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Category: Reprints from others.
US Department of Energy believes lab leak is most likely theory for Covid’s origins
We want to thank the Morning Brew.
HEALTHNew report reignites lab leak debate |
Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images
Nearly three years after the Covid-19 pandemic shut down much of the world, we still don’t know how it started. But the Department of Energy is ready to submit its best guess. In a new report based on fresh intelligence, the agency has concluded that Covid-19 most likely spread to humans as a result of a mistake at a Chinese laboratory (aka the “lab leak” theory), the WSJ reports. Important note: In making this determination, the Energy Dept. is about as self-assured as any Michael Cera character—it reportedly has “low confidence” that this theory is correct. Also, why would the Energy Dept. have information about a pandemic’s origins? Little-known fact: The Energy Dept. oversees a network of 17 national laboratories, and some of those labs do advanced bioresearch. The agency frequently leverages this lab network to gather information, rather than relying on typical intelligence operations, according to the NYT. But there’s still no consensusIn endorsing the lab leak theory, the Energy Dept. joins the FBI, which has concluded with “moderate confidence” that Covid originated accidentally from a Chinese lab: the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The two agencies reportedly arrived at this conclusion via different methods. However, four other US agencies and the National Intelligence Council have concluded that Covid originated through natural transmission from an infected animal. But they, too, have low confidence their conclusions are correct. One piece of evidence that’s missing from the natural transmission theory? The animal that hypothetically did the infecting hasn’t been identified. Given all this uncertainty, two other US agencies haven’t reached a conclusion on Covid’s beginnings yet. So, if you’re doing the math at home: Four US agencies believe it was natural transmission, two say lab leak, and two are undecided. Zoom out: Scientists say it’s important to make every effort to learn how Covid-19, a pandemic that’s caused nearly 7 million deaths globally, began, so we can better prevent the next one. But with the Chinese government (Joe and Hunter’s best buds) thwarting investigations by global authorities, there may only be so much information the US can gather. And it might never be able to confidently answer the question: How did Covid begin? Edited. |
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Lead author of new Cochrane review speaks out.
I’ve decided to post the entire interview from Dr. Demasi’s substack Also our lurker loons seem to be confused about what’s a fact and what’s Progressive gobly gook. Before I forget, the Study Doctor Jefferson’s group of doctors and scientists did was peer reviewed. Recently one of the lurker posted what it called a fact. A assistant worker at a hospital as a rebuttal to the report. One low level person. Well again this loon went after the report.
It’s source was Michael Hiltzik. What doctor or scientist is Mr. Hiltzik? He’s not one. I’ve been in contact with him since 2004. He’s a business writer for the LA Times. Yes a business writer. And a very good one at that. Not a medical writer. So if you wish to read his articles, you’ll find him in the business section not medical.
Tom Jefferson, senior associate tutor at the University of Oxford, is the lead author of a recent Cochrane review that has ‘gone viral’ on social media and re-ignited one of the most divisive debates during the pandemic – face masks.
The updated review titled “Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of acute respiratory viruses” found that wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to influenza-like or covid-19-like illness transmission.
This comes off the back of three years of governments mandating the use of face masks in the community, schools and hospital settings. Just last month, the WHO upgraded its guidelines advising “anyone in a crowded, enclosed, or poorly ventilated space” to wear a mask.
Jefferson and his colleagues also looked at the evidence for social distancing, hand washing, and sanitising/sterilising surfaces — in total, 78 randomised trials with over 610,000 participants.
Jefferson doesn’t grant many interviews with journalists — he doesn’t trust the media. But since we worked together at Cochrane a few years ago, he decided to let his guard down with me.
During our conversation, Jefferson didn’t hold back. He condemned the pandemic’s “overnight experts”, he criticised the multitude of scientifically baseless health policies, and even opened up about his disappointment in Cochrane’s handling of the review.
The Interview
DEMASI: This Cochrane review has caused quite a stir on social media and inflamed the great mask debate. What are your thoughts?
JEFFERSON: Well, it’s an update from our November 2020 review and the evidence really didn’t change from 2020 to 2023. There’s still no evidence that masks are effective during a pandemic.
DEMASI: And yet, most governments around the world implemented mask mandates during the pandemic…
JEFFERSON: Yes, well, governments completely failed to do the right thing and demand better evidence. At the beginning of the pandemic, there were some voices who said masks did not work and then suddenly the narrative changed.
DEMASI: That is true, Fauci went on 60 minutes and said that masks are not necessary and then weeks later he changed his tune.
JEFFERSON: Same with New Zealand’s Chief Medical Officer. One minute he is saying masks don’t work, and the next minute, he flipped.
DEMASI: Why do you think that happened?
