excluded from this operation.Here's the interview with Rep. Gohmert, now on
Brighteon.com, just in case YouTube tries to memory hole this video:
The raid appears to have targeted the CIA's Frankfurt server farm operationWe also now have confirmation from WikiLeaks documents that
the CIA used a data center in Frankfurt as a remote hacking base to rig US elections.
DW.com reported:
WikiLeaks released a trove of CIA documents on Tuesday that it claimed revealed details of its secret hacking arsenal.The release included 8,761 documents that it claimed revealed details of "malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized 'zero day' exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation."The leaks purportedly revealed that a top secret CIA unit used the German city of Frankfurt am Main as the starting point for numerous hacking attacks on Europe, China and the Middle East.German daily "S¼ddeutsche Zeitung" reported the building was known to be home to a vast network of intelligence personnel including CIA agents, NSA spies, military secret service personnel, Department of Homeland Security employees and Secret Service employees. It reported the Americans had also established a dense network of outposts and shell companies in Frankfurt.It appears the CIA was using the same foreign data center to hack the US elections... and got caught. This is precisely why, as the Gateway Pundit reports, the CIA was kept completely out of the server raid operation that just took place in Germany. The raid was likely leveled against the CIA's own server farm that ran the remote Dominion hacking operation the night of the election!https://twitter.com/LLinWood/status/1327425499472293888
GOING DOWN: Big Tech, media giants, Democrat operatives and half the deep stateIt should be obvious to any informed person that everything Big Tech and the fake news media did to rig this election, then bury the Democrats' massive vote fraud operations, was a covert, fraudulent deception and unlawful action... and it was all carried out on behalf of communist nations like China and globalist operations that are located outside the United States.It's not merely that the voting system companies whose hardware and software systems rigged the election were located in Canada and Spain; we're also told that part of the CIA's rigging of the election in real-time involved data being offshored to servers located in Germany and possibly Serbia. So there are at least
three or four foreign countries involved in this election, and that doesn't even include China and Venezuela, who both had other roles in running influence operations to rig the election outcome in favor of Biden. (Funding for Dominion was also provided, it is rumored, from wealthy socialists in Venezuela.)Now, Team Trump is in the process of gathering
irrefutable evidence of criminal collusion to carry out election interference, and the cover-up trails will lead directly to Big Tech (targeted censorship and collusion with China) and the fake news left-wing media (gaslighting propaganda campaign to cover up evidence of foreign collusion).This means that in one fell swoop, President Donald J. Trump will be able to:
Arrest and seize the assets of all the top Democrats and deep state traitors who attempted to steal the 2020 election. Seize all the Big Tech corporations and left-wing media propaganda outlets that were complicit in the conspiracy. This could include seizing their domain names such as Twitter.com, YouTube.com, Facebook.com, etc. Defeat the DNC forever by revealing overwhelming evidence of widespread election fraud, which will also result in a nationwide call for a voter ID system for all future elections. Solidify his own standing as the brilliant mastermind President of the USA for a second term (and perhaps a third, we dare say).Never bet against the Donald.
RECOUNTS no longer matter; the certification of votes is now irrelevantThe action plan to achieve all this is under way as you read this. Team Trump already has the full transaction logs of Dominion Voting Systems election alterations, and with raids taking place in Europe, more evidence of foreign interference is being secured.Importantly, this enormous cache of vote fraud evidence will be more than sufficient for President Trump to present this evidence to the American people, then
declare an illegal insurrection attempt against the United States of America while deploying US Marshals or military police to arrest the treasonous actors in the United States who attempted to carry out this elaborate criminal fraud. No wonder John Brennan appears to be crapping himself every time he appears on live television. Once Trump's plan is fully activated, people like Brennan will need a lifetime supply of Depends.Once all the evidence is compiled and presented, President Trump merely needs to declare the entire election to be
null and void as an artifact of a failed foreign coup attempt against the United States, aided by treasonous operators inside the Democrat party and certain dark corners of the intelligence community (CIA, FBI, etc.).As an immutable legal principle, any party that engages in a social contract (such as an election) and then
cheats to try to unfairly "win" that contract, is
disqualified by default. You cannot win an election by stealing it. There is overwhelming legal precedent for this in court decisions from both SCOTUS and Federal district courts. The recounts are irrelevant. The "certification" of the fraudulent votes is just theater. None of that matters once the overwhelming fraudulent nature of the entire operation is documented and revealed to all.
We've already wonTrump has already won this election. The treasonous enemies of America have already been caught. They will face criminal charges by the thousands as all this plays out, unless they flee the country first. And the DOJ is about to drop the hammer on the entire operation.The American people are with Trump -- including many Democrats who are now sickened by what they witnessed take place with wholesale left-wing election theft.
Americans will not allow their country to be stolen by foreign interests, and as we've mentioned before, if Trump needs to call up every able-bodied man in America to converge on Washington D.C. fully armed with courage,
millions of patriots will arrive to defend this constitutional republic against its enemies, both foreign and domestic.Trump no longer needs to win recounts, and he certainly doesn't need the media on his side. They won't be around much longer anyway. All Trump needs is to continue gathering evidence, prepare to present it to the world, and continue to garner support from millions of Americans who are ready to lay their lives on the line, if necessary, to defend this nation.
We win if we choose to win.The only way we lose is if we surrender to the criminals on the Left.And the word "concede" isn't even in my vocabulary. Nor will Alex Jones, Owen Shroyer, Steve Bannon, Jim Hoft, Rudy Giuliani or any other patriot surrender to these left-wing criminals and tyrants.I cover a few additional details on all this in my Nov. 13th Daily News Update:
Keep reading
NaturalNews.com for more analysis in the days ahead... this is
history in the making, hour by hour, day by day. You are a living witness to one of the most epic political genius "4D chess" moves in human history. Grab some popcorn and join the pro-Trump rallies in the mean time. Victory is coming.
Outgoing Syria Envoy Admits Hiding US Troop Numbers; Praises Trump's Mideast Record - Defense One
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 15:25
By Katie Bo Williams
Senior National Security Correspondent
November 12, 2020 06:26 PM ET
Middle East Syria ISIS White House Pentagon Iraq Four years after signing the now-infamous ''Never Trump'' letter condemning then-presidential candidate Donald Trump as a danger to America, retiring diplomat Jim Jeffrey is recommending that the incoming Biden administration stick with Trump's foreign policy in the Middle East.
But even as he praises the president's support of what he describes as a successful ''realpolitik'' approach to the region, he acknowledges that his team routinely misled senior leaders about troop levels in Syria.
''We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,'' Jeffrey said in an interview. The actual number of troops in northeast Syria is ''a lot more than'' the roughly two hundred troops Trump initially agreed to leave there in 2019.
Trump's abruptly-announced withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria remains perhaps the single-most controversial foreign policy move during his first years in office, and for Jeffrey, ''the most controversial thing in my fifty years in government.'' The order, first handed down in December 2018, led to the resignation of former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. It catapulted Jeffrey, then Trump's special envoy for Syria, into the role of special envoy in the counter-ISIS fight when it sparked the protest resignation of his predecessor, Brett McGurk.
For Jeffrey, the incident was far less cut-and-dry '-- but it is ultimately a success story that ended with U.S. troops still operating in Syria, denying Russian and Syrian territorial gains and preventing ISIS remnants from reconstituting.
In 2018 and again in October of 2019, when Trump repeated the withdrawal order, the president boasted that ISIS was ''defeated.'' But each time, the president was convinced to leave a residual force in Syria and the fight continued.
''What Syria withdrawal? There was never a Syria withdrawal,'' Jeffrey said. ''When the situation in northeast Syria had been fairly stable after we defeated ISIS, [Trump] was inclined to pull out. In each case, we then decided to come up with five better arguments for why we needed to stay. And we succeeded both times. That's the story.''
Officially, Trump last year agreed to keep several hundred U.S. troops '-- somewhere between 200 and 400, according to varying reports at the time '-- stationed in northeast Syria to ''secure'' oil fields held by the United States' Kurdish allies in the fight against ISIS. It is generally accepted that the actual number is now higher than that '-- anonymous officials put the number at about 900 today '-- but the precise figure is classified and remains unknown even, it appears, to members of Trump's administration keen to end the so-called ''forever wars.''
As he exits public service again, Jeffrey is hardly derisive of the divisive president.
The career ambassador's 2018 decision to serve in the Trump administration despite his political opposition to the president '-- and to champion his policies on the way out the door '-- is on-brand for an official described by colleagues as the consummate apolitical public servant. Jeffrey offers no polemics on the president's character, even as he says he stands by his decision to sign the 2016 open letter that said Trump was ''erratic'' and ''acts impetuously.''
''I know what I did in 2016, I do not disagree with that,'' said Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq. ''I was following closely the situation with Iran, Iraq and Syria, and I was appalled that we didn't have a more coherent policy. This wasn't a political decision.''
Jeffrey now says that Trump's ''modest'' and transactional approach to the Middle East has yielded a more stable region than either of his predecessors' more transformational policies. President George W. Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech heralding the seismic U.S. intervention into Iraq and President Barack Obama's 2009 speech in Cairo proclaiming a ''new beginning'' with the Muslim world represent an approach to the Middle East that ''made things worse'' and ''weakened us,'' Jeffrey said. Trump's administration, he said, has looked at the Middle East through a geostrategic lens and kept its focus on Iran, Russia, and China, while keeping the metastatic ''disease'' of Islamist terror in check.
Jeffrey believes Trump has achieved a kind of political and military ''stalemate'' in a number of different cold and hot conflicts, producing a situation that is about the best any administration could hope for in such a messy, volatile region.
In much of Syria, the remaining U.S. troops maintain a fragile stability. Although U.S. diplomats are still painstakingly working to resettle thousands of ISIS families and relocate foreign fighters still held by the Kurdish-led SDF, Jeffrey said the humanitarian situation is slowly improving and he has no concerns that the remaining detained ISIS fighters will escape.
In Iraq, Jeffrey credits the Trump administration with maintaining relations with the central government and constraining Iranian influence in Baghdad.
''Stalemale and blocking advances and containing is not a bad thing,'' Jeffrey said. ''That's what powerful countries '-- France, Britain, the United States '-- failed to do in the 1930s, and then they discovered they had to fight for their lives in really important places like Paris and the South China Sea and North Africa.''
''That's the nature of realpolitik and great power foreign policy.''
Jeffrey's is an unorthodox view of Trump's foreign policy, to be sure. It comes at a moment when most mainstream national security professionals of both parties '-- including some former members of Trump's own administration '-- are openly condemning the president's handling of America's military and diplomatic affairs. In particular, critics say the 45th president has damaged American alliances, perhaps irreversibly, with his combative Twitter account and occasionally punitive foreign policy. In one key example, Trump announced a troop withdrawal from Germany because Berlin wasn't meeting defense spending benchmarks.
Jeffrey said there's no question that Trump has demanded a lot of U.S. allies, both in Europe and the Middle East. But he rolls his eyes at the notion that U.S. alliances will crumble under the pressure from the United States to do things like pay more for their own national defense or do more to push back on Iran.
Far from undermining Middle East allies, Jeffrey said, Trump has sought ''to build up our alliance system and basically stop nagging at them, show that Washington has their back including their domestic situations '-- they can do pretty much what they want, but they're going to have to step up and do things.''
In the Middle East, he said, that approach has won him friends, not enemies. He points to the historic political tightening between Israel and some of the Gulf monarchies.
"Nobody really wants to see President Trump go, among all our allies [in the Middle East],'' he said. ''The truth is President Trump and his policies are quite popular among all of our popular states in the region. Name me one that's not happy.''
In Iraq, he said, relations with Baghdad have remained healthy, even as he confirmed the State Department threat to shutter the embassy if Iraq didn't do more to curtail Iranian militia activity.
''That's an ongoing issue,'' he said. ''It was not a bogus threat, it's very serious.''
The Syria withdrawal announcement was roundly condemned even by members of Trump's own administration as an abandonment of the SDF, which did the bulk of the on-the-ground fighting against ISIS. It is often held up by critics as the ultimate object lesson of the chaos '-- and even cruelty '-- of the Trump administration.
Jeffrey disputes the charge that the United States ''abandoned'' its Kurdish allies to a Turkish onslaught. Although the United States gave the Kurds a military guarantee against Russian mercenaries operating in Syria, the Syrian government and ISIS, ''nobody in Washington ever gave the Kurds a military guarantee against Turkey,'' Jeffrey said. ''I cannot put my finger on it, [but] every Kurdish leader I know thinks that he or she was given such a guarantee by people in the field, and that had an impact on how they behaved including how they behaved vis-a-vis the Turks. So it was a very complicated political mess.''
Jeffrey doesn't dispute that there was some chaos to the decision-making process. But he compared it to troop level fluctuations in Iraq under Bush, or Obama's surge into and simultaneous withdrawal deadline in Afghanistan.
''Look, there's a surface chaos to every administration,'' he said. ''I'm not defending this gang, I'm just saying chaos is what I've experienced.''
If Jeffrey is complimentary of the Trump administration's overall approach to the Middle East, he is equally sanguine about the incoming Biden administration.
''If [U.S. allies in the Middle East] had to pick somebody else to come, it would be Joe Biden,'' Jeffrey said. ''I can't predict how Joe Biden would act [but] of all of his decisions that I was involved in, and there were many, he is more of a transactional guy by his nature.
''I can't see him giving either the Bush speech or the Cairo speech. And that's a good thing.''
Asked how he would advise the Biden administration when it takes over his portfolio, Jeffrey said he would urge the President-elect to stay the course laid out by Trump's team. Some things the Biden team may want to undo '-- like the dismantling of the Iran nuclear deal '-- he suggests may now be impossible. But above all, don't attempt ''transformation.'' Don't try to ''turn Syria into Denmark.'' Stalemate is stability.
''I think the stalemate we've put together is a step forward and I would advocate it,'' Jeffrey said.
''I'm just telling you the reality as I saw it. I'm not trying to do favors to anybody. Because it's very important when the new team comes in, they don't say, if it was made by Trump it has to be bad.''
Vigan²: US election still not over, Americans must pray for good outcome | Opinion | LifeSite
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 00:43
Editor's note: The following interview with Abp. Carlo Maria Vigan² was conducted by Giuseppe Nardi for Katholisches.info. LifeSite has published this translation with permission.
November 13, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) '-- 1. For years, you were the apostolic nuncio to the United States. You know this country '-- the leading world power, especially in the so-called free world '-- from very close experience. What is happening now in the USA?
In recent months the United States of America has been witnessing the realization of the globalist plan, which involves all nations of the world with rare execeptions. This plan cannot fail to also include the nation that is the most important Western democracy, both because of its economic power and because of the role it plays in international political balances. The globalist dictatorship cannot tolerate the existence of a voice of opposition, a voice of dissent against aligned mainstream thought, which the United States will be if Donald Trump is president and the Republicans hold the majority in Congress and in state governments. Let's not forget that the ideology of the globalist left does not accept discordant voices that question it. We are witnessing a planned and highly organized attack, which avails itself of the collaboration of significant parts of institutions, almost the entire media, and the financing of multinational powers and international organizations. Furthermore, it is evident that there are also external interferences, both in economic terms and in endorsements of the Democratic candidate.
I would also like to emphasize the destabilizing role played by the movements close to the Democrats such as BLM and Antifa, all financed by [George] Soros. The gap of time between the insufficient announcement of Joe Biden's victory and the confirmation of the real winner of the election could be used by the left to stir up riots and civil unrest, following the well known playbook of the Deep State.
2. At the end of October, you addressed an open letter to President Trump, in which you used apocalyptic tones. Were these tones justified? Do you feel the election confirmed these tones? Are the concerns and accusations about a systematic fraud justified?
The use of the term ''apocalyptic'' in this context appears absolutely correct to me, because the term refers to the final battle between God and Satan announced in Sacred Scripture. The events we are witnessing are perhaps not part of the final conflict, in which the Antichrist will seem to prevail and in which the Church and traditional society will be mercilessly persecuted. Certainly, however, this historical phase will have direct repercussions on the method and times in which the the kingdom of the Antichrist will establish itself. The presidency of Trump, in this sense, is able to represent a strong obstacle against the Deep State and against globalism, which is anti-human and anti-Christian in its ideological essence. If the fate of the world is at stake, it seems to me that the tones can only be apocalyptic.
As for the electoral fraud that is emerging in these days, I think it is essential that clarity be created by the bodies in charge, in such a way as to ensure the regularity of the counting of votes. Democracy cannot be invoked in alternating phases, delegitimizing it as populism as soon as the will of the people diverges from what the elite want to accept. The global left, in order to gain power and also to maintain it, has always and only used the violence of either weapons or fraud: we think of socialist totalitarianism, as well as its various incarnations as Nazism, fascism, and communism.
3. How is it possible that in the United States, the nation that is the model for all representative democracies, an election can be manipulated?
It seems to me that the possibility of the election being manipulated is demonstrated by the evidence of the facts. The dozens and dozens of videos posted on social media in which we see the counting staff manipulating the voting ballots, bags full of votes thrown in trash cans or abandoned on the roadside, and the fanatics who boast of having falsified votes because of their hatred of Trump, all leave no room for doubt. What needs to be verified is not the existence of these frauds, but their extent and gravity. And let's not forget about the tampering discovered in the software for scanning votes done by the shareholders and owners of the companies in charge of their management.
Here we are not talking about small scams in some obscure county, but the system in its entirety, in which external interference is revealed to be systematic, coordinated always and only favoring Biden and damaging Trump. The result of this election, regardless of who is the final victor, cannot remain compromised by the doubt created by these serious irregularities. It is no coincidence that the courts are now taking action, after hundreds of denunciations, to verify what really happened.
I would like, however, to emphasize a very significant element: democracy is considered by the left as an instrument of power. If the citizens, skillfully persuaded by the media, allow themselves to be convinced to vote for them, the people triumph. But if they do not give in to pounding indoctrination and the utopian promises of politicians, if they vote for a party or a candidate who is not of the left, then the people become incapable of choosing whom to be governed by; and an elite, an aristocracy, decides in their place what is good and what is bad for the masses.
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4. Can we consider the elections over, as Biden, the Democratic Party, and the majority of mass media are claiming?
The elections are regulated by very precise laws and regulations. Relying on the projections made by television networks passed off as definitive data risks turning against those who want to impose their own desires as incontestable reality. We have well understood what side world leaders have lined up on, along with the media, the multinational information corporations, world finance, humanitarian organizations, and the Bergoglian church itself, but this does not make the presence of irregularities any less true or the need for a careful recount that respects the law any less urgent '-- that is, if respect for the law still means anything for the Democrats.
5. You have also made an appeal to Catholics and all Americans of goodwill. Do you believe it will be listened to? How did Catholics vote in the election, who historically for a long time have been closer to the Democrats?
From what has so far been possible to understand from the election results, the majority of Catholics voted for Trump. Despite the smear campaign carried out by the U.S. Bishops' Conference and self-styled Catholic progressive intellectuals along with the aberrant orchestration of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his ''magic circle'' at the Vatican, American Catholics have understood that a Protestant candidate who defends life and family is preferable to a self-styled Catholic who supports abortion even up to the ninth month of pregnancy, gender theory, LGBTQ ideology, and globalist demands.
What emerges, unquestionably, is the disorientation of the faithful in the face of the treacherous enslavement of the highest levels of the Catholic hierarchy to globalism, and the increasingly evident rift between the Christian people and their shepherds, who are too busy pleading for the indiscriminate welcome of illegal aliens and closing churches in compliance with the diktats of public health boards.
Certainly, the financial and sexual scandals of a large part of the progressive episcopate, its moral laxity and its doctrinal deviations are perfectly coherent with the political support given by the hierarchy to the Democrats in the U.S. and in general to the left throughout the world '-- a support that is widely reciprcoated and that should make us reflect.
6. Trump has been vilified and ridiculed for four years, but he obtained (acccording to the latest numbers) 8 million votes more than he did in 2016, which is more votes than Barack Obama, who was a sort of secular ''Messiah'' for the political left. Can we say Trump is really the most popular U.S. president since Ronald Reagan?
While it is only right to wait for the final outcome of the vote to measure Trump's popularity, we can take note of his ability to combine those values and that sense of sound patriotism that, conversely, the Democrats want to deny and cancel in the name of an unconditional adhesion to the globalist plan. Trump has known how to give expression to the voice of the majority of the American electorate, and his popularity derives from this. It is regrettable that in other contexts, such as for example in Italy, the opposition seems to want to confine itself to a gatekeeping role that in the past was played by other movements that today hold governing power. It seems to me that this is the prelude to an incomprehensible political suicide, unless there are unforeseen changes at the last minute.
7. It is said by some that in the four years of his presidency, Trump was unable to obtain full control of the federal apparatus. Does what is called the Deep State exist? If it exists, has it also been at work in the elections?
Anyone who becomes president of the United States after years of Democratic power cannot imagine that he will reform an articulated institutional system in a short time. What Trump has done so far demonstrates his laudable commitment, but at the same time, it reveals the widespread infiltration of the Deep State into the halls of power. The left's control of the institutions, the judiciary, and the media '-- as we see also in Italy '-- is the result of decades of subversive activity, of appointments, blackmail, and conflicts of interest. We cannot expect that in four years it is possible to heal such a generalized situation, especially when one acts in due respect for the law and not, as others do, in systematic violation of the law and justice.
8. How can it be that the Holy See and Pope Francis have supported this marginalization of Trump in their own way? We are confused: is there a link between Democrats and the Catholic Church?
The Catholic Church has nothing to do with the Democrats, whose ideas are irreconcilable with the teaching of Christ. Instead, what is obvious is the not disinterested support of the Deep Church for the Deep State. It is an alliance that sees political progressivism united to religious progressivism, for the purpose of establishing an antichristic society with its own Universal Religion.
The ties of the progressive intelligentsia with the Democratic Party are well established and date back to 1968, to the student movement, to the calls for renewal made by Vatican II in a key no less subversive than what the left did in the political sphere. On the other hand, after decades of ideological indoctrination even in Catholic universities and associations, it was impossible not to see disastrous results in society.
What is certain is that today, Bergoglio has been chosen on a worldwide level as the spiritual guarantor of globalism, on the basis of the desiderata that John Podesta expressed in his famous email about the ''springtime of the Church.'' It seems to me that the work carried out thus far by the Argentine pope rightly deserves the applause of the Democrats and, more generally, of those who want to establish the New World Order.
9. A few days before the election, Nigel Farage [leader of the Brexit Party] said that the ''momentum'' was propitious for Trump. The opposite seems to have emerged from the count of the votes. In your opinion, what should Trump do now?
Trump remains officially in office until January 20, 2021. We are waiting for the results of the recount of the votes and the outcome of the denunciations of fraud, as required by law and as all parties to the matter should hope for. At that point, we will be able to say if Farage was right. In the meantime, as confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Trump has full right to demand clarity and to use all the tools that the law offers him to protect the will of the voters expressed at the ballot box.
10. Are we also witnessing psychological warfare?
This war is essentially psychological: it is based on blatant manipulation of the masses, mainly by the work of the mainstream media. It has come to the point of censoring the statements of the president of the United States on social media and even on direct television, in the name of a supposed right of the media to block news that is arbitrarily judged to be false. But this censorious attitude began with ''fact-checking'' by ideologically aligned entities and in the attempt to call any news not conforming to the official narrative ''fake news.''
The same thing happens, at the global level, in information about the pandemic. The official data inexorably refute the media version telling us that it is a catastrophe, but despite this, the masses are still terrorized, because COVID, prescinding from its mortality rate, must be used as an instrument to impose limitations on fundamental rights that would otherwise be unacceptable. So don't be surprised to hear Biden announce the next lockdown and his desire to make the mask obligatory everywhere; he is responding to the same powers that are behind the pandemic emergency.
I note that even the announcement of the vaccine produced by Pfizer '-- of which the ''philanthropist'' Bill Gates who is so committed to reducing the world population is a shareholder '-- was postponed until after the announcement of Biden's supposed victory, blatantly revealing the political agenda that the pharmaceutical companies pursue by means of their scientific research. I read on the internet that Sandra Zampa, former vice president of the P.D. [Italian Democratic Party] and now an undersecretary in the Conte government, has thanked Pfizer for this operation.
11. In your opinion, what can or should Catholics in America and throughout the world do?
American Catholics can and must pray, because faced with such a massive deployment of adverse forces, only the intervention of God can bring the truth to light. Obviously, this does not exclude renewing the coherent witness of Catholics in the social order. But this human action, always inspired by the common good, must not lose sight of the supernatural dimension. Jesus Christ is the Lord of history and the King of nations: He will not abandon his children in the moment of trial, if they faithfully have recourse to Him and to his Most Holy Mother.
DHS boss Chad Wolf defies Trump order to fire cyber chief Chris Krebs
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 03:40
Department of Homeland Security acting Secretary Chad Wolf is defying President Trump's order to terminate election cybersecurity official Christopher Krebs, multiple sources tell The Post.
The White House on Wednesday evening instructed Wolf to fire Krebs after Krebs openly dismissed claims of voter fraud in the Nov. 3 election .
''He gave us a bunch of reasons why he didn't want to do it and he said no,'' a senior White House official told The Post about Wolf's refusal.
''If anything, Chad is carrying Krebs' water,'' the source added.
Krebs, a former Microsoft executive, has since 2017 led DHS's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and recently launched a ''Rumor Control'' website to debunk claims of voter fraud. A CISA panel declared Thursday that the ''November 3rd election was the most secure in American history,'' rejecting Trump's claims of widespread fraud.
A different administration official said ''the president wants to fire him'' and ''Chad Wolf is refusing.''
Chad Wolf Getty ImagesBoth officials told The Post that there was no ambiguity about whether the termination order came from the president, who says fraud resulted in narrow unofficial losses to President-elect Joe Biden in crucial swing states.
''Honestly, it was the president saying, 'What the heck is this guy doing? He's giving me grief before the election and now he's saying there's nothing wrong in the world?''' the White House official said.
Krebs irked Trump allies even before he refuted claims that election fraud tilted results toward Biden. Foes claim he's close to former DHS chief of staff Miles Taylor, who recently outed himself as ''Anonymous.''
A third person familiar with the matter noted concern that Krebs employs an appointee of President Barack Obama, Matt Masterson, as his senior adviser for election security.
''Chad was asked by the president to fire Anonymous' best friend and he's refusing,'' the administration official said. ''He is not managing his agency, but that should not surprise anyone because he is a [former DHS Secretary Kirstjen] Nielsen lackey.''
Taylor did not respond to a request for comment from The Post about whether Krebs is indeed a friend.
It's unclear if Trump will use his unilateral right to dismiss Krebs from his post without Wolf's assistance, officials said.
A spokesman for Wolf said, ''All political appointees serve at the pleasure of the president. The White House has unilateral authority in hiring and firing of presidential appointees.''
Wolf, in office less than a year, immediately preceded Taylor as Nielsen's chief of staff. But he's an unlikely face of lame-duck resistance to Trump after regularly backing the president's policies in public and helping put down anti-police brutality riots this year.
Among Krebs' sins, according to sources, is his decision to host an election night gathering at a northern Virginia office building '-- described by a detractor as a watch party. A document reviewed by The Post indicates it was attended by two staffers of Dominion Voting Systems, whose platform miscounted some Michigan votes.
Dominion software's widespread use across states is a focus of Trump backers claiming fraud.
Krebs told associates this week he believes he will be fired, according to reports, and some detractors believe he is trying his best to get terminated '-- potentially to boost future career opportunities.
On Thursday, Krebs retweeted a message urging people not to circulate ''wild and baseless claims about voting machines, even if they're made by the president.''
''Krebs is trying to make himself a resistance hero, obviously,'' the senior administration official said.
The official added: ''It's not surprising that Wolf would be protecting someone who worked closely with him under Nielsen along with Anonymous. It kinda makes you wonder if they're putting the resistance ahead of the president they are supposed to be serving.''
James Murdoch's wife Kathryn tweets 'we did it!!!!' and shares anti-Trump posts after Biden's win | Daily Mail Online
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 13:35
James Murdoch's wife Kathryn tweeted 'we did it!!!!' and shared anti-Trump posts after Joe Biden's historic win Saturday.
On Election Day she had written: 'What will you tell your children or your future self about the part you played in history?'
