Putin Lashes Out at US Regime After Meeting with Biden
teleSUR – June 16, 2021
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday lashed out at the United States on arms control, human rights, cyber-attacks, among other issues, after meeting with his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden.
“The West believes that the Russian policy is unpredictable. Well, let me reciprocate. The U.S. withdrawal from the ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty in 2002 wasn’t predictable,” Putin said at a solo press conference.
He criticized the U.S. on human rights, citing U.S. attacks in Afghanistan and the existence of the Guantanamo Bay prison.
“One single strike can kill … (about) 120 people. All right, assuming this was a mistake that happens in a war, but shooting from a drone, (at) an unarmed crowd, clearly the civilian crowd, what is this about? How would you call that? And who’s responsible for this?” said Putin.
“And how would you call this person? Who is the killer now?” he asked.
On Cyberattacks, Putin said that it is of vital importance globally, “for the United States in particular, and for Russia as well in the same volume.”
Putin noted that his country has not yet received any response from the U.S. on Russia’s request regarding cyber-attacks this year.
The White House on Wednesday posted on its website a U.S.-Russia Presidential Joint Statement on Strategic Stability.
The statement said that the two heads of state noted that the two countries “have demonstrated that, even in periods of tension, they are able to make progress on our shared goals of ensuring predictability in the strategic sphere, reducing the risk of armed conflicts and the threat of nuclear war.”
“The recent extension of the New START Treaty exemplifies our commitment to nuclear arms control. Today, we reaffirm the principle that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” said the statement.
The summit between Putin and Biden officially kicked off here Wednesday afternoon, the first of its kind since Biden took office in January 2021.
Biden nominates Thomas Nides as ambassador to Israel
MEMO | June 16, 2021
US [proclaimed] President Joe Biden appointed Thomas Nides as the country’s next ambassador to Israel, the White House announced in a statement yesterday.
Nides, 60, is vice chairman of Morgan Stanley, the fourth-largest US investment banking firm and has previously served as deputy secretary of state from 2011 to 2013 during the administration of former President Barack Obama.
“Thomas Nides is a distinguished public servant and business leader,” the White House said in a statement. “Nides was Chief of Staff to the US Trade Representative Micky Kantor, was Senior Advisor to Speaker of the House Thomas S. Foley, and earlier to House Majority Whip Tony Coelho,” the announcement reads.
“He is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the former Chairman of the Board of the Woodrow Wilson Center appointed by President Obama. Nides received his B.A. degree from the University of Minnesota. He is the recipient of the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award,” it adds.
Born in 1961 to a Jewish family in Duluth, Minnesota, his father, Arnold Nides, was the president of Temple Israel and the Duluth Jewish Federation.
As deputy secretary of state, Nides built effective working relationships with several Israeli officials and played a key role in the Obama administration’s approval of an extension on loan guarantees for Israel worth billions of dollars in military aid, including funding for the Iron Dome missile defence system.
In 2012, Nides articulated the Obama administration’s opposition to an effort to redefine Palestinian refugees as only people who were forced to leave Palestine in and around 1948 – excluding their descendants.
“United States policy has been consistent for decades, in both Republican and Democratic administrations – final status issues can and must only be resolved between Israelis and Palestinians in direct negotiations,” Nides said in a letter to congressional leaders at the time.
“The Department of State cannot support legislation which would force the United States to make a public judgment on the number and status of Palestinian refugees.”
His appointment now needs to be confirmed by the Senate, but no opposition is expected.
FBI Operatives Likely ‘Unindicted Co-Conspirators’, Organizers Of Capitol Riot: Report
By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – June 16, 2021
Tucker Carlson dropped several bombshells on his show Tuesday night, chief among them was from a Revolver News report that the FBI was likely involved in organizing the Jan. 6 Capitol ‘insurrection,’ and were similarly involved in the kidnapping plot against Michigan Governor Gretchin Whitmer.
“Why are there so many factual matters that we don’t understand about that day?” asked Carlson.
Why is the Biden administration preventing us from knowing? Why is the administration still hiding more than 10,000 hours of surveillance tape from the US capitol on January 6th? What could possibly be the reason for that – even as they call for more openness… they could release those tapes today, but they’re not. Why?”
Carlson notes that Revolver News has dissected court filings surrounding the Capitol riot, suggests that unindicted co-conspirators in the case are likely to have been federal operatives.
We at Revolver News have noticed a pattern from our now months-long investigation into 1/6 — and in particular from our meticulous study of the charging documents related to those indicted. In many cases the unindicted co-conspirators appear to be much more aggressive and egregious participants in the very so-called “conspiracy” serving as the basis for charging those indicted.
The question immediately arises as to why this is the case, and forces us to consider whether certain individuals are being protected from indictment because they were involved in 1/6 as undercover operatives or confidential informants for a federal agency.
Key segment from Tucker:
“We know that the government is hiding the identity of many law enforcement officers that were present at the Capitol on January 6th, not just the one that killed Ashli Babbitt. According to the government’s own court filing, those law enforcement officers participated in the riot – sometimes in violent ways. We know that because without fail, the government has thrown the book at most people who were present at the Capitol on Jan. 6. There was a nationwide dragnet to find them – and many are still in solitary confinement tonight. But strangely, some of the key people who participated on Jan. 6 have not been charged.”
Look at the documents, the government calls those people ‘unindicted co-conspirators.’ What does that mean? Well it means that in potentially every case they were FBI operatives… in the Capitol, on January 6th.”
“For example, one of those unindicted co-conspirators is someone government documents identify only as “person two.” According to those documents, person two stayed in the same hotel room as a man called Thomas Caldwell – an ‘insurrectionist.’ A man alleged to be a member of the group “The Oathkeepers.” Person two also “stormed the barricades” at the Capitol on January 6th alongside Thomas Caldwell. The government’s indictments further indicate that Caldwell – who by the way is a 65-year-old man… was led to believe there would be a “quick reaction force” also participating on January 6th. That quick reaction force Caldwell was told, would be led by someone called “Person 3,” who had a hotel room and an accomplice with them. But wait. Here’s the interesting thing. Person 2 and person 3 were organizers of the riot. The government knows who they are, but the government has not charged them. Why is that? You know why. They were almost certainly working for the FBI. So FBI operatives were organizing the attack on the Capitol on January 6th according to government documents. And those two are not alone. In all, Revolver news reported there are “upwards of 20 unindicted co-conspirators in the Oath Keeper indictments, all playing various roles in the conspiracy, who have not been charged for virtually the exact same activities and in some cases much, much more severe activities – as those named alongside them in the indictments.”
Watch:
Revolver, meanwhile, has important questions about January 6th
- In the year leading up to 1/6 and during 1/6 itself, to what extent were the three primary militia groups (the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and the Three Percenters) that the FBI, DOJ, Pentagon and network news have labeled most responsible for planning and executing a Capitol attack on 1/6 infiltrated by agencies of the federal government, or informants of said agencies?
- Exactly how many federal undercover agents or confidential informants were present at the Capitol or in the Capitol during the infamous “siege” and what roles did they play (merely passive informants or active instigators)?