JEFFERSON: Governments had bad advisors from the very beginning… They were convinced by non-randomised studies, flawed observational studies. A lot of it had to do with appearing as if they were “doing something.”
In early 2020, when the pandemic was ramping up, we had just updated our Cochrane review ready to publish…but Cochrane held it up for 7 months before it was finally published in November 2020.
Those 7 months were crucial. During that time, it was when policy about masks was being formed. Our review was important, and it should have been out there.
DEMASI: What was the delay?
JEFFERSON: For some unknown reason, Cochrane decided it needed an “extra” peer-review. And then they forced us to insert unnecessary text phrases in the review like “this review doesn’t contain any covid-19 trials,” when it was obvious to anyone reading the study that the cut-off date was January 2020.
DEMASI: Do you think Cochrane intentionally delayed that 2020 review?
JEFFERSON: During those 7 months, other researchers at Cochrane produced some unacceptable pieces of work, using unacceptable studies, that gave the “right answer”.
DEMASI: What do you mean by “the right answer”? Are you suggesting that Cochrane was pro-mask, and that your review contradicted the narrative. Is that your intuition?
JEFFERSON: Yes, I think that is what was going on. After the 7-month delay, Cochrane then published an editorial to accompany our review. The main message of that editorial was that you can’t sit on your hands, you’ve got to do something, you can’t wait for good evidence…. it’s a complete subversion of the ‘precautionary principle’ which states that you should do nothing unless you have reasonable evidence that benefits outweigh the harms.
DEMASI: Why would Cochrane do that?
JEFFERSON: I think the purpose of the editorial was to undermine our work.
DEMASI: Do you think Cochrane was playing a political game?
JEFFERSON: That I cannot say, but it was 7 months that just happened to coincide with the time when all the craziness began, when academics and politicians started jumping up and down about masks. We call them “strident campaigners”. They are activists, not scientists.
DEMASI: That’s interesting.
JEFFERSON: Well, no. It’s depressing.
DEMASI: So, the 2023 updated review now includes a couple of new covid-19 studies….the Danish mask study….and the Bangladesh study. In fact, there was a lot of discussion about the Bangladesh mask study which claimed to show some benefit….
JEFFERSON: That was not a very good study because it was not a study about whether masks worked, it was a study about increasing compliance for wearing a mask.
DEMASI: Right, I remember there was a reanalysis of the Bangladesh study showing it had significant bias….you’ve worked in this area for decades, you’re an expert…
JEFFERSON [interjects]… please do not call me an expert. I’m a guy who has worked in the field for some time. That has to be the message. I don’t work with models, I don’t make predictions. I don’t hassle people or chase them on social media. I don’t call them names… I’m a scientist. I work with data.
David Sackett, the founder of Evidence Based Medicine, once wrote a very famous article for The BMJ saying that ‘experts’ are part of the problem. You just have to look at the so-called ‘experts’ that have been advising government.
DEMASI: There were so many silly mask policies. They expected 2yr olds to wear masks, and you had to wear a mask to walk into a restaurant, but you could take it off as soon as you sat down.
JEFFERSON: Yes, also the 2- meter rule. Based on what? Nothing.
DEMASI: Did you wear a mask?
JEFFERSON: I follow the law. If the law says I need to wear one, then I wear one because I have to. I do not break the law. I obey the law of the country.
DEMASI: Yeah, same. What would you say to people who still want to wear a mask?
JEFFERSON: I think it’s fair to say that if you want to wear a mask then you should have a choice, okay. But in the absence of evidence, you shouldn’t be forcing anybody to do so.
DEMASI: But people say, I’m not wearing a mask for me, I’m wearing it for you.
JEFFERSON: I have never understood that difference. Have you?
DEMASI: They say it’s not to protect themselves, but to protect others, an act of altruism.
JEFFERSON: Ah yes. Wonderful. They get the Albert Schweitzer prize for Humanitarianism. Here’s what I think. Your overnight experts know nothing.
DEMASI (laughs)
JEFFERSON: There is just no evidence that they make any difference. Full stop. My job, our job as a review team, was to look at the evidence, we have done that. Not just for masks. We looked at hand washing, sterilisation, goggles etcetera…
DEMASI: What’s the best evidence for avoiding infection?
JEFFERSON: I think your best shot is sanitation/sterilisation with antiseptic products. We’ve known for about 40 to 50 years that the inside of toilets, handles, seats for example, you recover a very high concentration of replication competent virus, it doesn’t matter what viruses they are. This argues for a contact / fomite mode of transmission.
Also, hand washing shows some benefit, especially in small children. The problem with that is, unless you make the population completely psychotic, they will not comply.
