US sanctions Russian chemical research institute, saying it’s ‘connected’ to Triton computer malware
RT | October 23, 2020
A Moscow research institute involved in developing the S-300 air defense missiles has been blacklisted by the US Treasury Department over alleged “connections” to malware used “against US partners in the Middle East.”
The Central Scientific Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics (TsNIIKhM, or ЦНИИХМ) is “connected to the destructive Triton malware,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin declared on Friday, accusing it of “building customized tools that enabled” the cyber attack on “a petrochemical facility in the Middle East” that allegedly took place in August 2017.
No evidence was offered for this claim, nor the one that in “2019, the attackers behind the Triton malware were also reported to be scanning and probing at least 20 electric utilities in the United States for vulnerabilities.”
The alleged malware attack targeted industrial control systems at the facility and “had the capability to cause significant physical damage and loss of life,” Treasury said in the announcement.
There have been media reports of a cyber-attack on a petrochemical facility in Saudi Arabia in August 2017, but its name or ownership have never been revealed. A March 2018 New York Times story said that “Iran, China, Russia, the United States and Israel had the technical sophistication to launch such attacks,” and speculated that Iran was behind it, arguing that none of the others had the motive to do so.
The sanctioned institute goes back to a gunpowder research lab founded in 1894, and is the leading scientific organization in Russia “in the interests of defense and security of the state,” according to the Association of State Scientific Centers, an umbrella group for 48 Russian government-funded research facilities.
As a result of the sanctions, any property of the institute in possession of US persons is blocked and Americans are prohibited from any transactions with it. The designation also opens non-Americans to sanctions if they do business with the institute.
The sanctions were imposed under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), a law approved with veto-proof majorities in both the House and the Senate in July 2017 – at the height of the ‘Russiagate’ hysteria.
Data from Bolivia’s Election Add More Evidence That OAS Fabricated Last Year’s Fraud Claims
The MAS Received More Votes in Almost All of the OAS’s 86 Suspect Precincts in 2020 than in 2019
By Jake Johnston | CEPR | October 21, 2020
On Sunday, October 20, Bolivians went to the polls and overwhelmingly elected Luis Arce of the MAS party president. Private quick counts released the night of the vote showed Arce receiving more than 50 percent of the vote and holding a more than 20 percentage point lead over second place candidate Carlos Mesa. As of Wednesday morning, just over 88 percent of votes had been tallied in the official results system — and Arce’s lead is even greater. The MAS candidate’s vote share is, at the time of writing, 54.5 compared to 29.3 for Mesa. As the final votes are counted, Arce’s vote share will likely increase further.
At this point, there can be no questioning Arce’s victory. The election came nearly exactly a year after the October 2019 elections which were followed by violent protests and the ouster of then president Evo Morales, who resigned under pressure from the military. Official results in that vote showed Morales and the MAS party winning with a 10.56 percentage point advantage over Mesa, just over the 10 point margin of victory needed for Morales to win the election outright, without having to stand in a run-off election. However, the Organization of American States (OAS) alleged widespread manipulation of the results, feeding a narrative of electoral fraud that served as a pretext for the November 10, 2019 coup.
With Arce’s 2020 victory now all but confirmed, what do the 2020 results tell us about the OAS allegations of fraud in last year’s vote?
The OAS’s initial claims of fraud centered around a “drastic” and “inexplicable” change in the trend of the vote, which allegedly took place after the preliminary results system, or TREP, was suspended for nearly 24 hours. In the time since, myriad statistical analyses — from CEPR (beginning the day after the OAS allegations), and from academics at MIT, Tulane, University of Pennsylvania and elsewhere, have shown the OAS’s statistical analysis to be deeply flawed. In fact, there was no “inexplicable” change in the trend of the vote.
The OAS has refused to respond to these studies, or to queries about their statistical analysis from members of Congress, and has instead pointed to other alleged irregularities identified in the OAS audit. Statistical analysis is just informative, the OAS claimed, but the real evidence was in an audit that they carried out after the elections.
In that audit, the only evidence purporting to show an actual impact on the results of the elections were 226 tally sheets from 86 voting centers across the country. The OAS alleged that the tally sheets had been doctored. They noted that, if you removed the votes for Morales from all of these 226 tally sheets, his entire advantage above the 10 percentage point threshold for a first-round win disappeared. In other words, these 226 tally sheets served as supposed proof that Morales had cheated in order to win in the first round.
