Categories
America's Heartland Biden Cartel Commentary Links from other news sources. Reprints from others. Work Place

Thanks Joe Biden. US Steel idles steelmaking at Granite City plant indefinitely, will likely lead to 1,000 layoffs.

US Steel idles steelmaking at Granite City plant indefinitely, will likely lead to 1,000 layoffs. This was the location that opened under Donald Trump back in 2018.

Sam Clancy.

GRANITE CITY, Ill. — U.S. Steel announced it would be idling steelmaking at the Granite City Works plant indefinitely.

Workers learned of the decision in an email from U.S. Steel Senior Vice President & Chief Manufacturing Officer Scott Buckiso that was sent out Tuesday morning. As part of the decision, U.S. Steel issued approximately 1,000 employees a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notice that they might be laid off and said they anticipated about 60 percent of those workers would likely lose their jobs.

The WARN Act requires most employers with more than 100 employees to provide notice 60 days in advance of planned closings and mass layoffs.

United Steelworkers Local 1899 President Dan Simmons said the email was the official announcement of something the union knew was coming.

The move comes two months after U.S. Steel temporarily idled furnace B in a move it called “risk mitigation” in response to the now-resolved United Auto Workers strike. At the time, Simmons said they weren’t feeling the effects of the United Auto Workers strike and it would take months and more locations going on strike for it to affect them.

In Tuesday’s email, Buckiso said the company could meet demand with other active iron and steelmaking facilities. He said the rolling and finishing lines in Granite City would continue to run using slabs from other facilities.

“They’re claiming there is still some low volume yet, hasn’t increased where they want it to be. But the price of steel is in good shape right now,” Simmons said.

“I don’t see how they can not make the right decision, do the right thing and start us back up at full operation,” he said.

In June of 2022, U.S. Steel told the Pittsburgh Business Times, a sister publication to the St. Louis Business Journal, that it planned to sell two blast furnaces at its big Granite City, Illinois, facility. The company said the sale of the blast furnaces would result in an estimated 550 jobs remaining out of 1,500 at Granite City Works.

As part of the plan, the plant would be sold to a company called SunCoke Energy. SunCoke would use the blast furnaces to produce a type of crude iron called pig iron.

Categories
Biden Cartel Black Supremacy Censorship Commentary Corruption Emotional abuse Government Overreach How sick is this? January 6 Links from other news sources. Progressive Racism Reprints from others. Trump Uncategorized

Newly Discovered Letter by Thompson Potential Cause of TSA Placing Innocent Americans on Terror Watchlist.

Newly Discovered Letter by Thompson Potential Cause of TSA Placing Innocent Americans on Terror Watchlist.

On January 6th, 2021, “insurrectionists attacked the United States Capitol intent on preventing the certification of a democratic election and, apparently, inflicting violence upon elected officials… Several lives were lost, including at least one Capitol Police officer…” wrote Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), then-Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security to Transportation Security Administration Administrator David Pekoske on January 11th, 2021, in a previously unrevealed letter. This committee “focuses on legislation and oversight related to the security of the United States” with the goal of “[ensuring] that the American people were protected from terrorist attacks.”

Chairman Thompson started his letter with unproven charges and false information in this salacious statement of fiction as he requested an Executive Branch agency ignore due process and deprive thousands of Americans of their Constitutionally protected rights to travel freely within the United States (a right recognized since at least 1870.) Rep. Thompson’s account of the events on January 6th, 2021, could have been lifted directly from a far-left opinion website like HuffPost or ProPublica. While Thompson does not source his wild allegations, he could have easily credited a ProPublica article that made identical claims: law enforcement agencies were “unprepared,” and “the attack was planned largely in open internet forums.” A subsequent article by the same author falsely claimed that “Officer Brian Sicknick died defending the Capitol.”

But Congressman Thompson’s concern was not about how to better protect the U.S. Capitol. His immediate concern, less than a week after the events of January 6th, was punishing those who came to Washington, DC, without trial or investigation. He said the “perpetrators have continued to enjoy freedom of movement throughout the country. Only a fraction of the insurrectionists have been arrested, and many of those arrested have been released pending a future court date. To our knowledge, the Federal government has not prevented a single insurrectionist from boarding an aircraft.” Perhaps the Chairman is less than familiar with the U.S. Constitution to which he was required to swear allegiance in his 15 terms as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, but the 5th Amendment is quite clear on the following: “No person shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

Chairman Thompson continued with a statement he attributed to “growing online chatter,” which informed his belief that “many of the same groups that planned and carried out Wednesday’s attack intend to return to Washington, D.C., to cause further disruption and violence in the coming days, including at the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.” Those of us who were working in law enforcement during the inauguration of Joe Biden marveled at the speed and efficiency of locking down Washington DC into a Police State scene out of the Cold War. The anti-scale fencing, which was nowhere to be found during the summer riots of 2020, was installed with an efficiency that shocked the government sensibilities in a place like Washington, DC. But at the bottom of his third paragraph, Rep. Bennie Thompson says the so-called quiet part out loud: “It appears little is being done to disrupt the travel of terrorists who just attacked the seat of the U.S. Government and wish to do so again.” Furthermore:

Please provide a briefing not later than the end of this week on the following topics:

  •       Current efforts to disrupt the travel of white supremacist and other domestic terrorist groups who may be planning further attacks against the U.S. Government and may be targeting the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden;
  •       Options available for quickly denying air carrier service to individuals identified as posing a potential threat, including TSA’s authorities to prevent individuals from flying on a temporary or flight-by-flight basis;”

After this letter was received by the top official at the TSA, many Americans who had simply traveled to the National Capitol Region on or around January 6th, 2021, were welcomed to the “Quiet Skies.” These unsuspecting (and unconvicted) American citizens were added to a secretive program known as Quiet Skies—which the TSA claims identifies “international travelers who may require enhanced screening” by a “set of risk-based, intelligence-driven scenario rules.” It further claims that “these rules have strict oversight by the Department of Homeland Security, including the privacy, civil rights and liberties, and general counsel offices.” However, several Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) whistleblowers and retired supervisory FAM Sonya Labosco have blown the lid off some of the abuses of this program in numerous national interviews and a previous article published by UncoverDC. Additional coverage by UnCoverDC’s Wendi Mahoney introduced those unfamiliar with Quiet Skies to the “Quad S” designation.

The simple fact is—thousands of Americans are now subjected to invasive “security” screenings for several years as a form of extrajudicial punishment that was called for by a powerful Congress member and implemented by a feckless administrative agency. The saddest part for those of us who have engaged in surveillance activities of alleged but unindicted terrorists is—legitimate investigations of sworn aspiring members of ISIS or Al-Qaeda are not nearly as destructive to those members’ lives. The entire point of covert surveillance in a law enforcement setting is to document the subject’s behavior without them altering it from the heavy-handed or visible presence of police. The “SSSS” designation on the boarding passes of many attendees of a 1st Amendment-protected activity or even those who coincidentally flew into the region during that timeframe leads to an experience that is the opposite of productive for any “domestic terrorism” investigation. We only know this information because of the tireless work of the AMNC and former FAMs like Sonya Labosco.

Labosco is the Director of a private advocacy group called the Air Marshal National Council (AMNC). Historically, the FAMS have spent the majority of their time traveling internationally. Armed federal agents with specialized training to stop a terrorist hijack attempt or reclaim a seized aircraft, the FAMS are unique in their skillsets and focus on a post 9/11 airborne jurisdiction. But since January 2021, this highly specialized counterterrorism force has been aimed at surveilling Americans who have not been identified under any other federal law enforcement agency watch list.

The AMNC has been quietly working to unravel the chain of events that has led to the weaponization of this agency. This letter from Chairman Thompson appears to be one of the first movements by the eventual “Chairman of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol” (J6 Unselect Committee) to craft the Democratic Party fantasy that “white supremacists and domestic terrorists groups” were the cause of the riot that day. It also appears to be an underhanded request to the TSA, an agency Congressman Thompson’s Committee had “special oversight functions” over, to “disrupt the travel” and “[deny] air carrier service” to Americans who simply found themselves on the wrong side of the Congressman’s politics. Of note, this letter was co-signed by the Committee’s Ranking Member, John Katko, a 3-term New York Congressman who declined to seek re-election in 2022. Former Rep. Katko is currently a senior advisor to Hill East Group—a Washington, DC-based consulting and lobbying firm.

What Americans should know after reading this letter is that the Democrat narrative regarding what they would set out to show in their highly curated, nominally bipartisan Committee on January 6th was already sent out as marching orders to one of the federal government’s most inefficient and theatrical entities: the TSA.

You can read the full letter here.

Kyle Seraphin is a former FBI Agent assigned to the Washington Field Office on January 6th, 2021. After a transfer to Las Cruces, NM, he “blew the whistle” on the FBI’s partisan investigations into parents at school board meetings. He was suspended for a year without pay before “resigning,” but not before continuing to blow the whistle on numerous issues, including breaking the story the FBI was targeting Catholics with UnCoverDC. His work has spawned multiple Congressional and Attorney General investigations. 

Categories
Child Abuse Commentary Emotional abuse History Reprints from others. Sexual Abuse

Sadly, Israel Must Finish Off Hamas, No Matter What.

Hamas terrorists stand by vehicles as they hand over hostages who were abducted during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel to members of the International Committee of the Red Cross, as part of a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel amid a temporary truce, in an unknown location in the Gaza Strip, Palestine, on Nov. 26, 2023. (Hamas Military Wing/Handout via Reuters)
By Roger L. Simon for EPOCH TIMES  11/27/2023

Yes, it’s sad that Israel must finish off Hamas, no matter what.

Innocent Gazans will die, particularly children.

But they have no choice.

Many of the adults, however, may not be so innocent. They’re people who elected to remain in Gaza under Hamas rule, despite the regime’s brutality equaling the worst in human history, while others sensibly fled.

The horrifying story of Hamas’s methods in overcoming the Palestinian Authority in Gaza in 2007, only two years after the territory was given freely to the Palestinians by Israel for their own rule, is a harrowing narrative worth reading. That they threw each other off 15-story roofs is but one harbinger of the Oct. 7 atrocities including rapes and the parading of victims, the murdering and abducting of babies, and so forth.

That most Arab nations don’t want these people for whom violence is a way of life within their borders is not surprising.