- Finally, of all of the unindicted co-conspirators referenced in the charging documents of those indicted for crimes on 1/6, how many worked as a confidential informant or as an undercover operative for the federal government (FBI, Army Counterintelligence, etc.)?
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has demanded an explanation from FBI Director Christopher Wray:
More:
- Revolver News: “Unindicted Co-Conspirators in 1/6 Cases Raise Disturbing Questions of Federal Foreknowledge“
- Tucker Carlson op-ed: “Government agents may have helped organize the Jan. 6 Capitol riot“
We recommend you read the entire Revolver piece, which includes the fact that at least five individuals involved in the “Whitmer Kidnapping Plot” were undercover agents and federal informants.
Congress Moves to Censure Both Ilhan Omar and Marjorie Taylor Greene for Accidentally Offending Jews
By Eric Striker • National Justice • June 16, 2021
Members of Congress have put forth resolutions to censure Reps. Ilhan Omar and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
On the surface, the hijab-wearing Muslim progressive from Minnesota and the gun-toting Southern Evangelical Republican could not be more different. But the two women — portrayed in the press as extreme manifestations of their respective party’s ideologies — have accidentally crossed organized Jewry.
The act of censuring a member of the House of Representatives is less grave than a formal expulsion, but it is still considered to be a serious punishment. Only 24 members of Congress have been censured since 1832, the most recent cases were for engaging in brazen corruption or sexual assault.
In Rep. Omar’s case, Florida Republican Mark Waltz is leading the charge to shut her down for making a moral equivalence between the actions of the Israeli military and the Palestinian resistance group Hamas in a question posed to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
A wide range of Jewish organizations and over a dozen Democrats immediately began attacking Omar. At first, Reps. Omar attempted to call her attackers Islamophobes, but when appealing to identity politics did not work, Omar walked her comment back under pressure from House leader Nancy Pelosi, much to the dismay of pro-Palestine activists.
Rep. Greene is being targeted for comparing COVID restrictions to the “Holocaust.” Democrat Brad Schnieder, who has also led condemnations of Ilhan Omar, announced that he will be “shelving” Greene’s censure after she begged for forgiveness in front of a Holocaust museum on Monday.
While Schnieder appeared to be satisfied with her groveling, the American Jewish Congress (AJC) took the opportunity to attack her even harder.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene, your apology is NOT accepted” read an over the top bulletin on their website. AJC president Jack Rosen is demanding that Greene “find a different career” and went on to condemn her as an abnormal person who cultivates “anti-semites” and “white supremacists” in her base.
Reps. Omar and Greene both serve Jewish interests dutifully in different capacities. Omar has used her political platform to promote “domestic terrorist” and “white supremacist” hysteria, while Greene is an unflinching supporter of the Zionist project abroad.
But the work the two women invest in promoting different Jewish interests do not shield them from constant bad faith attacks from Jewish groups, who demand absolute allegiance on every one of their issues.
The EEOC Did NOT Say Federal Law Permits Requiring a COVID-19 Vaccine
Informed Consent Action Network | June 16, 2021
In the article, “Can employers require workers to get the COVID vaccine?”, Bailey Aldridge claims that, given the updated rules of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), “your employer can require you to get a COVID vaccine.” Aldridge even claims that “The EEOC says there are no federal laws that prevent an employer from requiring employees who are physically in the workplace to get the COVID-19 vaccine.”
The EEOC’s guidance, however, does not claim that an employer can legally require an emergency use COVID-19 vaccine. The EEOC guidance merely states that the “federal EEO [Equal Employment Opportunity] laws do not prevent an employer from requiring” an emergency authorized COVID-19 vaccine. That is not surprising because the EEO laws apply only to discrimination based on certain protected classes, such as race, religion and national origin.
Federal law is, of course, far broader than the narrow EEO laws. In recognizing that there are other federal laws that do prohibit an employer from requiring a COVID-19 vaccine, the EEOC’s guidance also states that, “These three vaccines were granted Emergency Use Authorizations (EUA) by the FDA” and that, “It is beyond the EEOC’s jurisdiction to discuss the legal implications of EUA or the FDA approach.”
When one reviews the FDA’s EUA and its approved labeling, a.k.a. “fact sheets,” for each COVID-19 vaccine, they each clearly provide that: “It is [the vaccine recipient’s] choice to receive or not receive the COVID-19 Vaccine.” The reason each fact sheet includes this language is because the same section of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act that authorizes the FDA to grant an EUA also requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to “ensure that individuals to whom the product is administered are informed … of the option to accept or refuse administration of the product.”
That same section of the Act also authorized the Secretary, and only the Secretary, to provide the “consequences” for refusing to receive an EUA product and the EUAs for each COVID-19 vaccine do not include permission to terminate an employee for refusing the vaccine.
ICAN hopes that the Department of Justice will do its job and enforce the federal law prohibiting mandating an EUA vaccine and will continue to push it to enforce this important law.
US state-run Voice of America, RFE/RL ‘defiantly refusing’ to follow Russian foreign agent law
Press TV – June 15, 2021
The Russian government’s media regulator says US state-run outfits Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty [RFE/RL] are “defiantly refusing” to comply with Russian legislation on the work of foreign agents within the country.
Media regulator Roskomnadzor said Russian law describes restrictions and regulations “in detail” in order to prevent “ambiguous interpretations,” and there could be serious penalties for non-compliance.
“American media outlets Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty [RFE/RL], which are listed as foreign agents, are defiantly refusing to comply with the law in full,” the regulator said in a statement.
“In particular, Voice of America is yet to establish a Russian legal entity, and Radio Liberty is systematically failing to comply with the requirement to mark the materials it posts.”
Roskomnadzor says the Russian laws are “much more tolerant than similar regulation in many foreign countries.”
The regulator referenced the US Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires foreign agents to submit regular financial reports and give a detailed description of contacts with government officials.
Russian ‘foreign agent’ law pinpoint NGOs that engage in political activity using foreign funding.
According to the legislation, mass media organizations and specific individuals, who are deemed “foreign agents”, must make the designation clear to their readers.
The law was expanded in 2017 to include media organizations after RT TV network (former Russia Today) was declared a foreign agent in the United States.
Latvia-based news outlet Meduza and Dutch-funded online newspaper VTimes have been added to the list of foreign agents in recent months. Both Voice of America and RFE/RL have had the designation for four years.
Roskomnadzor noted that, “Russian media outlets deemed foreign agents by the US – in particular, Russia Today and news agency Sputnik – have completely fulfilled their requirements under American law, unlike US state media in Russia.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has accused Moscow of using the ‘foreign agent’ legislation to “restrict independent reporting, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty,” a charge Moscow denies.
The Russian media regulator said in February that it fined the Russian-language service of US-funded Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe nearly $150,000 over non-compliance with its ‘foreign agent law.
Roskomnadzor said RFE/RL’s director failed to label nine of the US outlet’s websites operating in Russia.