Excerpts from the OAS audit report
In March 2020, CEPR published an 82-page report detailing how the rest of the OAS allegations were just as flawed as the statistical analysis that formed the basis for the fraud narrative that led to Morales’s forced removal from office. We looked into these 226 tally sheets, showing the flaws in the OAS analysis and pointing out that the results in these voting centers closely matched results from previous elections. There was, in fact, nothing surprising about MAS performing extremely well in these areas. Further, we noted that while OAS officials had repeatedly spoken publicly about forged tally sheets, the auditors had provided no evidence to back up that allegation.
Now that there are disaggregated voting results from this Sunday’s elections, we can see that results in the centers where the OAS had allegedly identified doctored tally sheets follow the same patterns as in the 2019 elections. Table 1, below, presents the 2020 results (with 88 percent of votes counted overall) in all 86 voting centers where the OAS alleged that tally sheets had been manipulated last year.
Table 1.
We have at least partial data for 81 of the 86 voting centers, and in all but 9, the MAS share of the vote has increased when compared to 2019.
In 2019, the OAS and other observers appeared scandalized by the fact that, in many rural areas, Morales had received more than 90 percent of the vote — and in some cases, even 100 percent of the vote. This, they claimed, surely sufficed as evidence of fraud. But, the 2020 results thus far further discredit the unsubstantiated claims made by the OAS, which served as justification for a coup d’etat and the repression that followed. To this day, former electoral officials remain under house arrest based on nothing more than the OAS audit.
As we noted in the March report, the communities targeted in the OAS analysis of these 226 tally sheets are, in the majority of cases, predominantly Indigenous. Though it may come as a shock to see a candidate receive 100 percent of the votes, it shouldn’t. Community voting — in which a community comes to a consensus around who to vote for — is a widely recognized phenomenon in Bolivia.
What the OAS alleged is that electoral jurors, the citizens selected at random by the electoral authorityTSE to serve as electoral officials at each voting table, did not print their names on the tally sheets — but that someone else had written their names. To be clear, the OAS does not allege that all 226 were filled out by the same individual; — in no case does the OAS allege that more than 7 tally sheets were filled out by the same person. Further, in only one of the 226 cases does the OAS allege any problem at all with any signatures on the tally sheets. Rather than fraud, the most likely explanation for this is simply that a notary (each notary oversees about 8 voting tables), or some other official with clear handwriting, printed the names and then each juror signed the tally sheet. It is not clear, from the electoral regulations, that this is even a violation of the electoral law. Either way, the results from 2020 further confirm that there was nothing abnormal about the results on these 226 tally sheets in 2019. Further, what the OAS identified as irregularities had no discernable impact on the results of the election.
We can’t go back to 2019, or erase the racist violence unleashed on the population following the coup. On Sunday, Bolivians showed their courage, and the power of organized social movements, in righting the wrong of 2019. But that victory shouldn’t allow us to forget about 2019, or the role that international actors played in overthrowing a democratically elected government. Those 226 tally sheets never showed fraud, as the OAS asserted. They do, however, reveal how the OAS disenfranchised tens of thousands of Indigenous Bolivians in its galling attempts to justify the undemocratic removal of an elected leader.
Jake Johnston is a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.
QAnon & Censorship: Facebook Lying About OffGuardian… again
The censorship train is leaving the station, and we’re all running out of time to jump off
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | October 23, 2020
Fresh from labelling perfectly simple math as “misinformation”, based on complete lies, Facebook is now showing our potential readers another false warning.
This time it’s claiming OffGuardian “may be associated with dangerous content”. Specifically they mean QAnon, which they describe as a “dangerous conspiracy movement” which “inspires violence” according to “experts”:
Regardless of whether or not this is an honest description of QAnon (and it’s not), we are not now, and never have been “associated” with it. In any way. At all. Ever.
In fact QAnon has been mentioned in a grand total of 7 times in the roughly 4000 articles we have published. Four times to say they were mistaken, three times simply saying they exist.