By Saturday she had also shared posts that referenced 'Trump's authoritarian antics' and 'surviving the gravest threat to our system of government since the Civil War'.
Kathryn, 47, had also voiced her agreement that her family, which owns Fox News, must 'put their country above their profits' and disavow President Donald Trump's claims of widespread voter fraud.
Her husband James stepped down from the board of Fox News parent News Corp in July, citing disagreements with some of the company's editorial content.
Kathryn expressed the sentiment in a tweet on Friday, saying she agreed with CNN host Jake Tapper, who had stated: 'The Murdochs and the people at Fox have an obligation to put their country above their profits. It is very important that people make it very clear -- that there is no credible evidence of widespread fraud.'
'I agree with this,' Kathryn tweeted. Her remark came as little surprise given her history of public criticism of Fox News coverage, particularly on the topic of climate change, and her work with groups such as Unite America on bridging partisan divides.
Kathryn's latest comments came at a time when Fox News and other media outlets faced divisive questions over how to cover the Trump's explosive claim, without proof, that the election was being 'stolen' though rampant fraud.
Kathryn Murdoch, 47, tweeted Saturday shortly after Biden's win was confirmed. She is pictured with her husband James in 2013
Kathryn, 47, tweeted 'we did it!!!!'. She had also voiced her agreement that her family, which owns Fox News, must 'put their country above their profits' and disavow President Donald Trump 's claims of widespread voter fraud
On Election Day she had written: 'What will you tell your children or your future self about the part you played in history?' By Saturday she had also shared posts that referenced 'Trump's authoritarian antics' and 'surviving the gravest threat to our system of government since the Civil War'
Biden used his first national address as president-elect to vow to heal a deeply divided nation, declaring it was time to 'let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end' and reaching out to the millions of people who voted against him to say, 'Let's give each other a chance.'
His calls for reconciliation at a Saturday evening victory celebration came even as President Donald Trump continued to argue that the election had been stolen from him, an indication that the divisive politics that have gripped the U.S. over the past four years are far from over.
On Friday CNN had reported that Fox News employees had been instructed to avoid calling Biden the 'president elect' on air even if the network projects Biden will win the presidency.
'If you're a Fox News report, and you're going to abide by this crazy instruction, you might as well hand in your press credentials at the same time,' commented CNN's Tapper.
A Fox News spokesperson told DailyMail.com then that there have been no network wide memos or editorial guidance from Fox News regarding the type of instructions that CNN claimed.
Trump is said to have called RRupert Murdoch in a fury on Tuesday night after Fox News became the first to call Arizona for Biden.
A source told Vanity Fair that Trump phoned Murdoch, who owns Fox 'to scream about the call and demand a retraction.' The 89-year-old media mogul refused to order his staff to retract the Arizona call.
Kathryn's husband James stepped down from the board of Fox News parent News Corp in July, citing disagreements with some of the company's editorial content. The couple are pictured
Biden was on track to win the national popular vote by more than 4 million, a margin that could grow as ballots continue to be counted.
He made Trump the first incumbent president to be denied a second term since Republican George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton in 1992.
Fox News, along with CNN, was one of only two major news networks to carry Trump's angry White House address in its entirety on Thursday evening, without cutting away.
In his 17-minute tirade Trump claimed he was the victim of 'big media, big money and big tech' coming together to commit 'historic election interference' to give Biden the presidency.
Fox News contributors Bill Bennett and Byron York said that just because Trump did not allege specific instances of irregularities doesn't mean there haven't been any. But the president and his lawyers need to present evidence, they said.
'What we saw tonight is a president who believes that at the end of the day, when all the votes are counted, the election is not going to to go his way, so he's trying to plan an alternate route to retain the White House,' said Fox White House correspondent John Roberts.
Fox News, along with CNN, was one of only two major news networks to carry Trump's angry White House address in its entirety on Thursday evening
Kathryn Murdoch, 47, expressed the sentiment in a tweet on Friday, saying she agreed with CNN host Jake Tapper (above)
"The Murdochs are ultimately responsible," @BrianStelter notes. "Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch are responsible for what is on this network in the coming hours."@JakeTapper says if you're a Fox reporter who obeys the instruction, "You might as well hand in your press credential." pic.twitter.com/LlwvkorXLS
'-- Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) November 6, 2020Other members of the network's news staff have also remained skeptical, demanding proof of Trump's claims.
'We haven't seen that level of fraud. He's saying it's there, but we haven't seen it,' said Bret Baier, Fox News' chief political correspondent, while pushing back on former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in an interview on Friday.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson, one of the network's top opinion commentators, took a more sympathetic line, saying broadcasters are duty-bound to cover Trump's accusations and not airbrush them from the election.
'Our system works. It has worked before. If people air concerns, resolve the concerns,' Carlson said in his monologue on Thursday night.
'Don't call them names, don't sweep those concerns under the rug, don't shut it down artificially with unelected news anchors.'
Earlier this year, Kathryn Murdoch spoke out about her 'radical centrist' politics in an interview with Politico's Women Rule podcast.
Kathryn's latest comments came at a time when Fox News and other media outlets faced divisive questions over how to cover the Trump's explosive claim, without proof, that the election is being 'stolen' though rampant fraud
James Murdoch, Kathryn, Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng leave Murdoch's annual summer party at the Oxo Tower in London on June 17, 2009
News Corp Executive Chairman and Fox Corporation Co-Chairman Rupert Murdoch
'This is the first time where I've really decided that I have a voice and I need to try to use it,' said Kathryn, who has long quietly supported climate change causes after Al Gore convinced her the issue was urgent in a 2006 presentation.
'The decisions we make in the next few years are going to have an impact on coming generations,' Kathryn said. 'I need to know that I've done everything that I can possibly do.'
The Murdoch family retains 39 percent of the voting power in News Corp, the parent company of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.
Founder Rupert Murdoch, 89, remains executive chairman of News Corp, with his son Lachlan Murdoch as co-chairman.
James Murdoch, the younger son of media mogul Rupert, had been on the board of directors at News Corp since 2013 when he quit in July.
He said: 'My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company's news outlets and certain other strategic decisions.'
He did not go into detail about his differences with the company, but has been publicly critical of its news platforms in the past.
In his resignation letter, James cited 'disagreements over certain editorial content' as the reason for his departure
His departure meant the board will now consist of ten members, headed by Rupert and Lachlan.
James has spoken out against his father's company on a number of occasions, with him and his wife Kathryn slamming the family business for promoting climate change 'denials' during the Australian bushfire crisis in January.
The pair released a statement saying they were 'disappointed' by the coverage of the fires by Fox News and other News Corp outlets.
'Kathryn and James's views on climate are well established and their frustration with some of the News Corp and Fox coverage of the topic is also well known.
'They are particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial among the news outlets in Australia given obvious evidence to the contrary,' their statement read.
The 'denials' were in reference to allegations arsonists and not climate change were to blame for the destructive wildfires.
His comments were perceived as 'unprecedented' and sparked speculation of a feud within the family since he rarely speaks publicly about his role in the business.
James is known as the more liberal Murdoch brother, while older brother Lachlan's views seem to be more aligned with those of his conservative father.
He was even last year reportedly looking to set up a $1billion new project including a liberal news outlet, in stark contrast to his father's Fox News.
In March it was further suggested he pumped money into start-ups looking to combat fake news.
His firm Lupa Systems was said to have teamed up with Betaworks to create a 'more sustainable news ecosystem'.
THE MURDOCH FAMILY MEDIA EMPIRE RUPERT MURDOCH, EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN OF NEWS CORP
The Australian-born mogul began building his media empire in Australia by acquiring numerous publications in the 1950s, before entering the British newspaper market in 1969, and expanding to the US in 1974.
He founded News Corporation in 1980, which quickly evolved into one of the largest media groups in the world owning assets in print, news, and television.
In 2013, News Corporation split into two sister companies, News Corp and 21st Century Fox. The latter was later rebranded as Fox Corporation after the majority of its assets were sold to The Walt Disney Company in 2019.
Murdoch currently serves as the executive chairman of News Corp and the chairman of Fox Corporation. He is estimated to be worth $17billion.
LACHLAN MURDOCH, EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN AND CEO OF FOX CORPORATION, CO-CHAIR OF NEWS CORP
Lachlan Murdoch, 48, the eldest of the Murdoch children, is the heir apparent to News Corp Executive Chairman Rupert and is co-chairman of News Corp. He was named executive chairman and CEO of Fox Corp in 2019, after 21st Century Fox was sold to Disney.
Before the sale, younger brother James had been the CEO of the company and Lachlan was executive chairman. Lachlan is also chairman of Australian entertainment company NOVA Entertainment, which operates a number of radio stations across the country.
JAMES MURDOCH, FORMER BOARD MEMBER OF NEWS CORP
The younger son of Rupert Murdoch, James, 47, had been on the board of News Corp since 2013. He and brother Lachlan had shared power at 21st Century Fox, but the sale of much of the Fox entertainment business to Disney in 2019 saw James depart as CEO.
Since then, he has worked at the helm of investment fund Lupa Systems.
James is considered more liberal than his older brother who is CEO of Fox Corp, home to conservative news network Fox News, the Fox broadcast and sports networks and local TV stations.
James has been critical of News Corp's editorial decisions and has said he disagreed with Fox News coverage. He resigned from the board on July 31, 2020.
PRUDENCE MURDOCH, NON-EXECUTIVE BOARD MEMBER OF NEWS CORP
Prudence Murdoch, 62, is the eldest child of Rupert Murdoch through his first marriage with Patricia Booker.
She formerly worked as journalist for now-defunct British tabloid, News of the World, which was owned by her father.
Prudence was once described in the media as the 'only one of [Murdoch's] children not directly competing for his business affections.'
ELISABETH MURDOCH, MEDIA EXECUTIVE AND FORMER CHAIRPERSON OF SHINE GROUP
Elisabeth is Rupert Murdoch's daughter from his second marriage with Anna Maria Torv. Born in Sydney, she moved to London in 1990s where she worked on the operations side of BSkyB, ran by her father.
She founded UK-based TV programming company Shine Limited in 2001, which was sold to News Corp ten years later.
She currently serves as executive chairman of production company Sister.
GRACE AND CHLOE MURDOCH
The sisters, aged 19 and 17, are Rupert's daughters from his third marriage to Wendi Deng.
Dominion
TV Professional Anonymous Report AP
In the morning Adam!
TLDR: I work with elections data for all the major local news stations across the country - and they all agree: this election was fucked up and we saw things on election night we've never seen before. Also please keep me anonymous if you use this in the show.
Details below:
DELETED
DELETED, we DELETED sell a data server that local news stations use to receive the AP data feed and feed their broadcast graphics. This product is in over 90% of the local tv market - and has been used in every major election for almost 15 years.
On election night we were inundated with calls to allow our stations to bypass the AP feed, since most stations were surprised by the speed at which AP called states. We've had isolated glitches during elections before, but usually they are at the race level, and are generally minor. This year we got a lot of complaints that AP was calling races with 0% of the precincts reporting, or way earlier than what the Networks were calling. Part way through the night we had to stop passing AP calls so that stations could manually call races inline with their networks.
I've since spent the past week on post-mortem calls with dozens of stations, and the higher-ups at many of these groups discussing how election night went. They've all had identical reactions to the speed at which AP called the elections - all saying they've never seen AP call them so fast, or with such little data reporting. As well,the precincts reporting has never needed to be changed on election night at this scale. Again, sometimes things get entered wrong - but we were seeing multiple states and counties changing revising their precinct counts down far too often.
As a result of this election, every single client has asked for us to implement features to easily bypass the AP going forward as they all think AP called the election way too early and they ended up having to hold on officially calling races.
I don't think this is a terribly big secret, since most people saw the odd results with their own eyes - but I found it strange how the sentiment that AP was too hasty / had dubious results was unanimous across all major local news groups across the country.
I hope this helps, and thanks for all that you do!
CAUGHT! Election data analyzed, producing detailed list of over 500,000 votes SWITCHED from Trump to Biden via voting machine software theft, with heavy fraud focused on swing states
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 12:19
CAUGHT! Election data analyzed, producing detailed list of over 500,000 votes SWITCHED from Trump to Biden via voting machine software theft, with heavy fraud focused on swing states
An analysis of the raw voting data dumps from the 2020 election, carried out by user "Centipede" ("PedeInspector") at
TheDonald.win, reveals bombshell news.It appears that hundreds of thousands of votes were switched from Trump to Biden via the software control systems of the voting machines. This was done in real time, during election night, which also explains why election counting was slowed in swing states in order to allow the election theft to be coordinated and executed.PedeInspector explains how he wrote a script to detail all the instances of votes being lost or switched from Trump to Biden. His data source is the NYT raw data dump feed at the following link (which may not function once the NYT pulls it):https://static01.nyt.com/elections-assets/2020/data/api/2020-11-03/race-page/michigan/president.jsonAs
The Gateway Pundit explains:
The author also claims that the data is from Edison Research and it is the same data that is used for election coverage by at least ABC News, CBS News, CNN and NBC News. It is also used for the website of the NYT, and probably others as well.This
json data feed is like a transaction log file. It shows each update to the voting totals, like a Flight Data Recorder ("Black Box") on a commercial airliner.He shows what one of the data switches looks like:
Explanation: This graphic shows two updates on voting totals. #27 and #28:For #27:Trump votes = .578 x 573857 = 331,689Biden votes = .401 x 573857 = 230,117For #28:Trump votes = .568 x 574417 = 326,269 (it went DOWN for Trump by 5,420 votes)Biden votes = .406 x 574417 = 233,213 (it went UP for Biden by 3,096 votes)As you can see, votes were taken from Trump and added to Biden. In this case it was only a few thousand, but there were thousands of other vote switch transactions in the log files.Understand that
this is absolute proof of software-based vote theft. (See more details below.)This is like having the black box recorder recovered after a jet crash. All the data are intact. The election was stolen over the 'net, in real time.
A detailed list of the vote theft resultsThis list is organized by voting systems (voting software brands). We are highlighting the swing states in particular, so notice how the special emphasis on vote theft focused on these states.
Dominion Voting Systems :Pennsylvania : Switched : 220,883 Lost Votes : 941,248New Jersey : Switched : 80,242 Lost Votes : 20Florida : Switched : 21,422 Lost Votes : 456
Michigan : Switched : 20,213 Lost Votes : 21,882New York : Switched : 18,124 Lost Votes : 623,213
Georgia : Switched : 17,407 Lost Votes : 33,574Ohio : Switched : 14,965 Lost Votes : 5,102
Virginia : Switched : 12,163 Lost Votes : 789,023California : Switched : 7,701 Lost Votes : 10,989Arizona : Switched : 4,492 Lost Votes : 0Minnesota : Switched : 2,766 Lost Votes : 195,650Tennessee : Switched : 2,330 Lost Votes : 0Louisiana : Switched : 2,322 Lost Votes : 0Illinois : Switched : 2,166 Lost Votes : 54,730
Wisconsin : Switched : 2,078 Lost Votes : 3,408Colorado : Switched : 1,809 Lost Votes : 0Utah : Switched : 1,627 Lost Votes : 0New Hampshire : Switched : 973 Lost Votes : 116Iowa : Switched : 938 Lost Votes : 477New Mexico : Switched : 268 Lost Votes : 4,610Missouri : Switched 0 : Lost Votes : 20,730Nevada : Switched : 0 Lost Votes : 0Alaska : Switched : 0 Lost Votes : 0Washington : Switched : 0 Lost Votes : 0Hawaii : Switched : 0 Lost Votes : 0
Kansas and Texas use Premier Election Solutions, owned by Dominion Voting Systems.Texas : Switched : 14,954 Lost Votes : 30,557Kansas : Switched : 1,674 Lost Votes : 2,154
Election Systems & Software :Nebraska : Switched : 30,086 Lost Votes : 50Kentucky : Switched : 8,129 Lost Votes : 23,849Arkansas : Switched : 3,664 Lost Votes : 20,748South Carolina : Switched : 2,779 Lost Votes : 2,119Montana : Switched : 2,330 Lost Votes : 1,276South Dakota : Switched : 1,347 Lost Votes : 1North Dakota : Switched : 234 Lost Votes : 681Maryland : Switched : 203 Lost Votes : 0North Carolina : Switched : 0 Lost Votes : 15District of Columbia : Switched : 0 Lost Votes : 0
Unknown Systems:Nebraska : Switched : 30,086 Lost Votes : 50Connecticut : Switched : 3,834 Lost Votes : 272Massachusetts : Switched : 3,613 Lost Votes : 51Oregon : Switched 2,557 Lost Votes : 0Alabama : Switched : 1,170 Lost Votes : 408Mississippi : Switched : 355 Lost Votes : 0Maine : Switched : 271 Lost Votes : 35Rhode Island : Switched : 6 Lost Votes : 13West Virginia : Switched : 0 Lost Votes : 78,300Idaho : Switched 0 Lost Votes : 0Oklahoma : Switched : 0 Lost Votes : 0Indiana : Switched : 0 Lost Votes : 0Delaware : Switched : 0 Lost Votes : 0Vermont : Switched : 0 Lost Votes : 0
Rudy Giuliani confirms that Dominion software people are stepping forward as whistleblowersIn yet more shocking news that will change the course of history, Rudy Giuliani has now confirmed, during a live broadcast with Steve Bannon's "Warroom" program, that Dominion software witnesses are stepping forward and blowing the whistle on the massive vote theft fraud:
https://twitter.com/RealWayneRoot/status/1326555434405097477
Without the vote fraud, Trump wins with 307 electoral votesThe website
EveryLegalVote.com shows the real election results once you remove all the vote theft.
Without vote theft: Trump wins with 307 electoral votes.
With vote theft: Biden wins with 304 electoral votes.Fraud has been detected and documented in nearly all the swing states, including PA, MI, WI, GA and VA:
See full details at
EveryLegalVote.comSource reveals that the CIA ran the vote theft while Trump and the DoD documented the entire election coupYesterday, sources told us that the CIA was in charge of running the vote theft operation, with Gina Haspel deeply involved in straight up treason. On election night, President Trump and hand-selected DoD personnel were sitting in secure command room, watching and documenting the entire election theft taking place in real time.
All the vote theft was recorded in detail, and this vote theft was
allowed to take place so that deep state treasonous actors could be caught in the act.Big Tech, the mainstream media and the CIA are all conspiring to try to gaslight the nation and falsely claim that Biden won, even as they all know the election was stolen via voting machine software theft. This is why they are rushing to remove Trump from office right now, with John Brennan, Obama's former CIA director, practically crapping himself on live TV and demanding Trump be immediately removed via the 25th Amendment.That's because Brennan and the other deep state actors know
they've been caught. Trump has all the evidence. In fact, he has a detailed transaction log showing the fraud playing out in real time.In the coming weeks, this information will be presented to the U.S. Supreme Court. We anticipate SCOTUS will
invalidate the presidential election and kick the outcome back to Congress, where each state gets one vote to choose the next President. Republicans have a strong majority in the number of state legislatures they control, and they will easily win that vote. (Nancy Pelosi may refuse to allow the vote to take place, but if she does, she will be arrested for treason.)Trump has
fired former Defense Secretary Mark Esper and is cleaning house at the DoD in order to get the Pentagon ready for
military arrests of the traitors who carried out this engineered election theft.Hundreds (or thousands) of people will eventually be arrested and charged with various crimes, including conspiracy and sedition. Many of the deep state players who worked under Obama will go to prison once this is all said and done.The insane, radical Left-wing lunatics in America will explode with rage and violence once the election is announced for Trump, and this will almost certainly lead to President Trump invoking the Insurrection Act and deploying troops on the streets to take down left-wing terrorists. At this time, America will be plunged into significant chaos and violence, which is sadly unavoidable as part of the process of draining the swamp and putting down left-wing terrorists.All American patriots are advised to double check their rifles, ammo and red dot sights. This situation is absolutely going kinetic, most likely within the next 70 days. But the good news is that
Trump holds all the cards and has all the evidence of vote theft that he needs to win.Listen to my emergency podcast from Nov. 11th for a full explanation of what happens next: SCOTUS, Congress, Nancy Pelosi, military police and more. This is my current best estimate of where this goes and how Trump wins the election and defeats the deep state:
DHS Cyber Director Chris Krebs And Deputy Director Matt Travis Tied To Clapper Who Commandeered HAMMER / SCORECARD - The American Report
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 23:47
By Mary Fanning and Alan Jones | November 13, 2020
Today, a gentleman called into the Rush Limbaugh Show and asked guest host Michael Knowles why DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Christopher Krebs is lying about HAMMER and SCORECARD while highly-respected U.S. Air Force General Thomas McInerney (Ret.) and super attorney Sidney Powell have publicly and repeatedly expressed alarm about HAMMER and SCORECARD.
THE HAMMER supercomputer's SCORECARD application injected into state election systems in 10 states cloned, identically-sized blocks of Biden votes that were used to steal the 2020 election from President Trump, according to CIA whistleblower Dennis Montgomery, who was granted immunity by the DOJ and FBI for exposing illegal U.S. domestic surveillance.
Director Krebs claims that HAMMER and SCORECARD are a ''hoax,'' a talking point with which the mainstream media and the ''fact checkers'' are now running.
There may be a reason why CISA Director Chris Krebs is denying the existence of THE HAMMER and SCORECARD.
Krebs worked closely with intelligence contractor Kevin P. O'Prey at Obsidian Analysis. O'Prey hired and worked closely with U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper (Ret.) at DFI International. Clapper received a $50,000 exit bonus from DFI then awarded O'Prey's DFI branch a contract with Clapper's Pentagon office that oversaw THE HAMMER and SCORECARD.
Clapper illegally commandeered the super-survillance system THE HAMMER. SCORECARD was one of exploits that ran on THE HAMMER framework and that secretly stole elections.
Clapper was previously caught lying to the Senate Intelligence Committee about unlawful U.S. government surveillance of Americans.
James Clapper and John Brennan illegally commandeered THE HAMMER and SCORECARD less than two weeks after President Obama's 2009 inauguration. Clapper and Brennan then transformed THE HAMMER from a foreign surveillance system into an illegal domestic surveillance system, turning America into communist-style police state.
Clapper and Brennan relocated THE HAMMER and SCORECARD to a top-secret facility in Fort Washington, Maryland. They networked THE HAMMER directly into the Obama White House via an encrypted VPN, according to CIA contractor-turned-whistleblower Dennis Montgomery, who designed and built THE HAMMER and SCORECARD.
According to The Whistleblower Tapes, Brennan and Clapper used THE HAMMER to spy on Donald Trump ''a zillion times.'' The CIA feared Donald Trump, Montgomery states.
Whistleblower Tapes: Trump Wiretapped ''A Zillion Times'' By 'The Hammer,' Brennan's and Clapper's Secret Computer System '' The American Report/ March 17, 2017/ By Mary Fanning and Alan Jones (audio tapes included)
Christopher Krebs, the DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director who claims that HAMMER and SCORECARD are a hoax and reportedly expects to be fired by President Trump, was a principal at Obsidian Analysis, a Washington D.C. intelligence consulting firm co-founded in 2010 by Kevin P. O'Prey and Matthew K. Travis.
DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Christopher Krebs (above)
Both Obsidian Analysis co-founders O'Prey and Travis have been executives at intelligence contracting firm DFI International, where O'Prey hired retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper.
Travis is currently CISA Deputy Director where he reports directly to CISA Director Christopher Krebs and may soon replace Krebs.
''Department of Homeland Security acting Secretary Chad Wolf is defying President Trump's order to terminate election cybersecurity official Christopher Krebs, multiple sources'' told the New York Post.
''Should Krebs be forced to step down, his role would likely be filled by CISA Deputy Director Matthew Travis, who has served in the deputy director position since 2018,'' The Hill reported on November 12, 2020.
O'Prey was the head of DFI's Government Services branch, where he hired and worked closely with James Clapper.
In October 2006, O'Prey hired retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper full time as DFI International Government Services Chief Operating Officer (COO). Six months later, in April 2007, Clapper left DFI to become Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.
Clapper picked up a $50,000 bonus from DFI when he left for his new job overseeing the Pentagon's intelligence programs.
Five months later, around September 2007, Clapper's Pentagon office awarded O'Prey's DFI International branch with a contract advising Clapper's office. This was the very Pentagon office that was overseeing THE HAMMER.
Former head of DFI International's Government Services Branch Kevin P. O'Prey (above) hired James Clapper at DFI in 2006. DFI then received a Pentagon contract from Clapper's office. In 2010, O'Prey co-founded Obsidian Analysis with Matt Travis.
O'Prey's Obsidian Analysis co-founder Matthew Travis is currently listed on DFI's website as Vice President of Business Operations, DFI Government Services, where Clapper worked under O'Prey.
CISA Deputy Director Matthew Travis (above) co-founded Obsidian Analysis with Kevin P. O'Prey, who previously hired James Clapper as COO of DFI International. Christopher Krebs was a Principal at Obsidian Analysis.
''The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the Department of Homeland Security appears to be in the midst of a house cleaning,'' the Federal News Network reported on November 12, 2020. ''Bryan Ware, the assistant director of the cybersecurity division at CISA, unexpectedly resigned today,'' Ware ''confirmed to Reuters that he had handed in his resignation on Thursday,'' according to Reuters. ''Ware did not provide details, but a U.S. official familiar with his matter said the White House asked for Ware's resignation earlier this week.''
Montgomery Designed And Built THE HAMMER To Keep America Safe After 9/11Dennis Montgomery designed and built THE HAMMER foreign surveillance system in 2003 to keep America safe from terrorists and foreign adversaries after 9/11.
Beginning in 2007, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Clapper had oversight of THE HAMMER, a supercomputer system that provided foreign surveillance data to the U.S. military in a highly classified Special Access Program (SAP). Clapper's office hired Kreb's associate O'Prey at DFI to advise Clapper's office.
The Los Angeles Times, in a July 25, 2010 article about Clapper titled ''Intelligence nominee's contractor ties draw scrutiny,'' reported:
In October 2006 he [General James Clapper] was hired full-time by DFI International, which was trying to boost its consulting with intelligence agencies. In April 2007, when he returned to public service as the chief of the Pentagon's intelligence programs, DFI paid him a $50,000 bonus on his way out the door, according to his financial disclosure statement. Five months later, DFI landed a contract to advise Clapper's Pentagon office, though company officials do not recall collecting any revenue from the deal.
The First Secret City blog reported in December 2018:
In 2006, DFI Government Services, the branch then headed by O'Prey, hired retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper to head its defense program. Prior to joining DFI, Clapper served as the director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, which has its main headquarters in St. Louis. Earlier in his career he had been director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Krebs was a principal at O'Prey's Obsidian Analytics from January 2012 until February 2014, putting Krebs in long-term, direct contact with Clapper's former boss. Krebs then served as Microsoft's Director of Cybersecurity Policy from February 2014 until March 2017.
Krebs was Vice President of Washington D.C. lobbying firm Dutko from 2009 to 2012. Dutko was ''founded by the late Dan Dutko, a close friend of President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore'' and several names at the firm ''have deep ties to the Bush family,'' according to Politico.
Before joining Dutko, Krebs was a policy advisor at DHS from 2007 until 2009 under DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, a critic of President Trump. Krebs has participated in events sponsored by Chertoff's private contracting firm The Chertoff Group. The Chertoff Group famously lobbied the TSA on behalf of OSI Systems, manufacturer of the Rapiscan full-body scanner.
DFI International's Deep Ties To DemocratsThe CEO of DFI International at the time of Clapper's employment at DFI was Barry Blechman. Blechman is the co-founder of the Stimson Center. The Chairman of the Stimson Center is Ambassador David Lane who served under President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as an envoy to the United Nations. Lane was named chairman of the left-leaning Annenberg Foundation in 2016. The Annenberg foundation runs fact-checking organization FactCheck.org and is a major sponsor of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (NRP/PBS). Lane was also Chief of Staff for President Clinton's Commerce Secretary William Daley and worked for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
President Clinton's U.S. Ambassador to Russia Thomas R. Pickering is a member of the Stimson Center's Board of Directors.
The Stimson Center's official website includes a profile page for Kevin O'Prey, describing him as ''a former staff member, affiliate, intern, or guest author.'' In 1995, the Stimson Center published a policy paper by O'Prey titled ''Keeping the Peace in the Borderlands of Russia.'' O'Prey published the paper at Stimson ''In Program.''