Friedman’s Last Gasp
By Jonathan Cook – New Left Review – June 10, 2021
Thomas Friedman’s recent column in the New York Times reflecting on Israel’s 11-day destruction of Gaza is a showcase for the delusions of liberal Zionism: a constellation of thought that has never looked so threadbare. It seems that every liberal newspaper needs a Thomas Friedman – the UK’s Guardian has Jonathan Freedland – whose role is to keep readers from considering realistic strategies for Israel-Palestine, however often and catastrophically the established ones have failed. In this case, Friedman’s plea for Joe Biden to preserve the ‘potential of a two-state solution’ barely conceals his real goal: resuscitating the discourse of an illusory ‘peace process’ from which everyone except liberal Zionists has moved on. His fear is that the debate is quietly shifting outside this framework – towards the recognition that Israel is a belligerent apartheid regime and the conclusion that one democratic state for Palestinians and Jews is now the only viable solution.
For more than five decades, the two-state solution – of a large, ultra-militarized state for Israel, and a much smaller, demilitarized one for Palestinians – has been the sole paradigm of the Western political and media class. During these years, a Palestinian state failed to materialize despite (or more likely because of) various US-backed ‘peace processes’. While Americans and Europeans have consoled themselves with such fantasies, Israel has only paid them lip-service, enforcing a de facto one-state solution premised on Jewish supremacy over Palestinians, and consolidating its control over the entire territory.
But in recent years, Israel’s naked settler-colonial actions have imperiled that Western paradigm. It has become increasingly evident that Israel is incapable of making peace with the Palestinians because its state ideology – Zionism – is based on their removal or eradication. What history has taught us is that the only just and lasting way to end a ‘conflict’ between a native population and a settler-colonial movement is decolonization, plus the establishment of a single, shared, democratic state. Otherwise, the settlers continue to pursue their replacement strategies – which invariably include ethnic cleansing, communal segregation, and genocide. These were precisely the tactics adopted by European colonists in the Americas, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. Friedman’s function in the Western media – conscious or not – is to obfuscate these historical lessons, tapping into a long legacy of unthinking colonial racism.
One of the central pillars of that legacy is an abiding fear of the native and his supposedly natural savagery. This has always been the unspoken assumption behind the interminable two-state ‘peace process’. A civilized and civilizing West tries to broker a ‘peace deal’ to protect Israel from the Palestinian hordes next door. But the Palestinians continuously ‘reject’ these peace overtures because of their savage nature – which is in turn presented as the reason why Israel must ethnically cleanse them and herd them into reservations, or Bantustans, away from Jewish settlers. Occasionally, Israel is forced to ‘retaliate’ – or defend itself from this savagery – in what becomes an endless ‘cycle of violence’. The West supports Israel with military aid and preferential trade while watching with exasperation as the Palestinian leadership fails to discipline its people.
Friedman is an expert at exploiting this colonial mentality. He often avoids taking direct responsibility for his racist assumptions, attributing them to ‘centrist Democrats’ or other right-minded observers. Coded language is his stock in trade, serving to heighten the unease felt by western audiences as the natives try to regain a measure of control over their future. In some cases the prejudicial framing is overt, as with his concern about the threat of an ascendant Hamas to women’s and LGBTQ rights, couched in an identity politics he knows will resonate with NYT readers. But more often his framing is insidious, with terms like ‘decimate’ and ‘blow up’ deployed to cast Palestinians’ desire for self-determination as violent and menacing.
Friedman’s three-layered deception
Friedman’s promotion of the two-state model offers a three-layered deception. First, he writes that the two-state solution would bring ‘peace’, without acknowledging that the condition for that peace is the Palestinians’ permanent ghettoization and subjugation. Second, he blames the Palestinians for rejecting just such ‘peace plans’, even though they have never been seriously offered by Israel. And finally, he has the chutzpah to imply that it was the Palestinians’ failure to negotiate a two-state solution that ‘decimated’ the Israeli ‘peace camp’.
Such arguments are not only based on Friedman’s dehumanizing view of Arabs. They are also tied to his domestic political concerns. He fears that if Joe Biden were to acknowledge the reality that Israel has sabotaged the two-state solution, then the President might disengage once and for all from the ‘peace process’. Of course, most Palestinians would welcome such an end to US interference: the billions of dollars funneled annually to the Israeli military, the US diplomatic cover for Israel, and the arm-twisting of other states to silently accept its atrocities. But, Friedman argues, this withdrawal would carry a heavy price at home, setting off a civil war within Biden’s own party and within Jewish organizations across the US. God forbid, it might ‘even lead to bans on arms sales’ to Israel.
Friedman reminds us of Israeli businessman Gidi Grinstein’s warning that in the absence of a ‘potential’ two-state solution, US support for Israel could morph ‘from a bipartisan issue to a wedge issue’. The columnist writes that preserving the two-state ‘peace process’, however endless and hopeless, is ‘about our national security interests in the Middle East’. How does Friedman define these interests? They are reducible, he says, to ‘the political future of the centrist faction of the Democratic Party.’ A ‘peace process’ once designed to salve the consciences of Americans while enabling the dispossession of Palestinians has now been redefined as a vital US national security issue – because, for Friedman, its survival is necessary to preserve the dominance of foreign policy hawks in the Democratic machine. The argument echoes Biden’s extraordinarily frank admission made back in 1986 that ‘were there not an Israel the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region’.
Friedman then concludes his article with a set of proposals that unwittingly expose the true consequences of a two-state settlement. He insists that Biden builds on his predecessor’s much-ridiculed ‘peace plan’, which gave US blessing to Israel’s illegal settlements on vast swaths of the occupied West Bank, penning Palestinians into their Bantustans indefinitely. Trump’s plan also sought to entrench Israel’s control over occupied East Jerusalem, remake Gaza as a permanent battlefield on which rivalries between Fatah and Hamas would intensify, and turn the wealth of the theocratic Gulf states into a weapon, fully integrating Israel into the region’s economy while making the Palestinians even more dependent on foreign aid. Polite NYT opinionators now want Biden to sell these measures as a re-engagement with the ‘peace process’.
The US, writes Friedman, should follow Trump in stripping the Palestinians of a capital in East Jerusalem – the economic, religious, and historic heart of Palestine. Arab states should reinforce this dispossession by moving their embassies from Tel Aviv to West Jerusalem. Neighbouring countries are encouraged to pressure the Palestinian Authority, via aid payments, to accede even more cravenly to Israel’s demands. (Of course, Friedman does not think it worth mentioning that Palestine is aid-dependent because Israel has either stolen or seized control of all its major resources.)
Once this subordinate position is guaranteed, divisions within the Palestinian national movement can be inflamed by making Hamas – plus the two million Palestinians in Gaza – dependent on the PA’s patronage. Friedman wants the Fatah-led PA to decide whether to send aid to the Gaza Strip or join Israel in besieging the enclave to weaken Hamas. For good measure, he also urges the Gulf states to cut off support to the United Nations aid agencies, like UNRWA, which have kept millions of Palestinian refugees fed and cared for since 1948. The international community’s already feeble commitment to the rights of Palestinian refugees will thus be broken, and the diaspora will be forcibly absorbed into their host countries.
