NY Post: George Floyd and Derek Chauvin reportedly “bumped heads” while working security together at a nightclub years before their fatal encounter. A one-time co-worker at El Nuevo Rodeo on Lake Street in south Minneapolis revealed the duo’s purported shaky history in an interview with CBS Evening News.
Children’s Health Defense
Biotech firm Oxitec plans to release genetically modified mosquitoes in the Florida Keys to combat dengue fever, but critics raise concerns about the impact on human health and the environment.
This spring, the biotechnology company Oxitec plans to release genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes in the Florida Keys. Oxitec says its technology will combat dengue fever, a potentially life-threatening disease, and other mosquito-borne viruses — such as Zika — mainly transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito.
While there have been more than 7,300 dengue cases reported in the U.S. between 2010 and 2020, a majority are contracted in Asia and the Caribbean, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Florida, however, there were 41 travel-related cases in 2020, compared with 71 cases that were transmitted locally.
Native mosquitoes in Florida are increasingly resistant to the most common form of control — insecticide — and scientists say they need new and better techniques to control the insects and the diseases they carry. “There aren’t any other tools that we have. Mosquito nets don’t work. Vaccines are under development but need to be fully efficacious,” says Michael Bonsall, a mathematical biologist at the University of Oxford, who is not affiliated with Oxitec but has collaborated with the company in the past, and who worked with the World Health Organization to produce a GM mosquito-testing framework.
Bonsall and other scientists think a combination of approaches is essential to reducing the burden of diseases — and that, maybe, newer ideas like GM mosquitoes should be added to the mix. Oxitec’s mosquitoes, for instance, are genetically altered to pass what the company calls “self-limiting” genes to their offspring; when released GM males breed with wild female mosquitoes, the resulting generation does not survive into adulthood, reducing the overall population.
But Oxitec has been proposing to experimentally release GM mosquitoes in the Keys since 2011, and the plan has long been met with suspicion among locals and debate among scientists. Some locals say they fear being guinea pigs. Critics say they are concerned about the possible effects GM mosquitoes could have on human health and the environment. In 2012, the Key West City Commission objected to Oxitec’s plan; in a non-binding referendum four years later, residents of Key Haven — where the mosquitoes would have been released — rejected it, while residents in the surrounding county voted in support of the release. With the decision left up to the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, officials approved the trial to be conducted elsewhere in the Keys.
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Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/release-gmo-mosquitoes-florida-keys/
Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic performed a series of tests, but say they don’t know what caused the woman to develop paralysis following her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine.
The Pennsylvania woman said she initially felt fine after being vaccinated, but woke up in the middle of the night with no feeling in her arms or legs.
“It was the scariest thing in the world to go to sleep completely fine (and walking), to wake up 1:30 in the morning and not be able to move at all,” the woman said. “I’m literally counting on my daughter to hand me my phone to call to get help.”
Paramedics rushed her to the hospital where she was later transferred to the Cleveland Clinic where doctors ran tests to figure out how and why she suffered paralysis. An MRI and spinal tap were clear and blood work all came back negative, ruling out any rare diseases or disorders.
“There is just nothing they can find wrong with me,” the woman told Channel 11. “No underlying conditions, I have nothing in my history and they are basically telling me, ‘You’re healthy and we can’t figure out why this is going on.’”
Although she has regained feeling and strength in her arms, she has no function from her lower chest down besides very slight movement in a few toes. The woman’s family confirmed with Channel 11 that her case was reported to Pfizer.
By Gilbert Doctorow | April 19, 2021
In his last book “War with Russia?” my friend and colleague Steve Cohen wrote about the flagrant censorship of news being carried on by The New York Times in support of its Russia-bashing editorial policies. Said Cohen, the newspaper’s century old slogan of “All the News That’s Fit to Print” has been turned into “All the News that Fits” when it comes to coverage of Russia.
But the problem goes far deeper than the professional malpractice of one leading newspaper in America. The censorship of news carried by mainstream media by U.S. authorities covers not only the domestic press but also the mainstream of Allied countries. News blackouts are imposed when something ugly arises implicating the United States in violation of international norms of state behavior for which the State Department has no ready explanation or white wash.
This very situation seems to have arisen over the weekend, when news broke in Moscow over the arrest of two conspirators plotting a coup d’état in Minsk, to be carried out by the Belarus armed forces tentatively during the 9 May parade celebrating victory over fascist Germany in the Second World War.
Other leading English-speaking papers such as The Guardian and The Financial Times have front page reports on Alexei Navalny’s near death condition in a prison camp but not a word about Belarus. Ditto the Frankfurter Allgemeine and Le Figaro. Curious, n’est-ce pas? Warum? Let’s look into the story in its full dimension.