That LGBT folks have joined the pro-Hamas demonstrations without realizing what would happen to them under the terrorist’s rule is the darkest of comedy.

That some supposed conservatives see moral equivalency between Hamas and Israel would be laughable were it not so dangerous. Certainly, it’s a display of massive ignorance.

With the prisoner–hostage swap in progress, the efforts of the left and the United Nations, among others, to push Israel into a permanent cease-fire will undoubtedly redouble.

The U.N. is particularly hypocritical, or worse, in this regard. Little is more repellent than their longtime complicity, through their United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), with Hamas and other extremist organizations. They have literally ignored the use of human shields, the misuse of construction materials for terror tunnels, and similar abhorrent desecrations of human rights for well over a decade for the most malign and selfish of reasons—among them, if there were no more Palestinian refugees there would be no need for a UNRWA.

The U.N.’s other off-shoot, the World Health Organization (WHO) that we know from their obeisance to China during COVID-19, has been curiously silent about the use of hospitals for weapons storage, missile launching, those same tunnels, and even command and control headquarters by Hamas. (The director of Shifa Hospital, the largest medical complex in Gaza, is under interrogation by Israel at this moment about this.)

And then there’s the question of U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s statement about the Hamas attack.

These are the people who will be clamoring for a cease-fire, the very thing Hamas wants so they can regroup and attack again.

The terrorist organization makes no secret they wish to do this. It’s in the genocidal chant we hear everywhere from Los Angeles to London: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

When I say genocidal, I mean really genocidal. In Paris in the late eighties, just after Hamas was formed, I saw one of their early demonstrations at which they chanted “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas!” in English and French.

Clear enough?

The good news in all this is that Hamas is finally on the run. We can see this, as the Times of Israel has pointed out, from the nature and timing of the prisoner–hostage exchange. Normally, Hamas asks for a far greater imbalance with a huge number of real terrorists released, as in the case of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was kidnapped by Hamas for five years.

Not this time. Hamas, in an unusual hurry for a pause, was willing to exchange for women and young prisoners, and fewer of them.

This is a sign that Hamas, which surprised the Israelis on Oct. 7, has been surprised themselves by the force of the Israeli response. They expected the usual three- or four-day counterattack when the Israelis, under global admonition to be “proportionate,” would relent and all would go back to the status quo ante.

Not this time again. Hamas leadership made a serious miscalculation, and Israel shows no sign of backing off. They have apparently had enough of carping from Western nations. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant made clear on the eve of the temporary truce that the Israel Defense Force will resume fighting “with intensity” for at least two months.

The way things have been going, that would seem sufficient to achieve the fate for Hamas that has already been achieved for its “semblable” ISIS.

It’s hard to know, after that, where things will go for the once-vaunted two-state solution. For some time, the Palestinians haven’t seemed really to want one. In 2007, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered the Palestinian Authority 97 percent of what they said they wanted, and their leader Mahmoud Abbas walked away.

But you never know. Real power, properly applied, has the ability to change minds.

What we really should do is ask how it came to pass that Hamas got to accrue such an incredible and seemingly endless arsenal of weaponry, not to mention the funds for their leadership to enjoy the lifestyle of billionaires in luxury hotel suites in Turkey and Qatar while flying about in private jets?

The answer, alas, to some degree points to us.

Yes, most of those funds came via Iran, aka the “world’s greatest sponsor of terrorism,” with an assist from the aforementioned Qatar.

But where did and does Iran get its money to wreak havoc across the Middle East and potentially beyond?

To be blunt, I recommend asking Barack Obama and Joe Biden. They’re the ones who relaxed sanctions on Iran to the tune of billions and billions.

As for Israel, there’s no such thing as being “proportionate” when it comes to conquering evil.

 

Categories
Commentary Daily Hits. How funny is this? Life Links from other news sources. Reprints from others. The Funnies. WOKE

Todays Funnies.

Everyone is welcome to post their favorite carton gif or meme.





This one is so on target, I have to put it in here (again).





So, for me – This Babylon Bee piece on inflation below is still on target.





”Have a favorite?

Categories
Biden Cartel Corruption Emotional abuse How sick is this? Reprints from others. Stupid things people say or do.

Dementia Joe Posts Thanksgiving Guide of How to Respond to “Crazy MAGA Nonsense”

The Biden-Harris reelection campaign shared a “handy guide for responding to crazy MAGA nonsense” for supporters heading into the holidays with Trump supporting family members.

The guide shared talking points to respond to conservative rhetoric about subjects from immigration to the economy. One slide included responses to when someone claims “Trump secured our border!” to reply with a “No he didn’t,” followed by claims that “All he did was separate families, put children in cages, and leave behind a broken immigration system for Joe Biden to clean up.”

Critics across social media shredded the list of talking points, arguing it takes an especially insufferable kind of person to approach the Thanksgiving table looking forward to an argument rather than eating with family.

“Democrats literally publishing a script of how to be the worst person at Thanksgiving,” Republican digital strategist Alec Sears wrote.

“Imagine needing political talking points for a holiday encounter with loved ones,” podcast host Siraj Hashmi wrote.

“Reminder to all political persuasions: Preparing political talking points to use against family members on Thanksgiving is a form of mental illness,” author John Durant wrote. “Show some maturity, speak with the right tone, or change the subject.”

