Robert Hur Emerges as the Clear Winner in the Presidential Debate
By Jonathan Turley | June 28, 2024
The presidential debate last night was chilling to watch as President Joe Biden clearly struggled to retain his focus and, at points, seemed hopelessly confused. The winner was clear: Special Counsel Robert Hur. For months, Democrats in Congress and the media have attacked Hur for his report that the president came across as an “elderly man with a poor memory.” Hur concluded that prosecuting Biden would be difficult because a jury would view him as a sympathetic figure of a man with declining mental capabilities. That was evident last night and the question is whether a man who was too diminished to be a criminal defendant can still be a president for four more years.
Hur laid out evidence that President Biden had unlawfully retained and mishandled classified evidence for decades. However, he also concluded that “at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” He found that “it would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
What has followed is the usual pile-on in the media with legal analysts, press, and pundits denouncing Hur for his findings.
Hur likely does not anticipate any apologies even as commentators on CNN and MSNBC admit that there are now unavoidable questions of Biden’s ability to be the nominee.
Democrats have repeatedly insisted that Hur did not find Biden diminished and that he actually was impressed by his memory and mental acuity. Hur contradicted that in his own testimony before Congress.
Indeed, the denial campaign took on a bizarre character, particularly when Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.) insisted that Hur “exonerated” Biden. Hur pushed back: “I need to go back and make sure that I take note of a word that you used, ‘exoneration.’ That is not a word that is used in my report and that is not a part of my task as a prosecutor.”
Jayapal shot back, “You exonerated him.”
Hur responded, “I did not exonerate him. That word does not appear in the report.”
The debate also further undermines the ridiculous effort of the Biden Administration to continue to withhold the audiotape of the Hur interview as privileged (despite saying that the transcript is not privileged).
The debate showed not only what Hur saw but why the Justice Department is making a clearly laughable privilege claim to delay any release of the audiotape until after the election.
Lebanon denies Telegraph claims, invites officials for airport tour
Al-Mayadeen | June 23, 2024
The Air Transport Union in Lebanon (UTA) denied in a statement The Telegraph’s report in which it claimed that “Hezbollah stores missiles and explosives at Lebanon’s main airport,” saying that these clams were made without any proof offered.
The UTA called The Telegraph’s unfounded claims “mere illusions and lies aimed at endangering Beirut Airport and its civilian workers, as well as travelers to and from it, all of whom are civilians.”
Moreover, the Air Transport Union held the media outlet, as well as “those who report on it and spread its falsehoods” responsible for the safety of those who work at Beirut Airport in all its facilities “including the passenger terminal, departure and arrival, the apron, maintenance, and civil air cargo.”
Additionally, in its statement, it called on all Lebanese, Arab, and foreign media outlets to come to Beirut Airport “with their camera crews and verify for themselves, otherwise, we consider what is being promoted by suspicious media outlets as incitement to kill us.”
On his part, Lebanon’s Caretaker Minister of Public Works and Transport, Ali Hamieh, proclaimed, in a press conference, that “Beirut Airport has been subjected to disinformation for years,” adding that instead of publishing a “ridiculous” and baseless report citing anonymous sources, the British daily “should have opted for checking in with the British Department of Transport, which conducted a field visit of the airport on January 22, 2024.”
“This is the primary authority responsible for transportation matters at the airport,” he stated.
Questioning the paper’s credibility, Hamieh asked, “Is it conceivable that a reputable newspaper would change its sources within an hour?”
Additionally, the caretaker minister called on all media outlets and all ambassadors or their representatives to visit the airport tomorrow at 10:30 am for a tour of all airport facilities to make sure that the airport is strictly a civilian infrastructure and that no weapons are being smuggled through it.
“We have nothing to hide,” he maintained.
Moreover, Hamieh informed the press, “We are in the process of filing a lawsuit against the newspaper and we will announce the details later.”
Candace Owens and Briahna Joy Gray reveal media ‘red line’ on Israel
If Americans Knew | June 16, 2024
Conservative Candace Owens interviews progressive Briahna Joy Gray about their experiences getting fired because of their criticism of Israel. This clip is from the Candace Show on June 14, 2024.