As of November 2020, DFI International's Board of Directors includes:
Jeffrey H. Smith, DFI International Counsel and former CIA General Counsel for President Bill Clinton's Director of Central Intelligence John M. Deutch. DCI Deutch, who hired Smith at CIA in 1995, was caught with classified documents on a laptop computer and a computer disk at his home. Deutch admitted to mishandling classified information, but was pardoned by President Clinton.
Gen. John A. Gordon, USAF (Ret.}, former CIA Deputy Director under CIA Director George Tenet and President Clinton.
''Oddly, the firm's website appears to be an English translation based on German text,'' The First Secret City reported without elaborating. ''Travis and O'Prey, the founders of Obsidian Analysis, are now vice-presidents of Cadmus Group '-- the EPA's climate change consultant.''
The Cadmus Group acquired Obsidian Analysis in 2016.
In 2007, DFI International was acquired by British intelligence contractor Detica. In July 2008, Guilford, Surrey, UK-based Detica was acquired by London-based defense contractor BAE Systems. DFI International was renamed BAE Systems Applied Intelligence. BAE Systems Applied Intelligence sells internet surveillance packages to governments, including the UAE government, according to The Intercept.
The American Report First Broke THE HAMMER Story in 2015We first broke THE HAMMER story on The American Report's official Facebook page in December 2015, at The American Report's official Twitter account on March 4, 2017, in an expos(C) at TheAmericanReport.org on March 17, 2017, and on October 31, 2020 published at The American Report the first-ever report on SCORECARD. We also published a book about HAMMER and SCORECARD called ''THE HAMMER Is The Key To The Coup,'' released in Kindle format on August 19, 2020 and available at Amazon.
HAMMER and SCORECARD were foreign surveillance tools that were never to be turned on America. But on February 3, 2009, John Brennan and James Clapper illegally commandeered that foreign surveillance tool and illegally turned it on America for the purpose of ''blackmail and leverage'' according to Dennis Montgomery. THE HAMMER was designed and built by Montgomery in 2003 to keep America safe after 9/11.
In 2006, DNI Director John Negroponte invoked the State Secrets Privilege and a Government Protective Order on Montgomery in order to ensure that no one would understand that secret cyberweapons THE HAMMER and SCORECARD were being turned against America.
FBI Director Robert Mueller raided Montgomery's home in 2006 in an attempt to coral the evidence of the FBI's involvement in illegal surveillance of Americans with THE HAMMER.
In 2015 CIA contractor Dennis Montgomery, received immunity agreements from the Department of Justice and the FBI for exposing illegal U.S. domestic surveillance.
COPYRIGHT 2020 MARY FANNING AND ALAN JONES
Posts falsify ties between election tech firm and Democrats - The Washington Post
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 21:37
As poll workers tallied votes from the U.S. presidential election, many social media users interpreted a clerk's error in a small, Republican-leaning Michigan county as vote-rigging because it wrongly favored Joe Biden before being fixed.
A week later, that misinterpreted mistake has snowballed into a deluge of false claims that Democrats have deep ties to Dominion Voting Systems, the company that supplies election equipment to Michigan and dozens of other states nationwide.
Claims that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and the Clinton Foundation have interest or influence in Dominion are all unsubstantiated. But that didn't stop tens of thousands of social media users from amplifying them on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram this week.
Here's what you need to know about the falsehoods spreading around Dominion Voting Systems.
CLAIM: Prominent Democrats including Pelosi, Feinstein and the Clinton family have a stake in or a deep relationship with Dominion Voting Systems, the second-largest voting vendor in the U.S., whose equipment was used in several battleground states in the 2020 election.
AP'S ASSESSMENT: False. Dominion made a one-time philanthropic commitment at a Clinton Global Initiative meeting in 2014, but the Clinton Foundation has no stake or involvement in Dominion's operations, the nonprofit confirmed to The Associated Press. A former aide to Pelosi has represented Dominion as a lobbyist, but so have lobbyists who worked for Republicans. Claims that Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum, holds a stake in Dominion are baseless.
THE FACTS: When Michigan's Antrim County initially reported a landslide win for Joe Biden in the U.S. presidential election, social media users grew suspicious about the Dominion election management system used to tabulate the data.
As it turned out, Dominion was not to blame, according to the Michigan Department of State. ''There was no malice, no fraud here, just human error,'' County Clerk Sheryl Guy told the AP.
The issue was quickly corrected, and President Donald Trump won a majority of votes in that county. However, in the days since Biden won Michigan and the presidential election, Trump supporters have continually tried to undermine trust in Dominion, which is used in at least 30 states, including key battlegrounds like Georgia.
Several widely shared social media posts this week exaggerated a one-time connection six years ago between Dominion and the Clinton Foundation in order to claim the election software should not be trusted.
''Is it a coincidence that Dominion Voting is in bed with you guessed it... The Clinton Foundation?'' read one tweet shared more than 7,000 times.
Some posts shared a screenshot from the Clinton Foundation's website. It shows that in 2014, at a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, Dominion made a philanthropic commitment to donate its election technology to emerging democracies outside the United States as part of a three-year project.
However, that one-time commitment is not proof of any lasting relationship between the Clinton Foundation and Dominion, nor of any foul play in the 2020 election.
The Clinton Foundation told the AP in an email that it does not help fund, receive funding from, or participate in implementing commitments like this one.
''The Clinton Foundation has never had any stake in Dominion Voting Systems; we have never been involved in the company's operations; and we can confirm that we are not currently working together,'' the nonprofit said.
Dominion did donate between $25,001 and $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation in 2014, according to reporting by the Washington Post, but its lobbyists have also donated to Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Other social media sleuths pointed to Dominion's hiring of Nadeam Elshami, Pelosi's former chief of staff, as part of its lobbying team as alleged evidence of a link between the company and Pelosi.
''What's the name of the company with all the voting machines that 'glitch' to create more votes for Biden? Dominion Voting Systems,'' read a tweet from Emerald Robinson, a reporter for the conservative cable network Newsmax. ''Who is their DC lobbyist? Nancy Pelosi's aide.''
It's true that Elshami is part of a lobbying team representing Dominion, according to public disclosures.
However, that team also includes Brian Wild, who counts Republicans such as former House Speaker John Boehner and former Vice President Dick Cheney among his past bosses.
Jared Thomas, a longtime aide to Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, has also lobbied for Dominion.
A third category of social media posts circulating this week attempted to link Feinstein to Dominion by claiming her husband, investment banker Richard Blum, is a ''major shareholder'' holding a 60% stake in the company.
''Can someone tell me why Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum, owns Avid Technologies (which provides the voting machines for our election)?'' read an Instagram post viewed nearly 60,000 times.
In fact, Avid Technology does not provide election software for Dominion or any other company '-- nor does Blum's firm currently own a stake in it.
''To officially correct a misconception that arose on Twitter in the last 24 hours, Avid Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVID) definitively states that we do not develop software for vote counting,'' AVID wrote in a statement on Twitter on Saturday. ''Further, while Blum Capital was an investor in our company, it has no holdings today.''
Dominion did not respond to requests for comment on these claims. It's privately held and does not disclose its financials. But in an April letter responding to a request by the House Committee on Administration, Dominion CEO John Poulos said Dominion is 75.2% owned by the New York-based private equity firm Staple Street Capital and that he, a Canadian citizen, holds a 12% stake. No other investor owns more than a 5% stake, he said. Staple Street Capital did not return emails and phone calls for this story.
On Saturday, Chris Krebs, the director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, urged Americans to stop spreading baseless claims that minor vote counting issues indicated fraud.
''Seeing #disinfo that some isolated voting day issues are tied to some nefarious election hacking and vote manipulation operation,'' Krebs posted on Twitter. ''Don't fall for it and think twice before sharing!''
___
AP technology writer Frank Bajak contributed to this report from Boston.
___
This is part of The Associated Press' ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online, including work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform.
Here's more information on Facebook's fact-checking program: https://www.facebook.com/help/1952307158131536
Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
STEAL THE VOTE? Voting Machine Memory Sticks Go Missing '... Yes It Was A Blue State
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 21:39
Because election 2020 wasn't already fraught enough, we get to add this story to the mix.
There is a mad scramble to get ahead of the consequences of a key piece of technology going missing in the midst of an election.
The memory sticks used to program the voting machines do count as a 'key piece of technology', wouldn't you say?
A laptop and several memory sticks used to program Philadelphia's voting machines were stolen from a city warehouse in East Falls, city officials confirmed Wednesday, setting off a scramble among elections officials to investigate the theft and ensure the machines could not be compromised before Election Day.
The equipment appeared to be taken this week, sources said. Officials immediately began checking to make sure none of the voting machines had been compromised while also working to contain the fallout for fear of how President Donald Trump and his allies might use the news to cast doubt on the integrity of the city's elections. -MSN
Hold on, MSN. A laptop and memory cards used to regulate the voting machines go missing and your first concern is... TRUMP? That's some real crackerjack reporting you've got going there.
What else did they have to say?
They said the theft would not disrupt the election.
''Since being informed of the incident, I have immediately committed to making necessary police resources available to investigate this incident and find the perpetrators. I have also committed to the City Commissioners additional resources to provide enhanced security at the warehouse going forward,'' Mayor Jim Kenney said in a statement. ''This matter should not deter Philadelphians from voting, nor from having confidence in the security of this election.''
Still, when contacted by The Inquirer, the commissioners and the Mayor's Office initially refused to confirm the theft or that they had opened an investigation. They only did so after The Inquirer informed them that it would be reporting the theft based on sources who had been briefed on the matter but were not authorized to publicly discuss it. -MSN
Oh. They were going to suppress this news? No, nothing sketchy there.
Was it because they were embarrassed? Or because they were turning a blind eye to whoever took it? In this year's crazy cycle either answer could be equally plausible.
After all, between ballots turning up in ditches and garbage cans, we do know that at least SOME folks who have been ginned up by the press consider Trump an 'existential threat' and are bringing in a 'by any means necessary' attitude to this year's elections.
Many details surrounding the incident remained unclear Wednesday afternoon including exactly how the equipment was taken, whether there are any suspects, and details on how the missing technology might be used. Officials said there are multiple levels of security to prevent the equipment from being used maliciously, and a police investigation is ongoing
The equipment is believed to have been taken some time this week, though the exact date is not clear, according to two sources briefed on the matter who were not authorized to publicly discuss it. No other material appeared to have been taken, the sources said.
...A potentially greater concern are the stolen USB memory sticks that are used to set the machines in advance of an election, including setting the design of the ballots. --MSN
The story goes on to mention some fail-safes to make tampering with voting machines readily apparent -- including the use of seals that would be broken in the event of tampering.
That isn't to say that there is plenty of other mischief that could be accomplished if that information gets into the wrong hands. The ballot design, for instance, points to the theoretical possibility of falsified ballots.
Speaking of scandals involving computers and sensitive information...
BOMBSHELL REPORT: Trump-Russia Collusion Was A STRATEGY By Hillary To Distract From Email Scandal
And whatever became of these guys?
AWAN BROs: Remember Those Sketchy IT Guys DWS Hired For The Dems? The Scandal's Not Over Yet
EU elections also vulnerable to manipulation?
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 00:21
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The judge opens the sale of Scytl and awaits offers for the company until June 22 | Web24 News
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 13:17
(C) Image LaVanguardia.com Elections to the Catalan chambers of commerce commissioned to Scytl last year Francisco Gil Monz"n, holder of the mercantile court 6 of Barcelona, has already opened the sale process of the production unit of Scytl, the electronic voting company that went into liquidation at the end of May with debts of around 80 million euros. After at that time reject direct sale to the Sandton Capital fund, the judge has acted very quickly, as requested by the electronic voting signature, represented in this process by Cuatrecasas.
Just a week after declaring bankruptcy and opening the liquidation, the judge issued a car on June 2, which started the sale of the production unit. Thus definitively closed the door to the direct award to Sandton, whose binding offer accompanied the request for bankruptcy filed on May 23.
The fund tried to convince the judge with an express offer that expired on May 31 and with its willingness to lend liquidity to the company immediately. But the judge was clear from the beginning: he wanted competition for the benefit of creditors '' including banks, but also public institutions such as the ICO or Avan§a'' and of the more than 130 workers. It is expected that the tender, coordinated by the bankruptcy administration that exercises Lexaudit, have the maximum concurrence.
A referenceScytl's business, a pioneer in electronic voting, has a very high potential demand
Leadered by Silvia Caparr"s, Scytl has a highly qualified staff, is one of the world benchmarks in electronic voting systems and no one doubts that its activity will be in great demand in the immediate future. Potential buyers include venture capital funds and competitors from the same sector, such as Indra. Sources close to this company assure that it is studying the presentation of an offer.
The process will be quick, because there is a rush. The pandemic of coronavirus It has delayed a multitude of electoral processes around the world and Scytl needs liquidity to meet even the most basic payments. For that reason, the judge has established short deadlines to sell the productive unit. In the first, three weeks and which will culminate the June 22nd, potential investors will have access to a data room and they will be able to present their offers.
Subsequently, Lexaudit will evaluate them in five business days according to the established criteria '' price, business knowledge, job preservation and others '' and the two best offers and the third if it is not separated by more than 10% of valuation than immediately previous will go to judicial auction to make the final bid. The plan is for the entire process, for which there is a lot of interest in the market, to end in early July. At that time, the production unit will be awarded and Scytl's business '' with its patents, brands and a large part of its staff or all of it '' will pass into the hands of its new owner.
Why 2020 US Election Votes Were Counted By A Bankrupted Spanish Company Scytl
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 13:18
Days after it was revealed how 2020 US Elections were rigged by Canadian Crown Agent Dominion Voting Systems through a so-called ''glitch'', now GreatGameIndia has found involvement of another dubious foreign company in US Election meddling. The votes cast by Americans were counted by a bankrupted Spanish company Scytl in Spain. Like Dominion Voting Systems, Scytl has a long history of election fraud in various nations including injecting backdoors in its election software. The issue has prompted experts to question why the sensitive job of counting votes was outsourced to a foreign company? How could a bankrupted Spanish company count American votes in Spain? Due to such widespread fraud, the Chairman of the US Federal Election Commission Trey Trainor believes that the 2020 US Presidential Elections is illegitimate.
INTEL UPDATE: US Military Raided Scytl Servers In Germany For Evidence After Vote Switching Scandal
2020 US Election Votes Were Counted By A Bankrupted Spanish Company ScytlScytl involvement in 2020 US Election Many American states commissioned a foreign company based in Spain to provide various election services '-- including online voting '-- in the 2020 presidential election. Scytl, a Spanish company headquartered in Barcelona offering a suite of election services, has been used by various states and cities in several ways since 2008.
Forbes reported in 2017:
Founded in 2001 in Spain, Scytl organized 12 state-wide implementations, and its technologies were used in another 980 U.S. jurisdictions in 28 states, during the 2016 General Election. Specializing in online voting and elections solutions, the company's products include online voter registration services, poll worker management, and electronic ballot delivery.
Its online voting services employ end-to-end encryption, vote return cords, and a bulletin board audit service. Scytl's customers include France's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European Green Party, the Parliament of the European Union and the Swiss Canton of Fribourg. In January 2012, the company bought SOE Software. Scytl also holds more than 40 patents and patent applications. In 2008, the company became the first online voting company to receive certification from the Florida Department of State.
Scytel's website shares an overview of election services it provides to governmental clients in U.S.:
Scytl has successfully delivered election modernization projects in the US since 2008, and most recently for the 2018 Midterm Elections, when over 70M voters from more than 900 U.S. counties successfully leveraged Scytl's technology. Also, during 2016 US Presidential Election Scytl's technology provided over 53 million registered voters and thousands of election staff across 28 states the benefits of more efficient, scalable and accessible election processes, consolidating Scytl as the leading election modernization provider in the United States.
Scytl was declared Bankrupt in June 2020 What is interesting is that the Spanish firm Scytl was declared bankrupt in June this year. The company filed for bankruptcy as part of a broader analysis of security vulnerabilities associated with digital voting.
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On 11 May 2020, facing debts of over 75 million euro, Scytl initiated bankruptcy proceedings with a view to sell its business to the U.S. investment fund Sandton Capital. On 2 June 2020, a Spanish court declared Scytl bankrupt and started the process of auctioning off its assets.
Scytl is funded by Spanish Government Scytl has been the center of controversy in the past for misuse of European Union funds and mishap with an election. Scytl received large amounts of research funds from the Spanish government which, reporting by Republik shows, was used in ways contrary to what had been stipulated.
Instead of spending it on cooperative work with universities, Scytl used it to stock up its product team and develop new prototypes for its customers. An injection of over 1.5 million euros from Spain's Ministry for Industry was, according to an internal document seen by Republik, used for, among other things, a product demo>> for Neuchtel. And 900'000 euros in EU funds were spent on the development of software modules for Ecuadorian election authorities.
Cases of Scytl Voting Fraud Scytl's products cover the entire election process, including election planning, online voter registration, poll worker management, electronic ballot delivery, online voting, results consolidation and election night reporting. In 2014, Scytl reported having customers in more than 35 countries. However, Scytl is involved in controversies wherever its products or services were used with allegations as severe as election voting fraud.
Australia In 2018, the authorities of New South Wales selected Scytl to provide the software for the state's ''iVote'' online voting system until 2022 for $1.9 million. The iVote system is an internet and telephone voting solution that allows persons with disabilities and voters with accessibility problems to vote remotely. During the 2015 election, researchers uncovered vulnerabilities in the iVote system which could be used to manipulate votes, violate ballot privacy and subvert the verification mechanism.
Ecuador Scytl ran voting machines in several parts of Ecuador in 2014. They were supposed to produce results within 72 hours, but ran into a variety of problems and took over a month.
According to a report by the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), the system was unable to process the amount of scanned information>>. Although technology bloggers later argued that the system hadn't been sufficiently tested in advance, Scytl, in turn, blamed Ecuador's poor infrastructure.
Norway Scytl deployed electronic voting in Norway in 2011 in partnership with the government. A flaw in their cryptography was discovered in 2013, and 0.75% of all voters managed to vote twice in 2013, once online and once in a polling station. In 2014 Norway abandoned Scytl's Internet Voting project, due to security failures, lack of increase in turnout, and high costs.
Switzerland In a joint venture with Swiss Post, Scytl provides its sVote e-voting system to several cantons that allow Swiss citizens who live abroad to take part in cantonal and federal elections and referenda electronically.
Scytl said its sVote system used in Switzerland is ''universally verifiable'', but its system has been criticized as overly complex, difficult to audit and not sufficiently transparent. After Swiss authorities launched a public code review, a group of researchers of the University of Melbourne, Universit(C) catholique de Louvain, and the Open Privacy Research Society reported in March 2019 that they discovered a deficiency in the code that would allow the system's operator to alter votes undetected. They found backdoors is Scytl software.
Because of the deficiencies, Swiss authorities disallowed the use of Scytl's e-voting system in the Swiss referenda of 19 May 2019, and it has not been used since. Swiss Post purchased the rights to the software from Scytl in 2020 as the company faced bankruptcy.
Were 2020 US Elections Rigged? A so-called computer ''glitch'' in the voting machines flipping votes during the 2020 US Elections has caused a major controversy. The source and ownership of the voting machines used in the elections has become an urgent issue because of real fears that hackers, whether foreign or domestic, might tamper with the mechanics of the voting system.
However, GreatGameIndia has found that the vendors and not hackers maybe behind the rigging. One of the vendors, a Denver-based Canadian Crown Agent company Dominion Voting Systems has a long history of allegation of election rigging and interference in elections of various nations, including census data theft in India and interference in US Elections of 2020.
The issue has prompted experts to question why the sensitive job of counting votes was outsourced to a foreign company? How could a bankrupted Spanish company count American votes in Spain? Due to such widespread fraud, the Chairman of the US Federal Election Commission Trey Trainor believes that the 2020 US Presidential Elections is illegitimate.
US Military raid Scytl servers in Germany According to intelligence sources US Military raided voting machine company Scytl servers in Germany for evidence of manipulation in 2020 US Elections after it was exposed in vote switching scandal by GreatGameIndia.
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Alyssa Milano Sounds Alarm About Election Hacking - Variety
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 23:50
Alyssa Milano has become one of Hollywood's leading activists in the Trump era, taking on issues like abortion, gun safety and sexual harassment. In 2020, she is turning her attention to a new fight: ballot security.
Along with other entertainment industry figures, Milano is launching a campaign against electronic voting machines and electronic ''ballot marking devices.'' She argues that only paper ballots are secure, and any voting machine with an internet connection is at risk of foreign hacking.
''Look, if we don't have secure elections, we're done,'' Milano told Variety in an interview. ''Because the country is so divided, it is essential that voters can trust the results of the election.''
Milano is also working on a campaign to defeat President Trump in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the three battleground states where he narrowly won in 2016. Dubbed the ''2020 Fund,'' the effort aims to boost the Democratic nominee through grassroots get-out-the-vote efforts.
On ballot security, she is working with the National Election Defense Coalition, a non-partisan group that advocates for paper ballot voting systems, and the advocacy group Free Speech For People. Other celebrities who are involved include Alec Baldwin, Glenn Close, Henry Winkler, Melissa Etheridge, Ken Olin, Sterling K. Brown, Ron Perlman, Patricia Arquette, Katey Sagal, Yvette Nicole Brown, Frances Fisher, Rosie O'Donnell and Danny Zuker.
In December, the NEDC filed suit against the state of Pennsylvania, challenging the certification of the ExpressVote XL machine. The touchscreen machine has been approved for three counties, including Philadelphia County. In local elections last November, the machines malfunctioned, turning out inaccurate results that had to be corrected using paper backups. The manufacturer, Election Systems & Software, argued that the backup worked as intended, and the outcome was a fair and accurate tally.
''We want to get all voting machines that have modems in them disconnected,'' Ben Ptashnik, executive director of the NEDC. ''We want to challenge these machines so elections officials don't foolishly buy them. We need a very public campaign to push for this.''
Ptashnik said the group is also likely to file suit in other states.
Election security again became a front-burner issue again following the fiasco in the Iowa Democratic Caucus, in which a coding error in the party's vote-counting app caused a prolonged delay in the results.
The group of celebrity activists '-- dubbed the Creative Arts Council '-- is also highlighting the testimony of Special Counsel Robert Mueller last July, in which he warned that Russia would seek to interfere in the 2020 election.
''They've done it before, there's no reason to think they wouldn't do it again,'' Milano said. ''I think election integrity and election security is probably the most important fight right now.''
She added, ''If we don't fix this, we've got to turn out in numbers that are too big to rig.''
Steal The Vote
Marc Elias: Democratic Legal Activist Spent Career Preparing for 2020 | National Review
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 13:28
Marc Elias on Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, June 10, 2020(MSNBC/via YouTube) If the 2020 election ends up a battle in the courts '-- as many expect '-- Marc Elias will be the Democratic general directing an army of left-wing lawyers in their bid to win back the Senate and take down President Donald Trump.
A native New Yorker whom Politico has described as ''quick-talking'' and ''Twitter-savvy,'' Elias is the face of election law for Democrats, an image he's spent decades crafting.
He's best known as Hillary Clinton's campaign lawyer who paid for the salacious Steele Dossier in 2016, and for leading the still-controversial 2008 Minnesota Senate recount that ended with Al Franken overtaking Republican Norm Coleman '-- giving Democrats the 60-seat majority they needed to pass the Affordable Care Act.
He also is the architect of the 2020 Democratic legal strategy that has involved filing dozens of lawsuits across the country challenging state election laws. While his legal victories often face multiple, drawn-out challenges, his 173,000-plus Twitter followers gives him the reach to cement narratives before they've actually happened. His bio '-- ''Lawyer fighting for Democrats and voting rights for all'' '-- pits him as a man interested in politics, but not at the expense of democracy.
Republican lawyers who have faced off against Elias describe an opponent who is smart, sophisticated, and hyper-aggressive with his litigation strategy, willing to go scorched earth if there's a prayer of overturning an election result in his client's favor.
But they also describe a lawyer prone to puffery, inflating the importance of his victories in the press and on social media, and then falling silent when those victories are overturned by higher courts. He paints himself as a crusader for voters, they say, but is at heart a partisan Democrat motivated to help Democrats win at any cost.
In a 2018 Tweet, Trump called Elias the Democrats' ''best Election stealing lawyer.''
In an email to National Review , Elias defended his work, saying he is focused on challenging laws ''that unnecessarily restrict voting rights, particularly the rights of lawful voters to cast their ballots in the middle of a pandemic and have them counted.''
''Sadly, in every case I have been involved in, Republicans have fought to make voting harder,'' he wrote.
Elias is the chair of the political law group for the progressive, Seattle-based firm Perkins Coie, which has had a stranglehold on Democratic legal work for years. Since 2019, Perkins Coie has been paid at least $41 million for its political work by Democratic-affiliated organizations, according to Federal Election Commission records. Republican lawyers say that is likely just a fraction of what Perkins Coie has received, because it doesn't include legal work for many left-wing nonprofits.
''Marc Elias and Perkins Coie have basically monopolized the Democratic election law work,'' said Justin Riemer, chief legal counsel for the Republican National Committee. ''He funnels essentially all this legal work through political and non-political organizations through his firm. It's in many ways sort of a clearinghouse for the left-wing litigation agenda.''
And it appears that Elias has taken his client's preferences to heart. In August, Above the Law revealed a purported email from Elias that slammed a judicial decision made by a former colleague who had been appointed by President Trump to the Ninth Circuit. Elias stated that the appointment was ''a source of deep embarrassment and sadness.''
Finding Democratic votes to count
Elias first started building his reputation as a top Democratic dogfighter in 1998, when he helped former senator Harry Reid secure a recount victory and hold his Nevada Senate seat by just over 400 votes. In 2004, he was general counsel for John Kerry's presidential campaign.
But his rise to Democratic legal stardom officially started in 2008, during the Franken-Coleman recount in Minnesota. After Election Night, Franken, the Democratic challenger, trailed Coleman, the Republican incumbent, by only 715 votes. Elias entered the fray as the battle for contested absentee ballots heated up.
Elias was on the front lines daily, delivering the latest updates in press conferences with reporters. But the line between matter-of-fact lawyering and campaign flack quickly blurred. ''What Elias does not say is that the repeated sessions almost always begin with several minutes of spin from him,'' Minnesota Public Radio revealed .
Coleman's lead shrank to 215 after the first canvass, and after months of back and forth, he ended up behind by 315 votes.
''If the GOP hopes to avoid repeats, it should learn from Minnesota that modern elections don't end when voters cast their ballots. They only end after the lawyers count them,'' was the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board's verdict.
The win cemented Elias's strategy '-- overwhelm the opponent with multiple cases while simultaneously flooding the airwaves.
''Not all of those votes would have been counted without Marc's strategy,'' Eric Schultz, then a staffer for Franken's campaign and now a high-powered Democratic operative, admitted to The Hill in 2018.
Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation and manager of Heritage's election-law reform initiative, said the model Elias developed during the 2008 Franken-Coleman race involves using technology to track rejected and provisional ballots, and then fighting hard to get those ballots counted in heavily Democratic counties.
''Marc Elias came in with a huge team of lawyers and totally out-lawyered and out-technologied Norm Coleman and his lawyers,'' von Spakovsky said. He explained that while Coleman's lawyers tracked votes with pens and notepads, Elias had his team on the ground with ''modern technology,'' including scanners, which they used to send ballots into the Cloud, where Elias could track individual votes in real time.
It has not always been smooth sailing, however. Elias tried and failed in Florida's 2018 Senate race, after being tapped to head the charge for then-Senator Bill Nelson's post-election challenge to Republian Rick Scott, who emerged post-Election Day with a lead of over 10,000 votes. Even after a federal district court judge tossed one of Elias' challenges, he insisted to reporters that the fight was not over.
''It's never been our view that there is going to be one silver bullet that was going to change the margin in this race,'' Elias said . ''If you look at each stage where the margin has shrunk, it has not shrunk because of one big thing, but rather it has shrunk from a number of smaller things.''
Nelson conceded two days later, but Elias has not missed a beat. Von Spakovsky said he expects Elias to use a similar strategy in 2020 of fighting to count rejected absentee and provisional ballots if need be.
''I suspect what they're planning to do in any state where the election is close and there are enough outstanding or rejected absentee ballots to make the difference, you're going to see the same kind of fight that occurred in Minnesota,'' von Spakovsky said.