Earlier this month Facebook and YouTube totally banned all accounts associated with QAnon (following Twitter’s lead, who did the same thing in July).
Our criticism of this decision would be the only even faintly positive mention of QAnon we have ever made:
And this – this EXACT situation – is the reason we objected. This is the reason everyone should object. Because censorship spreads. It is subtle, quiet and contagious – and it must be opposed, on principle. Always.
You should oppose censoring the malicious the vulgar or the offensive. The ignorant, the ill-informed and the insane.
Government power thrives on precedent, and once you have ceded “It’s OK to censor X“, the state will simply start changing what words mean until they can claim all their critics said X. Subtle alterations to attitudes and social norms will twitch things around until Y and Z = X.
Bespectacled fascists in inoffensive sweaters will right cloying opinion pieces about how “A, B and C are all just one step from X“. D will be an “X enabler” and E will be “dog whistling to Xs in the comment section”.
And since they can silence people, protests and defenses will never be heard. After all, “we can’t have X sympathisers on social media”.
A lot of what QAnon says is misguided or foolish. But if you let them get banned, then all Facebook has to do is say “A is associated with QAnon” and then A is gone too.
Facebook has wasted no time in illustrating our point for us.
You have to protect all speech, not because everything is worth saying, but because you need to keep the power to silence people out of the hands of those who would abuse it.
First they came for the QAnons.
Then they changed what “QAnon” meant.
And they came for the QAnons again.
FDA Approves Gilead’s Remdesivir To Treat COVID-19 Despite Data Showing Drug Doesn’t Work
By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 10/22/2020
Despite reams of data from an international WHO study raising serious questions about its efficacy, the FDA has finally approved the use of Gilead Science’s remdesivir – a powerful antiviral originally developed to treat ebola – for the treatment of COVID-19, making it the first such drug approved to treat the virus in the US.
The FDA first granted the drug emergency authorization in May, allowing hospitals and doctors to use the drug even though by all accounts it wasn’t that widely used.
President Trump received one course of remdesivir along with several other COVID-19 therapies after contracting the virus. Doctors also gave the president dexamethasone, a steroid that has a much better track record for treating the virus, according to the available data. Trump also received an experimental drug from Regeneron, which, along with Eli Lilly, has filed for emergency use approval for its COVID-19 antibody treatment.
Gilead has been waging a PR campaign against the WHO, which recently publicized the results of its global trial of remdesivir, producing data that was widely hailed as definitive by other scientists.
But Gilead had a lock on approval seemingly from the very beginning, as US officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, praised the drug. Dr. Fauci once said the drug would “set a new standard of care” for COVID-19.
Back in August, Gilead said the company planned to produce more than 2 million courses of the drug by the end of the year, with “several million more coming in 2021.”
Initially, Gilead says it will initially focus on meeting “real-time demand” in the US.
Oddly, none of the initial coverage of the FDA’s decision included much discussion of the WHO’s trial data, which pretty clearly branded the drug a flop. Even the evidence that Gilead has managed to marshal in remdesivir’s defense has been pretty unconvincing.
South Korean’s medical association urges govt to suspend flu shot program after 25 people die following jab
RT | October 23, 2020
South Korean Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun called for a probe into the deaths of at least 30 people who died shortly after receiving seasonal flu shots, stepping up scrutiny after Seoul previously denied any link to the vaccine.
“The authorities should thoroughly investigate the causal relationship between vaccinations and the deaths and make public the development transparently,” Chung said on Friday at a meeting of the government’s disaster and safety counter-measure group.
Chung’s statement came after the death toll among people who recently received the vaccine more than doubled between Thursday morning and Thursday afternoon, then continued rising through the night. There were 25 deaths recorded as of 4pm Thursday, up from 12 earlier in the day, and the toll reached 30 at midnight.
Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), reportedly told South Korean lawmakers on Thursday that there was no direct link between the deaths and the vaccine. Of the first 25 deaths recorded, 22 involved people aged 60 or older, but a 17-year-old boy last week died two days after getting his flu shot.
Chung called on the KDCA to investigate quickly and provide the public with an explanation for the deaths “so that people can receive vaccination without anxiety.”