Last night’s News of the Week program hosted by Dimitry Kiselyov, Russia’s top manager of state news programming, began with a 20 minute report on the extraordinary arrest of two conspirators plotting armed rebellion entailing the murder of Lukashenko and his family, abolition of the post of President, installation of a Committee of Concord such as previously had been headed by the opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.
But these were not empty allegations. The arrests followed on a meeting by the two conspirators with Belarus military officers held in a downtown Moscow restaurant which was filmed from start to finish by the Russian state security agency, the FSB. Lengthy segments of recordings from their meeting and discussion of their treasonous plans were aired on the Kiselyov program. Moreover, the accused are not some unknown pawns such as the British presented to the world press when they released their accusations against Russia over the Skripal poisoning. No, one of the two arrested was the former press secretary of Lukashenko, a person who would have had all the contacts necessary to organize such a rebellion. The other plotter has dual US-Belarus citizenship and was well known as a fighter against Lukashenko’s rule.
The two were turned over to the Belarus KGB for interrogation in Minsk. Surely further information about the links of the plotters to Ukraine, to Poland and to the United States will come out in the next few days.
What we have here is “very likely” (to use current Anglo-American political jargon) involvement of the United States in yet another regime change operation. The revolution from below in Belarus led by Tikhanovskaya with support from Poland and Lithuania failed. The anti-Lukashenko street demonstrations led to nothing. And now Plan B, a putsch from above, was being organized to achieve the objective of removing Lukashenko both politically and physically. We have not seen such openly murderous plans with “likely” U.S. backing since John Kennedy’s days when the assassination of Fidel Castro was the hot game in D.C.
On the same “very likely” logic, I permit myself to take this all back to the door of the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Policy designate Victoria Nuland. The links to Warsaw and Kiev that appear present are all in line with what she was doing to precipitate the Maidan in 2013 and violent overthrow of the sitting President in Kiev amidst attempts to murder him as he made his escape to Russian territory in February 2014.
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“There’s no way around it. Every April, environmental beat reporters are inundated with e-mails from public relations representatives seeking to capitalize on Earth Day, a holiday originally intended to highlight righteous civil disobedience and social justice activism but which somehow became an annual celebration of reusable diapers and tree-plantings.”
If you know an environmental reporter, send them some love this week. Earth Day is coming, and our inboxes are filling up with hot, useless garbage.
There’s no way around it. Every April, environmental beat reporters are inundated with e-mails from public relations representatives seeking to capitalize on Earth Day, a holiday originally intended to highlight righteous civil disobedience and social justice activism but which somehow became an annual celebration of reusable diapers and tree-plantings.
The e-mails are not just numerous, but terrible. Every request to highlight a climate activist…
View original post 719 more words
Plutocracy V: Subterranean Fire
Directed by Scott Noble (2017)
Film Review
This documentary provides a comprehensive labor history of the United States, involving the most violent history of union repression in the world.
Largely owing to inhuman pay and working conditions, American workers first attempted to organization soon after the birth of large scale industrialization in the US. Prior to the passage of Roosevelt’s National Labor Relations Act, most worker strikes were suppressed violently by the National Guard, the US Army or private armies hired by factory owners.
The initial era of radical unionizing (1870-1914) abated with World War I and brutal government repression via the Red Scare and Palmer Raids. (1) Despite massive profits Wall Street businesses amassed during the so-called “Roaring” Twenties, more than 60% of US families were earning less than $2,000 a year (with $2,500 the minimum income necessary for a family four).
With the 1929 Wall Street crash came the Great Depression. Unemployment surged to 25% and skyrocketing poverty led to a resurgence in union organizing and strikes. Pay cuts and worsening working conditions would give rise to the “sit down” strike, in which striking workers occupied their factories. Loathe to damage their valuable machinery, employers refrained from launching violent attacks on sit down strikes. In this way workers at many companies (including GM, Chrysler and Ford) won the right to form unions.
In 1935, John L Lewis formed the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO), which unlike the American Federation Labor (which only represented skilled workers), represented all industrial workers regardless of sex, race or national origin.
The same year Roosevelt, courting the union vote in the 1936 election, introduced the National Labor Relations Act. The Act gave all Americans (except for domestic and agricultural workers) the right to unionize.
A typical politician, following reelection, Roosevelt ordered the FBI to “monitor” radical unions and other groups, including the CIO, United Auto Workers, United Mine Workers and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP).
With the approach of World War II, federal forces of repression overtly suppressed union organizing, via the Smith Act (2), and the formation (in 1938) of the House on Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). In 1939, the US Supreme Court would declare sit-down strikes illegal.