Elias has already been vocal about the mailed vote in 2020, an election marked by a surge in absentee and mail-in ballots due to the pandemic. Back in August, during a wave of mass hysteria that President Trump was personally directing the U.S. Postal Service to disenfranchise millions of voters, Elias was a nonstop presence on Twitter, decrying it as ''just another layer of Trump's voter suppression strategy.''
Trump's attack on the @USPS continues to escalate. I have updated my @DemocracyDocket piece to reflect this new, more alarming reality.
I hope you read and share.ðhttps://t.co/X6ZkBktfsI
'-- Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) August 9, 2020
Looking forward to being on @maddow tonight to discuss voting rights and Trump's attack on @USPS.
'-- Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) August 11, 2020
ð¨ð¨ð¨@realDonaldTrump is working to dismantle @USPS and Republicans are following his lead. We can't let democracy suffer at the hands of state inaction or presidential intimidation.
We need more ballot drop boxes to ensure every vote counts in November.https://t.co/KAjDIN0saR
'-- Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) August 14, 2020
But when the New York Times reported last week that ''the worst fears about the Postal Service's ability to handle the crush of election-season mail have not materialized,'' Elias completely ignored the news. He declined to comment when asked if he still believes the USPS is trying to suppress the vote.
Overturning state election laws
In addition to leading Democratic recount fights, Elias also is known for his hyper-aggressive legal battles to overturn state election laws that he claims disenfranchise voters, including voter ID and absentee ballot witness requirements, and bans on ballot harvesting, where party affiliates gather ballots from voters.
Fighting for voting rights and ensuring every ballot is counted is his ''single purpose'' and ''the honor of my life,'' according to a post Elias wrote on his Democracy Docket website.
''When we win a case, I still wonder whether we are doing enough to protect voters,'' he wrote. ''When we lose a case, I despair about what we could have done differently.''
Elias told National Review there is no evidence that election fraud is a significant enough factor to sway presidential elections. He said that none of the Republican legal efforts in 2020 are focused on making it easier for people to vote. It is the RNC that has announced a $20 million litigation budget ''almost entirely dedicated to making voting harder,'' he explained.
''It is really indisputable that the Republican party is actively trying to disenfranchise voters,'' he added.
Republican lawyers say Elias' self-righteous displays are part of a strategy to perpetuate that false disenfranchise-voter narrative. No one wants to disenfranchise millions of voters, they argue.
''With Elias, it's not actually about the voters,'' said Christopher White, senior associate counsel with the RNC. ''It's about getting this narrative going that makes him money, gets turnout juiced up, and creates chaos and the opportunity for even more litigation after the election.''
Elias has a history of challenging state election laws, but with the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 has been a banner year for the courtroom battles. Elias maintains a list of his cases on his Democracy Docket website. As of Monday, the website listed 21 active cases in nine states.
''There have been more lawsuits filed this year before the election trying to change election rules than I've ever seen before, and I've been doing election stuff for three decades,'' von Spakovsky said. ''What they've been trying to do is take advantage of COVID-19 to get the changes they've wanted for years into election rules.''
Elias' focus in 2020 has been on his so-called Four Pillars lawsuits promoting ''safeguards that are necessary to prevent voter disenfranchisement'': free or prepaid postage for mail-in ballots, ensuring all ballots postmarked on or before election day must be counted, protecting voters from signature-matching requirements on absentee ballots, and legalizing ballot harvesting.
''He brings a lot of cases. He tends to be very particular about where he brings these cases, and he'll only bring them in places where he has either a friendly state court in which he can litigate, or a district judge who is predisposed to agree with him,'' Riemer said. ''What that does is it guarantees him an immediate good ruling.''
The broad approach has had some victories. In North Carolina and Pennsylvania, courts have allowed elections officials to continue accepting absentee ballots for several days after Election Day. On Monday, Elias shared his delight when an appeals court rejected a Republican effort to end drive-through voting in Harris County, Texas.
But in many states Elias has prematurely declared victory '-- only for further court decisions to side against Democrats, with no correction of the record from the super lawyer.
Across late September and early October, Elias used such tactics in cases involving Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
ð¨BREAKING: Georgia federal court rules GA Secretary of state ''to require the use of a paper backup of the electronic pollbook to prevent voter disenfranchisement.''
Congrats to the Coalition for Good Governance on their victory. pic.twitter.com/fw05j7Cy7M
'-- Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) September 28, 2020
ð¨BREAKING: Iowa Court enters EMERGENCY STAY blocking GOP Secretary of State's directive that counties cannot send pre-filled absentee ballot applications.
A victory for @dscc @dccc and the thousands of voters otherwise at risk of disenfranchisement!https://t.co/Tr6laEb63T
'-- Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) October 5, 2020
ð¨BREAKING: In huge victory for @TheDemocrats and Wisconsin voters, federal judge:
''
extends online and mail in registration deadline from 10/14 to 10/21.''
extending ballot receipt deadline to November 9, so long as postmarked on or before election day.https://t.co/mVnEZIHGrk
'-- Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) September 21, 2020
ð¨BREAKING: In huge victory for @TheDemocrats and Wisconsin voters, federal judge:
''
extends online and mail in registration deadline from 10/14 to 10/21.''
extending ballot receipt deadline to November 9, so long as postmarked on or before election day.https://t.co/mVnEZIHGrk
'-- Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) September 21, 2020
But when all four cases were challenged by Republicans and overturned by higher state and federal courts, Elias simply moved on. Democracy Docket links that detailed the initial wins were quietly scrubbed.
That was also the case in South Carolina, where the Supreme Court reinstated a state requirement that residents voting by mail have a witness sign their ballot, and in Wisconsin where the court refused to extend the deadline for election officials to receive and count ballots.
Elias acknowledged that he provides a lot of information about voting rights cases that he and his allies bring. It's important to keep people informed, he said.
Elias said his strategy is simply ''to provide accurate information to the public about voting and voting rights.''
He denied venue shopping.
''We file in the courts with appropriate jurisdiction to hear the case,'' he wrote. ''I don't believe we have ever been subject to a change-of-venue motion, much less a successful one.''
Elias says he's won more than he's lost and ''more than I expected.''
Republican lawyers counter that when taken together, Elias' state election lawsuits have not been particularly successful in 2020.
''He did get one big thing,'' von Spakovsky said. ''The legal fees he's been collecting will probably make him a multimillionaire.''
Send a tip to the news team at NR.
It's possible that 2020's election fraud is way bigger than we thought - American Thinker
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 03:44
November 9, 2020
Two massive Twitter threads contend that serious computer fraud two years ago in Texas, which turned strong red districts blue, was essentially a trial run for what's been playing out across America in this election. This post summarizes the core claims in those threads, along with interlineations of information I found.
'); googletag.cmd.push(function () { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1345489840937-3'); }); }
One Twitter thread comes from Roscoe B. Davis, the other from Bad Kitty.
Scytl is a Barcelona-based company that provides electronic voting systems worldwide, many of which have proven vulnerable to electronic manipulation. Scytl has (or had) Soros and Democrat party connections. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Vulcan Capital has invested $40 million in Scytl.
In 2012, Scytl acquired all the assets of SOE Software, which was then America's largest voting machine and software vendor. Scytl also acquired the trade name "Clarity Elections" and rebranded its American operations as "Clarity," with a data process domain at clarityelections.com.
'); googletag.cmd.push(function () { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1567099776462-0'); }); } Everything on the Clarity site is unsecured on Amazon Web Services. By 2018, Scytl, using the Clarity network, supported elections in more than 12 states and 900+ jurisdictions, covering 70 million voters.
The electronic voting software in Dallas came from Electronic Software & Systems, Inc. (ES&S), the largest manufacturer of voting machines in the U.S. (4,500 localities in 42 states and two territories). ES&S maintains all its data as unsecured files on the clarityelections.com domain, which is processed through Scytl servers in Barcelona. General election voting records are automatically forwarded to DNS addresses that include ES&S, Scytl in Barcelona, Smartmatic12 in London, and a Russian server at South Ural State University in Chelyabinsk.
In Dallas County, Texas, a deep red county, there was a sudden, unexpected blue wave in 2018. The computer logs revealed that ES&S technicians repeatedly overrode thousands of error codes for "time stamp mismatch" and "votes exceed ballots." Essentially, they replaced votes. Then ES&S ignored the requirement that the data be saved for 22 months and destroyed everything.
Investigators also found an Excel spreadsheet file with Scytl algorithms projecting voting results on the NGP Van website. NGP Van does voter database and analytics for the DNC. It also works closely with ActBlue and Shared Blue.
While the real data manipulation in Dallas occurred at the electronic level, it's worth noting that the election was also plagued by obstructing poll-watchers, flash memory cards that showed up with new votes, and shuffled computer logs, among other things.
In 2019, the same anomalies in Dallas showed up in Kentucky, which was also using Clarity. The most notable was an instantaneous decrease of 560 votes for Bevin, a Republican, and an increase of 560 votes in favor of Beshear, a Democrat. This occurred at the Clarity level, which was funneled to, and played out on, CNN.
In-depth analyses show that Clarity's systems in Kentucky were a Spanish operation. Scytl, through Clarity, had the final control over vote-counting and reporting.
Since Scytl and Clarity ultimately provide the software and analytics for elections across America, this means that many American elections are run, counted, and controlled by an overseas company. Another company, SGO Smartmatic, headquartered in London, plays a role similar to Scytl's vis- -vis American elections. There's more at the Bad Kitty thread, and you really should work your way through it.
What Roscoe B. Davis brings to the table is a claim from two cyber''forensic investigators. They told him that all the stuff we're talking about '-- the secretive poll-counting, the cemetery voters, the ballot dumps '-- is a distraction. The real issue is that the important changes are happening at the level of computer tabulation. The forensics investigators believe that these changes occur offshore, mostly at Scytl's headquarters in Barcelona, and maybe in Frankfurt, Germany.
As far as I can tell, what's important is that, across America, machines maintained by giant multinational corporations handle our elections and have already provably manipulated elections in Texas and Kentucky. These are the kind of systems that can be manipulated with Hammer and its Scorecard program or gamed (as they seem to have been in Texas) by employees overriding the people's will.
All of this is pure theorizing. But here's something for you to consider as to whether these theories are striking a nerve: I wrote about the Benford Anomalies in the election outcomes, as did many other sites, including GNews. Jim Hoft, of Gateway Pundit, tweeted out the GNews story. Gateway Pundit picks up the narrative:
Tonight we heard from several readers who were suspended after retweeting our tweet on Benford's law.
Facebook and Twitter flagged the tweets for sexual exploitation.
There's something rotten in Denmark '-- or Barcelona, London, Frankfurt, at least ten American states, and Silicon Valley. Trump is fighting not just for his presidency, but for the integrity of American politics. Support him in any way you can.
Image: ENIAC, the first functional computer system, which filled an entire room in the late 1940s/early 1950s, just to remind you how far we've come. Public domain.
Two massive Twitter threads contend that serious computer fraud two years ago in Texas, which turned strong red districts blue, was essentially a trial run for what's been playing out across America in this election. This post summarizes the core claims in those threads, along with interlineations of information I found.
One Twitter thread comes from Roscoe B. Davis, the other from Bad Kitty.
Scytl is a Barcelona-based company that provides electronic voting systems worldwide, many of which have proven vulnerable to electronic manipulation. Scytl has (or had) Soros and Democrat party connections. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Vulcan Capital has invested $40 million in Scytl.
In 2012, Scytl acquired all the assets of SOE Software, which was then America's largest voting machine and software vendor. Scytl also acquired the trade name "Clarity Elections" and rebranded its American operations as "Clarity," with a data process domain at clarityelections.com.
Everything on the Clarity site is unsecured on Amazon Web Services. By 2018, Scytl, using the Clarity network, supported elections in more than 12 states and 900+ jurisdictions, covering 70 million voters.
The electronic voting software in Dallas came from Electronic Software & Systems, Inc. (ES&S), the largest manufacturer of voting machines in the U.S. (4,500 localities in 42 states and two territories). ES&S maintains all its data as unsecured files on the clarityelections.com domain, which is processed through Scytl servers in Barcelona. General election voting records are automatically forwarded to DNS addresses that include ES&S, Scytl in Barcelona, Smartmatic12 in London, and a Russian server at South Ural State University in Chelyabinsk.
In Dallas County, Texas, a deep red county, there was a sudden, unexpected blue wave in 2018. The computer logs revealed that ES&S technicians repeatedly overrode thousands of error codes for "time stamp mismatch" and "votes exceed ballots." Essentially, they replaced votes. Then ES&S ignored the requirement that the data be saved for 22 months and destroyed everything.
Investigators also found an Excel spreadsheet file with Scytl algorithms projecting voting results on the NGP Van website. NGP Van does voter database and analytics for the DNC. It also works closely with ActBlue and Shared Blue.
While the real data manipulation in Dallas occurred at the electronic level, it's worth noting that the election was also plagued by obstructing poll-watchers, flash memory cards that showed up with new votes, and shuffled computer logs, among other things.
In 2019, the same anomalies in Dallas showed up in Kentucky, which was also using Clarity. The most notable was an instantaneous decrease of 560 votes for Bevin, a Republican, and an increase of 560 votes in favor of Beshear, a Democrat. This occurred at the Clarity level, which was funneled to, and played out on, CNN.
In-depth analyses show that Clarity's systems in Kentucky were a Spanish operation. Scytl, through Clarity, had the final control over vote-counting and reporting.
Since Scytl and Clarity ultimately provide the software and analytics for elections across America, this means that many American elections are run, counted, and controlled by an overseas company. Another company, SGO Smartmatic, headquartered in London, plays a role similar to Scytl's vis- -vis American elections. There's more at the Bad Kitty thread, and you really should work your way through it.
What Roscoe B. Davis brings to the table is a claim from two cyber''forensic investigators. They told him that all the stuff we're talking about '-- the secretive poll-counting, the cemetery voters, the ballot dumps '-- is a distraction. The real issue is that the important changes are happening at the level of computer tabulation. The forensics investigators believe that these changes occur offshore, mostly at Scytl's headquarters in Barcelona, and maybe in Frankfurt, Germany.
As far as I can tell, what's important is that, across America, machines maintained by giant multinational corporations handle our elections and have already provably manipulated elections in Texas and Kentucky. These are the kind of systems that can be manipulated with Hammer and its Scorecard program or gamed (as they seem to have been in Texas) by employees overriding the people's will.
All of this is pure theorizing. But here's something for you to consider as to whether these theories are striking a nerve: I wrote about the Benford Anomalies in the election outcomes, as did many other sites, including GNews. Jim Hoft, of Gateway Pundit, tweeted out the GNews story. Gateway Pundit picks up the narrative:
Tonight we heard from several readers who were suspended after retweeting our tweet on Benford's law.
Facebook and Twitter flagged the tweets for sexual exploitation.
There's something rotten in Denmark '-- or Barcelona, London, Frankfurt, at least ten American states, and Silicon Valley. Trump is fighting not just for his presidency, but for the integrity of American politics. Support him in any way you can.
Image: ENIAC, the first functional computer system, which filled an entire room in the late 1940s/early 1950s, just to remind you how far we've come. Public domain.
The Founders Outsmarted the Presidential Election Fraudsters - American Thinker
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 22:07
November 13, 2020
Who chooses the President of the United States?
This question is by no means rhetorical. For example, the mass disinformation media has chosen Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election. Many people liked this news, but I must disappoint them '' the television broadcasters have, according to the U.S. Constitution, nothing to do with who will live in the White House for the next four years.
Maybe the Supreme Court chooses the President? No, the Constitution does not provide for this. Could it be that the citizens of America choose their President? Following the U.S. Constitution, no. So, who then chooses the President?
Before answering this question, let us note that, contrary to popular misconception, the President of the United States is not a representative of the American people. State legislators and governors are representatives of the people, and at the federal level so are the members of the House of Representatives of the United States Congress. (Currently, senators are also representatives of the people, but before the ratification of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution in 1913, they were appointed by state legislators). So, who does the President of America represent?
The President of the United States of America, according to the Constitution, represents state legislators' interests and no one else.
In general, the federal government's structure in America reflects the numerous attempts of the Founding Fathers of the United States to introduce a system of effective state control over the federal government. The fact is that the main difference between our country and all other countries, without exception, is that it was organized "from the bottom up," that is, individual colonies voluntarily united against a common enemy '' the British Empire. All other "republics" on the planet were created "from the top down," when the already existing provinces were graciously granted some independence by the already existing central government.
The Inauguration of George Washington
From The Granger Collection CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
In building the American state, the fundamental principle was state control over the newly created federal power structure. Therefore, from the Founding Fathers' point of view, the federal government in Washington should consist of both representatives of the people (congressmen) and representatives of the state leadership '' the federal President and senators. This is how the institution of the Electoral College was invented and implemented. The electors are appointed by the state legislatures, and they are the ones who elect the President of the country.
So why do American citizens need to participate in the presidential elections? Well, strictly speaking, it is not necessary. It is just that there is a long tradition in America '' state legislators appoint electors in such a way that these appointments correspond to the mood of the people (in some states, this is even enshrined by law). This is a tradition, but according to the U.S. Constitution, the participation of the people in presidential elections, generally speaking, is not required. According to the Constitution, the people participate in the direct elections of their legislators, which is quite enough.
There is nothing reprehensible in this '' after all, the President of America is not the representative of the American people. He is the representative of state legislators. From the point of view of the states, the President (and pre-1913, two senators from each state) are the "overseers" of the federal government. In other words, the President, from the point of view of state legislators, is "our man in Havana" (that is, in Washington), who is responsible for the observance of state rights by the federal government.
Thus, under the Constitution, state legislators have the right to generally ignore the results of the voting of citizens of their state and appoint those who they deem necessary to the Electoral College. Why did the Founding Fathers of the United States give state legislators such unprecedented power? Because most of the Founding Fathers were geniuses with impressive foresight. They did not know precisely when this would happen, but they knew it would eventually happen: the election's published results would have nothing to do with how the citizens voted.
This is exactly what happened in 2020.
Of course, there have been falsifications in the counting of votes in America before. However, in 2020, the Democrats went all-in with a scam, and for the first time in American history, they were close to success. Actually, they simply had no other choice. They knew very well that another Trump term would be enough to crush the American left to its core. (However, even if Trump does not manage to stay in the White House, his departure from politics will be such that the left will not be envied.)
Now, more than a week after the elections, it is already clear what the Trump team is doing. They are working in two directions.
First, they sue in states where there was a clear violation of the electoral law. Violations include the counting of votes that came after polling stations closed, turnout of more than 100%, the use of computer systems that were systematically "wrong," always in favor of Biden, the thousands of Pennsylvania voters born on January 1, 1900 (or even on January 1, 1800), and much more.
For example, election results in some Democrat-controlled states violate fundamental laws of both mathematics and physics. The votes cast for Biden do not comply with the statistical law of distribution of digits (Benford's Law), while the ballots cast for Trump do adhere to this law. Thousands of mailed ballots were received even before they were officially sent. Thus, the 2020 election showed compelling evidence of the possibility of time travel.
Secondly, the Trump team calls on state legislators to use their constitutional powers to rectify the local executive authority's criminal actions to the point of completely ignoring the falsified voting results.
These are the expected steps. Any presidential candidate would and should take such measures. Al Gore did the same in 2000, but then the case concerned only the state of Florida. In 2000, the country did not know the name of the winner for 35 days, and in 2020 we should not expect a faster resolution of the issue because now we are talking about at least six "problem" states.
Only now is the reason for the frenzy with which the Democrats attacked the three Trump-nominated Supreme Court justices is becoming clear. The fact is that the Trump-nominated current U.S. Supreme Court justices '' Gorsuch, Kavanagh, and Barrett '' were on Bush's legal team that secured the Supreme Court case in favor of Bush in 2000.
But the main difference between the 2020 elections and the 2000 elections is the involvement of the federal government's apparatus in investigating violations. The investigation is carried out by both prosecutors of the Department of Justice and FBI agents.
According to the Constitution, all courts and all other voting problems must be resolved by the first Monday after the second Wednesday of December, which falls on December 14 this year. If on December 14, the Electoral College fails to elect a president, then the Constitution also provides for this scenario. Per the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, in this case, the President and Vice President will be elected by the House of Representatives (however, if for some reason the Vice President cannot be elected by the House of Representatives, then the right of his choice is transferred to the Senate.)
In the House of Representatives, state delegations will be voting, not the individual congressmen themselves. Now in the House of Representatives, the majority of delegations '' 26 '' belong to Republicans. In the Senate, the Republicans also have an advantage. So, the only reason Trump can lose the election now, a week after the election, is his own admission of defeat. But such a strange decision by Trump is unlikely '' this guy is from Queens, and if he gets involved in a fight, he will see it through to the end.
It is also unlikely that Trump does not understand that if the chronic vote-rigging by Democrats is not stopped now, America will end. The Trump team is well aware that such an opportunity to end the creeping socialist revolution may no longer be presented.
As a result, Democrats will likely not recover from this fraud. The disinformation media (which Fox News joined on the election night) will not recover from deliberately covering up this fraud, this attempted coup. If the Democrats went for broke, then Trump could, most likely, also go for broke.
Trump may have already destroyed the Democratic National Committee, but they just do not know it yet.
In military terms, Trump's team conducted careful reconnaissance and intelligence on the enemy for a week. They collected numerous affidavits about the electoral fraud of Democrats, witnesses who confirm their testimony under oath. But on the evening of November 10, the reconnaissance was completed, and massive artillery bombardment began in the form of lawsuits in several key states and the initiation of criminal investigations into violations by the Department of Justice. If this does not help, Trump will bring into the battle the strategic reserves available only to the President of the American state apparatus '' for example, in the form of a complete declassification of Obamagate. In any case, our country is by no means at the end; we are at the very beginning of this process.
From a legal perspective, Biden is an impostor, a false president, at least until December 14 of this year. If Biden can declare himself President-elect without any legal basis, then any other American citizen can also declare himself President-elect.
Therefore, I am forced to repeat my advice once again '' to survive in this leftist madhouse, turn off the TV and start thinking for yourself. If you have read the article so far, you will definitely succeed. And remember '' if the laws in our country are still observed, then the chances of the Harris-Biden administration (in this order) are practically zero. If the laws in America are not followed, then the great American political experiment will unfortunately end.
Gary Gindler, Ph.D., is a conservative columnist at Gary Gindler Chronicles and the founder of a new science: Politiphysics. Follow him on Twitter and Quodverum .
Who chooses the President of the United States?
This question is by no means rhetorical. For example, the mass disinformation media has chosen Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election. Many people liked this news, but I must disappoint them '' the television broadcasters have, according to the U.S. Constitution, nothing to do with who will live in the White House for the next four years.
Maybe the Supreme Court chooses the President? No, the Constitution does not provide for this. Could it be that the citizens of America choose their President? Following the U.S. Constitution, no. So, who then chooses the President?
Before answering this question, let us note that, contrary to popular misconception, the President of the United States is not a representative of the American people. State legislators and governors are representatives of the people, and at the federal level so are the members of the House of Representatives of the United States Congress. (Currently, senators are also representatives of the people, but before the ratification of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution in 1913, they were appointed by state legislators). So, who does the President of America represent?
The President of the United States of America, according to the Constitution, represents state legislators' interests and no one else.
In general, the federal government's structure in America reflects the numerous attempts of the Founding Fathers of the United States to introduce a system of effective state control over the federal government. The fact is that the main difference between our country and all other countries, without exception, is that it was organized "from the bottom up," that is, individual colonies voluntarily united against a common enemy '' the British Empire. All other "republics" on the planet were created "from the top down," when the already existing provinces were graciously granted some independence by the already existing central government.
The Inauguration of George Washington
From The Granger Collection CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
In building the American state, the fundamental principle was state control over the newly created federal power structure. Therefore, from the Founding Fathers' point of view, the federal government in Washington should consist of both representatives of the people (congressmen) and representatives of the state leadership '' the federal President and senators. This is how the institution of the Electoral College was invented and implemented. The electors are appointed by the state legislatures, and they are the ones who elect the President of the country.
So why do American citizens need to participate in the presidential elections? Well, strictly speaking, it is not necessary. It is just that there is a long tradition in America '' state legislators appoint electors in such a way that these appointments correspond to the mood of the people (in some states, this is even enshrined by law). This is a tradition, but according to the U.S. Constitution, the participation of the people in presidential elections, generally speaking, is not required. According to the Constitution, the people participate in the direct elections of their legislators, which is quite enough.
There is nothing reprehensible in this '' after all, the President of America is not the representative of the American people. He is the representative of state legislators. From the point of view of the states, the President (and pre-1913, two senators from each state) are the "overseers" of the federal government. In other words, the President, from the point of view of state legislators, is "our man in Havana" (that is, in Washington), who is responsible for the observance of state rights by the federal government.
Thus, under the Constitution, state legislators have the right to generally ignore the results of the voting of citizens of their state and appoint those who they deem necessary to the Electoral College. Why did the Founding Fathers of the United States give state legislators such unprecedented power? Because most of the Founding Fathers were geniuses with impressive foresight. They did not know precisely when this would happen, but they knew it would eventually happen: the election's published results would have nothing to do with how the citizens voted.
This is exactly what happened in 2020.
Of course, there have been falsifications in the counting of votes in America before. However, in 2020, the Democrats went all-in with a scam, and for the first time in American history, they were close to success. Actually, they simply had no other choice. They knew very well that another Trump term would be enough to crush the American left to its core. (However, even if Trump does not manage to stay in the White House, his departure from politics will be such that the left will not be envied.)
Now, more than a week after the elections, it is already clear what the Trump team is doing. They are working in two directions.
First, they sue in states where there was a clear violation of the electoral law. Violations include the counting of votes that came after polling stations closed, turnout of more than 100%, the use of computer systems that were systematically "wrong," always in favor of Biden, the thousands of Pennsylvania voters born on January 1, 1900 (or even on January 1, 1800), and much more.
For example, election results in some Democrat-controlled states violate fundamental laws of both mathematics and physics. The votes cast for Biden do not comply with the statistical law of distribution of digits (Benford's Law), while the ballots cast for Trump do adhere to this law. Thousands of mailed ballots were received even before they were officially sent. Thus, the 2020 election showed compelling evidence of the possibility of time travel.
Secondly, the Trump team calls on state legislators to use their constitutional powers to rectify the local executive authority's criminal actions to the point of completely ignoring the falsified voting results.
These are the expected steps. Any presidential candidate would and should take such measures. Al Gore did the same in 2000, but then the case concerned only the state of Florida. In 2000, the country did not know the name of the winner for 35 days, and in 2020 we should not expect a faster resolution of the issue because now we are talking about at least six "problem" states.
Only now is the reason for the frenzy with which the Democrats attacked the three Trump-nominated Supreme Court justices is becoming clear. The fact is that the Trump-nominated current U.S. Supreme Court justices '' Gorsuch, Kavanagh, and Barrett '' were on Bush's legal team that secured the Supreme Court case in favor of Bush in 2000.
But the main difference between the 2020 elections and the 2000 elections is the involvement of the federal government's apparatus in investigating violations. The investigation is carried out by both prosecutors of the Department of Justice and FBI agents.
According to the Constitution, all courts and all other voting problems must be resolved by the first Monday after the second Wednesday of December, which falls on December 14 this year. If on December 14, the Electoral College fails to elect a president, then the Constitution also provides for this scenario. Per the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, in this case, the President and Vice President will be elected by the House of Representatives (however, if for some reason the Vice President cannot be elected by the House of Representatives, then the right of his choice is transferred to the Senate.)
In the House of Representatives, state delegations will be voting, not the individual congressmen themselves. Now in the House of Representatives, the majority of delegations '' 26 '' belong to Republicans. In the Senate, the Republicans also have an advantage. So, the only reason Trump can lose the election now, a week after the election, is his own admission of defeat. But such a strange decision by Trump is unlikely '' this guy is from Queens, and if he gets involved in a fight, he will see it through to the end.
It is also unlikely that Trump does not understand that if the chronic vote-rigging by Democrats is not stopped now, America will end. The Trump team is well aware that such an opportunity to end the creeping socialist revolution may no longer be presented.
As a result, Democrats will likely not recover from this fraud. The disinformation media (which Fox News joined on the election night) will not recover from deliberately covering up this fraud, this attempted coup. If the Democrats went for broke, then Trump could, most likely, also go for broke.