The spate of deaths comes amid an effort by South Korea’s government to provide free flu vaccinations to 19 million people, including the elderly and teenagers, to avoid having to cope with both a major flu outbreak and the Covid-19 pandemic at the same time. The vaccination program will continue uninterrupted by the investigation, despite the recent deaths and a recommendation by the Korean Medical Association to suspend the shots for one week.
The program was previously halted for three weeks after it was revealed that five million doses had been transported at room temperature, rather than being refrigerated as required.
Syria: Six Million Displaced People Have Returned Home
teleSUR – October 23, 2020
On Thursday, Syrian authorities announced that six million displaced people had returned home to different parts of the country.
The Minister of Municipal Administration and Environment, Hussein Makhlouf, said to the People´s Assembly that one million refugees had returned to Syria, and 5 million internally displaced people were back at their homes.
The official said that this achievement was possible after the rehabilitation of infrastructure and roads, collecting and disposing of 4 million cubic meters of waste and debris from them.
Moreover, the authorities reported that they had repaired more than 19,000 houses while supporting waste recycling projects to secure 18,000 job positions.
As the country tries to overcome aggression and sanctions from the U.S. and the European Union, the government plans to create more homes and announces that 11 new artisanal zones were established in Tartous, Quneitra, Homs, and Hama provinces. Also, with China’s support is has imported transportation, including buses and 708 vehicles for the cleaning sector.
Magic Novichok
By Craig Murray | October 23, 2020
The security services put an extraordinary amount of media priming effort into explaining why the alleged novichok attack on the Skripals had a delayed effect of several hours, and then failed to kill them. Excuses included that it was a cold day which slowed their metabolisms, that the chemical took a long time to penetrate their skins, that the gel containing the novichok inhibited its operation, that it was a deliberately non-fatal dose, that rain had diluted the novichok on the doorknob, that the Skripals were protected by gloves and possibly only came into contact in taking the gloves off, or that nerve agents are not very deadly and easily treated.
You can take your pick as to which of those convincingly explains why the Skripals apparently swanned round Salisbury for four hours after coming into contact with the novichok coated doorknob, well enough to both drink in a pub and eat a good Italian lunch, before both being instantaneously struck down and disabled at precisely the same time so neither could call for help, despite being different sexes, ages and weights. Just as the chief nurse of the British army happened to walk past.
So now let us fast forward to Alexei Navalny. Traces of “novichok” were allegedly found on a water bottle in his hotel room in Tomsk. That appears to eliminate the cold and the gloves. It also makes it possible he ingested some of the “novichok”. I can find no suggestion anywhere it was contained in a gel. So why was this deadly substance not deadly?
There seems no plain allegation of where Navalny came into contact with the “novichok”. Assuming he spent the night in his hotel room, then the very latest he can have come into contact with the deadly nerve agent would be shortly before he left the room, assuming he then subsequently touched the bottle before leaving. This is true whether the bottle was the source or he just touched it with novichok on his hands. After poisoning with this very deadly nerve agent – which Germany claims is “harder” than other examples, he then checked out of the hotel, went to the airport, checked in for his flight, had a cup of tea and boarded the flight, all before being taken ill. This after contact with a chemical weapon allegedly deadlier than this:
Which of course is aside from all the questions as to why the Russians would use again the poison that was ineffective against the Skripals, and why exactly the FSB would not have swept and cleaned up the hotel room after he had left. All that is even before we get to some of the questions I had already asked:
Further we are expected to believe that, the Russian state having poisoned Navalny, the Russian state then allowed the airplane he was traveling in, on a domestic flight, to divert to another airport, and make an emergency landing, so he could be rushed to hospital. If the Russian secret services had poisoned Navalny at the airport before takeoff as alleged, why would they not insist the plane stick to its original flight plan and let him die on the plane? They would have foreseen what would happen to the plane he was on.
Next, we are supposed to believe that the Russian state, having poisoned Navalny, was not able to contrive his death in the intensive care unit of a Russian state hospital. We are supposed to believe that the evil Russian state was able to falsify all his toxicology tests and prevent doctors telling the truth about his poisoning, but the evil Russian state lacked the power to switch off the ventilator for a few minutes or slip something into his drip. In a Russian state hospital.