Background information:
Krystal Ball, Saagar Enjeti, Glenn Greenwald reveal details of the campaign against her:
Behind the Myth of “Billions in Arms” Flowing into Ukraine
By Brian Berletic – New Eastern Outlook – 13.06.2024
In a June 8, 2024, Bloomberg article titled, “Putin Is Running Out of Time to Achieve Breakthrough in Ukraine,” an optimistic prognosis was made regarding the ongoing conflict in Ukraine in favor of Kiev.
The article claims that Russia has made “limited progress” along the line of contact, including along the newly-opened front in Kharkov and that as “billions in arms start flowing” into Ukraine, Ukrainian forces will be given the opportunity to “counter-attack.”
The “billions in arms” Bloomberg cites refers to the renewed flow of US military assistance after months of delays in passing funding in the US Congress. However, recalling the flagging impact of US arms transfers to Ukraine even before the funding delays, and a closer look at the actual quantities associated with these packages versus Russian military production, tells an entirely different story.
Bloomberg claims that the renewed flow of US arms is eroding Russia’s military advantage. However, this is simply not true.
Artillery Shells
The most recent US arms package featured, among other items, badly needed 155mm artillery shells and anti-tank weapons including the vaunted Javelin missile. Missing from the Pentagon’s public press release, were the quantities these weapons and munitions were being sent in.
It is well-known that US and European artillery shell production falls short of Russia’s by several times. A May 2024 Business Insider article puts the number of Russian shells produced this year at 4.5 million, while the US and Europe combined amount to only 1.3 million.
The prospect of Western shell production drastically increasing to match or even exceed Russian production numbers is unrealistic, according to a June 7, 2024 Bloomberg article titled, “America’s War Machine Can’t Make Basic Artillery Fast Enough.”
In the Bloomberg piece, various factors are mentioned ranging from limited material inputs, a lack of trained human resources, the need to vastly expand the physical production sites producing both the shells themselves and their various individual components, as well as the need to consistently procure funding to expand each of these factors. All of this takes time.
The article claims that by 2025, the US should be producing up to 68,000 155mm artillery shells a month. Even if Europe was able to match these production numbers, it would represent only two-thirds of Ukraine’s monthly requirements to achieve its 6,000 round daily rate of fire, which still falls far short of Russia’s daily rate of fire, placing Ukraine at a disadvantage.
Artillery shell production is relatively straightforward compared to more advanced weapons Ukraine also desperately requires. This includes anti-armor weapons like the Javelin missile.
Javelin Anti-Tank Missiles
Once hailed as a “game changer” by the collective Western media, the Javelin is now rarely mentioned either in headlines or even buried deep within articles. The missiles were passed over to Ukraine by the thousands during the initial phases of the Russian Special Military Operation (SMO), up to 7,000 or about one-third of the US’ total inventory according to the US government and arms industry-funded Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in late 2022.
Since then, Lockheed Martin, which produces the Javelin missile, claims to have expanded production by up to 15% in a 2024 release, producing up to 2,400 missiles per year or about 200 per month.
2,400 missiles are not being sent entirely to Ukraine each year. The missiles and less numerous command launch units (CLU) that fire them are required by the US, other NATO members, and other Lockheed customers around the globe. But let’s assume for a moment all 2,400 missiles are sent to Ukraine each year, and because US stockpiles are at critical levels, let’s assume Ukraine is sent Javelins drawn from this monthly production.
Does this mean that each month, 200 Russian tanks will be damaged or destroyed, adding up to 2,400 a year? No. According to the US Army’s own studies, even trained US soldiers have a 19% hit rate while utilizing Javelin, TOW, and AT-4 systems, all of which the US has sent to Ukraine throughout the SMO.
This means that even if Ukraine was receiving 200 missiles a month and firing them at Russian armored vehicles, they would be scoring only about 38 hits a month. Out of those 38 hits, fewer still would result in significant damage or complete destruction.
Comparing these overly optimistic numbers with Russian tank and other armored vehicle production puts this into better context.