DEMASI: May I just ask a finer point on masks… it’s not that masks don’t work, it’s just that there is no evidence they do work…is that right?
JEFFERSON: There’s no evidence that they do work, that’s right. It’s possible they could work in some settings….we’d know if we’d done trials. All you needed was for Tedros [from WHO] to declare it’s a pandemic and they could have randomised half of the United Kingdom, or half of Italy, to masks and the other half to no masks. But they didn’t. Instead, they ran around like headless chickens.
DEMASI: I’ve worked as a political advisor, so I know that Governments don’t like to appear “uncertain,” they like to act as if they are in control of the situation….
JEFFERSON: Well, there’s always uncertainty. Masking became a “visible” political gesture, which is a point we make over and over again now. Washing hands and sanitation and vaccination are not overtly visible, but wearing a mask is.
DEMASI: Your review also showed that n95 masks for healthcare workers did not make much difference.
JEFFERSON: That’s right, it makes no difference – none of it.
DEMASI: Intuitively it makes sense to people though…. you put a barrier between you and the other person, and it helps reduce your risk?
JEFFERSON: Ahhhh the Swiss cheese argument…..
DEMASI: Well, the ‘Swiss cheese’ model was one of the most influential explanations for why people should layer their protection. Another barrier, another layer of protection? You don’t like the Swiss cheese model?
JEFFERSON: I like Swiss cheese to eat — the model not so much …It’s predicated on us knowing exactly how these respiratory viruses transmit, and that, I can tell you, we don’t know. There isn’t a single mode of transmission, it is probably mixed.
The idea that the covid virus is transmitted via aerosols has been repeated over and over as if its “truth” but the evidence is as thin as air. It’s complex and all journalists want 40 years of experience condensed into two sentences. You can quote the Swiss cheese model, but there’s no evidence that many of these things make any difference.
DEMASI: Why? How can that be?
JEFFERSON: It’s probably related to the way that people behave, it could be the way viruses are transmitted or their port of entry, people don’t wear masks correctly….no-one really knows for sure. I keep saying it repeatedly, it needs to be looked at by doing a huge, randomised study – masks haven’t been given a proper trial. They should have been done, but they were not done. Instead, we have overnight experts perpetuating a ‘fear-demic.’
DEMASI: I’ve heard people say it would be unethical to do a study and randomise half of a group to masks and the other half to no masks….do you agree?
JEFFERSON: No, because we don’t know what effect masks will have. If we don’t know what impact they have, how can it be unethical? Strident fanatics have managed to poison this whole discussion and try and make it into a black and white thing…and rely on terribly flawed studies.
DEMASI: Thanks for the chat with me today.
JEFFERSON: You’re welcome, Maryanne.
Note: This interview was edited for clarity and brevity. Jefferson is co-author of Trust The Evidence
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Provided by the free press.
A look at the weeks happenings.
TGIF: Dignity for Oompa Loompas
Former President Donald Trump hands out Make America Great Again hats to McDonalds employees in East Palestine, Ohio. (Jabin Botsford via Getty Images)
TGIF: Dignity for Oompa Loompas
Robots replace academics. Another Dolezal. The censors come for Roald Dahl. Buttigieg blows it in Ohio. Plus: David Mamet on cowboys.
By Nellie Bowles
February 24, 2023
→ Home sales fall for 12 straight months: It’s the longest streak since 1999. Mortgage rates are still too high. See I only care about politics that directly impact me financially, and this does because it means when I look at my house on Zillow I see the number going down. Not allowed! Meanwhile, office landlords are beginning to default as those 10-year leases end.
→ Georgia grand jury foreperson gone wild: The head juror for the special grand jury looking into Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results has gone rogue. She is Emily Kohrs, 30, a private citizen, a grand jury foreperson tasked with protecting elections, and as of this week a chatty new media darling.
To MSNBC: “I kind of wanted to subpoena the former president because I got to swear everybody in. And so I thought it’d be really cool to get 60 seconds with President Trump, of me looking at him and being like, ‘Do you solemnly swear?’ And me getting to swear him in.”
To CNN: “There may be some names on that list that you wouldn’t expect. But the big name that everyone keeps asking me about—I don’t think you will be shocked.”
Emily’s having fun! (And of course she’s into witchcraft.) Honestly, the grand jury foreperson’s main bias seems to be toward drama and chaos, and in that we salute her.
As an aside, you know why Trump hasn’t been caught for anything big? The man never writes anything down. Not an email, not a text. The resistance, run by chaos Wiccans like Emily, will simply never catch him.