Following World War II, the 1947 Taft Hartley Act (4) would deal the single biggest blow to trade unionism in the US. This law. combined with fanatical anti-communist hysteria promoted by HUAC (3), the CIA, the US State Department and the mainstream media would lead to top down trade union organizing that discouraged strike action in favor of a bloated trade union bureaucracy and sweetheart (5) deals with management.
The end result would be one of the lowest levels of union representation in the developed world.
(1) The Red Scare was a campaign of anti-radical hysteria launched under Woodrow Wilson. Its goal was to promote the irrational fear that a Bolshevik revolution was imminent in the US. The Palmer Raids were a series of raids the Wilson administration conducted between November 1919 and January 1920 under to arrest suspected leftists, mostly Italian immigrants and Eastern European immigrants, and deport them (without trial).
(2) Passed in 1940, the Smith Act set down criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of the US government. The Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional (for violating the First Amendment) in 1957.
(3) The Taft Hartley Act banned wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, closed shops, union donations for political purposes and the election of communists and other radicals to union leadership. It also permitted states to pass Right To Work laws (under right to laws, there is a ban on union contracts forcing non-union members to contribute to the costs of union representation).
(4) Although Hollywood celebrities received the most publicity when they were subpoenaed for being suspected communists, most of the individuals summoned before HUAC were union organizers.
(5) A sweetheart contract is a contractual agreement inappropriately advantages some parties over others. The term was coined in the 1940s to describe corrupt labor contracts unduly favorable to the employer. They usually involved some kind of kickback or special treatment for the labor negotiator.
This masterful white paper documents the events and people surrounding the founding of Google. It should be read and understood by every American because it represents the greatest social engineering program of all time. Google was not accidental, nor was it simply fulfilling the needs of a new marketplace. ⁃ Technocracy News Editor
In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, western governments are moving fast to legitimize expanded powers of mass surveillance and controls on the internet, all in the name of fighting terrorism.
US and European politicians have called to protect NSA-style snooping, and to advance the capacity to intrude on internet privacy by outlawing encryption. One idea is to establish a telecoms partnership that would unilaterally delete content deemed to “fuel hatred and violence” in situations considered “appropriate.” Heated discussions are going on at government and parliamentary level to explore cracking down on lawyer-client confidentiality.
>What any of this would have done to prevent the Charlie Hebdo attacks remains a mystery, especially given that we already know the terrorists were on the radar of French intelligence for up to a decade.
There is little new in this story. The 9/11 atrocity was the first of many terrorist attacks, each succeeded by the dramatic extension of draconian state powers at the expense of civil liberties, backed up with the projection of military force in regions identified as hotspots harbouring terrorists. Yet there is little indication that this tried and tested formula has done anything to reduce the danger. If anything, we appear to be locked into a deepening cycle of violence with no clear end in sight.
As our governments push to increase their powers, INSURGE INTELLIGENCE can now reveal the vast extent to which the US intelligence community is implicated in nurturing the web platforms we know today, for the precise purpose of utilizing the technology as a mechanism to fight global ‘information war’ — a war to legitimize the power of the few over the rest of us. The lynchpin of this story is the corporation that in many ways defines the 21st century with its unobtrusive omnipresence: Google.
Google styles itself as a friendly, funky, user-friendly tech firm that rose to prominence through a combination of skill, luck, and genuine innovation. This is true. But it is a mere fragment of the story. In reality, Google is a smokescreen behind which lurks the US military-industrial complex.
The inside story of Google’s rise, revealed here for the first time, opens a can of worms that goes far beyond Google, unexpectedly shining a light on the existence of a parasitical network driving the evolution of the US national security apparatus, and profiting obscenely from its operation.
The shadow network
For the last two decades, US foreign and intelligence strategies have resulted in a global ‘war on terror’ consisting of prolonged military invasions in the Muslim world and comprehensive surveillance of civilian populations. These strategies have been incubated, if not dictated, by a secret network inside and beyond the Pentagon.
Established under the Clinton administration, consolidated under Bush, and firmly entrenched under Obama, this bipartisan network of mostly neoconservative ideologues sealed its dominion inside the US Department of Defense (DoD) by the dawn of 2015, through the operation of an obscure corporate entity outside the Pentagon, but run by the Pentagon.
In 1999, the CIA created its own venture capital investment firm, In-Q-Tel, to fund promising start-ups that might create technologies useful for intelligence agencies. But the inspiration for In-Q-Tel came earlier, when the Pentagon set up its own private sector outfit.
Known as the ‘Highlands Forum,’ this private network has operated as a bridge between the Pentagon and powerful American elites outside the military since the mid-1990s. Despite changes in civilian administrations, the network around the Highlands Forum has become increasingly successful in dominating US defense policy.