According to a March 2024 CNN article discussing Russian military production, it admits Russia is producing up to 125 tanks a month. Other Western sources claim Russia also produces up to 250 other armored vehicles per month, for a total of 375 armored vehicles a month.
Compare that with the 38 hits Ukraine would be able to inflict even if the US sent every single Javelin produced straight to Ukraine each month. Russia is producing far more armored vehicles than the US is producing Javelin missiles to destroy them. The story is the same for other anti-armor weapon systems produced across the West (e.g. 1,000 TOW missiles produced per year), all of which face depleted stockpiles and low monthly production rates.
Considering that the number of Javelin missiles and other ordnance sent to Ukraine will be far less in reality than total monthly production, we begin to see the true measure of US (and European) military assistance and how the “billions in arms” now flowing to Ukraine do not represent a significant change in Ukraine’s ability to slow, let alone stop Russian forces as they continue mounting pressure not only along the existing front, but opening entirely new fronts, creating a wider strategic dilemma for Ukraine, stretching an already insufficient amount of manpower, equipment, and ammunition even further.
Empty Rhetoric
Despite Bloomberg discounting its “Putin is Running Out of Time” article with its “America’s War Machine Can’t Make Basic Artillery Fast Enough” article, it and other Western publications’ attempts to convince audiences that the tide is about to shift in Ukraine’s favor is a repeat of this same empty rhetoric used to sell Ukraine’s 2023 “counteroffensive” as poised to shift the conflict.
In reality, the 2023 Ukrainian military operation was soundly defeated by Russian forces who not only decimated Ukraine’s manpower, equipment, and ammunition stocks, but managed to bolster its own numbers and capabilities in the process.
Ukrainian attempts to claw back territory it has recently lost in Kharkov will lead to the same fruitless conclusion its 2022 and 2023 offensives did, a questionable chance of actually taking the territory for a guaranteed severe cost in irreplaceable trained manpower and equipment.
Today’s headlines across the West portending the tide changing in the fighting across Ukraine represent a now familiar cycle of encouraging Ukraine to fight on in what is otherwise an unwinnable conflict inflicting an immense and indelible cost on Ukraine in terms of territory, human lives, and economic prospects well into the future.
But as has been pointed out many times before, feeding Ukraine into an unwinnable proxy war had been a US objective articulated as early as 2019 in RAND Corporation’s paper, “Extending Russia,” which stated:
Expanding U.S. assistance to Ukraine, including lethal military assistance, would likely increase the costs to Russia, in both blood and treasure, of holding the Donbass region. More Russian aid to the separatists and an additional Russian troop presence would likely be required, leading to larger expenditures, equipment losses, and Russian casualties. The latter could become quite controversial at home, as it did when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.
But warned:
However, such a move might also come at a significant cost to Ukraine and to U.S. prestige and credibility. This could produce disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows. It might even lead Ukraine into a disadvantageous peace.
Obviously, even in 2019, US policymakers realized Ukraine would not win a US-sponsored proxy war against Russia. The actual objective was to raise the cost of Russian victory high enough to undermine Russia’s economy, divide Russian society, and perhaps even eventually precipitate a Soviet Union-style collapse. While RAND’s predictions of Ukraine’s destruction amid such a proxy war have clearly come to pass, the supposed “benefits” of this policy have yet to avail themselves and do not appear even plausible at this juncture.
Thus, Western rhetoric about Ukraine’s soon-to-be good fortune is not based on genuine analysis of the ongoing conflict, but is instead a point of propaganda aimed at encouraging Ukraine to fight on despite all actual analysis warning of the disaster awaiting in doing so.
Only time will tell just how far this process plays out to where the US and its partners are no longer pushing Ukraine onto the battlefield and are instead taking to the negotiation table. In the meantime, the “billions in arms” flowing into Ukraine will continue to have the same impact they’ve had all along, ensuring “disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows,” ultimately leading Ukraine “into a disadvantageous peace.”