Such proposals are the last gasp of a discredited liberal Zionism. Friedman visibly flounders as he tries to put the emperor’s clothes back on a two-state solution that stands before us in all its ugliness. The Western model of ‘peace-making’ was always about preserving Jewish supremacy. Now, at least, the illusions are gone.
Read on: Kareem Rabie, ‘Remaking Ramallah’, NLR 111.
© NEW LEFT REVIEW LTD 2021
FBI hypes QAnon threat again, says some conspiracy theorists ‘likely’ to attack Democrats
RT | June 14, 2021
Some followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory might decide to engage in real-world violence against the ruling Democrats, FBI and Homeland Security analysts wrote in a memo provided to Congress that has now been made public.
“We assess that some DVE [domestic violent extremist] adherents of QAnon likely will begin to believe they can no longer ‘trust the plan’ referenced in QAnon posts and that they have an obligation to change from serving as ‘digital soldiers’ towards engaging in real world violence—including harming perceived members of the ‘cabal’ such as Democrats and other political opposition—instead of continually awaiting Q’s promised actions which have not occurred,” says the memo, breathlessly reported by CNN and other corporate media outlets as a clear and present danger to the US.
Right below that assessment of likelihood, however, the FBI and DHS say that other QAnon adherents “likely will disengage from the movement or reduce their involvement in the wake of the administration change,” which might be “spurred by the large mainstream social media deplatforming of QAnon content.”
The memo itself leads with the disclaimer that it’s “provided for informational purposes only.” It is dated June 4, and was provided to Congress at the request of Senator Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, according to CNN. An earlier, classified version of the memo was provided to lawmakers in February, according to Heinrich.
This might explain why there are references to mass deplatforming of QAnon – which was going on in the wake of the January 6 riot at the US Capitol – and that the most recent example of “DVE activity” is dated January 8.
One of the examples, dated back to March 2020, was also questioned by an expert. There was “no evidence” that the train derailment in California “was directly linked to QAnon,” said Marc-Andre Argentino of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at King’s College London.
The memo says more than 20 QAnon followers were among those arrested for trespassing at the Capitol on January 6. Over 400 people have been charged in connection with the riot, however. As 25,000 National Guard troops deployed to Washington, DC to secure Joe Biden’s inauguration, mainstream media outlets cited a purported FBI memo warning about militias threatening to storm DC and state capitals. No one showed up on the appointed day, however.
As criticism of the “occupation” in DC grew, the Capitol Police cited another secret intelligence bulletin claiming QAnon, Boogaloo Boys, or some other sovereign citizen militia would try to attack the Capitol on March 4. The House adjourned early citing the threat, while the Senate carried on. Nothing happened.
The Capitol was actually attacked on April 2, but not by QAnon. An African-American man rammed into a barricade, killing one Capitol Police officer and attacking another with a knife before he was shot to death. He claimed to have been a member of Nation of Islam, which disavowed him. The last remaining 2,000 National Guard troops departed the Capitol on May 24.
According to the FBI memo, followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory believe that the US is run by “a corrupt cabal of ‘global elites’ and ‘deep state’ actors run a Satan-worshiping international child sex trafficking ring,” which Donald Trump tried to oppose while president.
Democrats have accused the Republican party of being QAnon believers, but a recent poll suggested that 23% of Republicans – as well as 15% of independent voters and 8% of Democrats – actually found the conspiracy theory plausible.
The Enduring False Narrative About the PULSE Massacre Shows the Power of Media Propaganda
Democrat Hillary Clinton visits the site of Pulse nightclub in Orlando, July 22, 2016. (Photo by Brooks Kraft/Getty Images)
By Glenn Greenwald | June 14, 2021
On the fifth anniversary of the PULSE nightclub massacre in Orlando, numerous senators, politicians and activist groups commemorated that tragic event by propagating an absolute falsehood: namely, that the shooter, Omar Mateen, was motivated by anti-LGBT animus. The evidence is definitive and conclusive that this is false — Mateen, like so many others who committed similar acts of violence, was motivated by rage over President Obama’s bombing campaigns in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, and chose PULSE at random without even knowing it was a gay club — yet this media-consecrated lie continues to fester.
On Saturday, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) falsely described the massacre as an “unspeakable act of hate toward the LGBTQ+ community.” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) went even further, claiming “the LGBTQ+ community was targeted and killed—all because they dared to live their lives.” Her fellow Illinois Democrat, Sen. Dick Durbin, claimed forty-nine lives were lost due to “anti-LGBTQ hate” (he forgot the +). These false claims were compiled by the gay socialist activist Matt Thomas, who correctly objected: “the shooter literally picked PULSE at random from Google after security was too tight at the mall he went to first,” adding that while LGBT groups “are hopeless of course,” too much money and power is at stake for them to give up this self-serving fiction. But he asked, “Shouldn’t the bar be a little higher for senators?”
In the immediate aftermath of that horrific crime, it may have been reasonable for the public to speculate that Mateen, given his professed support for ISIS, chose PULSE because it was a gay club. That belief also neatly played into a liberal political agenda of highlighting anti-LGBT hate crimes, and also comported with the dual stereotypes of the gay-hating Muslim and the closeted gay man who harbors self-hatred that ends up directed at other gay people. This storyline was instantly consecrated when politicians and LGBT groups quickly seized on this claim and ratified it as unquestionably true.
Rather than acknowledging that it was anger over his relentless bombing raids in the Muslim world, President Obama immediately declared that anti-LGBT hatred was the real cause. “This was an attack on the LGBT community,” the president said, adding: “And hatred towards people because of sexual orientation, regardless of where it comes from, is a betrayal of what’s best in us.” Chad Griffin, then-head of the largest LGBT advocacy group, Human Rights Campaign, claimed: “the maniac who did this was somehow conditioned to believe that LGBT people deserve to be massacred, that they are ‘less than’ in this society.”
Then-candidate Hillary Clinton, as part of her campaign, made a pilgrimage to Orlando and seized on the attack. In addition to its constituting anti-American terrorism, the Democratic nominee proclaimed the massacre “was also an act of hate,” adding that “the gunman attacked an LGBT nightclub during Pride Month.” She vowed: “We will keep fighting for your right to live freely, openly and without fear. Hate has absolutely no place in America.” Speaking with Clinton in Orlando, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said that it is “a cruel irony that a community defined almost exclusively by whom they love [LGBT people] is so often a target of hate.” Then-candidate Donald Trump also endorsed this view: “A radical Islamic terrorist targeted the nightclub, not only because he wanted to kill Americans, but in order to execute gay and lesbian citizens, because of their sexual orientation.”
Liberal propagandists who pose as journalists treated this storyline as definitively proven. The massacre was “undeniably a homophobic hate crime,” Jeet Heer wrote in The New Republic. “Let’s say it plainly: This was a mass slaying aimed at LGBT people,” Tim Teeman wrote in The Daily Beast. In USA Today, James S. Robbins speculated that Mateen was likely “trying to reconcile his inner feelings with his strongly homophobic Muslim culture.” In the days following the killing spree, one writer in USA Today, Steph Solis, even accused those of questioning this narrative of propagating bigotry and exhibiting cruel indifference to gay suffering: “Those who insist the shooting was solely an Islamic terror attack try to erase the LGBT community from the narrative, causing only more pain by invalidating their experiences in this ordeal.”