Giant defense contractors like Booz Allen Hamilton and Science Applications International Corporation are sometimes referred to as the ‘shadow intelligence community’ due to the revolving doors between them and government, and their capacity to simultaneously influence and profit from defense policy. But while these contractors compete for power and money, they also collaborate where it counts. The Highlands Forum has for 20 years provided an off the record space for some of the most prominent members of the shadow intelligence community to convene with senior US government officials, alongside other leaders in relevant industries.
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Via https://www.technocracy.news/flashback-how-and-why-the-cia-made-google/
Nearly three months later, with plenty of vaccine supply on hand and eligibility open to all residents 16 and older, officials struggled to fill appointments, said Kristy Fryman, the emergency response coordinator and public information officer for the Mercer County Health District. About 264 people received their first dose at the district’s clinic earlier this month — roughly half the number of people who were signing up at the start of the rollout.
“It’s very concerning,” she said. The rural county is home to roughly 41,000 people and earlier in the pandemic had the highest Covid-19 case rate in the state, Fryman said. “We don’t want to go backwards,” she added.How one of Detroit’s churches is tackling vaccine hesitancy to help combat Michigan’s Covid-19 surgeDemand has dropped off so much, the health district decided to end mass vaccination clinics for first doses and instead, transition to smaller clinics that require fewer resources and volunteers. But it’s not just that hub that’s seen a slowing demand: other vaccine providers in the area are reporting the same pattern, Fryman said. Roughly 27% of the county’s residents have started their vaccinations, according to Ohio’s Covid-19 vaccine dashboard.
“People in rural areas tend to have an attitude of being self-sufficient, especially among the younger population,” Fryman said. “We’ve also heard people are waiting to get the vaccine because they’re wanting to know the side effects down the road from it. And then another comment would be that the vaccine is just too new.”
In nearby Paulding County, a rural community that’s “all villages” and home to less than 19,000 people, the health department’s emergency response coordinator has seen a similar trajectory. Just weeks ago, the department would sign up several hundred people on its Covid-19 vaccine wait lists. Now, “we do not have a wait list,” Bill Edwards said. Roughly 29% of the county’s population have started their Covid-19 vaccination, state data shows.
And it’s not just in Ohio. Pharmacies in one part of Louisiana say Covid-19 vaccine demand has “completely fallen off.” Georgia officials announced recently they were shutting down a mass vaccination site due to low demand. Tennessee leaders said late last month they were opening eligibility following low numbers of vaccinations in rural areas. Parts of Texas have also seen declining demand.
“We’re reaching the point where we’re getting to the hard audiences,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO). “The ones that either are unsure or on the fence about the vaccine, don’t have enough information or are just plain outright… not interested in the vaccine for other reasons.”
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Via https://edition.cnn.com/2021/04/18/us/covid-vaccine-slowing-us-demand/index.html
By
COVID booster shots are music to the ears of investors, but scientists warn trying to outsmart the virus with booster shots could create new variants, each more virulent and transmissible than the one before.
Annual COVID booster shots are music to the ears of investors. But some independent scientists warn that trying to outsmart the virus with booster shots designed to address the next variant could backfire, creating an endless wave of new variants, each more virulent and transmissible than the one before.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said Thursday a third dose of the company’s COVID vaccine was “likely” to be needed within a year of the initial two-dose inoculation — followed by annual vaccinations.
Bourla said that “a likely scenario” is “a third dose somewhere between six and 12 months, and from there it would be an annual re-vaccination.”
[…]
Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/vaccine-treadmill-covid-booster-shots/
Psilocybin Therapy May Work as Well as Common Antidepressant
Psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms,” may provide relief from depression symptoms that is equivalent to, or better than, an SSRI antidepressant. Credit: Getty Images
The first randomized controlled trial to compare the illicit psychedelic psilocybin with a conventional selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant found that the former improved symptoms of depression just as well on an established metric—and had fewer side effects. The study was fairly small, however, and was not explicitly intended to show how well the drugs stacked up on other measures of well-being.
In a study published on Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine,psychiatrist David Nutt, psychologist Robin Carhart-Harris and other researchers, all then at Imperial College London, conducted a six-week trial of 59 participants split into two groups. One group was given a full dose of psilocybin (the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms”) in combination with psychotherapy. The other received daily amounts of the SSRI escitalopram plus two minuscule amounts of psilocybin with psychotherapy. All of the participants suffered from major depressive disorder (MDD), which affects roughly 10 percent of the U.S. population in a given year.
Researchers had previously conducted an open-label trial (in which subjects and practitioners know which treatment they are getting) and four randomized controlled trials of psilocybin for depression and anxiety. But until now, no randomized controlled trials had directly compared psilocybin with an SSRI.