Glenn Greenwald interviews Briahna Joy Gray about her firing by the Hill
System Update | June 11, 2024
From System Update with Glenn Greenwald, June 7, 2024. Greenwald is a journalist, constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York Times bestselling books on politics and law. He has won numerous journalism awards. (https://theintercept.com/staff/glenn-…)
More information on Gray’s firing is at https://israelpalestinenews.org/most-…
Shorter clips are at https://youtu.be/KjbEsA7rVqk?si=Yb91r… and https://youtu.be/Ly9F_45OZi0?si=Ph95S…
Full show at : https://rumble.com/v5091bc-system-upd… –
Ex-Press TV reporter at center of WaPo’s smear campaign against Grayzone
By Maryam Qarehgozlou | Press TV | June 11, 2024
The Washington Post reports that Grayzone journalist Wyatt Reed took funds from Iran, and the report is based on testimonies of anti-Iran elements or those linked to US arms manufacturers.
In another desperate bid to muzzle alternative media that has been revealing Western complicity in Gaza and Ukraine, The Washington Post recently published a hit piece targeting The Grayzone news outlet.
The article alleged that The Grayzone is financially backed by Iran and Russia to “spread falsehoods.”
Authored by Joseph Menn, the article claimed to have “exposed” The Grayzone’s journalist Wyatt Reed’s ties with Iran’s state media, relying on what it said were hacked emails and quotes from sources either anti-Iran elements or linked to the US government or arms manufacturers.
The oldest newspaper in Washington, owned by pro-Israel business tycoon Jeff Bezos, insinuated that since Reed, now a managing director at The Grayzone, appeared on Press TV many years ago, he is on the Islamic Republic’s payroll.
The piece went as far as to suggest that he should be jailed for reporting for the Iranian news channel.
The Washington Post report repeated the same claims about Reed’s reporting for Russia’s state-run news agency Sputnik.
Reed, for his part, has never hidden his work for Press TV. At the start of his journalistic career in 2020, Reed appeared on Press TV several dozen times and openly tweeted his reports. The “correspondent @PressTV” was also featured in his Twitter bio at the time.
“For weeks, we’ve been waiting to see how they would target us. Now we know. Congrats to the @washingtonpost’s ‘Digital threats reporter’ on this earth-shattering reporting on my appearances on Press TV years before I edited Grayzone,” Reed wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, last week.
“How could they possibly have figured it out?” he added.
Dan Cohen, an American journalist and filmmaker, also took to X to assert that The Washington Post’s “sloppy attempt” to discredit independent journalism only highlights the media group’s own corruption.
“The Washington Post is targeting Grayzone journalist @wyattreed13 for having previously worked for Iran state media outlet Press TV and Russian state outlet Sputnik, as if that’s somehow a breach of journalist ethics,” Cohen wrote in a post.
He said The Washington Post reporter Greg Jaffe has a fellowship at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a permanent war think tank funded by the US State Department and Pentagon.
The editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, Max Blumenthal, responded that supporters of the Israeli war on Gaza and the Western proxy war in Ukraine are angry with The Grayzone and Reed because of their truthful reporting.
“The motive behind this malicious attack is abundantly clear: Wyatt now works for The Grayzone, and The Grayzone’s factual reporting has infuriated boosters of the Ukraine proxy war and members of Israel’s international propaganda network,” he said.
‘Embarrassing’ correction
Stung by the backlash, The Washington Post was forced to retract some of its allegations. While the story initially claimed that editors of The Grayzone had received payments from Iranian media, it soon corrected the story, saying only Reed received such payments.
“Less than 24 hours after @JosephMenn’s hatchet job on @TheGrayzoneNews landed, WaPo has been forced into a massive and deeply embarrassing correction,” Kit Klarenberg, a British investigative journalist and contributor to the Press TV website, wrote in a post on X.
“Other egregious distortions and falsehoods remain extant. But it’s a start. And certainly the foundation of future legal action,” he added.
Reed also said in an X post that more corrections are expected in the coming days.
“The ‘journalists’ attempting to get me jailed for journalism just had to issue a major correction to their hit piece. Expect more in the coming days as we expose the US government cutouts, pro-Israel zealots, and federal informants they relied on to target us.”
Bogus claims
Despite the correction, the piece is still filled with false, twisted, and distorted accounts. For example, the author of the article, Menn, claims Blumenthal did not answer emails seeking comment. However, Blumenthal said in a post on X that he received no emails.