Next we are supposed to believe that Putin, having poisoned Navalny with novichok, allowed him to be flown to Germany to be saved, making it certain the novichok would be discovered. And that Putin did this because he was worried Merkel was angry, not realising she might be still more angry when she discovered Putin had poisoned him with novichok
There are a whole stream of utterly unbelievable points there, every single one of which you have to believe to go along with the western narrative. Personally I do not buy a single one of them, but then I am a notorious Russophile traitor.
The eagerness of the Western political establishment to accept and amplify nonsensical Russophobia is very worrying. Fear is a powerful political tool, politicians need an enemy, and still more does the military-industrial complex that so successfully siphons off state money. Many fat livings depend on the notion that Russia poses a serious threat to us. The nonsense people are prepared to believe to maintain that fiction give a most unpleasant glimpse into the human psyche.
US elections: with two weeks to go who’s winning
By William Stroock | October 23, 2020
2016 was a bad year for political pollsters and predictors. At his website, FiveThirtyEight, data guru Nate Silver gave Hillary Clinton a 65% Chance of defeating Donald Trump. Silver’s prediction model was on the low end. The New York Times said Hillary had an 85% chance of winning. The Princeton Election Consortium put Hillary’s chances at 99%. Hillary Clinton was heavily favored in 2016.
But she shouldn’t have been. At the end of the Obama presidency much of the nation was in a malaise. The Obama economic recovery never achieved an annual growth rate of 3% and wasn’t felt throughout large swaths of the country. While Obamacare enabled some Americans to buy health insurance, it didn’t lead to universal coverage and was passed by the Democrats via parliamentary muscle and maneuver. The president’s Iran nuclear deal was never ratified by the senate and did not have the force of law. Under Obama the Democrat Party didn’t grow, it shrank. Obama lost nearly a thousand elected Democrat seats throughout the nation. Obama’s presidency simply wasn’t transformative as he and the Democrats promised.
After eight years of Obama, Hillary had a tough task before her. Replacing a two-term president from your party, while not impossible, is hard to do. Just ask Vice Presidents Richard Nixon and Al Gore. In 2016 had Hillary Clinton been in the White House for eight years, a brilliant Democrat candidate like Barrack Obama would’ve been hard pressed to defeat Donald Trump.
Hillary was not a brilliant candidate. From her first senate run in 2000 she was stiff on the stump and had trouble connecting with voters. One got the sense that everything Hillary said had been presented to a focus group and written into a talking point. Overtime she should have become a better campaigner. But bizarrely, from 2000 through 2016 Hillary only became more awkward, ‘Why aren’t I fifty points ahead!?’ she shouted in a weird televised message during the 2016 campaign. She couldn’t defeat Obama in the 2008 Democrat primary and barely defeated socialist Bernie in 2016
Hillary could have learned a thing or two from her husband. In 1992 Bill Clinton jumped into the Democrat primary. Clinton cast himself as an old fashioned democrat in the model of JFK and FDR, an alternative to the ‘bleeding heart’ liberals that lost five of the last six presidential elections to the GOP. Clinton reinvented campaigning, appearing on talk shows and attending townhalls where he took questions from voters. Clinton had an uncanny knack for connecting with people in these venues. After twelve years of Republicans in the White House and a recession, the circumstances for Clinton were fantastic and he won a three-way race. With a good economy at his back in 1996, Clinton easily defeated Republican dinosaur Bob Dole.
In 2000 Vice President Al Gore won the Democrat nomination. But despite eight years of peace and prosperity, Gore lost the 2000 election by a razor thin margin. The Vice President looked uncomfortable before the cameras as he tried to overcome his reputation for being ‘wooden’. His ideas like a social security ‘lock box’ were the butt of jokes. His three debates with GOP nominee George W. Bush were the turning point of the campaign. Bush was amiable while Gore looked like a smug, know it all bully lacking self-awareness. Gore thought he won the debates. Exasperated staffers showed him clips of Saturday Night Live’s brutal parodies of his performance.
So at this point readers are probably wondering where Trump and Biden fit into this matrix of circumstances, ideas and candidates. Let’s ask ourselves who’s the better candidate. Joe Biden has spent most of the campaign in his Wilmington home. When Biden does come out, he reads cues from a comically large teleprompter, very often losing his place and the context of what he is saying. Biden looks tired and old. On most days he ends press availability before noon. The size of the Trump crowd protesting outside a Biden campaign event usually outnumbers the people attending. Biden just isn’t a big campaign draw. At this point Biden’s best argument is that he’s not Trump. His TV ads are sentimental calls for unity and change but offer no specifics. In essence Biden tells voters nothing about what he would do in the Oval Office.