Trump may have already destroyed the Democratic National Committee, but they just do not know it yet.
In military terms, Trump's team conducted careful reconnaissance and intelligence on the enemy for a week. They collected numerous affidavits about the electoral fraud of Democrats, witnesses who confirm their testimony under oath. But on the evening of November 10, the reconnaissance was completed, and massive artillery bombardment began in the form of lawsuits in several key states and the initiation of criminal investigations into violations by the Department of Justice. If this does not help, Trump will bring into the battle the strategic reserves available only to the President of the American state apparatus '' for example, in the form of a complete declassification of Obamagate. In any case, our country is by no means at the end; we are at the very beginning of this process.
From a legal perspective, Biden is an impostor, a false president, at least until December 14 of this year. If Biden can declare himself President-elect without any legal basis, then any other American citizen can also declare himself President-elect.
Therefore, I am forced to repeat my advice once again '' to survive in this leftist madhouse, turn off the TV and start thinking for yourself. If you have read the article so far, you will definitely succeed. And remember '' if the laws in our country are still observed, then the chances of the Harris-Biden administration (in this order) are practically zero. If the laws in America are not followed, then the great American political experiment will unfortunately end.
Gary Gindler, Ph.D., is a conservative columnist at Gary Gindler Chronicles and the founder of a new science: Politiphysics. Follow him on Twitter and Quodverum .
China
Porter Wright: Law Firm That Dropped Trump Advises CCP-Linked Firms, Aided in Outsourcing U.S. Jobs to China
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 18:38
Porter Wright, a law firm that reneged on providing representation to the Trump campaign's anti-fraud lawsuits in Pennsylvania, retains lawyers who have advised the Chinese Communist Party, The National Pulse can reveal.It was announced this week that Porter Wright would no longer represent the Trump campaign in its efforts to expose Democrat voter fraud.
But while Porter Wright refuses to provide counsel to President Trump, the law firm is willing to collaborate with the Chinese Communist Party and employ individuals with ties to the regime.
Yuanyou ''Sunny'' Yang '' Of Counsel at the firm's Pennsylvania office '' describes in her bio that she ''represents Chinese entities doing business in the U.S., as well as U.S. entities pursing investments and operating in China.''
Porter Wright's Yang.Yang's resume reveals she spoke at the Chinese Communist Party's Department of Justice in the municipality of Chongqing on October 16th, 2020. Specifically, the ''Judicial Bureau of Yubei District, Chongqing City'' invited Yang to advise on the issue of ''Common Compliance Issues and Risk Prevention of Chinese Enterprises' Overseas Investment.''
Yang has also spoke at the Beijing Long An Law Firm in a lecture series entitled, ''The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States '' New Challenges for Foreign Investment.''
The Beijing-based firm has been ''commended'' by the Chinese Communist Party for ''outstanding performance in Party building for many years,'' as the firm overwhelmingly staffs itself with Chinese Communist Party apparatchiks.
The office has insisted it ''carefully studies Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, actively organizes Party building activities, and carefully explores the long-term working mechanism of Party building work, insistently promoting the construction by Party building and put it into practical action to serve the society.''
''In the future, Long An Law Firm will work harder to do a good job in Party building, further strengthen the standardization of Party organization work, discover and train young lawyers, support Party leadership, serve the people, and continue to contribute to the construction of socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics,'' the firm also notes.
Yang, who holds degrees from two Chinese Communist Party-led institutions including Sichuan University and Southwest University, has lectured at her alma mater Southwest University's school of Political Science and Law on two occasions in July of 2020. Southwest University describes itself as ''under the direct administration of the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China'' that retains ''support in the construction and development from Central Government of China.''
In 2017, Yang advised on the topic of ''international law firm management'' at another Chinese Communist Party-linked body: the Chengdu Bar Association.
Yang's resume reveals that Porter Wright has represented a host of Chinese companies, which are invariably linked to the Chinese Communist government which is hostile to President Trump and his ''America First'' agenda.
The firm also appears to have helped facilitate the outsourcing of U.S. jobs to China by ''representing a U.S. company in negotiating certain investment agreements and supplier agreements with a Chinese manufacturer.''
Porter Wright helped facilitate closer economic ties between the two countries, even in areas rife with intellectual property theft.
The company:
Represented a major Chinese steel manufacturer related to its acquisition of a division of a U.S. company;Represented a major Chinese mineral production company related to its acquisition of a spinoff of a U.S. company and related environmental compliance issues;Represented a Chinese automobile accessories company in setting up a U.S. joint venture with a U.S. company;Obtained settlement that the client, a major Chinese technology company, found favorable in a breach of Know-How Transfer Agreement, fraud and negligent misrepresentation case.In other words, Porter Wright is willing to represent Chinese companies '' even in arbitration against U.S. firms '' yet refuses to represent the President of the United States.
Natalie Winters Natalie Winters is a Senior Reporter at the National Pulse and producer of The National Pulse TV show.
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China finds coronavirus on packaging of Saudi shrimp | Reuters
Sun, 15 Nov 2020 13:28
FILE PHOTO: Frozen seafood products made of imported shrimps are seen inside a sealed freezer at a supermarket following a new outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Beijing, China June 19, 2020. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - The western Chinese city of Lanzhou said on Saturday it had detected the new coronavirus on the packaging of a batch of shrimp imported from Saudi Arabia, as China ramps up testing of frozen foods.
The Lanzhou Municipal Health Commission said in a statement on its website that it had found one positive sample on Friday on the inner packaging of imported frozen shrimp from Saudi Arabia that had passed through customs in the coastal city of Tianjin.
The cold storage plant in Lanzhou where the case was discovered had been temporarily closed, all employees of the plant had been tested, all food involved was sealed and the whereabouts of all food sold had been determined, the statement said.
The commission said the shrimp had been purchased by Zhanjiang Guolian Aquatic Products Co Ltd, entered the country on Oct. 21 and reached Lanzhou on Nov. 8.
The positive sample in Lanzhou follows the detection of the virus on the packaging of a batch of Brazilian beef in Wuhan on Friday, and on Argentinian beef samples in Shandong and Jiangsu provinces this week.
The World Health Organization says the risk of catching COVID-19 from frozen food is low, but China has repeatedly sounded alarms after detecting the virus on imported food products, triggering disruptive import bans.
for-phone-only for-tablet-portrait-up for-tablet-landscape-up for-desktop-up for-wide-desktop-up
NWO - Great Reset
Code Ninjas coding schools spread around UK - BusinessCloud
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 21:00
US-based kids coding franchise Code Ninjas is live in six UK locations and plans to open a further 22 around the nation.
Budding 'ninjas' can enjoy coding, gaming and drone building at locations in Hampshire, Greater London, Hertfordshire and Berkshire.
The next round of launches will be hot on the heels of the late summer grand openings, with programmes opening up in Potters Bar, Chelmsford, Croydon, Welwyn Garden City and Hammersmith before the end of January.
The Code Ninjas network has grown at a rapid rate. With plans for 22 more locations already in the pipeline, the US-born kids coding school is on track to deliver their fun, interactive coding curriculum to 'ninjas' aged 5-14 throughout the nation by 2021.
''In late August, we celebrated the grand opening of our very first UK location in Watford, Hertfordshire '' that was a momentous occasion for Code Ninjas and something the entire team has been working towards for a number of months,'' said Justin Nihiser, CEO.
''It was also around this time that I joined the Code Ninjas team. Stepping up to take the reins of a global kids coding franchise during a pandemic has certainly been a challenge but one I was proud to take on.
''Despite the economic challenges caused by the lockdown period, I'm pleased to have witnessed such impressive growth first-hand.
''All of the locations we'd planned prior to the 23rd March are now fully operational and our network has almost doubled during the second two quarters of the year. And that's just the tip of the iceberg as we plan for 2021.''
Code Ninjas Watford, the brand's UK flagship location, opened its doors on Saturday 11th July.
''It's an honour to be part of Code Ninjas and play such a vital role in spearheading the growth of the brand on British soil,'' said Jass Patel, who owns the centre with wife Reena.
''We both feel so passionately about Code Ninjas' commitment to delivering quality coding education and are thrilled to have the opportunity to support that mission in our community.
''We're in for a busy few months but can't wait to make our mark on the state of children's coding education in the UK.''
Just one week later, Code Ninjas Pinner followed suit, launching on the 18th July. On the 22nd August, Code Ninjas Enfield welcomed budding ninjas from across Greater London. On the 24th August, a centre opened in the Hampshire town of Chandler's Ford. Code Ninjas Langley, the first location to launch under the brand's new Studio model, launched in Langley College on the 19th September.
Biraj Nakarja, one of the four franchisees behind Code Ninjas Langley, was over the moon to welcome students, parents, families and friends to their grand opening event.
''Despite the restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, we still made the most of our launch party, inviting our community to help us celebrate our new business,'' said Biraj.
''We're very proud and excited to bring the Code Ninjas programme to local children and, now that we're open, are looking forward to making a real impact on the state of coding education in our area. We're providing a service that is so in demand and fundamental for the future of the next generation.''
Raman, Sital and Biraj
Along with the rest of his team '' wife, Sital, and long-term friends, Raman and Karnvir Bath '' Biraj plans to open a second location, in nearby Windsor, within the next year.
''Essentially, we're establishing ourselves as the go-to providers for kids coding education across east Berkshire. Our first priority is to build momentum with our initial location before setting our sights on getting our second location off the ground. Although we definitely have to take the current economic climate into consideration, we feel confident in our ability to grow with the backing of the Code Ninjas team to guide us,'' said Biraj.
Despite the delays caused by the pandemic, the majority of the UK network have already made the initial steps towards opening a second location. Justin and the support team, based in Pearland, Texas, have been impressed by the network's commitment to delivering the Code Ninjas curriculum at such a crucial time.
''With a system of determined and passionate franchise owners and corporate staff that believe ardently in Code Ninjas' mission, our work will result in better problem solving and critical-thinking skills for our ninjas. Building these STEM-related skillsets at a young age equips Code Ninjas' students with valuable tools to navigate today's increasingly tech-centric world.''
Armageddon
The economy as we knew it might be over, Fed Chairman says - CNN
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 05:19
By Anneken Tappe, CNN Business
Updated 4:57 PM EST, Thu November 12, 2020
New York(CNN Business) The Covid-19 pandemic brought the economy to a screeching halt, and while it has started its long road to recovery, the economy we knew is probably a thing of the past, said Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Thursday.
"We're recovering, but to a different economy," Powell said during a virtual panel discussion at the European Central Bank's Forum on Central Banking.
The pandemic has accelerated existing trends in the economy and society, including the increasing use of technology, telework and automation, he said. This will have lasting effects on how people live and work.
While technological advances are generally positive for societies over the long term, Powell said, on a short-term basis they create disruption, and as the market adjusts to the new normal the pain isn't shared evenly.
For example, it's likely that lower-paid workers, as well as those in jobs requiring face-to-face interactions, such as retail or restaurant workers, will shoulder most of the burden of this shift. These groups, heavily skewed towards women and minorities, have already been among those most affected by pandemic layoffs, Powell said.
The post-pandemic economy is also at risk of being less productive: women have been forced to quit their jobs due to child care responsibilities during the crisis, and children aren't getting the education they deserve, Powell said.
Generally speaking, inequality holds the economy back, the central banker said.
"Even after the unemployment rate goes down and there's a vaccine, there's going to be a probably substantial group of workers who are going to need support as they're finding their way in the post-pandemic economy, because it's going to be different in some fundamental ways," Powell said.
Washington has spent trillions of dollars to boost the economy in the wake of the pandemic. But jobless workers are still in a tough spot: some benefits have already dwindled and more are set to expire at year-end. Economists are hopeful that the next administration will manage to pass another stimulus bill to help workers and businesses as the recovery continues.
More work needs to be donePowell has long said that the economy might need more stimulus from both the government and the central bank to get through the crisis. He again echoed this sentiment on Thursday.
"My sense is that we will need to do more and that Congress will need to do more," he said.
While the prospect of a vaccine is goods news, many questions remain, including the resurgence of the virus around the world.
"The main risk we see today [...] is the further spread of disease here in the United States," he said. Several states have restarted their pandemic restrictions to curb the spread.
US stocks weakened following Powell's sobering comments. The market had lately been rallying on vaccine hopes.
The Dow ( INDU ) closed 1.1%, or 317 points, lower, while the broader S&P 500 ( SPX ) fell 1%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite ( COMP ) finished 0.7% lower.
M5M vs Internet
US - UK Intel Agencies Declare Cyber War on Independent Media - unlimitedhangout.com
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 14:36
In just the past week, the national-security states of the United States and United Kingdom have discreetly let it be known that the cyber tools and online tactics previously designed for use in the post-9/11 ''war on terror'' are now being repurposed for use against information sources promoting ''vaccine hesitancy'' and information related to Covid-19 that runs counter to their state narratives.
A new cyber offensive was launched on Monday by the UK's signal intelligence agency, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which seeks to target websites that publish content deemed to be ''propaganda'' that raises concerns regarding state-sponsored Covid-19 vaccine development and the multi-national pharmaceutical corporations involved.
Similar efforts are underway in the United States, with the US military recently funding a CIA-backed firm'--stuffed with former counterterrorism officials who were behind the occupation of Iraq and the rise of the so-called Islamic State'--to develop an AI algorithm aimed specifically at new websites promoting ''suspected'' disinformation related to the Covid-19 crisis and the US military''led Covid-19 vaccination effort known as Operation Warp Speed.
Both countries are preparing to silence independent journalists who raise legitimate concerns over pharmaceutical industry corruption or the extreme secrecy surrounding state-sponsored Covid-19 vaccination efforts, now that Pfizer's vaccine candidate is slated to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by month's end.
Pfizer's history of being fined billions for illegal marketing and for bribing government officials to help them cover up an illegal drug trial that killed eleven children (among other crimes) has gone unmentioned by most mass media outlets, which instead have celebrated the apparently imminent approval of the company's Covid-19 vaccine without questioning the company's history or that the mRNA technology used in the vaccine has sped through normal safety trial protocols and has never been approved for human use. Also unmentioned is that the head of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Patrizia Cavazzoni, is the former Pfizer vice president for product safety who covered up the connection of one of its products to birth defects.
Pedestrians walk past Pfizer world headquarters in New York on Monday Nov. 9, 2020. Pfizer says an early peek at its vaccine data suggests the shots may be 90% effective at preventing COVID-19, but it doesn't mean a vaccine is imminent. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)Essentially, the power of the state is being wielded like never before to police online speech and to deplatform news websites to protect the interests of powerful corporations like Pfizer and other scandal-ridden pharmaceutical giants as well as the interests of the US and UK national-security states, which themselves are intimately involved in the Covid-19 vaccination endeavor.
UK Intelligence's New Cyberwar Targeting ''Anti-Vaccine Propaganda''On Monday, the UK newspaper The Times reported that the UK's GCHQ ''has begun an offensive cyber-operation to disrupt anti-vaccine propaganda being spread by hostile states'' and ''is using a toolkit developed to tackle disinformation and recruitment material peddled by Islamic State'' to do so. In addition, the UK government has ordered the British military's 77th Brigade, which specializes in ''information warfare,'' to launch an online campaign to counter ''deceptive narratives'' about Covid-19 vaccine candidates.
The newly announced GCHQ ''cyber war'' will not only take down ''anti-vaccine propaganda'' but will also seek to ''disrupt the operations of the cyberactors responsible for it, including encrypting their data so they cannot access it and blocking their communications with each other.'' The effort will also involve GCHQ reaching out to other countries in the ''Five Eyes'' alliance (US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada) to alert their partner agencies in those countries to target such ''propaganda'' sites hosted within their borders.
The Times stated that ''the government regards tackling false information about inoculation as a rising priority as the prospect of a reliable vaccine against the coronavirus draws closer,'' suggesting that efforts will continue to ramp up as a vaccine candidate gets closer to approval.
It seems that, from the perspective of the UK national-security state, those who question corruption in the pharmaceutical industry and its possible impact on the leading experimental Covid-19 vaccine candidates (all of which use experimental vaccine technologies that have never before been approved for human use) should be targeted with tools originally designed to combat terrorist propaganda.
While The Times asserted that the effort would target content ''that originated only from state adversaries'' and would not target the sites of ''ordinary citizens,'' the newspaper suggested that the effort would rely on the US government for determining whether or not a site is part of a ''foreign disinformation'' operation.
This is highly troubling given that the US recently seized the domains of many sites, including the American Herald Tribune, which it erroneously labeled as ''Iranian propaganda,'' despite its editor in chief, Anthony Hall, being based in Canada. The US government made this claim about the American Herald Tribune after the cybersecurity firm FireEye, a US government contractor, stated that it had ''moderate confidence'' that the site had been ''founded in Iran.''
In addition, the fact that GCHQ has alleged that most of the sites it plans to target are ''linked to Moscow'' gives further cause for concern given that the UK government was caught funding the Institute for Statecraft's Integrity Initiative, which falsely labeled critics of the UK government's actions as well as its narratives with respect to the Syria conflict as being related to ''Russian disinformation'' campaigns.
Given this precedent, it is certainly plausible that GCHQ could take the word of either an allied government, a government contractor, or perhaps even an allied media organization such as Bellingcat or the Atlantic Council's DFRLab that a given site is ''foreign propaganda'' in order to launch a cyber offensive against it. Such concerns are only amplified when one of the main government sources for The Times article bluntly stated that ''GCHQ has been told to take out antivaxers [sic] online and on social media. There are ways they have used to monitor and disrupt terrorist propaganda,'' which suggests that the targets of GCHQ's new cyber war will, in fact, be determined by the content itself rather than their suspected ''foreign'' origin. The ''foreign'' aspect instead appears to be a means of evading the prohibition in GCHQ's operational mandate on targeting the speech or websites of ordinary citizens.
This larger pivot toward treating alleged ''anti-vaxxers'' as ''national security threats'' has been ongoing for much of this year, spearheaded in part by Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate, a member of the UK government's Steering Committee on Countering Extremism Pilot Task Force, which is part of the UK government's Commission for Countering Extremism.
Ahmed told the UK newspaper The Independent in July that ''I would go beyond calling anti-vaxxers conspiracy theorists to say they are an extremist group that pose a national security risk.'' He then stated that ''once someone has been exposed to one type of conspiracy it's easy to lead them down a path where they embrace more radical world views that can lead to violent extremism,'' thereby implying that ''anti-vaxxers'' might engage in acts of violent extremism. Among the websites cited by Ahmed's organization as promoting such ''extremism'' that poses a ''national security risk'' were Children's Health Defense, the National Vaccine Information Center, Informed Consent Action Network, and Mercola.com, among others.
Similarly, a think tank tied to US intelligence'--whose GCHQ equivalent, the National Security Agency, will take part in the newly announced ''cyber war'''--argued in a research paper published just months before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis that ''the US 'anti-vaxxer' movement would pose a threat to national security in the event of a 'pandemic with a novel organism.'''
InfraGard, ''a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and members of the private sector,'' warned in the paper published last June that ''the US anti-vaccine movement would also be connected with 'social media misinformation and propaganda campaigns' orchestrated by the Russian government,'' as cited by The Guardian. The InfraGard paper further claimed that prominent ''anti-vaxxers'' are aligned ''with other conspiracy movements including the far right . . . and social media misinformation and propaganda campaigns by many foreign and domestic actors. Included among these actors is the Internet Research Agency, the Russian government''aligned organization.''
An article published just last month by the Washington Post argued that ''vaccine hesitancy is mixing with coronavirus denial and merging with far-right American conspiracy theories, including Qanon,'' which the FBI named a potential domestic terror threat last year. The article quoted Peter Hotez, dean of the School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, as saying ''The US anti-vaccination movement is globalizing and it's going toward more-extremist tendencies.''
Simone Warstat of Louisville, Colo., waves a placard during a rally against a legislative bill to make it more difficult for parents to opt out for non-medical reasons to immunize their children Sunday, June 7, 2020, in Denver. It is worth pointing out that many so-called ''anti-vaxxers'' are actually critics of the pharmaceutical industry and are not necessarily opposed to vaccines in and of themselves, making the labels ''anti-vaxxer'' and ''anti-vaccine'' misleading. Given that many pharmaceutical giants involved in making Covid-19 vaccines donate heavily to politiciansin both countries and have been involved in numerous safety scandals, using state intelligence agencies to wage cyber war against sites that investigate such concerns is not only troubling for the future of journalism but it suggests that the UK is taking a dangerous leap toward becoming a country that uses its state powers to treat the enemies of corporations as enemies of the state.
The CIA-Backed Firm ''Weaponizing Truth'' with AIIn early October, the US Air Force and US Special Operations Command announced that they had awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to the US-based ''machine intelligence'' company Primer. Per the press release, ''Primer will develop the first-ever machine learning platform to automatically identify and assess suspected disinformation [emphasis added]. Primer will also enhance its natural language processing platform to automatically analyze tactical events to provide commanders with unprecedented insight as events unfold in near real-time.''
According to Primer, the company ''builds software machines that read and write in English, Russian, and Chinese to automatically unearth trends and patterns across large volumes of data,'' and their work ''supports the mission of the intelligence community and broader DOD by automating reading and research tasks to enhance the speed and quality of decision-making.'' In other words, Primer is developing an algorithm that would allow the national-security state to outsource many military and intelligence analyst positions to AI. In fact, the company openly admits this, stating that their current effort ''will automate the work typically done by dozens of analysts in a security operations center to ingest all of the data relevant to an event as it happens and funnel it into a unified user interface.''
Primer's ultimate goal is to use their AI to entirely automate the shaping of public perceptions and become the arbiter of ''truth,'' as defined by the state. Primer's founder, Sean Gourley, who previously created AI programs for the military to track ''insurgency'' in post-invasion Iraq, asserted in an April blog post that ''computational warfare and disinformation campaigns will, in 2020, become a more serious threat than physical war, and we will have to rethink the weapons we deploy to fight them.''
In that same post, Gourley argued for the creation of a ''Manhattan Project for truth'' that would create a publicly available Wikipedia-style database built off of ''knowledge bases [that] already exist inside many countries' intelligence agencies for national security purposes.'' Gourley then wrote that ''this effort would be ultimately about building and enhancing our collective intelligence and establishing a baseline for what's true or not'' as established by intelligence agencies. He concludes his blog post by stating that ''in 2020, we will begin to weaponize truth.''
Notably, on November 9, the same day that GCHQ announced its plans to target ''anti-vaccine propaganda,'' the US website NextGov reported that Primer's Pentagon-funded effort had turned its attention specifically to ''Covid-19 related disinformation.'' According to Primer's director of science, John Bohannon, ''Primer will be integrating bot detection, synthetic text detection and unstructured textual claims analysis capabilities into our existing artificial intelligence platform currently in use with DOD. . . . This will create the first unified mission-ready platform to effectively counter Covid-19-related disinformation in near-real time.''
Bohannon, who previously worked as a mainstream journalist embedded with NATO forces in Afghanistan, also told NextGov that Primer's new Covid-19''focused effort ''automatically classifies documents into one of 10 categories to enable the detection of the impact of COVID'' on areas such as ''business, science and technology, employment, the global economy, and elections.'' The final product is expected to be delivered to the Pentagon in the second quarter of next year.
Though a so-called private company, Primer is deeply linked to the national-security state it is designed to protect by ''weaponizing truth.'' Primer proudly promotes itself as having more than 15 percent of its staff hailing from the US intelligence community or military. The director of the company's National Security Group is Brian Raymond, a former CIA intelligence officer who served as the Director for Iraq on the US National Security Council after leaving the agency.
The company also recently added several prominent national-security officials to its board including:
Gen. Raymond Thomas (ret.), who led the command of all US and NATO Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan and is the former commander of both US Special Operations Command and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).Lt. Gen. VeraLinn Jamieson (ret.), the former deputy chief of staff for Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance who led the Air Force's intelligence and cyber forces. She also personally developed ''strategic partnerships'' between the Air Force and Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and IBM in order ''to accelerate the Air Force's digital transformation.''Brett McGurk, one of the ''chief architects'' of the Iraq War ''surge,'' alongside the notorious Kagan family, as NSC Director for Iraq, and then as special assistant to the president and senior Director for Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush administration. Under Obama and during part of the Trump administration, McGurk was the special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS at the State Department, helping to manage the ''dirty war'' waged by the US, the UK, and other allies against Syria.In addition to those recent board hires, Primer brought on Sue Gordon, the former principal deputy director of National Intelligence, as a strategic adviser. Gordon previously ''drove partnerships within the US Intelligence Community and provided advice to the National Security Council in her role as deputy director of national intelligence'' and had a twenty-seven-year career at the CIA. The deep links are unsurprising, given that Primer is financially backed by the CIA's venture-capital arm In-Q-Tel and the venture-capital arm of billionaire Mike Bloomberg, Bloomberg Beta.
Operation Warp Speed's Disinformation Blitzkrieg The rapid increase in interest by the US and UK national-security states toward Covid-19 ''disinformation,'' particularly as it relates to upcoming Covid-19 vaccination campaigns, is intimately related to the media-engagement strategy of the US government's Operation Warp Speed.
Officially a ''public-private partnership,'' Operation Warp Speed, which has the goal of vaccinating 300 million Americans by next January, is dominated by the US military and also involves several US intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as well as intelligence-linked tech giants Google, Oracle, and Palantir. Several reports published in The Last American Vagabondby this author and journalist Derrick Broze have revealed the extreme secrecy of the operation, its numerous conflicts of interest, and its deep ties to Silicon Valley and Orwellian technocratic initiatives.
Warp Speed's official guidance discusses at length its phased plan for engaging the public and addressing issues of ''vaccine hesitancy.'' According to the Warp Speed document entitled ''From the Factory to the Frontlines,'' ''strategic communications and public messaging are critical to ensure maximum acceptance of vaccines, requiring a saturation of messaging across the national media.'' It also states that ''working with established partners'--especially those that are trusted sources for target audiences'--is critical to advancing public understanding of, access to, and acceptance of eventual vaccines'' and that ''identifying the right messages to promote vaccine confidence, countering misinformation, and targeting outreach to vulnerable and at-risk populations will be necessary to achieve high coverage.''
The document also notes that Warp Speed will employ the CDC's three-pronged strategic framework for its communications effort. The third pillar of that strategy is entitled ''Stop Myths'' and has as a main focus ''establish[ing] partnerships to contain the spread of misinformation'' as well as ''work[ing] with local partners and trusted messengers to improve confidence in vaccines.''
Though that particular Warp Speed document is short on specifics, the CDC's Covid-19 Vaccination Program Interim Playbook contains additional information. It states that Operation Warp Speed will ''engage and use a wide range of partners, collaborations, and communication and news media channels to achieve communication goals, understanding that channel preferences and credible sources vary among audiences and people at higher risk for severe illness and critical populations, and channels vary in their capacity to achieve different communication objectives.'' It states that it will focus its efforts in this regard on ''traditional media channels'' (print, radio, and TV) as well as ''digital media'' (internet, social media, and text messaging).
The CDC document further reveals that the ''public messaging'' campaign to ''promote vaccine uptake'' and address ''vaccine hesitancy'' is divided into four phases and adds that the overall communication strategy of Warp Speed ''should be timely and applicable for the current phase of the Covid-19 Vaccination program.''
Those phases are:
Before a vaccine is availableThe vaccine is available in limited supply for certain populations of early focusThe vaccine is increasingly available for other critical populations and the general publicThe vaccine is widely availableGiven that the Covid-19 vaccine candidate produced by Pfizer is expected to be approved by the end of November, it appears that the US national-security state, which is essentially running Operation Warp Speed, along with ''trusted messengers'' in mass media, is preparing to enter the second phase of its communications strategy, one in which news organizations and journalists who raise legitimate concerns about Warp Speed will be de-platformed to make way for the ''required'' saturation of pro-vaccine messaging across the English-speaking media landscape.
BLM
MIT is Mandating Diversity Training; One Student Calls it 'Indoctrination'
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 00:39
EducationPosted by Charlie Staff - 22 hours ago
If you plan on pursuing or continuing your education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, be prepared to take diversity training, otherwise you cannot attend.
In an email sent to all students, they were told they would not be able to register for spring classes if they did not complete diversity, equity and inclusion training.
Campus Reform Reports:
In the email, a copy of which Campus Reform obtained, MIT outlined ''two required trainings,'' the first one being ''diversity, equity, and inclusion,'' and the second being ''sexual assault prevention ongoing: healthy relationships.''