Other commentators accused Biden-Harris campaign of pushing “propaganda.”

“Biden-Harris putting out propaganda scripts to defend their campaign is… gross,” conservative radio host Jason Rantz wrote.

“All this gaslighting would make North Korean state media blush,” Twitchy’s Doug Powers wrote.


Dementia Joe’s handlers strike again.

Categories
Biden Cartel Black Supremacy Commentary Leftist Virtue(!) Links from other news sources. Media Woke Opinion Politics Progressive Racism Racism Reprints from others.

Ann Coulter on Joy-Ann Reid.

Ann Coulter on Joy-Ann Reid. From 2021 but so relevant still.

Consider:

You were admitted to Harvard with SAT scores that would have gotten an Asian kid disowned by his parents.

You manage to keep your show at MSNBC with ratings that would get a white person canceled.

People try harder to laugh at your excruciating jokes than they would for a male of any race.

Plus, I have it on good authority that no one at MSNBC has pestered you about touching your hair.

Your brief daytime show on MSNBC made ratings history, garnering only 38,000 viewers in the demo its first day on air — the lowest for the entire network! That inched up to 56,000 viewers two days later, the second lowest for the network. Ronan Farrow’s show debuted the same week. But while he was quickly cashiered for poor ratings, you were promoted, even though he is white and you are black. Dodged a bullet there!

You weren’t prosecuted for making a false FBI report when you claimed that right-wing saboteurs had hacked your blog, planting long, venomous threads about gay people. It seems your go-to attack for celebrities and Republicans is to accuse them of being gay. (For example, you described Dick Cheney “topping off” Sean Hannity — gay slang for oral sex — and repeatedly ran your “Top 5 ‘totally not gay celebrities of the year.'”)

Nor were you fired for your preposterous, and quickly disproved, lies about having been hacked when it was you who mocked people for being gay — including Oprah.

Your many, many blog posts sneering at gays were written just 10 years earlier, when you were an adult and a professional journalist. Meanwhile, teenagers — even white ones! — are being thrown out of college for the stupid things they said on Snapchat when they were 15. But you came through like a champ, without consequence — despite being black!

Indeed, instead of firing you, MSNBC gave you a prime-time show. This is the network that canned Chris Matthews (astonishingly, another white male) for telling girls they’re pretty. And who took the humiliated Matthews’ time slot? YOU DID! Despite the fact that he is white and you are black.

Actually, if you think about it, in a deeply racist, majority-white country, you’ve done pretty well issuing nonstop libels against white people. Here are three recent quotes:

Joy-Ann: “I’ll say it again: People on the right would trade all the tax cuts for the ability to openly say the N-word like in ‘the good old days.’”

That comment, like many made by you, seems at variance with the facts and not based in reality. But has your delusional hatred of white Americans held you back? Not so’s you’d notice.

Joy-Ann: “Your kid can’t read certain books or learn about history while their kids get Christian prayer in school and get to hurl the n-word on Twitter with no consequences.”

Did kids “hurl the n-word” at your high school, Joy-Ann? You know, the high school in Denver, Colorado, in the 1980s? My heart wants to believe you, but my head is telling me, “This woman is a lunatic fantasist.”

I’ll tell you why I say that. Just 10 years after you matriculated at Denver’s diverse Montbello High School, a Nation of Islam minister was invited to speak, whereupon he told the assembly (all boys, no girls allowed) that, while blacks were building the Egyptian pyramids, white people “ate their dead” and “slept with animals.” Even you have to admit, THAT wasn’t racist.

Joy-Ann: [Thanksgiving is] “a simplistic fairytale interpretation of a 1621 encounter between Indigenous tribes and English settlers that erases the genocide that followed.”

Wow. People who are actually descended from American slaves — Joy-Ann is not one of them — don’t hate white Americans that much. Yet, strangely, white Americans, despite being white, haven’t held that against you.

Your immigrant parents came here in the late 1960s, settling in Iowa. Perhaps you rank Iowa up there with Denver as a bastion of Jim Crow, but even you would have to concede it was a step up from Guyana and the Congo.

While having zero American slave ancestry, you have managed to elbow aside actual descendants of American slaves (DOAS), gobbling up the benefits earned by their ancestors’ suffering and intended for them. That was a good deal for you!

Finally, notwithstanding the White Power Structure, you have a job that reportedly pays millions of dollars a year, which is more than 99.9% of Americans make — even several white ones! All in all, that doesn’t sound so bad.

Categories
Biden Pandemic Corruption Medicine Reprints from others. Science Terrorism Tony the Fauch

US Scientist’s Warnings About Wuhan Research Facility Predated the Pandemic

Barack Obama shakes hands with Francis Collins, director of National Institutes of Health, in 2009. Collins said warnings of dangerous genetically engineered viruses were ‘science fiction’ In the last days of the administration, he said at a contentious WH meeting that a DOE threat assessment “reads like a movie script.”

“Delete That Comment”

In late October 2017, a US health official from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) arrived at the Wuhan Institute of Virology for a glimpse of an eagerly anticipated work in progress. The WIV, a leading research institute, was putting the finishing touches on China’s first biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory. Operating with the highest safeguards, the lab would enable scientists to study some of the world’s most lethal pathogens.