Despite being 73 years old and having just recovered from the Corona Virus, Trump is campaigning across the country. He often holds two rallies a day; thousands attend. These rallies are visual masterpieces, usually held in local airports with Air Force One in the background. On the trail, Trump is relentlessly on message, touting his record on China, trade war, Corona Virus and the economy. He hammers Biden on his 47 years in Washington and son Hunter’s corruption. As far as circumstances go, who would you rather be right now, Trump or Biden?
Iran Seeks to Confuse the United States?
Another story that is more fiction than fact
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. Credit: The Hill/ YouTube
By Philip Giraldi | American Herald Tribune | October 23, 2020
Those who have been waiting for the elusive October Surprise that will upset the apple cart on election day are admittedly running out of time. The media’s unwillingness to even consider that the antics of Hunter Biden just might constitute an embarrassment of major proportions or even something worse has done much to kill that story. And the old tried and true expedient of starting a little war somewhere is also proving to be a false hope as no one appears ready to provoke the righteously wrathful Secretary of State Mike Pompeo by ponying up a casus belli. Maybe there is still time for a false flag operation, but even that would require more prior planning than the White House appears capable of.
There is, however, one area that might just be exploitable to create a crisis, though it much depends on whether a tired public is willing to go one more round over the issue of “foreign election interference.” And yes, the Russians are presumed to be involved, on this occasion, as they always are, joined by the ever-vengeful Iranians.
On Wednesday Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe held a news conference at which he laid out details of the most recent dastardly plot against American democracy. He described how Iran and Russia both obtained American voter registration data, apparently through publicly accessible databases and through purchases of email lists. Though no actual votes have been altered, they are using that information “to influence the presidential election as it enters its final two weeks.” Ratcliffe elaborated how “This data can be used by foreign actors to attempt to communicate false information to registered voters that they hope will cause confusion, sow chaos and undermine… confidence in American democracy.”
Ratcliffe focused mostly on Iran, saying that it had been identified as the source of what he described as a claimed 1,500 “spoofed emails” routed through Estonia that “seek to intimidate voters, incite social unrest, and damage President Trump.” Iran was also blamed for other material, to include a video encouraging the casting of illegal ballots both domestically and overseas. Additional intelligence suggests that Iran is planning to take more steps to influence the election in the coming days, though what those measures could possibly be was not revealed.
Other government sources elaborated, indicating that Iranian intelligence has been credited with the sending of the email messages going out to Democratic voters in four states, including hotly disputed Pennsylvania and Florida. The emails falsely claimed to be from the alleged far-right group Proud Boys which has been much in the news. Their message was that “we will come after you” if the recipients fail to vote for Donald Trump.
It doesn’t take much to realize that threatening messages relating to voting for Trump allegedly coming from a source described as “racist” would undoubtedly motivate most registered Democratic voters to do the opposite, but that seems to have escaped the analysts of the Directorate of National Intelligence. And one must also ask why Tehran would want the re-election of a president who has been unremittingly hostile, including imposing crippling sanctions, withdrawing from a beneficial nuclear agreement, and assassinating a leading Revolutionary Guards general. Even U.S. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer appears to have figured that one out, saying “It was clear to me that the intent of Iran in this case and Russia in many more cases is to basically undermine confidence in our elections. This action I do not believe was aimed… at discrediting President Trump.”
The anti-Trump New York Times has, of course, another, more sinister interpretation, suggesting that “… it may also play into President Trump’s hands. For weeks, he has argued, without evidence, that the vote on Nov. 3 will be ‘rigged,’ that mail-in ballots will lead to widespread fraud and that the only way he can be defeated is if his opponents cheat. Now, on the eve of the final debate, he has evidence of foreign influence campaigns designed to hurt his re-election chances, even if they did not affect the voting infrastructure.”