Barack Obama and Joe Biden place flowers for victims of the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, June 16, 2016. (Photo SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
But journalism is supposed to function on evidence, not speculation, and there never was any evidence that supported the storyline that he was driven by hatred for LGBTs. The evidence that was available suggested the opposite.
On June 12, 2016, Mateen spent just over three hours in PULSE from the time he began slaughtering innocent people at roughly 2:00 a.m. until he was killed by a SWAT team at roughly 5:00 a.m. During that time, he repeatedly spoke to his captives about his motive, did the same with the police with whom he was negotiating, and discussed his cause with local media which he had called from inside the club. Mateen was remarkably consistent in what he said about his motivation. Over and over, he emphasized that his attack at PULSE was in retaliation for U.S. bombing campaigns in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. In his first call with 911 while inside PULSE, this is what he said about why he was killing people:
Because you have to tell America to stop bombing Syria and Iraq. They are killing a lot of innocent people. What am I to do here when my people are getting killed over there. … You need to stop the U.S. airstrikes. They need to stop the U.S. airstrikes, OK? . … This went down, a lot of innocent women and children are getting killed in Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan, OK? … The airstrikes need to stop and stop collaborating with Russia. OK?
In the hours he spent surrounded by the gay people he was murdering, he never once uttered a homophobic syllable, instead always emphasizing his geo-political motive. Not a single survivor reported him saying anything derogatory about LGBTs or even anything that suggested he knew he was in a gay club. All said he spoke extensively about his vengeance on behalf of ISIS against U.S. bombing of innocent Muslims.
Mateen’s postings on Facebook leading up to his attack all reflected the same motive. They were filled with rage about and vows of retaliation against U.S. bombing. Not a single post contained any references to LGBTs let alone anger or violence toward them. “You kill innocent women and children by doing U.S. airstrikes,” Mateen wrote on Facebook in one of his last posts before attacking PULSE, adding: “Now taste the Islamic state vengeance.”
It was of course nonetheless possible that he secretly harbored hatred for LGBTs and hid his real motive, but that never made sense: the whole point of terrorism is to publicize, not conceal, the grievances driving the violence. And again, good journalism requires evidence before ratifying claims. There never was any to support the story that Mateen’s attack was driven by anti-LGBT hatred, and all the available evidence early on negated that suspicion and pointed to a radically different motive. But the media frenzy ended up, by design or otherwise, obscuring Mateen’s anger over Obama’s bombing campaigns as his motive in favor of promoting this as an anti-LGBT hate crime.
As the FBI investigation into Mateen proceeded, all the early media gossip — that Mateen was a closeted gay man who had searched for male sexual partners and had even previously visited PULSE — was debunked. The month after the attack, The Washington Post reported that “The FBI has found no evidence so far that Omar Mateen chose the popular establishment because of its gay clientele,” and quoted a federal investigator as saying: “While there can be no denying the significant impact on the gay community, the investigation hasn’t revealed that he targeted PULSE because it was a gay club.” The New York Times quickly noted that no evidence could be found to support the speculation that Mateen was gay:
F.B.I. investigators, who have conducted more than 500 interviews in the case, are continuing to contact men who claim to have had sexual relations with Mr. Mateen or think they saw him at gay bars. But so far, they have not found any independent corroboration — through his web searches, emails or other electronic data — to establish that he was, in fact, gay, officials said.
The following year, the local paper that most extensively covered the PULSE massacre, The Orlando Sentinel, acknowledged that “there’s still no evidence that the PULSE killer intended to target gay people.”
As the investigation proceeded, this anti-LGBT hate crime narrative became more and more unlikely. But the question of Mateen’s motives was settled once and for all — or at least it should have been — during the unsuccessful attempt by the Justice Department to prosecute Mateen’s wife, Noor Salman, on numerous felony charges alleging her complicity in her husband’s attack. That trial — quite justifiably — ended in a full acquittal for Salman, but evidence emerged during it that conclusively disproved the widely held view that Mateen chose PULSE because he wanted to kill gay people.
Along with my then-colleague Murtaza Hussain, I extensively reported on the Salman trial and compiled all the evidence that emerged during it that proved anti-LGBT hatred was not part of Mateen’s motive. But it was not just us: virtually every journalist who covered that trial, including several who began believing or at least suspecting that this was an anti-gay hate crime, definitively concluded that this was false. Reporter Melissa Jeltsen covered that trial for The Huffington Post and — writing under the headline “Everyone Got The Pulse Massacre Story Completely Wrong” — explained:
Almost overnight, a narrative emerged that until now has been impossible to dislodge: Mateen planned and executed an attack on PULSE because he hated gay people. . . . Salman’s trial cast doubt on everything we thought we knew about Mateen. There was no evidence he was a closeted gay man, no evidence that he was ever on Grindr. He looked at porn involving older women, but investigators who scoured Mateen’s electronic devices couldn’t find any internet history related to homosexuality. (There were daily, obsessive searches about ISIS, however.) Mateen had extramarital affairs with women, two of whom testified during the trial about his duplicitous ways.
Mateen may very well have been homophobic. He supported ISIS, after all, and his father, an FBI informant currently under criminal investigation, told NBC that his son once got angry after seeing two men kissing. But whatever his personal feelings, the overwhelming evidence suggests his attack was not motivated by it.
Even the gay reporter for NBC News who covers the LGBT community, Tim Fitzsimons, tried to make clear that the commonly held view of the PULSE attack as an anti-LGBT hate crime was false. “The attack on the nightclub has long been seen as a hate crime directed at the LGBTQ community,” explained the headline under which he wrote, “but all evidence says the gunman chose it at random.”
NBC News, June 12, 2018
What that conclusive evidence proved is that Mateen had spent days scoping out Disney locations but concluded they were too secured to attack. Search records from Mateen’s phone and computers showed him looking for “Orlando clubs,” but never “gay Orlando clubs.” That night, after cell tower records and security cameras showed him scoping out several Disney venues, he used his phone to Google the search term “Orlando nightclubs” — not “gay clubs” — and chose PULSE because the popular nightclub was the first search term that appeared. Witnesses said that when he entered, he asked security guards: “where are the women?” As Jeltsen wrote: “As far as investigators could tell, Mateen had never been to PULSE before, whether as a patron or to case the nightclub.” None of Mateen’s phones or computers had any evidence he sought sex with men but contained ample evidence of his affairs with numerous women.
Whatever Mateen’s motives were, the horror and tragedy of the extinguishing of forty-nine innocent lives at PULSE on June 12, 2016, remains the same. But this enduring falsehood — which continues to deceive many well-meaning people through this very day, long past the point that it has been definitively debunked — is damaging for so many reasons.
Lying about what happened dishonors Mateen’s victims. It harms the cause of LGBT equality, which does not need lies and fabrications to be a just movement. It obscures how often U.S. violence in the Muslim world causes “blowback” — to use the CIA’s term — by motivating others to bring violence to the U.S. as retaliation and deterrence for violence against innocent Muslims. And a major reason for the completely unjust prosecution of Noor Salman was to appease understandable demands within the Orlando LGBT community for someone to be punished, but mob justice rarely produces anything benevolent.