→ Roald Dahl meets 2023: The long-dead British children’s books author—Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The BFG, and, who could forget, The Witches—has not escaped our moment, and now his books are getting a modern makeover to remove offensive bits. I forget, were those books racist? Sexist? Not exactly, no, but lots of people might be offended, for example, by the fact that Dahl describes witches as bald. And so now there is a new line in the book right after his description of a witch’s hairless head: “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.” (I’m dead serious.)
Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was described as “fat.” That’s gone (now he’s just “enormous”). And did anyone ask the Oompa-Loompas whether they self-identified as “small men?” Now they are “small people,” which of course gives these characters, who are called Oompa. Loompas. All their dignity back. In one story, a character Dahl described as “ugly and beastly” is now just “beastly,” a concession, I guess, to sensitive ugly people. But what about the beastly?!
Now the next lines from James and the Giant Peach are so offensive, I want you to be very careful who sees your screen. These were traditionally sung by the Centipede: “Aunt Sponge was terrifically fat / And tremendously flabby at that.” And: “Aunt Spiker was thin as a wire / And dry as a bone, only drier.”
Those are gone now, replaced with new and worse rhymes coughed up by the very nice censors at Inclusive Minds.
Now, Dahl was also famously an antisemite, which he occasionally cloaked as simple anti-Zionism. Actually, that didn’t need a modern progressive update at all. Now excuse me while I go track down my original copy of The Twits before a sensitivity reader with red pens shows up at my door.
→ Ancestry is complex: One-time Black Panther Angela Davis went onto the PBS show Finding Your Roots, where Henry Louis Gates Jr. does a deep dive into your ancestry. But then something strange happened: It turns out her ancestors arrived on the Mayflower. Now the gotcha here from the right is something like “Oh she’s a descendant of the Mayflower! Not so victimized, eh?” But actually it’s sort of a vindication of the 1619-mindset, in that the history of America and slavery is entwined from the start. It’s worth watching the clip just to see Davis’s face and the gravity of being tied genetically back to that ship. “No, my ancestors did not come here on the Mayflower. No, no no. That’s a little bit too much to deal with right now.”
→ Selling unused Covid gear on the cheap: New York City is auctioning off $200 million in Covid supplies for just $500,000. This comes from local news blog The City, who got the scoop. Among some of the details from the story: A junk dealer from Long Island picked up $12 million in ventilators for just $24,600. “It took the dealer 28 truckloads to cart the stuff away, auction records state.” It’s a great story that also includes emails showing city officials fretting that people might find out how much they overspent. It’s like Storage Wars but so, so sad.
Congratulations to the junk dealer who got 500,000 pounds of ventilators.
→ Jimmy Carter, 98, in hospice: The former president is now in hospice in his Plains, Georgia, home. I recommend this 2018 feature about his sweet and simple life in retirement with Rosalynn, where every Sunday he taught a lesson at the Maranatha Baptist Church. TGIF salutes Jimmy Carter, a model of decency.
Speaking of gentle souls with good intentions, humble dreams, and devoted marriages, let’s see what Bill Clinton and Donald Trump are up to this week. . .
→ Trump gets to East Palestine before the White House: Trump visited the site of the toxic train derailment, spoke to residents, and brought pallets of water (Trump-branded, of course). He stopped at McDonalds, telling workers quite believably: “I know this menu better than you do.”
Meanwhile, local officials in East Palestine are getting on camera to show themselves drinking tap water. Like, see, it’s totally safe! The fish are dead and your dog is dying, but we’re cool! Don’t be so uptight about “vinyl chloride” and “phosgene,” which are just fancy words for totally not-toxic water.
One thing that makes Trump successful is he says that things are shitty when they’re shitty, and I’m sorry, but the water in East Palestine is shitty right now.
Racing there after Trump was Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, the man who is proving single-handedly that Rhodes Scholars are overhyped. Buttigieg whiffed when he arrived: he ran away from reporters, leaving his press secretary begging those reporters to turn off their cameras before she would talk to them. When he did finally speak, he said he “lost his train of thought.” Oh god:
Is there something I’m missing here? Why did the train derailment get coded as so conservative that no one could talk about it? Why do the cameras have to be off? Why isn’t Michael Moore there? To me, this whole thing is a gimme for Democrats: use it to argue for more and smarter government infrastructure spending. But for some reason, acknowledging the crash and its environmental impact is verboten. If you can answer this political mystery, please do in the comments.
→ I really don’t like this item: Mark Middleton, a one-time advisor to Bill Clinton, who seemed to be involved with handling his Jeffrey Epstein relationship, is dead by apparent suicide. Details came out this week: Middleton was found hanged with an electrical cord—and with a gunshot wound to his chest. When it comes to Epstein-related shadiness and the extended cover-up of that scandal, at this point, I’m willing to believe just about anything. On the other hand, people who have done bad things do generally want to avoid facing their own souls. So I’d say I’m Epstein-related-murder-conspiracy-open but not sold. But let’s give it a week.