The project had support from Western governments seeking a more robust partnership with China’s top scientists. France had helped design the facility. Canada, before long, would send virus samples. And in the US, NIAID was channeling grant dollars through an American organization called EcoHealth Alliance, a controversial research group at the center of the Covid lab leak theory, to help fund the WIV’s cutting-edge coronavirus research.

That funding allowed the NIAID official, who worked out of the US embassy in Beijing, to become one of the first Americans to tour the lab. Her goal was to facilitate cooperation between American and Chinese scientists. Nevertheless, says Asha M. George, executive director of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, a nonprofit that advises the US government on biodefense policy, “If you want to know what’s going on in a closed country, one of the things the US has done is give them grant money.”

The lab — where the FBI believes Covid leaked from — was found to have a ‘serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate’.

The official — who is unnamed due to concerns for her safety — from the NIAID, run by Anthony Fauci at the time, was instructed to erase the safety failures in her report to avoid angering China.

And this wasn’t the first time concerns over engineered viruses were dismissed.  A year prior, US officials at the DOE warned the NIAID of the dangers of genetically engineered and altered pathogens. However, longtime head of the NIH, Francis Collins, called the claims ‘science fiction.’

The NIAID official told her superiors what she’d gleaned from the technician who’d served as her guide. The lab, which was not yet fully operational, was struggling to develop enough expertise among its staff—a concern in a setting that had no tolerance for errors. “According to [the technician], being the first P4 [or BSL-4] lab in the country, they have to learn everything from zero,” she wrote. “They rely on those scientists who have worked in P4 labs outside China to train the other scientists how to operate.”

She’d also learned something else “alarming” from the technician, she wrote. Researchers at the WIV intended to study Ebola, but Chinese government restrictions prevented them from importing samples. As a result, they were considering using a technique called reverse genetics to engineer Ebola in the lab.

Anticipating that this information would set off alarm bells in the US, the official cautioned, “I was shocked to hear what he said [about reverse engineering Ebola]. I also worry the reaction of people in Washington when they read this. I don’t want the information particularly using reverse genetics to create viruses to get out, which would affect the ability for our future information gain,” meaning it would impair the collaboration between NIAID and the WIV. “I don’t feel comfortable for the broader audience within the government circle [to hear this]. It could be very sensitive.”

There was good reason to fear that such a revelation could derail the fledgling partnership. One year earlier, the US Department of Energy had warned other agencies, including NIAID’s parent entity, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), that advanced genetic engineering techniques could be misused for malign ends. The Energy Department had developed a classified proposal, reported on here for the first time, to ramp up safeguards against that possibility and develop tools to better detect evidence of genetic engineering. The proposal, which was not implemented in its suggested form, prompted a heated interagency battle.

F. Gray Handley, then NIAID’s associate director for international research affairs, responded to the email agreeing with the official. His response included: “As we discussed. Delete that comment.”

On January 19, 2018, the US embassy in Beijing issued a sensitive but unclassified cable that included details from the NIAID official’s tour. It said that WIV scientists themselves had noted the “serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate” the lab, according to an unredacted copy obtained by Vanity Fair. But the cable did not include the information that her NIAID colleagues apparently found most worrying.

For synthetic biologists, the idea of engineering Ebola isn’t seen as particularly unusual. Reverse genetics, using the CRISPR gene editing technology developed roughly a decade ago, is now a widely used laboratory technique. The WIV’s BSL-4 laboratory was designed to safely research Ebola, be it natural or man-made. Some scientists argue that, for research purposes, it can be safer to make a deadly pathogen in-house than to risk transporting it.

However, according to Stanford microbiologist David Relman, the risks of the WIV producing something new or unknown may have driven the government’s concern. “When you are reverse engineering Ebola, you have now established a platform from which you can do [a] million different things with Ebola, or something that you call Ebola,” he says. “It means you can now make any variant or construct that is Ebola-like at will.”

US government warnings about scientific collaborations in autocratic countries predate the pandemic and cut across partisan lines.

Any effort to shield the technician’s Ebola remarks from wider scrutiny within the federal government would be “a dereliction of responsibility,” says Gerald Parker, former commander of the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID).

Some view ongoing questions about biosafety at the WIV as part of a Republican campaign to discredit Anthony Fauci, who led NIAID for 38 years. But US government warnings about scientific collaborations in autocratic countries predate the pandemic and cut across partisan lines. Concerns flagged in the Obama administration persisted through the Trump administration and are being examined today.

“There’s a dark side” to certain research, says Jason Paragas. “Just because you’re doing it to publish a paper doesn’t mean no one is going to do anything bad.”

Between 2015 and 2023, at least seven US entities supplied NIH grant money to labs in China performing animal experiments, totaling $3,306,061 — that we know about.

“Serious Security Concerns”

Operating out of a sprawling 300-acre campus in Bethesda, Maryland, the National Institutes of Health describes itself as “the federal focal point for health research.” Each year it makes more than 50,000 grants, distributing the majority of its $48 billion budget to researchers in the US and around the world. Among its 27 institutes and centers is NIAID, which distributed $5.3 billion in the 2023 fiscal year alone.