''You will have a registration hold placed on your account and will be unable to register for IAP and/or spring 2021 classes if you do not complete both trainings by the Nov. 2 deadline,'' the email reads.
''From my perspective, this is a gross over-reach of the school's power,'' one MIT student, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution, told Campus Reform.
The student argued that MIT was making ''classes contingent upon indoctrination.''
MIT cited a 2015 push by the Black Student Union as the catalyst for the change, saying that since then, ''students rated MIT as more caring, safe, and friendly.''
The training covered various topics, including the exploration of power, the definition of privilege, and different types of oppression.
In one section titled ''defining privilege,'' it shows a photo of a white man and says ''people may be privileged through no action of their own.'' I wonder if the millions of poor white people, with untold amounts of disadvantages around the country would agree they have default privilege because of their skin color.
Some of the questions included, ''I've never been told that I'm in the wrong bathroom,'' ''Police officers make me feel a sense of safety,'' ''I never have to worry that my friends or family will be deported,'' ''When I graduate, my family will attend,'' and ''I always have a safe place to pray.''
After answering the question, students were then able to see how many students out of 100 disagreed with the statement, thereby allegedly showing their privilege.
Nothing like trying to get rid of racism by accusing people of being racist and privileged and pushing your own ideology.
A WHOPPING 56% of Americans Say They are Better off Today (Mid-Pandemic) than Under Obama-BidenA recent Gallup survey found that a whopping 56 percent of Americans say they are better off now under President Trump''in the middle of a pandemic''than they were four years ago when President Obama was in office.
Gallup writes:
During his presidential campaign in 1980, Ronald Reagan asked Americans, ''Are you better off today than you were four years ago?'' Since then, this question has served as a key standard that sitting presidents running for reelection have been held to.
Gallup's most recent survey found a clear majority of registered voters (56%) saying they are better off now than they were four years ago, while 32% said they are worse off.
The Gallup Poll has just come out with the incredible finding that 56% of you say that you are better off today, during a pandemic, than you were four years ago (OBiden). Highest number on record! Pretty amazing!
'-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 9, 2020
Gallup compared the 56 percent number to 2012, during the Obama-Biden Administration when just 45 percent of Americans could say they felt they were better off. In 2004, 47 percent of Americans said they were better off and in 1992, that number was at 38 percent.
President Trump responded to the news, writing on Twitter, ''The Gallup Poll has just come out with the incredible finding that 56% of you say that you are better off today, during a pandemic, than you were four years ago (Biden). The highest number on record! Pretty amazing!''
Affluent Chicagoans Fleeing Due to Leadership Inability to Calm BLM ViolenceMany people, including President Trump himself, noted during their Republican National Convention speeches that Democratic-run cities are experiencing violence and looting, as the leaders whose policies are to blame are safely hidden in privileged areas. However, areas like Chicago have become so bad, affluent neighborhoods are no longer safe and citizens are getting out of dodge.
''Incidents of widespread looting and soaring homicide figures in Chicago have made national news during an already tumultuous year,'' writes the Chicago Tribune. ''As a result, some say residents in affluent neighborhoods downtown, and on the North Side, no longer feel safe in the city's epicenter and are looking to move away.''
Liberal leadership has been unsuccessful at subduing violence from the Black Lives Matter's highjacked movement. With no end of destruction in sight and spontaneous eruptions of violence, while residents say ''they understand why protesters and rioters have poured onto the streets of downtown, and some acknowledge that crime is worse in other parts of Chicago'' they still want out reports the Chicago Tribune.
Some people ''agree with protesters that something systemic needs to be changed'' but they ''don't want to wait it out here in the city, fearful of stepping outside at night and hoping for things to maybe get better.'' A 30-year-old nurse who lives in the River North area said, ''not to make it all about us; the whole world is suffering'...but I do think that I've never had to think about my own safety in this way before.''
Hopefully, this will be a lesson to Chicagoans and similar cities, that they need to vote out their Democratic leadership who refuse to stand up to the violent protesters and also refuse to accept help and assistance offered directly from President Trump. 60-year-old Neil Spun has lived in Chicago for over half his life and is deeply conflicted about moving. A state worker, Spun said ''there have been rights before, and looting. It just seems to me now that the city isn't doing anything about it. I don't see this getting any better, and so I'd like to leave.'' Residents would be far better off voting in new leadership instead of succumbing to liberal policies that change their communities beyond recognition.
Police kick a Muslim activist off an American Airlines flight after dispute with white passenger | Daily Mail Online
Sun, 15 Nov 2020 12:39
A Muslim activist was removed from an American Airlines flight and detained for four hours after she reportedly confronted a first class passenger over alleged special treatment.
The incident happened on Saturday when Amani al-Khatahtbeh, a congressional candidate and founder of Muslimgirl.com, attempted to travel from Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey to Charlotte, North Carolina.
According to a statement from American Airlines, the incident between Al-Khatahtbeh and an unidentified white passenger began during TSA screening.
American Airlines indicated that her arrest came after the on-plane confrontation, but her brother and the New Jersey chapter of the Council for American-Islamic Relations said al-Khatahtbeh was handcuffed for refusing to remove her hijab.
'Our understanding is that Ms. Al-Khatahtbeh believed the other passenger, who is enrolled in PreCheck, was getting favorable treatment because he was allowed to proceed through security while she was removing her shoes,' the statement read.
Al-Khatahtbeh, who was named one of the 25 most influential Muslim Americans by CNN, is the founder of the blog MuslimGirl.com
The woman is pictured speaking to a police officer who boarded the plane on Saturday morning
'This led to a verbal altercation that continued through the terminal and on the plane where Ms. Al-Khatahtbeh confronted the passenger and began filming him before taking her seat,' the statement continued.
American Airlines added that both PreCheck and non-PreCheck screeming were consolidated into one open lane at the time.
Al-Khatahtbeh later shared her experience on Twitter. She said the man had her removed from the flight because she made him feel 'uncomfortable'.
'I had the craziest experience in TSA this morning. An entitled white man behind me insisted on cutting me in line because I was 'still taking my shoes off.' When I said he could wait like everyone else, he started going off about how he's 'pre check' and 'first class'', she told her 28,000 followers.
Amani al-Khatahtbeh recounted the incident on her Twitter account Saturday morning as she attempted to fly out of New Jersey
'He then proceeded to not only shove his things before mine, but then RUN THROUGH THE MACHINE and TSA did NOTHING! Not only did they not do anything, a TSA officer had the audacity to tell ME to 'cut it out''.
'Y'all know if I, a VEILED MUSLIM WOMAN, had the audacity to throw a temper tantrum and run through TSA security, I would have gotten BODIED. I would have been detained, missed my flight, possibly gotten charged, etc.'
Later al-Khatahtbeh updated her followers on the unfolding situation by tweeting: 'Guys he made a complaint about me and @American is attempting to remove me from the flight.'
She then tweeted the airline directly stating: 'ONE OF YOUR MANAGERS IS TRYING TO GET POLICE TO REMOVE ME OFF 9:55 EWR (Newark Liberty Airport) TO CHARLOTTE.'
Al-Khatahtbeh shared a photo of her being arrested by police and captioned it: 'Simply flying as a Muslim woman makes people uncomfortable...unbelievable'
Al-Khatahtbeh's brother shared an update on Twitter saying that he was en route to Newark Liberty to try and find further information. He also shared a video showing her speaking with police after being booted from the flight
Al-Khatahtbeh shared a photo of police escorting her off the plane, saying 'Simply flying as a Muslim woman makes people uncomfortable.... unbelievable.'
On Facebook Live, she posted a video showing all passengers disembarking the plane after she and the man both refused to leave.
Her brother later shared an update on Twitter saying that he was en route to Newark Liberty to try and find further information.
He and CAIR-NJ executive director Selaedin Maksut both claimed that Al-Khatahtbeh was only handcuffed after she refused to remove her hijab.
Selaedin Maksut, executive director of New Jersey chapter of the Council for American-Islamic Relations, said Al-Khatahtbeh was handcuffed after she refused to remove her Hijab
'@Amani2020 was handcuffed by EWR police officers bc she refused to take her hijab off during processing. Muslim woman should not have to endure such humiliation bc they hold firm to their religious beliefs. Do better,' wrote Maskut.
'Only after our @CAIRNJ attorney asked to speak with EWR Port Authority police did they remove the handcuffs and allow for @Amani202 to remain in the cell with her hijab.'
Additional footage of the incident was taken and shared by an American Airline passenger who witnessed it.
The passenger also shared video footage of al-Khatahtbeh speaking with airline crew and police before she was booted off the aircraft.
A photograph appearing to show a Muslim Congressional candidate being escorted off an American Airlines flight in handcuffs has sparked outrage on the internet.
'Had to get off my flight because a man asked a Muslim woman to get off the plane. @AmericanAirlines employees followed his request and gave the woman no explanation,' the passenger, @yesjaketapia, wrote beneath a video of the woman speaking politely to flight crew.
She says she would not leave the aircraft simply because the man was 'uncomfortable'.
A second clip showed a police officer coming aboard the aircraft to speak with the woman, who said she was happy to get off the plane so long as they also disembarked the man with whom she had an alleged dispute. She identified the man as being a white male who was seated in first class.
The New Jersey chapter of the Council for American-Islamic Relations told NJ.com that al-Khatahtbeh was detained by authorities for nearly four hours.
The woman in the footage is believed to be noted author and activist Amani al-Khatahtbeh. She took to her own Twitter account to relay the incident
Al-Khatahtbeh became the the first Muslim woman in New Jersey to run for federal office when she announced she was seeking to represent the state's 6th Congressional District during the 2020 election. She was unsuccessful.
The activist - was named one of the 25 most influential Muslim Americans by CNN - is the founder of the blog MuslimGirl.com.
American Airlines added in its statement: 'We are aware of an incident that took place between two passengers before and during boarding of flight 2029 at Newark Liberty International Airport. We are concerned by these allegations and our team is working to understand what occurred.'
Al-Khatahtbeh updated her followers on the unfolding situation by tweeting: 'Guys he made a complaint about me and @American is attempting to remove me from the flight'
Free is Expensive
Google Photos ends free unlimited storage - CNN
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 05:20
By Rishi Iyengar, CNN Business
Updated 6:58 PM EST, Thu November 12, 2020
San Francisco(CNN Business) Google will restrict free usage of a very popular service.
The company will phase out unlimited storage on Google Photos, it announced Wednesday. The service, launched in 2015, allows users to easily upload, back up and sort through the thousands of images we fill our smartphones with.
Any images users upload beyond June 1, 2021 will count towards the 15 GB limit imposed on Google accounts that already includes files from other services such as Gmail and Google Drive.
After hitting that limit, Google Photos users will have to pay for extra space through the company's Google One cloud service, which starts at $1.99 a month for 100 GB of storage.
Angry usersBut the flood of users that flocked to Google Photos in the five years since it launched '-- more than a billion of them '-- may have reason to feel betrayed after counting on a feature that Google at least hinted would be around forever.
"Google Photos gives you a single, private place to keep a lifetime of memories, and access them from any device," Anil Sabharwal, Google Photos' then-head, said in a blog post when the service launched in 2015. "And when we say a lifetime of memories, we really mean it."
Google Photos hooked users with the offer of unlimited high quality photo uploads and slick automatic backups from your smartphone. Once your photos are uploaded Google's AI capabilities make it much easier to search through your old photos, including grouping them by event, by date or even identifying individual people and places.
People got used to the free and very good service, so after Google's Wednesday announcements, many people are posting sarcastic, disappointed or even angry comments on social media.
"Google Photos: Photos. Until Google doesn't want them anymore," wrote one user on a YouTube promo touting Google Photos as being "For Life."
Several Twitter users also accused the company of a "bait and switch," with many vowing to stop using Google Photos.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment.
Some caveatsThere are some details about the upcoming change worth noting.
Previously, Google allowed users to upload high-quality images '-- slightly compressed from the original but barely noticeable to the casual eye '-- for free. Uploading original quality images already counted towards the 15 GB storage limit. But after June 1 next year, any images users put on Google Photos will eat into that limit.
There are some measures in place that will help ease the transition. Google says anything uploaded to Google Photos between now and next June will not count towards the 15 GB cap, and the company estimates more than 80% of users will have enough space to store around three more years' worth of images and videos even after June next year.
Google will also let you track your remaining space in years rather than GB, based on a calculation of how often you take and back up images. Google Photos also uses artificial intelligence to warn you when you may be running out of space and suggest photos that might be easy to get rid of, such as random screenshots, blurry images and anything it's already backed up to the cloud.
Google says users of its Pixel smartphones will enjoy the free unlimited storage even after the June 2021 deadline.
You've got optionsTo some, Google's move to suddenly make more users start paying for storage might seem like the perfect example of a tech company that's too big and powerful.
After all, the tech giant is already facing a significant antitrust lawsuit over its dominance in online search, and Its move to juice Google Photos for even more revenue could give some of the company's many critics more fodder to justify a crackdown.
But unlike its dominance in online search, Google has several high-profile competitors when it comes to photo and cloud storage services.
These include Apple's iCloud, which offers 5 GB of free storage and $0.99 a month for 50 GB of storage thereafter, Microsoft's OneDrive, which gives users 100 GB of storage for $1.99 a month, and Flickr, which offers up to 1,000 photos and videos for free and charges $6.99 a month for unlimited storage.
So galling as it might seem to some, the change is unlikely to exacerbate scrutiny of its market power.
"I think it's a stretch to call this an antitrust problem," said Avery Gardiner, general counsel and senior fellow for competition, data and power at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "And giving people more than six months notice of a future price increase isn't the sort of conduct we usually characterize as an abuse of power."
Gardiner also points out that Google doesn't impede users from switching to other services or place restrictions on compatibility between different services.
But for users who have years of images and videos on Google Photos '-- the company says more than 4 trillion images are currently stored on the platform, with 28 billion being added every week '-- switching away may be difficult. Some good things just weren't meant to last.
New lawsuit: Why do Android phones mysteriously exchange 260MB a month with Google via cellular data when they're not even in use? ' The Register
Sun, 15 Nov 2020 12:27
Google on Thursday was sued for allegedly stealing Android users' cellular data allowances though unapproved, undisclosed transmissions to the web giant's servers.
The lawsuit, Taylor et al v. Google [PDF], was filed in a US federal district court in San Jose on behalf of four plaintiffs based in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin in the hope the case will be certified by a judge as a class action.
The complaint contends that Google is using Android users' limited cellular data allowances without permission to transmit information about those individuals that's unrelated to their use of Google services.
Data sent over Wi-Fi is not at issue, nor is data sent over a cellular connection in the absence of Wi-Fi when an Android user has chosen to use a network-connected application. What concerns the plaintiffs is data sent to Google's servers that isn't the result of deliberate interaction with a mobile device '' we're talking passive or background data transfers via cell network, here.
"Google designed and implemented its Android operating system and apps to extract and transmit large volumes of information between Plaintiffs' cellular devices and Google using Plaintiffs' cellular data allowances," the complaint claims. "Google's misappropriation of Plaintiffs' cellular data allowances through passive transfers occurs in the background, does not result from Plaintiffs' direct engagement with Google's apps and properties on their devices, and happens without Plaintiffs' consent."
Google designed and implemented its Android operating system and apps to extract and transmit large volumes of information between Plaintiffs' cellular devices and Google using Plaintiffs' cellular data allowances
Android users have to accept four agreements to participate in the Google ecosystem: Terms of Service; the Privacy Policy; the Managed Google Play Agreement; and the Google Play Terms of Service. None of these, the court filing contends, disclose that Google spends users' cellular data allowances for these background transfers.
To support the allegations, the plaintiff's counsel tested a new Samsung Galaxy S7 phone running Android, with a signed-in Google Account and default setting, and found that when left idle, without a Wi-Fi connection, the phone "sent and received 8.88 MB/day of data, with 94 per cent of those communications occurring between Google and the device."
The device, stationary, with all apps closed, transferred data to Google about 16 times an hour, or about 389 times in 24 hours. Assuming even half of that data is outgoing, Google would receive about 4.4MB per day or 130MB per month in this manner per device subject to the same test conditions.
Putting worries of what could be in that data to one side, based on an average price of $8 per GB of data in the US, that 130MB works out to about $1 lost to Google data gathering per month '' if the device is disconnected from Wi-Fi the entire time and does all its passive transmission over a cellular connection.
An iPhone with Apple's Safari browser open in the background transmits only about a tenth of that amount to Apple, according to the complaint.
Much of the transmitted data, it's claimed, are log files that record network availability, open apps, and operating system metrics. Google could have delayed transmitting these files until a Wi-Fi connection was available, but chose instead to spend users' cell data so it could gather data at all hours.
Vanderbilt University Professor Douglas C. Schmidt performed a similar study in 2018 '' except that the Chrome browser was open '' and found that Android devices made 900 passive transfers in 24 hours.
Under active use, Android devices transfer about 11.6MB of data to Google servers daily, or 350MB per month, it's claimed, which is about half the amount transferred by an iPhone.
The complaint charges that Google conducts these undisclosed data transfers for further its advertising business, sending "tokens" that identify users for targeted advertising and preload ads that generate revenue even if they're never displayed.
"Users often never view these pre-loaded ads, even though their cellular data was already consumed to download the ads from Google," the legal filing claims. "And because these pre-loads can count as ad impressions, Google is paid for transmitting the ads."
The Register asked Google to respond to the lawsuit's allegations. It declined to comment.
We also asked Marc Goldberg, Chief Revenue Officer at ad analytics biz Method Media Intelligence whether preloaded ads ever get counted as billable events when not shown.
"Yes they could be," Goldberg said in an email to The Register. "It is important for advertisers to understand their billable event. What are they paying for? Auction won? Ads Served? Ads rendered? These simple questions need to be asked and understood."
The lawsuit seeks to recover the fair market value of the co-opted cellular data and the "reasonable value of the cellular data used by Google to extract and deliver information that benefited Google," dating back years to whenever this practice began. ®
Podcasting 2.0
Spotify Goes 'Nose-to-Tail': Is this the beginning of the end for the dream that was podcasting? | by Nick Hilton | Pod Culture | Nov, 2020 | Medium
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 13:54
The Lesser-Spotifyed Pig E very once in a while, someone comes along and thinks they can crack podcasting's data problem. They believe they have the tools to unlock dynamic, personalised and highly-targeted messaging delivery. But each time one of these radical propositions emerges, it's scuppered against the same rocks: every party involved in the process of making a podcast has a different set of priorities, and every party is financially disincentivised from streamlining that process.
For example, I might make a podcast called The Nick Hilton Show (fyi, I don't, though if the price were right'...). I'd be the first party involved in that show, as the production company (and that may come with internal divisions, though, for clarity's sake, let's say this is a self-hosted show made by my own company, in which I am the majority shareholder). I do a deal with, let's say, Acast, to sell advertising on that show '-- suddenly I have a second party who share my interest in the show's success but have a totally different set of priorities to me. And even though we're working together, that relationship cannot be transparent '-- they can't share analytics and they can't share leads '-- otherwise I might be inclined to circumvent them and take a 100% cut of revenue, rather than a 67% cut. And with that '-- poof '-- their business model would be up in smoke.
That's a very simple relationship, but there are further parties that are involved in the production line between me making the award-winning The Nick Hilton Show and it reaching my thousands, nay millions (*cough*), of listeners. There are the parties who sell advertising via Acast, who are paying a premium to have dynamic insertion (not to mention the ease of broadcasting to a curated suite of shows, rather than going out on the town looking for individual shows to have a good time with). Then there are the distributors '-- Apple, say, or Overcast '-- who, to some extent, want to undo the commercialisation of the podcast at Stage 2 in order to prioritise the UX. And then there's the listener: the humble, disinterested listener.
And so, it's been very hard to do anything too radical in podcasting, because all these services have been very atomised and have worked together yet at cross purposes. They didn't emerge at the same time, but sprung into existence as the medium very gradually professionalised. Their presence is symbiotic yet secretive. And podcasting, in its first 15-odd years, hasn't quite had the financial clout to make an investment in drawing these threads together worthwhile'... until now.
Spotify has, this week, acquired Megaphone in a deal that The Verge reports as being worth $235m. It's no secret that Spotify's been on aggressive manoeuvres lately, buying up real estate across the industry, including big money deals for companies like Gimlet and Anchor, and this is the priciest item in their shopping basket. In a way, Megaphone was the last piece of the puzzle '-- a pure hosting company (Anchor is also that, though in techland it's value is perceived as being podcast creation, rather than hosting). They can now offer a nose-to-tail experience for podcasters, from creation with Anchor, hosting with Megaphone, dynamic advertising with their own Streaming Ad Insertion (SAI), and distribution with Spotify. And they'll use creator acquisitions '-- like Gimlet, The Ringer, Parcast and Joe Rogan '-- to try and set this as the industrial default for emerging podcasters. And there's a good chance that they will become the industrial default, because they can do it; they can crack podcasting's data problem. Anchor won't hold out on Megaphone, Megaphone won't hold out on SAI, SAI won't hold out on Spotify; they're all cogs moving the same wheel, working towards a shared purpose.
The danger, as I see it, is to the ecosystem more generally. Most podcasters cannot make a living from podcasting, and that has been a fact since Day 1. Nothing is going to change here, and if you think that Spotify is going to flush the industry with that beautiful Swedish VC krona, you haven't paid attention to the squeeze they've put on the music industry.
The lack of clear application for data in podcasting has had multiple impacts. It has definitely meant that the quantity of advertising has been slow to emerge '-- most advertisers would rather stick with tried and tested routes, or look to new social avenues without an upfront spend. But it has also allowed some middle tier podcasts to price their product competitively with the larger professional market. $20/30 CPMs have been frustrating to many, but those look great when compared to what Spotify pays musicians or YouTube pays creators. At $0.00318 per stream, thats a $3.18 CPM that Spotify were reported to pay artists earlier this year; YouTube's CPM is in the region of $3/5, though many creators seem to get frozen out entirely.
There's a chance that Spotify's full-system-podcasting will mean that Joe Podcaster (not Rogan) gets to take home some money from his show, however few people listen to it (remember that most current ad-insertion companies don't deal with sub-10k shows at all). And maybe that will be written up as hugely democratic, even if it's just beer money at the end of the month. But there will be consequences to CPMs declining, even if money is being distributed more equitably.
The advertising industry '-- and, indeed, the industries that supply advertising with its clients '-- are not staked in the success of podcasting as a medium. If CPMs are being driven down by the single biggest player in the game, everything will adjust to reflect that. Dynamic ad-insertion is there to improve the situation for advertisers, not podcasters. And the more that Spotify has the whip-hand over the podcast industry, the less incentivised they are to generosity when sharing ad sales. I suspect that, in a couple of years time, recouping two thirds of your agency ad-sales (the current standard) will seem like a dizzy daydream.
And so, in conclusion, once again this is a move that favours broadcasters whose imperatives are not solely advertising sales. It will favour podcasts within the Spotify family, certainly. It will favour private publishers like the New York Times, The Athletic and The Atlantic, for whom a prong of their podcast strategy is integrating people to a subscription model. And, as ever, it will favour public broadcasters. As Noel Coward might've said, the rich get richer and the poor get a three-buck CPM.
Follow me on Twitter if you can stand the idea, and do check out my podcast documentary, The Town That Didn't Stare, available on most good podcast platforms. And you can always email me to nick@podotpods.com if you want to chat podcasts.
FedNow
Lebanon Plans to Introduce Digital Currency in 2021: Salameh - Bloomberg
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 15:52
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WTC-7
Anthrax Petition Executive Summary | Lawyers' Committee for 9/11 Inquiry
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Out There
Egypt uncovers tomb treasure trove buried for 2,500 years | News | DW | 14.11.2020
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 15:18
Experts have uncovered some 100 sarcophagi at an ancient necropolis south of the Egyptian capital Cairo. The country's tourism minister described the find as a "treasure."
Archaeologists in Egypt have uncovered a treasure trove of some 100 intact sarcophagi dating back more than 2,500 years, the government said on Saturday.
Officials said the discovery of the sealed wooden coffins in the Saqqara necropolis south of Cairo was the largest such find this year.
Experts who worked on the excavation said they belonged to top officials of the Late Period and the Ptolemaic period of ancient Egypt.
One coffin revealed a mummy wrapped in a burial shroud adorned with brightly colored hieroglyphic pictorials.
Saqqara was an active burial ground for more than 3,000 years and is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Archaeologists in the area found 59 other well-preserved and sealed wooden coffins just over one month ago.
Egypt eyes tourism boost "Saqqara has yet to reveal all of its contents. It is a treasure," Antiquities and Tourism Minister Khaled al-Anany said at the unveiling ceremony.
"Excavations are still underway. Whenever we empty a burial shaft of sarcophagi, we find an entrance to another."
More than 40 statues of ancient deities and funerary masks were also discovered, he said.
Last month, experts excavated nearly 60 such coffins at the same site.
Another two wooden statues were found in the tomb belonging to an ancient judge of the 6th dynasty, according to Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.
Archaeologists also hope to find an ancient workshop for manufacturing wooden coffins for mummies soon, he said.
They will be displayed in several museums across Egypt including the yet-to-be-opened Grand Egyptian Museum at the Giza plateau.
Ministers hope such discovery will help boost tourism, which has been badly hit by the global coronavirus pandemic and the aftermath of a 2011 uprising that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak.
Read more: Ancient Egypt holds priceless treasures yet to be discovered
jf/dj (AP, AFP, dpa)
Atlas V rocket launches NROL-101 spy satellite to orbit | Space
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 19:35
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. '-- United Launch Alliance (ULA) successfully sent an Atlas V rocket into space today (Nov. 13), following a series of delays due to hardware issues and poor weather conditions at the launch site.
The 206-foot-tall (63 meters) rocket blasted off from Space Launch Complex 41 here at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 5:32 p.m. EST (2232 GMT), carrying with it a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, which manages the U.S. government's fleet of spy satellites.
Designated NROL-101, the mission marks ULA's fifth launch so far this year; the company has launched various other payloads for the military as well as NASA's Perseverance Mars rover. The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has been stingy with details about the payload, which is typical for these types of missions, but did confirm that the payload was designed and built by the NRO.
Video: Blastoff! US Spy satellite launches atop Atlas V rocketRelated: Declassified US spy satellite photos & designs (gallery)
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying the NROL-101 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office lifts off from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, at 5:32 p.m. EST (2232 GMT) on Nov. 13, 2020. (Image credit: ULA)Originally scheduled to launch on Nov. 3, the mission was first delayed 24 hours when the team noticed an issue with the vehicle's environmental control system. A hardware swap was ordered and crews worked to replace a damaged environmental control system duct, which provides conditioned air to the rocket's payload.
The rocket was rolled back to the pad for another attempt at launch. As the countdown progressed, teams noticed an issue with the vehicle's fueling system, which prevented the rocket from being loaded with super chilled oxygen, one of its propellants. The countdown was halted and the launch postponed again.
The most recent delay came from mother nature in the form of Tropical Storm Eta, which strengthened into a hurricane on Monday (Nov. 9) and threatened to bring rain and winds to Florida as the storm cut across the state. Fortunately, Eta was short-lived, allowing weather conditions at the Cape to improve dramatically on Friday.
Weather forecasters predicted an 90% chance of favorable conditions at liftoff on Friday night, with the only cause for concern being cumulus clouds.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying the NROL-101 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office lifts off from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, at 5:32 p.m. EST (2232 GMT) on Nov. 13, 2020. (Image credit: ULA)Today's launch marked the 29th mission for the NRO and the 17th such mission launched on an Atlas V. (the other 12 launches on the company's Delta IV rockets.) The NROL-101 mission marked the 86th flight of an Atlas V since the rocket's debut 2002.
The NRO uses these "eyes in the sky" to provide optical and radar imagery of Earth from space, as well as to send and intercept secured communications to various intelligence agencies.
As is usual with this type of mission, the NRO hasn't revealed many details about this launch or its payload. However, warning notices issued to pilots and boaters and a mission profile animation from ULA suggest that the rocket is flying on a northeasterly track that will eventually put it in a high-inclination orbit with regular views of the Northern Hemisphere.
ULA has another government payload sitting on a nearby pad. A Delta IV Heavy is slated to hoist the NROL-44 payload to orbit sometime this year. That mission, which has been grounded due to hardware issues at the pad, was originally slated to take off in August, but has been postponed indefinitely.