“Unless Menn can prove that he emailed me and I somehow missed it, this is malicious conduct that demonstrates reckless disregard for journalistic ethics,” he said.
Blumenthal added that if he had received any emails from Menn, he would have stated clearly that Reed reported for Press TV three years before he joined The Grayzone and that Wyatt’s position at The Grayzone was created through “a public, grassroots crowd-funding campaign” in which readers pooled together small donations.
“I would have also stated that The Grayzone does not accept funding from any government, unlike nearly every intel front Menn quoted against us,” he added.
According to Blumenthal, these facts would have undermined the entire premise of Menn’s “malicious” smear piece, which may be why he did not email him.
WaPo quotes NATO-backed groups
Blumenthal also revealed that Menn’s key sources for the article included Neil Rauhauser, a “shady online troll” who is also believed to be an FBI informant, and some NATO-backed outfits.
The article cited the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, or ASPI, a Canberra-based think tank funded by Australia’s Department of Defence, NATO, and the US Department of State.
The Atlantic Council, the semi-official DC think tank of NATO, is another source cited by The Washington Post, which has taken in substantial funding from the US Department of State, EU states, and arms manufacturers.
It also quoted Ali Herischi, personal lawyer of Masih Alinejad, a US-based, exiled Iranian rabble-rouser who is on Washington’s payroll for instigating anti-Iran sentiments inside and outside the country.
Alinejad has advocated for Israeli military attacks on Iran and received $305,000 from the US government for her work at Voice of America, the US state broadcaster, between 2015 and 2019.
“At no point did Menn inform his readers that his sources were state-funded pro-war entities,” Blumenthal said.
Misinforming readers
The Washington Post story also alleged that The Grayzone is spreading misinformation by reporting “widespread Israeli attacks against its [settlers] on October 7” when Hamas carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm into the occupied territories.
However, the newspaper conveniently failed to inform its readers that Israeli media have corroborated The Grayzone’s assessment that the Israeli military explicitly ordered attacks on Israeli settlers who had been taken captive on October 7, killing many.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported last month that Israeli Gen. Barak Hiram ordered an Israeli tank to shell a home in Kibbutz Beeri filled with over a dozen Israeli captives on October 7, killing all but two.
Desperate attempts
According to Hermela Aregawi, a US-based independent journalist, the targeting of American journalists who challenge mainstream narratives is likely to ramp up ahead of the US presidential elections.
“If you read beyond the headline, the ‘editor’s ties’ are that… ‘The files appear to show that the Iranian broadcaster paid [journalist Wyatt] Reed for occasional contributions to its programming’… The reality is US outlets, UK outlets, Qatar (Al Jazeera) etc. pay some of their contributors for their analysis,” she wrote on X.
Journalist Mark Ames also said that the piece was a desperate attempt to trigger a federal investigation against independent journalists.
“This is the second WaPo hit piece against Grayzone this year. Based on the sourcing/media here, you get the sense Langley & DC press corps are so frustrated that their ‘disinformation’ hex cast upon [The Grayzone ] has had no effect, so they’re trying to summon the Feds to shut [The Grayzone ] down.”
The Australia-based anti-war commentator Caitlin Johnstone also said on X that The Grayzone staff worked for foreign media outlets like Press TV because there are no major Western media outlets that platform dissident voices like theirs, who “criticize the Western empire and its actions.”
“The Washington Post is one of the worst propaganda rags ever to exist in any country. If I’d published such an article for such a depraved empire propaganda outlet, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.”
PCR Testing for Bird Flu ‘Will Only Serve to Raise False Case Count’ Critics Say
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | June 6, 2024
Dr. Deborah Birx, the Trump administration’s coronavirus response coordinator, told CNN’s Kasie Hunt the U.S. is making the “same mistakes” with bird flu that it made with COVID-19, which she said spread because there wasn’t enough testing for asymptomatic infection.
Birx is now calling for every cow to be tested for bird flu weekly and for regular pooled tests for dairy workers. She also said it’s likely that undetected cases are circulating in humans.