For the NIH and its grantees, global collaboration and transparent data sharing are synonymous with scientific progress. Even a trickle of grant money to a foreign lab can pay dividends. It can give US researchers access to new environments and viruses and help build trust that may elude bickering governments. “It is almost always beneficial to exchange ideas and samples with other countries, particularly those with different climates than our own,” says Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “I don’t see why science funding should be reserved for friendly countries.”

But within the federal government, there is a different world of scientists: those tasked with anticipating threats to national security. In the open exchange of cutting-edge research with scientists in autocratic countries, they see the risk that science that serves the public good could be misappropriated to cause harm—a phenomenon known as dual-use research of concern. Worries about dual-use research have only grown with the easy accessibility of DNA-editing tools. Those technologies have opened the door to miraculous treatments, such as using gene editing to reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease. But “there’s a dark side” to certain research, says Jason Paragas, former director of innovation at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. “Just because you’re doing it to publish a paper doesn’t mean no one is going to do anything bad.”

Lawrence Livermore is one of 17 national laboratories overseen by the Department of Energy, a science and technology agency with strong intelligence capabilities, a number of whose scientists regularly review classified threats. “They spend their time in a dark world, faced with the nastiness of what could go on,” says Diane DiEuliis, a distinguished research fellow at the National Defense University. Sometimes they flag concerns for scientists who, given their focus on open research, are “not willing to even contemplate what they’re talking about.”

Based on classified threat assessments, and concerns raised by DOE scientists, Brouillette urged NIAID to use caution in its collaborations with Chinese government scientists

DOE officials issued their most specific warning in mid-2019, just months before the pandemic began. Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette alerted a top Fauci adviser that the coronavirus research the US was helping to fund at the WIV risked being misappropriated for military purposes. Based on classified threat assessments, and concerns raised by DOE scientists, Brouillette urged NIAID to use caution in its collaborations with Chinese government scientists. His warning should have served as a red flag for any research the agency was conducting with China, according to two sources with knowledge of the exchange.

A spokesperson for NIAID said, “We are not aware of this interaction.” A spokesperson for Fauci, who has advised seven presidents on infectious disease policy and [supposedly] championed expanded treatment options for HIV and AIDS, said he was unavailable to respond to questions.

Shi Zhengli – dubbed the ‘Bat Lady’ or ‘Bat Woman’ for her work on bat coronaviruses – “investigated the possibility” Covid could have emerged from her lab back in 2020, according to colleagues. And you thought that little mask protected you?

Though the DOE and the NIH have partnered on historic endeavors, from the Human Genome Project to the Cancer Moonshot, they’ve also battled over what restrictions, if any, should be placed on technologies that allow scientists to synthesize and edit DNA. “We came at it from the point of view, ‘There are serious security concerns,’” says Ernest Moniz, who served as DOE secretary under Obama. “Our view was always, ‘We have to address them in ways that do not unduly restrict basic science.’ But what is the meaning of ‘unduly’? There lies the entire matter.” In meetings during the final months of the Obama administration, the longtime head of the NIH, Francis Collins, dismissed such risks as “science fiction,” according to several people present.

This June, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) issued a declassified report that provided a snapshot of perspectives on the COVID-19 origins question across America’s intelligence agencies. According to the report, the DOE and the FBI believe the pandemic is most likely to have originated with a lab leak. The National Intelligence Council and four other agencies say the virus most likely spilled over from a natural host, and two others, including the CIA, say there isn’t enough evidence to support one conclusion over the other.

All the intelligence agencies agree that SARS-CoV-2 was not developed as a bioweapon, the report said, and “almost all” agree it “was not genetically engineered.” Three sources said that DOE scientists, using an array of advanced tools and working out of several different labs, including Lawrence Livermore, Argonne, and Oak Ridge, could not rule out the possibility that the virus’s sequence had been engineered.

The ODNI report also found that People’s Liberation Army scientists sometimes worked out of WIV labs and collaborated with its civilian scientists on biosecurity projects and coronavirus research to address public health needs.

The Chinese government encourages such intermingling with a policy called military-civil fusion, which aims to harness civilian scientific innovation to advance military goals.

“This Reads Like a Movie Script”

In 2011, a Dutch virologist named Ron Fouchier announced at a scientific conference that he’d genetically engineered what he’d later describe as “probably one of the most dangerous viruses you can make.” He had altered the H5N1 avian influenza strain to make it transmissible among ferrets, which are genetically closer to humans than mice are. The experiment had been funded, in part, by the NIH.

Fouchier’s announcement triggered an uproar over what’s known today as gain-of-function research of concern—lab work that enhances the virulence or transmissibility of pathogens to help assess their threat to humans and develop countermeasures. Though the NIH has advocated for such research, others in the scientific community organized against it, arguing that creating pathogens that don’t exist in nature runs the risk of unleashing them.

The Dutch government initially blocked Fouchier from publishing his findings, for fear that they could serve as a how-to manual for bioterrorists.

Amid the controversy, the NIH assembled a high-level group, nicknamed the “ferrets committee,” to advise it on the risks of funding such research. As one member of the advisory group recalled, “We were worried we could be in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention.