→ James O’Keefe is out: Project Veritas, the right-wing undercover investigations outlet, has ousted its leader and star, James O’Keefe. He spoke to staff before leaving and you can watch that strange, rambling speech here. The board accused him of spending “an excessive amount of donor funds in the last three years on personal luxuries.” Items and amounts that the Veritas board lists: “$14,000 on a charter flight to meet someone to fix his boat under the guise of meeting with a donor” and “over $150,000 in Black Cars in the last 18 months.”
Now, to be clear, James O’Keefe’s job is setting up shady stings of his enemies. One of my friends who got stung was on his third date with a woman who turned out to be an undercover Veritas operative. It was on that date that she recorded him. To me, there’s no one better to run an operation like that than a dude who spends $14,000 to meet someone about a boat. Over $150,000 on limos is basically the minimum spend for a guy like this.
→ Ozy Media founder arrested: It’s not only right-wing media that’s losing a star this week. On Thursday we learned that Carlos Watson, founder of progressive media company Ozy, had been arrested on charges of fraud. The United States of America v. Carlos Watson and Ozy Media, Inc. is pretty fun reading. Among other things, Watson allegedly had a subordinate— Samir Rao, Ozy’s COO—pretend to be a YouTube executive on a call with Goldman Sachs, to say how great Ozy Media was doing on YouTube.
This whole thing was first broken open by scoop hound Ben Smith, now of Semafor. An idea: maybe Carlos Watson and James O’Keefe can start something new together?
And now, a word from resident cartoonist David Mamet . . .
→ University DEI admins come up with their perfect replacement: Vanderbilt University’s office of diversity issued a statement consoling students about a recent mass shooting at Michigan State. But apparently they are so very busy that they used AI to write it.
Let me back up: last week, 43-year-old Anthony Dwayne McRae—who had previously pleaded down a felony charge that would have prevented him from possessing a gun—slaughtered three students, seemingly at random, on Michigan State’s campus.
In response, Vanderbilt’s equity workers released a touching statement about how everyone needs to be kind and inclusive to, I guess, prevent mass shootings by nearby career criminals: “Another important aspect of creating an inclusive environment is to promote a culture of respect and understanding.” And: “[L]et us come together as a community to reaffirm our commitment to caring for one another and promoting a culture of inclusivity on our campus.” And: “Finally, we must recognize that creating a safe and inclusive environment is an ongoing process that requires ongoing effort and commitment.” It’s the same nonsensical but warm sentiment said over and over—inclusive (7 times), community (5 times), safe (3)—and it kinda worked!
Except at the bottom of the statement was this sentence: Paraphrase from OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI language model, personal communication, February 15, 2023.
People were upset. The university apologized. And yes, you could ask what exactly these bureaucrats are doing all day. But their laziness might also be their genius: replace all university bureaucrats with ChatGPT. Like the discovery of penicillin, sometimes accidents make genius.
→ NPR cutting 10 percent of its staff: The public radio station—that is, in part, taxpayer funded—is losing money and needs to cut staff. I can’t point to an institution that has more fully failed its mission than NPR, which went from fulfilling a genuine public service with news and great stories (I’m thinking of early This American Life) to just another hyper-partisan maker of mush. Tote bags and mush.
→ NYT union versus NYT workers: The New York Times’ labor union is a funny thing because reporters pay into it every two weeks and, in turn, the union’s main project is getting some of those reporters fired. It’s a bit like musical chairs: If you’re too slow putting the fist in your Twitter profile picture, you’re it. See, the union is pretty bad at achieving boring stuff like raises, but it shines at gathering groups of reporters to get a deskmate ousted. Who needs money when you can draw blood?
The latest: the union stepped in to help ax a couple Times writers who reported on trans issues with anything close to an objective lens. Here’s what union head Susan DeCarava wrote to Times staff in a note about how to organize: “[E]mployees are protected in collectively raising concerns that conditions of their employment constitute a hostile working environment.” Oh yes, reporting on trans issues makes a hostile work environment. Perfect. We got the language, now let’s march on Katie, that very bad Times reporter! Let’s picket the awful Emily! The people united will get Katie fired!
Except finally, finally, the union this week is seeing some organized pushback, and a group of Times people wrote their own letter asking the union to just please stop. “We ask that our union work to advance, not erode, our journalistic independence.”
If media union bosses can’t wake up and get Katies and Emilys fired, what exactly are they supposed to do all day?