“We have the technology,” Birx said. “The great thing about America is we’re incredibly innovative and we have the ability to have these breakthroughs.”
The technology Birx referenced is polymerase chain reaction or PCR testing — the same diagnostic tool that came under fire during the COVID-19 pandemic for producing inaccurate results, including false positives.
Speaking out on X (formerly Twitter), critics like Simon Goddek, Ph.D., pushed back, accusing Birx of “deliberately using the same strategy to fabricate another fake health emergency.”
On Wednesday, the day after Birx’s interview, JAMA published its own article advocating for more widespread bird flu testing.
“No animal or public health expert thinks that we are doing enough surveillance,” Keith Poulsen, DVM, Ph.D., director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told JAMA.
Andrew Pekosz, Ph.D., from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told JAMA that more testing should be conducted to find asymptomatic and mild infections. Workers at infected farms should be tested twice weekly, he said, and cows should be tested once a week.
Inventor: PCR test never intended for use as diagnostic tool
PCR testing works by starting with tiny fragments of DNA or RNA called nucleotides and replicating them until they become large enough to identify. The nucleotides are replicated in cycles, and each cycle doubles the amount of genetic material in the sample. The number of cycles required to create an identifiable sample is the “cycle threshold” (Ct).
PCR tests became a household name during the COVID-19 pandemic because they were treated as the “gold standard” for identifying positive cases, especially among asymptomatic people.
However, as early as December 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that using a high-cycle threshold would lead to false-positive results. The agency encouraged healthcare providers to consider the test in concert with other factors — namely the presence of symptoms — when diagnosing patients.
The WHO also cautioned those using the tests to read the instructions carefully to determine whether the cycle threshold ought to be changed to account for any background noise that could lead to a high-cycle threshold being mistaken for a false positive.
“When specimens return a high Ct value,” the press release said, “it means that many cycles were required to detect virus. In some circumstances, the distinction between background noise and actual presence of the target virus is difficult to ascertain.”
Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel Prize for inventing the PCR test, said it was inappropriate to use the test as a diagnostic tool to detect a viral infection.
Even Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted during the pandemic that a high cycle — which was used often — detected only “dead nucleotides,” not a viral infection.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) did not immediately respond to The Defender’s inquiry about which cycle thresholds are used to test animals for bird flu.
Mass testing ‘will only serve to raise a false case count’
As of Tuesday, the latest circulating bird flu virus has reportedly infected 81 herds of dairy cattle in nine states and poultry farms in 48 states. The virus can be fatal for poultry but does not generally cause serious illness in cattle.
Bird flu is rare among humans. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) maintains it poses only a low risk to public health.
In the latest wave of bird flu, only three people in the U.S. have tested positive for the virus after close exposure to an infected cow. All three experienced mild symptoms — two experienced eye irritation and one also had a cough and sore throat. All recovered without incident.
The WHO reported Wednesday that a resident of Mexico died from a bird flu infection, but WHO officials also maintain the virus’ threat to the general population is low.
Bird flu cannot be transmitted among humans, but that hasn’t stopped health officials such as the WHO’s Chief Scientist Jeremy Farrar and U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf from publicly stoking fears that the virus could suddenly mutate, become more infectious and transmissible among humans, and cause a pandemic.
Mainstream media outlets like Scientific American warned that the bird flu isn’t a pandemic “yet,” but it could evolve to become one if people do things like continue to drink raw milk. And The New York Times warned yesterday that the virus “may not be done” adapting.
The CDC reported on Tuesday that it monitors genetic changes in the virus and “few genetic changes of public health concern have been identified.”
Nevertheless, the U.S. government is building up its national stockpile of existing vaccines produced by CSL Seqirus and is nearing contracts with Moderna and possibly Pfizer to fund the development of an mRNA vaccine for the virus.
On Tuesday, Finland announced it will begin offering the vaccine to selected groups of people.
Other public health experts have dismissed the alarmism as “overblown,” with some suggesting the “fearmongering” is motivated by profit.
Dr. David Bell, a public health physician and biotech consultant, told The Defender last month the bird flu scare was “farcical.”
“We did not have a bad outbreak for over a century, and there is every likelihood that we won’t again,” Bell said. “We are using technology to pretend that new threats are occurring because we can now detect them.”
Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough said last month that mass testing of healthy animals — as Birx is suggesting — will only serve to “raise a false case count.”
Feds using PCR testing on animals, wastewater, farmworkers, meat and milk
The federal government last month announced a new round of funding to reduce the impact of bird flu. The plan appropriated $93 million for the CDC to do virus genomic sequencing, increase monitoring of farmworkers, and improve and expand testing on a national scale for bird flu in animals, wastewater, farmworkers and meat.
The FDA also appropriated an additional $8 million to surveil and test the commercial milk supply.
Lactating dairy cows must be tested for bird flu before they can cross state lines, per an April 24 Federal Order issued by the USDA.
The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) also encourages farmers to voluntarily test cattle and herds with suspected infection, showing symptoms like reduced milk production or respiratory issues. APHIS covers the cost of the tests if conducted at an approved laboratory and if the farmers agree to have the tested cattle and premises tracked.
The approved laboratories conduct PCR tests for several different flu strains that could be bird flu markers, including “FluA matrix, H5 and optionally H5N1 2.3.4.4b,” to determine whether the cattle are infected.
All laboratories, whether or not on the USDA’s approved list, must report all positive influenza A test results to the USDA weekly by 5 p.m. on Mondays. Farms with positive cases are quarantined.
KFF Health News reported that additional testing of farmworkers would make it possible for researchers to “track infections.” The problem is that “people generally get tested when they seek treatment for illnesses,” but farmworkers don’t tend to go to doctors unless they are very ill.
Farmworkers have been actively monitored for symptoms since the first case was detected but not PCR-tested. In response, federal authorities announced in May they would pay farmworkers to get tested for the virus as part of a program that also offers incentives to farmers to allow their dairy herds to get tested.
Workers are paid $75 for giving the CDC a blood sample and nasal swab.
The federal money also goes to support new wastewater surveillance using PCR tests. The CDC’s National Wastewater Surveillance System, launched in 2020, collects and makes public viruses identified in facilities across the country.
That wastewater testing is done by organizations including WastewaterSCAN, an infectious disease monitoring program based at Stanford University, in partnership with Emory University and funded through philanthropy, including the Sergey Brin Family Foundation created by the founder of Google.
The organization has most recently detected bird flu in San Francisco, although it is unclear whether it comes “from animal waste, milk, people or a combination of sources, according to the Los Angeles Times. WastewaterSCAN on June 3 began publicly reporting H5 data from its 190 sampling sites across the country in its online dashboard.
Other private companies that do PCR-based wastewater surveillance, like Biobot Analytics, are funded by venture capital firms in addition to the CDC.
The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service is also testing meat from condemned cows. Late last month the agency announced that 95 of 96 culled cows tested negative for viral particles and that none of their meat entered the food supply.
It also reported that ground beef from retail facilities in states with cows that have tested positive for bird flu was all PCR-negative for the virus.
The agency also experimented with inoculating meat with high levels of the virus and then cooking it and testing for the virus. The virus was not detected in the meat patties cooked to medium or well-done, and it was “substantially inactivated” in the rare patties.
The FDA also tested retail dairy products in 17 states. The agency noted that PCR-positive results “do not necessarily represent live virus that may be a risk to consumers,” so when they found PCR-positive samples, they further tested them through a process called “egg inoculation.”
The agency found many samples with positive PCR tests, but none tested positive for the live virus.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Brenda Baletti, Ph.D., is a senior reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
Guardian withdraws cheap renewables claim
Net Zero Watch | June 4, 2024
The Guardian has been forced to withdraw an advertorial, paid for by National Grid, that purported to debunk ‘myths’ about clean energy.
Energy writer David Turver, who had formulated a detailed rebuttal,[1] submitted complaints to both the Guardian and the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
The Guardian’s response said that they did not think that there was any need to correct the article. However, the ASA appear to have taken more jaundiced view, and the article has now been removed from the Guardian website. As they told Mr Turver:
We have decided to resolve your complaint through the provision of advice to the advertiser. Therefore, we have explained the concerns raised to the advertiser and provided them with guidance on how to ensure that their advertising complies with the Codes both now and in future.