From 2009 to 2021, the NIH was led by Francis Collins, whose achievements include discovering the gene that causes cystic fibrosis. In March 2012, Collins wrote an email to members of the ferrets committee in which he acknowledged, “I am not familiar with the Biologic and Toxic Weapons Convention. Can our crack legal staff offer any opinions on this question?”

The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, enforced since 1975, is the most significant treaty that governs the development and use of biological agents.

In response, a staffer emailed her supervisor: “I can’t believe he doesn’t know what the BWC is???!!! yikes.” The supervisor replied, “It shows you how different our worlds are.”

Categories
Biden Cartel Censorship Commentary Free Speech Links from other news sources. Media Woke Opinion Politics Progressive Racism Reprints from others. Social Venues-Twitter White Progressive Supremacy WOKE

Media Matters and the Fake News Era Go to Court.

Media Matters and the Fake News Era Go to Court.

Categories
Biden Pandemic Drugs Medicine Reprints from others.

Peer-Reviewed Study On COVID Vaccine Shows What Happened to 1 In 35 People

After undergoing a full peer review, a newly published study in the European Journal of Heart Failure found that 1 in 35 people showed signs of heart damage after taking the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.

The CDC openly admits that myocarditis and pericarditis (inflammation of the outer lining of the heart) are “rare side effects of COVID vaccination, especially prevalent in adolescents and young men.” Despite this serious concern, the CDC says the vaccine is safe for “the vast majority of people,” and that data shows “the low risk of complications from the vaccine is outweighed by the reward.”

The study concluded that adverse effects were more common than previously thought. The study also found that adverse effects were more frequent in women versus men.

“One in 35 health care workers at a Swiss hospital had signs of heart injury associated with the vaccine, mRNA-1273, researchers found,” according to the Epoch Times.

Researchers wrote in the paper, “mRNA-1273 booster vaccination-associated elevation of markers of myocardial injury occurred in about one out of 35 persons (2.8%), a greater incidence than estimated in meta-analyses of hospitalized cases with myocarditis (estimated incidence 0.0035%) after the second vaccination.”

“In a generally healthy population, the level would be about 1 percent, the researchers said,” the report found.

Adverse effects continued for a period of 30 days and half of the individuals showed unusually high levels of high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T, which is an indicator of subclinical heart damage.

The long-term implications of the study remain unclear as little research has tracked people over time with heart injury.

“None of the patients experienced a major adverse cardiac event, such as heart failure, within 30 days of booster vaccination, and none had electrocardiogram changes,” the report added.

The possible side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine have been a topic of controversy in recent weeks. Business mogul and Tesla boss, Elon Musk, responded to the heart attack of LeBron James’ son, Bronny, by questioning the role played by the experimental and controversial COVID-19 vaccine.

Musk responded bluntly, “We cannot ascribe everything to the vaccine, but, by the same token, we cannot ascribe nothing. Myocarditis is a known side-effect. The only question is whether it is rare or common.”

In recent years, Americans have witnessed an alarming increase in young and healthy people suffering cardiac arrest. The 18-year-old son of NBA superstar LeBron James was rushed to a hospital after collapsing during a basketball workout.

Social media erupted with widespread speculation about what caused Bronny’s heart to stop despite being a young and healthy athlete. In recent years, any questions or criticism surrounding the COVID vaccine are effectively censored, banned, and labeled “false” by the almighty truth-bearers on social media.

Multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical companies are also wielding their power, influence, and money to shape the national discourse surrounding their drugs. Twitter boss Elon Musk recently exposed internal documents proving Pfizer board member Dr. Scott Gottlieb helped censor Americans online.

“Nothing to see, no questions to ask,” Charlie Kirk sarcastically wrote.

Bronny is entering his first year at USC and he is ranked as a top-25 recruit and future NBA prospect by ESPN. A James family spokesperson said, “Yesterday while practicing Bronny James suffered a cardiac arrest. Medical staff was able to treat Bronny and take him to the hospital.” Bronny was discharged from the hospital after making a full recovery.


Here is the study. I’ll print the abstract and link to the article itself.

Sex-specific differences in myocardial injury incidence after COVID-19 mRNA-1273 booster vaccination

Natacha Buergin, Pedro Lopez-Ayala Contributed equally as co-first authors.

Abstract

Aims

To explore the incidence and potential mechanisms of oligosymptomatic myocardial injury following COVID-19 mRNA booster vaccination.

Methods and results

Hospital employees scheduled to undergo mRNA-1273 booster vaccination were assessed for mRNA-1273 vaccination-associated myocardial injury, defined as acute dynamic increase in high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hs-cTnT) concentration above the sex-specific upper limit of normal on day 3 (48–96 h) after vaccination without evidence of an alternative cause. To explore possible mechanisms, antibodies against interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1RA), the SARS-CoV-2-nucleoprotein (NP) and -spike (S1) proteins and an array of 14 inflammatory cytokines were quantified. Among 777 participants (median age 37 years, 69.5% women), 40 participants (5.1%; 95% confidence interval [CI] 3.7–7.0%) had elevated hs-cTnT concentration on day 3 and mRNA-1273 vaccine-associated myocardial injury was adjudicated in 22 participants (2.8% [95% CI 1.7–4.3%]). Twenty cases occurred in women (3.7% [95% CI 2.3–5.7%]), two in men (0.8% [95% CI 0.1–3.0%]). Hs-cTnT elevations were mild and only temporary. No patient had electrocardiographic changes, and none developed major adverse cardiac events within 30 days (0% [95% CI 0–0.4%]). In the overall booster cohort, hs-cTnT concentrations (day 3; median 5, interquartile range [IQR] 4–6 ng/L) were significantly higher compared to matched controls (n = 777, median 3 [IQR 3–5] ng/L, p < 0.001). Cases had comparable systemic reactogenicity, concentrations of anti-IL-1RA, anti-NP, anti-S1, and markers quantifying systemic inflammation, but lower concentrations of interferon (IFN)-λ1 (IL-29) and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) versus persons without vaccine-associated myocardial injury.