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Did Norfolk Southern neglect safety protocols in pursuit of DEI and ESG initiatives?
On February 3rd, dozens of Norfolk Southern train cars derailed while traveling through East Palestine, Ohio, with 11 of those cars carrying ultra hazardous chemical agents. Some three days later, those chemicals were burned off into the air, after officials expressed concerns that the materials could explode and ignite an even greater catastrophe. Could all of this have been avoided?
On Thursday, the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) determined in a preliminary report that an overheated wheel bearing on a Norfolk Southern train car could be responsible for the derailment that occurred.
The report listed multiple operational concerns, adding that “surveillance video … showed what appeared to be a wheel bearing in the final stage of overheat failure moments before the derailment.” This seems to indicate that this was a disaster that could’ve been avoided with proper safety protocols in place.
We are offered clues of possible neglect in Norfolk Southern’s 2022 ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance) report, which showcases how the railway corporation has completely embraced the modern “stakeholder capitalism” agenda that inundates seemingly every major American corporation.
Our 2022 ESG report highlights our efforts to develop sustainable solutions for both our customers and our planet, and to invest in our people. Read More: bit.ly/3QCgT1h #Sustainability #DEI
The report, published in late 2022, highlights how Norfolk is pursuing wokeness and the climate agenda over safety and merit-based hiring.
It contains a message from Alan Shaw, the rail company’s CEO, who has been in the news lately for all of the wrong reasons. In a letter to readers, Shaw proudly announced that they would continue “reducing our carbon footprint” while expanding their DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) initiatives.
Shaw, by the way, failed to show up for the latest community meeting on the railway disaster on Thursday.
As for the DEI page, it touts how Shaw signed the “CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion pledge,” a product of the ultra woke consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The pledge commits employers to pursue “racial equity” in their hiring processes and “implement and expand unconscious bias education and training.” In short, follow the agenda and you will be rewarded by The System.
In its DEI page, Jason Pettway, the company’s Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (a role created by the company in 2021) cheers the fact that more than half of all new hires belong to a racial minority.
The DEI page makes clear to readers that Norfolk is committed to hiring its workforce on the basis of gender and skin color, and not merit.
Forget about the mushroom cloud and toxic gasses they helped to launch over East Palestine. In its ESG section, Norfolk Southern has won plenty of awards recently for “delivering the low-carbon economy.”
Did all of this “climate leadership” mean Norfolk Southern was cutting corners on safety standards? The report was surely celebrated by Norfolk’s multi-trillion dollar asset management behemoth stakeholders.
As for the people of East Palestine, Ohio, they are left with the wreckage in their physical backyards, and with a series of questions that remain unanswered from Norfolk Southern officials, who have largely refused to hold themselves accountable for the consequences of their failures.
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Biden Family Key Partner Eric Schwerin to Flip in House Oversight Probe.
Hunter Biden’s top financial lieutenant Eric Schwerin is expected to “soon” provide documents to the House Oversight Committee’s investigation of the Biden family for nine violations, including money laundering and wire fraud, a spokesperson for the committee told Breitbart News.
Schwerin, who shared bank accounts with President Joe Biden and dubbed the family’s “moneyman,” also maintained guest lists for White House functions and negotiated the settlement with Hunter’s first wife, Kathleen. Emails from Hunter’s laptop show Schwerin was deeply embedded in Hunter’s personal life and the Biden family networks for nearly two decades and is even pictured at campaign events with Joe Biden.
Schwerin was also the president of Rosemont Seneca Partners, a fund created by Hunter Biden and several associates that spawned business deals in Russia, Ukraine, China, and Romania. Many of those deals yielded the Biden family business millions over decades while Joe Biden was an elected official.
Joe Biden and his team have claimed at least seven times the president is not involved in the family’s international business deals, but more than 17 instances show that Joe Biden was involved in the business. In one example, Schwerin visited the White House and other official locations 27 times when Joe Biden was vice president.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) is seen in front of a newspaper page with a photograph of Hunter Biden and his father President Joe Biden during the Protecting Speech from Government Interference and Social Media hearing with former Twitter employees before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability at the Rayburn House Office Building on Wednesday February 08, 2023, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
A committee spokesperson told Breitbart News it has been in contact with “Schwerin’s attorney and expect him to start producing documents to the Oversight Committee soon.”
Wednesday was the deadline set by the committee for Schwerin, James, and Hunter to comply with demands to disclose a host of both classified and unclassified documents, records, and communications between business associates and family members, including Joe Biden.
While Hunter has refused to comply with the request, the committee told Breitbart News that James has received correspondence from his attorneys. It is unknown if James is complying with the requests.
“Oversight Committee staff will be in communication with them about Chairman Comer’s request,” the spokesperson said.