Related: Pentagon picks SpaceX, ULA to launch national security missions
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket stands ready to launch the NROL-101 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office, from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. (Image credit: ULA)The two-stage Atlas V rolled out to the pad from its nearby integration facility for its fourth launch attempt on Thursday afternoon (Nov. 12). Once in place, crews began to prep the rocket for its flight.
Atlas V is fueled by a mix of liquid oxygen and RP-1, a refined form of kerosene used for spaceflight, and liquid hydrogen in its upper stage, which was loaded into the rocket Friday afternoon. The vehicle flew in the "531" configuration, with three solid rocket motors, a 17.7-foot (5.4 m) diameter payload fairing, marking the first NRO mission to use this variant.
It was the fourth time overall that an Atlas V has flown in the 531 configuration, and the first mission to use the newly upgraded solid rocket motors. This version's three previous flights each carried Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) communications satellites for the U.S. military.
In photos: Atlas V launches AEHF-6 military satellite for US Space Force
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket launches the NROL-101 spy satellite for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office, on Nov. 13, 2020, from .Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. (Image credit: ULA)The rocket's strap-on boosters, called GEM 63, are manufactured by Northrop Grumman and were made to replace the previous models made by Aerojet Rocketdyne. Each of the 66-foot-long (20 m) rocket motors packs an extra 373,800 pounds of thrust. According to ULA, the GEM 63's are easier to handle and cost less than previous iterations.
Once ULA's Vulcan Centaur rocket is flying, it will be powered by a beefier version of the solid rocket motors, called the GEM 63XL. By testing a smaller version on the Atlas V, the rocket manufacturer plans to thoroughly test out the GEM's capabilities before strapping one onto a Vulcan.
The Atlas V rocket and NROL-101 stand ready for launch at Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, during sunset on Nov. 12, 2020. (Image credit: ULA)Launch preparations for NROL-101 began a few months ago, on Sept. 11, when teams started stacking the Atlas V rocket inside the integration facility adjacent to the pad. ULA teams started by hoisting the first stage on top of the Atlas mobile launch platform, then added the vehicle's trio of solid rocket motors and finally the upper stage. The payload was installed on Oct. 26.
Today's launch was the first of a planned double header this weekend, as SpaceX is preparing to launch its next crew mission to the International Space Station. On Saturday evening (Nov. 14), a Falcon 9 rocket is set to blast off from Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, carrying with it a crew of four astronauts.
If all goes as planned, Mike Hopkins, Shannon Walker, Victor Glover, and Soichi Noguchi of Japan will embark on an 8.5-hour flight to the ISS. The crew is scheduled to stay on station for six months, kicking off the first long-duration mission to launch from Florida. Liftoff is set for 7;49 p.m. EST (0049 GMT on Nov. 15), and the launch will be broadcast live on Space.com.
Follow Amy Thompson on Twitter @astrogingersnap. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
Clips
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VIDEO-A Minus on Twitter: "And there it is. The covid virus (the flu), is the crisis they needed to bring in the reset or otherwise known, global communism. Trudeau isn't even hiding it now. They see us over a barrel.... https://t.co/qk2BuekRgY" / Twitt
Sun, 15 Nov 2020 12:36
A Minus : And there it is. The covid virus (the flu), is the crisis they needed to bring in the reset or otherwise known, gl'... https://t.co/dXPLv87jT8
Sun Nov 15 02:11:35 +0000 2020
President-Elect Kimono MelancholyFlower ðð>>ðð : @AMinus____ Build back better is an ngo scam to steal tax dollars for the charity of lining the pockets of billionaires
Sun Nov 15 12:35:42 +0000 2020
Alex johnstone : @AMinus____ Until the sheep wake up the shepherd is alone keep fighting guys
Sun Nov 15 12:33:38 +0000 2020
J.S. : @AMinus____ Now that the vote tampering is being sorted, I think we are are ready for a non confidence vote to get this wacko out of there.
Sun Nov 15 12:32:51 +0000 2020
Cha_nn_247 : @AMinus____ You'd swear he's getting bjob under that table the way he can hardly contain his excitement. Unless Tru'... https://t.co/SSHVTulAv1
Sun Nov 15 12:31:03 +0000 2020
Will : @AMinus____ Seems fake...
Sun Nov 15 12:30:00 +0000 2020
Release the Kraken Now! : @AMinus____ Better check your voting machines Canada. Maybe you didn't actually 'elect' him ... js
Sun Nov 15 12:25:11 +0000 2020
batfly : @AMinus____ These predators of humanity are preparing genocide on unprecedented levels. COVID-19 is the smokescree'... https://t.co/89FQMYnvJe
Sun Nov 15 12:25:09 +0000 2020
S. : @AMinus____ This article mentions the window of opportunity this pandemic provides and how China views the world.'... https://t.co/PU4OSAqwoS
Sun Nov 15 12:24:54 +0000 2020
Buckwheat : @AMinus____ remove communists. he is like Lenin... save us from 100 years of communism!
Sun Nov 15 12:24:30 +0000 2020
Jonathan Da Silva : @AMinus____ https://t.co/BQB37m80HB
Sun Nov 15 12:23:16 +0000 2020
Deb ðºð¸ : @AMinus____ @Baretta911 Communist criminal.
Sun Nov 15 12:22:45 +0000 2020
Dimitri R : @AMinus____ @fragrantfeline Populism will take over the world. That's why they fear Trump so much
Sun Nov 15 12:22:33 +0000 2020
Isabell Campbell : @AMinus____ @ChavisMika 2030 Agenda.. that's it.....
Sun Nov 15 12:21:33 +0000 2020
Mick Colledge : @AMinus____ @jonny26414585 https://t.co/GD541od09L
Sun Nov 15 12:21:17 +0000 2020
Chris Coutts ð¬ð§ 1606. 1707. 45. : @AMinus____ That man's a muppet. And a puppet, seemingly.
Sun Nov 15 12:20:12 +0000 2020
Miles E Mooskie : @AMinus____ Sounds like klaus schwab himself
Sun Nov 15 12:19:18 +0000 2020
mikael . : @AMinus____ @KarinaMowinckel Hur canadensarna r¶stade p¥ den h¤r d¥ren g¥r ¶ver mitt f¶rst¥nd..
Sun Nov 15 12:18:58 +0000 2020
RobRobbie : @AMinus____ Dude makes my skin crawl
Sun Nov 15 12:18:51 +0000 2020
Jeremiah Marsh : @AMinus____ Trujew
Sun Nov 15 12:17:48 +0000 2020
exmersey : @AMinus____ @Hookie62 A digital world war 3 . I have been saying that since last March. Reset without a bloody war . Dave J
Sun Nov 15 12:17:21 +0000 2020
Let's See What Happens Nidža : @AMinus____ Well they've all been briefed at Davis you know.
Sun Nov 15 12:17:10 +0000 2020
Larry D : @AMinus____ Hey @JustinTrudeau https://t.co/7gc0386iZA
Sun Nov 15 12:16:46 +0000 2020
Monica : @AMinus____ ð¤
Sun Nov 15 12:15:33 +0000 2020
Pete of England : @AMinus____ Demon
Sun Nov 15 12:15:17 +0000 2020
The Right Honourable Mr. Uncommon Sense : @AMinus____ @k_seafield FU @JustinTrudeau. Canadians WILL rebuild from the mess that you and your treasonous father'... https://t.co/Brzn9a5uNj
Sun Nov 15 12:12:47 +0000 2020
ÍGennyP17 : @AMinus____ 2030 Agenda. Reset. Global challenges. Building back better. All globalist terms.
Sun Nov 15 12:11:45 +0000 2020
predator ops area fifty three : @AMinus____ Civil War on the horizon
Sun Nov 15 12:11:27 +0000 2020
Eric ðð¸ð°ðºð¸ð''¸ð : @AMinus____ Why is Canada using Biden's slogan?
Sun Nov 15 12:10:44 +0000 2020
Stormtrooper5 : @AMinus____ 2/ #GlobalReset #NewWorldOrder #IMF #OneWorldGovernment #MarchForTrump #COVID19 #BuildBackBetter https://t.co/fn031dz2LK
Sun Nov 15 12:10:38 +0000 2020
VIDEO-ASC T-121 | Full Alert | Tuttle, OK ( Grady Co. Tornado Siren Test ) 11/14/20 - YouTube
VIDEO-The US Military Has Raided And Seized Servers In Germany Tied To The Dominion Election System - YouTube
VIDEO-Brandon Quittem on Twitter: "1/ A quick thread about #Bitcoin and the power of incentives. For Bitcoin to reach global dominance, it must inspire a vibrant ecosystem of allies. "Show me the incentives, and I'll show you the outcome." Let's go ð"
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 23:49
Brandon Quittem : 1/ A quick thread about #Bitcoin and the power of incentives.For Bitcoin to reach global dominance, it must insp'... https://t.co/miBbptI4RN
Sat Nov 14 21:58:06 +0000 2020
Bitcoin PT : @Bquittem @threadreaderapp unroll
Sat Nov 14 22:45:52 +0000 2020
Horoshi' : @Bquittem @SwanBitcoin Populism...ð
Sat Nov 14 22:15:18 +0000 2020
Spinte : @Bquittem https://t.co/VmIV1ilehp
Sat Nov 14 22:13:37 +0000 2020
DukeofN00bz : @Bquittem Outstanding thread Brandon! ðð>>
Sat Nov 14 22:11:19 +0000 2020
Brandon Quittem : 2/ Bitcoin attracts new users for many reasons- Get wealthy- Stay Wealthy- Preserve Freedom- Minimize violenc'... https://t.co/LkJrXi5RWq
Sat Nov 14 21:58:06 +0000 2020
VIDEO-China's foreign reserves are depleting at a breakneck pace - YouTube
VIDEO-WEF founder: Must prepare for an angrier world - YouTube
VIDEO-HOME - Return To Life Safely
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 20:57
Return to Life Safely: How It Works
R2LS is a multifaceted approach to reentering the world in an unfamiliar era. The manager's toolset enables employers to track and manage the myriad safety issues presented by COVID-19, from facility preparation, sanitization, and management to employee health status and contact tracing information. On the consumer-facing end, R2LS uses custom technology to capture and deliver data-specific detail on all aspects of operations, allowing returning workers, guests, and customers to interact within facilities with confidence.
VIDEO-Mellissa Carone Dominion Whistleblower With Lou Dobbs - YouTube
VIDEO-Ticketmaster To Verify COVID Vaccination Status Of Fans Before Issuing Concert Passes '' CBS Los Angeles
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 20:14
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) '' As an experimental vaccine for COVID-19 continues to make progress, the concert industry is preparing for a potential return to live events in the coming months.
Ticketmaster is working on a plan to use smart phones to verify whether customers have been vaccinated or tested for coronavirus, according to Billboard.
While the plan is still in its early phases, Billboard reports the process would involve fans using the Ticketmaster app in partnership with medical information firms and vaccine and testing distributors.
Upon buying a ticket, fans would be required to either verify their vaccination status or prove they have tested negative for coronavirus within 72 hours prior to the concert dates. Regional health authorities would determine the length of coverage for any test.
After being tested, customers would authorize a lab to share their results with a health pass company such as IBM or CLEAR, according to the report. If one of the requirements was met, the health pass company would verify that information with Ticketmaster, which would then release the tickets to the customer.
Any fan who tested positive or failed to verify vaccination status would be denied access to the event.
UCLA School of Public Health Professor Anne Rimoin said that idea may sound good, but there are more complex issues associated with large gatherings at this time.
''The test you have today doesn't mean that you can't be exposed and then also become infected after that time,'' she said.
Rimoin added that false negatives and other malfunctions can give a false sense of security and make people feel safer than they actually are.
''I miss it too, but I really implore people to'...just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do it,'' she said.
While details are still murky, the report says Ticketmaster would only receive verification of a customer's status and would not store or have access to medical records. All data sharing would be required to be in compliance with medical privacy laws.
Some music fans who spoke to KCAL9/CBS2 said that even the thought of seeing their favorite artists live again is not enough to justify gathering in such large crowds.
''If other safety procedures were put in place like making sure that within the environment they had separation'...I think that would be more appropriate,'' said Toluca Lake resident Kara Mann.
Like other live event companies, Ticketmaster has struggled as the coronavirus pandemic forced the cancellation and/or rescheduling of sports, concerts and other events across Southern California and around the world.
In April, the online ticket sales giant initially offered refunds for events that were canceled, postponed or rescheduled, but eventually clarified the site would only give refunds for canceled events.
CBSLA Staff Comments (14)
VIDEO-Animated No Agenda - Agree to Disagree - YouTube
VIDEO-Bill Maher, Trump adviser Jenna Ellis spar over election results | TheHill
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 19:42
Bill Maher William (Bill) MaherCarville predicts Biden will quickly be declared winner: 'Not going to be close' Conservative group unveils ad accusing liberals of attacking Barrett's faith Sanders tells Maher 'there will be a number of plans' to remove Trump if he loses MORE and Trump campaign legal adviser Jenna Ellis sparred over election results on HBO's "Real Time" on Friday.
"First of all, I do admire you for coming on," Maher told Ellis after introducing her to the audience. "This is a tough argument you have to make. Would you acknowledge that?"
Ellis began immediately touting the stance President Trump Donald John TrumpTrump: New York won't receive COVID-19 vaccine immediately Biden considering Yellen as possible Treasury secretary: report Trump puts Giuliani in charge of election lawsuits: report MORE has taken regarding the 2020 election process, underscoring the campaign's priority to ensure that "every legal vote" is counted "fairly and accurately."
Maher interjected, saying, "No one is contesting the idea that we are not wanting to count legal votes. That's really not what's going on."
"Joe Biden Joe BidenTrump: New York won't receive COVID-19 vaccine immediately Biden considering Yellen as possible Treasury secretary: report Obama hits Trump for refusing to concede, says there's 'no legal basis' for challenges MORE is," Ellis replied, alleging that the president-elect wants "late ballots, all of these ballots from dead people and nonresidents."
The Trump campaign has filed several lawsuits across key contested states in the election cycle following statistical analysis by the media projecting Biden as the 2020 president-elect.
The campaign has made numerous baseless allegations that the Nov. 3 election was rife with fraud and illegitimate votes.
Despite the campaign vowing to fight the election results through litigation, a recent string of legal battles turned aside in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona rendered the president's attempts to turn the election in his favor few and far between, The New York Times reported.
Maher cited mainstream reports that the 2020 election cycle was the most secure in U.S. history.
He asked, "Aren't you a little bit ashamed of how you're denigrating the people who work so hard in the most difficult election in memory? They worked so hard to make this come out right."
Ellis replied with a common retort of the Trump campaign in recent days, asking, "How much fraud is OK with you?"
The "Real Time" host also underscored Biden's range of congratulations from world leaders and figures such as the Pope and several foreign prime ministers as well as China's acknowledgment of Biden's victory.
LOL @JennaEllisEsq owning Bill Maher on his own show. pic.twitter.com/Fu7Z3i0D4A
'-- Kyle Kashuv (@KyleKashuv) November 14, 2020"China now congratulated Biden. Why have so many people come over to this idea that, OK, America had a free and fair election. We're congratulating the new guy. That's the way it works. You win some. You lose some. Why?" Maher said.
"China is definitely congratulating Biden because they know they can control him. 'Beijing Biden' is something actually really needs to be looked into," Ellis replied before Maher cut her off, retorting, "Well, I walked right into that one, didn't I?"
While Maher clearly supports the currently projected outcome of the election in favor of Biden, some critics raised concerns that the "Real Time" host's decision to interview Ellis was irresponsible and highlighted disinformation regarding the election.
VIDEO-TheSharpEdge on Twitter: "They're not allowed to talk about it. https://t.co/q9LDprVIJp" / Twitter
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 18:18
TheSharpEdge : They're not allowed to talk about it. https://t.co/q9LDprVIJp
Fri Nov 13 16:00:24 +0000 2020
VIDEO-City of San Jose starts 'Cash for Trash' community cleanup incentive program for local homeless residents - ABC7 San Francisco
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 18:11
SAN JOSE, Calif. (KGO) -- The City of San Jose hopes the launch of a new community cleanup incentive program will reduce some of the blight around local homeless encampments.
The pilot program is called "Cash for Trash," and has been created in collaboration with the BeautifySJ initiative and Mastercard.
RELATED: Trash cleanup underway in South San Jose after months of illegal dumpingThe plan incentivizes homeless residents to pick up trash at encampments by providing them with garbage bags and a reloadable Mastercard City Key debit card.
For every bag of trash participants pick up and bring to program officials, the City of San Jose will add $4 to their debit card.
Homeless residents will be able to earn up to $20 dollars per day, which can be used to pay for essential items.
RELATED: Gov. Newsom announces $200M in funding for Homekey project to help California's homelessThe cards are designed to be maintenance-free, with minor restrictions on alcohol and tobacco expenses.
After a delayed launch in February due to COVID-19, San Jose officials say Cash for Trash will now take place at 40 locations throughout the city.
San Jose mayor Sam Liccardo explains city government has many reasons for the program to move forward with haste.
"To be able to provide a pathway for our homeless residents, our neighbors, to be part of the solution," Liccardo says, "To be able to help us clean the community and beautify our city in a way that makes us all collectively proud."
Copyright (C) 2020 KGO-TV. All Rights Reserved.
VIDEO - Kulvinder Kaur MD on Twitter: "Watch this. Then watch it again. These are facts verified with published scientific evidence. According to Public Health Agency of Canada study in Journal of Clinical Virology, PCR Ct in: -Canada is 33-45 -Ontario is
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 15:12
Kulvinder Kaur MD : Watch this. Then watch it again. These are facts verified with published scientific evidence. According to Public H'... https://t.co/RnPfQ8mBtZ
Sat Nov 14 10:56:49 +0000 2020
Taha Ø·Ù : @dockaurG Hey look another idiot on Twitter! We had one death every two days back in august in Ontario, now we have'... https://t.co/rZBKgHUmc8
Sat Nov 14 15:03:25 +0000 2020
Julie Bertoia : @dockaurG Chief Scientific officer says the Pandemic is built on false positive Covid tests.https://t.co/lRmYomjdPm
Sat Nov 14 14:45:51 +0000 2020
Gerard : @dockaurG @fordnation when will our health officials and politicians wake up!
Sat Nov 14 14:24:58 +0000 2020
Scott Noftle : @dockaurG 3/ for or suspected of having SARS or travel within 10 days of onset of symptoms to an area with document'... https://t.co/yU9Pqouzos
Sat Nov 14 14:19:34 +0000 2020
Scott Noftle : @dockaurG 2/ One or more symptoms with respiratory illness (e.g., cough, shortness of breath, difficulty breathing,'... https://t.co/9X0SuE1bsp
Sat Nov 14 14:19:20 +0000 2020
Scott Noftle : @dockaurG 1/ CDC Preliminary Case Definition for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) '-- March 21, 2003Suspect'... https://t.co/bwXalVHUFA
Sat Nov 14 14:18:04 +0000 2020
VIDEO-Daniel Chaitin on Twitter: "Michael Flynn attorney Sidney Powell says she has ''staggering'' statistical evidence and testimony to show Dominion voting machines altered ballots and this deception stems back to Venezuela, Cuba, and China. She's s
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 14:04
Daniel Chaitin : Michael Flynn attorney Sidney Powell says she has ''staggering'' statistical evidence and testimony to show Dominion'... https://t.co/tK59MIRHd7
Fri Nov 13 22:55:09 +0000 2020
V Laszlo : @danielchaitin7 I think she meant she's trying to get herself off the crack.
Sat Nov 14 14:03:08 +0000 2020
stephanie : @danielchaitin7 Wtf is wrong with Fox news? Why do they allow this insanity on the air at this point? Why is lou Dobbs allowed to do this?
Sat Nov 14 14:02:41 +0000 2020
Kaine ' '¥ : @danielchaitin7 Well let's see it then because in court Trump has lost every single case bar one in which a few hun'... https://t.co/qWJ6F1r0Nt
Sat Nov 14 14:00:58 +0000 2020
Cerulean49 : @danielchaitin7 As an attorney she knows her duty isn't to inform Lou Dobbs or 'Release the Kraken' - it is to prov'... https://t.co/MNj8gRG9Gm
Sat Nov 14 13:58:49 +0000 2020
VIDEO-oriJONal on Twitter: "ð¨ SCYTL RAID ð¨ @replouiegohmert reveals US Army (CIA?) team raid on Scytl server facility in Frankfurt, Germany to recover "extremely compelling" data detailing vote switching. THREAD for updates ðð>> https://t.co/
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 13:55
oriJONal : ð¨ SCYTL RAID ð¨@replouiegohmert reveals US Army (CIA?) team raid on Scytl server facility in Frankfurt, Germany to'... https://t.co/Ijfn3yFRQh
Fri Nov 13 15:50:13 +0000 2020
VIDEO-Clash of the Titans (2010) - Release the Kraken! Scene (8/10) | Movieclips - YouTube
VIDEO-Kyle Becker on Twitter: "GEORGIA.ð"¸ One week before the election. PBS (Public Broadcasting Systems) does a deep dive on Georgia's use of Dominion Voting Systems machines. What they found was troubling.ð--½ https://t.co/RzwI3spw4Z" / Twitter
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 03:40
Kyle Becker : GEORGIA.ð"¸One week before the election.PBS (Public Broadcasting Systems) does a deep dive on Georgia's use of D'... https://t.co/YZ5GaBzYHD
Fri Nov 13 19:16:07 +0000 2020
VIDEO-Tom Elliott on Twitter: "@JoeBiden Biden: "Those who say 'the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots' -- a great line, well, guess what: The fact is, if you're going to take on the government you need an F-15 with Hellfire Missiles.
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 00:50
Tom Elliott : @JoeBiden Biden: "Those who say 'the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots' -- a great line, well,'... https://t.co/cTCP7PLm9u
Sun Feb 09 22:00:58 +0000 2020
VIDEO-BLM Effect: 'Law & Order: SVU' Discovers 'Systemic Racism Within NYPD' | Newsbusters
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 00:48
Network shows have finally returned and with them comes a new narrative. As seen in Chicago P.D., NBC seems ready to give into the anti-cop crowd that protested its police dramas this past summer. Up next on the chopping block is one of its longest running shows, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
The November 12 premiere ''Guardians and Gladiators'' gets things started in all the wrong ways with a story that perfectly parallels the Central Park dog walker story. Namely, an obnoxious white woman calls the police on an equally obnoxious black man as he records her in the park. Over the course of their encounter, the police discover the semi-conscious body of a male rape victim. Sadly, that doesn't seem to matter to anyone as police arrest the black man in broad daylight.
Colleen: You need to leave now!
Jayvon: I have a right to be here. Okay, ma'am?
Colleen: Not near my child you don't.
Dylan: Mommy, let's go.
Colleen: Okay. I am calling the police.
Jayvon: Don't do that. I'm not bothering you.
Colleen: Yes, there is a black man threatening me and my son.
Jayvon: There she goes, y'all. What? I am just working out!
Colleen: We're Central Park in the Ramble. Please hurry.
Jayvon: This is America. 2020.
Officer 1: Let's see what we got. Okay, folks, what's going on?
Jayvon: Officers, nothing's going on.
Colleen: This is him. This is the man.
Jayvon: Officers, listen, I've done nothing to her.
Officer 2: Yo, big guy, back it up.
Jayvon: Me? I'm not doing anything.
Dylan: Mom, I need to go get my ball.
Colleen: Dylan, stay here. He is scaring my son.
Jayvon: How? Because I'm black? Listen, officers, I'm out here minding my own business. She comes'--
Officer 2: Sir, do you have your id on you?
Jayvon: I don't have to show you anything. I know my rights.
Dylan: Mommy, mommy, come look. There's a man.
Colleen: Dylan, get back here.
Dylan: He's not moving.
Officer 2: Everyone stay where you are. We got a vic.
Colleen: Honey, move away from there.
Officer 2: Semi-conscious male bleeding from the head. I need a bus.
Colleen: Oh, my God, that's why he was acting so crazy. He just attacked someone.
Jayvon: What? No, I don't know anything about that.
Officer 1: Sir, put the phone down and put your hands behind back.
Jayvon: Why?
Officer 2: Hands behind your back, now!
Jayvon: Listen'--
Officer 2: Stop resisting!
Jayvon: I'm not resisting!
Officer 2: Stop resisting! Stop resisting!
Jayvon: I'm not resisting!
Sure, the SVU team still tries to find the rapist through twists and turns like they usually do, but they're quickly bogged down by the black man suing the police for his arrest. While we obviously know our team isn't racist, that doesn't stop Deputy Chief Garland (Demore Barnes) from essentially accusing the NYPD of ''racial bias'' or Sergeant Fin (Ice-T) claiming ''this country will always break your heart.''
Garland: I know you two are close, but I have to ask. Would things have played out differently if Jayvon were white?
Fin: Yeah, I mean, the woman, Colleen, she would've never called the police in the first place, and if she did, the precinct cop wouldn't have cuffed him.
Garland: I concur. And when SVU got there, do you think racial bias played any part in how things were handled?
Fin: Not consciously. I've worked with Captain Benson for over 20 years. Her only bias is for the victim.
Garland: All right. Thank you. Sergeant... I know I'm not someone you relate to, but we have one thing in common. We're both Black and blue. We've been on this job a long time. Did you know my father joined the force in the '70s?
Fin: No, I didn't know that.
Garland: Made Sergeant. Those days, that was about as far as they'd let us go. Those days are over. Things are changing.
Fin: Know how many times I've heard that? The one thing I do know is this country will always break your heart.
Garland: Ah, this time's different. This is a true inflection point.
Fin: If you say so, Chief.
Garland: We are. I know it. I also know the old guard won't go down without a fight. There's gonna be a purge.
Fin: Hold up. So what are you saying?
Garland: I appreciate your loyalty, but you need to watch out for yourself.
The public opinion is even worse. The video of the event goes viral and continually interrupts the police's search for the rapist. Not that that seems to matter to these people too much.
Another police captain interviews the SVU team to analyze the situation, but it quickly devolves into accusing the NYPD of being racist. Captain Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) plays the part of a supportive liberal (complete with an RBG picture in her office, see below image) and basically agrees that the police are racist.
Curry: Since George Floyd, I've taken statement after statement from two kinds of cops: The baton swinging gladiators who take one look at me and can barely hide their disdain...
Benson: And I'm sorry that you had to experience that.
Curry: And the well-intentioned, guardian cops who never see themselves as racist, but are in denial about their complicity in the systemic racism within the NYPD... Cops like you, Captain Benson.
Benson: I'm well aware there's racism in NYPD.
Curry: And what about your own bias?
Benson: I'm not racist.
Curry: I'm sure you're not, explicitly. But implicitly? If you grew up in this country, it's in you and me. I struggle every day with my own biases. For too many people, law enforcement has lost all credibility, and until every one of us takes a serious self-inventory, we can't begin to get it back.
For the record, no one in this episode actually explains exactly what ''self-inventory'' really means in this case. Apparently, it includes calling your entire basis of work systematically racist and never stopping suspicious black men. At least they aren't entertaining the ''defund the police'' idea.
Unfortunately, the viral video starts to affect their work directly. Once they find the rapist, he feigns abuse from the police and claims he confessed under duress to the jury. The jury then sides with the rapist, letting him go free, while his victim remains in a coma. And even then, everyone still blames the police, claiming this wouldn't have happened if the police didn't profile a black man.
No, this wouldn't have happened if people didn't assume every cop was an evil racist. More importantly, this wouldn't have happened if networks weren't so desperate to appeal to BLM activists that they claim the characters in a show over twenty years old are now racist. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has always been a hotbed of liberal issues, but now they've thrown their own premise under the bus. Considering BLM wasn't happy with their pandering in 2015, I doubt this will change anybody's minds. Welcome to America. 2020.
This show was sponsored by commercials from Panera Bread, Verizon, and Starbucks.
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VIDEO-Chinese 'cartels' quietly operating in Mexico, aiding US drug crisis | Fox News
Sat, 14 Nov 2020 00:47
MEXICO CITY, Mexico '' From nondescript buildings in the industrial nucleus of Wuhan, across wavy seas to dusty tented super laboratories in the heart of Mexico, and then across the jagged southwest border and dispersing like a wild bomb ripping through every crevice of the United States, the growing presence of Chinese drug lords and cartels below the southern border is one that is killing an unprecedented amount of Americans.