No matter how noble the intent, journalism — and activism — becomes corrupted if it knowingly supports falsehoods. That the PULSE massacre was an act of anti-LGBT hatred is a fiction. Unless you are a neocon, there is no such thing as a “noble lie.” It is way past time for politicians and activist groups to stop disseminating this one.
A Covid Timeline, 1943-2021
BY GODFREE ROBERTS • UNZ REVIEW • JUNE 14, 2021
Introduction
In September 1943, the US Army created “Operation Capricious,” a secret biowarfare program described as purely defensive against insect pests enemy nations might use against America by bombing America with germ-infected insects. Under the direction of George W. Merck, president of Merck & Co. The program stockpiled bacillus anthracis (anthrax), clostridium botulinum (botulism), and other deadly bacteria until President Truman approved and operationalized its use by the U.S. military, in 1952, on North Korea and China where, like previous biowarfare efforts, it proved ineffectual.
On March 15, 1976 President Ford, informed of an outbreak of Swine influenza A, planned an immunization program and, once pharmaceutical companies were guaranteed a profit and legal indemnity, they produced a vaccine. But cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome affecting vaccinated patients were reported, and the program was abandoned.
On March 18, 2008, the FBI falsely cast suspicion on former government scientist, Dr. Steven Hatfill, for releasing an anthrax strain developed by the US Army and media implied that Hatfill was the culprit. The long-time Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote, “I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip came in a roundabout way from a high government official. I was carrying Cipro way before most people had ever heard of it.”
In 2009, H1N1, Swine Flu, a novel virus with a combination of influenza genes previously unseen in animals or people, spread quickly from the US across the world, killing 284,000. 60 million people, mostly children, received Glaxo Smith Kline’s H1N1 vaccine, Pandemrix, but it caused lifelong narcolepsy and cataplexy–an incurable, lifelong condition requiring extensive medication–in thousands of them. H1N1 still circulates as a seasonal flu, causing hospitalizations and deaths
Throughout 2015, two hundred US biosafety level 3 and 4 labs worked with dangerous pathogens. Their determination to keep their safety records secret stirred nationwide controversy: Lab-Made Coronavirus Triggers Debate; Baric lab: Circulating bat coronaviruses and the risk of SARS re-emergence; New SARS-like Virus Can Jump Directly From Bats to Humans, No Treatment Available.
In 2016, researchers began issuing public warnings like SARS-like WIV1-CoV poised for human emergence and, in February, 2018, H7N4 bird flu sickened 1,600 Chinese and killed 600. Despite this, the White House dissolved the US Pandemic Response Team. “It would be nice if the office were still there,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told Congress.
2019 Year
May 2, 2019 The chemical and biological defense unit of USA Defense Fort Detrick, MD, bids to develop SARS and MERS virus detectors.
June 14. CDC finds the US Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, MD, non-compliant with its pathogen control agreement.
June 30. Unidentified pneumonia in Springfield, VA nursing home kills two and sickens dozens.
July 9. White House withdraws the CDC’s epidemiologist embedded with China’s CCDC. “The message from the administration was, ‘Don’t work with China, they’re our rival”.
July 12: Three dead, 54 sickened in respiratory outbreak at Springfield, VA care home, one hour from Fort Detrick. Since respiratory illness usually spreads in winter, officials can neither explain the number of cases nor the season.
Jul 14. Chinese researcher escorted from infectious disease lab by Cnd’s RCMP for sending biological samples to China.
July 17. Still-unexplained pneumonia epidemic reported at a Burke, VA nursing home, one hour from Fort Detrick, MD.
Jul. 19. CDC shuts down Ft. Detrick Lab, MD. Senior scientist describe its atmosphere as one of “fear and mistrust.”
July 26. VA State stops all nursing home collective activities, screens residents, and mandates cleanliness measures to prevent the spread of pneumonia epidemic.
August 4. First case of EVALI (vaping) reported to CDC. Shortness of breath, pain in breathing, cough, fever, chills, nausea, weight loss, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, ground glass lung CT scan. By Feb 18, 2020, 2,807 EVALI cases and 68 deaths were recorded. No cases reported outside the US.
October 3. Doctors studying EVALI lung tissue rule out vaping, deepening the mystery over the cause of uniquely American illness.
October 3. US Army team arrives in Wuhan for Military Games.
Oct. 18. CIA Deputy Director participates in Event 201, Gates Foundation pandemic exercise modeling a fictional coronavirus pandemic.
November 12. A couple from Inner Mongolia is admitted to Beijing hospital with pneumonic plague. Says physician Li Jifeng: “I am very familiar with diagnosing and treating the majority of respiratory diseases but, this time, I could not figure out what pathogen caused the pneumonia.”
Nov. 15. CDC advertises for quarantine managers in all major cities:
December. 5. FBI arrests Chinese medical researcher taking biological samples to China. His labmates succeed in taking specimens to Beijing.
Dec 17. South Korean coronavirus exercise was ‘blind luck’: a hypothetical South Korean family contracts pneumonia after a trip to China, where cases of an unidentified disease had arisen. It quickly spreads to colleagues and medical workers. Experts develop tests, algorithms to find the pathogen and its origin.
Dec 27. Wuhan’s Dr. Zhang Jixian detects & reports suspicious cases of a ‘pneumonia of unknown origin’ to CCDC. Three more patients arrive, all related to Huanan Seafood Market.
Dec. 30. Wuhan Municipal Health Committee issues notice of an unknown viral illness.
Dec 31. A team from Beijing investigates, informs the WHO of “cases of pneumonia unknown etiology.” Since no medical worker was infected, they find no evidence of human-to-human transmission, and verify this on January 4. Wuhan announces the virus on CCTV and CGTN.
2020 Year
Jan. 1. Huanan Seafood market shut down.
January 2. WHO incident management system activated across WHO country office, regional office, and headquarters.
Jan. 3. Dr. Gao Fu, head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC), phones the CDC’s Dr. Robert Redfield to warn him of the virus.
Jan. 3. China reports 44 suspected patients with the mystery pneumonia, classifies it as highly pathogenic, orders all labs without high pathogen licenses to destroy or transfer samples to secure labs.
January 4. WHO reports that Chinese authorities had informed it of “a cluster of pneumonia cases, with no deaths, in Wuhan”.
January 5, WHO’s Disease Outbreak News: “There is limited information to determine the overall risk of this reported cluster of pneumonia of unknown etiology. The symptoms reported among the patients are common to several respiratory diseases, and pneumonia is common in the winter season; however, the occurrence of 44 cases of pneumonia requiring hospitalization clustered in space and time should be handled prudently.”
Jan 8 ‘Unknown cause’ identified as a novel coronavirus.
Jan. 9. Chinese labs begin genetic sequencing of the virus. China reports the death of an infected 61-year-old male in Wuhan with several underlying medical conditions.
Jan. 9. Chinese officials announce 44 confirmed cases of the coronavirus outbreak.