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) has stated in February the “next step” to compel the relevant information from Hunter and James is to issue subpoenas to Hunter and James if they do not comply.
The revelations about Schwerin’s willingness to turn over documents to the committee comes as Republicans have been stonewalled by Hunter, the Treasury Department, and former FBI “point man” Timothy Thibault, who allegedly “improperly” “shut down” a probe into Hunter’s laptop that is likely unrelated to the ongoing criminal probe concerning reported tax fraud by the president’s son.
In January, the Treasury denied the Committee’s request to disclose 150 suspicious reports flagged by U.S. banks concerning Biden family business transactions, causing Comer to threaten a subpoena.
Republicans has raised concerns that Joe Biden could be compromised by China and questioned how the Biden family made millions of dollars without producing any actual work in return for the money.
“What is the Biden family business? They don’t have any assets,” Comer said. “They don’t manufacture anything. They don’t sell anything. Yet they receive millions from around the globe.”
In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism.
Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’s investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from Hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing even to have a 10 percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
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Teacher gets the boot. DeSantis gets the last laugh. Recently WP and some no name website ran with a fake story about a school library having no books left because of a Florida law against explicit stories in some books. A teacher showed a video about the shelves in the library being empty. DeSantis said it wasn’t true. Somebody didn’t do the research and ran with the fake news. Here’s the facts.
A viral hoax showing a supposedly cleaned-out library as a result of a new Florida law banning explicit material in schools has resulted in a teacher being fired.
Brian Covey, who was a substitute teacher for Duval County Public Schools (Jacksonville area), was told his services would no longer be needed after he posted a video making it seem as if the Mandarin Middle School library had been emptied out. When questioned about the situation at the time, Gov. Ron DeSantis denounced it as a fake narrative, noting that nothing in the law required any school to take any such action.
Apparently, the school hadn’t taken such action. Covey had instead filmed some random empty shelves in a library otherwise full of books. That was deemed to be a violation of the district’s social media policy and a harm to students by making them believe there were no books to check out.
Naturally, outlets like The Washington Post are still pushing the false narrative, even as they report on the firing and why it occurred.
Hey Lurkers this look familiar?
“In discussion between the district and ESS regarding this individual’s misrepresentation of the books available to students in the school’s library and the disruption this misrepresentation has caused, it was determined that he had violated social media and cellphone policies of his employer,” the district said. “Therefore, ESS determined these policy violations made it necessary to part ways with this individual.”
If you read the article, they admit that Covey’s video was a misrepresentation. Yet, the Post, just a few words later, immediately repeats the falsehood that teachers are being forced to remove and cover books.
No, they aren’t. Rather, they are being forced to remove books with graphic sexual content such as “Gender Queer,” which contains illustrated scenes of gay sex. Ask yourself, why are these press outlets so obsessed with ensuring kids are exposed to sexual content in schools? I don’t have an answer to that, and I suspect the reasons vary, but it’s certainly a really weird and gross dynamic.
The reality is that there is no prohibition on what anyone would consider normal, acceptable reading material for children. The curation of books to exclude explicit and sexual content is not new and has long been part of school libraries. Any teachers or administrators that are rushing to clean out a library or cover up whole bookshelves are doing so simply as a political stunt.
Of course, advocacy groups are treating Covey as a victim, arguing his First Amendment rights were violated.
Kate Ruane, a director at the free-speech nonprofit organization PEN America, said in an interview that Duval’s termination of Covey may have violated the teacher’s First Amendment rights.
“What the district has done is clearly an attempt to chill the speech of public school teachers,” Ruane said.
You do not have a First Amendment right to take video at work in order to mislead and lie about your employer (in this case, partially being the State of Florida). Social media policies for employment have long existed and have long been held up as legal by the courts. Covey wanted his moment in the spotlight, and he got it. All it cost him was his job, and deservedly so. If he wants to be an activist, maybe Al Sharpton’s outfit, which is currently wasting time in Florida, is hiring.
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Former AG Whitaker. Overturning Trump Pardon ‘Abuse of Power’.
Former Attorney General Matthew Whitaker told Newsmax on Tuesday that the administration of Joe Biden’s attempt to retry Philip Esformes, who former President Donald Trump pardoned, is “an abuse of power.”
“This administration appears to not really be grounded by the Constitution,” Whitaker said Tuesday on “Wake Up America.” “The president’s ability to pardon folks is absolute under the Constitution. In this case, President Trump issued a pardon, commuted Mr. Esformes’ sentence, and now this administration wants to go back and re-prosecute the same case and put him back in jail, if they can, and it’s an outrageous abuse of power.”