The Times also notes a broader conspiracy by the dreadful Persians, explaining how “Iran has tinkered at the edges of American election interference since 2012, but always as a minor actor. Last year, it stepped up its game, private cybersecurity firms have warned. They have caught Iranian operatives occasionally impersonating politicians and journalists around the world, often to spread narratives that are aimed at denigrating Israel or Saudi Arabia, its two major adversaries in the Middle East.” Again, however, the article provides no explanation of what Iran could possibly hope to gain from the minimal “tinkering” it might be able to engage in an American election in which billions of dollars will be spent by Democrats and Republicans who are viciously attacking each other without any outside help.
Ratcliffe had less to say about Russia but U.S. media coverage of the story included a referral to a recent account of how the U.S. military’s Cyber Command helped take down a network developed by Russian hackers called TrickBot that had been used in ransomware attacks directed against companies as well as cities and towns across the United States. It also reported how “In recent days, another Russian hacking group called Energetic Bear, often linked to the F.S.B. — one of the successors to the Soviet Union’s K.G.B. — appears to have focused its attention on gaining access to state and local government networks. That has caught the attention of federal investigators because, until now, the group had largely targeted energy firms, including public utilities.”
There was, however, no evidence that either hacking group was being directed against voter systems, so Russia’s inclusion in the front-page Times story headlined “Iran and Russia Seek to Influence Election in Final Days, U.S. Officials Warn” has to be considered questionable editorial judgment. Perhaps scaremongering would be a better description. In any event, the story itself is much ado about nothing. Iran’s sending out 1,500 emails if that actually occurred, would have zero impact. Likewise, the claimed existence of alleged Russian hacking groups that have done nothing directed against voters or balloting systems with only a few days left until the election would appear to be an electoral tactic rather than exposure of any genuine threat. One might even describe it as a bit of deliberate disinformation.
‘Big Guy’ Joe Biden was PERSONALLY involved in China venture, Hunter Biden’s business partner says
RT | October 23, 2020
Investor Tony Bobulinski says he personally met with Joe Biden to discuss a joint venture with a Chinese company, accusing his son Hunter and the Biden family of using the endeavor as a “personal piggy bank.”
In a statement to the press on Thursday night, shortly before the presidential debate in which Democratic nominee Biden and President Donald Trump will face off, Bobulinski affirmed media reports that the emails between him and Hunter Biden are authentic.
Bobulinski said he was approached in 2015 about a joint venture with CEFC China Energy and “one of the most prominent families in the US.” This led to a May 2, 2017 meeting with Joe Biden, his brother James, and his son Hunter, at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles.
At the hour-long meeting, Bobulinski said, they discussed the Biden family’s business plans with the Chinese, with which Joe Biden “was plainly familiar, at least at a high level.”
The venture was to be named “SinoHawk,” Bobulinski explained, combining China and the favorite animal of Biden’s late son Beau, who died of a brain tumor in 2015.
Bobulinski further said he received an email from Hunter on May 13, 2017 in which 10 percent of the equity in the company would be reserved for “the Big Guy,” which he said stood for Joe Biden. He later objected to Hunter’s request that the company should wire $5 million to entities controlled by the Biden family, saying SinoHawk “could not be Hunter’s personal piggy bank.”
According to Bobulinski, he found out that the money had indeed been wired from last month’s Senate report.
Responding to Bobulinski’s announcement, Biden’s campaign said that Barack Obama’s former vice-president and current Democrat presidential candidate “has never even considered being involved in business with his family nor in any overseas business whatsoever.”
The campaign also called the accusations a “smear” and claimed it was a “desperate, pathetic farce.”
Bobulinski told reporters he had never been political and had previously donated to Democrats, but decided to go public so “the American people can decide for themselves.” At the event, he held up three cell phones he said contained messages from the 2015-2018 time period, which he was going to turn over to the FBI as evidence. He left without taking questions.
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Psychiatric drugs kill 500k+ Western adults annually, few positive benefits – leading scientist
RT | May 13, 2015
Psychiatric drugs lead to the deaths of over 500,000 people aged 65 and over annually in the West, a Danish scientist says. He warns the benefits of these drugs are “minimal,” and have been vastly overstated.
Research director at Denmark’s Nordic Cochrane Centre, Professor Peter Gøtzsche, says the use of most antidepressants and dementia drugs could be halted without inflicting harm on patients. The Danish scientist’s views were published in the British Medical Journal on Tuesday.