Jan 11. Beijing uploads the genetic sequence of the coronavirus to an international database and distributes preliminary test kits in Wuhan.
Jan 13. Germany develops a test and test protocol.
Jan 17. WHO adopts refined version of German test and protocol.
Jan 15. Wuhan Health Commission: “Although significant evidence confirming human-to-human transmission has yet to be found, the possibility cannot be ruled out.”
Jan 16. President Trump evacuates Americans from Wuhan and bars entry to the US.
Jan. 18. HHS begins six-month Crimson Contagion scenario of a respiratory virus pandemic that begins in China and quickly spreads around the world.
January 20. Respiratory disease expert, Zhong Nanshan, announces the first verified human-to-human transmission.
January 21. China’s National Health Commission reports that the novel coronavirus is a Class B infectious disease and that Class A methods of prevention must be adopted. Chinese epidemiologists publish first Covid-19 paper, A Novel Coronavirus Genome Identified in a Cluster of Pneumonia Cases. Wuhan, China 2019-2020. CCDC Weekly.
Jan 20-21. WHO Field Team Visits Wuhan. “We were at the hospital where the first patient was identified in the last week of December, 2019. We met with staff there, and with one of the earliest known patients”. Team leader Peter Ben Embarek calls the visit “very informative.”
January 22. Scott Liu, 56, a Wuhan native and a textile importer who lives in New York, caught the last commercial flight out.
January 23. Cordon sanitaire around Wuhan. China suspends flights after 571 confirmed cases and 17 fatalities, builds a 1,000-bed hospital over the weekend.
Jan. 24. Following private briefings on COVID-19, five US senators sell major stock holdings, avoiding significant losses before markets fall.
Jan. 24. Slate : “Many of China’s actions to date are overly aggressive and ineffective in quelling the outbreak.” LA Times : “China boasts of ‘people’s war’ against coronavirus, but Wuhan residents see shoddy propaganda”.
Jan. 26 – First clinical cases published in The Lancet: “No epidemiological link was found between the first patient and later cases. Their data also show that, in total, 13 of the 41 cases had no link to the seafood marketplace”. Daniel Lucey, infectious disease specialist at Georgetown University: “If the new data are accurate, the first human infections must have occurred in November 2019—if not earlier—because there is an incubation time between infection and symptoms surfacing. The virus came into that marketplace before it came out of that marketplace.”
Jan. 27. WHO’s Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warns against “unnecessarily interfering with international travel and trade” in trying to halt the spread of coronavirus. China bans citizens from reserving overseas tours. Japan Tourism Company faces 20,000 cancellations from coronavirus outbreak. Tourism industry hit hard as Chinese tourists stay home. China screens people leaving the country.
Jan 29. WHO rejects accusations that China was responsible for the global spread of COVID-19: “[China’s] actions helped prevent the spread of coronavirus to other countries.”
Jan. 30: With 82 cases outside China and zero deaths, WHO declares Covid-19 a global health emergency.
Jan. 30. US State and Federal officials refuse permission for Dr. Chu, U. Washington infectious disease expert, to use ongoing flu tests to monitor for coronavirus.
Jan. 30. NYT : “The fallout from the virus in China will accelerate the return of jobs to North America, with millions at the time placed under lockdown in Wuhan and elsewhere”. The Guardian : “Coronavirus deals China’s economy a bigger blow than global financial crisis”.
Feb. 3. US CDC rejects WHO tests, ships 200 of its own test kits.
Feb 4. 57 personnel arrive at a Nebraska military base from Wuhan. Infectious disease specialist Dr. James Lawler asks to test them. CDC refuses: “The CDC does not approve this study. Please discontinue all contact with the travelers for research purposes.”
Feb. 15. CDC recalls its flawed test kits.
Feb. 25. Against CDC instructions, UW’s Dr. Chu begins testing and gets an immediate Covid-19 result dating from January 28. By then, the virus had contributed to two deaths and would soon kill twenty more. “It must have been here this entire time. It’s just everywhere already,” Dr. Chu recalls thinking.
March 4. US ignores international investigators’ repeated requests for EVALI postmortem lung tissue samples.
March 9. The White House orders federal health officials to treat top-level coronavirus meetings as classified, an unusual step that hampers response to the contagion.
Mar. 11. US tests 5,000 people suspected of Covid-19 infection.
Mar 12. White House classifies scope of infections, quarantines, and travel restrictions. Moves discussions to Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility, SCIF, “It has something to do with China.” CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield testifies that some early fatalities attributed to flu ‘have been attributed to C-19 after post-mortem analysis,’ does not identify dates or locations.
March 12. Chinese FM spokesman Zhao Lijian: “When did patient zero begin in the US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be the US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make your data public! The US owes the world an explanation”.
March 15. Santa Clara, CA, reports 114 infections. Fifteen were associated with travel to China or other infection hot zones, 28 had close contact with infected people, and 52 had no travel or contact with known cases, indicating local acquisition.
March 17. American, British, and Australian virologists: “We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible… Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus”.
March 18. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo vow s to prevent Iran from purchasing medicines and ventilators. US sanctions on Venezuela increase the cost of tests 300%.
March 19. The US sees the sharpest increase in deaths and new infections per day of any country in the world. US doctors exhaust supply of N95 masks.
March 20. White House website petition:
- Why did the U.S. erase internet news reports of the Ft. Detrick Lab shutdown?
- Why was Fort Detrick military lab shut down?
- Why did flu-season come earlier this year?
- What caused vaping pneumonia?
- Why not allow people to do coronavirus testing?
- What are you trying to hide?
- “You owe everyone an explanation,” Julius Ryde tweets to President Trump.
- Why did we withdraw from 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention in 2001?
- Why did the US threaten and prevent UNSC from setting up BTWC monitoring?
March 20. US State Department cables all officials: “[PRC] Propaganda and Disinformation on the Covid-19 Pandemic. Chinese Communist Party officials in Wuhan and Beijing had a special responsibility to inform the Chinese people and the threat world since they were the first to learn of it. Instead, the… government hid news of the virus from its people for weeks, while suppressing information and punishing doctors and journalists who raised the alarm. The Party cared more about its reputation than its own people’s suffering”. Says one official, “These talking points are all anyone is really talking about right now. Everything is about China. We’re being told to try and get this messaging out in any way possible, including press conferences and television appearances.”
Mar 21. Oxford University’s Evolutionary Ecology of Infectious Disease Group says Covid-19 reached the UK no later than mid-January and may have infected half the population by March 21.
March 24. Covid samples taken from Italian patients in Sept-Nov. 2019 prove genetically distinct from China’s strain. Prof. Massimo Galli, at the University of Milan, describes ‘a very strange pneumonia” circulating in Europe in 2019.
Timeline Video:
April 16. Peter Daszak, disease ecologist, “I’ve been working with that [Wuhan] lab for 15 years. And the samples were collected by me and others in collaboration with our Chinese colleagues; they’re some of the world’s best scientists. There was no viral isolate in the lab and no cultured virus that’s anything related to SARS coronavirus 2. So it’s just not possible.”