Esformes, a nursing home owner, was convicted in 2019 in a $1.3 billion Medicare fraud scheme and sentenced to 20 years in prison, CNBC reported in January.
Trump commuted his sentence in 2020, but Esformes lost his appeal on prosecutorial misconduct earlier this year, which could allow him to be retried, the report said.
Whitaker said the Department of Justice under Biden has “gone berserk” with the case and that a presidential pardon should have ended the prosecution.
“Once the president has pardoned somebody for certain types of behavior, that’s usually what it should end in,” Whitaker said. “I can’t find an example where an administration is going back and prosecuted someone for the same crime. This is an extraordinary case. Obviously, it is personal for the prosecutors, which it should never be.”
Whitaker said the main motivation for trying for a retrial seems to be driven by the fact that the Biden administration wants the pardon overturned just because Trump issued it.
Whitaker also said Biden’s surprise visit to Ukraine on Monday to mark the first anniversary this week of Russia’s invasion into that country should have come sooner.
“Biden should have gone there well before the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion,” Whitaker said. “I think he is searching for a way, and a tone, to make this war compelling and interesting to the American people.”
Who else came out? Former AG’S John Ashcroft, Edwin Meese, Michael Mukasey, and Alberto Gonzales endorsed Esformes’ appeal before clemency was granted.
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Thanks to KCRA and Gateway Pundit.
But we were told that there was no voter fraud. It still sticks in my mind of how this one loon from California claimed that it checked all 50 states and only found one case of voter fraud. And it was a Republican. SMH.
Last week, The Gateway Pundit reported on a press conference about the arrest of a Lodi city councilmember named Shakir Khan. The San Joaquin Sheriff discovered the election crimes while serving a search warrant for non-election related findings regarding Khan’s businesses in the city.
KCRA reported:
[Khan] is accused of stashing 41 ballots at his home. Investigators also say he registered 23 people to vote at his home and that his email and phone number were used to register 47 others. Body camera footage showed voters telling detectives how Khan allegedly pressured them to vote for him and how he allegedly falsified voter registration documents.
Towards the end of the press conference, before taking questions from the media, Captain Hardy addresses some discrepancies in the voter rolls they discovered during their investigation:
https://youtu.be/0CZapWNipFc
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I want to thank the Daily Caller for this article.
AILAN EVANSASSOCIATE EDITOR
The U.S. State Department, through its Global Engagement Center (GEC), helped facilitate funding for a group that reportedly works to demonetize sites it claims are disseminating “disinformation,” including conservative news outlets, according to its website.
The Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a United Kingdom-based nonprofit that styles itself as a “non-political” monitor working to “disrupt the business model of disinformation,” lists as a funder the Disinfo Cloud, a now-shuttered GEC project. However, GDI has worked to demonetize conservative news sites by collaborating with ad exchanges to flag alleged purveyors of disinformation, the Washington Examiner reported.
GDI maintains a “dynamic exclusion list” of the worst offenders of disinformation online, according to its website. The organization then provides this list to ad tech companies, which can then “defund and downrank these worst offenders” and thereby defund sites allegedly promoting disinformation.
While the exclusion list isn’t publicly available, popular conservative news site Breitbart is on the list, according to the Examiner, and it is “plausible” that any of the “riskiest” outlets would also be on the exclusion list, according to a member of the GDI advisory panel who spoke to the Examiner.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a press conference before a meeting with Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Eli Cohen (not pictured) on January 30, 2023 in Jerusalem, Israel. (Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images)
In this list of news outlets that were deemed the “riskiest” for alleged promotion of disinformation, GDI identified several prominent conservative news sites including the New York Post and the Daily Wire. By comparison, the “least risky” sites were overwhelmingly left-wing.
Moreover, GDI flagged the Examiner itself as disseminating “anti-LGBTQ+” disinformation, according to an October 2022 GDI memo, and pointed to an Amazon ad displayed on the Examiner page. The “anti-LGBTQ+” content in question was found in an opinion article.
In September 2021, the State Department’s GEC hosted the U.S.-Paris Tech Challenge, an event seeking to “advance the development of promising and innovative technologies against disinformation and propaganda” in Europe and the U.K. The event was held in “collaboration with U.S. Embassy Paris, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)” and several other entities.
GDI, along with the U.K.-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), were two of the three winners; ISD also works to monitor and combat perceived misinformation and disinformation, and lists as government partners the U.S. State Department and U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The three winners will receive grants totaling $250,000, according to the Atlantic Council, which partnered with the State Department to arrange the event.
GDI also lists among its funders George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, Pierre Omidyar’s Luminate and Craig Newmark Philanthropies.
The Global Disinformation Index and the State Department did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