Mr Turver, who has written extensively on the relative costs of renewables and other forms of electricity generation,[2] said:
The Guardian piece was a mess of untruths and half-truths and attempted to paint the picture that renewables are cheap. Although the ASA seems to have avoided giving a ruling, the disappearance of the article suggests that they think any such claims are misleading.
Notes
[1] https://davidturver.substack.com/p/national-grid-propaganda
[2] https://davidturver.substack.com/p/debunking-cheap-renewables-myth
Deborah Birx Is Back: Humans and Cows Be Warned
By Adam Dick | Peace and Prosperity Blog | June 5, 2024
Remember Deborah Birx, the “scarf lady” United States bureaucrat who joined President Donald Trump and chief coronavirus fearmonger Anthony Fauci for regular televised briefings to whip up fear of coronavirus and support for crackdowns and new health practices supposedly required by “the science”?
She was there day after day pushing mask wearing and social distancing that had not been shown to produce any net reduction in disease spread, mass PCR testing that proved unreliable, elimination of early treatment efforts, implementation of conveyor belt to death ventilators and remdesivir hospital protocols, production and distribution of Operation Warp Speed “vaccines” that proved to be both ineffective and dangerous, closure of businesses, prohibition of gatherings, and other tyrannical quackery. Birx also was conniving behind the scenes to strengthen national crackdown-related measures and traveling around the country promoting coronavirus fear and encouraging state governments to implement, maintain, and expand their crackdown measures.
In other words, Birx was a primary villain behind the coronavirus crackdowns in America.
Well, Birx is back. And she is pursuing a similar mission again. She is stirring up fear of a new disease du jour — bird flu — and calling for new crackdowns in response. In an interview this week at CNN, Birx declared, “we should be testing every cow weekly” with PCR tests for bird flu. She also wants to test every “dairy worker” as well as test “to really see how many people have been exposed and got asymptomatically infected.”
Birx seems to be jonesing for a replay of the coronavirus crackdown approach, this time in the name of countering bird flu. Indeed, she may want to take the crackdown bigger this time. In the interview, she suggests that the failure to already be doing the extensive testing she supports for bird flu means “we’re making the same mistakes today that we made with covid.” Got that? For Birx, a big mistake with the government response to coronavirus was that it didn’t do enough soon enough. With time, however, Americans have increasingly come to realize that government actions taken in the name of countering coronavirus created much more suffering than did coronavirus.
Don’t let Birx and other authoritarians succeed in using bird flu as an excuse to roll out a new crackdown dangerous to both health and liberty. Let’s end this tyrannical push now. Just say no to Birx and her new scheme.
They Think We Are Stupid, Volume 9
By Aaron Kheriaty, MD | Human Flourishing | May 29, 2024
Everything you need to know about our ruling class’s opinion of you. As always, these headlines are presented without commentary.
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From the Archives
Major rabbi says non-Jews are donkeys, created to serve Jews
By Khalid Amayreh, in occupied East Jerusalem | The People’s Voice | October 18, 2010
A major Jewish religious figure in Israel has likened non-Jews to donkeys and beasts of burden, saying the main reason for their very existence is to serve Jews.
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual mentor of the religious fundamentalist party, Shas, which represents Middle Eastern Jews, reportedly said during a Sabbath homily earlier this week that “the sole purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews.”
Yosef is considered a major religious leader in Israel who enjoys the allegiance of hundreds of thousands of followers. … continue
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- If Americans Knew
- Born into war, raised across borders: The story of Gaza’s premature babies separated from their parents amid Israel’s genocide
- Israeli soldiers suspected of raping Palestinian detainee allowed to return to service
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- Commentary: take away Israel’s biggest weapon
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- No Tricks Zone
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
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- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
- New Study Finds Warming Saves Lives…Cold Temperatures 12 Times More Deadly Than Excess Heat
- German Science Blog Accuses PIK Climate Institute Of Hallucinating Climate Tipping Points
- Devastating Assessment Of Comirnaty Vaccine By Former Senior Pfizer Europe Toxicologist
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