Conclusion

mRNA-1273 vaccine-associated myocardial injury was more common than previously thought, being mild and transient, and more frequent in women versus men. The possible protective role of IFN-λ1 (IL-29) and GM-CSF warrant further studies.

Find the paper here

Categories
Biden Cartel How sick is this? Leftist Virtue(!) Reprints from others. Warfare

A Seismic Victory in Gaza: Mapping the Tunnels of the “Gaza Metro”

One of the Hamas tunnels discovered.

By Malcolm E. Whittaker for Real Clear Wire

According to sources, Hamas’ tunnels under Gaza extend “a few dozen miles.” Other sources believe these tunnels extend hundreds of miles and rival the underground of a major European city. This has caused some commentators to refer to Hama’s tunnels as the “Gaza metro.” The ‘Gaza metro’: The mysterious subterranean tunnel network used by Hamas | CNN. Whatever their length, they shield fighters from surveillance and allow movement without fear of observation or attack. What if these tunnels could be precisely located? Rather than being safe locations, they would become death traps.

Commentators suggest the tunnels give Hamas an asymmetric advantage. The noted publication Foreign Affairs, states that only “[b]ulldozers can be used to expose tunnels during a ground operation. Drones, robots, or dogs can help clear tunnels. There might be a need to enter the tunnels to rescue hostages, as a measure of last resort. … This is how most states have eliminated subterranean threats in the past, and this is what Israel should do, as well.” (November 9, 2023, “Israel Must Destroy Hama’s Tunnels, Demolishing the Groups Infrastructure Is More Important Than Eliminating Its Leaders”). In short, according to Foreign Affairs, only personnel on the ground can locate and destroy Hama’s tunnels. Of course, Israeli personnel searching open ground to locate the entrances to the tunnels would be exposed to attack.

Currently used seismic equipment could locate tunnels using a system of geophones and pulse generators. However, personnel placing the geophone data acquisition equipment on the surface would be exposed to small arms fire and potential capture. The need to potentially expose personnel to attack while emplacing geophones would seem to defeat use of this well-understood technology that could readily and accurately locate Hama’s tunnels.

At its most basic, a seismic system can map layers in the earth’s surface. To do so, as seen in the figure below, a source generates a seismic wave. This wave travels through the earth and reflects off reflecting subsurface layers, such as the roof and floor of a tunnel, and these reflected waves are collected by a receiver. A source and be anything that generates a seismic wave. Currently, stamper trucks and explosives are frequently used to generate these waves. Seismic receivers are generically referred to as “geophones.” Geophones collect seismic data, i.e., seismic waves, and map the earth’s subsurface.

Fig. 1 – Schematic of Seismic Reflection Method – courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Environmental Geophysics webpage Seismic Reflection Methods | Environmental Geophysics | U.S. EPA

Current seismic technology readily available from the oil field will allow identification (and then destruction) of these tunnels. Wireless Seismic METIS (Multiphysics Exploration Technology Integrated System) uses a seismic recording channel collected by autonomous drones. These drones also drop DART (Downfall Air Receiver Technology) receivers, i.e., geophones. The DARTs are dropped by the drone and impale themselves into the ground creating a system of geophones to model the subsurface data. This system was thoroughly evaluated in Papua New Guinea in 2018. Wireless Seismic News — METIS field test yields excellent results. A single drone dropped 60 DARTs in one hour and these drones recovered “real time seismic data” thereby imaging subsurface data of underground voids. Precision guided artillery shells could provide the seismic source needed for the geophones to collect subsurface data. The DART’s would be dropped inside Gaza to model any location, i.e., not just locations close to where Israeli troops are located. Thus, METIS could accurately map the entire Gaza strip.

Once the location of the tunnels is known, they can be destroyed using deep penetrating bombs fused to detonate deep in the ground and dropped from aircraft. This could potentially interdict the entire system of tunnels. Even an extensive metro-like system of tunnels could be defeated if important chokepoints could be detected and collapsed.

Finally, this technology could resolve the ongoing factual dispute over whether Hamas has placed tunnels underneath hospitals, United Nations positions, schools, and other places that are protected from attack. While not a panacea, the METIS system could answer these basic questions and, potentially, turn Hama’s tunnels into a death trap for fighters using the tunnels. At least, it would mitigate any asymmetric advantage Hama’s tunnels provide.

Malcolm E. Whittaker is a former candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. Malcolm is an engineer and patent attorney in Houston, Texas.

This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.