His scathing analysis will likely prove controversial among traditional medics. However, concern is mounting among doctors and scientists worldwide that psychiatric medication is doing more harm than good. In particular, they say antipsychotic drugs have been over-prescribed to many dementia patients in a bid to calm agitated behavior.
Gøtzsche warns psychiatric drugs kill patients year in year out, and hold few positive benefits. He says in excess of half a million citizens across the Western world aged 65 and over die annually as a result of taking these drugs.
“Their benefits would need to be colossal to justify this, but they are minimal,” he writes.
“Given their lack of benefit, I estimate we could stop almost all psychotropic drugs without causing harm.”
Gøtzsche, who is also a clinical trials expert, says drug trials funded by big pharmaceutical companies tend to produce biased results because many patients took other medication prior to the tests.
He says patients cease taking the old drugs and then experience a phase of withdrawal prior to taking the trial pharmaceuticals, which appear highly beneficial at first.
The Danish professor also warns fatalities from suicides in clinical trials are significantly under-reported. … continue
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Aletho News- Ron Unz: JFK Assassination, Iranian Channel Four TV (IRIB) March 24, 2023
- Mexican President Says Trump Arrest is About Keeping Him Off the Ballot March 23, 2023
- Russian governor’s son flees house arrest in Italy March 23, 2023
- Turkiye ‘reviewing options’ for Syria withdrawal: Report March 23, 2023
- Iraq war is epitomy of media duplicity March 23, 2023
- US to build new military bases near South China Sea March 23, 2023
- Why hypersonic weapons change everything March 23, 2023
- Serbs Aware of UK’s ‘Gift’ for Ukraine: NATO Poisoned Serbia’s Soil for Billions of Years to Come March 23, 2023
- Putin and Xi Standing Firm on the Right Side of History March 23, 2023
- Western Sanctions Targeting Russians Failed, PM Mishustin Says March 23, 2023
- Russia’s economy recovers while dozens of US banks face collapse March 23, 2023
- ‘Never vaccinated’ vs ‘Ever vaccinated’ mortality rate illusion: Survivor bias and how to overcome it March 23, 2023
- Indiana’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles is caught collecting and selling personal data March 23, 2023
- I am the “US-based Kremlin intermediary” that tried to help Tucker Carlson book an interview with Putin March 23, 2023
- Mom files lawsuit after being reported to law enforcement for questioning “polysexual” school poster March 22, 2023
- Biden fails to dismiss censorship collusion lawsuit March 22, 2023
- Is Dr. Malone Invested in Humanity or Transhumanism? March 22, 2023
- Why I don’t believe there ever was a Covid virus March 22, 2023
- If Americans Knew
- Bezalel Smotrich calls a lie “the biblical truth” March 22, 2023
- Joel Osteen’s startling interview with Bibi Netanyahu March 20, 2023
- Thursday-Friday: Israeli forces kill 5 Palestinians March 18, 2023
- Brownstone Institute
- Madness in the Law Schools March 24, 2023
- How They Convinced Trump to Lock Down March 23, 2023
- The Lab Leak and the Counter Measures: What Really Happened March 23, 2023
- The Latest in the War on Science March 23, 2023
- The Covid Disaster was Foreshadowed with Love Canal March 23, 2023
- The Real Trauma of Love Canal March 22, 2023
- Richie Allen
- Bordeaux Town Hall Burnt Down By Pension Reform Protesters March 24, 2023
- Scottish Schools Tell Kids There Are THREE Biological Sexes March 24, 2023
- Greta Thunberg To Sue Sweden For Climate Change Inaction March 23, 2023
- USA Today Names BLOKE In WOMEN Of The Year List March 23, 2023
- Not A Lot Of People Know That
- Dutch farmers on collision course with Brussels over compulsory farm buyouts March 24, 2023
- Prominent physicist warns that wind power “fails on every count” March 23, 2023
- Rural Homes Will Be Forced To Install Unaffordable Heat Pumps March 23, 2023
- Met Office & Their Opinion Poll March 22, 2023
- No Tricks Zone
- Consent Factory
- The Censorship Industrial Complex March 10, 2023
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