According to multiple Mexico-based security and intelligence professionals, the bulk of the deadly work is carried out by the "Los Zheng" wing, identified as having "the largest presence in Mexico for the trafficking of fentanyl and methamphetamine."
As per intelligence findings by security firm Fortress Risk Management, obtained exclusively by Fox News, the Zhengs operate through seemingly legitimate shell companies that offer veterinary services, clothing sales, clinical laboratories and maintenance of computer systems in Mexico. They use the ports of Lzaro Crdenas, Michoacn, Manzanillo Colima in Mexico and Ensenada Baja, Calif., for the commercialization of their products in the country.
FILE PHOTO - Soldiers stand guard in front of a modified and armored truck as it is displayed to the media at a military base in Reynosa, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas June 5, 2011. Soldiers seized a couple of modified and armored trucks at a warehouse in the municipality of Camargo during a patrol on Saturday, local media reported. According to the military, the vehicles were used by the CDG (Gulf Cartel) to transport drugs and hitmen. (REUTERS/Stringer)
"They have the collaboration of customs authorities and members of the Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generaci"n cartels in Mexico," explained Lee Oughton, Fortress co-founder and COO. "Once in the country, the drug is transported by air and land to the United States through the states of Jalisco, Nayarit, Sinaloa, and Sonora."
GANGSTER BUSTED IN MEXICAN CARTEL MASSACRE OF MORMON MOMS AND KIDS
This past June in Ohio, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated four Chinese individuals and one entity pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (Kingpin Act) for "facilitating payments for the purchase of fentanyl analogs or other controlled substances, including synthetic cannabinoids or cathinones, for the Zheng Drug Trafficking Organization (DTO) '' known for its endeavors in Colombia and Mexico '' and directed by alleged Chinese synthetic opioid trafficker, Fujing Zheng.
Fujing Zheng, 37, who operated under the alias Gordon Jin and his father Guanghua Zheng, 64 '' both of whom live in Shanghai '' were indicted by the U.S. in 2018 "with conspiracy to manufacture and distribute controlled substances, conspiracy to import controlled substances into the United States, operating a continued criminal enterprise, money laundering, and other crimes."
Despite the recent arrests, the Zheng operation is said to only be proliferating on both sides of the snaking border.
Ed Calderon, a former Mexican law enforcement officer and narcotics subject matter expert, concurred that the Zheng-connected enterprises are ongoing '' and that there are primary, secondary and backup facilitators to account for any arrests of personnel.
FROM BOMB-AFFIXED DRONES TO NARCO TANKS AND VENTILATED TUNNELS: HOW WELL-EQUIPPED ARE THE MEXICAN CARTELS?
And it is not just the Chinese drug lords and Mexican cartels that stand to boost their bottom lines.
"You can't bring anything into the country without paying off someone," Calderon asserted. "There are a lot of 'fixers' and guards assigned to these entry ports making a killing from China too."
Experts emphasize that it is a well-oiled machine in which each player has a distinct role and piece of the pie. Chinese-led money laundering procedures inside Mexico are said to be igniting faster growth and movement of the drug, which was initially developed for use as both an anesthetic and painkiller up to 100 times more potent than heroin.
Yet in cases such as Los Zheng, legitimate pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are used as "fronts" or as a blurring between the legal and illegal missions.
And while Mexican cartels have, in recent times, upped the ante on their own production of fentanyl-related products, most still depend on Chinese counterparts for precursor chemicals and remain its biggest black market customers.
So with raw yet easy-to-cook and convert fentanyl costing around $2,000 per pound in China, its relative cheapness makes it highly profitable for cartels who then disperse the product on U.S. streets.
"For the past 12 years, Chinese criminal organizations have become the backbone to the drug cartels with chemicals supplied to the cartels and laundering tens of billions of the cartel profits in North America and Europe," said Richard Higgins, author of "The Memo: Twenty Years Inside the Deep State Fighting for America First," president of HTG, LLC, a strategic security and information warfare consulting who previously served on the National Security Council as the director for strategic planning. "Chinese-organized criminals south and north of the border are very sophisticated using WeChat and other forms of encrypted communication."
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Mexico and China "are the primary source countries for fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked directly into the United States."
A police officer in Oklahoma was administered an opioid overdose drug last week after he was exposed to fentanyl following a drug bust. (Bartlesville Police Department)
The DEA continues to pinpoint the Sinaloa and the New Generation Jalisco (Crtel de Jalisco Nueva Generaci"n or CJNG) cartels as the primary culprits responsible for plundering fentanyl to the States from Mexico via "corridors in Mexico that connect to California and Arizona, indicating drugs passing through these associated areas would need to be approved by these organizations."
Moreover, Chinese nationals implicated in illicit webs are documented to cross through the southern border of Mexico at Frontera Corozal, in the state of Chiapas, into Tapachula, where there is a sizable ethnic Chinese community, and then journey by train to the Atlantic coast through territory controlled by Los Zetas. Others enter directly from Asia, passing through ports on the Mexican Pacific coast, including Puerto Vallarta in Jalisco, Manzanillo in Colima, and Coyacan in Mazatlan or arrive by air directly to Mexico City "where the activity of Chinese trafficking networks has been publicly reported by the Attorney General's Office."
US-CHINA RELATIONSHIP REMAINS A CHALLENGE FOR BIDEN AMID HONG KONG STRUGGLES
But over the past two years, especially, there has been a steady drip of related seizures as a result of U.S. and Mexican authorities working on joint missions.
For one, the Mexican navy seized more than 25 tons of Chinese fentanyl en route to Culiacn, Sinaloa'--the Sinaloa cartel's Mexico flagship '' in August last year, and the Administration claims to have intercepted more than 1 million fentanyl pills in Phoenix and Arizona in 2019 alone.
Border Patrol agent Justin Castrejon speaks in front of newly replaced border wall sections Thursday, Sept. 24, 2020, near Tecate, Calif. Top Trump administration officials will visit South Texas five days before Election Day to announce they have completed 400 miles of U.S.-Mexico border wall, attempting to show progress on perhaps the president's best-known campaign promise four years ago. But most of the wall went up in areas that already had smaller barriers. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
Aside from Zheng's apprehension five months ago, numerous other arrests inside the U.S. have also been made in recent years pertaining to Chinese involvement in the drug trafficking trade.
Last month, six Chinese nationals were slapped with various charges connected to a conspiracy that allegedly made more than $30 million over the past 12 years distributing drug money to Latin America from U.S. soil, and according to the Department of Justice (DOJ), entailed a complex operation of offering bribes to undercover informants, cryptocurrency exchanges, as well as purporting to create fraudulent identities and fake U.S. passports in the long-running scheme.
In June, Chinese national Xueyong Wu pleaded guilty for his role in laundering over $4 million in drug profits in conjunction with organizations in Latin America and Mexico, through to Virginia.
In March, Chinese national Xianbing Gan was convicted in Chicago of laundering narcotics money '' totaling more than half a million dollars '' from his homeland bank accounts and remitted to trafficking operatives in Mexico.
In 2007, Zhenli Ye Gon, a Chinese-Mexican businessman, was one of the first to fall under the iron fist "under suspicion of trafficking precursor chemicals into Mexico from Asia." While licensed by the Mexican government to import substances to feed his legal official Mexican pharmaceutical corporations, he was arrested by federal authorities in Maryland and charged with illicit dealings to siphon methamphetamine into the U.S., and hundreds of millions in cash was seized from his southern home. Gon has since maintained his innocence and was extradited to Mexico in 2016.
But since then, observers stress, such criminal activity between the two major bodies has only grown in depth and sophistication in the name of big cash rewards.
Calderon highlighted that smuggling and packaging techniques have also advanced in recent times, with cartels investing heavily in "pressing pill" technologies and moving from fentanyl-laced marijuana or heroin to regular pharmaceutical bottles and labels. These can be easily transported over-the-border and sold unbeknown to someone on the U.S. side seeking an oxycodone hookup.
Indeed, this has made the synthetic drug especially deadly '' just a hint sprinkled into a counterfeit pill can be fatal, not to mention highly addictive.
The sudden onslaught of the coronavirus earlier this year provided an initial blow to the illegal drug industry, incapacitating the supply chain and flow of critical chemicals from the contagion's Wuhan epicenter to cartel counterparts in Mexico; intelligence gathers say it did not take long to adapt and tweak the business model and alter production mechanisms.
And with the unparalleled economic strain of the ongoing health pandemic, experts note that demand for drugs has only soared and worsened the opioid overdose crisis that President Trump deemed a "public health emergency" just over 3 years ago.
During the first three months of 2020, according to preliminary estimates released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), drug overdoses deaths rose 10% compared to the same time period last year.
Furthermore, last year, as per data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), more than 72,000 Americans died of drug overdoses, of which "illicitly manufactured fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, or methamphetamine (alone or in combination) were involved in nearly 85% of drug overdose deaths in 24 states and the District of Columbia during January''June 2019."
MEXICAN PIRATES POSING GREATER RISK IN GULF OF MEXICO TO OIL WORKERS, TOURISTS
Total figures for 2020 are expected to well surpass the 72,000 figure. Each year, such causes of death have been increasing to almost double the 38,300 figure of 2010.
Officially, U.S. authorities have maintained that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not complicit nor absolved in the illegal industry emanating from its terrain '' yet some are skeptical that there isn't an inch of trade that the leadership doesn't have some form of engagement or watchful eye over.
"As part of the CCP's unrestricted warfare model, they have progressed significantly against America with their enhanced role in the drug business. They can make multibillions and, at the same time, undermine the security of America," claimed Derek Maltz, a retired special agent in charge at the DEA. "A kilogram of fentanyl can kill 500,000 people, so the administration should look at the death rates and treat this as a serious national security threat as opposed to only a public health crisis."
This undated file photo provided by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Phoenix Division shows a closeup of fentanyl-laced sky blue pills. (Drug Enforcement Administration via AP, File)
U.S. anti-narcotics authorities warn that the deadly drug deluge into America will only continue to modernize and multiply in the forthcoming months amid the protracted pandemic and rising demand, posturing as one of the biggest national security threats for the incoming administration to grapple with.
"Drugs are now the primary source of funding for most terrorist organizations throughout the world," Higgins added. "Go after the drug profits. Follow the money, not just drugs. Less money in cartel pockets means fewer chemicals and drugs, less violence and weapons, and less ability to corrupt the rule of law."
VIDEO-The Problem of trying to determine SARS-CoV-2 infections using PCR Tests on Vimeo
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VIDEO-Fauci says U.S. has 'independent spirit,' but now is the time to 'do what you're told'
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 23:15
Whitehouse coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci thinks that Americans have an independent spirit, but that there are times when it's in our best interest to follow the rules.
Fauci, speaking on Thursday at Washington National Cathedral with other top health experts on the pandemic, noted that it is a bit unfair to compare the United States' coronavirus response with other countries. The United States isn't an island with five million people that can easily be shut down, he notes. So suppressing and controlling the virus is a lot more of a challenge.
"I was talking with my U.K. colleagues who are saying the U.K. is similar to where we are now, because each of our countries have that independent spirit," he said on stage. "I can understand that, but now is the time to do what you're told."
Fauci noted that scientists have been perceived throughout this pandemic as "authoritarian" by members of the public, because of the steps taken to combat the virus. He noted that it's unfortunate that science "has been lumped into politics."
In a "divisive" society, he said, people's willingness to follow the advice of scientists has often been portrayed a political decision. Surveys have found that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to view Covid-19 as a major threat to public health.
"All of a sudden science gets caught in a lot of this divisiveness," he said.
But if the majority of Americans started following the guidelines, Fauci expressed confidence that we will not need to shut down the country. Instead, he explained, the virus could be brought under control if people wore masks, socially distanced, and washed their hands.
In his view, herd immunity is not a viable strategy.
"It sounds simple in the context of this ominous outbreak but in fact we can turn it around," he said.
Fauci spoke alongside Dr. Luciana Borio, a member of President-Elect Joe Biden's coronavirus taskforce and National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins.
More than 10 million people in the U.S. have contracted the virus, and 242,000 have died. There have been more than 1,000 deaths a day for weeks at a time and the discussion comes as many health experts are growing increasingly concerned about the winter months.
But this week, the country heard some positive news with Pfizer announcing that its vaccine is more than 90 percent effective.
Fauci seemed more optimistic, given the vaccine news, than he has been in the past. He was hopeful that people can see a light at the end of the tunnel, and will be ready to take the pandemic more seriously.
"When people know that help is on the way ... I hope we can get over the Covid fatigue," he said.
VIDEO-@SeanHannity - SeanHannity - CNN's Amanpour Compares Trump to Nazis Purging...
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 22:32
CNN's Amanpour Compares Trump to Nazis Purging Jews
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VIDEO] James Woods Just Shared the Most Savage and Damaging Anti-Biden Ad You'll Ever See'...And It's Viral '' Conservative MediaGo to my profile to watch videoðð¼@tedcruzfan ðð>>ðð>>ðð>>
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They are the socialist Communist pigs
Are you shitting me!!@!!
Looks he got suspended by twitter
When did I purge anyone? Lol
I can't print what I want to say.
Bitch you wouldn't tell life depended on it!
@Susanmorales54 I know! I can't understand how their heads don't just blow right off or their lips explode when they say this crazy, backward shit! It's y'all!! You're the freakin liars! Epitome of insanity and gaslighting! And, omgosh, people are BELIEVING this shit!! ð
It's time to start dragging traitors out in the streets.Past time.Or...We can wait till they're in the back yard.They're coming.
@Violet375 No I am not a lier called Freedom of speech
So what. Who cares. Get some more relevant news.
Maybethey should look at libtards that burning city'sdow.
@Violet375 You believe what you want don't call people liers unless you know what your talking about bye
Name Hidden · @Private User 1 hour ago
You got to be kidding me!
@Violet375 Apparently, there's been a misunderstanding here. ð I'm in awe of the crazy news lady that Ted Cruz posted... Like I don't get how they can accuse others of EXACTLY what they are doing.
She can't be serious, wait till the Justice Dept sends little old Hunter to jail floowed by the Chairmanof the Board, his daddy.
Wow. Fuckers on here are weird. Only my second day and I'm thinking I'm about out ð
Just like in Orwell's 1984. Twist the narrative until it fits. Incredible! I never thought our future would look like this.
[VIDEO] Fox News Host Appears to Not Realize She's on Camera'...Watch Her Reaction to Someone Saying Media Doesn't Decide ElectionsGo to my profile to watch videoðð¼
@tedcruzfan ðð>>ðð>>ðð>>
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They are returning to their corruption. That's the norm to them.
Never again. That ship has left port for a distant shore. ðºð¸
Newsmax Reports Fox News Exodus So Massive, They've Now Hired a ''Crisis Management'' Team to Stop the Hemorrhagingðð¼Go to my profile to watch video
@Electionn2020
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Name Hidden · @Private User 1 hour ago
ð
It is too late!!!!
Disgusting... ð
Think about it: A fascist would have all the media on his side prematurely calling the election in his favor when nothing has been decided.DO NOT CONCEDE to CHEATERS and FASCISTS that HATE America BIGLY as in BIG LEAGUE!
#CountAllTheVotes #CountEveryLegalVote
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Name Hidden · @Private User 1 hour ago
Do you have a brain to think with? ð§
Maybe she does not know...NAZI'S were socialist.Most Democrats don't know what side of history they are on...the wrong side.
@2eleanorc Meanwhile in reality that's just not true. Like literally none of what you just said was true.
This Viral Tweet Cleverly Uses ''Stacey Abrams'' to Expose Media and Left's Hypocrisy Demanding Trump ''Concedeðð¼Go to my profile to watch video
@Electionn2020
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Now that's rich.
She needs to be taken out!
Who could have foreseen it?? Watch as Antifa turns on Biden IMMEDIATELY, protest his VICTORY party.Go to my profile to watch videoðð¼@tedcruzfan ðð>>ðð>>ðð>>
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To hell with him and these fake groups being paid for by taxpayers.
They do eat their own. Like the person nursing the snake back to life and is surprised when it bites..?
Watch as ISIS reemerges.
F that Limey Slut !!!
I'm sure Antifa is going to be rioting.
@1242a35f4dd544c197d8aaffb817d143 This robotic site @tedcruzfan continually spits out the same stories hundreds of times a day. Sometimes the stories are funny, sometimes real, sometimes they are fake news, sometimes they change the dates to make them appear current, and some are simply long lists of people's Parler names. You are free do do whatever you wish with this information. I simply wanted you to be aware and that many other sites like this are out there. Here's a list of the ones I am aware of.
VIDEO[ Matt Gaetz: ''Dead People Don't Always Vote'...But When They Do, They Prefer to Vote by Mail''ðð¼Go to my profile to watch video
@Electionn2020
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And they vote democrat
And dead people always vote Democrat
...and they vote for Demoturds!!!!
Newsmax Reports Fox News Exodus So Massive, They've Now Hired a ''Crisis Management'' Team to Stop the HemorrhagingGo to my profile to watch videoðð¼
@marklevifriend ðð>>ðð>>ðð>>
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Lol.. stop the lies and hate might work better..
Will never go back to Fox news.
Sounds like Fox News is getting raped. I think this new imagining of police officers might just work!Bwaaaaa haaaaahaaaaahaaaaa
Doesn't she have a painting of the twin towers burning ?
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Sounds about right.
And ANTIFA flag burning pin in her lapel. ð½ðºð²
WATCH] Fox News Anchor Humiliates Herself When She Viciously Argues With Team Trump Against Fraud in PAGo to my profile to watch videoðð¼
@marklevifriend ðð>>ðð>>ðð>>
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How can we stop these nasty people spewing lies about our President?
Sean Ilike you but your teams real suck. Trump 2020
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Sick and demented ''progressives'' ð¤ð¤®
Mitch McConnell Puts Reporter in Her Place After She Asks Ridiculous Question, 'At the Risk of Bragging'Go to my profile to watch videoðð¼
@marklevifriendðð>>ðð>>ðð>>
Talk about Goin off the Rails!Good Lord!
CNN is not a news organization. They are pure left wing propaganda
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Facts
No doubt. You stated the obvious.
COMMUNIST NEWS NETWORK (CNN)
CHINE COMMIES. ð½ðºð²
Owned by the globslists to brainwash everyone into their plans its why trump gets demonised in the media. He is a patriot and that is globalist worse nightmare.
Classy, aren't they?
VIDEO:Tucker Plays ''Defund The Police'' Advocate, Calling The Police!!Go to my profile to watch videoðð¼
@Patriotswinsðð>>ðð>>ðð>>
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That is a great video. What an entitled child she is.
Name Hidden · @Private User 1 hour ago
Racist idiot
Today is FRIDAY 13th and for the first time is LUCKY day, we still have Donald Trump as our Leader!!!Follow ðð¼ @BreakingNewsUSA if you support Republican Partyðºð¸
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I sure as hell hope it stays that way.
Farcebook would make you believe he's already out of office...wish we could burn down facebook offices and destroy their servers..of course..we arent them
That is what I call Liberal Trash.
VIDEO-Rebuking Trump, DHS cybersecurity agency says no evidence of deleted, changed votes - ABC News
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 21:38
CISA Director Chris Krebs now expects to be fired, a source said.
November 13, 2020, 5:10 PM
' 4 min read
The top cybersecurity agency inside the Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly rebuked claims made by President Donald Trump and his campaign of widespread voter fraud inside the 2020 election, and a source with knowledge of the situation said its director now expects to be fired.
''There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,'' the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said in a statement released Thursday.
CISA is responsible for securing the 2020 elections and has been exposing what it calls election-related "rumors" on its website -- including those spread by Trump and his allies.
CISA's "Rumor Control" site has debunked everything from software glitches in voting software to votes being cast by dead people.
''While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too," the members of Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council Executive Committee said. "When you have questions, turn to elections officials as trusted voices as they administer elections.''
The statement goes on to say that ''The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history."
Christopher Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, attends the Conference of Mayors 88th Winter Meeting at the Capital Hilton, in Washington, D.C., Jan. 22, 2020.
The development of Krebs' expected firing was first reported by Reuters.
Two other CISA staffers, Bryan Ware Assistant Director for Cybersecurity for CISA and Valerie Boyd, Assistant Secretary for International Affairs at U.S. Department of Homeland Security were asked to resign Thursday, a separate source familiar with the matter also told ABC News but their emails appeared active as of Friday. Neither official responded to an ABC News request for comment.
CISA has not returned a request for comment, and the White House declined to respond when asked whether Krebs would be fired, whether Ware and Boyd were asked to resign, or whether the White House was involved.
On Thursday night, following news reports he expects to be fired, Krebs took to Twitter to personally assure Americans the election was secure.
"America, we have confidence in the security of your vote, you should, too,'' he tweeted.
VIDEO-Twitter Execs Clueless Of Democrat's Russian Bot Factory - YouTube
VIDEO-Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #306 - YouTube
VIDEO-Ryan Saavedra on Twitter: "CNN compares Trump to Nazis purging Jews https://t.co/T5EcBjeDXi" / Twitter
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 16:59
Ryan Saavedra : CNN compares Trump to Nazis purging Jews https://t.co/T5EcBjeDXi
Fri Nov 13 11:55:12 +0000 2020
Eliott Khan : @RealSaavedra Some of Trump's grandchildren are Jews. What are they talking about?
Fri Nov 13 16:59:07 +0000 2020
Robin : @RealSaavedra CNN is just a tool and all about fear mongering.
Fri Nov 13 16:58:57 +0000 2020
P dair ð>>ð... : @RealSaavedra It wasn't Donald Trump that wanted to 'compile a list' post election.This is yet another example of'... https://t.co/0i1ng3vfh8
Fri Nov 13 16:58:42 +0000 2020
TubThumpin : @RealSaavedra Says the party thay kills millions of babies and hate freespeech!
Fri Nov 13 16:58:26 +0000 2020
Trumps WARRIOR : @RealSaavedra Ohhh ok so you can say something bad about someone and get punished by twitter but this SHIT!!!! You'... https://t.co/9DSf3kHKDv
Fri Nov 13 16:58:20 +0000 2020
VIDEO-TRUMP TEAM WIN: MAJOR Legal Win For President Trump IN PENNSYLVANIA - YouTube
VIDEO-Growing research indicates many COVID-19 cases might not be infectious at all | Just The News
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 14:38
A growing body of research suggests that a significant number of confirmed COVID-19 infections in the U.S. '-- perhaps as many as 9 out of every 10 '-- may not be infectious at all, with much of the country's testing equipment possibly picking up mere fragments of the disease rather than full-blown infections.
Confirmed cases of the disease have been the focal point of public health authorities and governments worldwide for many months, with countries across the globe working frantically to shore up their testing infrastructure and ensure that most citizens who want a COVID-19 test can obtain one with relative ease.
Many politicians, meanwhile '-- including most state governors in the U.S. '-- have tied reopening policies to the number of cases detected in the local community, with regions and localities often being permitted to reopen in staggered "phases" only when they have reached successively lower benchmarks of average new daily cases in the area.
Numerous institutions, meanwhile, have adopted testing protocols in an attempt to preempt the spread of the virus. American colleges and universities, for instance, have turned to mass testing in order to closely monitor incidences of the disease among students, particularly residential students living on campus.
Yet a burgeoning line of scientific inquiry suggests that many confirmed infections of COVID-19 may actually be just residual traces of the virus itself, a contention that '-- if true '-- may suggest both that current high levels of positive viruses are clinically insignificant and that the mitigation measures used to suppress them may be excessive.
'Cycle threshold' set very high for many tests
At issue is the method by which many COVID-19 tests detect a patient's viral load within a given sample. Polymerase chain reaction tests, which have been widely deployed to determine if individuals are infected with the disease, function by amplifying DNA samples to the point that an antigen can be detected and classified.
The "cycle threshold" is the number of amplification cycles a PCR test goes through before a target pathogen is detected. A lower cycle threshold means that a higher amount of the virus was present in the sample; a higher threshold means the machine had to work harder to detect the virus in the sample, indicating a lower viral load and more likely a non-infectious patient.
According to a rundown of PCR tests compiled by the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics, many manufacturers of PCR tests set the cycle threshold cutoff for a positive sample at up to around 40 cycles, a level numerous public health officials believe is guaranteed to return what are effectively false positive results that have detected fragments of the virus.
"I'm shocked that people would think that 40 could represent a positive," Juliet Morrison, a virology professor at the University of California, Riverside, told the New York Times in August.
Health authorities elsewhere have indicated similar skepticism of high-threshold tests. A spokeswoman for Taiwan's Central Epidemic Command Center said in June that the agency only assigns positive cases to samples with Cts of 35 or less, with authorities there believing that any samples with Cts of more than 32 are likely (though not definitely) non-infectious.
A team of researchers at Oxford, meanwhile, wrote in a preprint paper last week that, based on a review of various sample collections, swabs requiring more than 30 cycles were "associated with non-infectious samples."
Binary positive-negative test results '-- in which cycle thresholds are not considered '-- will "result in false positives with segregation of large numbers of people who are no longer infectious and hence not a threat to public health," they wrote.
Preprint papers have not yet been through the peer review process, so their results and conclusions can be changed prior to full publication. Yet several other research projects have indicated similar results. One, published in April by public health authorities out of France, found that "patients with Ct values equal or above 34 do not excrete infectious viral particles."
Similarly, a study out of Ireland seeking to determine "the duration of infectivity" of COVID-19 patients found that, of numerous samples subject to PCR testing, scientists were unable to achieve positive culture growth in any that required more than 34.3 cycles.
Both of those thresholds are notably smaller than the maximum number of cycles instituted by many test manufacturers, suggesting that there may be many nominally positive COVID-19 cases that are innocuous as far as infectiousness and illness are concerned.
Echoing those concerns, researchers at Harvard in May argued that "the Ct value from positive test results, when interpreted in context, can help to refine clinical decision making," and that a cycle threshold of around 34 may be a useful tool for determining when a patient is truly infectious and when he or she is merely carrying remnants of the virus.
Such a policy, if implemented, could have momentous implications for public health policy in the U.S. and elsewhere. Presently, in many industries and at many institutions, a single positive COVID-19 case can result in a complete shutdown of the affected company or university or elementary school, followed by a rush to have everyone tested out of concern that the virus may have spread.
A greater emphasis on the cycle threshold of positive tests may preempt such disruptive policies by signaling which positive test results are truly infectious and which are detecting low viral loads at much less threat of infectivity.
Early indications suggest the number of clinically trivial positive cases in the U.S. might be startlingly high. The New York Times said last month that a review of the cycle thresholds of positive cases in Nevada, New York and Massachusetts indicated that "up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus."
Those numbers, if extrapolated nationwide, could suggest that a significant proportion of the mitigation and preparation measures currently in place across the U.S. might be excessive relative to the actual level of infectious cases around the country.
Ultimately it can be difficult to determine the cycle thresholds used at laboratories across the country, making that kind of extrapolation difficult. A spokeswoman for LabCorp '-- one of the largest clinical laboratory groups in the world '-- said the company "does not include the CT value in result reporting."
"Our CT cutoff is based on extensive validation," she said, "and is within the accepted range to accurately identify individuals currently infected with SARS-CoV-2." The company on its website says it has performed 13.5 million COVID-19 tests, about 15% of the country's total number of tests.
At the Center for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University, researchers stressed last month that "PCR detection of viruses is helpful so long as its limitations are understood; while it detects RNA in minute quantities, caution needs to be applied to the results as it often does not detect infectious virus."
"If this is not understood, PCR results may lead to restrictions for large groups of people who do not present an infection risk," they wrote.
VIDEO-Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Twitter: "The new administration's COVID-19 task force ushers in a new day for science and evidence-based policy-making. As a city, we look forward to working together to ensure the health of all Chicagoans. https://t.co/b5QN
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 13:34
Mayor Lori Lightfoot : The new administration's COVID-19 task force ushers in a new day for science and evidence-based policy-making. As a'... https://t.co/lraljdDoer
Tue Nov 10 23:05:09 +0000 2020
FauxtakuLounge : @chicagosmayor Dead inside.
Fri Nov 13 13:29:51 +0000 2020
Sean Marsh : @chicagosmayor This is what happens when you take bullying out of schools
Fri Nov 13 13:25:51 +0000 2020