April 17. Chris Cuomo says, “Cristina believes that at least two of the kids had it in the last few months. It’s atypically long-duration sinus, fever, lethargy. I think we’re going to learn that coronavirus has been in this country since October. How many people do you hear saying, ‘I think I had it, I had this and this, I lost my sense of smell and this and that, but I never got tested’?”.
May 5. Brazilian virologists find antibody samples from November 2019: “We analysed human sewage located in Florianópolis from late October. Our results show that SARS-CoV-2 has been circulating in Brazil since late November 2019”. The tests were repeated in three laboratories independently, with internal controls and negative controls.
May 7. First peer-reviewed Covid article: Identification of a novel coronavirus causing severe pneumonia in humans: a descriptive study.
June 17. Spanish virologists find traces of C-19 in Barcelona wastewater from March 2019: “The levels of SARS-CoV-2 were low but were positive,” said research leader Albert Bosch.
June 20. French virologists find SARS-CoV-2 was spreading in France in December 2019. “Early community spreading changes our knowledge of the COVID-19 epidemic”.
Nov. 16. Italian Researchers find Coronavirus in Italy from September, 2019. “Traces of SARS-Cov-2 have been found in samples of waste water taken in Milan and Turin between September 2019 and March 2020”.
Nov. 30. American researchers find high levels of Covid-19 antibodies in archived Red Cross blood samples throughout the USA from Dec. 2019. Serologic testing of U.S. blood donations to identify SARS-CoV-2-reactive antibodies: December 2019-January 2020.
Dec. 1. Bloomberg : “COVID-19 was silently infecting Americans before first cases emerged in Wuhan: CDC study. Coronavirus was present in the U.S. weeks earlier than scientists and public health officials previously thought, raising questions about the pandemic’s origin”.
2021 Year
January, 2021. US monthly Covid deaths peak at 95,000. MIT says the number is 133,000.
Feb. 25. “Analyzing Covid genomes using k-mer natural vector method, we conclude that the virus likely already existed in France, India, Netherlands, England, and USA before the Wuhan outbreak”.
Mar. 30. Joint WHO-China Report on Jan.-Feb. China visit: “Researchers reviewed 76,000 clinical records from October to November 2019, in which were 92 possible cases of Covid-19. 67 of those had no signs of infection based on antibody tests done a year later, and all 92 were ultimately ruled out based on the clinical criteria for Covid-19”.
May 4. Mutations of the progenitor and its offshoots have produced many dominant coronavirus strains, which have spread episodically over time. Fingerprinting based on common mutations reveals that the same coronavirus lineage has dominated North America for most of the pandemic in 2020. There have been multiple replacements of predominant coronavirus strains in Europe and Asia and the continued presence of multiple high-frequency strains in Asia and North America. We have developed a continually updating dashboard of global evolution and spatiotemporal trends of SARS-CoV-2 spread: An evolutionary portrait of the progenitor SARS-CoV-2 and its dominant offshoots in COVID-19 pandemic.
June 1. WHO sends 30 Italian 2019 biological samples to Rotterdam’s Erasmus University laboratory for re-testing.
June 3. WHO says the search for Covid’s origins is being “poisoned by politics”.
June 5. European Medicines Agency’s reports 13,867 deaths and 1,354,336 serious injuries following injections of MRNA Moderna (CX-024414), MRNA Vaccine Pfizer-Biontech, AstraZeneca Vaccines, Vaccine Janssen (AD26.COV2.S).
June 8. Erasmus University results confirm Italian 2019 samples ‘are very similar to what (Italy’s National Cancer Institute) discovered, despite some small differences. The combined results made a convincing case that the coronavirus or a similar virus was circulating in Italy months before the country’s first officially recorded case’.
June 9. A study conducted of 52,000 Cleveland Clinic employees found that vaccines significantly reduce the risk of COVID-19 for those who have never tested positive–but not for those with previous infection. 4%-6% of Americans tested positive in December, 2019, according to the CDC.
June 10. UK Government reports 1,295 deaths and 922,596 injuries recorded following the experimental COVID injections: AstraZeneca: 863 deaths and 717,250 injuries; Pfizer- BioNTech: 406 deaths and 193,768 injuries; Moderna: 3 deaths and 9243 injuries. (Source); Unspecified COVID-19 injections: 22 deaths and 2335 injuries. (Source) Italy halted use of AstraZeneca injections for people under the age of 60, following the death of a teenager who died from blood clots.
June 11. CDC lists 329,02 injuries following COVID-19 shots: 5,888 deaths, 4,583, permanent disabilities, 5,884 life-threatening, 43,892 ER visits, and 19,597 hospitalizations.
June 13. Europe’s drug regulator suggests countries stop using AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine for all age groups as more alternatives have become available amid fears of rare blood clots. “In a pandemic context, our position was and is that the risk-benefit ratio remains favorable for all age groups,” he said.
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Trita Parsi: Israel Set a Trap for Total War in the Region
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From the Archive
Zionism’s Violent Legacy
By Donald Neff | Washington Report On Middle East Affairs | January 1996
On January 4, 1948, Jewish terrorists drove a truck loaded with explosives into the center of the all Arab city of Jaffa and detonated it, killing 26 and wounding around 100 Palestinian men, women and children.[1] The attack was the work of the Irgun Zvai Leumi – the “National Military Organization,” also known by the Hebrew letters Etzel – the largest Jewish terrorist group in Palestine. The Irgun was headed by Revisionist Zionist Menachem Begin and had been killing and maiming Arabs, Britons and even Jews for the previous ten years in its efforts to establish a Jewish state.
This terror campaign meant that at the core of Revisionist Zionism there existed a philosophical embrace of violence. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Trita Parsi: Israel Set a Trap for Total War in the Region
- Trump’s Iran war is on an Israeli leash
- Saudi oil boss issues global supply warning
- Riyadh Says Its Oil System Is Intact. The Numbers Say Otherwise.
- Trump and Netanyahu Want to “Finish the Job” on Iran
- US ‘one-sided dictation’ not Iran’s beliefs makes rational talks impossible: Baghaei
- Iran’s Next Strike May Not Explode. It Could Shut You Down /Col Doug Macgregor
- Iran: US political targets legitimate if assassinations return
- Iraq shuts key border crossing with Iran under US pressure: Report
- Undersea Internet cables could be targeted in retaliation for attacks on Iran: IRGC deputy chief
- If Americans Knew
- The Israel Lobby’s Changing Fortunes
- AIPAC has become such a political liability that it’s shifting to a more “nimble” approach to buying politicians
- At least 160 Israeli settler attacks in 2 weeks
- Will Gaza’s Ancient Christian Community Disappear Forever?
- Israel’s vision of regional security rests on keeping Arab states weak
- Heidi Levine recounts how Palestinian youths helped save her in settler attack
- DAILY UPDATE: Latest essential news on Palestine, Israel, & region
- Trump’s Intensifying Sabotage of the ICC, for Israel’s Sake
- Israeli military detain US and UK volunteers in West Bank including Democratic NY politician Brad Lander
- Americans at National Conservatism Conference held in Israel this year criticize Israel
- No Tricks Zone
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
